Researching Shaman, And the Chain Lightning.

Well, its been a while since I posted. (For those who saw it.)

Ive been doing pretty well on Rexxar, a few people have come to be amused by the 5 boxxing, and I got a team of hunters up to 60, as a "test run" of sorts. All good stuff.



Now Im working on Tauren Shaman. Got them all up to 32, because I believe I read somewhere that 5 boxers routinely use CL to wipe out entire instances. Well, I took myself to SM-L, and found that it isnt quite that easy, so Im wondering what I could be doing wrong. Im specced Ele as deep as I can at 32, with special attention paid to shock/LB damage, as well as CL... and it seems pretty difficult. Im seeing Cl only hop to one other target usually, and while the primary takes heavy damage, the second usually shrugs it off... then I have cooldown, and 2 pissed elites on my leather wearing elementalists. (Who quickly get beat down)



So, Im pretty much going for strategies. Who's found themselves catching an asswhopping here? Who did something about it? Who routinely rapes instances and BG's? How do you do it?



Thank you!

-Myth

Just to make things clear, it is really trial and error at the start and there is no perfect answer except for what you figure out on your own. That said, there would be a few ways you could take this, I think most people drop stoneclaw, wait a moment pull, drop stoneclaw again once it is down and dps away. The idea behind this is that the naughty boys will be distracted for most of the pull. The other option is setting up the earthbind, stoneclaw, grouping where hopefully they are slowed enough that you can dps them down and stoneclaw distracts a significantly large enough portion of the other adds that you can just blast them while they slowly make their way to you. those are two possible options that you can play with, but I am sure there are some other ideas that people can float your way. Trial and error equals win. :thumbsup:

A few points..

The thing which sets shammies apart from other classes is totems.
So you need macro's or another feature, to apply totems effectively.

In 3.2 there will be a totem bar, which can drop all four at once (or fewer), as a set.
We will eventually be able to drop any one of four bars.

In the meantime, I'd use a combination of:
a) a totem farm/mass drop castsequence macro
b) several totems which you can drop en-masse individually.

For a Totem Farm macro, go with something like this:

#show
/castsequence reset=5 Air Totem, Water Totem, Earth Totem, Fire Totem

#show
/castsequence reset=5 Water Totem, Air Totem, Earth Totem, Fire Totem

You get the idea. Each shammy has their own farm macro.
Prioritize the buffs/debuffs you'd like to have the most and have those drop early.
My farm macro puts Fire last across the board, except one shammy drops Totem of Wrath first.
You won't have that yet, but its a group buff so you only need one down.

At later levels you might glyph it and have them all drop it, then do the farm macro.
You only need one down for combat, but if glyphed, you gain a strong buff for 5 mins after having dropped it.

Anyway, I put fire last for the other toons. I can mash my Totem Farm 3 times and have nothing which will "pull" for me.
A fourth pull includes a bunch of searing totems, too.

Then have the ability to drop 4x (or 5x with 5 shammies) of a totem on demand.
- Fire Elemental (massive AoE, use a Castsequence)
- Fire Nova (if talented this stuns, use a Castsequence).

- Mana Spring (x1) + Healing Stream (x Everyone Else)
- Cleansing Totem (x1-2), Mana Spring (x1), Healing Steam (x ?)

- Earthbind (if talented this roots, use a Castsequence).
- Earth Elemental (use a Castsequence)

- Grounding (x all)

So you're facing caster mobs... you can have every shammy drop Grounding Totems on demand.
If you're facing spiders with poison, you can drop the cleanse set, to deal with it.

For the cast sequence macro's, a spell name is cast, but a comma acts as a null (or nothing happens).
You have the macro on the same keybind, but move the nulls, so one press gets a spell or nothing.
And each press only gets the one spell.
The subsequent presses gets the same spell but on a different shammy.
Very nice for abilities with a cooldown.

#show
/castsequence reset=45 Thunderstorm,,,,

#show
/castsequence reset=45 ,Thunderstorm,,,

#show
/castsequence reset=45 ,,Thunderstorm,,

You'll probably not have Thunderstorm yet, but you'll get it down the road.
You can adapt this to any of your spells which you'd like to round-robin.
Change the reset to the recast delay of the spell in question.







A ton of people go with 1 paladin and 4 shaman for instances.
A tank can make a lot of stuff way easier.
5 shammies can work, but down the road you'll hit snags which they cannot beat until they outgear the instance.
You might even consider dual spec down the road, for heroics on one shammy for elemental/enhance primary and restoration/enhance second-spec.
I personally wouldn't consider dual spec's until you're thinking of heroics.