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World of Warcraft: Shaman manga preview
Do you like World of Warcraft? Do you like comics and/or manga? If you answered yes to either question, then I highly recommend you check out the newest upcoming WoW manga by Tokyopop titled World of Warcraft: Shaman. Written by Paul Benjamin (Starcraft: Frontline) and drawn/inked by the ever-talented Roccio Zucchi (World of Warcraft: Death Knight), this will be the next installment of the WoW class-themed comics. World of Warcraft: Shaman follows the epic tale of one Muln Earthfury, leader of the shamanistic group known as the Earthen Ring. Muln and his fellow shaman become concerned over time, as the elements they worked so closely with start becoming unresponsive and exceedingly violent. Just when it looks like all hope is lost, in comes Shotoa -- a mysterious tauren shaman who doesn't just work with the elements, but brutally forces them to do his bidding. Shotoa promises power and grandeur for the ancient organization, claiming that Muln has lost his power. He vows to lead his followers into a grand new era of shamanism, but Muln and his people must decide if Shotoa is honoring their traditions, or desecrating them. I like the way this manga has a nice tie-in to the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. If Deathwing's arrival is going to force open several elemental planes, it makes a lot of sense that the resident spirits of Azeroth are going to be in upheaval. There is also very little known about Muln himself. All we know is that he leads the Earthen Ring. Other than that, he's kept a pretty low profile. We'll also get to meet Kettara Bloodthirst, his spunky-looking orc apprentice. Once again, Blizzard is using the idea of trans-media to their advantage and exploring major lore characters that otherwise would be overlooked in-game. World of Warcraft: Shaman will be available in October 2010.
Totem Talk: Glyphing for Fire Elemental
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, and wolves, and best of all, Windfury. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. After writing last week's article and then this week diving headfirst into some 10s and 25s I felt like the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem needed some love. I felt even more so after looking at my combat parses for Lich King fights and noticing Fire Nova was my second highest damage ability. The fight is a long one -- a very long one -- and it got me wondering if I could step up my output by glyphing into fire ele. After all, who doesn't want more minions running around doing damage for them? Fire ele has the potential to be a great glyph: the elemental is another pet doing good damage and we can still cast Fire Nova off the totem. Of course the downsides are deal breakers for the glyph in most cases: The pet is leashed to the totem Fire Nova's damage is lost if the boss or mobs move away from the totem The 5 minute cooldown is still longer than most boss fights Read more to see when and where it's appropriate to glyph into this.
Totem Talk: Elemental scaling and how Cataclysm can fix it
Melee combat? Barbaric. Healing? How pedestrian. Let the elements do the talking. Totem Talk: Elemental. Bought to you this week by Tyler Caraway; for being far more fabulous than Mike Sacco. Greetings and salutations my elemental brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, your normal guide to taming the raging storms is feeling a bit under the weather himself at current, so instead you'll have to listen to my yammering. I promise to make it as painful and mind numbing as possible. Wait, scratch that and reverse it. This is totally going to rock! For those of you whom are not familiar with me, and I doubt that many of you are, allow me to very quickly introduce myself. I am Tyler, but most folks around these parts simply call me Murmurs. No, not that annoying Thunderaan wanna-be in Shadow Labyrinth. The equally annoying balance druid that haunts the World of Warcraft Damage Dealing forums with tediously long posts no one bothers to read. I know that we had some issues during the Naxxramas portion of Wrath of the Lich King, but I promise to make it up to you. Just please don't hurl massive boulders of molten lava at me this time.
