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Totem Talk: Elemental 101
Melee combat? Barbaric. Healing? How pedestrian. Let the elements do the talking. Totem Talk: Elemental. Brought to you by Mike Sacco. If you're here and reading this, you've probably decided that elemental will be one of your shaman's two possible specs and you want to get a good grasp of how it all works before you dive in. The maiden voyage of Totem Talk's Elemental edition is intended to tell you everything you need to know to get started as one of the game's simplest specs, from mechanics to gearing to rotation. What it isn't intended to be the is be-all-end-all of Elemental theorycrafting. We'll delve into more complex stuff later on. Let's get started!
Totem Talk: Fire Nova
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. This week, Matthew Rossi talks about Fire Nova, his absolute favorite new ability in quite some time. Boom! The hastily cobbled together screenshot above really only gives you a small taste of the awesome that is Fire Nova. The old Fire Nova totem was okay... you'd drop it on big AoE packs if you could do so, but for a lot of shamans, sacrificing their active fire totem to so so was a lot to ask. The genius of Fire Nova, the new ability, is of course that it works with any fire totem you have. You're a restoration shaman with a Frost Resist totem down up close to the melee on Sapphiron? Well, our first question could be "Why are you still running Sapphiron?" but we'll assume it's a weekly raid thing. Anyway, even that Frost Resistance totem can now provide some damage! I'm not saying waste your mana on DPS if it's a tight thing, mind you, I'm just saying that if you found yourself healing a fight you way overgeared you can pop a couple of FN's in there to liven things up. Yeah, okay, this happened to me. It was boring! Where Fire Nova has really shined for me, though, is running a modified Enhancement set-up. Now, granted, some of the DPS I'm seeing from this has also come from getting a few upgrades to my gear set, but in tight AoE situations I'm seeing Fire Nova as a solid 2nd on the DPS chart, just behind melee attacks.
Totem Talk: Goodbyes
First off, yes, I'm leaving Totem Talk. It's been a good ride, and no, I'm not quitting the shaman class nor WoW.com. You'll still see me around on Know Your Lore and The Care and Feeding of Warriors for the foreseeable future, and I'll be writing Totem Talks until we have a replacement. The reason I'm leaving Totem Talk is simple: I don't think I'm giving enough coverage to all the different specs and playstyles anymore, and frankly I don't want to have to try and respec every few days to catch up on spec mechanics for roles I don't want to play. For some classes I play, this isn't an issue, but I'm straight up never ever going to like elemental as a spec or a playstyle. I'm not a ranged DPS player, I never was, I never will be. There's a big difference between personal preference and a spec not being good, mind you. I don't dislike elemental, I simply don't like standing in the back and casting as my DPS role. So I'm out, and we'll have new people come in and cover the class. I'll still be playing my shaman, healing and stormstriking my way through content. I still love the class, and I'm always going to play one as long as I'm playing WoW. Before I go on to talk about the highlights of my two plus years of covering shamans for WoW.com (and WoW Insider before that), I do want to say that the Tier 10 bug that causes a seven day lockout just floors me. It's the kind of bug you'd almost expect to see on elemental shaman gear, frankly. If I were an egomaniac (well, more of one) I'd almost think this was done for me as a fitting tribute as I depart. Here's hoping it gets fixed soon. And now, my favorite Totem Talk moments.
Totem Talk: The Shaman of 2009
2009 has been a year of almost continuous changes for shamans. It seems that not a patch has gone by without some changes to the class, some major, some not so severe. The class has seen mysterious DPS shortfalls, a minor controversy about health in PvP that then carried over into PvE content with the high levels of AoE damage in Ulduar with patch 3.1. Flametongue Weapon saw changes to prevent enhancement shamans from using caster weapons. Resto got a fairly substantial review and some significant tweaks. Elemental also saw some talents redesigned. While all of this was going on, shamans also saw some controversy about itemization, gear scaling and having to share caster mail between two specs that value different stats, as well as the constant battle with holy paladins to keep their grubby, grasping mitts off of our mail. Yeah, we know you don't want that MP5 plate, but since you're the only ones who can possibly get anything out of it, go away and leave our precious alone. (Cue the pages of discussion on why it's perfectly acceptable for holy paladins to take caster mail and explanations in detail of why I'm an inhuman monster who drowns fish. Yes, fish, That's how evil I am.) Now that we've got the pleasantries out of the way (remind me to tell you the story of the year my mom beat Santa Claus up in front of the extended family) we move on to shamans in 2009.
