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Top 3.1 specs so far from 3D Armory
Not to be outdone by TalentChic, the folks at 3D Armory also sent us their lists of what the most popular builds are in the game after patch 3.1, and since everybody seems to be build-hungry lately (and why not -- we each get two!), here they all are.Warrior: Fury 18/53/0.Paladin: 0/0/0, which means you need to log in, Paladins! Also 51/5/15 for Holy.Hunter: 0/0/0 wins here, too, but Survival (6/14/51) comes in next.Rogue: Combat 15/51/5.Priest: 14/57/0 for Holy.Death Knight: 17/0/54 Unholy.Shaman: Elemental 57/14/0.Mage: 0/53/18 Fire.Warlock: 0/41/30 Destruction.Druid: 14/0/57 Restoration, which surprised me.Keep in mind that these are from only a small sample of the game, so they're not the most popular specs in the game, just the most popular among those surveyed by the 3D Armory. And unfortunately, unlike TalentChic, it doesn't look like there's any way to see where the points are going, just the distribution of points among the trees (though that reminds us that Blizzard probably has some amazing point-by-point stats on how popular talents are).
TalentChic updates for patch 3.1, introduces GlyphChic
TalentChic, the site that displays the most popular talent specs based on Armory data, has updated to reflect the most popular builds for patch 3.1. They've also added glyph functionality via GlyphChic, which should help those players that choose their glyphs just by checking what's on the auction house at that particular moment. Good glyph resources are pretty hard to find, so we'll see how this turns out!TalentChic won't be incredibly accurate for another few days considering the patch only hit two days ago, but it's pretty fun to see what the current most popular builds are. An Elemental Shaman build (57/14/0) seems to be the most popular spec overall right now, which is odd because Elemental glyphs aren't even the most popular Shaman glyphs right now, let alone overall most popular. Glyph of Chain Heal and Glyph of Water Mastery (which would be used by Elemental, I suppose) are tops for Shaman.
Totem Talk: 3.1 Shaman Gear Part 2
So it's been a heady week for us all. I was wrong about the patch dropping this week, and have since respecced my shaman resto in order to begin tackling Ulduar - 10 as a healer. Things I have learned healing in Ulduar - 10? I am not geared enough to heal in Ulduar yet. Razorscale likes to hit me with fireballs. Perhaps someone told him about my not being geared enough. Ignis likes to put me in his slag pot. See Razorscale. XT - 002 makes me the Gravity Bomb constantly. Overall it's been an interesting couple of days. Since I've been running the instance on two different toons and on two different levels (10 and 25 man) the whole thing seems to blur together in my head, but so far I'm enjoying Ulduar. XT - 002's voice alone was worth the price of admission. Sadly the instance has been very unstable (on Norgannon at least) so the four bosses in the entrance zone (the Colossal Forge, according to the teleporter) are the only ones I've gotten to see personally. I did get to float around for three hours with Chain Heal casting endlessly at one point, that was interesting in an extremely boring way. Last week we talked about 10 and 25 man tier gear in Ulduar. This week, we'll try and cover as much of everything else as we can. There's a lot to cover (and more all the time) so we'll just have to do the best we can, starting with the new Emblem of Conquest gear.
Totem Talk: 3.1 Shaman Gear Part 1
I guess I'm gambling that the patch won't be next week. Because there's no way I can cover all the gear available for shamans in 3.1 (both set and otherwise) for three specs in anything like two weeks of this column. In addition to discussing sets for resto, elemental and enhancement there's quite a lot of non-set gear to discuss, rings, trinkets, and so on. We know that Flametongue Weapon will be changed to reassert the superiority of the slow/slow combo for enhancement, for instance, so there's also weapons to discuss. Since I know that's not possible for me to cover in one column and probably not in two, we'll just take it as it goes. This week, we'll discuss the Tier 8 sets from Ulduar 10 and 25, the Valorous and Conqueror's Worldbreaker sets. As is usual for shamans, it comes in Battlegear for Enhancement, Garb for Elemental and Regalia for Restoration. As was the case for Tier 7, the 10 and 25 man sets have the same set bonuses and will work with each other, so if you have two pieces of Tier 8 from 10 man raids and 2 pieces from 25, you'll get both set bonuses.First up, let's look at the Conqueror's and Valorous Worldbreaker Battlegear.
Totem Talk: PTR Build 9684 undocumented changes
Well, I had a long rant about the Mana Spring change and some more about the leveling process and then Blizzard chose to drop a new PTR build on us, so we'll be talking about that instead. Some of these changes are holdovers from previous PTR builds and some are totally new. We'll be covering them step by step here and discussing them all as they are the state of the art for what's coming for the class, but to avoid deluging anyone with information they'd prefer not to see yet (since it is all of course subject to change before going live) we'll do so behind the jump.