Stardock CEO going on modding sabbatical after Elemental ships
Stardock CEO Brad Wardell will take a "sabbatical" after shipping Elemental: War of Magic later this year. It's not unheard of to take some time off after shipping a major product in the industry (horrible example), but Wardell isn't traveling the world. No, instead he's having a full-on geek out: he's goin' modding. Wardell explained to Joystiq, "It's more than a vacation. For the past year I've been doing multiple jobs at once -- running Stardock, managing external game development, coding on Elemental, building a house, and writing a book. I typically start work at around 8am EST and work until around 11pm and do this every day -- seven days a week -- though recently I've been getting in some Starcraft 2 time. But it has averaged around 80 hours a week overall." The executive explains that he wants to mod Elemental to make all kinds of other games and get as much out of the Kumquat engine (the company's new game engine) and Impulse Reactor as possible. Then take those lessons and show it to other developers. He also plans to work on Civilization V mods, which uses the same mod program as Elemental. Wardell expressed the time off "won't affect Stardock's product scheduling at all," he'll still be working on stuff. A lot of that stuff just happens to be modding. [Via Big Download]
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Shaman changes
Patch 3.3.3 will bring some interesting changes to shamans. Flame Shock: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes and is affected by spell haste. Talents: Elemental Oath: This ability is now always on as a passive aura. Unleashed Rage: This ability is now always on as a passive aura. Turning the talents Elemental Oath and Unleashed Rage into passive auras is a bonus for leveling, soloing, and PvP. Instead of waiting a few GCDs or strikes for that first crit, the aura is up for you (and your team in PvP) immediately. In a raid environment these talents tend to be up continuously so the change for raiders is less significant.
Totem Talk: Thunder! Thunder! Thunderstorm, ho!
Melee combat? Barbaric. Healing? How pedestrian. Let the elements do the talking. Totem Talk: Elemental. Brought to you by Mike Sacco. Elemental is one of those specs. The kind of spec whose 51-point talent is more of a fun, situational ability than one you stick in your regular rotation. The kind that you'll love and everyone in your party will hate. That's right. We're talkin' about Thunderstorm today. In terms of the normal WoW ability "kit," Thunderstorm is a pretty unique snowflake. What makes it so special? It's free. Unlike nearly every damaging spell in the game, all Thunderstorm costs you is a global cooldown. It gives you mana for nothing. Not mp5, not lowering the mana costs of spells -- this is a straight 8% mana return every 45 seconds if you so desire. It's got knockback. Twenty yards of it, in fact. Wrath added the knockback ability into the gestalt WoW experience, but it's still fairly unique, shared only with a few other spells like Typhoon and Blast Wave. And twenty yards is a long way to go. While one or two of these qualities might not be so strange to see together, all three of them makes it in a class of its own. Thunderstorm is incredibly appealing as an emergency mana reserve and as an "oh-shit" button, but the knockback tends to make fellow players really angry when used inappropriately (or even appropriately, depending). They say "glyph it!" Well, I disagree. I think Thunderstorm is one of the best spells in the game, and it's because of the knockback, not in spite of it. Today we're going to take a brief look into making Thunderstorm work for you.
Totem Talk: Elemental gearing for the new 80
Melee combat? Barbaric. Healing? How pedestrian. Let the elements do the talking. Totem Talk: Elemental. Brought to you by Mike Sacco. Last week I took you through Elemental 101, a crash course in playing your elemental shaman. Now that we've got the basics out of the way and you understand your talents and rotation, it seems as good a time as any to talk about gear. We addressed the main stats you're looking for on elemental gear last week, but here's a quick rundown again for those who missed it: Hit rating, spell power, haste, and crit. These are the only four stats we'll be looking for on elemental gear, besides the obvious intellect and stamina boosts that'll be on nearly every piece of caster gear anyway. If the above sounds like a pretty reasonable set of stats to look for, well, you're not wrong. So I've got good news and bad news for you. The good news? There's definitely elemental gear out there. The bad news? Good luck finding it. Elemental gearing has a lot of issues unique to both the shaman and this specific spec. And you're not gonna like them.
Totem Talk: Elemental 101
Melee combat? Barbaric. Healing? How pedestrian. Let the elements do the talking. Totem Talk: Elemental. Brought to you by Mike Sacco. If you're here and reading this, you've probably decided that elemental will be one of your shaman's two possible specs and you want to get a good grasp of how it all works before you dive in. The maiden voyage of Totem Talk's Elemental edition is intended to tell you everything you need to know to get started as one of the game's simplest specs, from mechanics to gearing to rotation. What it isn't intended to be the is be-all-end-all of Elemental theorycrafting. We'll delve into more complex stuff later on. Let's get started!
