enhancement-shaman-totem-talk
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Totem Talk: Cooldown management in ICC part 2
Rich Maloy lives and loves enhancement. Enhance is his main spec, his off spec, and his off-off spec. The other trees are there purely for his amusement. Whatever your shaman's spec, get your questions ready for the Totem Recall shaman roundtable on Raid Warning coming July 13. Send your questions in now to be answered by the top shaman from around Azeroth. Last week we covered the Lower Spire of ICC and how enhancement shaman (or any damage-dealing class, for that matter) can maximize their cooldown usage. This week we'll use the 25% buff and power-clear the rest of the instance. Rotface Regular and Heroic Another fight where Heroism off the start is the best way to go. The oozes come out faster the lower his health gets, so my theory is to get as much damage on target early on. At the end, things are hectic and too much damage is lost as too many people are running around or dead. You can pre-pot here to have another Potion of Speed available to use later on in combat. An early Hero makes cooldown management easy; use at the beginning and then again at every opportunity.
Totem Talk: Cooldown management in the Lower Spire
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, wolves, and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild/reality-show Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. (pic: grats Saltycracker on Big Crits' first Shadowmourne!) This article originally started as an enhancement shaman's guide to cooldown usage in ICC but given that cooldown management is universal to all damage dealers I've expanded the scope of the article. Actually, "expanded the scope" is a bit grandiose; it's more accurate to say I just changed the wording from enhance-specific spells to using the generic 3-min, 2-min and 1-min cooldowns. In some cases I kept the enhancement abilities because they bring other abilities in addition to just straight damage. Here's a quick rundown of our major cooldowns for the unenhanced: 10 min – Bloodlust/Heroism – you know it and love it 10 min – Fire Ele (5 min with glyph) – yeah he's dumb but what do you expect, his brains are on fire 3 min – Berserk & Bloodfury – Troll & Orc racials, respectively 3 min – Feral Spirit – two wolves who do damage and heal you simultaneously. Rad. 2 min – on-use Trinkets – Currently my trinkets are not on-use but I take them into account in case yours are 1 min – Shamanistic Rage with t10 2pc – normally this is a mana-regeneration and damage-reduction spell but with 2pc t10 it increases damage. I still talk about using Bloodlust/Heroism, Fire Ele, and Shammy Rage because they have their own unique aspects to deal with in raid. Namely, BL/Hero helps everyone, the Fire Ele is dumb as hell, and Shammy Rage mitigates damage.
Cataclysm Talent Preview: Enhancement shaman
With the release of the Shaman talent tree came some big news for enhancement, some new spells, and a request from Blizzard for feedback. What are we enhancers looking at with the talent changes in Cataclysm? Other than some rearranging of the clothes in the closet there are some notable new talents: Focused Strikes Ancestral Swiftness Searing Flames Totemic Vigor Improved Lava Lash What did Ghostcrawler have to say? How do the new talents play out?
Totem Talk: Basic Power Auras for enhancement
Rich Maloy developed a location-aware, augmented-reality GuinnessAura application for his DROID that would automatically guide him to the nearest bar with perfectly poured pints while simultaneous putting 10 yard radius red warning rings in virtual space around the attractive women in said bar. His girlfriend declared it a little too close to a "do everything and go everywhere this app tells you to" and subsequently broke it. Thankfully Rich has an innate sense for well poured pints--and only that, baby, I swear. In an ongoing effort to spend my extremely limited time doing things that aren't critically important, I undertook some UI tweaking. Granted, everyone that watches Big Crits is subject to my UI, so I do try to keep it clean enough for the show but functional enough to play and raid lead. I wanted to replace the memory-hog Shock and Awe with the lighter and more configurable Power Auras. Surprisingly it wasn't that difficult, and so after just over an hour I had auras set up for Maelstrom Weapon, Lightning Shield, and Water Shield. To get Shock and Awe setup to display MW counts, shield status, and other enhancement-specific items is very easy: open the options panel and enable the ones you want. I wrote about Shock and Awe a few months back, wherein my poor choice of font was quickly noted. The plus side of SaA is its ease of use and quick setup, the downside is the limited customization and massive amounts of memory. Besides, it's well established that using the SaA priority system is a net dps loss for experienced enhancement players. Once you learn your enhancement rotation the priority window is nothing but a distraction. I wasn't using the priority system in SaA. I was only using the bars for MW, wolves, and shields so I could replace it with something better. After the break we'll dive in to a basic enhancement shaman Power Auras setup as well as some good suggestions from the WoW Twitter crew for more information on shaman UIs and PA setups.
