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Totem Talk: Mists beta updates for restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Two weeks ago, I was gushing about how much fun I was having in Mists. I still am having a blast, and I truly enjoy healing through the new dungeons. I haven't had a chance to test out shaman healing in one of the new raid encounters yet due to the times they've been scheduled, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a time that lines up with my being home so I can bust in some raid skulls. Over the course of the last two weeks, however, there have been a number of updates to the beta client, as well as statements and replies from the developers at Blizzard Entertainment in regards specifically to a shaman talent in the expansion. One of the updates also contains the first glimpse of our tier 14 bonuses for both two-piece and four-piece sets. Keep in mind that all of this information is based on the latest Mists of Pandaria beta build and is subject to change at any time.
Totem Talk: What resto shaman will miss in Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. Mists of Pandaria is proving to be fairly cool so far for many reasons. I've been absolutely enamored with the visuals of the new expansion. The lush zones even at this stage of the beta are absolutely wonderful, and for some reason, I just really feel at home in the setting. The new talents are interesting and involve some strategy when picking depending on what you're doing, and the new spell effects are pretty neat as well. For all of the good that's coming, though, there are still some things that I am going to miss about being a restoration shaman when moving from Cataclysm into the brave new world. It's the classic inevitability -- in order to gain something new and move into the direction of progress, something must be sacrificed in exchange.
Totem Talk: New look for Chain Heal, new features for resto shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how So with all the excitement over the release of Diablo III, Mists hasn't been one to sit idly by and just be completely quiet. There have been a number of changes to shaman in general over the last few builds. I figured if you could tear yourself away from the eternal struggle of the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, then we could take a look at some of those changes. One of the most underrated aspects of the new expansion, in my opinion, is the glyphs themselves. There's a lot to be said about the importance of the glyphs in the new expansion. I personally feel that they will become much more useful as tools to help define our healing kits for the fights, much more so than talents currently do.
Totem Talk: A restoration shaman hands-on with Ascendance
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how This week, we're going to talk about our level 87 ability, Ascendance. That video above is not mine, but it is pretty darn cool, so I figured I would link brandonk99ing's video here since it did such a nice job. It shows our brand new ability for Mists, which we get to play with at level 87. Each flavor of shaman gets a different version of the ability. Elemental and enchancement get some nice damage increases, while resto gets to walk around like a giant water elemental, throwing out crazy healing numbers. Basically, while in the Water Ascendant form, all of our healing done is duplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies. I've commented that it looks just like the ability Essence of Dreams from the Ultraxion encounter -- and to be honest, that's exactly how it feels. I figured I would share with you my impressions of the ability, now that I've gotten my hands on it.
Totem Talk: Mists talents for restoration shaman, tier by tier
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The talent systems for Mists of Pandaria is one that's received quite a bit of attention since it was first announced, and with good reason. It's a complete revamp of the current system, a reduction of the total number of talents by a considerable amount and an attempt to make the talents something more fun and less mandatory. We've talked about them since they were announced at BlizzCon 2011, but talking and speculating about them is much different than actually sitting down and getting to test them out for yourself. Today, I'm going to talk about my own personal experience with these talents, and I'm going to offer up my own opinions, just like the last article. The talent system now doles out talents every 15 levels, presenting a clear tier structure to anyone looking at them, and that's exactly how we'll tackle them.
Totem Talk: First impressions of restoration shaman in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Well, I finally got my hands on some beta access for Mists of Pandaria, and the first thing I did was make sure good old Lodur got copied over for some healing experimentation. I mean, after all, that's what I live for. Before doing any healing, though, it was time to poke around and see how things have changed. And boy, have they! Even though I expected it, it was quite jarring to log in to Mists and see that Lodur had a measly 100,000 mana to work with. Any of you out there would probably notice that this is almost half of what we're sporting on our final run-through of Dragon Soul. While it is daunting, it's something that we have to keep in mind will be compensated with mana regen and increasing the mana pool as we level up to 90.
Totem Talk: The state of Telluric Currents and speculating for Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Time to revisit this topic again. You're probably asking yourself why we're talking about this again. Well, to be honest, it's because it's the end of an expansion cycle. While we're prepping for the next expansion that will shake up mechanics and stats, we find ourselves at a point of speculation -- and therefore, things like Telluric Currents find themselves back in the crosshairs, so to speak. The talent itself is something you use, or you don't use. There are some hard facts about the talent. You do not need to stack hit to make it useful, only to make sure every bolt hits. It is not mana neutral, using the talent and casting Lightning Bolt will indeed fill up your mana bar. It can be used to supplement low spirit totals for beginning healers, and can be used in certain phases on raid bosses to maintain healing mana totals. Whether it is optional or mandatory depends on a lot of factors up to and including the team you're healing with and the content you're healing through.
