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Totem Talk: Enhance me
Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury, and wolves. 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 and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 8 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. Two weeks ago a fellow enhancement shaman contacted me on Twitter asking how to improve his damage output. He was kind enough to let me use his email as the topic for the weekly enhancement shaman column here on WoW.com. Because he was brave (crazy?) enough to face the public scrutiny that comes from being in the spotlight here, show him the high level of respect our fellow enhancement brother deserves. Here's his email: I just switched to enhance for raiding a couple of weeks ago and I still feel like my DPS is lower than what it could be. I'm using Shock and Awe and still depending more or less on the priority frame, which I hope to ween off of soon. I'm still not 100% sure if I have the priorities set up correctly at this point. They are set at: SR MT LS MW5 LB SS ES if SS FS LL FN I also use Wolves every time they are up and also Fire Elemental when off CD. With just my buffs at the heroic dummy I seem to be maxing out around 6-6.5k. Again, seems a little low to me. If you would like to look at my armory, the name is Alyssian on Durotan. We use WoL, too, and my guild is Chi Cerca Trova. PS - Any tips for helping me get off of the SAA priority window? I'm mainly concerned with keeping the shock rotation going, I think I can handle the rest.
Totem Talk: Elemental changes, part two
Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. Hello again, dear readers. It's time for me to waffle on again about elemental shaman. A few weeks ago, we saw the talent tree revamp down to seven tiers, and there have been a number of changes in the builds since then. Some of the changes are small, but there's one or two in there that I think you'll like, if you haven't heard about them already. I've also spent a little time on the beta, and aside from being totally unfamiliar with the UI, I'm enjoying it. Earthquake is fun to use, although I do wish that the cooldown didn't exist. As you can see from the image above, the current animation isn't quite finished yet, but looks promising. But before we get started, I'd like to let you in on a little project I've been working on lately: TotemSpot. TotemSpot is our new Shaman Community Site that's been set up by a few shaman bloggers, and we're currently in beta (everything is there, but there are a few layout issues and changes we are working on). There is a forum, a blog/news front page, and a Wiki as well. Pop on over and have a look.
Totem Talk: Leveling as a restoration shaman in Cataclysm
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast The Cataclysm beta has been offering us many things. From talent trees being changed to revealing new voices for bosses and audio for events, there really has been something new discovered almost every day. This is not too surprising considering the world is going through a massive series of changes as well as the game mechanics themselves. One of the things that is being watched very carefully are the changes to healing and the mechanics not only of healing output but also mana regeneration. Sadly, though, there is still a lot missing from the client, making it hard to get an idea of exactly how it will all wind up being balanced. That said, there are still a lot of changes in place for healers in the way we quest and level. New talents and spells make it a different experience than before. On top of that, there are also a plethora of quests that seem to be tailored at least somewhat with a healer specifically in mind. If you really do not want to know anything about Cataclysm until it is released, there will be some Cataclysm spoilers after the break. If you don't mind having a few things spoiled for you, please continue to read on.
Totem Talk: Dual-wielding topics
Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. 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 and leads the guild Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. This week I'm dual wielding topics. Neither one was enough to keep you entertained, my lovely and intelligent readers, for a full week's worth of enhancement, but combined together I think we can accomplish something. Consider a Stormstrike post with fire elemental mechanics in one hand and Cataclysm changes in the other. If you're firmly in the "don't tell me anything about Cataclysm" camp, then just read the first section and skip the rest, though all I'm talking about are the recent changes to the shaman talent trees. If you don't mind a sneak peek at enhancement 4.0 as it stands now, then enjoy!
Totem Talk: Back to basics
Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. He'd also like to point out that Time Warp is just another excuse to bring mages vending machines to raids. Since I'm still the new guy here, I figure that it's best to start at the beginning, for it's a very good place to start (and I'm not intentionally putting song lyrics into my posts, it just happens). Given that Cataclysm is still in beta testing, I'm not going to talk about talents, rotations or even the new spells here. "But Binks," you say, "how can you have an article about basics if you don't include any of those topics?" You can, I say, if you talk about the essential basic you have to get right in your playstyle. This is the thing that turns an average-geared player into a fairly competitive one, makes the top-end raiders great, and without which the guy languishing at the bottom of the DPS table will never get to the top no matter how many best-in-slot items he has. What I'm talking about is skill. This doesn't just mean the ability to mash buttons faster or harder, or the bonus of having really low latency (trust me, a good ping for me is in the 300ms range), but rather being situationally aware, knowing when to move, how far to move and what to do while moving. It means thinking a few steps ahead so that when the next event occurs, you're already in position and ready for it. Some players will never master the basics. Others don't even have to try because they're naturals. For the rest of us (and yes, I mean myself as well), it requires a bit of experimentation, some trial and error and most important of all, guides!