Totem Talk: Enhancement trinkets
Currently Stoneybaby is trying to come up with witty article titles and failing miserably due to a splitting headache, so "Enhancement X" will have to suffice for this week. And yes Rich Maloy lives and loves enhancement. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 4 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. Since last week's weapons column went off with slightly less trolling than normal, I'm going to push my luck with another article about gearing. Today's topic: trinkets. Trinkets are not nearly as hard to acquire as weapons. Unless of course the RNG gods hate you and Death's Choice/Verdict drops only once in your guild in all of the god-forsaken months you spend in ToC and the first time it dropped you passed to a hunter who really needed the upgrade and you thought to yourself I'll be a good leader and let someone else win because it will drop again and I'll get it next time only it doesn't drop again ever and you're convinced the RNG gods do in fact hate you so you wrap yourself in your towel and rock yourself gently to sleep. Thinking back on that, maybe trinkets are a bit hard to acquire. Thankfully for us, one of enhancement's best-in-slot trinkets is very easy to come by.
Totem Talk: Enhancement weapons
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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 3 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. As a melee class, weapons are our most important items. Not surprisingly, good weapons (emphasis on "good") can't be bought with emblems and only drop off a select few bosses, with the best weapons dropping off the hardest bosses. While trinkets can be hard to acquire (Death's Choice/Verdict is a lie!), you can fill in the gaps with emblems or even some subpar trinket choices and not have as big an impact on overall damage as a good weapon. Nothing beats a big stick. Today we're looking at enhancement weapon options in dungeons, plus Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel in 10s and 25s, regular and heroic. I am skipping over Naxx, OS, EoE, Ulduar, and Ony because it seems to me that it's far easier to get in and gear up in a ToC/ToGC PuG these days than any other raid. There are some good weapon choice in those older raids, but even starting out as a fresh 80 you should find ToC-10 PuGs doable. Let's dive in to our weapon options.
Totem Talk: Leveling enhancement 71-80
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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 2 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. We're in the home stretch now: Northrend. Once we hit our max level I'll throw out some recommendations dungeon, raiding, and PvP specs. Though admittedly I'm not the best PvPer so you'll have to bear with me on that and add in your recommendations in the comments. But that all comes at level 80 and we last left off at level 70 with a spec of 9/52/0. This spec still includes the Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem, but if you find you're tearing apart mobs and barely getting touched I recommend replacing that with Glyph of Stormstrike for the extra nature damage. Let's dive in and continue!
Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 61-70
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. We left off last week with the spec 0/51/0 and already killing boars in Outland. Comments from last week were mostly opposed to my advice to go WF/FT for weapon imbues, saying that it's best to wait until more elemental talents are added before leaving WF/WF behind. I can see their point, but can't imagine that either way is going to make a significant impact in terms of time lost due to deaths or slower kills. My rationale for WF/FT is that its likely you're facing off against higher level mobs than your current level which may take a bit more to whack down. This means more DoT ticks from Flame Shock, more Maelstrom Weapon procs, and more Earth Shocks, and thus a healthier balance between physical and magical damage. Regardless of you off-hand imbue of choice, we're really in the heart of enhancement right now. After hitting 60 we get spell upgrades every level instead of every other level, but the exciting talents and spells are already in our books so there's not much new and fun stuff happening.
Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 41-60
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost and wolves -- and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. As we get deeper into levels, the new spells from trainers taper off and we start to pick up all the fun stuff from talent points. In the next 20 levels we're going to finish out the enhancement tree, pick up some great talents and have a ton of fun blowing up elite mobs. But before we get there. we do have to get out of the level 40 doldrums. We left off with one point in dual wield and a spec of 0/31/0. At this point, you're probably missing as much as you're hitting with dual wield. If you were to spend one more level with a two-hander or a one-hander + shield, no one would fault you for it. It's really only at level 43 that enhancement starts to take off. Let's dive in and continue.
