How to Stormcaller

[Mormoran]

So I needed an AoE spec for my mage, and of course, Stormcaller it is.

I'm 50, and assuming I go 51 Stormcaller/10 Warlock/5 Elementalist...

What the heck am I doing?

A good rotation for starters, never ever played Stormcaller before. Now I have to deal with Electrified, Hypothermia (huh?) and a bunch of channeled, charge consuming, and cooldowns. Oh god cooldowns. Everything has a cooldown. What's a decent rotation if half my stuff has a cooldown? (I'm exaggerating but meh, didn't bother to count my cooldown spells yet).

What are some useful macros and what spells are simply not worth it?

[Sarg]

As a 51 point SC, open with a hypothermia spell. Assuming this is an AoE situation, you probably want to start with Arctic Blast. Hailstorm is a definite possibility as well for a 51-point stormer. So use whichever one isn't on cooldown.

The hypothermia's a 75% snare for 10s on the mobs. Which keeps them nice and grouped for AoE step 2: Lightning Storm. This is a 6 second channel. It applies 3x Electrified and then roots for the rest of the channel.

That's your setup. Now here's your AoE "rotation":

Lightning Field
Lightning Field
Lightning Field
Arctic Blast or Hailstorm (whichever one isn't on cooldown - remember also you have a skill to make AB insta-cast)
Forked Lightning
Forked Lightning
Forked Lightning

Since you have the Charged Field upgrade, each mob is going to chain your Lightning Field strikes so long as Electrified is up. Since your opening Lightning Storm slapped 3xElectrify, you can spam it three times fast - it's an instacast so you can move while doing it. The more mobs ... the more damage. This is the meat of your AoE assault.

You re-apply the hypothermia in the middle because Forked Lightning will get a +15% damage boost from it and with your +51% damage boost to water spells, it's going to do a fairly nice hit as well.

Your Forked Lightnings build your electrify buffs back up. If anything actually survives this long, you can go back to the Lightning Fields, but I've found elites are generally dead at this point unless you're the only person in the group AoEing at all.

[Mormoran]

That is just absolutely lovely. A million thanks and mroe to you good sir (or madam).

As a start, it will give me an idea of how to behave in a group situation. I really didn't want to go to a dungeon run and have no clue of what I'm doing and have the other 4 people carry me. It's just not my style.

Again, greatly appreciated. I'll see if I can take it from here, if I have a doubt, I know who to look out for

[Josch]

To be honest, there is hardly any benefit spending 51 points into Stormcaller, I'd suggest doing it more like 3x SC/3x Ele oder 3x SC/3x Warlock, your Damage will be much higher. The reason for that is rather obvious, by spending points into Stormcaller, it will only push your water/ice damage, but your main source of damage is air, in addition there are no dps increasing spells after Hailstorm in SC-tree.

And rotationwise I do it like Sarg suggested: Start with Hailstorm, continue with Lightning Storm, then hit flux (20% dmg buff) and spam Lightning Field 3 times. After that apply Hypothermia again with Arctic Blast and electrified with 3 Forked Lightnings.


My main gripe with Stormcaller is the damage against single targets. I don't like the fact, that I have to switch to Nec/Warlock for a lot of bosses, just because the dmg is far higher than with SC. Maintaining all debuffes (Electrified/Hypothermia/Ice Shear) is a lot of fun, but Thunderbolt needs a higher base damage and/or the cooldown of Raging Storm should be reduced. Not to mention Couldburst, I don't even have that spell on my action bars anymore...

[Sarg]

My main gripe with Stormcaller is the damage against single targets. I don't like the fact, that I have to switch to Nec/Warlock for a lot of bosses, just because the dmg is far higher than with SC. Maintaining all debuffes (Electrified/Hypothermia/Ice Shear) is a lot of fun, but Thunderbolt needs a higher base damage and/or the cooldown of Raging Storm should be reduced. Not to mention Couldburst, I don't even have that spell on my action bars anymore...

