Mythic Xhul as Ele (alt)

[siccora]

hi there. since xhul is a 3 heal fight and we want to play with a 2 shaman setup i am going to play this boss as a elemental and not holy pally. so normally i would think i just spam chainlightning in the adds and earthquake all the way. but i was looking on some top parse logs and i think that there is more to it.

so i understand that you cast ascendance right on the pull after the full buffed flame shock on the boss. but after that i got some question.

do you precast chainlightning when the imps are going to spawn or just cast chainlightning when the imps a visible there?

there will be 2 big adds. do i only cast a buffed flame shock on these two or just put a "normal" flame shock on them?

do i make shure not to be near the spawning adds because i don't want to "kite" them and just go ham with chainlightning?

when there a bunch of imps and i got a 20 stack of lightningshield, do i cast earthshock on the boss to get the 4piece buff or just spam chainlightning and earthquake until those imps are down?

what trinketsetup is best? classtrinket with iskar?

[Deleted]

"so i understand that you cast ascendance right on the pull after the full buffed flame shock on the boss"

Nope you ascendance with a simple unleashed flameshock, without EF stacks.

You should precast CL but if the spawn is unfortunate you may not (but you usually will) get an EQ proc. In general it's worth doing it. You want to cast a fully buffed flameshock on both adds, then a 2 EF on vanguard since it'll fade before it dies.

I kite the shadow adds, it's not that big of a deal, but there are much better classes for that for sure.

Earth shock the highest hp imp.

Iskar + Archimonde trinket yes.

[Firebug1975]

After casting CL as soon as the Imps spawned, and Fire Mages and Rogues taking all their HP and making me mad... I figured I'd make BigWigs do a countdown for the Imp spawn and I started pre-casting CL when the countdown said 2.. working pretty well so far coz Rogues and Fire Mages mad at me now.

Grounding Totem's pretty good for Void Surges too... just make sure you put make a macro with a /stopcasting in it and you're good. You, or your other Shaman should be able to catch every one of them.

[Gistwiki]

Three things about grounding totem:

1) The cooldowns for grounding totem and void surge don't quite line up perfectly. Grounding is at 25 while Void Surge sits at 30. I found it much easier to keep track of grounding's cd and count to 5 after it came back up than keeping track of void surge for some reason.

2) The casts from the imps can eat it too. As such, you should try to have both shaman using it for each void surge to maximize chances at actually catching it.

3) Void surge prefers targets that're out of melee, and Grounding Totem has only a 30 yard range. As such, you may find it occasionally not catching anything. If that happens, it's a range problem. Depending on exactly what strategy you're using for handling raid positioning this may or may not matter, but if it does Totemic Projection can fix it.

Echo/PE/EF for talents. If you want to go for a setup with a lower mental overhead and have a High Council trinket (or really anything that isn't prophecy of fear) to switch for the class trinket then you can go Echo/PE/LM. It's definitely weaker, but there's much less to manage and you can focus better on mechanics. Microloft used it for awhile, though hes switched to the former more recently.

With Echo, an opener where you go Fire Ele -> Pot + LvB precast -> LvB -> UF -> FlS -> Ascend is approximately equal to Fire Ele -> UF -> Pot + LB precast -> FlS -> LvBx2 -> Ascend. Technically the former is numerically superior, but they're close enough that in practice you won't notice a difference and will likely perform better with which one feels better to you.

Maintain flame shocks (preferably fully-empowered ones as damage on those targets is still important - just less important than add damage) on all 3 big targets. More Lava bursts is a big help. If you decide to go with Echo/PE/LM then only maintain a flame shock on your primary target (Akellion > Ominus > Xhul for that purpose.)

Positioning is strat dependent. If the strategy calls for you to kite an add because of how it spawned, then you kite the add. If it doesn't, you may indulge in the ham.

You *should* ES the highest imp. In practice the swap will use you time until you're used to it. If the imps are dying quickly enough it's not the end of the world to drop ES casts into the boss mobs, but you *should* be using them on imps. ESx20 > EQ > CL.

Class trinket/Iskar is the default setup. If you're running with LM (again, easier to manage but there's a small loss in overall dps even if you have the best possible trinket for it,) then Iskar/Desecrated Shadowmoon Insignia is the best combination.

[jimmyolsen]

or really anything that isn't prophecy of fear

Is the issue that Mark of Doom Procs end up on the imps making it hard to track/keep substantial uptime? Or is it just too weak to warrant usage?

[Gistwiki]

Is the issue that Mark of Doom Procs end up on the imps making it hard to track/keep substantial uptime? Or is it just too weak to warrant usage?

The former mostly. I found that even with addons assisting me in keeping proper track of the debuff I could never get it on targets that I could use the explosion on consistently. There were times were it would pop on Akellion on Xhul every time as an imp wave would come out and it would be comparable to other trinkets at that point, but outside of those times it was pretty terrible.

[siccora]

i only got the class and fear trinket. i am just an alt. i need some better gear for sure.

thanks for the insights. all of you

[Nyoken]

Keep empowered FS up on the 3 adds(assuming u have the class trinket), all the time. Spam CL and keep EQ down as much as possible, and on 20 stacks of LS, use it to procc ur 4 set, since it ramps up so quick with CL. And obv use lava surge on the move.

[Deleted]

Three things about grounding totem:
1) The cooldowns for grounding totem and void surge don't quite line up perfectly. Grounding is at 25 while Void Surge sits at 30. I found it much easier to keep track of grounding's cd and count to 5 after it came back up than keeping track of void surge for some reason.
.

Or have WeakAuras track it for you. :>
Also never noticed imps eat the grounding, as long as your raid have a mass grip & stun rotation going.
Sure its not perfect, but if you can get away with it, you might aswell use it, if it helps your raid, right?

[Gistwiki]

Or have WeakAuras track it for you. :>
Also never noticed imps eat the grounding, as long as your raid have a mass grip & stun rotation going.
Sure its not perfect, but if you can get away with it, you might aswell use it, if it helps your raid, right?

I found auras for it ineffective. At least any ones that trigger at the start of the cast, as there always seemed to be a gcd-length delay in grounding actually absorbing things after it was placed (found it around a dozen times in logs after day 1 of progression.) Ones that kept an eye on the CD of the spell overlap with boss mods.

[Deleted]

Sounds to me, that your raid dont have all imp casts covered. But i guess we were lucky to have 3 DKs, for mass grips and single target grips if needed.
All i know is that we noticed fewer debuff in our raid.