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Cataclysm Talent Preview: Enhancement shaman
With the release of the Shaman talent tree came some big news for enhancement, some new spells, and a request from Blizzard for feedback. What are we enhancers looking at with the talent changes in Cataclysm? Other than some rearranging of the clothes in the closet there are some notable new talents: Focused Strikes Ancestral Swiftness Searing Flames Totemic Vigor Improved Lava Lash What did Ghostcrawler have to say? How do the new talents play out?
Totem Talk: Restoration addons, part 3
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 In April we talked about addons and macros that were focused on restoration shaman. We highlighted some staple addons and some useful macros for a variety of situations. In May, I tipped my hat to Power Auras Classic and pointed out the interaction between Totem Radius and AVR/AVRE. Shortly after that second addon post, news arose that AVR was going to be killed in the next major patch to hit servers. While I've never been one to rely solely on mods, it did make totem placement a lot easier and was pretty useful. In the end, though, it empowered players too much and so must be dealt with. Since that news dropped, I have been going through reader email about addons and mods as well as combing through all the various choices available. So today, I would like to bring you part 3 of our restoration addon discussion.
Totem Talk: Basic Power Auras for enhancement
Rich Maloy developed a location-aware, augmented-reality GuinnessAura application for his DROID that would automatically guide him to the nearest bar with perfectly poured pints while simultaneous putting 10 yard radius red warning rings in virtual space around the attractive women in said bar. His girlfriend declared it a little too close to a "do everything and go everywhere this app tells you to" and subsequently broke it. Thankfully Rich has an innate sense for well poured pints--and only that, baby, I swear. In an ongoing effort to spend my extremely limited time doing things that aren't critically important, I undertook some UI tweaking. Granted, everyone that watches Big Crits is subject to my UI, so I do try to keep it clean enough for the show but functional enough to play and raid lead. I wanted to replace the memory-hog Shock and Awe with the lighter and more configurable Power Auras. Surprisingly it wasn't that difficult, and so after just over an hour I had auras set up for Maelstrom Weapon, Lightning Shield, and Water Shield. To get Shock and Awe setup to display MW counts, shield status, and other enhancement-specific items is very easy: open the options panel and enable the ones you want. I wrote about Shock and Awe a few months back, wherein my poor choice of font was quickly noted. The plus side of SaA is its ease of use and quick setup, the downside is the limited customization and massive amounts of memory. Besides, it's well established that using the SaA priority system is a net dps loss for experienced enhancement players. Once you learn your enhancement rotation the priority window is nothing but a distraction. I wasn't using the priority system in SaA. I was only using the bars for MW, wolves, and shields so I could replace it with something better. After the break we'll dive in to a basic enhancement shaman Power Auras setup as well as some good suggestions from the WoW Twitter crew for more information on shaman UIs and PA setups.
Totem Talk: For the love of PvP
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 In the last few weeks we have talked about Icecrown Citadel and various boss encounters found inside. We have gone over upcoming talent changes that were discovered through a small leak, and we talked about macros, addons and even more addons, and we even got a glimpse at some new potential swag from the Ruby Sanctum. It has been a busy couple of months. There are still a number of changes coming that we can look forward to. One of the more anticipated items is rated battlegrounds. When it was first announced, a lot of people became quite excited about this idea. Back when the arena format was released, some people simply did not care for it. They were people who either did not have the time to commit to being competitive in arenas or simply don't like the format. There is still a large number of people who like PvP and prefer battlegrounds, but in order to get to the good PvP gear, they are required to have an arena rating. The idea of a rated battleground helps to bridge the gap and provide a way for those that would prefer to work in the larger battles found in battlegrounds to be able to work towards that high-end PvP gear. This is for the healing shaman looking to get ready for rated battlegrounds and wondering what we have to offer besides healing.