The Queue: Not quite mutual destruction
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I want to kick off this edition of The Queue by thanking you guys for submitting your armories to the reboot of Pimp My Profile. Our first edition will be hitting this upcoming Wednesday. In an ideal world, we'll have one for you every single Wednesday after that. On to the Q&A! RogueJedi86 asked... "Why were the Dragonflight Aspects created/assigned if they can be killed with no repercussions whatsoever? Killing Malygos didn't do so much as give Mages a nosebleed, despite being the Custodian of Magic. And I doubt killing Deathwing will do anything to the earth either."
Elemental: War of Magic casts release date toward Q3 2010
Stardock has confirmed that its PC turn-based strategy-RPG Elemental: War on Magic is strategically shifting its release to somewhere between July and September of 2010. Big Download reports, despite the continued presence of a February 15 release date on Impulse, that the game is escaping the jam-packed first quarter. What's a shame, really, is that the game will now miss the release date it's had since way back in November of 2008. It also means that Stardock may have to rethink its Q1 release strategy, which the company planned to stick with for a half-decade, and seemed completely logical, until 2010 changed the landscape of the once-barren land of Q1 video game releases. %Gallery-36057%
Totem Talk: Leveling on the 68-80 express
Totem Talk, the column for shamans, finishes up its roundup/overview/update (it's all these things and more!) of shaman leveling with a look at what you'll be doing once you get off the boat to Northrend. Matthew Rossi is tired now, but would like to thank Steve again for the screenshot accompanying today's article. And so we arrive at Northrend, able to take the quests and explore the new zones. We've talked about faction rewards and instance gearing for shamans in Northrend before, and for the most part that still holds true. Here's a look back at the posts about the various five man instances and zone rewards: Dragonblight and Azjol-Nerub Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, and the Troll instances CoT Stratholme and Halls of Stone/Lightning Utgarde Keep, the Oculus (spelled correctly, but really, if I misspelled it what's Sacco gonna do, arm wrestle me? We all know how that would go) and the heroic versions of Utgarde Pinnacle/The Nexus. The only real changes in terms of 5 man instances are the introduction of Trial of the Champion and Heroic TotC, and to my astonishment I've never done a gear list for shamans from TotC. That really is kind of astonishing. It's possible I simply lost track since I was in the middle of a vast discussion of Ulduar gear when TotC was on the horizon, but it's still a pretty big oversight. With another set of new five mans dropping alongside the Icecrown raid in patch 3.3, TotC/Heroic TotC 5 are instances any new 80 should be running to get geared up in anticipation of 3.3. So we'll talk about that gear today.
Totem Talk: Patch 3.2.2 and you (if you're a shaman)
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. This week, Matthew Rossi continues looking at patch 3.2.2, this time with a more general view of the changes.One thing I did wrong yesterday was that I really did not focus enough on the changes to Flame Shock, Lava Burst and Shamanism. I was admittedly very angry with the loss of just about every anti-stealth tool in my toolkit (especially as I've been leveling my orc shaman in AV as Elemental this week as part of my promise to you guys while also considering faction changing my space goat to a tauren) but the very silver lining to the particular patch 3.2.2 cloud is the significant DPS increase for Elemental.Frankly, the duration increase on Flame Shock and the removal of Lava Burst's consuming the FS damage over time component, by themselves, would have resulted in a nice little DPS boost by freeing up a Glyph slot and extending the duration of the damage. (It also allows you to use other shocks and let FS tick off by itself rather than worrying about reapplying it). But when you combine this change with the significant increase in Shamanism's effect on Lightning Bolt and it now also working on Chain Lightning, what we have here is a very nice series of changes that help Elemental with those pesky scaling issues that have dogged the spec.I'll admit, even with the XP loss in Alterac Valley and the loss of all my anti-stealth I still can't help but love AV on my orc. As I've gone up in level I'm not getting as many of those pesky resists and then this came along and my damage went up nicely even in my hodgepodge of old epics and new greens.
