This from other shaman in a raid makes me crazy if I'm MT Defiler. If the tank is going down because the MT deathsaves are all used...yeah...let's hit him with whatever we have because something has gone wrong, but when my single target ward poofs out of existence because someone just overwrote it, now my rotation is all messed up, and worse, I am not keeping track of damage or able to prepare for spikes. Plus, if I didn't have better gear and/or better spell quality, I wouldn't be the MT Defiler, they would. (Not being elitist...if your gear and spell quality is better than mine, I WANT you to be in that spot) So the wards that are overwriting mine are worse and smaller than what I'd do. Some boosted Shamans come from a dps mentality and want to compete for a heal parse. Any time anyone asks to 'see' the heal parse (unless they are a Paladin...because..well..paladins), I know they are a noob healer. That's not exactly how it works, and isn't the best for the health of the raid. If you are the OT Shaman, your job is to focus on that tank. Think of yourselves as the MT group in reserve. If the MT goes down, the OT steps in. The healers in the MT group have only got one job at that point, and that's getting the MT back on his feet and buffed. As the OT shaman, you don't even think about them, you have been prepared and have wards sitting on the OT for just that moment, or for when they pull an add or other boss away from the main raid by design. If everyone is doing well, debuff your butt off. You'll learn the times when your debuffs are more important than your heals, but that's not exactly why they brought you. Hope this helps a little and hope you really like raiding
Preach - agree 100%! And, really, if you're going to sweat the heal parse, you can often "heal more" and "win the parse" with the off tank than the MT, depending on gear, tank temps, class, etc.
Well so far I have brought my Defiler into a couple of raids and some groups. My fellow guildies are giving me words of praise. I don't know if they are just being kind or if I am really doing ok. I am trying to figure out how to setup my hotbars so that wards and heals are handy and are in the order I should be using them. The DPS stuff is all together as well. I try to ward first, throw in some DPS, heal some, redo wards, DPS, heal, etc, etc, etc.
Dual conversion wins... and as a defiler you learn to watch your wards ticking down, cast greens and debuffs between recasting wards... I usually am never in a MT or OT during raids, and end up being a solo healer for another group... if you have the class cloak, it is great... make sure you have a lot of ability mod if you have high potency.. and you will see a nice boost with crits... don't overwrite your wards too soon, sometimes people do that and they could be casting debuffs and dots during that time.. I can honestly say that I have never hit soul ward... but if you do, better hit that channeling button..
You can take all 3 endlines if you really wanted to. Its just the first one costs 2 points, the 2nd one costs 20 points and the 3rd one costs 30 I believe. Like some others have said, eq2wire isn't setup to calculate the increased cost properly, so it counts both as 2, which is why it will appear to have 18 unspent points.
If they were dying all the time when they shouldn't have - you wouldn't have gotten praise. You'd have felt the silence in Vent. If everyone is alive at the end of the fight, you are doing great. As you play longer, you'll get more elegant and fancy, so don't be concerned about that. What you DO want to do is spend some time and just READ every single spell. What does it do? Where/when can I (or can't I) use it? How do my debuffs go together? Which are stronger? Which are situational? If you take the time to do this, then you can set up your spell bars (I suspect you are a clicker...clickers unite!) in a way that makes sense to you and lets you have fast access to emergency spells. Your DPS should be the 3rd thing(s) you cast. Single target ward, Group ward, debuff debuff debuff... patch heal with single target directs...then DPS if you have time. Defiler debuffs are pretty decent, and can really help healing by helping to weaken the mob. When the poo hits the fan, though, single target ward/group ward spam might get you through it. Toss in a debuff if you can. Don't stress! This is FUN!
I am looking at the defiler spells by category on the Wikia page so I can familiarize myself better with what I have specced into and what each one does. "What you DO want to do is spend some time and just READ every single spell. What does it do? Where/when can I (or can't I) use it? How do my debuffs go together? Which are stronger? Which are situational? " I am not sure exactly what you mean by debuffs going together. From what the Wikia shows defiler debuffs are Atrophy, Abomination, Terror Chant, Umbral Trap, Ancient Terror, and Abhorrent Seal.So after warding the tank and then warding the group I would use wards but I am not sure how I tell which wards should be used and when. Hope that makes sense and sorry for being a little slow on this. Healing in this game is still very new to me.
Well reading through my spells/abilities I just noticed that I have Death Cries and Deathward. Seems Death Cries replaced Deathward. It is a quicker cast and "becomes far more powerful than Deathward when the target is below 50% health". So I guess I should take the 5 points I have on the Shadows tree and put it somewhere else. I am trying to setup my hotbars to have all wards together, all heals together, then DPS stuff, and finally rez stuff.
BTW, when I mentioned the end line in Heroics problem in eq2u not showing correctly, it is also the same for in game. I would get the same unassigned points problem in game. Don't know if this is a known problem that will ever be fixed but it drives me nuts as I don't know if behind the scenes my points are being properly distributed.
Don't move those points. Death Cries is modified by the aa points you put into DW in the shadow tree. Plus the DR from that spell is nice.