Totem Talk: Enhancement trinkets
Currently Stoneybaby is trying to come up with witty article titles and failing miserably due to a splitting headache, so "Enhancement X" will have to suffice for this week. And yes Rich Maloy lives and loves enhancement. 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 (Week 4 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. Since last week's weapons column went off with slightly less trolling than normal, I'm going to push my luck with another article about gearing. Today's topic: trinkets. Trinkets are not nearly as hard to acquire as weapons. Unless of course the RNG gods hate you and Death's Choice/Verdict drops only once in your guild in all of the god-forsaken months you spend in ToC and the first time it dropped you passed to a hunter who really needed the upgrade and you thought to yourself I'll be a good leader and let someone else win because it will drop again and I'll get it next time only it doesn't drop again ever and you're convinced the RNG gods do in fact hate you so you wrap yourself in your towel and rock yourself gently to sleep. Thinking back on that, maybe trinkets are a bit hard to acquire. Thankfully for us, one of enhancement's best-in-slot trinkets is very easy to come by.
Totem Talk: Restoration and Ruby Sanctum drops
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 a bit about some addons that you may have found useful as a restoration shaman. Sadly though, shortly after that post, news broke that AVR/AVRE would be going away in patch 3.3.5. The addon did some things that Blizzard was just not too happy about. The week was not filled with all bad news, though. We have had some amazing Cataclysm screenshots every day, Rich Maloy had an awesome post on enhancement weapons and the loot tables for Ruby Sanctum 25-man and 10-man have been slightly updated. There are still no heroic mode items yet, but there seems to be a fair amount of loot shaping up for restoration shaman in the normal mode alone. Keep in mind that this is still on the PTR and subject to change, but let us take a peek at what sort of itemization we can look forward to in the next content patch.
Totem Talk: Enhancement weapons
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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 3 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. As a melee class, weapons are our most important items. Not surprisingly, good weapons (emphasis on "good") can't be bought with emblems and only drop off a select few bosses, with the best weapons dropping off the hardest bosses. While trinkets can be hard to acquire (Death's Choice/Verdict is a lie!), you can fill in the gaps with emblems or even some subpar trinket choices and not have as big an impact on overall damage as a good weapon. Nothing beats a big stick. Today we're looking at enhancement weapon options in dungeons, plus Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel in 10s and 25s, regular and heroic. I am skipping over Naxx, OS, EoE, Ulduar, and Ony because it seems to me that it's far easier to get in and gear up in a ToC/ToGC PuG these days than any other raid. There are some good weapon choice in those older raids, but even starting out as a fresh 80 you should find ToC-10 PuGs doable. Let's dive in to our weapon options.
Totem Talk: Addons for restoration, part 2
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. Not too long ago, we talked a bit about helpful macros and addons for the restoration-minded shaman. That post was full of great comments from the community and some great advice about macros and addons that you, the readers, use to great effect. Since then, I've had quite a few emails about various mods as well as some time to try out a good many of them myself. So today will be a part two to the addon and macro post, but without the macro part. Over the last few weeks, I've been playing around with various new mods and some old ones and thought I would take the time to share my findings with you.
Totem Talk: Hasteybaby
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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 2 now out, Week 3 coming!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. Haste. It's the killer stat for enhancement shamans in end-game raiding. In the beginning of the expansion, the killer stat seemed to be attack power, and it continued to maintain dominance through Ulduar. Around ToC (i245) level of gearing, we could choose between AP stacking and haste stacking. Personally I tended toward AP stacking until midway through ToGC, when I ran some sims and realized haste will be the killer stat for Stoneybaby going forward. Why is that? Let's take a look at haste and how it affects our damage output. For starters, let's use the ICC equivalent of Patchwerk (at least for melee), Deathbringer Saurfang. This is a fight where we get to stand in one place and only focus on our rotation while the ranged go crazy with picking up, slowing, DPSing and evading angry blood beasts. While the healers frantically watch the marks, the paladins call out the bubble rotation and the tanks scream at the ranged about Saurfang's ever-increasing blood power.