Totem Talk: And you will go forth with dual specs to conquer
First up, bad news: the Glyph of Windfury Weapon now does not add the additional attack power. You can panic now. This is bad enough that I'll be devoting all of next week's column to it.Dual specs are coming at long last! What will this mean for shamans? Shamans come in slightly behind other hybrids but are still capable of fulfilling two different DPS roles (melee or caster) as well as healing. What spec combinations can we expect to see? Which will be the most popular or the most in-demand? It's fairly easy to expect that shamans who raid at either the 10 or 25 man level (especially the 25) will be expected to have restoration as their dedicated off spec, especially now that unified spellpower means that they may well be able to heal reasonably well in elemental gear with a few changes.While enhancement gear isn't even close to as good for either elemental or restoration play, it's still likely that enhancement shamans who raid will be expected to choose restoration as their offspec, since in either case (elemental or enhancement main specs) shamans 'switching to benefit the raid' would most likely be asked to backup heal. However, it is possible to imagine an enhancement/elemental offspec for specific boss fights that are more suited to melee or ranged DPS: the shaman simply switches over to whichever spec allows him or her to contribute the most damage. Gear will of course be an issue.Let's look at some possibilities.
Raid Rx: Will dual spec affect your healing squads?
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 dual specs and the effects it will have. The dual spec Q&A was posted earlier in the week and Mike's got a nice summary listed. Let's get right down to it. How does dual spec capability affect raid healing?
Stardock talks staying afloat in The Great Lakes State
News of PC game publisher and developer Stardock's plans to expand further into its home state of Michigan was a bright light in what has been an otherwise gloomy series of months, seeing numerous studios crippled by an ongoing tepid economic climate. We asked ourselves if it was something in the water, though to hear Stardock boss Brad Wardell talk, we wonder if more studios may someday begin to follow suit and swim to The Great Lakes State."I definitely see the state of Michigan moving in a direction to try to attract technology companies and consumer entertainment companies – movie studios, interactive digital entertainment, etc," noted the exec. "One of the reason I suspect is simple geography -- Michigan is located in a pretty good spot for this kind of thing. The other is that Michigan is a state in transition. The state knows that it needs to diversify and it is putting its efforts to focus on an area ripe for growth such as digital entertainment."Michigan is already home to a handful of developers, including Reactor Zero, which is handling the PC version of THQ's upcoming Red Faction: Guerrilla, and Realm Online dev Norseman Games. None, however, have left a footprint in the snow nearly as deep as Stardock.
Totem Talk: A week with patch 3.0.8
Okay, first off: I haven't been able to play my shaman much at all since patch 3.0.8 dropped. It's not that I haven't tried to. No, no, I've tried and tried and tried. I had an elemental spec all picked out and everything. Unfortunately, whenever I log on to my shaman I immediately disconnect. It's not the Wintergrasp bug (which wouldn't be an issue anyway, what with Wintergrasp being disabled) and having a GM move my character didn't fix it. I can log on to other characters fine, but the shaman sits in Dalaran, unable to be on for more than a few seconds. (My death knight is having similar problems.) Edited for joy: a second move seems to have finally unlocked my shaman! Yay!As you can probably surmise, this has limited my ability to test my shaman out with the changes. I'm going to try and take him to some heroics and possibly a 10 man Naxx run today, but that's in the future from the point where I'm writing this. Still, I will say this much: I really enjoy free respecs, and I really REALLY enjoy Shamanism. The amount of bonus damage I'm seeing on my Lava Bursts in particular is just so much fun. I'll be speccing between all three trees for the next few days to try and get a feel for how things have changed post patch, but for now we'll talk about elemental, as it's the most changed at the moment.
Totem Talk: 3.0.8, The Rise of Shamanism
The most recent patch notes for the PTR are among us. As promised, quite a few changes for shamans, especially elemental shamans, are included in this patch. First off, let's look at the specific changes to shamans.Shaman Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat. Healing Way: Now only one application is required to reach full benefit. No longer stacks. Improved Water Shield: Lesser Healing Wave now has a reduced chance to trigger this talent. Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat. Mental Quickness and Static Shock have switched positions in the talent tree. Mental Quickness: Reduces the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power. Searing Totem (Rank 4) now does the proper damage for its rank. Tremor Totem's duration has been increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes. The changes to Fire Nova and Magma Totem are aimed at shaman AoE issues: it seems the Blizzard designers are really set on shaman AoE coming from totems or Chain Lightning. While I'm still not sold on losing either Flametongue or Totem of Wrath just to do some AoE, hopefully the removal of threat on these totems will help.The Imp WS change keeps you from using up a charge on a relatively low mana cost LHW, which I can see even if I won't be happy if I have no mana left and am using LHW because it's the only healing spell I have the mana for. The change to Healing Way is probably due to the fact that a lot of resto shamans don't bother to take it anymore since they have a more varied spell rotation with Riptide and Chain Heal still the standouts. I honestly don't know if this change will really accomplish much: it may encourage people to put a Healing Wave into the rotation just to keep the buff up, but if you're doing 90% of your healing with riptide and CH anyway, you may just not bother and keep not spending the talent points on it.
