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Totem Talk: How to heal Yor'sahj in the Siege of Wyrmrest
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 For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. The Siege of Wyrmrest temple has begun, and with Morchok and Zon'ozz down, it's time to begin stepping it up a notch. Dragon Soul offers so many fights that are just absolutely fun for restoration shaman. Yor'sahj the Unsleeping is a great example of a great healer workout. His mechanics are simple from a DPS and tanking aspect, but for healers, you will constantly have to be prepared to adapt to different slime combinations. Make no mistake, knowing your blobs is key to success. Every raid team will have a different way of handling the oozes and setting priorities on which to burn. As a healer, though, you'll have to learn what each blob is capable of and the effect that the certain combinations of globules will have. Each wave of oozes summoned by the boss will have three oozes on normal and Raid Finder difficulty, and your raid will have the option of killing one of the oozes each wave. (For full details of the encounters or full raid strategies, please read Ready Check for WoW Insider's boss guides.)
Spiritual Guidance: Priest healing for Dragon Soul's Hagara and Ultraxion
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Picking up where we left off the other week, today's Spiritual Guidance will cover the fourth and fifth bosses in Dragon Soul. The first up is Hagara the Stormbinder. Before we jump right in please make sure you're familiar with the basic mechanics and strategy of the fight; I will be examining the fight specifically from a healing priest's point of view. For Hagara, I recommend getting acquainted with the fight through the video guide at LearnToRaid.com or the written guide at Icy Veins. Healing priests of either spec should be mindful that Hagara's ice phase is probably going to be where players are at the greatest risk of death. Fortunately, Leap of Faith is the perfect way to intervene, provided you remember a few things. The obvious one first is that you should make sure you're well ahead of the Ice Wave before you use it. It's easy to get caught up in the wave yourself if you try to stop and cast, and the extra second required to orient yourself properly for a life grip could be a second too long if you're not careful. Next, take care to ensure you're not pulling your ally into an equally treacherous spot when you use Leap of Faith. Pulling someone away from the Ice Wave just so they can be hit by an Icicle is cleary counterproductive (although somewhat comical, depending on who you're saving).
Blood Pact: Dark Intent update and T13 gearing
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. Greeting again, darklings. It's that time of the week once more for us to talk about all that drives our purpose: bringing horrible pain to our enemies. There are multiple cogs in our wheel of destruction, but this week I want to focus in on two of those. To start, there's the small matter of the ever-constant debate on weaponry and trinkets, something that comes up with every new tier. Second, there's the issue of Dark Intent. While it's been relatively established on the priority of the buff, there are a few kinks to work out, as always. The prior settlements that were made were based upon data that was relevant back in tier 11. Although there isn't too much that has changed since this, Blizzard's adjustments and gearing does merit bringing up the issue once more. There can be little doubt that shadow priests are the best recipients for Dark Intent. A significantly large portion of their damage come from DoTs; furthermore, Mind Flay has a unique interaction with the ability as well that results in an even higher return. As shadow priests gain gear, more of their damage does actually shift toward Mind Blast, plus their tier 13 increases more of their non-DoT based damage. Again, none of this changes that they are still the best target for Dark Intent, but it does slightly reduce the disparity between shadow priests and non-shadow priests when getting it.
The Light and How to Swing It: Juggling Yor'sahj's oozes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. While Ultraxion is definitely the most unique fight for healers in this tier, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping is a close second place. The boss' abilities are simple for the DPS classes and tanks, but healers will constantly be reacting to the summoned oozes and their various effects. These globules cause us to shift our healing strategies with each new wave, and learning to handle the globules will be the key to mastering this encounter. Every raid group is going to handle the ooze packs differently. You need to familiarize yourself with what each ooze can do, and then combine the effects based on your raid leader's preference. You'll be faced with three oozes at a time on Raid Finder and normal difficulties, with the option to kill one ooze out of each wave. On heroic difficulty, there are four oozes per wave, for a total of three effects on the boss after you've killed one of the oozes.
