Well I was referring to littleburst his statement about that guy doing 30k (and with the perception is was insane/bugged), and which obviously from a solo point of view, not from a multiboxing point of view where people would spam a macro.Originally Posted by Atrocious
But either way if I multibox my elemental shamans I try to play them like when I would play solo, so I don't use any macro's.
I use video feeds and have Tiny caster stats addon on each slave, which displays the haste / spellpower during the fight. As well I use a cooldown bar for lava burst (chronobars addon). I also have shieldsUp addon that displays the stacks of lightning shield. So I basically see on my main screen who can cast lava burst and who can't, what amount of stacks each slave has and their spellpower.
In pve I play max 3 ele shamans and if I don't hold a modifier then all cast same spell. If I hold down alt + key then my leader fires off the respective spell on the actionbar, and other 2 will cast a lightning bolt. If ctrl + key then toon 2 will cast that spell + 1/3 will cast lightning bolt, if ctrl+shift+key then toon 3 will cast a specific spell and others just a lightning bolt filler. This way you have 4 different states to react to procs, etc.
So basically I try to play my shamans like if I was to play them solo:, so I can try to explain how I approach a fight: But most important is being aware of procs and predict how and when you'll have to renew flame shock and how that relates to your amount of lightning shield stacks. Tracking as much info as possible is key tmho.
A screenie of my interface: as you can see I have power auras setup for trinket procs, etc ...
One of the key facts is knowing when to cast searing totem and fire elemental totem because they both take a snapshot of your spellpower when cast and they keep that value the entire time they are up. With all procs/potion I have 15k spellpower. If I pop my fire ele at that point he will keep that value for the 2 minutes he is up, eventhough if my procs expire 10 seconds later and I drop to my normal 10k spellpower. Same with searing totem. Therefore it's often better to clip searing totem for a few seconds when you see your trinket proc is about to expire and cast it again.
Use elemental mastery whenever it's up. Never ever use Unleash Elements in pve unless you need to move and have nothing else to cast (renew flame shock, drop searing or fulmination). Unless you have a nuke phase ahead (like rohash shield on conclave hc where you have to do x amount of damage in y seconds), you could cast UE prior to that phase, just to have extra Lava Burst damage in the nuke phase).
When moving to for example a stacking point you often have time to stop and cast a new ability. For example on al'akir you need to get close to him for an ability called wind burst that knocks you back (and off), but you can't stay close to him because there is also an ability that will interrupts your spells while being too close. I see many players bridge that gap in one 2-3 seconds run. But you can easily move when you cast and instant (shock) and run till global cooldown is over, stop and cast lightning bolt, start moving again and drop searing totem at same time, when gcd of searing is done you stop and cast a lava burst. I have hardly any dps loss this way. Not sure how to explain, but if you know the fights you can really gain a lot of extra dps from moving correctly and be aware of what's going on.
Never use chain lightning for single target dps.
So for the typical fight I would:
- 5 seconds prior to pull pop my totems so I have spellpower buff up
- open 1 second prior to pull with
/use volcanic potion
/cast lightning bolt
followed by another bolt (my engineering tinket is macro'd to my standard lightning bolt), then flame shock, lava burst, elemental mastery + lightning bolt,. At this point most of my procs are up so I'm at max spellpower and drop my searing or fire elemental totem (note that on some fights you can also use earth elemental at same time, unless there are crucial adds). If not at max spellpower it might weave in another bolt, but then I really pop my searing totem as the loss in time won't make up for the extra spell power.
If single target flame shock should always be up (it's the highest damage per execution spell), lava burst, at 7 stacks cast earth shock (not if flame shock has 1 second left and should be renewed), fill with lightning bolt. And make sure you react perfect to lava surge procs.
While ele shaman was pretty much 3 button spam back in wotlk, it's a pretty hard spec to be competitive with so far in cata. And knowing how to move & have a fluent interaction between your shocks/fulmination takes quite some practice.
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