I believe 51 point stormcaller deals with a lot of that deficiency versus single target. With the water spells doing 15-20% more damage for a pure stormy versus a more typical 30-34 pointer, you don't have to shun them in DPS situations ... so there's no reason not to leverage Building Storm instead of Static Flux in single target scenarios. It also means not having to use inferior DPS spells once every 10 seconds to keep up your hypothermia damage boost to the elecs.

[Josch]

Actually debating about it without parsing is always dangerous, but I don't believe that 51 SC is anywhere near a 3x/3x build. In AoE Fights (where SC shines) you hardly do any ice damage, only occasionally with Hailstorm and Arctic Blast. In singletarget boss fights (where SC is not on par with other Speccs, sadly) you're argument is coherent, but again the only ice damage comes from Icicle and Cloudburst. Compare it with a secondary Elemental Specc, you gain:

- Lighting Strike (crits up to 2600 with my mostly blue gear)
- 30% higher Crits
- Air Ele with more than 100dps, charge buff for you and spelldamage buff for your entire group
- Very nice timer (doubles the pets dmg and increasing your own dmg by 50% for 15s)
- Very nice debuff (7% more magical dmg taken)
- 5% higher chance to crit

Stretch of Cold can not compete with all these gimmicks, not as long as it is only increasing water/ice damage. And Eye of the Storm is just redundant, I can't see a niche for that spell

[bitrot]

To be honest, there is hardly any benefit spending 51 points into Stormcaller, I'd suggest doing it more like 3x SC/3x Ele oder 3x SC/3x Warlock, your Damage will be much higher. The reason for that is rather obvious, by spending points into Stormcaller, it will only push your water/ice damage, but your main source of damage is air, in addition there are no dps increasing spells after Hailstorm in SC-tree.

And rotationwise I do it like Sarg suggested: Start with Hailstorm, continue with Lightning Storm, then hit flux (20% dmg buff) and spam Lightning Field 3 times. After that apply Hypothermia again with Arctic Blast and electrified with 3 Forked Lightnings.


My main gripe with Stormcaller is the damage against single targets. I don't like the fact, that I have to switch to Nec/Warlock for a lot of bosses, just because the dmg is far higher than with SC. Maintaining all debuffes (Electrified/Hypothermia/Ice Shear) is a lot of fun, but Thunderbolt needs a higher base damage and/or the cooldown of Raging Storm should be reduced. Not to mention Couldburst, I don't even have that spell on my action bars anymore...

Cloudburst is where all my single target damage comes from. Raging storm to rapidly stack elecrifies (faster than Thunder Bolt x3), Ice Shear, and then Cloudburst.

Even if you're not dumping points into the boost for water damage per point spent in the tree, Cloudburst with electrify stacks out-damages thunder bolt. Given that thunderbolt's cast time is the same as the GCD, you get them off at the same rate, and cloudburst does more damage per cast. This just gets to be even better as you spend points in SC with each point spent on/towards stretch of cold.

In addition, cloudburst has the advantage of never getting interrupted by the mob dying.

I can see why you're unhappy with your single target damage if you took cloudburst off your hotbar. Put it back on, and be happy again.

All that said, I'm also a fan of a fairly generous split with elementalist. There's a lot of good synergy to be had there.

[Josch]

I will give it a try this night ;)

[sarianne]

Cloudburst is where all my single target damage comes from. Raging storm to rapidly stack elecrifies (faster than Thunder Bolt x3), Ice Shear, and then Cloudburst.

Even if you're not dumping points into the boost for water damage per point spent in the tree, Cloudburst with electrify stacks out-damages thunder bolt. Given that thunderbolt's cast time is the same as the GCD, you get them off at the same rate, and cloudburst does more damage per cast. This just gets to be even better as you spend points in SC with each point spent on/towards stretch of cold.

