WotLK castsequences for shaman/druid (theorycrafting/long)

[Fuzzyboy]

So, I was bored while updating my router-firmware and did a little castsequence thinking. Basically I'm trying to come up with a good castsequence which will work for 3.0/wotlk. Any input is appreciated.

Lightning bolt = 2.5 casttime (no cooldown)
Chain lightning = 1.5 casttime (3.5 CD)
Flame shock = instant, 15 sec duration with glyph, (6 sec cooldown untalented)
Lava burst = 1.5 casttime (8 sec CD)

Wrath = 1.5 casttime (no cooldown) - applies Earth and Moon (EM), 13% spelldmg increse
Starfire = 3.0 casttime (no cooldown) - applies Earth and Moon (EM), 13% spelldmg increse
Moonfire = instant, 12 sec duration
Insect swarm = instant, 12 sec duration

The idea behind the castsequence:

- Apply EM as soon as possible since it applies to shaman as well
- Allow flame shock to tick as long as possible before casting crit lava burst for mana save, for burst damage see alternate sequence below
- Get increased crit effect from swarm/moonfire combination while refreshing EM (druid only)

MPS sequence:

Druid

0.00 Wrath
0.50 - casting
1.00 - casting
1.50 Insect swarm, EM and swarm applied
2.00 - gcd
2.50 - gcd
3.00 Moonfire, Moonfire applied
3.50 - gcd
4.00 - gcd
4.50 Starfire
5.00 - casting
5.50 - casting
6.00 - casting
6.50 - casting
7.00 - casting
7.50 Starfire, EM refreshed
8.00 - casting
8.50 - casting
9.00 - casting
9.50 - casting
10.00 - casting
10.50 Starfire, EM refreshed
11.00 - casting
11.50 - casting
12.00 - casting
12.50 - casting
13.00 - casting
13.50 Restart, Swarm expire

/castsequence reset=target wrath, insect swarm, moonfire, starfire, starfire, starfire

Shaman

0.00 Flame shock, Flame shock applied
0.50 - gcd
1.00 - gcd
1.50 CL
2.00 - casting
2.50 - casting
3.00 LB CL cast, FS tick
3.50 - casting
4.00 - casting
4.50 - casting
5.00 LB
5.50 - casting
6.00 - casting, Shock CD, FS tick
6.50 - casting, CL CD
7.00 CL
7.50 - casting
8.00 - casting
8.50 LB CL cast
9.00 - casting, FS tick
9.50 - casting
10.00 - casting
10.50 LB, CL CD
11.00 - casting
11.50 - casting
12.00 - casting, FS tick
12.50 CL
13.00 - casting
13.50 - casting
14.00 Lava burst
14.50 - casting
15.00 - casting, Flameshock consumed
15.50 Restart

/castsequence reset=target flame shock, chain lightning, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, chain lightning, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, chain lightning, lava burst

DPS sequence:

Shaman (druid is the same)

0.00 Flame shock, Flame shock cast
0.50 - gcd
1.00 - gcd
1.50 Lava burst
2.00 - casting
2.50 - casting
3.00 CL, Flameshock consumed
3.50 - casting
4.00 - casting
4.50 LB
5.00 - casting
5.50 - casting
6.00 - casting, Shock CD

/castsequence reset=target flame shock, lava burst, chain lightning, lightning bolt

In making these sequences, I've made a couple of assumptions:

- there is no lag (so they need to be adjusted accordingly)
- flameshock will not expire before it's consumed (again assuming no lag), this can be fixed by switching the positions of the last CL and the lava burst, which will make flame shock lose one damage tick

I have little experience in theorycrafting and doing the sequences so I was hoping some more experienced people could help me with a couple of questions:

1) With glyph, flameshock will expire it's 15 second duration at the start of sec 15 - if there is any lag, will this mean the lava burst won't get the guaranteed crit?

2) Is there anything I have theoretically missed in the sequence above?

[Bravo]

won't have one piece of haste gear or the totem / druid imp moonkin talents?

[Schwarz]

I would think that you would want to cast lightning bolt followed by a chain lighting. Graphically it looks like they usually hit at the same time then followed up by a flame shock.

If you pull with flame shock then the mob is going to be running at you from the start. If you do lightning bolt/chain lightning then both of those are going to hit before the mob starts coming at you.

[Fuzzyboy]

won't have one piece of haste gear or the totem / druid imp moonkin talents?

Yes, and hopefully that will account for lag, but due to lack of knowledge on how much haste gear is realistic, how haste talents affect gcd and casttime (on my part) I didn't include those :-)

[Fuzzyboy]

I would think that you would want to cast lightning bolt followed by a chain lighting. Graphically it looks like they usually hit at the same time then followed up by a flame shock.

If you pull with flame shock then the mob is going to be running at you from the start. If you do lightning bolt/chain lightning then both of those are going to hit before the mob starts coming at you.

There are several reasons for this. First of all I'm assuming a paladin tank (I should probably have mentioned that :-), which means that tank will have aggro and the flameshock won't pull them off.

Secondly flame shock, with a dot component, benefits least from EM and we want EM to land before our LB/CL or we won't get the 13% bonus. Since LB has a longer cast time that Wrath, this could work still, but we want flame shock applied as fast as possible so we can have the CD counting for our next shock/burst cycle.

I'll try and find some coeff numbers and do the math.

