It’s no secret that Cataclysm is going revamp Guilds by providing numerous improvements such as guild levels and guild talents. While these broad, sweeping changes will be very welcomed, there are a few very simple improvements that I would like to see implemented.
This post is an additional installment in a series of posts in which Wowgiggity will be providing guidance on spell and skill rotation for the various class and talent specializations. For today, I will be presenting the rotation for the Enhancement Shaman and how to adjust the rotation for different situations.
Due to the interactions among the various abilities available, enhancement DPS does not have a rotation per se, but rather a priority scheme in which the shaman must determine the highest priority ability that is available during each global cooldown. For example, once your melee attacks have procc’d Maelstrom Weapon 5 times, you are able to cast Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning instantly. This can occur at any time, at which point casting Lightning Bolt becomes (essentially) the highest priority for the Shaman. Read on after the break for more details on these priorities, and some tips to help with determining your own optimal rotation.
On Friday I decided to rebuild my user interface. The impetus for this was an issue I was having during Punch and Pie’s first 25 man raid. My unit frames were acting up in a way that prevented me from seeing the names of the people in the raid. This made being master looter very stressful. Prior to Friday, I used a compilation of addons call ArkiveUI . Arkive is a luxury UI with all the bells and whistles; not a light weight user interface. Prior to blowing away my UI, I took a look at my setup through Addon Control Panel (yes, I have an addon to manage my addons). My priest had 156 active addons consuming easily 170MB of memory (that is before recount gets rolling). The power of Arkive is that it will configure all of the included addons specifically for your class. The down side is that you do not learn what or how all the addons work, so if you want to tweak something or if something breaks it can be difficult to fix. The last part is why I decided to Trim the fat and reduce my UI to only items I absolutely need. Read on for the details of what I chose and how I configured my UI.
He goes by “X”…and all your noobs are belong to him. He is the guild master of Un Guilded, number one ranked guild on Silver Hand (www.guildox.com ), and raid leader for the Raiding Charter (raiding alliance) Blameroll . WoWGiggity was able to chat with X and pick his brain about his experience with WOW, with Un Guilded, and of course higher orders of computational reasoning. Catch the interview after the page break.
This post is the first in a series of posts in which Wowgiggity will be providing guidance on spell and skill rotation for the various class and talent specializations. For today, I will be presenting the rotation for the Arcane Mage(57/3/11) and how to adjust the rotation for different situations.
The standard rotation is Arcane Blast four times (abx4) followed by Arcane Missles(am) which becomes Missle Barrage(mb) if that buff has proc’d from Arcane Blast. It is not garranteed that Missle Barrage will proc after four Arcane Blasts so, if you have a large mana pool, you should consider continuing to cast Arcane Blast until Missle Barrage procs. As a rule you should cast each consecutive Arcane Blast before the previous Arcane Blast ends. Doing this will load the spell in the ‘que’ to begin casting after the previous spell casting time has completed. Note that this only works once the casting time has passed the midpoint.
The following are various modifications to the rotation, for different circumstances:
Trash mobs: Depending on how many mobs are involved in the fight and the threat potential of your tank, you may wish to use Blizzard instead of the standard rotation. A good rule of thumb is to use Blizzard for groups of 3 or more. The Icy Veins (iv) and Arcane Power (ap) cooldowns are a great way to maximize your dps with Blizzard so be sure to throw that in if your tank can handle the threat. My typical sequence for large groups (5 or more) is to cast Mirror Image (MirImg) for threat reduction, then Icy Veins, Arcane Power, and finishing with Blizzard for the duration of the fight. The best way to keep Blizzard up is to cast consecutive Blizzards right before the previous Blizzard ends, this ensures that there is little DPS gap between each spell. For those fights where it makes better sense to use the single target rotation realize that you may not have the opportunity to complete a full rotation. Always watch the targeted mob’s health bar, if it is getting low and dropping fast, then you should finish your rotation with an Arcane Barrage (Abarr). Arcane Barrage is an instant cast arcane spell that will take advantage of the arcane buff from Arcane Blast. Don’t forget to use your cooldowns even during trash clearing. If you time it right, these cooldowns should be available for the boss fights.
Boss fights: I always begin a boss fight by casting Mirror Image, and usually cast it right before the start. This allows me to open up with Icy Veins and Arcane Power going into the full standard rotation while the threat reduction is still in effect. By the time Mirror Image has finished, the tanks have built enough threat that my own threat should not be an issue. As soon as Icy Veins has faded, pop a mana gem and use your trinket cooldowns if they are available. Continue repeating the rotation using cooldowns as they become available and a Potion of Speed towards the end of the fight. Be sure to use Evocation (evoc) towards the end of the second Icy Veins duration. If you cast Evocation during the last second of Icy Veins, will we have a very short Evocation and DPS downtime.
Tier 10 Armor – set of 2: The 2 set bonus for tier 10 armor is a 5 second haste buff that procs at the end of Missle Barrage. It might be considered useful in this case to cast Missle Barrage as soon as it is available regardless of how many stacks of Arcane Blast are in effect. This should almost always be avoided considering that the meat of your DPS/mana conservation lies in casting Missle Barrage with that 4th stack of Arcane Blast.
Rotations Summarized
Standard Rotation: abx4,mb,abx4,mb…
Maximum DPS Rotation(large mana pool required): abspam
Bossfights: MirImg,iv,ap,abx4,mb,abx4,mb,managem,trinket,abx4,mb,abx4,mb…iv,abx4,mb,abx4,mb,evoc
These modifications to the standard are what work best for me, the important thing is to experiment with your own rotations to come up with what works for you.
4