Totem Talk: Elemental shaman notes from the Twitter developer chat
Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. He'd also like you to go and vote in a poll he is running. Go on, you know you want to. As you may be aware, last Saturday there was another developer chat on Twitter. If you're anything like me, you would have searched through it for the elemental-specific questions and ignored the rest. (OK, so I did look at the druid ones as well, just to keep up with what's happening for my alt.) Q: What class are you currently most happy with how the talents are currently set up? Is there one you feel needs more work? A. They all need more work! source Obviously, this means that nothing is finished or finalized yet, so any serious analysis would be premature (not that some of us won't be doing it anyway). It also means that this is a good opportunity for a bit of feedback.
Totem Talk: Healing with a clown suit
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast Cataclysm beta is still a hot topic around the internet. Everyone keeps refreshing their Battle.net pages hoping that they will see the wonderful dragon artwork of Deathwing staring at them. Others who have made it in have been filtering information back to the outside world and trying to keep everyone up to date. The biggest news of course being the new beta build which implemented the new 31-point talent trees. Players have not been the only source of information over the last few weeks. There was a Blizzard developer chat on Twitter last week. If you missed it, don't panic! We have the entire thing organized for you by category right here. There was some very useful information handed out ... and some rather silly ones, but overall it was a good dev chat. This week I thought I would take some time to look over what we learned from the developer chat as well as talk about how things look now for a restoration shaman in the latest build of the Cataclysm beta.
Cataclysm Beta: Enhancement talent preview
As many of my fellow Wow.com bloggers noted, the starting talents are a welcome change, and even more so for enhancement. New shaman will hit level 10, choose the ultimate spec, and bam! We'll have dual wield, dual wield specialization, Mental Quickness and Lava Lash! This means no more playing as an elemental wannabe lobbing Lightning Bolts until the 2 button on your keyboard wears off. The way things stand now, leveling as enhancement doesn't feel like enhancement until the 30s, when we get Windfury, or 40s, when we currently get Dual Wield. That stretch of 20s and 30s really is rough right now, if you are true to the path of enhancement. Heck, even Faience from Choose My Adventure is feeling the pain of the lack of enhancement in the 20s. But no more! We will be enhancement from the beginning with dual wield plus hit, attack power conversion to spellpower and an off-hand attack! The talent tree is highly streamlined, but with only 41 talent points to spend, we won't be painting the trees with points. I don't see any tough choices in the enhancement tree, and getting down to Feral Spirit should be easy with something like 0/31/0. The last 10 points could look something like 8/33/0, but that remains to be seen.
Cataclysm Beta: Shaman talent analysis
If you weren't aware that a new Cataclysm beta build went live this week with updated talent trees for all classes ... well ... surprise! Though we can certainly expect more changes as the beta progresses (read: don't panic), this is our first look at Blizzard's new talent philosophy, coming to a server near you with Cataclysm. Now enough of my rambling on and let's get to the talents: Matt Sampson, Rich Maloy and Joe Perez provide analysis for the changes of each shaman tree. [ Elemental ] [ Enhancement ] [ Restoration ]
Cataclysm Beta: Elementary, my dear shaman
Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. This post is in part a tribute to Murphy, because as soon as you write a "this is what they might do" post for the end of the week, the talent revamp drops on your doorstep. Before I get started, I'd like to point out a few things. First off, I have this little blog on the side where I'll be writing small mathy bits, other ramblings and talking about Operation TotemSpot, the concept site that has sprung up as a result of the shaman roundtable podcast that was recorded recently. Speaking of that, Raidwarning now has the podcast up, so you can listen to Joe, Rich and myself talking about our chosen specs. So, how about those apples talent trees, eh? I'm sure you've seen them by now (and if not, go click the link!). Obviously there are a bunch of changes, and I completely missed half of them. I also wrote that last week in preparation for my first WoW.com article, but for once, the Blizzard "Soon"(TM) is sooner rather than later.