Totem Talk: Utgarde Pinnacle, the Oculus, and heroic Utgarde Keep/The Nexus
And we come at last to the conclusion of our big loot rounup for the five mans and heroic five man instances that debuted with Wrath of the Lich King. How appropriate that this shopping list should conclude on Christmas Day. Loot luck bless us, every one!Since it is the holidays, I hope you'll forgive me if I dispense with my usual verbosity and move right into the instances and their loot tables. I will be mentioning leather or even cloth drops if they seem really superior to mail for a specific talent spec, so you'll just have to bear with it. (Believe me, I'd rather focus on mail.)Let's go bust open some piñatas.
Totem Talk: Halls of Stone and Lightning, CoT Stratholme
Gear! Let us continue our discussion of gear in five man instances, for we are shamans, and we have more interesting things to talk about. Like love. Or DPS. I like talking about DPS more than love, to be honest, I'm not specced for love with anyone but my wife. (She's a very specific boss in this regard.) Healing's good too, we could also talk about that. I found myself healing a Halls of Stone/Lightning run (is anyone else noticing that they end up running more instances back to back in Wrath?) in enhancement spec (resto gear) the other day, and I freely admit I wished I was resto several times on that run. Well, we made it through, anyway. But a HoT would have been very nice on Ionar. Can I just say now how very much I hate Ionar? A lot. Healing that fight without Riptide is pretty agonizing, especially when you don't have Nature's Swiftness or Earth Shield as well. The tank had to heal himself a couple of times. Lesson learned: it's just more fun to heal as resto. Oh, please let dual specs come soon, Santa.As I'm inching up the levels on the shammy and considering if I want to raid on him (I've been considering raiding as resto or enhance, haven't decided yet) I'm looking to the Storm Peaks instances as a source for upgrades. What can we find there? I've also begun making forays to the Culling of Stratholme in prep for when I start running it over and over again on heroic for the fist weapon. I mean, for no reason at all! There's no fist weapon here! Don't even run the instance! (Whew, I think they bought it.)
Totem Talk: Emblem of Heroism gear for Shamans
First off, happy birthday to me. (It was actually this weekend.) As a present to myself, I've switched toons, sort of.Strangely enough, I've taken a break from my horde shaman to start leveling my alliance shaman, in one of those weird caprices of mood I get into from time to time. I don't know why, but the past five levels on the alliance side went faster than one level horde side, which is odd because I leveled exclusively as horde in the beta and enjoyed it immensely. Maybe it's just that I really enjoy Dragonblight from the alliance quest perspective, or maybe it's just being tired of the horde quests since I ran them so many times before. Maybe I'm just freaking insane. At any rate, I'm currently loving my space goat.With Christmas around the corner raiding seems to have dried up pretty heavily (maybe I just don't know enough obsessed people) meaning that I'm having a better time leveling than I would in trying to get a raid together. Right now, my main focus is on what gear I want out of heroics and what I want to spend my Emblems of Heroism on. Since I've been covering heroics in the various instance posts (and we still have three or four instances to cover) I figured today would be a good chance to take a look at Emblem loot, in an attempt to keep going in the same vein as last week's Rep post.
Wrath 101: Farming for Eternals
So you're level 80. What now? Raiding? PvP? Hah, no, not really. It's time to start farming mats for... everything! When you're off farming, Eternals (the Wrath equivalent of Primals) are probably on the top of your list. We've had a lot of people asking us what the best places for Eternal farming are, so we're here with the answer.Below is a quick guide to the best spots for every type of Elemental Eternal in Wrath of the Lich King, and it's assumed that you have Cold Weather Flying when you're out farming. Most of the best farming spots aren't exactly tuned for players lower than level 77, and you can't get to the really awesome spots at all. So hold off on your farming until you're 80, or near 80. It will make your life easier.