Totem Talk: Getting resurrected restoration shaman back to speed, and level 90 talents
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The Scroll of Resurrection revamp has been a topic of hot debate recently. Whether you love it or hate it, the feature's still an opportunity for our healing brethren to come back after a long break. To be honest, one of my friends has done just that. But being away from the game for any period of time, whether it is an entire expansion or just a content patch, can be jarring. So when my friend reactivated, I asked him what his most pressing concerns were coming back to Cataclysm. What did he want to know the most to get back up to speed? I thought that were probably quite a few number of folks coming back to the game who might have the same questions, so I figured now would be the perfect time to talk about that, as well as some news regarding the new level 90 talents that we just received. Oh, and the video has nothing to do with today's post ... I just had that song stuck in my head.
Totem Talk: Restoration shaman buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Every time there is a new update whenever we're waiting for an expansion, it's super hard not to be excited. We'll be getting a flood of information about the expansion soon -- I can feel that in my bones -- but in the meantime, we have had a steady trickle of information, ranging from the talent calculator updates to the recently discovered and discussed list of buffs and debuffs in Mists. Thursday, though, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street made a blog post about consolidating buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria. The first thing any shaman will notice is that buff totems have gone the way of Sentry Totem. This shouldn't be that surprising, really, since at BlizzCon 2011, Blizzard stated that this was going to happen. However, it means that raid buffs will be mobile and travel with you at all times -- a great thing for PvP and for PvE utility, but a bad thing for anyone who cares about the flavor of totems.
Totem Talk: Possible talents for restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how It's been a number of weeks since the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator was updated. It was pretty exciting, with everything that got shifted around. I mean, our level 90 talents basically got shifted around to a lower level, leaving a bit of a gaping hole with the ever classic "coming soon" from Blizzard. I don't know about you, but since then I've been wondering what could possibly be good enough to be our level 90 talents but not be so good that there was no way to have us be balanced. I posed the question at the end of next week, inviting you to speculate with me as to what our level 90 talents could be, what we would like to see if it were up to us to pick our level 90 talents.
Totem Talk: While my Chain Heal gently weeps
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how Last week was a massive update to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator for shaman in general but especially for restoration shaman. There were quite a number of surprises, a fair amount of tweaks and the implementation of a brand new mystery in our yet-to-be-named level 90 talents. Among all those changes was one that I didn't bring up. Instead, I wanted to wait until this week because I felt the topic required a bit of time all to itself. That is the change to Riptide in the new talent calculator. No longer will it be consumed by Chain Heal whenever we cast it on someone with Riptide as our primary target. This is certainly a cause for celebration, and as I imagined it in my head, Chain Heal gently wept with happiness at the news. While we're at it, be sure to enjoy the ukulele stylings of Jake Shimabukuro, who is a genius on the uke.
Totem Talk: Mists of Pandaria resto talent calculator update
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how The last few updates to the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator has seen some updates for the other healer types in WoW, but restoration shaman were left untouched from what we saw at BlizzCon 2011. That fact alone was starting to concern many of us, as we eagerly wait to see what we'll get for new spells and what we'll see our talents morph into. Well, this time around, the latest update to the talent calculator certainly has some things for the restoration-minded shaman to enjoy. Talents have been moved around -- some removed and others just reorganized -- and we get our first glimpse at a new spell.
Totem Talk: 5 ways to look like a bad restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. Sometimes knowing how to do well at something relies on knowing what not to do. Over time, we can accumulate some pretty bad habits, and if we're not careful, they can make us look like a terrible healer or a complete and total noob. There's nothing worse than that feeling of being the cause of a wipe or looking like you don't know what you're doing. That's sometimes the hardest thing a new restoration shaman faces when starting out healing groups in instances and the Raid Finder. It's OK, though -- just because you're a beginner doesn't mean you have to look like the world's worst healer. I've compiled a list of things you can and should avoid doing.
Totem Talk: A restoration shaman wish list for Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. Leading up to any expansion, especially before any beta access has gone out, is a great time to start your wish lists -- things you want to see, things you don't want to see and changes that you just might not want to consider as a possibility. We've already have received a sneak peek at the new talents that will grace our classes when the expansion goes live, as well as some changes to the way spells are being distributed. The fact is, though, that what we've seen so far has raised quite a few questions that have yet to have an answer. One of those big questions is what will happen to our beloved Telluric Currents? We're at a point where most restoration shaman can't live without the talent. It's a huge source of our mana regeneration, especially now in Dragon Soul. Also, before we get any further: This week's image is supplied by an up-and-coming artist by the name of Jeanette Dulzo, daughter of one of my raiding priests Galdrea. She hasn't set up a website, but I'm hoping this young artist will keep at it and set one up soon. The full picture of her concept of a female shaman can be seen after the break.
