Totem Talk: Enhancing your gear in only four dungeons
Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 12 now out!)as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.
Holy Stormstrikes! I'm going to refrain from using the term casual in a post ever again. Wait, I just used it there. Ah well, rack that promise up with "I'll never drink again" and "I'll never die to cutters again." Lies, all of them, lies.
We all have different definitions of the term and judging by the comments in the last post, others' definition of casual is more severe than mine. I'll get into casual vs. hardcore and the ridiculousness of those classifications in another post. For now, I hear you loud and clear, so let's refrain from diving into that now.
I digress. As I was writing last week's article I had this sneaking suspicion that I already wrote several articles on gearing your non-end game enhancement shaman. In fact I had written articles many moons ago, and they are all on my neglected blog, Big Hit Box. Time for a revisit.
The dungeon loot list
You would think that a dungeon gear wish list wouldn't have changed much since March 2009, considering that only four new instances were released after that list was published. But those four instances cover nearly every slot with ilevel 219 and 232 gear, whereas the previous 12 dungeons drop ilevel 200 gear.
The TL;DR version of gearing up your enhancement shaman outside of raids is: grind the heck out of Trial of the Champion, Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and every tank's favorite, Halls of Reflection. And yes tanks, that's sarcasm; I know firsthand from my bear druid how nasty that place can be.
I wanted to title this post "A loot list for enhancement shaman who do not have regular or significant access to ICC gear, and may or may not consider themselves casual" but I didn't think that would fit in the address bar. And, after filling out just a few items on the list, I realized just how easy it is to gear yourself up running only the four new instances. It's almost a joke to create a loot list, but I will anyway in case you have a particular slot with a green quest reward still plaguing your character screen.
Enough preamble, on to the loot! I do include some normal versions of the instances, which technically makes this list eight dungeons instead of four, but you get the idea. Use this list to target areas for specific upgrades. Click the header link for an amazing Wowhead filter.
Head
Eyes of Bewilderment – Forge of Souls (H)
Horns of the Spurned Val'kyr – Pit of Saron (N)
Barbed Ymirheim Choker – Pit of Saron (H)
Ancient Pendant of Arathor – Trial of the Champion (H)
Pauldrons of Concealed Loathing – Trial of the Champion (H)
Spurned Val'kyr Shoulderguards – Pit of Saron (H)
Accursed Crawling Cape – The Forge of Souls (N)
Frostworn Bone Chestpiece – Halls of Reflection (H)
Chestguard of the Ravenous Fiend – Trial of the Champion (H)
Essence of Suffering – The Forge of Souls (H)
Hoarfrost Gauntlets – Halls of Reflection (H)
Gloves of the Dark Exile – Trial of the Champion (H)
Belt of Rotted Fingernails – Pit of Saron (H)
Frostworm Bone Leggings – Halls of Reflection (N)
Spiked Toestompers – Halls of Reflection (H)
Muddied Boots of Brill – Halls of Reflection (N)
Scale Boots of the Outlander – Trial of the Champion (N)
Band of Stained Souls – Pit of Saron (H)
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion – The Forge of Souls (H)
Banner of Victory – Trial of the Champion (N)
Black Icicle – Halls of Reflection (H)
Nighttime – The Forge of Souls (H)
Hate-Forged Cleaver – Halls of Reflection (N)
Aledar's Battlestar – Trial of the Champion (H)
Seven-Fingered Claws – random drop in FoS, PoS, HoR, normal and heroic
Cudgel of Furious Justice – quest reward from Battered Hilt which drops in heroic FoS, PoS, and HoR
That list doesn't include anything from the emblems that you'll receive from running dungeons on a casual regular basis.
Get your priorities straight
Remember, your priorities on gearing are as follows:
cap expertise: 140 rating or 26 in your character sheet
cap hit: 341 for Alliance, 367 for Horde
go for mail gear with agility
Extra expertise is wasted. Extra hit is good. Stack AP until you get up to ICC-level gear. Then switch and go all haste stacking. If you're not in mostly ilevel 251 gear, then just stack AP.
Your weapons should always be slow. Slow means speed 2.60 weapons in each hand. Use the Windfury imbue in your main hand, and Flametongue in your off hand. Though for PvP Frostbrand is ideal in the off hand. For a refresher be sure to check out Enhancement 101, and 201.
Once again, weapons and trinkets can be found here on WoW.com. Weapons are your single most important piece of gear. Aggressively go after weapon upgrades.
And if you accidentally trip and fall into a raid you could always look at this loot list that I wrote up once upon a time for my brothers and sisters who do have access to ICC on occasion but don't have access to it on a regular basis. Whew, that's quite a disclaimer.
I'm all disclaimered out this week. Seriously, if you are a fresh 80 or limited in play time on your enhancement shaman, just run ToC, FoS, PoS, and HoR until you're geared to the teeth. Problem solved.
May all your hits be crits!
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Matt Sampson's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, WoW.com's shaman experts have you covered.
