shaman-totems
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Totem Talk: First impressions of elemental shaman in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Once a lonely tauren shaman in a bad Scarlet Crusade-themed transmog set, Josh Myers is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids as all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though. "Elamism, Savior of Azeroth" has a nice ring to it. For the first time in my time raiding, I'm officially done with a tier of raiding before the next has been released, and I'm pretty psyched about that. (The fact that I picked up two heroic No'Kaleds for my enhancement spec has me grinning ear to ear.) With Dragon Soul behind me, I can start focusing on the future, which makes it very timely that my invite to the Mists of Pandaria beta came last night. Before my raid tonight, I got to spend some time playing elemental on the beta, and I have some good news and some bad news to report. The bad news? Not much has changed from live for beta elemental shaman. The good news? Not much has changed from live for beta elemental shaman. Part of this is a level cap issue. Pandaria is only open for leveling up to level 86 at the moment, which means that you don't yet have access to any of the real game-changers being introduced in Mists of Pandaria. Ascendence, our new DPS cooldown and all-around coolest spell in the game, will be our prize for hitting level 87, and the tier of talents that includes Elemental Blast, Unleashed Fury, and Primal Elementalist isn't available until level 90. Since those talents are all complex and will all drastically effect your DPS, there's a lot to look forward to.
New Shaman totem interface revealed
This was sketched in outline in the massive Shaman Q&A post that went live a while back, but now we have details on how they plan on redoing the Shaman totem interface for patch 3.2. Remember these are just plans, and things may change as the development of the patch progresses, but this is the current state of things. Shamans will get a new bar for their totems, above the main action bar, where other class-specific bars go, like Paladin auras or Druid shapeshift forms. You'll have a button for a totem of each element of your choice, a button for Totemic Call (renamed Call of Earth), and a button for a new ability, Call of Fire, that drops all four selected totems at once, in a single GCD (but for the full mana cost). You'll also be able to set your Call of Fire to summon less than four totems if you like. Call of Fire will be trained at the same level as Totemic Call currently is, 30. At "higher levels" (I'd guess 60 and 70, or so) you get Call of Air and Call of Water, which do exactly the same thing as Call of Fire, but you can load them up with different totems. This gives you three different quick-sets of totems you can drop in one keystroke. Well, shamans, what do you think? Is it everything you hoped for in a totem interface update? 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!