Totem Talk: Patch 3.3 and shamans, part 2 -- How not to PUG
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. With the new Random Dungeons and Dungeon Finder, healing has never been more in demand, and shamans find themselves faced with the dilemma: do I wait 10 minutes and go as DPS, or get instantly invited by being willing to heal? Matthew Rossi is impatient and terrifyingly willing to heal random strangers. Ah, the Pick Up Group. Long a staple of our gameplay in WoW, patch 3.3 revolutionized the way we do it with the new dungeon finder, giving us incentives to put up with fury warriors who rush the tank, ret paladins who forget to turn Righteous Fury off, and runs consisting of two DK's, a paladin, a warrior and a shaman where people ask the shaman if he's tanking. (Hint, he wasn't.) Other things the shaman will not be doing in a PUG include making a summoning portal, a mage table (it's got mage in the name what is wrong with you), casting combat res on the tank when he dies, summoning Army of the Dead (seriously, I can understand being frustrated that someone cast that and it dragged the trash around, but shamans do not generally summon forth armies of walking corpses), washing your laundry (that's just gross), making a pinhole camera, performing a complicated medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest showtunes (unless you catch me in a really good mood), or casting Divine Intervention. Sure, I realize these are all fine things, and it's a shame that the shaman or shamans in your group won't be able to do them. That being said, shamans do bring all sorts of fun things to PUG's. Things like hybrid magical/physical DPS, caster DPS, or healing, a plethora of totem buffs, a cornucopia of ancillary benefits like Unleashed Rage, Totem of Wrath, and of course Sentry Totem. I know that's really why you bring us, it's okay.
Totem Talk: Patch 3.3 and shamans, part 1
Totem Talk is the column for shamans,. Matthew Rossi ran ICC twice this week and will probably run it on 10 man twice more, and yet managed to take possibly the worst screenshot of all time, which he shares with you above,. Can you find the three shamans, including himself, in it? He sure as heck couldn't. But it's got a skunk bear up front. That's nice. It's been an interesting week all told. The new five mans and new raid are out (well, first four bosses of new raid, anyway... having both tanked and been melee DPS on Deathbringer Saurfang, I have to say, it's an interesting mechanic but I'm already heartily sick of Blood Power, and I don't look forward to healing it) and we're seeing a couple of new mechanics and a new set of shorter cooldowns. I have to say, so far I really like the reduced cooldowns on our elemental totems. Now all they need is a pet bar, and not to die in two hits from any mob in sight. (I exaggerate slightly. Very slightly.) There's a lot to cover (I plan on going back to discussing shaman itemization and design in the future, especially since I'll be on the WoW Insider podcast this week with Sacco and Holisky so it'll be three dudes who love shamans going back and forth... you should listen... I think Totem of Wrath and its issues compared to Warlock debuffs might come up) so let's just get to it, shall we?
Totem Talk: On unique gearing and gear consolidation
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Matthew Rossi is a vampire robot from beyond the stars who came to Earth to learn the true meaning of love and to write columns about shamans. Seriously, it was in my alien creator's first lines of code when they programmed me. "Drink human blood, write shaman column." The love thing was somewhere around the second packet of directives. Last week on Totem Talk, we jumped our cherried out Dodge Charger out of a warehouse before it exploded and then complained that we were too old for this kind of thing to our reckless younger partner. We're supposed to retire in a few days, we informed him. There may also have been some discussion about shaman itemization in there. I'll have to check the credits later to make sure. The main issues with shaman itemization are more complex than can be easily summarized: many commenters correctly pointed out, for instance, that I was giving short shrift to enhancement's constant struggle to stay both hit and expertise capped (in fact, even calling them caps instead of targets shows that I'm not going into full detail) since the changes to the spec implemented with Wrath of the Lich King. Basically, one of the issues here is the very hybridization of the class: since now enhancement has become a spec that uses both spell damage and melee strikes, it has to hew to both spell hit rating levels (which are generally higher than melee targets) and stats like expertise, which is only useful for melee. Shamans are interesting in that they are a hybrid class more in their playstyles than in terms of roles: like priests and warriors, shamans are only two of the three possible roles, being either healers or DPS. We can of course quibble about the nature of DPS, and if 'ranged DPS' and 'melee DPS' are distinct enough roles to be divided in focus. I personally believe they are, based on watching my guild struggle to recruit ranged and being thick on the ground with melee. But as a result of having two damage specs and one healing spec, shamans have a lot of cross-hybridization conflict built into their itemization.
