Stormcaller, Deeply confused

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06-11-2011, 06:01 PM
Cactuschef

Stormcaller, Deeply confused

so I've only been 50 for awhile, and I've been trying different builds. was warlock for awhile, then pyro, both of which I thought were good dps until i started parsing and saw that basically everyone was beating me. some of this was my gear being trash when i first hit 50, but i'm starting to get a bit more geared from t2s/plaques (~200 focus, 800 sp, 600 crit) and my dps is still far behind. so I look around and find that according to the forums SC/ele is the best pve dps spec by a huge margin.

But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to use it. at best I can get it to keep up with my pyro spec, although at the cost of way more effort + loss of tons of utility

specific problems i've been having/ **** i dont get:

-the UI is broken. electrified still shows up when it's been eaten by charged field. is there any way to fix this? or do i just have to start counting in my head on every single pull?
-some of the abilities dont make sense. for example building storm. each stack adds 20% crit chance to hypothermia spells. okay. hitting the target with a hypothermia spell removes all stacks. okay. max 10 stacks ??? 200% chance to crit? huh? well i guess if using a spell removes some of the stacks then you still get a benefit... no wait removes all the stacks. whats the deal?
-none of the rotations I find in guides seem to make any sense. for example
forked lightning x 3 (ok) -> ice shear (ok) -> lightning strike (ok) -> lightning field x5 (what? after the third one electrified is gone, the last 2 do absolutely nothing)
-the builds listed always have a ton of points in talents that increase your water damage, speed up your water casting times, give bonus damage when the target has hypothermia. yet the guides say the only water spell to use is ice shear, which is already instant, does negligible damage, and doesn't cause hypothermia
-it eats mana like no other spec ive tried. I thought pyro was supposed to be the big mana hog, but I virtually never run low there, and have to channel elements multiple times during boss fights as sc. it also means I rarely get to activate static flux because i need that charge for mana. likewise after every pull i'm stuck standing there revitalizing while everyone else is running to the next one

help?

also, what is the "2nd best" pve dps spec? because i may just give up SC altogether unless i can figure out wth i'm doing wrong here. the playstyle seems incredibly spastic and lacking in any kind of utility
06-11-2011, 06:38 PM
Guaritor

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cactuschef

-the UI is broken. electrified still shows up when it's been eaten by charged field. is there any way to fix this? or do i just have to start counting in my head on every single pull?

The ui bug is being fixed next patch. For now, on aoe pulls its best to just ignore the ui and count in your head. Cast FL 3x then cast LF. Now the amount of times to recast FL depends on how many mobs are left. 2 mobs = FL->LF->repeat, 3 mobs = 2xFL->LF->repeat, 4+ mobs = 3xFL->LF->repeat

Quote:

-some of the abilities dont make sense. for example building storm. each stack adds 20% crit chance to hypothermia spells. okay. hitting the target with a hypothermia spell removes all stacks. okay. max 10 stacks ??? 200% chance to crit? huh? well i guess if using a spell removes some of the stacks then you still get a benefit... no wait removes all the stacks. whats the deal?

Well, its only 10% per stack when you just have the base ability and not the branch one, so they probably allow 10 stacks incase you dont pick up "favorable conditions"

Quote:

-none of the rotations I find in guides seem to make any sense. for example
forked lightning x 3 (ok) -> ice shear (ok) -> lightning strike (ok) -> lightning field x5 (what? after the third one electrified is gone, the last 2 do absolutely nothing)

There are different rotations for AoE and single target DPS with this build, though they may look similar i suppose. LF will only eat an electrified charge IF you are aoeing and it bounces to a nearby mob (and only if you have the charged field talent).

So if you are doing aoe trash pulls in instances, you forgo any single target spells and stick to hailstorm, lightning storm, forked lightning and lightning field.

For single target fights, using lightning field does NOT consume a charge of electrified so you can cast 5 and still have the last two do damage.

I know the charged field talent is a little tricky and confusing, but its fairly simple once you get a grasp on it. Lightning field does damage to any target with the electrified debuff on them within a certain radius (the initial cast of lightning field does NOT eat a charge of electrified), THEN if you have the charged field talent, it will bounce to another target nearby and eat a charge of electrified on the target it bounced to, and it will continue bouncing and eating charges until targets run out of charges, or it has hit everyone once.

I can try explaining it better if you want, but i think thats easy enough to understand.

Quote:

-the builds listed always have a ton of points in talents that increase your water damage, speed up your water casting times, give bonus damage when the target has hypothermia. yet the guides say the only water spell to use is ice shear, which is already instant, does negligible damage, and doesn't cause hypothermia

Well, most of those are really just filler since theres nothing else worthwhile for pve in the tree on your way up to the real talents you want. Though a recent rotation has been going around that does use building storm and arctic blast (complex rotation though).

Quote:

-it eats mana like no other spec ive tried. I thought pyro was supposed to be the big mana hog, but I virtually never run low there, and have to channel elements multiple times during boss fights as sc. it also means I rarely get to activate static flux because i need that charge for mana. likewise after every pull i'm stuck standing there revitalizing while everyone else is running to the next one

Yes, that is a downside of this build, it eats mana like nothing. The reason is because your main spells are all AoE spells, and those cost more mana. You shouldn't be needing to use channel elements THAT much though, maybe once every minute or two, or its even better to use it if theres a lull where you can't do damage (last boss of CC, or when turning around to avoid blinding spells, etc.)

Quote:

help?

also, what is the "2nd best" pve dps spec? because i may just give up SC altogether unless i can figure out wth i'm doing wrong here. the playstyle seems incredibly spastic and lacking in any kind of utility

The second best would probably be Pyro/ele. Its a much more stationary build from what I hear, though i don't know much about it, so i'd try searching these forums for more info.
06-11-2011, 07:12 PM
Phopis

^This pretty much. I would recomend looking at bluedots.org. If you want something easy, I would try Bluedot's 51 Elementalist build. It's basically 1 button plus your big cooldowns, and its dos is comparable to pyro/ele.