Cataclysm Class Changes: Enhancement Shaman Analysis
Today is a good day to be a shaman. Actually, it will be an even better day when Cataclysm hits, based on the initial changes we were shown today. There are some very exciting things coming down the pipeline for us enhancers. While I'm not keen on all of the changes, the stuff that I don't like is rather minor and everything else looks like it will be fun. Let's dive in and see what they have in store for enhancement when the world is torn asunder!
Totem Talk: Leveling enhancement 21-40
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost and wolves -- and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. Welcome back to the enhancement shaman leveling guide. This week we'll be covering levels 21 to 40, where we finally start to feel like enhancement, instead of just saying it's something we're going to do as we're Lightning Bolting down boars. There were some commenters who suggested going with Flametongue Weapon early on and just focusing on casting. Call me an enhance purist (go ahead, I can take it), but I'm of the opinion that if you're going enhance, you might as well go all the way. Plus those early levels of 1 to 20 are so easy and mobs will do down so fast, you could practically /dance your way to 21 -- probably to 30 if you wanted. One idea that was awesome and bears repeating is making your first glyph, Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem, and using said totem for pulls. It absorbs damage you take and shields your totem if you've got an extra-angry Searing Totem that can't seem to play nice with the naga. We're going to start with gear you should look for from quest rewards then continue the every other level breakdown.
Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 1-20
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. Shaman, welcome! Today begins your journey to the realm of shamanism. You'll learn to tame the power of the elements, request their presence and rely on their support in your daily life. The earth will move for you and fires will lash your enemies. The wind is always at your back and flusters those who would do you harm. You will learn to harness lightning to strike fear into mere mortals and summon elemental pets to aid you in your quests! It will be amazing! It will be fulfilling! It will... all come later. Now shut up and go over there and Lightning Bolt down some boars or moths. Ask most shamans how they leveled and the answer usually is enhancement. Let's face it: it's a fun spec to play, it's easy to stay alive, and in later levels after getting a few special talents you can solo elites and fend off filthy rogues on PvP realms. The purpose of this guide is to get you from 1-80 with the best possible talents, the most amount of information, and get good spell selection into practice now. Everything here is designed to keep you alive, keep you moving, help your quest/dungeon mates and get the most out of the class and spec. By no means are these absolute must-do and must-have rules. Play your class the way you want to play it and the way you enjoy it. But if you're stuck and not sure what to do, then follow this guide and hopefully it will point you in the right direction. Read on for BoA gear run down and levels 1-20...
Totem Talk: Glyphing for Fire Elemental
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. After writing last week's article and then this week diving headfirst into some 10s and 25s I felt like the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem needed some love. I felt even more so after looking at my combat parses for Lich King fights and noticing Fire Nova was my second highest damage ability. The fight is a long one -- a very long one -- and it got me wondering if I could step up my output by glyphing into fire ele. After all, who doesn't want more minions running around doing damage for them? Fire ele has the potential to be a great glyph: the elemental is another pet doing good damage and we can still cast Fire Nova off the totem. Of course the downsides are deal breakers for the glyph in most cases: The pet is leashed to the totem Fire Nova's damage is lost if the boss or mobs move away from the totem The 5 minute cooldown is still longer than most boss fights Read more to see when and where it's appropriate to glyph into this.
Totem Talk: Enhancement glyph review
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box and pens the enhance side of Totem Talk. Last week I went over the talents in great detail. Exhausting, two page article detail. I also linked to two specs which included glyphs. Those specs will serve enhancement shamans everywhere well enough to get the basics done, but I didn't get into the glyphs. This is what we'll tackle today. There are 28 major glyphs for shamans but of course not all apply to enhancement. Of those 28, two are considered must-haves for PvE (once you hit level at least 60). They are: Glyph of Stormstrike (level 40) and Glyph of Feral Spirit (level 60). And when it comes to PvP no other glyph beats Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem. After the break we'll review the enhance-related glyphs and get into a few options for glyph setups.