Totem Talk: Shaman Itemization resists a clever title
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. This installment sees Matthew Rossi contemplating the incoming influx of gear and how current itemization affects shamans. Also, sorry but you get Alliance shamans this week. I can't wait until I can race change to a dwarf. The thing is this: I hate doing gear lists. My editors (I like to imagine them as an old Marvel Comics cosmic entity like The Living Tribunal) quite rightly point out to me from time to time that with Patch 3.3 so close, we're effectively at the end of Wrath of the Lich King and therefore all sorts of new loot will be entering the game. Loot from the new five mans at Ulduar 10/25 quality! Loot from the new raid exceeding all previous iLevels! We'll be awash in the best gear we'll ever see until Cataclysm drops and we start it all over again. And of course they're right. It helps me to accept this if I imagine that cosmic entity spinning a giant head around with different faces on it like Reliquary of Souls. (No, sorry, we didn't call it Reliquary of Souls all those weeks just to be corrected by Blizzard. Heck, you guys even brought it back in Icecrown.) The next couple of weeks, however, I'm going to look not at gear but at itemization itself and how it interacts with shamans. I was inspired by the change to Elemental Mastery, the talent in the elemental combat tree that currently grants 15% crit when activated as well as making your next spell instant cast. On the surface, this doesn't look like a bad talent all told, so why would we even want to change it? Because of the way shaman talents and spells interact, an extra 15% chance to crit is somewhat useless to an elemental shaman. Specifically, we're talking about Flame Shock and Lava Burst. Because of these two spells and their interaction, elemental shamans can basically crit every eight seconds or so. They can guarantee an Elemental Focus clearcasting state to reduce mana cost by 40%. Stacking crit doesn't really do anything for them: they're going to crit anyway. Most of the elemental tree has synergy with spell haste in comparison, with abilities like Lightning Mastery and Storm, Earth and Fire already reducing cast time on various spells.
Totem Talk: Leveling on the 68-80 express
Totem Talk, the column for shamans, finishes up its roundup/overview/update (it's all these things and more!) of shaman leveling with a look at what you'll be doing once you get off the boat to Northrend. Matthew Rossi is tired now, but would like to thank Steve again for the screenshot accompanying today's article. And so we arrive at Northrend, able to take the quests and explore the new zones. We've talked about faction rewards and instance gearing for shamans in Northrend before, and for the most part that still holds true. Here's a look back at the posts about the various five man instances and zone rewards: Dragonblight and Azjol-Nerub Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, and the Troll instances CoT Stratholme and Halls of Stone/Lightning Utgarde Keep, the Oculus (spelled correctly, but really, if I misspelled it what's Sacco gonna do, arm wrestle me? We all know how that would go) and the heroic versions of Utgarde Pinnacle/The Nexus. The only real changes in terms of 5 man instances are the introduction of Trial of the Champion and Heroic TotC, and to my astonishment I've never done a gear list for shamans from TotC. That really is kind of astonishing. It's possible I simply lost track since I was in the middle of a vast discussion of Ulduar gear when TotC was on the horizon, but it's still a pretty big oversight. With another set of new five mans dropping alongside the Icecrown raid in patch 3.3, TotC/Heroic TotC 5 are instances any new 80 should be running to get geared up in anticipation of 3.3. So we'll talk about that gear today.
Totem Talk: From Scarlet Monastery to Outland
This week on Totem Talk we're going to continue the leveling with coverage of going from level 41 (so actually a little beyond SM, but "Razorfen Downs to Outland" or "Uldaman to Outland" didn't really have the same zing) to level 68, which is the level at which you can board the boat to Northrend. Some basic things to consider before getting to the meat of things. It is this writer's opinion that these are the levels that really define your spec and role. It's in the 40's that you can actually have enough talents and have trained enough skills that the real potential of each spec comes through: your elemental shaman actually feels and plays significantly differently than your dual wielding enhancement shaman, and while both can still heal, resto really starts pulling ahead here. Shamans were originally designed as 'offensive hybrids' to balance out the paladin's 'defensive hybrid' nature. Since shamans and paladins are no longer designed in opposition those roles have blurred somewhat, but elements of the original intent still show through. Keep in mind that two of the three shaman trees are DPS oriented, and at these levels the fact that one is a ranged DPS while the other is melee will not seem as distinctive as those roles become in raiding/instancing. Gear will start to drop in Outland that is more optimal for individual shaman specs. Before then, mail with spell power and/or MP5 is still somewhat rare on the ground in Azeroth outside of the various instance blues that drop. You're just going to have to work around it, annoying as it is. Shamans are pretty bloody flexible. I have a friend (Hi Will) who has leveled an orc shaman to 80 as resto, and is working on an alliance shaman as well. Again as resto. And he kills things just fine. It's slower, yes, but it can work, so if you have a spec you really like don't despair of leveling with it as a shaman. Okay, now to talk about what you'll be doing for 28 levels.