Patch 3.2.2 changes for Shamans
No, technically they didn't just go ahead and let you race change your draenei shaman into a dwarf in patch 3.2.2. I guess Blizzard didn't get my letter. It's a shame, because I used glitter and star stickers and I drew a picture of a pink pony Frost Shocking a Rogue. Perhaps the graphic illustration on page 2 of the Rogue stun locking the pony to death wasn't to their taste. Ah well.Let's assume that the next letter with the pony ankhing and hitting him in the back with a Flame Shock will be well received. For pony! What are the changes to Shamans in patch 3.2.2 to discuss? Let us look, cannot we? (Space Mutiny voice off.) For the changes follow us behind the jump please.
Totem Talk: Return of the Orc
This week, Totem Talk talks about leveling a shaman through PvP. That's right, I said leveling a shaman through PvP. Matthew Rossi has discovered the joys of returning to the Horde this weekend with a level grinding AV blitz that even he doesn't really understand.Before we even get started: I'm working on a post about the change to Glyph of Flame Shock and the Earthen Power changes. It will be its own post, it probably won't be a Totem Talk all by itself. It's one of those "Enough to give it some focus, not enough for a full column" changes. For now, here's a relevant forum thread with blue feedback on the issue.Alterac Valley's transformation into The Great Level Grinding Gulch (apologies to Warsong Gulch) has had one significant benefit to my Horde shaman: it's gotten me to dust him off and start playing. What's even more amazing is, it's been fun to play an enhancement shaman in PvP again! I think I may have suffered some subtle form of head injury, but there it is. This experiment was initially inspired by my desire to get back to my Horde roots without repeating all the content in Northrend for a sixth time. You know, it's well designed, and I do expect I'll go run Zul'Drak again for the Ampitheatre quests, but I wanted a shortcut and Alterac Valley has provided one. At present I honestly think any leveling guide should recommend a daily dose of AV to help speed the process up.Oh, I die a lot. Pretty much any time I don't have Feral Spirit up, I die. I die if the Alliance Rogues sneeze on me, which they do often, and with great relish, often snickering at my Zul'Aman enhancement gear and my poor green offhand. It does its best! But even with all the dying (to the point where the Orc death animation is sort of soothing to me now and if I go too long without having two rogues making me the meat in a stabbing sandwich I sort of miss it) I'm sort of impressed with how much I can actually do as an underlevel, completely undergeared Shaman leveling up purely through AV.
Class Q&A: Shaman questions answered
The first answer post from the class Q&A series is up! 6:30 PM on a Tuesday night is not exactly when I expected this to drop, but I'm not complaining, and neither are most shamans, I expect. 4,400 words from the devs answering the community's questions is always nice. I've summarized the major points below; my summary may seem long, but it is only 20% of the original post. As of Wrath, the goal is for all three Shaman trees to be viable in end-game raiding, and for Shaman DPS to be not necessarily quite as high as pure classes, but close; the goal is that "no raid worth its salt would turn down" any shaman out of concerns that the class is underpowered. They do think Shamans are a bit underpowered in PvP, especially smaller Arenas, and view that as a problem. They mention particularly wanting to improve Shaman performance on 2v2s.
Totem Talk: Ulduar non-set mail part 2
This week, Totem Talk covers the mail options for 25 man Ulduar, and also presents reader screenshots! Since I'm not raiding Horde-side as much right now (Malfurion, I miss you, especially the fine folks in the Consummate Vees, one heck of a good group of people) I've been using my Draenei shammy for the screens, and after many comments demanding the return of horde shamans, I finally threw down the gauntlet and dared the readers to provide them if they missed them so much.Clearly, I had underestimaged your desire to see orcs, taurens and trolls back alongside this column. Well, far be it from me to stand in your way. Readers Chris Bell and Adam Brien both sent me good pictures of their orc shamans (this week we meet Adam's shaman) as did Claire Jones, whose tauren shaman will be featured after the cut just because I have a soft spot for tauren shamans. (Vishypants, you are remembered.) Now, don't take this to mean you'll never see a draenei screenshot here again, cause even if you don't like them I do. But if readers keep sending in those screenshots I guarantee some of them will make it to this column.Heck, it saves me having to remember to take a screenshot, after all.