Totem Talk: Prelude to restoration's new talents
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. Back at the beginning of April, we were treated to the Cataclysm preview for all of the classes. Many people were excited, some were disappointed, but everyone had news to digest. This past week has seen the Cataclysm friends and family alpha start and since then, we have seen a plethora of leaks: everything from images of the changes to old zones and new instances up to some data-mined information about female worgen. Needless to say, it has been a pretty busy week. This last week has also seen a lot of discussion about the leaked talent trees as they are in the alpha now. I thought now would be a good time to take a break from boss talks to talk about what we know so far about the shaman talent trees and maybe find out your opinions on them as well. The information in the link above is leaked and is in no way official. If you are waiting for an official release or don't want to see any potential spoilers, don't click the link. Otherwise let us take a look at some of the potential changes.
Totem Talk: Restoration in The Frostwing Halls
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. You have broken down the front door, taken out the Lich King's chief physician and beaten down his vampire cadre into a sparkling pulp. Now it is time to take out the Lich King's aerial core by heading into The Frostwing Halls and taking out some Frost Wyrms. You've seen them everywhere in this expansion and with good reason. The Lich King has been raising an army of these former dragons to do his bidding. They range everywhere from Icecrown, as you would expect, but are also everywhere from the Howling Fjord to Sholozar Basin. These creatures are raised from the bodies of dragons from both the Blue Dragonflight that have been defeated by the scourge as well as any dragon remains found in the Dragonblight. These twisted forms have no memories of their previous lives nor of the world beyond death. They are intelligent beings capable of strategy, tactics and deception, but their lack of memories of their former life, combined with their unwavering desire to serve their dark master with all the power available to them, makes them very difficult opponents. The goal here is to take out their queen and the last obstacle between you and the leader of the scourge.
Totem Talk: Leveling enhancement 71-80
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 at Big Hit Box, pens the enhance side of Totem Talk, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 2 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. We're in the home stretch now: Northrend. Once we hit our max level I'll throw out some recommendations dungeon, raiding, and PvP specs. Though admittedly I'm not the best PvPer so you'll have to bear with me on that and add in your recommendations in the comments. But that all comes at level 80 and we last left off at level 70 with a spec of 9/52/0. This spec still includes the Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem, but if you find you're tearing apart mobs and barely getting touched I recommend replacing that with Glyph of Stormstrike for the extra nature damage. Let's dive in and continue!
Totem Talk: Restoration in The Crimson Halls
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. Two weeks ago, we walked into Icecrown Citadel and took out the first line of defenses that the Lich King had put in place. Last week, we went though The Plague Works, toppling Tweedledee and Tweedledumb and showed the Professor the follies of potion abuse. This week, we are going to play with some vampires. Now these vampires do not sparkle, but they can still be quite annoying. These are the San'layn, a subsection of the Darkfallen, and the Crimson Halls is where their leadership calls home. There have been several seen throughout the history Azeroth and they are quite instrumental in overseeing the Scourge's operations. In the halls we get to face three princes and their dark queen. As before, this is not an end all, be all guide. These are simply my opinions and thoughts on these bosses. There are several ways to do them, and I encourage you to find ones that work for you. So let us take a look, shall we?
Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 61-70
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. We left off last week with the spec 0/51/0 and already killing boars in Outland. Comments from last week were mostly opposed to my advice to go WF/FT for weapon imbues, saying that it's best to wait until more elemental talents are added before leaving WF/WF behind. I can see their point, but can't imagine that either way is going to make a significant impact in terms of time lost due to deaths or slower kills. My rationale for WF/FT is that its likely you're facing off against higher level mobs than your current level which may take a bit more to whack down. This means more DoT ticks from Flame Shock, more Maelstrom Weapon procs, and more Earth Shocks, and thus a healthier balance between physical and magical damage. Regardless of you off-hand imbue of choice, we're really in the heart of enhancement right now. After hitting 60 we get spell upgrades every level instead of every other level, but the exciting talents and spells are already in our books so there's not much new and fun stuff happening.