Totem Talk: The elemental talent tree revamp
Welcome to the first-ever article on WoW.com by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. So unless you live under a rock somewhere or are completely obsessed by all the Real ID drama recently (huzzah for the final outcome!), you've heard that the talent trees and mastery system are being completely revamped. (Would you like to know more?) What will the changes for our beloved elemental spec be? (Or in a topic-based-on-a-song version, Should I Stay or Should I Go?) Looking at the current Cataclysm preview/beta information, there are 26 talents and over 11 tiers, comprising 76 talent points. If we assume that there will be two or three talents per level, we're looking at 13 to 19 talents overall, with at least 31 points. Exactly how the secondary tree stuff will work is a guess at this stage.
Totem Talk: Cataclysm beta impressions
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast The excitement from this past week and the Real ID fiasco seems to be finally calming down, so I think it is safe to talk about other things. On July 13, Rich Maloy , Matt Sampson and myself will be appearing in a pre-recorded episode of RaidWarning's podcast. They put together a shaman roundtable by the name of Totem Recall. It was a ton of fun to record, and there were a lot of people from around the WoW community who joined us. For the restoration section, I joined Jhaman of Castaclysm, fellow Zul'jin dweller Borsk from Borsked, Vixsin from Life in Group 5, Pewter from The 'Mental Shaman and even the shaman crew from Elitist Jerks. We had a lot of fun not only answering reader questions, but just getting to sit down and talk to each other while sharing ideas and comparing notes. If you get the chance, make sure to download it when it becomes available and give it a listen; should be a good time! The Cataclysm beta has been going pretty strong now, with news trickling in from various sources. If you haven't heard, a new round of invites for the beta will be going out soon. While you keep checking your email and Battle.net pages, I thought I would share some of what I have seen healing the first few instances and doing a little questing.
Totem Talk: Enhance DPS on the move
Rich Maloy, master of the turn-around-Frost-Shock, nerd-rager of the Big Crits (week 7 coming next week), and blogger of the enhancement variety prides himself on keeping the pressure on the boss at all times. He encourages you to work on your turn-around jump shot this week. I love being melee. I love being up in the middle of the fray right on the boss' heel, breathing in the fumes of battle and mashing my abilities as fast as global cooldowns will allow. But the cost of being in the heart of the action are cleaves. And whirlwinds. And tail swipes, dragon breaths, shock vortexes, running around the room chasing ads, and oh yeah, dodging cleaves. Did I mention whirlwinds yet? Granted, there's not as much hate on melee in Wrath as there was in The Burning Crusade, but our DPS is still limited by time on target. We are after all, melee. Yet the great thing about enhance is when we're not in melee range, we can still lob some spells and drop some fire bombs all while running around dodging those whirlwinds. It was Sindragosa's Permeating Chill that first got me thinking about maximizing my damage output while I'm not doing melee attacks. Also, her Blistering Cold got me wondering about ways to keep damage on boss even while running in the complete opposite direction. What follows are some of my simple strategies for maximizing time on target and keeping the damage pumping even while running around.
Totem Talk: Revitalizing the Ruby Sanctum
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast There has been a ton of excitement this past week with the announcement of the Cataclysm beta starting. Everyone has been refreshing their emails and logging into their Battle.net accounts compulsively checking for invites. I can't say I blame them; I know Rich and I are doing the same. So while everyone has been getting excited about Cataclysm, we have almost forgotten that we have some new content to play with. Ruby Sanctum was released and it marks not only the last official raid zone of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but it is also a part of the prequel events leading up to Cataclysm. The Ruby Sanctum is the sacred grounds of the red dragons, and it has been invaded by the Twilight Dragonflight. You and your friends must travel forth into the sanctuary of the red dragons and purge the invaders from its insides. We have already discussed drops that a restoration shaman could find useful; now let us talk about some strategy and healing. So grab your totems and get ready to drub some dragons!
Totem Talk: Ruby Sanctum loot for enhancement
Rich Maloy subsists solely on enhancement air. He experiences shortness of breath when offered spellpower gear and is easily confused by spirit and MP5. You can ask him anything about enhance at the Totem Recall roundtable or watch his WoW reality series, Big Crits. In case you missed it in all the news about the Cataclysm beta, Ruby Sanctum was released into the wild on Tuesday. With a new instance out everyone is asking, "What's in it for me?" But my question is, "What's in it for enhancement?" The short answer is ArP. For a stat that's going away in a few months, we're seeing a lot of it in Ruby Sanctum gear from both the 10- and 25-man versions of the raid. Armor penetration (ArP) is not the ideal stat for enhancement. Not ideal, but definitely usable. There are some definite winners among the RS loot -- on both 10 and 25. I've created a new enhance gear spreadsheet on Google Docs including the new loot. It's read-only, so either make a copy to your Google Docs file or save a copy to your desktop as an Excel file. I've also included some sample EP values for different levels of play, including EP values derived from the latest Elitist Jerks BiS gear, setup and rotation.