Arcane Brilliance: Guide to leveling a mage in Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. this week, we seek to aid those of you who have made or will make the noble decision to level a mage in the coming months. In the past, we've done our leveling guides here at WoW Insider as sprawling, multi-post epics, spanning 10 or 20 levels a week over the course of a month, covering every aspect of every facet of everything you could ever want to know about leveling each class in the game. The problem with that approach is that you could probably just go in blind and level your mage from 1 to 85 faster than I could tell you how to do it. The simple fact of the matter is that the leveling game just isn't terribly difficult. The process has been streamlined over the years to the point that I don't believe such detailed leveling guides are really necessary anymore. Most of this game is intuitive and user friendly now, and the part of the game that really requires in-depth strategy doesn't really start until after the experience-gaining part of it has stopped. Knowing this, I won't be filling this guide with talent analysis, ways to optimize your level 45 boss fight rotation, or a detailed travelogue of every quest hub you'll be traipsing through along the way. This will be a more stripped-down endeavor, focusing on the parts of leveling that I think are important -- not the spell coefficients and spreadsheets, but the basic concepts your mage needs to learn while leveling, not only to make the process easier and more enjoyable, but also to help them step from mage adolescence into mage adulthood so they can shoot Deathwing in the face with a Fireball of wisdom and maturity.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Proc weapons and the future of itemization
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. For the first time since the brief period following the launch of the pre-Cataclysm patch, arms has achieved parity with fury as a PvE DPS spec. Granted, this required a painful mauling to fury's DPS output and relies heavily on arms' ludicrous AoE potential as well as getting your hands on a Gurthalak. The proc on the weapon can add as much as 15% of your current DPS; in raids and on heroics, I've seen the Tentacle of the Old Gods put out more DPS than Rend and Deep wounds combined. Even on a high-trash dungeon where you can use Blood and Thunder to spread Rend around, Tentacle can still put out a respectable 5% to 6% of your total damage. The sword is just as good for fury (I did in fact try out a fury build with it off-hand to test if it procced, and it did, quite frequently). While it won't make up for the nerf fury took, it does put me in mind of weapons like Bryntroll and Shadowmourne, proc weapons that did excellent damage in a warrior's hands from the end of the ICC era. I'll admit it's unfair to use Shadowmourne as an exemplar here, as the weapon was a legendary, but that's OK -- this isn't meant to be a pure comparison. Proc weapons have a long and storied tradition in World of Warcraft but they've also somewhat fallen from favor, since they're never as reliable and predictable as pure stats. People would argue the Blackhand Doomsaw vs. Arcanite Reaper into the small hours back then. But I think Dragon Soul's two proc weapons (Gurthalak and Souldrinker) have me thinking a lot about where weapon itemization has been and where it's going, and what that means for us warriors.
Totem Talk: Gearing your enhancement shaman for Raid Finder
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.) So, you want to queue for the Raid Finder on your enhancement shaman, but you don't quite have the required 372 item level for it yet. We've all learned tips and tricks over the year since Cataclysm launched to cheat the ilevel restrictions, like wearing restoration gear to inflate our ilevel. However, if you want to actually benefit the raid and increase your chances of downing bosses, those tricks are not the best way to go. There are multiple accessible 378 items for near every slot. The first rule of getting geared for Raid Finder is to avoid Hour of Twilight like the plague. There's seriously only one drop in the instance that's worth getting, and that's the Clattering Claw. Dawnslayer Helm? Both our Erupting Volcanic Helmet and Scalp of the Bandit Prince put that ugly hit/haste helm to shame. Betrayer's Pauldrons are a possible good choice, if only because extensive testing by yours truly has proven that Mantle of the Fiery Protector does not actually exist. It's a myth. Flickering Shoulders of the Zephyr/Windstorm are both good choices to use over the Hour of Twilight shoulders, but getting a useful random enchant on an already random drop is not a sure bet. Hour of Twilight also has the Cinch of the World Shaman as a quest reward. I'm so glad Blizzard decided to create an agility belt with shaman in the name and itemize it to be absolutely awful for the only spec of shaman that uses agility. Well played, Blizzard. If you're fresh to 85, this will unfortunately be your main belt choice, as the Firearrow Belt requires you to be honored with Avengers of Hyjal. However, you're a lucky shaman who has to run Firelands to deal with the itemization woes of the 4.3 heroics anyway, so you should be honored in no time at all!
