Totem Talk: Procs for elemental shaman in Dragon Soul
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.)
It's official. Arena Season 10 is ending in two weeks, and with it ends the reign of Ragnaros. We raiders will be moving on to bigger and better things, hopefully with a better color palette than endless red and orange. Deathwing's end and the saving of Azeroth as we know it awaits us ... but really, more importantly, so does the chance at more epic lootz. I know rationally that this loot will all be replaced within the first zone of Pandaria, but for the time being, I'm eagerly awaiting the last tier of gear of this expansion. Loot is cool, and Dragon Soul has some of the best gear we've seen this expansion.
Trinkets are really some of the most fun items in the game. I hate how aggravating they are to get; I just got Necromantic Focus last night, and I still have nightmares from The Burning Crusade when I ran heroic Magister's Terrace 34 days in a row to try and get a Shard of Contempt. Dragon Soul has some excellent trinkets, and almost all of them look appealing to elemental.
Terrific trinkets!
The first two trinkets worth talking about are the two on-use trinkets, Bottled Wishes and Reflection of the Light. Both of them are valor point purchases, and both have 90-second cooldowns that give you 2,280 spellpower for 15 seconds, which averages out to about 380 static spellpower. Reflection of the Light has a massive 458 spirit on it, which might end up being a huge help for struggling, undergeared elemental shaman looking to get hit-capped, but it probably won't be that useful for players in Dragon Soul equivalent gear.
Bottled Wishes has 458 haste, which will likely make it the better choice between the two. However, with the nerf of two-piece tier 12, the value of on-use spellpower trinkets is going to dramatically drop, since we'll no longer be timing spellpower procs to maximize Fire Elemental Totem damage every minute and a half. When compared with the whopping intellect found on the rest of the Dragon Soul trinkets, I'm not sure either Reflection or Bottled Wishes will be used as anything but valor point purchases for the undergeared.
The next two trinkets both offer a base 458 intellect, which is significantly better than 458 of a secondary stat. Insignia of the Corrupted Mind, which drops from Yor'sahj the Unsleeping, offers a beautiful 2,900 haste rating for 20 seconds. I've not been able to find verifiable proof of what the internal cooldown on this proc is, but if it's designed to have the same uptime as the valor trinkets, we can imagine it will be 2 minutes.
The other 458-intellect trinket is Cunning of the Cruel, which is a drop that is shared between Dragon Soul's bosses, like Eye of Purification. Offering the same base stats of IotCM, the proc is significantly different, a high-damage AOE Shadowbolt Volley to everyone within 10 yards of your target. This trinket seems really interesting, but I have no idea what the internal cooldown will look like. To even compete with IotCM on single-target fights, the internal cooldown on the Shadowbolt Volley proc would have to be very low. Even if it can't compete with the Insignia on single targets, though, Cunning of the Cruel will be fun in AOE situations.
The real beauty of Dragon Soul drops from the Spine of Deathwing himself. While Will of Unbinding has no passive stats, it procs 88 intellect off every damaging spell you cast (since it has a 100% proc chance), stacking up to 10 times. When fully stacked, it gives you an amazing 880 intellect, or 990 on heroic. I don't think I need to explain how incredibly good 880 static intellect is, and since you only need to cast once every 10 seconds to keep the buff up, it should be up for nearly the entire fight. The only downside? All of your casters are going to want this trinket, and you may even need to fight some healers for it. I'm looking at you, Atonement priests.
Winning weapons
Trinkets aren't the only fun items being released in Dragon Soul. Blizzard has gone an entirely new route with weapons off the Madness of Deathwing, last boss of Dragon Soul. Sort of like in Onyxia v4.3, Deathwing will drop weapons that forego secondary stats for awesome procs. Unlike Onyxia v4.3, these procs will actually be useful. (I'm looking at you, Reinforced Thunderstrike).
The first weapon is Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind, a one-handed dagger. Beyond the whopping 2,945 spellpower, Rathrak also has a chance to put an AOE nature DOT around your target. While this might not be the best single-target weapon, I can see some awesome synergy arising between it and Cunning of the Cruel. Combined with our new spammable Chain Lightning, we might be an AOE force next patch in the right gear.
The coolest weapon coming from the Madness of Deathwing is Ti'tahk, the Steps of Time. First off, I'd just like to point out the fact that it has 514 intellect. That's so beautiful, I could cry. That's not all, though. The staff also has a chance to buff you with 1,928 haste, as well as buffing your three closest friends with 386 haste. I'm a little scared, actually, of how much haste we'll have from procs in Dragon Soul, as Ti'tahk, Insignia of the Corrupted Mind, and our T13 four-piece bonus stacked on top of one another will be 5,000 haste from procs alone. With that in mind, I'm interested to see how stat weights play out as we enter tier 13.
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk: Elemental. Let's get down to business with a heart-to-heart on fixing the fire elemental problem, and then join us for a discussion of best practices for elemental shaman.