Totem Talk: Wrath faction gear for Shamans
One of the ways to gear up as you level and prepare for endgame in Wrath of the Lich King is by making use of the reputation gained via questing for various factions in Northrend. In addition to the main Alliance or Horde factions the Alliance Vanguard and Horde Expedition, there are a variety of other groups you can meet and ally with as you explore Northrend, often through daily quests, and these factions offer gear, head enchants and other items of interest to you as an up and coming shaman. Today, we'll go over what each group has to offer and which ones you might want to prioritize depending on your spec and interest.One group to mention in particular is the Sons of Hodir: unlike other factions, they don't have a Tabard which you can wear in level 80 dungeons and heroics to gain reputation with them. However, they do have quite a few dailies to unlock as well as a long series of quests which will get you started, and in addition to the usual gearing reasons to unlock and progress in this reputation they also provide shoulder enchants that equal or exceed the best outland ones, so they're a group you'll eventually want to work on.
Totem Talk: Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, and the Troll Instances
Before we get rolling with today's column, I direct you to yesterday's good news for elemental shamans. Soak it in, folks. Buffs for elemental with no huge nerfs attached? It's like a holiday or something. You should go eat Turkey to celebrate. I'll wait.Okay, now we move on to yet more gear. Last time we covered Dragonblight and its related instances, this week we move over to Grizzly Hills and Drak'Tharon Keep, and from there Zul'Drak and Gundrak will be our focus as you level through the zones. By the time you're done in Gundrak you should easily be level 77, have access to Lava Burst, and be ready to go exploring in Sholozar, Icecrown and Storm Peaks.Being about half-way through Grizzly Hills on my shaman and already nearly level 75 (I did both starting zones) you could even skip one of these zones if you wanted to. If that's the case, don't skip Zul'Drak, as the zone has some weapon rewards that are simply extraordinary.
Elemental Shaman changes in patch 3.0.4
Ghostcrawler, in a post to the Damage Dealing forums, outlined upcoming changes to Elemental Shamans. It's a pretty substantial talent overhaul for the tree, aimed at streamlining and improving scaling at higher levels of gear. (And boy, is that a good thing.) Unlike the recent post changing how totems work as AoE, this is a much more drastic set of changes all told. In case you can't get it to load at work or what have you, the complete text of the post will be after the jump with commentary by me.
Totem Talk: Dragonblight and Azjol-Nerub
Okay, I admit it: my experiment with 2h exnhancement lasted until I got a fist weapon I liked. My threat was too bursty, my DPS too low and I really missed being able to play with Lava Lash. I'm currently running slow/slow with Windfury Weapon on both, but once I have tine to sit down and really look at the numbers I may switch to Flametongue on the offhand for the benefit to Maelstrom Weapon procs like Chain Lightning.Since I myself am finally done with Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra, I thought this week would be a good one to look at the gear you can get while questing in Dragonblight or running one of its two instances, Azjol-Nerub or Ahn'katet. As is usually the case for this column, we won't be going over every green item that drops... you'll stumble across those in your leveling push and there's a lot of them... but we'll do our best to cover drops for all three specs both in the instances and through general questing.Dragonblight has some of the best lore-related quests in the game. Since I'm focusing my leveling efforts on my alliance warrior and horde shaman, I may have missed some quests from either faction but I've made my best effort to be comprehensive. Please feel free to mention anything I didn't catch in the comments.
Wrath of the Lich King class changes roundup
Over the last two days, the WoW Insider team has been busy reviewing and gathering all of the still-current class information to bring you up to speed for your first steps into Northrend. You've probably had a chance to get a handle on your class since most of the changes were pushed through in patch 3.0.2, but you have an extra ten levels ahead of you, an extra ten talent points, and a whole bunch of new skills and abilities you're going to need to learn. Don't know what to expect? We're here for you. If you do know what to expect? Well, I guess you can keep reading if you want. We'll let it slide just this once. Death Knight - Being the new class on the block, there's certainly been a lot to talk about in the recent months. Daniel Whitcomb points you toward much of it, including leveling builds, in-depth looks at their core abilities and mechanics, as well as some sage advice from Allison Robert. Druid - Speaking of Allison Robert, she'll be your guide today if you're looking for more on the Druid class. Talent builds, a glimpse at raid healing as Restoration, the rise of the Moonkin and much more can be found within.
Stardock sticking with Q1 release strategy for next half decade
Stardock just seems to "get it" when it comes to not putting any more burden on our time (or wallets) during the holiday season. The company's CEO, Brad Wardell, tells Gamasutra that the small publisher plans to release a title "every first quarter of every year" over the next five to six years. This way it can avoid the holiday glut, along with the marketing dollars required to stand out in the crowd.The Q1 release strategy, although not explicit up until now, seems to have worked well for the publisher. Galactic Civilizations II cut out a niche and Sins of a Solar Empire was a bona fide sleeper hit. We know that Gas Powered Games' Demigod is scheduled for February of next year and Stardock's internally developed Elemental is already slated for February of 2010. The publisher has its 2011 game already planned, but isn't announcing it yet.[Via Evil Avatar]