The Light and How to Swing It: Tanking the first 3 bosses of Dragon Soul
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. In the previous weeks, we've talked about getting prepped for patch 4.3, how to hit the ground running, and what pieces of gear should be on your hit list. Now we've come to the main event: the Dragon Soul raid. Deathwing's forces are assaulting Wyrmrest Temple, and it's up to you and your allies to knock them over and finally put a stop to his perfidy. The fights ahead will test your skills and the limits of your survivability. You'll also be taunt swapping like you've never taunt swapped before (which is its own kind of exciting). Morchok Morchok is a fairly simple encounter (and "fairly" is being generous). Consider it the Lootreaver of Dragon Soul. When you pull Morchok, turn him away from the raid. His Stomp attack will split damage among all targets within 25 yards, but the two closest (that is, you and your co-tank) get a double share of the damage. So unless you're trying to play Kill the DPS, face the boss away. You and your co-tank will be swapping at around two or three stacks of the Crush Armor debuff. Each stack reduces your armor by 20 seconds, so don't allow it to stack too high. Usually I'll take the boss first, co-tank taunts at two stacks, and then taunt when my stacks fall off, and we continue to taunt when stacks drop off there on out.
Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter trinket roundup
Every Thursday, WoW Insider brings you Scattered Shots for beast mastery, marksmanship and survival hunters. Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Mail your hunter questions to Frostheim. It's trinkets day here on Scattered Shots, back by popular demand. The number of emails I've been getting about hunter trinkets lately has made me suddenly realize that I have not posted my usual new tier trinket round-up and reevaluation -- and with the new tier of Raid Finder trinkets out, there the decision of when to upgrade is yet more complex. Trinkets are a lot like the nine support classes in WoW: You know they're useful, but it can be hard to figure out exactly which one is worth using without doing some math. Only unlike the support class players, you always want to have two of them with you. And they don't smell funny, or refuse to heal your pet, or screw up your lovely execution of executions. Maybe trinkets aren't much like the support classes after all. They're better. Join me after the cut as we run down the new 4.3 trinkets, compare them to the best of the previous tier's trinkets, and give some thought to the new Raid Finder versions of the trinkets as well.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priesting the End Time heroic
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration. He is also scientifically proven more beautiful than boomkin blogger Tyler Caraway. Recently, I've found myself playing World of Warcraft more and more. It's all because of my new shadow priest I finished leveling on Horde side. Even more specifically, it's because of the new 5-man heroics in patch 4.3. There's nothing I like more than fresh content. The first of the three new 5-man instances is called End Time. It's got a great concept: You travel forward in time to a post-apocalyptic Dragonblight nightmarescape. In this (soon-to-be) false future, Deathwing was not stopped and the maddened Echos of faction leaders roam a destroyed world. With treasure. As a level 85 shadow priest, it's your duty to travel to End Time, beat up the baddies, steal their loot, and ignore all the terrible time paradoxes your action undoubtably causes. There are five different bosses in End Time. Your party will randomly face two of four different Echoes (Baine, Jaina, Sylvanas, Tyrande). After beating the first two bosses, your party will teleport to the Bronze Dragonshrine to face off against the dragon Murozond in what is arguably the most fun 5-man fight of the entire expansion.
Encrypted Text: A savvy rogue's guide to the Fall of Deathwing via the Raid Finder
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. The first half of the Dragon Soul raid consists of knocking out a few of Deathwing's commanders that are attacking Wyrmrest Temple. After toppling the first four bosses of Dragon Soul, we finally see Deathwing face-to-face at the peak of the temple. He's still too busy to attack us himself, instead sending a couple of his additional underlings our way. Our first challenge will be overcoming Ultraxion, Deathwing's favorite twilight dragon. He's an easy target for rogues and is just about as simple for us as Warlord Zon'ozz. After that, we board an airship to face Warmaster Blackhorn and his Twilight infantry. Finally, we confront Deathwing in two separate encounters, each with its own challenges. We fight Ultraxion from the roof of Wyrmrest Temple, as he's too massive to fit inside. He'll spend most of the encounter cleaving the entire raid, which makes Feint an amazing tool here. Use it on cooldown for the entire fight. Unfortunately for rogues, we're not able to get behind Ultraxion, due to his positioning over the ledge of the temple roof. While Ultraxion has a buff that prevents him from parrying our frontal attacks, we're not able to use any positional attacks like Backstab or Ambush.
Shifting Perspectives: Guide to druid leveling in Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we steal from our colleagues. All three of WoW Insider's druid columnists have collaborated on a Cataclysm-era druid leveling guide, because we love you very much. Also, Alex Ziebart made us do it ... but mostly because we love you very much. If you're looking for a comprehensive piece on why X talent will give you a 0.072% increase in awesome at a particular level, this guide is not for you. If you're interested in getting a druid from 1 to 85 and successfully convincing everyone that you know what you're doing, this'll be more up your alley.