Totem Talk: Restoration mail bag
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast Last week we talked about one of most useful and versatile addons available to any player and discussed how it can be helpful for a restoration shaman. Prior to that, Rich Maloy had a fantastic write-up about using the very same addon for enhancement. This week, I thought I would do something a little different. Lately there has been quite a bit of email coming my way with questions regarding addons, shaman mechanics and making the switch to restoration. Part of my goal has ever been to provide information to players whether they are just starting out or just need a few things clarified. So this week I wanted to take some time to recover from USA's getting eliminated from the World Cup and answer some questions from readers. So, let us dive right into it, shall we?
Totem Talk: Cooldown management in ICC part 2
Rich Maloy lives and loves enhancement. Enhance is his main spec, his off spec, and his off-off spec. The other trees are there purely for his amusement. Whatever your shaman's spec, get your questions ready for the Totem Recall shaman roundtable on Raid Warning coming July 13. Send your questions in now to be answered by the top shaman from around Azeroth. Last week we covered the Lower Spire of ICC and how enhancement shaman (or any damage-dealing class, for that matter) can maximize their cooldown usage. This week we'll use the 25% buff and power-clear the rest of the instance. Rotface Regular and Heroic Another fight where Heroism off the start is the best way to go. The oozes come out faster the lower his health gets, so my theory is to get as much damage on target early on. At the end, things are hectic and too much damage is lost as too many people are running around or dead. You can pre-pot here to have another Potion of Speed available to use later on in combat. An early Hero makes cooldown management easy; use at the beginning and then again at every opportunity.
Totem Talk: Power Auras for restoration
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast Last week's discussion of Dual Wield restoration was a good follow up to our discussion of the official shaman talent preview. Everyone had lots of great opinions on the topic and there was some good speculation on other things the community would like to see happen as Cataclysm comes closer to being released. This week I would like to revisit a topic we covered briefly in part 2 of the restoration addon discussion, Power Auras Classic. If you remember last month Matthew McCurley did a fantastic write up in Addon Spotlight on this mod and earlier this month Rich Maloy did a great write up on basic power auras for enhancement shaman. So this week I would like to expand a little bit more about the usefulness of this addon in the hands of a healing shaman.
Totem Talk: Cooldown management in the Lower Spire
Axes, maces, lightning, fire, frost, 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/reality-show Big Crits as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. (pic: grats Saltycracker on Big Crits' first Shadowmourne!) This article originally started as an enhancement shaman's guide to cooldown usage in ICC but given that cooldown management is universal to all damage dealers I've expanded the scope of the article. Actually, "expanded the scope" is a bit grandiose; it's more accurate to say I just changed the wording from enhance-specific spells to using the generic 3-min, 2-min and 1-min cooldowns. In some cases I kept the enhancement abilities because they bring other abilities in addition to just straight damage. Here's a quick rundown of our major cooldowns for the unenhanced: 10 min – Bloodlust/Heroism – you know it and love it 10 min – Fire Ele (5 min with glyph) – yeah he's dumb but what do you expect, his brains are on fire 3 min – Berserk & Bloodfury – Troll & Orc racials, respectively 3 min – Feral Spirit – two wolves who do damage and heal you simultaneously. Rad. 2 min – on-use Trinkets – Currently my trinkets are not on-use but I take them into account in case yours are 1 min – Shamanistic Rage with t10 2pc – normally this is a mana-regeneration and damage-reduction spell but with 2pc t10 it increases damage. I still talk about using Bloodlust/Heroism, Fire Ele, and Shammy Rage because they have their own unique aspects to deal with in raid. Namely, BL/Hero helps everyone, the Fire Ele is dumb as hell, and Shammy Rage mitigates damage.
Totem Talk: A weapon in every healing hand?
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast Were you excited about the talent tree preview Blizzard gave us? We got to talk about it a little bit some of the upcoming changes (or lack thereof) and see a little bit about what is in our futures. Since the release of the preview speculation and planning has been running wild. One of the more interesting topics that has come up quite often, Dual Wield restoration. It was always one of the more interesting specs proposed, but in patch 3.1 Blizzard made all the good spell power weapons main hand only. This reduced the viability of the spec, and has since been looked upon with a fond adoration like the memory of a lost love. Now however, it just may be that this mythical spec may be viable again come Cataclysm.