In addition, cloudburst has the advantage of never getting interrupted by the mob dying.

I can see why you're unhappy with your single target damage if you took cloudburst off your hotbar. Put it back on, and be happy again.

All that said, I'm also a fan of a fairly generous split with elementalist. There's a lot of good synergy to be had there.

lit field and forked are both more dps then cloudburst no matter how much you invest in water talents.
If you go 33 deep in elem, or lock. tbolt is more dps then a 51 point sc cloudburst.

[Phrostt]

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthrea...ormcaller-Soul
Detailed SC guide I wrote, hope it helps.

[Phrostt]

Actually debating about it without parsing is always dangerous, but I don't believe that 51 SC is anywhere near a 3x/3x build. In AoE Fights (where SC shines) you hardly do any ice damage, only occasionally with Hailstorm and Arctic Blast. In singletarget boss fights (where SC is not on par with other Speccs, sadly) you're argument is coherent, but again the only ice damage comes from Icicle and Cloudburst. Compare it with a secondary Elemental Specc, you gain:

- Lighting Strike (crits up to 2600 with my mostly blue gear)
- 30% higher Crits
- Air Ele with more than 100dps, charge buff for you and spelldamage buff for your entire group
- Very nice timer (doubles the pets dmg and increasing your own dmg by 50% for 15s)
- Very nice debuff (7% more magical dmg taken)
- 5% higher chance to crit

Stretch of Cold can not compete with all these gimmicks, not as long as it is only increasing water/ice damage. And Eye of the Storm is just redundant, I can't see a niche for that spell

With warlock instead of elementalist you get much better stuff
-faster charge buildup
-10% to make your spells instant
-+5% crit
-+20% dmg
-very strong defensive cooldowns and silence interrupt which is great in T1 dungeons.

[sarianne]

With warlock instead of elementalist you get much better stuff
-faster charge buildup
-10% to make your spells instant
-+5% crit
-+20% dmg
-very strong defensive cooldowns and silence interrupt which is great in T1 dungeons.

eh.
elem also has faster charge buildup.
5% crit also elem has

50% for 15s vs 20% all the time.
And 30% crit damage for elem.

10% of 90% instants, 1.5s casts and channeled isn't much...
lit field is your highest dps. doesn't benefit. raging storm/lit storm dont benefit as channeled.
In overall dps, forked lit wont benefit due to 1.5s gcd. though an instant one is more practical.
Ice shear won't benefit.
Only lit strike, hailstorm and arctic blast would benefit at all.

Constant air elem dps.
Static discharge applys to your pet as well.

Exposure does not stack with archon 7% or cleric. both of which have longer applications. (exposure really needs to be buffed back up.)
Air elem buff also does not stack with various +spell power buffs. it is kindof lame.



Both a viable and comparable. Neither is much better then the other.

l

[Qaedyan]

Cloudburst is where all my single target damage comes from. Raging storm to rapidly stack elecrifies (faster than Thunder Bolt x3), Ice Shear, and then Cloudburst.

Even if you're not dumping points into the boost for water damage per point spent in the tree, Cloudburst with electrify stacks out-damages thunder bolt. Given that thunderbolt's cast time is the same as the GCD, you get them off at the same rate, and cloudburst does more damage per cast. This just gets to be even better as you spend points in SC with each point spent on/towards stretch of cold.

In addition, cloudburst has the advantage of never getting interrupted by the mob dying.

I can see why you're unhappy with your single target damage if you took cloudburst off your hotbar. Put it back on, and be happy again.

All that said, I'm also a fan of a fairly generous split with elementalist. There's a lot of good synergy to be had there.

Don't use Cloudburst. Ever. It's damage is pathetic (so is Thunderbolt's, but TB at least adds electrified effects). Stack 3 electrified effects then use Lightning Field, even on solo mobs. Charged Field does not remove electrified effects if you're hitting a single mob.