Casting between swings: Ranger w/ Earthshaker

[Troxx]

For the raw efficiency and number crunching I bet it's a toss up between

1) Swarmcaller then Woodsman
2) Skip Swarmcaller and just Woodsman

A lot of it depends on luck and your dexterity but I would not be surprised if the MOST efficient setup is skipping swarmcaller. On a high level mob the slow will probably make with worth it, but lack of a proc will leave you low health and a slower kill rate. Again, this boils down to luck.

Vs not high level blues the Woodsman alone will probably result in less downtime as the kill speed and consistency overcomes the randomness of procs.

I cannot see any setup where Earthshaker wins out from an efficiency setup. Comparing kill time to down time to heals needed vs regen ... does not compute. The time needed to proc already favors the Woodsman. Assuming you get an early proc a slow + ratio of woodsman wins. If you're buffed to hell AND get lucky, any combination including the Earthshaker is likely still worse than just using Swarcaller and Woodsman.

But ... if the earthshaker is the most fun, Cecily is right. Whatever is the most *fun* is the best setup ... even if it is 1/4 the efficiency of the next best setup.

For pure efficiency, only casting snare and necessary CC and saving mana for regens, necessary buffs, and heals is probably the best bet. That means skipping dots and all other non snare spells (the exception being an emergency root). For fearable animals, the mana spent on fear is far more efficient than mana spent healing damage the animal would have done to you - so fear away, and skip the Swarmcaler!

At the end of the day? Just play the way that is the most fun. After all, isn't that the point of playing a video game?