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Totem Talk: The Curious Case of Chain Heal
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 content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. Back in the glory days of restoration shaman, say around The Burning Crusade, Chain Heal was the best things since Roasted Kodo Meat. It was the premier group heal, it was incredibly efficient in terms of mana cost, and you could heal for the same value as two healers. It was truly the greatest of times for those healing minded of us. Anyone who has been following me on Twitter has probably noted that over the last few weeks I've had a pretty love hate relationship with CH on various fights in Siege of Orgrimmar. It is a complicated matter, at least through my eyes, for a few reasons.
Totem Talk: New look for Chain Heal, new features for resto shaman
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 cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how So with all the excitement over the release of Diablo III, Mists hasn't been one to sit idly by and just be completely quiet. There have been a number of changes to shaman in general over the last few builds. I figured if you could tear yourself away from the eternal struggle of the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, then we could take a look at some of those changes. One of the most underrated aspects of the new expansion, in my opinion, is the glyphs themselves. There's a lot to be said about the importance of the glyphs in the new expansion. I personally feel that they will become much more useful as tools to help define our healing kits for the fights, much more so than talents currently do.
Totem Talk: It's all about the Mana Tide
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 Raid Warning podcast), shows you how. So last week, we had ourselves a little bit of a Q&A for restoration shaman. The post went live on the same day that the patch 4.0.6 shaman changes were announced. A lot of what we talked about changed as a result of those notes, causing a lot more in the way of questions and concerns from just about everyone in the restoration shaman community. While some of the changes are being hailed as pretty bad or downright nerfs, there are quite a few tweaks and buffs. This includes the new restoration shaman casting animations that are being put into the game. While we have done some analysis of the changes, I felt it would be good to really take a look at these changes a little more in depth. I've spent the last few days really poking around on the PTR trying to see exactly what effect these changes have on us, and I'd like to share that with you.
In defense of ignorance
Friends, gamers, Earthicans -- lend me your ears. One of the things that has increasingly struck me while reading peoples' accounts of the new LFG system is the frequency with which people cite getting kicked from groups due to a low gear scores, or scathing comments from other players on the extent to which they are being "carried" after damage meters are posted. Now, while I don't believe that this is an overwhelmingly common practice (most players have had positive experiences with the dungeon finder, and I'm one of them), it's still a problem. People have complained since the beginning of WoW about damage meters and the jerks who spam them, and we've all seen our fair share of the unhappiness wrought by the misuse of GearScore, but this is different. At no point in WoW's history have so many players who don't know each other from Adam been tossed into relatively intimate 5-man situations with the total freedom to be angels or asshats to each other (and, speaking of the Adam we do know, even he's given up and started to expect some bad play in his PuGs). I am about to propose what I know is a radical departure from the standard gamer practice of reducing someone else's total worth to a number that, ideally, is lower than yours: Don't bother. You're happier not knowing.
Spiritual Guidance: 12 Reasons why you don't want to play a Priest
You know, I'm normally a huge proponent of my class. Don't get me wrong, I love my Dwarf Priest. There's all these great healing spells we have at our disposal. No one's ever going to turn down a Priest from joining a raid or a guild. I have to admit, we have it pretty easy. I'm used to giving newer players advice about Priests and reasons for selecting that class. Every once in a while, I get extremely bitter about being a Priest. For those of you that want to roll a Priest, let me introduce some second thoughts.
Resto Shaman changes hinted
Shaman news part two: revenge of Shaman news! You may still be reeling from the revamp to the totem interface announced earlier today, but Ghostcrawler presses on. In a thread bemoaning the current state of Resto Shamans, he pre-announced the following changes for patch 3.2: Healing Way changed to "work better" with Healing Wave. Improved Water Shield will also work with Chain Heal, and IWS procs will not consume a Water Shield orb. Nature's Swiftness cooldown reduced to two minutes "so you can HW more often." The crab says they'll try to make a more comprehensive list of Resto changes soon. Class changes lists, you say? Is that a PTR I see on the horizon? Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Loot, rationality, and the Sunwell effect
Here at WoW Insider we don't always agree with each other. Whether it's debating the merits of various tanks on different encounters, the damage difference between pure and hybrid DPS classes, the ideal function of a particular healing class in raids, or the superiority of cake over pie, our back-channel discussion tends to be pretty interesting.Eliah Hecht's article "25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear" sparked a lot of great discussion with our readers and, I think, some illuminating poll results as well. The majority of responders believed that giving 10-man and 25-man raids the same loot table would result in a significant drop in popularity for 25-man raiding. Overall, I tend to agree with this, but I also think that Eliah touched on something that speaks to Blizzard's evolving sense of game design, much of which is evident in the transition between late Burning Crusade and Wrath. I would like to call this the Sunwell effect, or "ingame rationality." To wit: don't incentivize players to behave in a manner contrary to your actual design interests. I believe this played a huge role in the differences between BC and Wrath raiding, and that it underlies why the 25-man loot table has to remain superior to its 10-man counterpart.
