Tier12
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Totem Talk: Restoration shaman, axes and mana concerns
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. For the last few weeks, we have been covering the various bosses of the Firelands raid. Beth'tilac and Rhyolith were taken down, Shannox and Baleroc have been toppled, Alysrazor and Majordomo Staghelm were retired early. This week, though, will not be about Ragnaros -- at least, not quite yet. This week, I thought we could talk about a wonderful little zone drop and how it shapes up for restoration shaman. I also thought we could talk about the tier 12 two-piece set bonus for restoration shaman and how useful it is in heroic dungeon and raiding environments.
Totem Talk: Tier 12 through an enhancement shaman's eyes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shoot web? The answer to the first two is "no," and roll a hunter for the third! Enhancement is a spec that has struggled with its tier bonuses in the past. Back in The Burning Crusade, we had such gems as tier 5's Your melee attacks have a chance to reduce the cast time of your next Healing Surge by 1.5 seconds, a bonus that provided absolutely no benefit to DPS beyond allowing us to live through a sticky situation. In Wrath of the Lich King, tier 8 gave us one of our best bonuses of all time: Increases the frequency of Maelstrom Weapon being triggered by your melee attacks by 20%. A patch later, tier 9 saw us unfortunately dropping that bonus for the overly boring and terribly mediocre An additional 3% chance to proc your Static Shock talent. Cataclysm hasn't been significantly better so far. On the one hand, our current two-piece bonus is amazing. It gives us a 10% increase to Lava Lash, our hardest-hitting and highest-priority ability, as well as slightly buffing Stormstrike. At the same time, our four-piece bonus is 10% critical strike chance to just Lightning Bolt. This bonus isn't terrible in and of itself, but it's coupled with terrible itemization on both the legs and the chestpieces and bad itemization on the gloves. Most enhancement shaman will find best in slot is heroic tier 11 helm and shoulders, Heroic Tunic of Failed Experiments, Twilight Scale Leggings, and Heroic Proto-Handler's Gauntlets. Four-piece tier 11 need not apply. Wednesday night, set bonuses for tier 12 were discovered on the 4.2 Public Test Realm. In an awesome twist, Blizzard themed all of the set bonuses around the raid they will drop in, the Firelands. Classes like death knights that don't already have fire spells to work with receive passive bonuses like Your critical strikes with melee abilities deal 15% additional damage as Fire damage over 4 sec. Specs like elemental, which already have fiery moves to work with, get set bonuses like Your offensive spells have a chance to reset the remaining cooldown on your Fire Elemental Totem, seamlessly weaving the theme of the raid with the class' abilities. Enhancement, which uses a surprising number of fire abilities itself, falls under this second category.
Patch 4.2: Firelands information features coming soon
Blizzard has released a schedule of patch 4.2 information related to the Firelands, armor tier previews, dungeon journal teaser, and more! Here's what we're expecting in the next couple of days, so stay tuned to WoW Insider for all the information and our commentary. April 27 "Through the Fire and Flames" 4.2 Video Teaser. April 28 "The Firelands" raid preview "A Legendary Engagement" legendary staff preview "The Regrowth and Molten Front Quest Hubs" BlizzCast 16 April 29 "Elemental Bonds" quest preview Tier 12 teaser May 2 Dungeon journal teaser Stay tuned! WoW Patch 4.1 is live, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from guides of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.
