Totem Talk: A week with patch 3.0.8
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 22nd 2009 at 8:00PM
As you can probably surmise, this has limited my ability to test my shaman out with the changes. I'm going to try and take him to some heroics and possibly a 10 man Naxx run today, but that's in the future from the point where I'm writing this. Still, I will say this much: I really enjoy free respecs, and I really REALLY enjoy Shamanism. The amount of bonus damage I'm seeing on my Lava Bursts in particular is just so much fun. I'll be speccing between all three trees for the next few days to try and get a feel for how things have changed post patch, but for now we'll talk about elemental, as it's the most changed at the moment.
What all of this leads me to ponder, however, is how it's going to shake out in raiding. Right now my preferred raid spec is still enhancement - I've never been much of a caster - but I'm more and more attracted to elemental as the spec shakes out in patches like this one. My enhancement spec didn't see a terrible amount of change even with the talents moving around, but with the elemental tree having seen some love I'm discovering a newfound respect for it and since I've collected decent blues I've been playing with it as much as I can.
To be honest, I'm currently alt-tabbed out from playing the game to write this post, that's how dedicated I am to you, dear readers. Well, okay, and our tank had to go to the bathroom.
My current elemental spec (I took the time today to run a heroic HoL just to test it out) definitely needs some help. For one thing, I need to get the Flame Shock glyph post-haste. Previous commenters seem to be correct also in that I don't need nearly as much crit as I feared I did: hit, spell power and haste are much more important when you can effectively guarantee a crit every eight seconds or so. I'm finding that I'm not nearly as concerned with mana regen and can DPS pretty effectively for long periods as long as I manage to keep the Lava Burst-generated clearcasting state up, which is another reason why I need the Flame Shock glyph so that I no longer have to worry as much about letting the DoT tick before using it to crit.
I admit it: I am still a complete noob when it comes to elemental, but the spec has managed to become fun somewhere along the way. Using shocks and bursts to generate clearcasting while also fitting lightning and chain lightning isn't quite as interactive feeling as enhancement's use of Maelstrom Weapon, but for caster DPS it's growing on me. I don't at all feel detached and spamming a single spell here.
One of the things I would like to see for the spec is a means to carry this forward. Right now, elemental shamans have gone from a one trick, LB LB LB CL spamming class to one that weaves fire and electrical damage in varied ways to proc critical hits and enter clearcasting, which not only lowers mana cost but also increases damage. I like the symmetry and wish I was better at it, but I'd also like to see more from the other elements here. A cascading effect where using a frost attack after a fire or lightning one in order to set up specific conditions (either buffs to the shaman or debuffs to the target) would be welcome in order to move elemental shamans more fully into the role of masters of the elements. To my mind, shamans shouldn't be reliant on one or two schools, but should be doing damage from all of them.
One idea would be that using a fire spell would debuff an enemy to be vulnerable to a nature spell (perhaps even a specific one: Lava Burst increasing the damage dealt by Earth Shock, for instance, for say five seconds) which could then buff the shaman's spell power for the next frost or fire spell cast for a few seconds. Something to build on this new cascading effect that shamans seem to be built around.
I hope this doesn't seem like I'm unhappy with the class as of patch 3.0.8: while I have been pretty unhappy with being unable to play as much as I would have liked, and am still somewhat irritated that I now have three specs I enjoy playing (boo hoo, poor me, I now like all three shaman trees, I know there are worse problems to have) in general I think the most recent patch has been very positive in terms of the changes to the shaman class. But I have felt like a lot of the angst about elemental scaling could have been avoided if folks listened to a lot of feedback on the beta forums saying over and over again that these kinds of changes were going to end up being necessary, so in the interest of looking forward I'm still thinking about how shamans can be more 'masters of the elements' without being carbon copies of other classes.
How has patch 3.0.8 been treating your shaman? Hopefully more accessible for you than it's been for me. Any big changes, small surprises, anything to report on glyphs, bugs that you haven't seen anyone else mention?
Next week I'll probably talk more about restoration or elemental, you've probably heard enough about enhancement from me for a while. We will discuss that again too, when it's time.
Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
lenlo Jan 22nd 2009 8:09PM
about your problem. if your using quest helper and log out in dalaran then it wont let you on. just go to your addons page and turn it off. after that you can turn it on again. it only happens in dalaran
Shroommonkey Jan 22nd 2009 8:36PM
Good to see someone else knows what they are doing.