Totem Talk: Restoration in the Plagueworks
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. So you've bested the bony boy, defeated the dour devil, played pirate and defeated the Lich King's cherished champion. Last week we took you through The Lower Spire with some tips and a look at each boss. This week, your sights are firmly set on the next challenge. The next stop on your journey will take you into the citadel's plague wing. Don't let the name fool you; this is no Naxxramas. As before, this is not a complete raid strategy, just some tips and tricks for the restoration shaman heading into the breach.
Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 41-60
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. As we get deeper into levels, the new spells from trainers taper off and we start to pick up all the fun stuff from talent points. In the next 20 levels we're going to finish out the enhancement tree, pick up some great talents and have a ton of fun blowing up elite mobs. But before we get there. we do have to get out of the level 40 doldrums. We left off with one point in dual wield and a spec of 0/31/0. At this point, you're probably missing as much as you're hitting with dual wield. If you were to spend one more level with a two-hander or a one-hander + shield, no one would fault you for it. It's really only at level 43 that enhancement starts to take off. Let's dive in and continue.
Totem Talk: Restoration entering Icecrown Citadel
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. I think we can safely say that it has been an interesting week. We have received a lot of news about what is to come in the near future, and man was it a lot! I know I talked about them a lot, but the changes are really almost everything we could possibly ask for. OK, I'll stop gushing about them for now. Last week we talked about addons and macros and I'm happy to say there was a lot of good feedback in the comments. Thank you to everyone who responded and contributed. Today I'd like to focus on the current content again and begin talking about making your way through ICC as a restoration shaman. This will not be an all-out strategy guide, as there are many of those already around. Instead this is going to be specific tips and tricks for the encounters you will face and each unique challenge ahead of you and your raid. This will not just focus on 25 man content, but will be things you can use for both 10 and 25 man content. Heroic will be it's own animal for another time.
Cataclysm Class Changes: Enhancement Shaman Analysis
Today is a good day to be a shaman. Actually, it will be an even better day when Cataclysm hits, based on the initial changes we were shown today. There are some very exciting things coming down the pipeline for us enhancers. While I'm not keen on all of the changes, the stuff that I don't like is rather minor and everything else looks like it will be fun. Let's dive in and see what they have in store for enhancement when the world is torn asunder!
Cataclysm Class Changes: Elemental Shaman Analysis
How good are the elemental shaman changes Blizzard announced today? So good that even longtime elemental detractor Matt Rossi is ready to break down and spec elemental in Cataclysm, that's the long and short of it. Some of these proposed changes sound so crazy-awesome that he says he'll finally give in and go dual DPS with his specs. Here's just one reason why. Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it's necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown. source So you're saying that I could make it so Lava Burst, Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt don't stop casting when I move? This could be absolutely huge for casting spells in high avoidable-damage situations. Imagine Defile is about to cast and you know it. You hit Spiritwalker's Grace and you can run away without losing that Lava Burst you're casting. Sure, it'll be huge for healing shaman too, but frankly this ability will solve one of my biggest problems with elemental as a playstyle: all the damage you lose jumping out of things. The longer cooldown means this'll be a situational ability as opposed to making you an unstoppable chain-casting machine, but the 10-second duration means you'll have plenty of time to get a few casts off before it ends. There's more, though. Much more.
Totem Talk: Restoration addons and macros
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. We have come a fair distance so far, starting from the basics up through last week, when we talked about haste and its use to a raiding restoration shaman. Today I would like to discuss macros and addons for the restoration-minded shaman. Macros have been in the game for a long time, and over the course of years, they have changed to allow or deny certain functions. The same can be said for the various addons that have existed over the life of the game. There are some addons and macros that can be particularly useful to you as a restoration shaman.
