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Totem Talk: Ulduar non-set mail, part 3
Totem Talk is our weekly look at all things shaman. Matthew Rossi would like to remind any readers with screenshots of their Horde shamans to email them to matthew.rossi@wow.com and not put them in the comments, where he is likely to forget they exist. In addition to being extremely hairy, he is somewhat ponderous in his recall.The past couple of weeks have been exciting with Q&A's to analyze and PTR changes to consider. It's been easy for me to forget that I left our round-up of mail drops in Uldar half-way through the 25 man items. One of the things I forgot to gripe about as much as I really should have last time we discussed Ulduar mail is the complete and utter lack of mail boots for elemental shamans in the instance. As of the last time I checked, there are three pairs of boots in Ulduar 25: two enhancement, (yes yes, I suppose hunters might use them too) and one mostly suited to restoration shamans. And I covered all three pairs of boots last time anyway.Let's get right to the heart of it, shall we?
Totem Talk: 3.2 PTR log
One of the things I've been doing in preparation for patch 3.2 is running a lot of heroics to fill gear holes in my enhancement set, since I am determined to get that set up to a respectable level before the patch drops. I don't often get to raid enhancement and my restoration set is mostly at the level I need it to be to heal 10 man content, so until fist weapons actually start dropping in raids, that means running CoT Strat a lot and cursing when the Band of Guile drops yet again. Seriously, if you need a Band of Guile, you should run CoT Strat with me in the party, because I can guarantee that it will drop by my very presence.When you get a good PuG, of course, you keep running until you just can't stand anymore. Today I was in that very circumstance, a PuG that went together so well that we slid from CoT to Utgarde Pinnacle to Utgarde Keep to the Nexus in short order. While the Band of Guile dropped yet again (seriously, I should start charging spellcasters who want rings, as Annhylde's Ring also dropped) there was one moment that struck me as a good reason why I play a shaman. A badly timed disconnect on the part of our healer and one of our DPS led to my switching to heal the tank through three mobs, only to see him and the other DK (who I will charitably say was somewhat inexperienced in his/her class) go down when another proto-drake was added by a corpse exlosion. At this point, low on mana as I was, I managed to pop my Feral Spirit, Shamanistic Rage, Fire Elemental Totem, and Heroism to burn the last add down while restoring my mana in the process.
Totem Talk: Patch 3.2 PTR
Patch 3.2 has been announced, and shamans saw some changes. That's the short version.Well, we've had the big patch notes bomb dropped on us, and they weren't kidding about changing restoration around, were they? Of course, if you're an orc shaman, you also got expertise with fist weapons added on to your racial, which is pretty neat all told. We also finally saw the debut of the new totem interface, which I can't say enough good things about. The ability not only to drop up to four totems in one GCD but to have up to three customizable sets of four totems for different uses (I plan on making a set just for when there's no DK's around and I can finally use Strength of Earth totem instead of freaking Stoneskin) just made the clouds part and a host of glorious angels descend upon me. Turns out they wanted some money, but still, for a moment it was pretty keen.Before we get rolling, though, I want to remind people: I want your horde screenshots! Otherwise this column is just going to be goat-men from the Twisting Nether, and I know you don't want that. I personally don't care, but you guys get so upset, and while that orc racial does make leveling my orc shaman appealing, I don't really think I have the time.I should probably also mention that rogues got axes in an attempt to give the design team more freedom to actually put some axes into the content. (Yay for one 1h DPS axe in all of Naxxramas, EoE, the Obsidian Sanctum and Ulduar!) I can only look forward to the host of axes in Argent Coliseum that are too fast for shamans to use effectively. On the up side, goodbye, totem stomper macros! We hate you!
Totem Talk: Analysis of Shaman Q&A
This week saw the first of Blizzard's class Q&A columns. Amazingly, we shamans got to go first. While Eliah already covered the basics for us, I thought going in depth with the discussion would be worthwhile. There's a lot of information in the Q&A as a whole to go over and discuss. For example: One longer-term change we are considering is removing the buff totems (replacing them with normal spells) and making all of the totems do something more active, like the current damage or healing totems. We've even discussed letting shamans carry a totem on their back (the tauren do it already) but that may be too far out there. No, no it's not too out there. Make it happen, make it happen now please. I don't care if you have to make a new weapon category that only shamans can equip for this to happen, I want to see shamans with those great big honking totems on their backs already.