Ilnara Jan 22nd 2009 8:59PM
I use QH and have NO issues logging into Dal....
Amaxe Jan 22nd 2009 11:07PM
Same. No problems logging into DaLAGaran except for the lag
Lemons Jan 23rd 2009 1:49AM
Yeah idk about the Dalaran thing, but QH just causes trouble in general. When I can't log on, I turn QH off, and it lets me log on...that's all i know.
ChiperSoft Jan 23rd 2009 12:01PM
The issue is with you being on specific quests while in dalaran, although no one has figured out just which quests it is.
People not on those particular quests have no problems logging in. People with faster computers also have no problems logging in. The issue is that QH takes too long to load the details for those quest and you timeout trying to get into the game.
Naithin Jan 23rd 2009 8:49PM
QH was patched to fix the issues with loggin into Dalaran literally days after it was discovered.
Update your QH, problem solved. QH now loads after you are completely in game, not while everything else is also loading. Means QH isn't instantly up the moment you login (you can see a QH progress indicator in it's usual details spot) but it loads fairly quickly and doesn't DC you any more.
Cwilks Jan 22nd 2009 8:21PM
Quality article Matthew :)
Informative and well-written.
However, you said, "you've probably heard enough about enhancement from me for a while" . . . and we haven't talked about enhancement for the past two weeks and that one was just about the new stormstrike icon.
I'm not QQing just wanted to correct you :P
Moving on, bring on the resto talks! I've been healing a bunch lately and would like to hear what you have to say about the tree.
Antonia Jan 23rd 2009 12:03PM
I WISH this was informative. it was the opposite, it was a lot of "i can't play my toon but i wish this is what is going to happen in the future".. there wasn't a shred of real information in this other than his opinion that shamanism is cool, which all of us elementals can agree too. otherwise there is nothing to report except unrelated bugs to things in the world and changes that were made that weren't in the patch notes at all
and dude I'm sorry you couldn't play your toon and all but don't write any thing till you get to fully play it out.. and you honestly needed a better title then "a week with.." when the article was posted it was only 2 days MAX.. not a week, get it right..
also, all three trees didn't get changed that much so why repecc unless you LIKE those other trees more.. there's no reason to "try" any thing in those other trees since nothing REALLY changed and you should know that if you've payed any attention at all.. some talents got moved in enhancement and resto's only real change is imp water shield which is so minor no one should even notice it TO care.. just a waste of respec costs imho..
and saying your a noob to elemental shows, specially since we had an extreme lack of info about this patch from you and how exciting it would be for us or what it was going to do for us. you couldn't even speculate or imagine any thing the same way you went about doing in this article.. you couldn't even convey that you were excited for the class as a whole.
it doesn't take a brain to figure out FS glyph is big for ele's, keeping those ticks up is huge and not consuming them on each lava burst is even bigger.
that spec, to be honest, is terrible.. your missing a lot of spellpower from elemental weapons in the enhancement tree and even the one point in shamanistic focus to make your shocks not cost nearly as much any more.. if you read this comment and fix that come back next week and comment how much bigger the extra spellpower from elemental weapons helps.. and totemic focus is a joke, taking that at all is a relic of the days we had to spec a little resto to get more crit, take those points out asap and ditch reverberation while your at it, it only truly helps in PvP, since you'll only be shocking flame and if you get that glyph it will be up for 18secs you wont need to worry about your shock cooldown as much.
while i like the complexity of what our casting is now i don't think your idea's are very good or that it needs to get any more complex. and I'm sure many MANY theorycrafters would agree, its just been too hard to gauge our damage. since you don't play an elemental very much its really not much help that you'd even throw these idea's out there at all. any of us that are having trouble at all are having trouble juggling cooldowns since our "rotation" doesn't even exist any more, we run on pure priority now circling around the use of flame shock and lava burst making sure we can fit any thing we can in between. honestly the idea of making a flame spell that would act, what i guess, like storm strike would be nice but it would be hard to fit in i'm sure. it'd also be little nonsensical because it would be like saying a fire would help a tree instead of just damaging the tree.. fire helping nature makes no sense in that respect.. or take it this way, to put out a fire they say quench it with soil, making a fire spell help earth shock would be counter productive.. and while it sounds like I'm being very literal i can DEFINITELY see blizzard thinking the same way, i mean look at half the crap they throw in the game. their logic is fuzzy, you should know that just reporting on half the things they do.
