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Totem Talk: Gear for elemental shaman in patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Get some Fulmination with your Lightning Bolts! Sort the shocks from the flames with Totem Talk: Elemental, brought to you by Sarah Nichol, otherwise known as Pewter from The 'mental Shaman and the Obscurecast podcast and founding member of TotemSpot. Dragons and spiders and flaming cats, oh my! It is officially summer time here in the UK, so by all rights I should be either talking about the weather or inundating you with extremely bad puns involving heat. Instead, lets talk about the latest in mail-based fashions as we prepare for the Firelands. As with the previous tier, the gear for tier 12 is obtained through a mixture of justice points, crafting and vendors unlocked by daily quests. The snazziest headgear, weapons and trinkets still require the bravery necessary to take on the later bosses of the Firelands. Tier 12 has a great, if occasionally frustrating, two-piece bonus and the four-piece bonus is nothing to shake a stick at. Our tier itemization is lacking in spirit, so non-tier items in a haste/spirit or mastery/spirit combo will be in demand. This list does not include gear from heroic modes, but for the most part the heroic versions of the better items are even better. And by "the most part," I mean all. As there is still a week or so to go until patch day, this list is subject to change. If you've just dinged 85, then I suggest checking out the troll gear guide and the pre-raid gear guide to augment items picked up from rep and crafting in patch 4.2. Ready for fire-themed upgrades? Read on.
Totem Talk: Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff vs. mastery
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Get some Fulmination with your Lightning Bolts! Sort the shocks from the flames with Totem Talk: Elemental, brought to you by Sarah Nichol, otherwise known as Pewter from The 'mental Shaman, co-host of the Obscurecast, and founding member of TotemSpot. I have proof that The Master is an elemental shaman! This is going to keep me happy for weeks -- or at least until the premiere of the next series of Doctor Who. This week, I'd like to touch upon a long-standing pet peeve of mine involving that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff we call haste, and also have a poke at The Ma -- I mean, at mastery. This goes back to the days when I was brand new to blogging and trying to gear up my own shaman for the first time. As I built up my store of knowledge, I frequently came across a specified amount of haste that was viewed almost like a haste cap. Get that amount of haste, and you didn't need any more? Madness. As the elemental tree was changed and tinkered with, this fixed number became less and less relevant. Based as it was in the idea of a fixed rotation and fitting in an extra Lightning Bolt between every Lava Burst, this fixed number wasn't as applicable in a live raid situation, where human error, RNG, and lag all combined to create an imperfect environment for a perfect rotation. Cataclysm delivered mastery into the mix. Thus began the eternal question: When is mastery better than haste? This question is couched in a misunderstanding of the way haste and mastery interact and in the practice of stacking whichever is the best perceived stat.
Patch 4.1 brings the AoE for elemental shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Get some Fulmination with your Lightning Bolts! Sort the shocks from the flames with Totem Talk: Elemental, brought to you by Sarah Nichol, otherwise known as Pewter from The 'mental Shaman, co-host of the Obscurecast, and founding member of TotemSpot. Just when you thought it was safe to go outside, it's our chance at a preview of patch 4.1! There I was, all set to rant about mastery and haste when some datamining popped up. I for one am pretty happy about the content of the patch, although I've heard a lot of consternation on Twitter about rehashing of old content. Comparing 4.1 to the first big content patch of Wrath? Wrath doesn't come close. Two raids, three 5-mans, the story getting progressed in Mount Hyjal, new pets and new mounts ... There's an awful lot to look forward to. On the elemental shaman front, so far there are a few direct patch notes and some tweaks to other areas of the game that we'll want to keep an eye on -- or at the very least, celebrate.