Totem Talk: The elusive shaman tank
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Matthew Rossi has found himself healing endless heroics in a conscious decision to improve his healing gear before 3.3 drops. Meanwhile, other shamans are apparently doing something else... This week, we at WoW.com have received multiple tips about tanking shamans. Several commenters linked to this post over at Righteous Defense discussing Sharicasmi, a shaman tank. I was disinclined to talk about it, first because I already play a couple of tanks as it is and because I feel like shamans have enough going on as melee DPS, caster DPS and healers. Do shamans really need to tank? Three out of the four possible roles in an instance isn't enough for them? But then I thought about it from the other angle. Two of our hybrids can heal, tank and DPS, and one of those hybrids can heal, tank, melee DPS and ranged DPS. While elemental and enhancement are very different in terms of how they play and what they do, they're still both DPS, they just go about it differently. Am I dismissing the idea of a tanking shaman too soon? Should I be more open? In the end, I decided to let you as readers make the judgment call instead of me. If this many people are sending in the link, it deserves to be discussed. So let's discuss shaman tanking's historical roots and why it is a hard road to hoe for anyone playing at 80.
Totem Talk: Patch 3.3 PTR Roundup Madness
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Matthew Rossi has been eying the PTR with an eye towards what path his shaman will take as we march on Icecrown. This week we talk about it.Before I say anything else, let me reassure elemental shamans, your Tier 10 relic is going to have haste instead of crit. Coming from someone who is at best a middling elemental shaman, even I knew that crit isn't terribly compelling to a spec that can force a crit whenever it wants. We covered the relics the other day, but I wanted to make sure to go over that change in case anyone was scratching their head at a crit totem for a spec that doesn't really need it anymore. Yesterday's changes on the PTR weren't terribly expansive, so let's reproduce the relevant ones here. Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 50 minutes (Improved Reincarnation will continue to lower the cooldown by 10/20 minutes). Relics Elemental - Your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells grant 73 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times. (We now know this will be haste for 30 seconds.) Enhancement - Your Stormstrike ability grant 146 attack power rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times. Restoration - Your Riptide spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
Totem Talk: 21 to 40 the Shaman way
Totem Talk talks leveling again with a discussion of the changes in 21 to 40 since the last time we discussed it. Matthew Rossi wanted to use this picture sent in by a reader, however. It has nothing at all to do with leveling. but it's a happy shaman with two 171 DPS 2.6 speed mugs. What more can you possibly want? Thanks to Russel Jones for sharing it.I considered doing a big loregeek post this week while waiting for the 3.2.2 changes to continue shaking out for shamans. So far in my experience (raiding as enhance/resto, PvPing as resto/elemental) elemental seems to have had a nice little buff that, while hardly game breaking, helps bring caster shamans closer to other ranged DPS. Didn't really see the point of posting that again, so instead I considered doing a "Famous Shamans of WoW" post that talked about the impact shamans have had on the Warcraft setting for good and ill. I mean, Ner'Zhul alone gives shamans some serious lore cred, not to mention Thrall, Drek'Thar, Nobundo, and even Gul'Dan.But then I remembered that we were talking about me leveling a baby shaman when stuff started hopping again. I got sidetracked leveling in AV, but that's no reason not to start talking about shamans and leveling again.
Totem Talk: Return of the Orc
This week, Totem Talk talks about leveling a shaman through PvP. That's right, I said leveling a shaman through PvP. Matthew Rossi has discovered the joys of returning to the Horde this weekend with a level grinding AV blitz that even he doesn't really understand.Before we even get started: I'm working on a post about the change to Glyph of Flame Shock and the Earthen Power changes. It will be its own post, it probably won't be a Totem Talk all by itself. It's one of those "Enough to give it some focus, not enough for a full column" changes. For now, here's a relevant forum thread with blue feedback on the issue.Alterac Valley's transformation into The Great Level Grinding Gulch (apologies to Warsong Gulch) has had one significant benefit to my Horde shaman: it's gotten me to dust him off and start playing. What's even more amazing is, it's been fun to play an enhancement shaman in PvP again! I think I may have suffered some subtle form of head injury, but there it is. This experiment was initially inspired by my desire to get back to my Horde roots without repeating all the content in Northrend for a sixth time. You know, it's well designed, and I do expect I'll go run Zul'Drak again for the Ampitheatre quests, but I wanted a shortcut and Alterac Valley has provided one. At present I honestly think any leveling guide should recommend a daily dose of AV to help speed the process up.Oh, I die a lot. Pretty much any time I don't have Feral Spirit up, I die. I die if the Alliance Rogues sneeze on me, which they do often, and with great relish, often snickering at my Zul'Aman enhancement gear and my poor green offhand. It does its best! But even with all the dying (to the point where the Orc death animation is sort of soothing to me now and if I go too long without having two rogues making me the meat in a stabbing sandwich I sort of miss it) I'm sort of impressed with how much I can actually do as an underlevel, completely undergeared Shaman leveling up purely through AV.
