spells linked together

[hokarz]

With poison nukes, before this expansion, there was only one. There was nothing to link it to. Cold nukes, on the other hand have never, ever been linked and we've had cold nukes since level 12. That's history. Our cold nukes had a fast cast time, and was balanced by a slow recast. The devs have never had a reason to link them before. I have no idea what the reason is now, or in the future. Fero being linked was just retarded. I stopped after level 65 even getting the damn spell. Adds very little after that and uses a hell of a lot more mana. It sucks.

[Kanan]

The only reason I got rk3 fero was it came from rolling a 1k on a rand 1k at the end of beltron, on a rather long night.  Only reason I got rk2 of it was bcs someone forced it upon me.  I shouldn't've wasted the plat on rk1.

I honestly dunno why I wasted the plat on rk1 of the SoF one.  Damn sure not wasting the plat for it on rk2 in the baz, and I'll tell them to give it to someone else if they try to give it to me.

I don't mem it on raids anymore, except at the start, when I'm casting SE, because I'm too lazy to put the dot in that spell slot on that particular spell set I used for 5 mins.  After that, I load up my paltry HatM, Bite, 2 Colds, poison & disease dot and twiddle my thumbs wondering what I should do with my growl slot before just leaving it with nothing else useful to mem.

I fully understand the poison nukes.  I'm very disappointed, but I do understand.  I don't give a rat's tail about fero, since I will require anyone requesting it to show me a triple digit dps gain from it before I'll waste a cast of HatM to cast it.

Cold nukes being linked, I'm ticked about.  I'd be less ticked if our dots didn't require so much more mana, yet get resisted incredibly more.  But then again, I suppose this was Prat the Worthless Prat's answer to "why do you keep giving us useless dots?".  Makes us have several more spell slots that are totally useless unless we load the dots.

I have such disgust for Prathun.  I will sing hosannas to the highest when they remove his worthless self from the position related to spells.

[Jebasiz]

Where are you using dots?  Poison for necros lands consistently in all raid content(FC was a bit dodgey but..undead typically are to poison/dis).  Disease, I don't use..it's damage is to insignificant.  Once in a great while I'll toss Grip of Mori because it has a small debuff..but for dps, it's crap.  It usually lands once scents have..before that it's really a crapshoot.  Which leads me to my last question.  Are you mobs being fully debuffed(I'm willing to bet they're not..even if people say they're casting them)? 

You're dots have no resist adjustment..necros have like neg 50.  If your dots are going to land at all..You'll need necros debuffing.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=14866&source=Live
Get your necros familiar with that line..It'll help you out a lot.  It's not something that a lot of necros would normally cast.

[hokarz]

I tried doing something different yesterday. I grouped with a druid and we aggro kited gobbies for faction in Loping plains. I used 5 dots and by the time the the gobby was dead, so was my mana. Three casts of 5 dots shouldn't use 10k mana. I only have the first rank of dot crit aa's and I dont think I have a mana pres focus anywhere. The druid was casting dots, too and the only time I pulled aggro off of her, is when I cast Bite. Instant aggro, everytime.

[Jebasiz]

Det mana pres and det ext are very helpful in preserving mana.  You cast 15 spells..from what you listed, I'm not sure what they are..but if they're an average of ~700 mana per cast, then ya..it would cost 10k mana.

Expenditure isn't really a huge issue IMO, it's not to be ignored, but it's not what makes a dot good or a dot bad.  DPM/DPS are the keys to getting dots that work effectively.  Parse those dots in a better/more accurate situation and see what you come up with.  If it's far below where people think is appropriate, perhaps you have something to address. 

[Wolfcaller]

I tried doing something different yesterday. I grouped with a druid and we aggro kited gobbies for faction in Loping plains. I used 5 dots and by the time the the gobby was dead, so was my mana. Three casts of 5 dots shouldn't use 10k mana. I only have the first rank of dot crit aa's and I dont think I have a mana pres focus anywhere. The druid was casting dots, too and the only time I pulled aggro off of her, is when I cast Bite. Instant aggro, everytime.

Affliction Efficiency trib is nice if casting DoTs.  And Burning Affliction if needed for any disease ones used.

[Kanan]

the resist modifier on our slow is only -30, yet its resist rate is significantly better than the previous one w/o a resist modifier.

