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Totem Talk: How to manage your elemental totems
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 I have no idea about the third. Elemental totems are one of those weird aspects of our class that are never as likable as they're intended to be. In Wrath of the Lich King, Fire Elemental Totem was a welcome DPS increase, but his 10-minute cooldown made him incredibly frustrating to plan fights around. By comparison, our Earth Elemental Totem has never had much of a part in our raiding game. Cataclysm has changed all that. Not only has it removed the shared cooldown between the totems (making it so you can drop both elementals at once), but we've also seen changes to our basic functionality that impacts our totem usage. Learning how to use these totems correctly is a vital part of maximizing our DPS.
Massively's hands-on with Rift: Planes of Telara's dynamic content
Just a few weeks ago, I was invited to attend Trion Worlds' Gamer's Day in San Francisco to get some hands-on time with a couple of the company's upcoming titles, including Rift: Planes of Telara. If Rift seems to have come out of nowhere, that might be due both to the acquisition of EverQuest II veteran Scott Hartsman to head the project as executive producer, and to a clever name change meant to reflect the team's shift in development focus. In fact, that shift in development focus is precisely what I was at Trion's studio to test -- I got to check out the Rifts themselves in all their glory, in the context of the greater dynamic content system that the developers are so excited about. Massively's writers have been able to play and report on character creation and the starting areas of Rift several times over the last year or so, including earlier this summer at E3. But until today's embargo lift (coinciding with the reveal at Gamescom), no one had quite seen the fabled planar invasions and takeovers in action. Now we have.
Know Your Lore: Children of the Stonemother -- The elements, part three
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. We've talked about the elemental spirits in general and about those of fire in more depth. This week, we take a look at Therazane the Stonemother and the elementals of earth. Unlike the more active fire elementals, the more erosive water or the quicksilver air elementals, those of earth reflect the solidity of their element. In general, the elemetals of earth tend to be slower to anger and play the middle ground for the other, more energetic elementals. It would be a mistake to assume this makes them placid or unwilling to resort to violence, however. Earth elementals were among the prized soldiers of the Old Gods during their war with the Titans, and to this day, some of their strongest still reside in Azeroth. The earth elementals owe allegiance to Therazane (we can see her name in game on a belt dropped by Nefarian and an off-hand available through old AV purchases). Her daughter, Theradras, seduced Zaetar (the son of Cenarius) and produced the centaur races of Azeroth. She can be found in Maraudon, which is holy ground to the centaur tribes of Desolace. While Therazane is often said to be the most peaceful and loving of the elemental lords, this doesn't mean members of her elemental court don't make trouble in Azeroth from time to time. However, given Therazane's connection to the earth, it's interesting to consider just what her role might actually be in the history of Azeroth. It's often said that Therazane feels pain when the earth and stones are disturbed and that she hates Deathwing for his destructive rampages (and, presumably, out of a rivalry with him, since he is the Titan appointed Aspect of Earth, while she is the Old God summoned Stonemother). This begs the question of Therazane's identity. Is the Stonemother the same entity the tauren refer to as the Earthmother?