Totem Talk: How to heal Morchok and Zon'ozz in the Siege of Wyrmrest
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 For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how. Dragon Soul is full of fire, black goo, explosions, dragons, and an odd shaman that have gone off the deep end and sided with some Old Golds. To be honest, it's an impressive raid zone in both scale of story -- and it's one for sure that most restoration shaman should fall in love with. (For full details of the encounters or full raid strategies, please read Ready Check for WoW Insider's boss guides.) Morchok is an elemental baddie straight from the pits of Deepholm, the most powerful elemental still under the control of Deathwing. He'll be your first roadblock on the highway to defeating the aspect of death -- and honestly, he's a fight designed with the restoration shaman in mind. Morchok's bark is much bigger than his bite when you're a restoration shaman. So what makes him such a good boss for a resto shaman healer? Well, the mechanics of the fight first and foremost lend themselves very well to your raid staying grouped up. This plays well the vast majority of our AoE healing spells.
Lichborne: Hour of Twilight tips for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. With End Time and Well of Eternity down, the last dungeon we examine is the Hour of Twilight. This dungeon technically takes place in the present day, acting as a precursor to the Dragon Soul raid. Unfortunately, you do have to escort Thrall through the dungeon, but if you turn off the sound on the voice acting and squint, maybe you can pretend it is a cooler shaman like Nobundo or Mylra. For now, though, what we're most interested in is getting through this dungeon as a death knight, be that tank or DPS. It's a short, sweet dungeon, but there are a couple of tricks and gimmicks you'll want to know to make the fight as smooth as possible. As with the other two dungeons, the loot here will be mostly sidegrades to Firelands stuff, a great way to catch up an undergeared death knight for Dragon Soul. (For a more complete overview of the dungeon from all angles, be sure to check out WoW Insider's guide to Hour of Twilight.) Trash for Arcurion, the first boss, isn't too annoying -- just some run-of-the-mill elementals. The second pack comes at you from both sides, so you may either want to wrangle the single dude in with Death Grip or have one of your DPS CC it.
Blood Pact: Cataclysm-era leveling guide for warlocks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology and destruction warlocks. For those who disdain the watered-down arts that other cling to like a safety blanket ... for those willing to test their wills against the nether and claim the power that is their right ... Blood Pact welcomes you. Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or via Twitter to @murmursofadruid. Of all the things that I am, for all of the multitude of alts that I have, one things that I've never been all that good at is writing leveling guides. I have a hard enough time as it is following said guides; writing out my chaotic leveling process is a chore and a half. That all being said, the one thing I do have enormous amounts of experience in leveling. I've nearly reached the full limit on the amount of characters that I'm allowed to have. Allow me, then, to impart some of what I know about bringing your fledgling warlock up to speed into the endgame. After all, while the journey might be half the fun, the destination is all so glorious. We do need someone to stomp on those pesky mages. The first order of business is to know your spec going into the game. While all warlocks focus on damage (so we don't have quite the same complications as hybrid classes), which spec you choose to go with is still important. Affliction has long been touted as the prime warlock leveling spec, and that is still somewhat true. Affliction offers the best multi-target, fast-paced farming that can't be matched by any of the others. The downside to this is that mob farming has fallen the way of the dinosaurs in WoW leveling; instead, questing and running dungeons is far more efficient, and affliction doesn't have its strength there.
Shifting Perspectives: The feral gear list to rule them all
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! This is it -- the final feral list of this expansion. By following this, you'll be well prepared to take on anything Deathwing throws your way. Some notes: This list is focused on items suitable for PvE content. You may have some success in PvP with these items ... or not. To compare PvP items with PvE, a good rough estimate is to take five points off the item level for weapons and 20 points off the item level for armor. This accounts for the useless resilience. This list starts at item level 378 (normal Firelands or new 4.3 5-man instances). If you've just hit 85, check the lists for items that can be acquired via the AH or crafting, then take a look at my previous gear list. In general, one point of agility is worth three points of any of the secondary stats, and all secondary stats are roughly equal. Use that as a guide when comparing items. I've grouped all the items into rough tiers. These typically line up with ilevel, but not always (mostly due to gem slots). You will almost always want to gem the best +agility gem you can afford into each socket, ignoring socket bonuses unless they are 20 agility or greater.