Raid Rx: Help! How do I start organizing my healers?
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week I explore a few questions that new healing leaders have. This is a question that caught my attention on the Plusheal forums. Julanna just became their guild's de facto healing lead and had some important questions to ask. So, I have become our de facto healing lead. We have very little structure. We need some. I am not sure how to get some coordination going between our healers. How do you communicate with your healers? How much do they expect from you in terms of instructions or advice? Is it before the raid? During? How can you get the raid leader to understand that healing assignments other than "don't let people die" are important and make things go better (especially if it is a tank with a healer alt)? I am not positive about assigning other classes of heals, and I am the only holy priest. Any resources out there I should look at? That may inform me of other classes basic skills, spells, etc? Or any advice you may have from a newb officer, newb healing lead, newb progression raider from a new guild? I'll break up these questions individually and answer them based on my own experience.
Name one thing you'd change about your class
Ghostcrawler is known to recite this line here and there. He mentions often that the purpose of saying such a thing isn't to get them (Blizzard) to change just one thing in a class the next patch, but to get people to zone in on a real problem.A real problem is something like "Fury Warriors do not have enough survivability and therefore are less effective in terms of spike PvP and PvE damage."A non real problem is something like "Blizzard hates Shamans and doesn't pay enough attention to them."So as an exercise this evening let's see what the WoW Insider readers think. Name one thing you would like changed about your class.As a full time PvE Protection Warrior, I think that we have a problem with obtaining the hit cap and would like to see more +hit gear drop in heroics and 10-man raid instances. I think an inclusion of items that have both +hit and +parry would help solve this wonderfully. I've also been known to dabble in Holy Paladins once in a while.
Shifting Perspectives: State of the class, part 1 - Balance
Every Tuesday, or possibly Thursday when the writer votes on Tuesday and spends Wednesday screaming and beating her laptop over formatting errors, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week Allison Robert steals John Patricelli's column once again, secure in the knowledge that she will never be forced to atone for her crime as long as she writes something nice about ferals and keeps a respectful distance from Dan O'Halloran's whip.I hate Tauren cat form.Good. I got that out of my system and can write something productive. Although, believe me, if I could get away with it, an entire Shifting Perspectives would be devoted to just how much I hate Tauren cat form. I mean, just look at it! Look at the angle on the horns! The cat can't bite anything! Christ, I just -- hi, Dan. Yes, I'm totally writing the column! Look at me go!This week, mindful as always of American election-year politicking, I'm going to borrow a page from presidential duties and write a little something I like to call "State of the Class." Druids have undergone a number of changes in the transition to Wrath of the Lich King, and will acquire even more as they level to 80. We are one of Blizzard's primary targets for both gear and role consolidation, which raises a few questions over how comfortably we're going to scale in relation to pure classes and what we can realistically expect on the march to a new level cap.The TL:DR version of this article -- I believe our future is generally bright, the Druid community continues to have a few concerns over certain aspects of the class, our focus in PvP seems to be changing the most, and I hate Tauren cat form. This is a three-part post, so let's get started with balance. However, if you want to jump ahead to feral, you'll find that here; and the third part, restoration, is here.
Shaman changes in patch 3.0.3
The elders spoke of a day when great, sweeping changes would come to us Shamans. A day when our command of the elements would become unsurpassed and we would harness power like never seen on Azeroth (kind of like Retadins). Today, my friends, is not that day. In fact, today may well be any other day for Shamans because Patch 3.0.3 is about as underwhelming as it gets with regards to changes to the class.Let's see... we have a Lava Burst damage increase, which means jack to us because we only train for the spell at Level 75. Speaking of which, Storm Reach was renamed to Elemental Reach because it now affects... Lava Burst. Also in the Elemental tree, Improved Fire Nova totem was reworked to increase the damage done by Fire Nova Totem by 20% instead of a quicker detonation and now stuns opponents caught in the blast for 2 seconds instead of ensnaring them.
