Boylston's Quad-box Shaman Rated Battleground Compendium

[Kicksome]

Oh, this is gonna be good!

My big concern is the druid AOE silence, roots, and the warlock AOE stun. In addition, the mage has the freeze ring thing and frost nova, and rogues have the smoke bombs that might make targeting difficult. Also, ele shamans get earthquake.

It seems like you will need to spread out much more than we have in the past, much more quickly.

[Boylston]

Oh, this is gonna be good!

My big concern is the druid AOE silence, roots, and the warlock AOE stun. In addition, the mage has the freeze ring thing and frost nova, and rogues have the smoke bombs that might make targeting difficult. Also, ele shamans get earthquake.

It seems like you will need to spread out much more than we have in the past, much more quickly.

Yeah, I am hoping to add a "How to Counter" section... thanks for reminding me!

[HPAVC]

Need info: These are off the GCD, yes? Is there a travel time on the Rocket Barrage?

Yes, its instant cast and its instant damage. Its "fire school" spell, your able to cast it when spriest silence effect is on you.

[Negativ1337]

Great guide!

Keep it up to date, its worth reading. I will try to make some viable talent specs in PvE + PvP some time soon.

Kind regards,

Team Overdose

[BrothelMeister]

As far as Totem selection goes:

Air: 3-4 Grounding, with 1 Wrath of Air completely optional. Extra Grounding totems never hurt.

Fire: Flame-tongue x4 I prefer simplicity, and the damage from Searing totem or magma totem will rarely be what finishes someone off. I also prefer to be able to cast Fire Nova at will without having to change totems, and FT totem has the longest Duration.

Earth: 2-3 Tremor ,1-2 Earthbind; Once again with the simplicity thing, I focus less on totems and more on other things, so if you don't want to stagger Tremor totems, it's not really necessary, just drop all your Grounding and Earth totems together every once in a while in combat to refresh them. More Tremors can still serve as protection for when someone kills one.

Water: Completely a toss up here, all based on preference. Ele shaman mana at 80 is beyond a joke, so the Mana spring totem is not needed yet, but that might change, and you will be providing Raid members with mana, so it might be worthwhile to have 1 up. Some form of resistance is a must, however I really don't like the glyph for Healing Stream totem to make it fill that role. As far as Healing Stream totem goes, you will end up with alteast 1 up regardless, but keep in mind that it's healing will not win or lose fights in Wrath, and with the changes to healing in Cata, I don't expect it to later either.

[Boylston]

Fire: Flame-tongue x4 I prefer simplicity, and the damage from Searing totem or magma totem will rarely be what finishes someone off. I also prefer to be able to cast Fire Nova at will without having to change totems, and FT totem has the longest Duration.

Flametongue totem does not stack with Totemic Wrath, which you should definitely have somewhere on one of your shaman, right?

If you know you're gonna get melee swarmed, I'd go ahead and drop magmas. If you're defending or just coming in range of someone, I prefer Searings. It's a good visual indicator that someone's in range as well.

[BrothelMeister]

Right-O, Flametongue totem is 100% useless except that it is a 5 minute duration stick, that allows you to cast Fire Nova. (while having one toon provide Totemic Wrath) Something that Searing totem unfortunately does not allow.

I wasn't saying that Magma totem was useless, just unnecessary since I prefer to knock melee away from me instead of letting them sit on me while Magma totem hits them.

[Shodokan]

Might want to add macro section etc etc.

I don't see fear as a problem, and most stuff that you need to move out of is relatively easy to do so.

This team will be good like always. Mastery > crit Also i understand people think that coordinated lavabursts is the way to go... personally i'm still going with lava surge with built in lavaburst usages, the more of them you use the more procs you get from overload the more damage you do.

[Boylston]

Might want to add macro section etc etc.

I don't see fear as a problem, and most stuff that you need to move out of is relatively easy to do so.

This team will be good like always. Mastery > crit Also i understand people think that coordinated lavabursts is the way to go... personally i'm still going with lava surge with built in lavaburst usages, the more of them you use the more procs you get from overload the more damage you do.

Will add macro section or at least link to another macro post.

I am curious about a priority system for Lava Burst. I think it will depend on the flow of damage with geared 85s.

Obviously, it's more damage over time. Secondary benefit might mean simplicity in fighting. If you have a priority system going where you always try to cast an available Lava Burst, then default to Lightning Bolt, then you can focus on other things instead of timing LvB volleys. After 8sec of non-combat, you'll always be able to make your next big opener a LvB...

Also, if you're casting more Lava Bursts, it will skew the analysis in favor or Mastery as opposed to Crit.

This will be one to stay tuned on, for sure!



One problem I don't have figured out is how to make the best use of Unleash Elements if you were going to have a priority-based LvB/LB setup...

[Boylston]

Just so I make sure I have this all right in my head and in the model I have in Excel... (numbers seem to match what Kruschpak's reports/screenshots show in my model)

If you were to get the most out of two attacks, it looks something like this:

Attack 1: Flame Shock... triggering a 1sec GCD if you have the Shocking glyph.
Attack 2: Elemental Mastery, Unleash Flame, Lava Burst, (optional Rocket Barrage racial or Eng Trinket).

Also assume you would follow that with Chain Lightning immediately afterwards.

So the damage ends up being a total of:

Flame Shock Instant Damage, t=0
Unleash Flame Instant Damage, t=1sec
Racial/Trinket Instant Damage, t=1sec
Lava Burst Hit when missiles arrive at t=2-2.5ish seconds?
- - - - GCD Resets at t=2.5sec, Cast Chain Lightning (1.2sec cast time with EM Haste)
First Flame Shock DoT at t=3.0sec
Chain Lightning Hits at t=3.7sec

Burst may be dead for normal people, but I think with 25% reduction due to resilience, we're still going to kill people with our big combo unless they are healed between Flame Shock and the Lava Burst landing. Even if they get a "normal" heal or two, the rest of the damage cascading in between t=0 and t=4sec may very well do the job.

At 7600 spellpower, the Flame Shock instant+Unleash Flame+Lava Burst damage (with no crits other than LB) is 174,547. Add in Rockets and it's at 191,233. Even if you assume 25% damage resistance due to resilience, that's 143,000 incoming damage when the Lava Burst lands (t=2.5ish).

At t=3.7, when the Chain Lightning and 1st Flame Shock tick have arrived, there's another 20,000 post-resilience damage that has piled on.

(All this assumes no crits for a total of 12-16 FS, UF, CL spells and no overloads, which is completely and totally unrealistic and conservative. Also, does not assume effects of Clearcasting damage boost. Actual damage could be significantly higher.)

Wow! Admittedly that's with all our IWIN cooldowns going...

Without either EM+UE cooldowns going, in a more sustained battle, numbers from my model show that a Flame Shock + Lava Burst + Chain Lightning with 2 shamans in clearcasting states (because we've been fighting) on the team combo will hit for about 65-75k on a 25% resistant target, again assuming only the LvB crit. No other crits or overloads, which we know is very likely to happen.

UE will be available every 15sec, and will change that number from 65-75k to 105k or so. Same no-crit, no-overload assumptions.

Wow...