Totem Talk: The Future Soon
Totem Talk resumes our discussion of Shamans in the upcoming expansion as Matthew Rossi puts on his wizard hat and immediately gets Earth Shocked for wearing the wrong hat. Also, I lobe the Machinima I stole the title of this post from, although that's not germane to the discussion.We were interrupted by BlizzCon announcements last week when discussing starting a new Shaman (or resuming an old one). Frankly, the list of changes incoming in Cataclysm makes me leery of discussing the current leveling experience too much, because it's going to be radically altered. Two new shaman races! A complete reworking of gear and statistics! A new profession we'll all have access to in Archaeology, entirely reworked talent trees, a new max level progression option in Path of the Titans, and last but not least (to me) new totem skins!Seriously, you have no idea how long I've wanted this. I expect the current 'default Horde' totems will remain the Orc totems of choice, but I'm very hopeful for Tauren and Trolls and Goblins and Dwarves to all get their own unique totem skins. Frankly, I want Tauren totems to resemble the giant beating pole Cairne Bloodhoof carries around.Despite what I posted about my warrior, I plan on faction transferring my Draenei Shaman to Tauren fairly soon and moving him to my Horde server. I may or may not race change him to Goblin when they become available for race change (might be more fun just to level one, we'll see) but the idea of finally getting totems that match other races just fills me with glee. Trolls with weird voodoo looking sticks! Goblins with... I have no idea!
Totem Talk: Revamped stats in Cataclysm and Dwarven/Goblin Shamans
Totem Talk is Wow.com's weekly column about all things Shamanistic. This week, we go "aaah aaah BlizzCon! Goblin and Dwarven Shamans! All sorts of stats changing! Aaaah!" with Matthew Rossi. Be warned that Cataclysm spoilers may be thick on the ground in this post.The past few days have been a crazy basket of news for us Shaman players. The Alliance will have a second Shamanistic race with the inclusion of Dwarves (which makes sense, really, since Dwarves are effectively descended from beings of pure earth) and the Horde will get a fourth race of Shamans in the Goblins.Frankly, an expansion based around the upheaval as Deathwing himself smashes the elemental plans pell-mell into Azeroth is pure bliss for a Shaman. This is what we're for! The elements in disarray, Ragnaros bucking wild on Mount Hyjal, the planes leaking through into Azeroth... time to get out there and do what we do best.But that's not all. With stat simplification gear is changing, Mastery will change the way our talent trees function, and then there will be the Path of the Titans to help customize us even more than Glyphs did. Shamans are going to gear differently, have five more talent points (but the talents themselves will be changed and streamlined, we're told) and play differently in Cataclysm. Let's start talking about how.
Totem Talk: Starting a Shaman
This week, Totem Talk's Matthew Rossi finds himself heading down nostalgia lane.Before I explain who that fine orcish chap to the right is, I wanted to take a moment and share some things with you. Specifically, this, this, this, this, this and this. These are some of the drops of interest from the level 80 Onyxia raid coming in patch 3.2.2, and I'll just point out that these are all the 10 man iLevel 232 drops, meaning that for everything you're looking at, there will most likely be a 25 man iLevel 245 version.Frankly, if you're an enhancement shaman (especially an orc) and you're not excited about the Empowered Deathbringer, I don't even know you anymore. With a 2.7 speed and a 628 dmg top end, it's hitting almost as hard as the Golden Saronite Dragon. Imagine how hard the 25 man version will hit? I'll admit to being a little disappointed they didn't leave the speed at 2.9, but even so great googly moogly is that not a hot little axe? Well, okay, a hot big axe. if the 25 man version of Deathbringer keeps pace with the 25 man version of Vis'Kag, we're looking at one of the best possible Main Hand/Off Hand combos for Enhancement. I don't think it's possible for me to explain how excited I am over this. I start twitching when I think about it, to be honest with you.Now that we've had this moment to geek out over upcoming loot, as is right and proper to do, what about this fine you lowbie horde you see before you?
