I eventually do a bloodfury shamanistic rage before stormstrike CL earth shock.
Amongst my concerns is if the casting fills the swing timer to keep the flurry synch. Chain lightning isn’t a part of our given rotation. My weapons are 2.6 speed. Do the fights just get longer in higher dungeons or raids? If I’m fully geared with ap strength does the melee just beat out the chain lightning? Someone had to have thought this was a good idea before. Thanks for any input.
But like why not chuck chain lightning? It seems to hit hard.
I’m dropping totems before we get in the fight and bosses haven’t lasted the duration yet. I’m only delaying like every other auto but less than half a second
Yes I do believe a lot my gear is still my PVP for fun stuff from Classic that focused on dumping shocks and praying for Windfury. I am in between spell damage gear and ap stuff and assumed as I transition to all AP gear this could start to differ.
I actually haven’t gotten a new swing timer on my TBC so I haven’t checked but with a 2 second cast it shouldn’t actually be getting in the way of a swing right? If I have no other nature damage in the party then I can use chain lightning into earth shock and benefit from Storm Strike on both.
I suppose technically not if you’re timing it perfectly between the swings, but like mentioned above, if you’re going to be gearing for more physical dmg as you gear up it’s probably not something to stress over too much since it’ll change.
At some point a WF proc off those auto attacks might heavily outweigh a CL. But I don’t know the number comparisons. Worth at least checking out. At some point people had to figure all that stuff out for max dps, so if you enjoy testing it out, go for it!
Yeah I’m sure the guys that mathed it all out before must have done this I just wanted to see how it played out myself. In an ideal situation auto attack followed by storm strike and we would have +2.6 seconds to fit in a chain lightning and earthshock before the next auto attack comes up.
Casting instant spells like cleans poison, purge, lighting/water/earth shield, shocks, or dropping totems do NOT interrupt your auto swing.
Casting Chain Lightning DOES reset your swing timer, on top of the obvious fact you don’t attack while casting a spell. If you are being attacked, the spell pushback further slows your damage down, and costs high mana.
So if you start your cast in the middle of the swing, lets say 1.5 seconds in – and then get pushed back 1 second, for a 3 second CL cast… and then reset your swing timer with a 2.7 speed main hand, you are DOWN over 7 seconds of NOT auto attacking, including mainhand and offhand. BAD!
Unless you are not in melee range, and have 3 target you want to zap, don’t spend your mana on Chain Lighting. Its more like an aoe spell cleave ability. You should never use it for a single target outside pvp applications as enh. And if you do, you NEED a swing timer addon to time it EXACTLY at the end of your mainhand auto attack if at all!
So the Chain Lightning after a storm bolt was in dungeons where a tank was holding threat for me so there was no pushback. Since the auto attack and storm strike I would line up for a windfury the CL was (at least in my thought) bringing the next auto attack swing outside of the 3 second wind fury ICD along with keeping the 2 weapon synched so that we don’t lose flurry since attacks within .5 seconds of each other only consume one flurry proc.
But in general yes and as my gear has moved towards the melee focus and away from my Classic spell crit to give me more melee Crit build I am seeing better results in just auto attacking as often as I can.
Also keep in mind that later on when the gear starts to allow for it better. You will need to start totem twisting between wind fury totem. To apply the buff to the melee group in a raid, then switch it out immediately for the roughly 8-9 seconds that it lasts for the grace of air buff before switching back to WF totem to reapply the buff to the group.
That way your melee are maximizing the potential of both totems. This is the way it was done back in the day and is a very mana intensive support play style. So using a shamans limited mana for CL will become a waste.
Given all that. An enhance shaman can still do very good dps/dmg with the right gear while doing the totem twist method.
