Why use chain lightning as shaman?

Classes Shaman
1

This comment is coming from a level 38 elemental Shaman
who is new to this game.

I was just curious how much damage chain lightning could do in 1 min vs 3 enemies. So I tested it out against 3 training dummies in Orgrimmar. Only using chain lightning, and earth shock I got around
10500 damage in one min (not bad!). So naturally I was curious what would happen using only my single target attacks i.e. flame shock, lava burst, lightning bolt, and earth shock. So only using the aforementioned abilities in almost perfect order in the same time limit as the chain lightning test, I got 10600 damage!

So that begs the question; what is the point of using chain lightning at this level. Later you get it upgraded to do damage against 5 enemies making it worth something. But at the moment other than for the sake of simplicity, chain lightning seems pointless if you know what you are doing.

Is my theory correct? Again I’m a new player so I may have miss calculated. Please try this for your self and let me know your results.

2

Could be correct but it much easier to spam chain lightening than tab and attack 3 seperate targets simultaneously … later on you will pair CL with EQ.

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3

Gives more maelstrom

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4

Beardboy-kelthuzad+
I was accounting for that already. I was using earth shake on both, despite that, it didn’t change the results.

Dosao+
I am aware that is easier to spam, however the problem is more about how the damage numbers are almost identical, henceforth making it feel pointless at the moment.
I’m asking in this post “whats the point of chain lightning at this level other than for the sake of simplicity”, and I’m asking if my results were accurate.

P.S. As a new player I am unaware of the terms CL and EQ. If you can elaborate on them I would be grateful.

5

CL = Chain Lightning, which like they said will generate more Maelstrom, and it will do so pretty fast against multiple targets, of course.

EQ = Earthquake, your AoE nuke, which you’ll spend Malestrom on. It can stack on itself, so it can do a butt-ton of AoE damage.

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6

You use Chain Lightning to generate more maelstrom, and spending it in EARTHQUAKE which does exponentially more damage in 2+ targets.

There is your gain.

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7

And you keep up flame shock on all targets as you spam Chain lightening and use Earthquake.

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8

Keeping up FS on 3 targets is the real kicker.

With 3 targets I, generally speaking, keep my ST rotation, swapping in CL/EQ with LB/ES, and rotate flameshock on all mobs.

This gives a steady stream of instant cast lavabursts, which if you have mote, allow for regular stronger EQs and CLs.

9

Ya trying to fit in LB/IF between CL and EQ is the way good players play… I am not good so I just keep up FS as best as I can and then spam CL and EQ .

10

Thank you for your answers
I was previously unaware of the fact that I’m supposed to keep up flame shock whilst using chain lightning.

One more quick thing though.
I don’t have EQ yet (Again I’m asking whats the point of Chain Lightning at level 38 not any higher), and the extra malestrom people are talking about did not make a difference in the test I preformed because I used earth shock in both.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

EDIT:
Holy crap that’s a lot of damage!!!
I did this test again twice, however this time I also did chain lightning with the flame shock, and I got over double the normal damage!
(I made sure to keep flame shock on all 3 enemies at once)

I did this test twice and got about the same results both times
In one minute I got the following damage:
Chain lightning, earth shock, flame shock (vs 3 enemies): 18632
Chain lightning, earth shock (vs 3 enemies): 11404
lava burst, flame shock, earth shock, lightning bolt (vs 1 enemy): 11025.
lava burst, earth shock, lightning bolt, flame shock (vs 3 enemies):
12105

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11

Hey friend,
I wouldn’t worry too much about 100% optimizing your play below level cap. It’ll help sure, but I personally feel that it’s more important to experiment with different talent builds and ideas to get a feel for the class as a whole, rather than a specific setup.

Like the others said, at that level you’re missing a lot of key components that make the spec function the way it was intended. That and the wonky low level scaling will lead to numbers like you’re seeing (Where aoe abilities are a damage loss in aoe situations.)

Best of luck on that leveling grind, and remember to have fun :smiley:

12

Also make sure you have fire elemental out as soon as you apply FS. It generates malestorm fast.

Edit:- Once you get it ofcourse . I don’t think you have it at 38

13

The solution is in the number of targets you are attacking.
ST ele excels
2 target cleave with good gear ele excels
3 targets we suck.
4 targets we do really good
5+ targets break out the popcorn and watch the numbers fly.

There is a decreased maelstrom production and chance to overload for chainlightning per target. To maximize both you need 4+ (preferably 5) targets.

Once you get SE/EQ you should be able to pull 4+ targets with EB totem, cap totem, TS using CL+EQ.

With SE you should be able to use the same tools and pull 8+ targets

With EE you should pull the entire area and mow them down.

If you can find a super concentrated area SE+EE will put out stupid numbers even at low level.

14

3 target is always gonna be weird for Ele shams. You don’t feel like you’re generating an efficient amount of maelstrom a lot of the time. Buuut you can keep FS up on all 3.

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16

[This will all be for Resto]* I wish we had options when it comes to our resto “dps rotation” or they could make it less boring/slow feeling. Chain lightning for resto is slow and depressing imo. The GCD changes also didnt help the resto “dps rotation” at all and kinda makes it feel/play slower. Other healers all kinda play better in open world content or have more interesting/engaging dps rotations.

Some ideas going forward but meh:

-Earth Shock that grows in stacks w/ lightning bolt and chain lightning, similar to ele but maybe higher stack limit to make it a mini cooldown of sorts. Would a large ST nuke when it’s charged up and could help make killing bosses during questing slightly faster. Something that we cant maybe reliably stack in M+ unless we have ALOT of downtime.