Totem Talk: Ulduar non-set mail
And we're back to looking at Ulduar's gear drops for shamans. This week, I figured it was long past time to look at the various non-set mail drops from the instance, since we've covered rings, shields, weapons and emblem of conquest purchases already. I'm sure we'll need to take at least a couple of weeks to fit all the mail in the place, so we should get started right away.Again I remind horde shaman enthusiasts that I'm not raiding Ulduar on my orc, and if you want to see screenshots of an horde shaman up here, my email is matthew.rossi@wow.com - I'd be happy to use one or even many of them.I'm just simply not going to be able to raid Ulduar more than I already am.Onward to gear. As always, the usual disclaimers (not all gear has been found yet, things get changed, moved, etc etc) apply. We'll talk about Ulduar - 10 gear first and then Ulduar - 25 either after or in the next post.
Lightning Overload hotfix buff incoming
There's been an active thread for the past few weeks called "Stealth Nerf to Elemental," wherein Elemental shamans voice concerns that their DPS fell in patch 3.1. Blizzard assures us that there was no intention to nerf Elemental DPS in the patch, and that they couldn't find any bugs. However, they must have come to the conclusion that Elemental was a bit low, because they're hotfixing in a buff to Lightning Overload. Currently, it has a 7/13/20% chance to proc; when the hotfix goes in ("sometime over the next couple of days"), it will be raised to an 11/22/33% chance, although the tooltip will not change (this will be fixed in a patch). Ghostcrawler's estimate is that this will be about a 5% to a raid-buffed shaman, but they'll keep an eye on it, and further buffs will ensue if necessary.
Totem Talk: Patch 3.1 Shaman Gear Part 4
One of the interesting things about new content is the transitional period as you clear the new bosses and start gearing up. Pictured alongside today's column is an illustration of that process, as Tier 7 blends into Tier 8 and Calamity's Grasp is paired with Vulmir. Myself, I've mostly been screaming "Why won't you drop" again, as I so often do (I have terrible loot luck) at various healing rings, trinkets, necks, and shields. Having recently healed my first 25 man since I switched from resto to elemental in SSC, I've also found that I hate spirit with a passion. Why there has been no effort to make spirit more useful for shamans as casters or healers, I can't tell you, because it's on every freaking thing. Yes, it helps on mana regeneration out of combat and if you can take five seconds in combat, but otherwise it's totally useless for shamans. Doesn't increase spell power or crit or do anything, really, just sits there like a less effective version of MP5. (And at least at my current gear and comfort level for healing, I don't spend a lot of time standing around not casting healing spells unless I'm forced to by the dreaded OOM.) Every time I see a healing weapon with spirit on it I want to go back in time and stab myself. I don't know what that would accomplish, exactly, but that's how much I hate spirit. I'd really like to see a talent in either mid-level elemental or restoration (resto would be better, and if it was fairly low in the tier elemental could pick it up too) that made spirit actually useful for shamans, but I'm not holding my breath.This is why I almost always wait for a shield instead of picking up a spell offhand.And now, on to our show, looking at the items that as of now we know about in Ulduar.
Totem Talk: Patch 3.1 Shaman Gear Part 3
Haven't gotten a chance to raid this week on the shaman, we've been pushing 25 man content pretty hard. Did manage to put 10 man Freya down (not on hard mode, holy heck that's going to be insane) which killed me when I didn't stand under a mushroom and was quite confused about being unable to cast spells while the raid leader yelled on vent about standing under the shrooms. Still, we got it done despite my total noobishness. As a healer, I've so far noticed that I somehow enjoy Kologarn for some reason. Something about the death rays and his screaming "OBLIVION!" all the time amuses me.Ulduar has quite a few weapon drops to consider for us shamans, especially as more and more gear is being discovered every week. So let's take a look, starting in 10 man and then moving up to 25 man, at the various staves, fist weapons, maces, daggers and axes of Ulduar. We'll probably end up having to come back to cover more, as I mentioned they're constantly discovering new gear in this raid.