Part of the reason I use disease dots is grouping with my GF.  She's a necro and likes to root a mob to load em up before going on the kite path.  So i get that on the mob while I"m sitting there waiting for her to finish loading the mob up.

On raids, I use [http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=10325&source=Live]Diregriffon's Bite rk2[/url] (there's no rank 3 actually) and Fever Spike rk2 (again, no rk3).  The reasons I load the disease dot are 3 fold: 1) the agro is less (I cut it close enough as it is most times), 2) the mana cost is less painful the Diregriffon, and 3) I get to use my focus on my earring, so its not wholly useless ;p

I use them rather than the higher level ones because I use DP focus for the disease one and I just noticed erroneously on the poison dot (/makes a note to shift to falrazim's since my dmg focus does work fully on it).  If I were still using the focus on my legs (wtb another 2 serpent essences =/), then Diregriffon would be superior due to foci.

I still get a lot more resists on the mana usage than from the nukes were.  I've not asked the necro's about their scent line, but I think I'll do that soon.

[Kakan]

On other note, can anyone tell me why the Vish neck clicky is linked with our colds nukes as well?? I really don't undestand the reasoning behind it.  Every 3min you can use the clicky, but only if the recast time on your other nukes is refreshed.  It's really a pita.

[Icekracker]

That is because the clicky from Vish (Glacial Spike iirc) is one of our spells already, therefore, it is affected by the linking of our Ice Nukes.

[Grbage]

Where are you using dots?  Poison for necros lands consistently in all raid content(FC was a bit dodgey but..undead typically are to poison/dis).  Disease, I don't use..it's damage is to insignificant.  Once in a great while I'll toss Grip of Mori because it has a small debuff..but for dps, it's crap.  It usually lands once scents have..before that it's really a crapshoot.  Which leads me to my last question.  Are you mobs being fully debuffed(I'm willing to bet they're not..even if people say they're casting them)? 

You're dots have no resist adjustment..necros have like neg 50.  If your dots are going to land at all..You'll need necros debuffing.

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=14866&source=Live
Get your necros familiar with that line..It'll help you out a lot.  It's not something that a lot of necros would normally cast.

Have to keep in mind that shammies are a parent class. Originially our spells were lower level shammy spells and as such did not come with resist modifiers due to shammies having the malo line. Now some spells (slow) over time have had a resist modifier added to them but our dots never have.

With no resist modifier the dots are often resisted, a waste of mana to cast. If in group there will land with someone else debuffing but then we run into the same issue every other dot caster has, the mob dies before the dot runs its course so mana effeciency goes out the window.

This leaves most bst to not bother using dots at all or in only certain situations. We've asked the devs to just quit giving out upgrades to the lines but they keep cranking them out every expansion.

[TabarQuell]

I for one have sworn off using DoTs unless i can't find any other way to harm the mob. they bounce too often and end up being less efficient than our lower level nukes (which we can't use anymore)

A spell resist modifier is a rather big thing, even if it's a really small number, as mob resists haven't really gone up.  That's why our Sha's Legacy spell (-30 check) works much better than Sha's Revenge (0 Check) as far as resists go.

[Denti]

Now that we can only use three nukes i tend to have at least one poison dot loaded. Granted, it doesn't allways land but on most SoF mobs the hit rate is pretty high, even more so on raids. And since we all have a poison focus allready to boost our poison nuke our dots are focused as well. It is different for our disease dots as those are very long running dots and it is pretty hard to get a disease focus as a beastlords so i don't usually mem them.

[Jebasiz]

I need lengthy and actual parses of before and after the spells got linked.  Send me a tell, 7pm est sun-fri if you have them. 

Also please clarify the shrink/wurine bug.  I had a friend click off wurine shrink and such several times this morning and there was no loss of shrink.

[Inphared]

The chances of someone having actual parses of the spells are slim to none. No one saw the change coming.

The Pact of the Wurine issue isn't retaining shrink on your original form - the problem is casting Pact, shrinking, waiting the duration of the buff, Pact fades, you recast Pact, and you're unshrunk again.

[Khauruk]

It's not a bug for Wurine - it's just a matter of a dreadfully short buff timer on it (30 minutes).  I'd like to see it extended to at least 2 hours (only problem then is the illusion slot blocking Bestial Alignment AA disc).