Ask a Beta Tester: Enchanting, legacy content, and a beta medley
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, wherein WoW Insider's stable of beta testers answer as many of your Wrath Beta questions as possible! Today we'll start off with burton888's question...Is there a "magic number" for Enchanting, in that you can disenchant everythng in the game (currently 275 for pre-WotLK content)?My 375 Enchanter was able to start disenchanting blues as soon as I hit Northrend shores, so I can't say for sure what the minimum level is. However, we can take some guesses based on what we saw in The Burning Crusade. As a few readers said, to disenchant epics it actually requires 300 Enchanting. 300 was the profession cap in WoW Classic. Assuming that trend continues, you will need 375 Enchanting to disenchant everything in Wrath. In the expansion after Wrath, it will probably take 450. Getting to 375 is a pretty safe bet.Red asked... How is spell damage affecting a Paladin's Ret Aura? Is it reduced like a standard DoT tick or even further? What are the numbers looking like with tested spell damage?
SK Gaming interview: Kil'jaeden, Sunwell, and why to stack +haste
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Insider_interviews_top_World_of_Warcraft_raider'; Recently WoW Insider caught up with Neg, a restoration-specced Orc Shaman who raided with Nihilum before leaving recently for SK Gaming. An experienced player who has seen all of Blizzard's raid content, from Molten Core through Sunwell Plateau, Neg's talked to us previously about high-end raiding and what Sunwell was like on the PTR. As he's become one of a small group of raiders worldwide to finish the whole zone, we've asked him some follow-up questions about guild stability during the transition to Wrath, what Sunwell was like going live, why there are so many Shaman nowadays in high-end raiding, and the best and worst raid content on offer in WoW.If you didn't catch our first interview with Neg, you can find that here, but read on for an inside look at the toughest raiding you'll find in the game:
Totem Talk: Misinformation
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Matthew Rossi has decided to spend this week's column exploring the odd notions people, including up and coming shamans, sometimes get about the class. He'll admit that he was guilty of one of these himself, and looks forward to your guesses.I was thinking I might talk about how to solo and quest as a restoration shaman. After all, there are a lot of new dailies out now and you might not have anyone online to run them with. Since elemental and enhancement are both DPS options, I thought it would be reasonable to talk about some things like putting Frostbrand or Flametongue on your weapon instead of Windfury (I always used to use Windfury with my dinky, 41 dps healing mace, and it was the wrong move) if you're soloing in your healing gear. Both frostbrand and flametongue get the benefit of 10% of your spell damage, making them better than Windfury for elemental or restoration shamans who won't be doing a lot of weapon damage - I use frostbrand on my resto shaman and would prefer it over flametongue if I were elemental, because I like to try and get back out to casting range, but flametongue can do a lot of damage on a fast weapon so a lot of elemental shamans like it better. And I definitely think I'll probably still do a column about proper soloing for the healer shaman. (Hint: your healing gear has a decent amount of spell damage now.)But then I got into a discussion with an old game friend I haven't talked to in a while about shamans, and things he's had people ask him or tell him while he was playing his (he has three, making me feel like a shaman slacker) and he told me that a group he was running with recently got upset with him for not shifting to Ghost Wolf to clear an entangle.Perhaps they thought he was a druid, you might say, even with the totem dropping and the being a troll. I find these kinds of errors to be regretfully common, and so I decided that for today, we could cover a few of them and try and clear up any mistakes people might have about shamans. A lot of these will seem obvious to long term shaman players and those familiar with the class, but believe me, sooner or later (in my case, often sooner) you will group with someone who does not know this stuff.
Totem Talk: Shamans are awesome.
Another week, another Totem Talk, a column by and for shamans and those that love us. Well, okay, you don't have to love us to read it, but why wouldn't you? Look how cuddly we are! We even provide Bloodlust or Heroism for your 5 mans and raids. Don't you want to adopt one of us and take us home right now? No? What do you mean, no? Matthew Rossi is disappointed that you haven't already made a shaman plushie and cuddled it upon finishing this paragraph.Okay, so my introductory column for Totem Talk went about like I expected, with most folks disagreeing with the idea that shamans need help. This isn't a new problem, of course, and it's not likely to go away for a while. Most players have enshrined the concept of shamans as OP and either deliberately or unknowingly exaggerate certain abilities (as an example, complaining that Grounding Totem, an ability which has a 15 second cast cooldown and which dies in one hit, is eating half of their frostbolts. How is that mathematically possible? Frostbolt has a max casting time of three seconds. You can cast five of them in the time it takes to cast one Grounding. It's just not possible for it to be eating half of your frostbolts, even assuming a one on one mage vs. shaman battle) but this happens to everyone. When I play my warrior, I see people complaining about 6k executes, and I'm sure every single class in the game has a similar ability or two that everyone complains about far more than it is actually capable of. But this week there will be no complaining. No, this week we're going to celebrate shamans and what they're capable of and try and sell a really interesting and fun class to everyone in WoW. So read on for tales of high adventure! Or at least tales of stuff that would be good to have along on an adventure, anyway.