Totem Talk: Patch 4.0.6 for elemental shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Get some Fulmination with your Lightning Bolts! Sort the shocks from the flames with Totem Talk: Elemental, brought to you by Sarah Nichol, otherwise known as Pewter from The 'mental Shaman and the Obscurecast podcast and founding member of TotemSpot. Ah, the sweet smell of wipes. How I have missed them. My guild stepped back into 25-mans this week, and I am so glad to be back. Every time I take a break from regular raiding, I need a week or so to truly get on top of my game. The muscle memory needs time to return, and I have to learn the steps to the new dances in a way that makes sense to me. Figuring out a good time to use Spiritwalker's Grace, the best time to unleash my fire elemental ... These are the sorts of details I love figuring out for myself, and the satisfaction of returning to 25-man raiding has been great stress relief after a hellish week. The return to raiding has also confronted me with the state of elemental DPS in general. I am aware that the gap between myself and the front-runners is down to personal error (a lot of the time) and someone has to be in the middle of the pack. In fact, the middle of the pack is a mighty fine place to be. Those State of DPS numbers only show results for the top 40 and top 200 parses, and being in the middle of the pack isn't what is alarming. What often raises eyebrows with these sorts of comparisons is the difference between the top few specs and the middle of the pack, not the placing on the scale, so I can understand why some players are upset. It isn't being middle of the pack; it's the magnitude of distance between yourself and the front-runners. Personally, I'm not too worried. I need to sort out my own mistakes first, and it's important not to forget that things change. So, is patch 4.0.6 going to ease the pressure a little? A very small amount. The change that has made me smile most so far is the fix for the graphic bug that hid Elementium Stormshield when it was in the resting position. I'm glad to see Quality Assurance Goblins got it right on that one.
Totem Talk: Pre-raid gearing tips for elemental shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Get some Fulmination with your Lightning Bolts! Sort the shocks from the flames with Totem Talk: Elemental, brought to you by Sarah Nichol, otherwise known as Pewter from The 'mental Shaman and the Obscurecast podcast and founding member of TotemSpot. This holiday period has been a mixed one for me. Power-leveling my shaman's inscription was a rousing success, and I put it down to all the mince pies consumed at the time. A delectable roast turkey lunch was followed by opening my Winter's Veil presents. There was snow on the ground, there was an open fire in the hearth. There was a Queen's Speech that should have inspired me to yammer on about how important team spirit and cooperation are to the shaman class. Instead, I borrowed my mother's laptop to have a poke at pre-raid gear. Then I went to put the laptop away and, after a week of moving house, managed to do something rather nasty to my back. Ouch. Not to worry, there's nothing like a bit of Cataclysm to take your mind off the pain. In Cataclysm, the process of gearing is much more intuitive than ever before. We no longer have to nab cloth or leather items to fill in the holes in our gearing. Look for as much intellect as possible, spirit or hit as appropriate, and then lean slightly toward all the haste gear you can find, filling in as necessary with mastery items. Don't worry about crit; it happens. Blizzard has done a good job of allowing players to obtain decent gear through a variety of avenues, and as a result, a lot of the RNG has been removed from the gearing process. I did not make this to be a best-in-slot list, as I prefer to look at items available in terms of practicalities. Finally, you'll note an absence of PvP items from this list. There is a lovely amount of intellect on PvP gear, so in the short term, it can be worth using some PvP items. However, resilience represents a lot of wasted item budget and is not the best choice in the long term.
Totem Talk: Cataclysm 101 for elemental shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Get some Fulmination with your Lightning Bolts! Sort the shocks from the flames with Totem Talk: Elemental, brought to you by Sarah Nichol, otherwise known as Pewter from The 'mental Shaman and the Obscurecast podcast and founding member of TotemSpot. We've had a week or so to absorb Cataclysm. I am finding it hard to focus purely on the details of preparing for raiding after such a short flirtation with the XP bar, because I'm having too much fun questing. The joys of using Thunderstorm to knock back an ettin or mercilessly delivering Lava Bursts to the faces of the Twilight Hammer are too good for me to ignore completely, so I am frequently distracted from practical preraid matters. However, weighty matters such as Tol Barad dailies and reputation grinds await me over the holiday season, so like a typical dwarf, I'll be taking my dailies with a half-pint of Thundermar Ale. Experienced elemental shaman are already hammering along the path to raids, but one of the great things about Cataclysm has been the number of new shaman appearing, attracted by the new short-stature shaman races, dwarves and goblins. I don't think I know many people who haven't rolled a shaman sometime in the last three weeks. Even I've rolled another shaman! Now it's time to take a look at the basics for a max-level elemental shaman. Have you just changed spec from something else or just finished leveling to 85? Then this is the post for you, and it has been updated to patch 4.0.6!