-LIghtning Shield ( like earth shield ) but does damage to enemies when you are hit or once you are hit 10-20 times it explodes into an aoe lightning attack. ( less useful in raids/dungeons and more useful in open world )

-Give Resto Earthquake (sans the knockdown/slow effects ) Make it have a chance to proc instant Chain Lightnings or to allow them to hit an extra target on proc. ( or allow it to charge earth shock in my idea above )

-Earth elemental could have a longer uptime but with how useful it is in some dungeons I dont mind keeping it as is. As it stands this is the only way we can get our CL casts off “normally” without being slowed down by dmg/getting hit constantly.

-Give us back our Fire Elemental but maybe make it more aoe focused? ( allows us to pull/kill large packs once ina while in questing ) Even if it doesnt do much can we maybe still get it back. I was so happy when you gave me back Rocky on Resto and also made him alot more useful.

-Maybe our spells can have x chance to summon small elemental effects, minions or totems for 10-20 seconds.
~So maybe FlameShock+FlameBurst combos have a chance to summon a small fire elemental/totem that will spread FShocks on adds who dont have it already, possibly cast fire novas if 5+ enemies in 5-10yrd range, or as long as it is alive Flame Bursts will explode also hitting 1-3 nearby enemies in 5-10 yrds.
~Lightning bolt has a chance to summon a lightning elemental/totem that will attack a single target with lightning bolts. Chain lightning summons an aoe variant or maybe it brings lightning crashing down every x seconds in 5-10 yrds around it.
~Earth element has a chance to break off small elementals when it reaches 75%/50%/25% health ( only happens once every CD or maximum 3, so we cant keep healing it for unlimited of these ) Maybe the small elementals cast mini 4-5yrd earthquakes around them but dont taunt anymore. ( the larger Earth Element will still taunt, this just adds a dmg portion that gets better if your element is in trouble )

-Let some of the talents like deluge and wellspring hit enemies similar to holy priests halo and divine star?
( Id be iffy about this depending on adds/placement and if it goes through walls, dont wanna pull the whole dungeon halo/priest styles, but this is a fast way to add some aoe dmg ) Maybe just make it not dmg enemies who are not in combat. This just adds some more aoe dmg which means not just spamming chain lightning on 3+ mobs for days.

-Give us our own water based attacks? ( like we see many KT/new NPC’s using in this expansion ) I mean over the past few expansions we have lost alot of our varied elemental toolkit ( frost/earth shocks, fire/air totems etc ) so maybe just say screw it and make us more H2O specialists, freezing, heating or electrifying our water to be harmful against enemies would be amazing.

-Healing Rain could spread/cleave electricity damage on enemies inside the circle when we use lightning attack, multistrike styles.

-This one is longer: I would LOVE to be able to chose how Resto does damage. Similar to how Druid have talent Affinities buffing certain dps aspects.
~It would be cool if we could chose between a melee dps “rotation” with Enhance style or an Ele/ranged/caster style like we have now.
We wouldnt get dual wielding with this swap or any huge bonuses but it could keep resto dps interesting and even feel akin to the glass canon/heavy hitter ENH used to be with 2h weps back in the day.
( For this though I mostly just want an excuse to use my fave 2h axe mog in melee because Pandaren fighting animation/style with it is so cool and giving us options is too )

So this means give us back primal strike and various other elemental weapon attacks that replace the ranged attacks ( or share cooldowns/time ). Maybe primal strike spreads or detonates flame shocks…etc. Obviously dont rework the talent tree because wed be missing a third talent but I think this would be very fun like with Resto Druid Affinities.

Anyways: Im not asking to be any stonger or even have it faster/better than other healers. I am just asking they change how slow it feels when we are only casting FireS+FlameB(on proc/cd), LightningB filler, and CLightning if 3+ people (with weaving in FS).

It’s actually horrible pulling more than one mob at a time on shaman (I only play healers so dont find swapping to non healer specs fun).
Both my priests and my monk had a more fun/smooth time questing because of how fun/engaging those healer specs the dps-ing feels. Both other healers can pull as many adds as my heart desires too, the sham seems to have trouble with 3+ and it just feels slower using chain lightning at all compared to killing 1-2 enemies with FBurst Procs. By the time one CLightning goes off I need to start casting the equally slow healing spells or rely on Heroism and my Earth Element.

Anyways thanks all for reading. Just tips to possibly make resto questing more fun :3

17

OP, take into account you are like level 38, which is like super early to go around making judgements about the class/specialization. You dont have all your skills or passives.

Really, its only at max level that specs are complete.

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18

Keep in mind, while you were chain lightning you were hitting 3 targets. While you were lgihtning bolting you were only hitting one. Lets say lightning bolt hits for 100 and chain lightning hits for 60. That chain lighting is going to be htting 60x3 for 180. It also can hit 5 max targets compared to one. 60x5=300. Also, since it is hitting more targets it has a higher chance to overload and proc again dealing more damage. This is the simple math as to why you use chain lightning with 3 or more mobs then lightning bolt.

19

It looks to me that the OP was using 3 training dummies and had already taken that into consideration

20

what i got from his post is that he was trying to compare the damage of his single target spells in a single target situation and his aoe spells in a single target situation, which is comparing apples to oranges. Hence why he was wondering his lightning bolt was doing more damage than chain lightning in his testing. As lightning bolts damage is not spread out over several targets its going to hit 1 target for its full damage. Thats the functionality behind it and I feel like thats the answer he was looking for and not because you need x azerite traits or a certain talent like the other comments.

21

Well, right in the OP he wrote “So I tested it out against 3 training dummies in Orgrimmar.”

He was comparing how much damage he could deal to 3 targets overall using CL and then just single target and he found he did more overall damage to 3 targets with single targeting abilities than with CL multi targets. Theoretically, multi target spells like CL should perform better against 3 targets but they weren’t which is why he was confused