Totem Talk: Enhancement talents
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box and pens the enhance side of Totem Talk. Being a hybrid class means there's not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to making specs as one spec can serve us well through 10s, 25s, dungeons, and soloing. While PvE builds don't leave much room for experimentation, I've seen far more variance in PvP specs, mostly depending on play-style. Of course there are distinct PvP talents built into the trees and there are core talents for both PvE and PvP without which we're just not enhancement shamans. But depending on your gear, team, and how your play you can customize your PvP specs for defensive, offensive, mana-rich, or anywhere in between. Let's start right out with the two of the more common builds right now: PvE - 19/52/0 - this spec will serve most all enhancers well across all levels on content and is the spec I use on Stoney. PvP - 16/55/0 - as I mentioned above there is far more flexibility in specs for PvP. I chose this one because it's a good starter PvP spec that is highly mana-conservative and defensive focused. I've seen many different takes on enhancement PvP specs and experienced players will alter to suit their own play style. But if you need a place to start, go with this. Read on after the break for the talent-by-talent breakdown of enhancement shamans!
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for enhancement shaman
Breaking news: enhancement shamans get the dumb in Cataclysm. Intellect is gone! Are we becoming rogues with mana? No doubt you've read the big changes coming in Cataclysm. At this point there are a few confirmed points with the rest falling into the "confirmed they'll be changing" category. What do these changes mean for enhancement shamans? Read on.
Totem Talk: Save yourself
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. 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 at Big Hit Box and pens the enhance side of Totem Talk. A dead DPS does no DPS. It's as simple as that. Whether in a raid, an arena, or out soloing and leveling, staying alive is priority number one. This is as true for enhancement shamans as it is for any class. Thankfully as enhancement we have a few more options than most DPS classes including our saving-throw talent: Maelstrom Weapon. I consider it an absolutely essential duty to toss out MW4/5 heals in a damage-intensive environment, especially if the fight is new progression for your guild or you're in a tough match in PvP. I remember working on Tidewalker in Serpentshrine Cavern, I'd throw MW5-Healing Waves on the tank constantly. The damage was so intense on our main tanks and their health so spiky that at 4 procs of Maelstrom Weapon he'd be at full health then a split second later when I had 5 procs he was dangerously close to dying. My Healing Waves rarely over-healed when we learned that fight it appears my memory is failing me as MW did not exist when SSC was progression content. I do distinctly recall tossing out Lesser Healing Waves to help top off the tank when the MT healers were Watery Graved. Tossing heals on the main tank in the Tidewalker fight was the exception, for the most part when using MW for healing it's a matter of keeping yourself alive. Read on to live to fight another phase.
Totem Talk: Shock and Awe
Rich Maloy is currently working on a real life augmented reality app that will dynamically generate and display his most important priority to accomplish at that moment, as well as cooldowns remaining on important events such as birthdays and anniversaries. Friends and family invited to the private alpha test said the software, known as RichAndAwe, kept getting stuck at "buy more Guinness." Rich reports this is working as intended. Of all the add-ons in all the mod sites in all the world there's one that stands out among the best for playing enhancement: ShockAndAwe. This mod developed by Pericles has a slew of features to keep enhancers on top of their game. While there are other ways to track information and max out damage output, ShockAndAwe is one mod that makes a big difference for beginners and experienced alike. We'll cover most of the features here, two of which stand out among the rest: Timer bars and Priority frame. But first we'll start with the options.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Shaman changes
Patch 3.3.3 will bring some interesting changes to shamans. Flame Shock: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes and is affected by spell haste. Talents: Elemental Oath: This ability is now always on as a passive aura. Unleashed Rage: This ability is now always on as a passive aura. Turning the talents Elemental Oath and Unleashed Rage into passive auras is a bonus for leveling, soloing, and PvP. Instead of waiting a few GCDs or strikes for that first crit, the aura is up for you (and your team in PvP) immediately. In a raid environment these talents tend to be up continuously so the change for raiders is less significant.
Totem Talk: Enhancement 201, spell selection
Rich Maloy is currently working on a distributed processing application called SimIt!@HOME which will calculate all possible enhancement shaman spell rotations for any possible situation given any gear combination. The application will also have an option to calculate all potential scenarios in which "sim it" is a half-a** answer but you should say it anyway. If I told you the enhancement shaman basic spell rotation was: SR, FE, SW, MW5_LB, MT(0), LS(1), ES_SS, SS, FS, ES, LL, FN would you run away screaming? What if I told you that was just for single target boss encounters and there's a different priority for boss fights that require changing targets, another priority for boss fights with heavy adds, and yet another priority for trash mobs. Scared yet? It's OK. Please come back. This is what we Enhancers have bouncing around in our head. I'll make everything alright by breaking it down into a few easy-to-remember chunks. Because we all like chunks.
