Settar's Raid Spec

Hey everyone, feat build discussion was requested in several e-mails so I'd like to start out with THIS one. The above is a tri-spec meant purely for high level pve endeavors, offering a lot of STEADY damage, +to electrical, and of course utility.

The main purpose of this build is to keep your mana up, and let's face it with all of the mana tap, natural regen, and the additional restoratives of Ether Discharge. You'll also notice "Building Storm" which, and this is my opinion, I would consider NECESSARY for any strong PVE spec...

Building Storm: Building Storm is, as the description mention, a channeled spell which you place on one teammate. That team member will recieve a 10% damage increase AND you will regenerate mana, in addition to this, after you finish channeling your nukes are reduced in mana cost by 100 mana for 10 seconds. But that's not the best part, no, a ONE MINUTE cooldown is what really want this. Now let's face it, with this build, you'll have cushy mana regen and you probably aren't going to need regen every minute, but spamming your Lightning Cast nuke once your heals are up can drain you pretty quick just due to its steep cost. And if you're out of mana, why just regen when you could be buffing someone else's damage AND regenerating at the same time? This is always a plus.

The main backing for this spec is the sheer electrical damage you recieve, look at it this way, you've got +57 elec damage in the general tree and +62 in lightning. Then you have idol of set, for each of your 6 group members (including yourself) you'll get +13 or so damage (stacking), then you'll get another 50 (I believe) from Idol of Set's Supremacy. In a large raid the one minute cooldown is hardly an inconvenience as most of the trash mobs take 30 seconds+ per pull.

Threat Feats: You'll see I have several feats to mitigate threat, one being and AoE, one being single target, they both have seperate 5 minute cooldowns. Another aggro feat is Grace, reducing hate by 3%. Now, it's difficult to test this to see if the tooltip is correct, or if it's even worth getting, but because of all of your lightning damage and say a large inner charge crit I picked this up to help me manage my hate. Also the feat Vindicator let's your tanks generate aggro faster while in defensive stance, unfortunately no number is given for this (unless I missed it) but it is unclear if the threat increase is significant or not.

Controversial Choice(s): I'd say that Power/Wrath of the Serpent Ring are largely underestimated. While PotSR is buggy (have to use before a spell is being cast) you take it for Wrath of the Serpent Ring, a 30% damage increase for 10 seconds, best part about this feat? Yet again, a 1 minute cooldown. Combined with Vengence of the Gods, call lightning buff, idol feats, overcharge + inner charge you can hit like a truck deep into long fights when aggro is secured on a tank.

QUESTIONS (I'll add the answers to other questions asked in comments or e-mails to this section):

1) Why no Storm Crown? Storm Crown is great, but in long range fights, it can't out damage the 30% increase for 10 seconds of each minute that WotSR can. The mana restorative is great, but this build already has enough mana regen/tap by far.

2) No Blood Mana? Again, mana regen that is not needed, you won't be running out enough to make use of this (Building Storm will be a better option with a lower CD anyways).

3) No Empowered Life of Set? Well, this one I'm not 100% on. While the extra 100-160 or so damage buff it gives your next attack are nice, you won't be spamming LoS (only when it isnt up yet) and so the overall damage increase in minimal, not worth it IMO.

4) Why Inner Charge? While the build does focus around steady damage, for just one point a guaranteed crit is a no brainer. You just have to be smart about when you use it, and if you're unsure if the tank has enough hate either A) Don't use it, or B) be smart and have your hate reducing abilities ready.

5) Why no Faithful of Set? This was included originally in my raid spec but upon testing I realized that even with 3 stacks of the buff up, it only increased the ticks of my HoTs by litterally just a few points, not worth it, I swapped the points out of this into inner charge and Coalesce Ether.

Thanks for reading and I hope some of you PVE'ers can take something from this, be sure to post questions, corrections and comments on this topic :)

P.S. As some of you know I'm more of a pvp guy, but with the pvp system not yet implemented I thought I'd share some pve ideas as this build seems to perform exceptionally in level 80 content.