Really annoyed with constant spell swap (shaman)

Let s look at 60 what spells i should always have loaded :

Root (the 3mn one sucks totally so still using immobilize)
Malo line
ST fast slow (turgur)
Prime avatar (recast is long i try to put it on 2-3 melees)
Torpor
Canni

Haste : Even if haste last now quite longer i don t manage to get everyone on the same timer, group change and when we have pet they sometimes die

Cloroblast : I should have it too even with a cleric just in case he/she get overwelmed.

On top often i should have at least a dot loaded (even if they cost so much).

Add to this a cure cause mobs land more and more dots/debuff and also Bili since mob keep snaring the puller which remove Bi-li.

This is not exhaustive, aoe slow may be usefull, disempower/cripple too...

And i m not counting long duration buffs or my non resistable disease ressit debuff.

The spell set do not help because i would need 20 of them.

At least if could customize the spell menu and just put there the spells we actually use it would be great. Is there a way to edit that XML ?

Note that there is nothing new there, it was probably much worst when i had to constantly refresh dext/str/stamina and haste ...

Just getting tired of it.

Have you heard of loading and storing spell sets? The icon on the bottom of the spell bar lets you do this. Not sure if it's click-and-hold or right click that brings up a menu. It lets you name and store different sets of spells and recall them by loading a different spell set.

Yes but i does help at all, i would need dozen of sets it all dynamic.

Sure i have a solo a group and a buf newbie set but in group i must change all the time, if you don't play a shaman you may not get why.

I take it you never group with an enchanter? Because with an enchanter in group you don't need haste or root. Not sure why you need root anyways, slow is usually good enough for crowd control.

If you're just exping you don't need a dot, mobs should be dead too quick to make it worth the mana, unless you don't need to heal much. Malo is also usually a waste of time when exping, unless you're fighting mobs yellow-red and slow is getting resisted a lot. Again an enchanter comes in handy, tash helps slow land.

I find it faster to swap spells by putting the ones I swap out most often on the first page of my spell book and use it. I can swap one spell out much faster than the right click menu on a spell gem. I do run a high resolution so the right click menu is very tiny.

Spell sets, make sure when you set them up you leave blank spell gems you are not swapping out. You won't be waiting for gems you don't need swapped to load. You can swap spell sets using a social macro also I believe. I leave stuff that has long refresh in spell gems that don't get swapped out and those gems are the blank ones in my spell sets.

Yeah use macros with /mem spellsetname

On my shaman on ragefire I had a ton of spellsets. As Troutfest said, remember to leave in blanks for the spells you dont swap. That way you only swap the ones you actually have to. It takes half an hour to set up but will be well worth it in the end.
Hell I even have several spellsets for Shieldingline, runes, resists, evac, ports, nuke setups etc on my wizard on Agnarr.

I have four sets I swap out between primarily (group, solo, single target buffs, group buffs) and on all of them I have instant heal in gem 1, avatar in gem 5, and HoT in gem 8, so that I never have to worry about those (or killing avatar's cooldown). The rest I fill with the generally most fitting spells for the set, and tweak the one-off's as occasionally necessary. I do have a few other sets for niche situations/raids (CC sets for VZ/Cornaiv) too.

If you haven't already set up spell sets and aren't already using hotkeys to access them ("/mem <spellsetname>" as mentioned above) I would start there and see if this eases things a bit.

I do agree with you, I don't think most non-shamans have any idea how many spells we juggle.

Its annoying... but not that bad. Really, if your a main shaman, I do not see an issue. If your a box shaman... yeah I can understand.

I mained a shaman on P99 where spellsets didn't exist and neither did the right click spell menu to mem spells. Had to mem every spell from the book. Still wasn't that bad. I can't imagine needing more than 3 MAYBE 4 spell sets with the occasional manual spellswap for a specific situation. It's not nearly as bad as you make it sound imo.

Large reason I never found Shm interesting.
Only cure is more spell gems and well we all know that would cause the earth to spin off it's axis and black holes to explode destroying the universe.

Even at endgame it doesn't get much better, with 12 spell gems I'm still juggling spells a lot of the time, and that's after slow/malo/root are added as AA's freeing those gems lol

Yeah it is simply too much and a lot of the effects could be combined but we all know rationality has always been in short supply.

This would make PVP unbalanced!

I had my main spells that I felt helpless without always in the same spell gem which was like 5 leaving 3 open for swapping. Since they were in the same spot on every saved set and only 3 would have to change it was fast on the load. Most of the time I could swap while tanking in between the slowed hits.

Like the idea but you have to do the upkeep on those saved sets or else hilarity ensues

Thanks for mentionnign the macro to load spell sets it will help a lot.

Also i never used blank gems instead i was redoing all my set each time i got a new heal or slow, so i will use blank gems.

Note that till i got avatar -- that needs to be loaded all the time due to cooldown -- and got too laod radiant cure often i had almost no issue. As i wrote the worst was the lower levels with individual buffs for each stat.

Harnessing of spirit was such a relief ... so glad too that they moved it to 46 since it was 50 in classic.

Will also move important spell on page 1 as suggested, actually it is what i did in my early levels. May be cleaning the book is a good idea but i m not too sure because if i need to buf or help a low level toon i may need some outdated spells. May be i just just keep the most powerfull spell lower than 50 for each spell line.

Probably i can delete all my lower level wolves.

Just adding a word about "malo" that is useless it is not if i need to slow a red mob and casters always reclaim it when i try to save mana and skip it. I believe is also help for proc that hit for full at least on my little magic stone that proc 320 there is some noticeable difference.

And pet in particular have a lot of proc either by weapons or for beastie with master buf.

Well it may be quite some work (i act three time more than a cleric ;-) but it is more entertaining.

Honestly i could not play a rogue with 3 buttons till 50 (or even 60), some are really lazy and don't do anything; others actually offtank.

Also grouped with super lazy rangers that were neither dotting or snaring, ranger snares and nukes are not great but they help. -- not speaking here about boxed Head Shoot ranger but of non boxed ranger without HS.

It is also quite common to see an afk necro pet and the master full mana and no dot on targets(s) ...

This sort of ninja afk is not really possible with a shaman.

The only thing i miss is the fun pulling that i had with my ranger or my bard. The bard much better indoor because of lull and goodies like the possibility to have resist song up when attacking and also better armor.

It sucks, but the flip side is being capable of so little you have spell slots to spare. I would suggest dropping root first if you're looking for things to get rid of. It's nice CC, but if you're already slowing you can generally tank whatever you slow. A shaman is a high utility class; just because you can do everything doesn't mean you *have* to. Learn to rely on the rest of the group/raid a little (And on the flipside, don't let them be lazy and lean on you too much).