Totem Talk: Four totems for the price of one
Totem Talk is WoW.com's column for all things shamanistic, and this week Matthew Rossi talks about the 3.2 changes and how he forgot to train the new Totem interface spells, leading to him having to plunk his way through Ulduar dropping them one at a time like a caveman. Amazingly, there actually are cavemen shamans in the game.If there's one thing I absolutely don't miss in Ulduar, it's the Troggs. I'll admit to being a little surprised that I haven't run into any, but as far as I'm concerned that's just fine.So, yeah, this week I forgot to train my new Call of the Elements, Call of the Ancestors, and Call of the Spirits spells. Since I'd been on the PTR and knew that I was supposed to train them I find this especially hilarious in retrospect, although I didn't find it nearly as funny at the time. There was some swearing, I won't pretend otherwise. Also, if you're a leveling shaman make sure to check the trainers as you hit 30, 40 and 50 to make sure you pick them up, as they're terribly useful even for the soloing shaman. (Depending on mana, you might not want to drop four totems while soloing/questing, but it's still terribly convenient to be able to do so with one button and one GCD when things get hairy.)
Totem Talk: The Fury of the Elements
Totem Talk is where Shaman enthusiast (imagine Robert De Niro from The Untouchables saying that word) Matthew Rossi comes to discuss all things Shaman. This week, we feature another horde shaman sent in by a reader named Steve. Steve, I lost your email if you want to claim your screenshot in the comments or via another email. I apologize for my brain being cracked.I spent the last week doing three things in game. One was getting my Death Knight up to 80 and getting him defense capped for tanking, but I'm sure none of you care about that. The second thing was running Ulduar 25 on my warrior and Ulduar 10 on my shaman. My shaman eschewed his usual "DPS as Enhancement or heal as Restoration" mindset this week due to the lack of our usual Elemental Shaman, who is quite frankly a far, far better caster Shaman than I am or will ever be. But babies wanted their Elemental Oath so I bit the bullet and respecced. (Admittedly, in a 10 man run with 1 rogue, 1 feral druid tank, one paladin tank, two priest healers, and three warlocks and a mage, my Elemental Oath was pretty useful. Holy casters, Batman.)My experience with Elemental was that, even with way too much cloth caster gear and a pair of resto boots, it can do tolerable (low, but tolerable) damage. Were I geared properly I'd have done much better, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean there aren't issues with the spec. It just means that I'm not a very good Elemental Shaman. However, even as a poor caster, I do feel that the arguments of the actual Elemental Shamans i've seen have some merit, and we've discussed them to some degree in the past weeks.
Totem Talk: Getting into the Spirit of the thing
Each week Matthew Rossi lovingly hand-crafts Totem Talk from a single switch of aged Barrens scrub pine. This week, we try and calm some fears and discuss what changes we're still hoping might make it into patch 3.2. This week's image comes from Protein, a restoration shaman on Bladefist (he didn't specify US or EU realm).Before we get rolling on the changes that shamans haven't seen yet in the various notes to patch 3.2, let us take a look at what notes we have seen, especially the most recent ones. Shaman Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap). Wind Shock: Has been renamed Wind Shear and no longer shares a cooldown with Flame, Frost or Earth Shock. Maelstrom Weapon: Now also has a chance to reduce the cast time of Hex. Hardly massive changes, but at the same time pretty welcome. The fact that ES gives a form of Thunder Clap is weird since pretty much every tank has or will have that debuff in patch 3.2 (Thunder Clap, Icy Touch, Infected Wounds and the incoming paladin ability) so it seems odd from a PvE standpoint to give it to a non tanking class. If this is intended as a PvP ability... well, it's not terribly impressive. If your choice is between ES or Frost Shock against melee, you're probably going to try and snare them instead of debuffing their attack speed.Still, not having to use ES as an interrupt will be a positive boon for elemental shamans who saw their DPS nosedive every time they had to keep that cooldown open for Earth Shock instead of Flame Shock, and it's not going to terribly impact enhancement in PvE at all. So I'd definitely call this one, on the whole, a positive change. And having Maelstrom affect Hex is just hilarious. Hex is kind of the poor man's poly in PvP, a combination snare and disarm that can be trinketed out or dispelled.
