The Spirit Realm

Could use a little feedback designing better spellsets to swap out during group battles. My goal is to find a swap strategy for maximum DPS and debuff effectivess. For me, this means, quick swaps, early debuffing, and max DPS for a typical 7-10 tic battle. I'd like to retain some crowd control abilites on hand as well.

Figure that quick heal, HOT, canni, and slow (BoD) will be perma-memmed. This leaves 5 spell gems to swap out, but I've found swapping out 5 spells at once to be too slow and not the best idea. A few, maybe 2, at a time seems the best balance.

For clickies, I have the TA and root pants. I will be making Philter of Major Negation potions for the 1.5s Nullify Magic clickies to be quick-cast from a hotkeyed inventory slot. I'm wondering if getting Pox pants will be worth it, both considering I'd be losing my prized root-pants and that the DPS from Pox prolly isn't worth it for quicker battles.

I'm thinking there will be 3 stages of swapping to do: Pre-battle, the debuff stage, and the DPS stage. I have single-spellsets for Idol of Malos, Panther, Malicious Decay, and Crippling Spasm (and gate). I typically work with 2 battle spellsets customized for the particular encounter, and it's second nature for me to type /mem m1, cast a few spells, then type /mem m2 (which swaps out 1-3 spells), then jump in and melee with panther on myself. Including 2 weapon procs and panther, I expect to contribute an average of ~3k damage per battle from shammy meleeing alone.

Ok, given this info, this is what I've worked out so far. Any criticism or suggestions are welcome. Possibilities include leaving Malos perma-memmed instead of using (-40) 'sinia; move Idol single mem to swap out with BoD instead of Malos/sinia; leaving out MD and calling it out only when anticipating needing it; and leaving the rain or panther up all the time (usually panther is perma-memmed). Cripple can be called in as needed, to use if I end up tanking.

Pre-battle
/mem i (idol)
...drop Idol

/mem p (panther)
...panther x 3 (pup, MT, self)
...panther other pet/melee (optional)

/mem m1
...replaces Idol with 'sinia
...replaces Panther with rain
...sisslak, NoP, and MD scribed

Debuff stage
...dispell on incoming pull
...'sinia
...bandolier TA to slow

Crowd control stage (if Adds)
MD
VP
clicky root

DPS stage
engage melee (bando hammer)
NoP
Sisslak
rain (later in battle)

Hehe, looking back at what I've typed up so far, I see that I didn't even use an /mem m2 set. So it seems I could cut down on most of the pre-battle spellswap hassle by simply making /mem m2 scribe in Idol and panther together. This would result in

Pre-battle
/mem m2
drop Idol
do panthers
/mem m1

Debuff stage (~7s)
Dispell (1.5s)
'sinia (2.4s)
TA (3s)

DPS stage (~7s)
engage melee (bando hammer)
NoP (2.3s)
gem refresh (2.25s)
Sisslak (2.3s)
rain (later as time permits)

This setup allows damage to start taking place about a tic into the battle. Ideally this would allow the Dots to run near full duration. And subtracting out a tic for the rain's cast time, it allows for 3-7 tics of shammy melee damage. It may be a good idea efficiency-wise to not melee, panther another instead, and use the time to regain mana. Perhaps even just use one DOT or lose the rain, but more panther targets? Maybe I just needed to think aloud here, but any insights are welcome.

Meh. With only ten spell sets, unless you're prepared to put some really serious work into setting them up, you'll be at least as flexible doing things manually.