Piatex's Verdant Convergeance for Raids - High/Medium Gear Requirement
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Step 1. What you need to know?
Verdant Convergeance with its profile of damage for raid environment requires you to be able to sustain Solar Eclipse throughout the fight. This prompts the need to get as many hits of Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning in - best way to do this? Crit. There is no better stat to scale this specs output and reliability than that, thus the gear requirement being at the very least you getting 49.4% crit chance on sheet!
The build links to both the 49.4% crit on sheet and 64.4% one as well as WAs I use will be on Ahmrila's Discord server: https://discord.gg/D8pHDZqjbB
Step 2. Spell-kit & Playstyle
Insect Swarm - Earthpulse Agony: a Damage over Time (DoT) ability applied to the target when hitting them with Wrath if you have Lightning Mastery up. This ability not only applies a debuff which grants you and your raid 5% crit chance but also 12% nature to your nature abilities per stack of it on the target. Can crit IF you have Solar Eclipse active at the time it deals damage thanks to Critical Cycles Epic Random Enchant.
Lightning Bolt: Main spammable ability which you will press majority of the time to upkeep Solar Eclipse.
Chain Lightning: A stronger version of Lightning Bolt, serves the same purpose and allows for AMAZING upkeep in cleave - every single target hit counts towards the bonus extension of Solar Eclipse's duration.
Wrath: The most important part of the toolkit, this ability enables EVERYTHING this build is - starting from applying your DoT component to improving your haste, granting guaranteed Elemental Overload procs if you crit and if not, a baseline of 50% chance on non-crits and even bringing utility in the form of magic damage debuff and healing reduction if needed (Gruul's Lair for example). ! ! ! Mandatory to cap the crit on this ability ! ! ! - thresholds in Step 1.
Earth Shock: Enabler. Use this ability only to start a new Solar Eclipse.
Sunburst: Cleave ability, press only if there is 3 targets or more. Useful during downtime - say your Solar Eclipse fell off early due to the fight being hard to keep it going, you can use Wrath to enter Lunar Eclipse and while doing your normal rotation get free instant casts of Sunburst to upkeep Nature's Grace while moving and waiting for another Solar Eclipse to come off cooldown.
Important interactions/effects:
Nature's Grace: Power house of an effect - grants 20-26% haste depending on REs and 30% chance to trigger Elemental Overload (tripled on a crit). You get it on a critical strike from Wrath/Sunburst
Lightning Mastery/Raw Power: Your good old RNG component of a spec, Lightning Mastery proc allows you to apply your DoT via Wrath and deal insane damage for short period of time. Keep in mind Wrath has to HIT the target during this buffs uptime. You get Raw Power from constantly criting with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning which at some point turns into Lightning Mastery.
Elemental Overload: Ohh boy... Probably most underrated 3 talent points in this game, in this build specifically - INSANE. Most people probably know what Ignite is and how good it is for a spec that can utilize it. This is even better! The additional triggers from this talent contribute towards not only your damage but also procs. They can trigger another volley of a spell via Lightning Mastery Epic Random Enchant, grant another stack of Raw Power or straight up trigger Lightning Mastery talent, extend duration of Solar Eclipse, trigger trinket effects and proc enchants from your weapons.
Rotation/Priority:
- Solar Eclipse and Earthpulse Agony uptime as high as possible.
- Nature's Grace uptime and when to cast Wrath depends on distance from enemy, general rule is you need 0.7 second of travel time per 10 yards between you and the target if they are not Magtheridon - he is too fat and it takes longer. Simply speaking, Wrath cast time + your distance/10 multiplied by 0.7 is how much time remaining on Nature's Grace you need to start casting Wrath to have 100% uptime. Maximum range (30 yards) your timing would be 2.1 + 1.1 (in most cases this is your wrath cast time), so 3.2 seconds of Nature's Grace duration remaining. You will get used to this at some point, for starters just try getting used to one specific range.
- Chain Lightning whenever off-cd and you dont need to cast Wrath/Sunburst for Nature's Grace/Earthpulse Agony.
- Lightning Bolt spam rest of the time.
Step 3. Talents & Abilities
Moonkin form. Hopefully I don't have to say this twice - this form is the ultimate amalgamation of everything this spec wants. It grants reliable mana sustain. It grants crit aura. It grants the ability to remove snares/slows (yes even cast speed slows if they are the same debuff as movement speed slow). It grants additional investment into Nature Damage.
Haste cooldowns are an amazing tool to keep this spec's ramp and uptimes going even in rough situations, Elemental Mastery being the best out of them all, close to 60% uptime haste cooldown that allows you to cast Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning on the move with the use of Avatar of Lightning Epic Random Enchant.
Get mobility! I would even advise starting with charge so fights like Magtheridon are not complete nightmare for you.
Breakdown of damage and dps with my current gear (mix of T4 and T5 on Thrall - High gear - mostly ascended/m20/mythic) without raid buffs and consumes.
Step 4. Gearing & Statweights
Crit cap >> SP + Haste > Intellect
No bis gearlist will be posted, I suggest you just go with those statweights in mind.
I will list some early gearing options, especially from dungeons and trinkets tho.
Head + Chest piece Mana-Etched set combo - amazing hit value with decent stats on the items themselves.
1H+Off Hand combo - crit/int/sp main hand and Lamp of Peaceful Radiance (broken good item btw)
Trinkets - Lightning Capacitor from Karazhan is basically mandatory for Single Target DPS on this spec, no other trinket comes even close. It grants high crit chance on top of doing 4-5% dps by itself. As a second option you can choose between Shaffar's Horn from dungeons or Sextant of Unstable Currents from SSC.
Once you are able to raid SSC: go for shaman set, 4 piece goal is Gloves, Head, Pants, Shoulders. Chest slot is reserved for the insane item that is Vashj's cloth chest piece with crit hit sp int and 3 sockets.
Consumables: Intellect + SP food & Int + SP Flask/Crit + SP Flask
Step 5. Skillcards & Draft
This build requires a lot to be drafted outside of your lucky cards, as those are reserved for utility slots + cooldowns. Most of those abilities are commons tho, so there shouldn't be that much of an issue getting them.
Starter Abilities: Mage Armor Mastery, Warlock Armor Mastery, Charge (as stated above, any mobility is key), Lightning Bolt.
Mandatory Normal Skill Cards: Elemental Mastery, Conjure Firestones.
Optional Normal Skill Cards: Moonkin Form, Arcane Power, Summon Felguard (most reliable Demonic Pact pet), Totem of Wrath, Innervate, Nature's Swiftness
Mandatory Lucky Skill Cards: Molten Armor, Fel Armor
Optional Lucky Skill Cards: Any of the Optional Normal Skill Cards, Power Infusion, Icy Veins, Solar Beam, Capacitor Totem/Shadowfury.
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@Piatex Hey there! This would also make for a great guide on our Database if you are willing to explore that option ^_^
Either way great job.
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@TastyGM hey, it depends what this exactly means, are we talking about extending this into a build draft? The main point of this post and the work im doing is to give more experienced, veteran players or those who want to learn more advanced specs a suitable reference guide on builds i'm either playing or testing out.
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@Piatex Not really build draft but database has a tool where you can create guides. People use them for various tools or things but I feel like your "build" guides could be a nice addition there. You can even link the spells there, format the text nicely etc.
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@TastyGM Gotcha, I'll look into it. Shouldn't be much of an issue.
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