making shaman more elemental is a great idea, though only in theory. frost shock /frostbrand and wind shock /windfury being the only real things we have for those two elements is a little disappointing. but i also i can't help to think how annoying it'd be to have us doing more of every type of elemental damage there is, not only to us but to the other classes.. besides we have 2 elemental types of damage for a reason, its called balance. mages are a "pure dpd" class, they get 2 elemental types and arcane, we sacrifice a 3rd damage type (not counting melee mind you) for heals, so do druids. warlocks, while being considered a "pure" class sacrifice another type (i can only guess) for the fact they get pets, just like a hunter sacrifices having any more then 1 real damage for his pet.
honestly good attempt at an article, it definitely came in a timely manner but that was actually part of its flaw this time.. you needed to write this one NEXT week, then even the name would fit. still waiting on that article about gearing up for raids as an elemental though, i can see your just putting that off or, like us, not finding the gear we need/needed. goodluck with that.
Shamatized Jan 22nd 2009 8:24PM
Try this spec out:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hEhVq0dItGxst0xxZM
Best dps ele spec to my knowledge atm.
Good luck with elemental, I sure know I love it!
cremean Jan 22nd 2009 10:17PM
Totemic Focus? Really?
Totems don't cost enough mana to justify that. I'd go 57/14/0
HommeChat Jan 23rd 2009 3:52AM
I agree with cremean : 57/14/0 is the best spec for dps as a raid elemental shaman.
You *have to* invest 3 points in Elemental weapons. :)
Teaspoon Jan 23rd 2009 5:58AM
Why reverb? With the flame shock glyph you only need to cast it every 18 seconds, and the earth and frost shocks aren't worth it for a PvE shaman.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hEh0qcdItGxst0xxco seems more like it.
As for rotation, if you can get around 10% haste on your gear the 15% once you include Wrath of Air means flame shock, lava, chain, 4xlightning, lava, 4xlightning is a pretty neat rotation. It lets the flame shock tick out completely, and with that haste it's about 8.25s between the end of one lava burst and the beginning of the next which allows a quarter of a second for lag and imperfect reflexes.
Playing in Australia and chain-casting that sequence means I have to spam the lava burst button at the end trying to catch the exact moment that the client-side cooldown ends, but your results may vary.
FireStar Jan 23rd 2009 9:45AM
That first "best dps" spec is kinda crappy, sorry to say. Mine's similar to teaspoons, except i dont put points in "eye of the storm" or "unrelenting storm", as i dont get hit and i'm mostly wearing ilvl213 gear so i'm always at full mana.
However, since patch 3.0.8 i may have to start putting poitns into elemental warding and eye of the storm, cause this lava burst is critting for 14k now and i have to watch my threat in heroics. Haven't done a raid as ele since since the servers suck and people need good heals over good dps.
Dagonis Jan 22nd 2009 8:30PM
I've found that I can't log into dalaran much ether most of the time. I used to have my friends log on and move my chars out for me. Then I found that if you disable all addons it tends to let me log in my characters. Not saying it will definantly work for you Matt, but give it a try next time you are unable to log in and see if it helps.
Looking forward to your next care and feeding!
peon47 Jan 22nd 2009 9:06PM
Disable or remove QuestHelper, and you'll have no problems.
Questhelper basically makes loading lag ten times worse, which is why it only affects characters in Dalaran (lag-city) and why some people have no problems at all (they're using beasts of computers with zomongous internet connections)
Matt Mar 24th 2009 11:12AM
maybe in the next expansion we will get an ice blast equiv of lave blast and then all your drams can be realized.
Zarfay Jan 22nd 2009 8:32PM
I dislike the change to elemental mastery before I would just use it and chain lighting when fighting 3-4 mobs so I could instantly crit all of them, now it doesnt work the same :(
HommeChat Jan 23rd 2009 3:58AM
You're right, of course... We had a certainty, we now have "just"a buff.
But the new Elemental mastery in raid is just terrific ! 20% more crit and 20% less mana cost for 30 seconds : look at you're recount, you'll be amazed. ;)
Skybreaker Jan 22nd 2009 8:37PM
I really don't understand the builds being posted.. Unless I'm missing something, I've never seen Reverberation being worth 5 talent points, much less in a PvE build like you seem to be posting. And there's never a good reason to put points into Resto right now. I'm not a hardcore PvEr either, so I could be wrong. But as far as I see, http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hEh0qcdItGxst0xxco seems to be undeniably the best PvE dps spec