I'm sure there are many ways to do it and it depends on what you're fighting. Assuming something semi-challenging I'd usually start off with a single ward on the tank, Ritual then Group ward prepull (can throw in Death Cries there as well). Once mob is pulled I'll use my temps, Deathtouch charm & Salvo charm for the bonus pot/cb (use DT on adds if possible), Cloak of Divinity then Soul Shackle. Refresh single & group wards as needed, debuff, dps. For dps spells I'll usually start with Nightmares & Maelstrom as they heal as well. Keep in mind, knowing the encounters and knowing what your spells do is helpful. If you're on a fight with a big power drain, especially some of the raid encounters where low power = death, you may want to save Maelstrom for the power feed. Also setting up some macros can be helpful. I'd macro your Group Cure, death save, emergency wards, and ancestral channeling to have a /cancel_spellcast. Basically any spell that, when you're going to use it or need it, you want it to cast immediately and interrupt anything you're already casting.
Another thing I would suggest is changing your AA spec a bit. In your shadows tree you have 5 points in Litany of Combat, but the spells you get are suspended while in your healing stance. Problem with that is that you only took the healing stance. Would make the most sense to take both stances. Personally, I'm in DPS stance most of the time anyway as most content is fairly simple for us to heal. As for your other lines, I've seen plenty of differing opinions on whats best, but for the heroic line I'd take the points from Spirituality & Spiritfire and take Spirit Aegis. Its a pretty decent group ward that you can throw up for extra protection while Soul Shackle is down. For the Dragon line, I've tried the Nature Dragon Scales line, mostly for Undaunted, but the problem I found with it is that unless I'm soloing heroic stuff, I never actually need it. The only times I actually die are due to scripts, and it won't protect you from a scripted death. Your points in Draconic Regeneration, past the first 2, are generally wasted, at least the last one since we rarely use our single target heals, especially since our wards heal as well. The extra trigger on DP can be useful for a few raid fights if you're in the MT group, but for most stuff you're better off with those 10 points elsewhere. Personally, I went down the Wild Smiting line to improve DPS. Finally, on the prestige line, and this is also probably a matter of preference, but I'd choose Phantasmal Barrier over Wraithwall. Reason being that I find more use for Phantasmal barrier than Wraithwall, unless you go full left side. In my opinion Wraithwall needs 3 points in Wraith Howl to raise the threshhold to 65%, otherwise it only triggers if the target falls below 20%, ie mostly never triggers and is basically kinda a ghetto DP. Phantasmal Barrier I find more useful since you can cast it while casting other stuff, so if you're in mid-cast of your group ward and a DPS peels it, can hit that to give them a ward while you're still casting. Also useful if you use Soul Ward to protect yourself while you in red.
Thank you for the input Allanna. If we can actually log in today after the patch, I will play around with my AAs. I took a look at your AAs on eq2wire and see that you also chose 2 in the Heroics end line. I guess that the "bug" is what is keeping me from doing that. I don't know if the game actually knows that those points are spent. When I checked my AAs before when I chose both Avenging Ancestors and Spirit Aegis IN GAME it showed I think 19 unused points. So I believe that this is not an eq2wire problem but a game problem. Has this been addressed anywhere? Not sure if this problem exists with other classes choosing 2 end line abilities in Heroics.
Do you have 350 AA yet? If not, when you are putting together the AA spec the game will let you spend points before you have them to plan out your progression and then as you earn them the AAs the abilities will be purchased. So you can "spend" 350 AA points before you actually have 350 AA. What I think you are seeing is that you put 20 points into the second ability before you actually had enough AA points to do so. So the game is storing your 19 unused points until you get your next AA point. Once you earn it, it should buy the ability.
This is really excellent advice. To get my rotation rolling, I usually cast the group ward first (pre-pull) because it takes longer to cast. Single target ward goes on at "Incoming in.." Then you have a really solid foundation for everything else.
Monstuhr, I do have 350 AAs now. If we ever get back into the game, I will re-assign points so that I have Avenging Ancestors and Spirit Aegis chosen. I will also re-assign some points so that I have DPS stance and healing stance. I have found that it is a little difficult to see how things work when playing with a training dummy compared to checking my DPS with my ranger and a training dummy. I still have to work on subjugation and ordination but hopefully working on a training dummy I can get those maxed out soon. I also don't have a salvo charm. I opted to get the vigor charm. Was that a mistake? As far as macroing some things I use darqui unified, which seems to have an automatic /cancel_spellcast but just to make sure I will macro these things using that. She really has been fun to play with. She was power leveled so I didn't get the chance to learn things as I progressed. She was only going to be a crafter toon. So now that she is level 100, I am learning what she can do. FYI, I am not savvy with acronyms yet so am not sure what a lot of you are saying (i.e.DT on adds if possible) or DP (I think this is death prevent). I need to run more ToT Heroics groups and Zek/Varsoon/CT Heroics groups to get better gear for ToT raid and Zek raid. I only have a pitiful 4454 pot right now. What numbers should I be striving for to use in ToT and Zek raid zones? OK that is enough questions for now since I can't get in the game for a while to see what else I have questions on.
