Totem Talk: Masters of the Elements

Totem Talk is the column about Shamans. It was originally just going to be about shaman totems, but we thought the shamans themselves might get upset. Matthew Rossi is playing two shamans, that handsome fellow you see above you and also a awful, icky Draenei that we wouldn't dream of using for the picture until next week at the earliest.

Well, a lot can happen in a patch day, huh? We know now that 2.3 has some pretty big changes in store for those shamans who choose to focus on the power of the elements. Some folks are not happy, even though they admit some of these changes are for the good. All these incoming changes to the spec do make my goal of talking about the elemental shamans among us a little trickier, because now we're looking at a spec that's going to be remarkably different in not very long at all.

Still, that's why I'm here, right? So let us move forward and look at elemental shamans, the caster DPS spec of this particular hybrid class we love so well.

Elemental shamans are the ones who burn your face off. They don't particularly want to get in people's faces and bash away, they're the smart ones who prefer to zap you at range. Most of the talents in the tree focus on increasing your range or damage with lightning bolt or chain lightning spells or lowering the cooldown and increasing the damage of your instant cast shock spells. Some of the talents frankly baffle me (Earth's Grasp and Eye of the Storm in particular, although I could see Eye of the Storm being good against other casters or a hunter... if attacked by a rogue or a warrior, though, I can't imagine you'd last very long if they're critting you to cast more spells) but on the whole it's a very strong tree.

Concussion and Convection often appear in people's general specs outside of elemental, and they may well be the strongest two talents available for their level and cost on any tree in the shaman's arsenal. It's really hard to argue with reduced mana cost and increased damage for your offensive spells. It's not impossible, I guess, if you really want to argue against it go ahead.

At the ten point level we get three rather remarkably good abilities to choose from, depending on your playstyle one may be better than the other two: Elemental Focus, Reverberation, and Call of Thunder. Since Elemental Focus is a 1 point talent while Reverberation and Call of Thunder are both five point talents, you're more likely to take Elemental Focus first. Basically, with EF, if you score a critical hit with one of your offensive spells, you enter a clearcasting state, although unlike any other class in the game who enters this state the shaman doesn't get the same benefit. For everyone else, clearcasting is a straight 100% mana reduction on your next spell - in effect, once you enter clearcasting your next spell is free. Shaman no longer get this benefit - their clearcasting state only grants a 60% mana cost reduction on their next spell. It's still a good talent, but compared to all the other offensive casters in the game it's horrible. (I still remember it fondly from its former, pre-nerf state.) Now, as for the other two talents, I'm personally a big booster of reverberation because I love shocks, but most elementals I talk to tell me that they're more likely to go for Call of Thunder for the boost to spell crit as well as the fact that it's the gateway talent for Lightning Mastery. As we can see, there's a lot of goodness at this level of the elemental tree.

Not really being a fan of the 15 point level of the tree, as I stated above (Eye of the Storm? Really? Getting crit as a mechanism for a caster spec? Really? This is honestly what you meant?) I'll move on to the goodness waiting for you at 20 points into the tree. On every tree, 20 points is what separates the off spec from the spec, as it were: a resto or enhance shaman could well go 20 elemental. But 21 points is where you have to start sacrificing the 41 point talents in other trees: once you invest that 21st point, you're most likely going to 41 anyway. For the elemental tree, we have Storm Reach, Elemental Fury and Unrelenting Storm. While I like Storm Reach personally, and I believe Elemental Fury a good talent for the simple fact that it's a prerequisite of a far, far better talent, I love Unrelenting Storm with the passionate intensity of a thousand suns. 10% of your int as MP/5? Yes please, and may I have another? Storm Reach is good if you feel your range isn't what you want it to be, and the boost to critical strike damage for your fire, frost and nature spells is nothing to sneeze at from Elemental Fury, but if you're out of mana, you're not casting any spells or dropping any totems. Still, it's hard to argue that any of these talents aren't worth the points - again, this is a very nice level of the talent tree.

Once you've spent at least 25 points in the tree, you can unlock Elemental Precision, which seems really good even for the three points you can invest in it, and Lightning Mastery, which can reduce the casting time on your Lightning Bolt spells by up to a full second if you spend the full five points. Elemental Precision seems to me to be a talent that is better when you are undergeared, and Lightning Mastery will always be good no matter how much spell hit your gear has, but they're both strong talents.

At 31 points, the choice is between Elemental Mastery and Elemental Shields. If you're speccing for PvE damage, this isn't even a choice. A 3 minute cooldown guaranteed critical hit vs. a chance to reduce how often you will be critically hit? For PvP it's a more even matchup, as doing more damage vs. taking less damage is a matter of personal preference and playstyle there. But if you're elemental in a party or raid, you're pretty much not supposed to be getting hit anyway, and Elemental Mastery's boost to your damage output wins.

Finally we come to Lightning Overload and Totem of Wrath. Lightning Overload is interesting because it basically subsumes the benefits of the original form of clearcasting. Instead of being adjustable by getting more spell crit, though, it's just a flat chance to proc based on talent points, so it's not as good as the old clearcasting effect was and it's way, way higher up in the tree. It's hardly a bad talent, and once you're up that far, you might as well take it, since you need it to get Totem of Wrath. Totem of Wrath will make sure all the other offensive casters invite you to their reindeer games, since it grants 3% to hit and to crit with spells to everyone in your party. Suddenly mages and warlocks want you and a boomkin around on the raid! Will wonders never cease?
As we've seen, for the most part elemental is a well rounded tree. It has good talents for offspec but also rewards further investment up to the final talent. It remains to be seen what the incoming changes will do to either improve or decrease the tree's versatility and damage dealing.

Next week, gear for levelling.