The Light and How to Swing It: Blinding Ultraxion with the Holy Light
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. As the fifth boss of Dragon Soul, Ultraxion is the gateway boss to pursuing Deathwing and stopping the second cataclysm. While Thrall and the dragon aspects are busy with the Dragon Soul itself, we're tasked with defending Wyrmrest Temple from Ultraxion's assaults. Simple, right? Ultraxion is an incredibly simple fight for tanks and damage dealers. In fact, it's already being called the Patchwerk-fight of this tier. Aside from a few extra button presses, non-healers are simply tasked with bringing Ultraxion down as quickly as possible. Healers, on the other hand, play a very special role in this fight. We're fighting against rapidly increasing AoE damage to the raid, and the aspects themselves step in to help us accomplish our task. Ultraxion is the healer-centric fight of this tier, like Baleroc and Chimaeron before him.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Leveling from 1 to 60 after Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. I am often a little surprised at how often leveling guides and leveling advice is requested by readers. It's easy for those of us working on raids to forget what it's like for the new player, just starting out of Silvermoon or Mulgore for the first time. With the changes to the 1-to-60 game made with Cataclysm, it's never been easier to level. While Mists of Pandaria is bringing a whole new talent system, the 1-to-60 game is most likely not going to see another revamp, so we'll go forward assuming that getting to max level will take the same path. In order to discuss it, I went and rolled yet another warrior. It's for science, people. For people rolling a new warrior, be it an alt or a new main, there is one thing I like to keep in mind: Know how you intend to level. Whether you're a new player or an old hand trying a warrior out, it's really helpful to know what you intend to do to get to max level. Each talent specialization is viable for questing and PvP (player vs. player), for instance, but if you're intending on tanking instances or flag running in WSG, protection is the clear winner. Arms may be the easiest to level, however, without the stress of tanking and fairly easy to gear up for.
Shifting Perspectives: Lunar Shower update and Celestial Alignment
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid. Balance druids everywhere are currently rejoicing. Why, might you ask? Well, you see, the Eclipse energy portion of Lunar Shower has finally been removed from the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator. That it took this long is something else entirely, but that isn't even really the point. First, I wish to express a slight personal issue with this revelation. When the Pandaria talent calculators were originally released, it was stated directly that Lunar Shower would be "working differently in the future." While I suppose accurate on the most technical levels, reverting a broken talent to the slightly less broken state that it was already in before it was made worse is not working differently. A bit harsh? To say that Lunar Shower is a broken talent, to suggest that it was always a broken talent? Well, I would apologize or choose better language -- however, this is the case. Lunar Shower has never truly fulfilled the function it was intended to serve, to offer balance druids a mobile DPS option. In defense that the current Lunar Shower on the live servers now is broken, I don't really think I need to put forth much evidence. After all, no one specs into it. Every single guide tells players to avoid it. And there's at least a thread a week complaining about it on the official forums. The issue speaks for itself.
Totem Talk: Mastery vs. haste for elemental shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.) Those of you following my Twitter feed might have read how I managed to go an entire content patch without ever getting tier 12 shoulders for the main spec of my main class. So when I heard that Blizzard's amazing idea for getting people tier gear more quickly was too entirely remove tier from valor point vendors, the part of me that saw something like two or three protector shoulder tokens drop in five months of raiding was very skeptical. That said, there are already people running around Orgrimmar with full sets of tier gear. Between weekly Raid Finder and a weekly run of Dragon Soul, you have four to six chances to see your token drop, with even higher chances for gloves and legs due to Baradin Hold. This is really good news for elemental, because our newly lackluster tier 12 needs to be replaced as soon as possible with the very shiny Spiritwalker's Regalia. The bad news? Everything you knew about elemental gearing in Firelands is gone, just like your permanent Fire Elemental Totem. Those of you who played elemental at the start of Cataclysm may remember a time when mastery was as good as haste and balancing the two stats was ideal. With Firelands, mastery fell by the wayside. It was still a good stat, but it couldn't compete with haste. Now that 4.3 has hit, we're starting to see mastery coming back into the limelight. It's like the Neil Patrick Harris of elemental stats -- starts off strong, fades into the background for 10 years (or five months), and comes back to outshine everything around it.