[Drakkun]

You won't be taking the talent 'Lightning Mastery' to reduce LB to 2 secs?

[Fuzzyboy]

You won't be taking the talent 'Lightning Mastery' to reduce LB to 2 secs?

Yes I will. That is included in the calculations above:

3.00 LB
3.50 - casting
4.00 - casting
4.50 - casting

On 5.0 LB will be cast meaning 2 secs.

[Fuzzyboy]

won't have one piece of haste gear or the totem / druid imp moonkin talents?

Ok, so I read up on haste and did some thinking. What we want to do is this:

1) Get flame shock off as soon as possible to burst it when its about to expire
2) Cast CL as soon as it cools down
3) Cast Lava burst when flame shock is about to expire

Point 3 is debatable - you might wanna cast it when it fits your rotation better, since shock doesn't tick for that much damage, but that would depend on whether you have a focus on mana save (long fights) or high dps (shorter fights).

According to blue posts, threat generation will be high in relative comparison to now, meaning that if your dps and tank is equally well geared your dps can pretty much go nuts and won't grab aggro (less focus on aggro management - again according to blue posts). So we have two scenarios - scenario A (dpm efficiency) and scenario B (dps efficiency).

Assuming 10% haste, that would be 5% from wrath of air and 5% from other sources (1% spell haste = 15.7 haste rating - 10% is equivalent to 157 spellhaste):

- Lightning Bolt (LB) will have a cast time of 2,0 / 1,1 = 1,818181818, lets assume 1.85s to cover for lag etc
- Lava burst will have a cast time of 1,5 / 1,1 = 1,363636364, lets assume 1.4s to cover for lag
- CL will have a cast time of 1,5 / 1,1 = 1,363636364, lets assume 1.4s to cover for lag
- Wrath will have a cast time of 1,5 / 1,1 = 1,363636364, lets assume 1.4s to cover for lag
- GCD will be at 1.4 on 10% haste also.

Assuming that EM is applied at 1.4, we have our two scenarios:

Scenario A:

0.0 Flame shock
0.0 GCD start
1.4 GCD end
1.4 CL start cast
2.8 CL end cast
2.8 LB start cast
3.0 FS tick
4.65 LB end cast
4.65 LB start cast
6.0 FS tick
6.3 CL CD
6.5 CL start cast
7.9 CL end cast
7.9 LB star cast
9.0 FS tick
9.75 LB end cast

Because CL hasn't cooled down yet, we can't cast it here. If we cast LB here, we will finish at 11.6 which is just

0.2 after CL CD which is ok.

9.75 LB start cast
11.4 CL CD
11.6 LB end cast
11.6 CL start cast
12.0 FS tick
13.0 CL end cast
13.0 Lava burst start cast
With only 2 secs until FS expiration, this could be a good time to chuck in lava burst
14.85 Lava burst end cast (consumes flame shock)

<restart>

14.85 Flame shock
14.85 GCD start
15.0 Flame shock would expire if not bursted
16.25 GCD end
16.5 CL CD

this looks fine and would allow us to restart our cycle after, giving a cast-sequence of:

/castsequence Flame shock, chain lightning, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, chain lightning, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, chain lightning, lava burst

or in other words exactly the same sequence as before, only it takes less time to complete (14.85 secs instead of 15.5), but keep in mind that we end up waiting 0.25 secs for CL to cool down at the end and "waste" 0.2 earlier in the sequence. Because we want flame shock to tick, we can't burst it without losing dpm efficiency, but that is accounted for in the DPS scenario:

Scenario B:

0.0 Flame shock
0.0 GCD start
1.4 GCD end
1.4 Lava burst start cast
2.8 Lava burst end cast
2.8 CL start cast
4.2 CL end cast

Since there is still 1.8 sec to shock cooldown and 3.5 sec to CL cooldown we can choose between waiting or casting a

LB (which would only delay the flame shock cast by 0.05 since we have a 1.85 cast time on LB.

4.2 LB start cast
6.0 FS CD
6.05 LB end cast

<restart> Since we can see from the continuing pattern below that we won't run into big trouble with CL CD (only a 0.05 delay)

6.05 Flame shock
6.05 GCD start
6.45 GCD end
6.45 Lava burst start cast
7.85 Lava burst end cast
7.9 CL CD


The DPS sequence will be:

/castsequence flame shock, lava burst, chain lightning, lightning bolt

or in other words exactly the same sequence as before, only it takes less time to complete (6.05 secs as opposed to 6.5) so the 10% spellhaste will increase dps but not alter the castsequence. Interestingly, increasing spell haste beyond 10% will be wasted on this sequence once the haste pushes the LB after the first CL below the FS CD. A way to fix this would be casting the LB before CL (FS, Lava, LB, FS and continue into a longer rotation) but that would seem to require a lot more haste and regardless be less efficient on multiple targets.

[Crucial]

Also..cooldown for CL is reduced by 2 seconds with talents come wotlk.

[Fuzzyboy]

Also..cooldown for CL is reduced by 2 seconds with talents come wotlk.

Actually it's reduced by 2.5 secs - that's why I calculated with a 3.5 sec cooldown as you can see:

2.8 CL end cast
2.8 LB start cast
3.0 FS tick
4.65 LB end cast
4.65 LB start cast
6.0 FS tick
6.3 CL CD