Totem Talk: 2011 for restoration shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. Hard to believe that another year has come and gone, isn't it? It seems like only yesterday we were waiting in line for the Cataclysm to drop. Now we're at the end of the expansion, complete with the last raid tier and a battle for the survival of Azeroth against the aspect of death himself. But the new year has come, and it's a perfect time to look back on a rather full year of activity while we eagerly await the release of Mists of Pandaria. Tier 11: A slice of heaven The release of Cataclysm was something that was eagerly anticipated by a rather large number of players -- new talent trees, new spells and abilities, and a ton of new content. After making our way through the various dungeons and heroics, we set foot into the first tier of raid content for the expansion only to find out that we were pretty awesome. Using our new tools and tricks, we were able to destroy and outclass a lot of fights. Heroic Chimaeron was a perfect example of a fight in which restoration shaman just destroyed the competition and were heroes of a higher healing caliber. Tier 11 gave us a lot of opportunity to make use of our brand new mastery, Deep Healing, and not just use it but let it shine. Many of the boss fights had mechanics that would bring a large number of the raid members' health down to very low totals, allowing our Healing Rain and Earthliving Weapon proc to explode onto the scene. Magmaw, Chimaeron, and Halfus all had a ton of damage to heal through and really let us pour on the healing juice.
Totem Talk: Healing Hagara the Stormbinder and Ultraxion
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. The siege is, by now, well under way, and now that you're done playing with slimes, it's time to move forward. Your next opponent is Hagara the Stormbinder, a shaman who has fallen under the sway of the aspect of death and now works toward the destruction of the world. Luckily for you, she's an enhancement shaman, so she's pretty easy to deal with. The major theme for this boss is movement. Every major ability that Hagara has boils down to your moving in the correct manner in order to avoid what would be absolutely lethal damage. Moving and healing has never really been a shaman's strong point, but if you use your abilities wisely, you'll have her down in no time. (For full details of the encounters or full raid strategies, please read Ready Check for WoW Insider's boss guides.)
Totem Talk: How to heal Yor'sahj in the Siege of Wyrmrest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. The Siege of Wyrmrest temple has begun, and with Morchok and Zon'ozz down, it's time to begin stepping it up a notch. Dragon Soul offers so many fights that are just absolutely fun for restoration shaman. Yor'sahj the Unsleeping is a great example of a great healer workout. His mechanics are simple from a DPS and tanking aspect, but for healers, you will constantly have to be prepared to adapt to different slime combinations. Make no mistake, knowing your blobs is key to success. Every raid team will have a different way of handling the oozes and setting priorities on which to burn. As a healer, though, you'll have to learn what each blob is capable of and the effect that the certain combinations of globules will have. Each wave of oozes summoned by the boss will have three oozes on normal and Raid Finder difficulty, and your raid will have the option of killing one of the oozes each wave. (For full details of the encounters or full raid strategies, please read Ready Check for WoW Insider's boss guides.)
Totem Talk: How to heal Morchok and Zon'ozz in the Siege of Wyrmrest
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. Dragon Soul is full of fire, black goo, explosions, dragons, and an odd shaman that have gone off the deep end and sided with some Old Golds. To be honest, it's an impressive raid zone in both scale of story -- and it's one for sure that most restoration shaman should fall in love with. (For full details of the encounters or full raid strategies, please read Ready Check for WoW Insider's boss guides.) Morchok is an elemental baddie straight from the pits of Deepholm, the most powerful elemental still under the control of Deathwing. He'll be your first roadblock on the highway to defeating the aspect of death -- and honestly, he's a fight designed with the restoration shaman in mind. Morchok's bark is much bigger than his bite when you're a restoration shaman. So what makes him such a good boss for a resto shaman healer? Well, the mechanics of the fight first and foremost lend themselves very well to your raid staying grouped up. This plays well the vast majority of our AoE healing spells.
Totem Talk: Mists of Pandaria talent calculator for restoration shamans
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. BlizzCon 2011 was an exciting time with a lot of announcements for every class and for the state of the game in general. If you're a regular reader of the column (and I hope you are), you'll remember that we talked a little bit about the proposed talent system changes before and what it meant for restoration shaman. Well, since then, the official talent calculator for Mists of Pandaria have been released on the official World of Warcraft site. With it, there are a few surprises. It has caused quite a stir throughout the community, and many of the bloggers out there have been sharing their thoughts on the new calculator and what it means for the future of their classes and specs. So today that's exactly what I'm going to do. We've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Cataclysm brought about a pretty revolutionary (and at the time controversial) change to the talent system by breaking it down from what we knew for years to the 31-point talent system we have today. It allowed for specialization locking a player into a certain talent tree, eliminating hybrid talent builds, but in exchange giving players some key abilities as perks. It was the first step in streamlining the talent system.
Totem Talk: Restoration and the 5-man dungeons of patch 4.3
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. On the PTR, the latest version of patch 4.3 has gone up, and it has an interesting tag with it. Now it has the word "release" to accompany the latest build. So this means that there is a release candidate up and running, or at least what would be proposed as one. This usually indicates that we are rapidly approaching a live release and that the patch could be on servers very soon for everyone to enjoy. So in my ongoing effort to shift the focus back into the upcoming content and what lies ahead for restoration shaman, today we're going to be focusing on what will likely be the first new content you explore in the latest patch, the new 5-man dungeons. Action, excitement ... a restoration shaman craves these things.
