Totem Talk: Patch 3.3 and shamans, part 1
by Matthew Rossi 
Dec 12th 2009 at 6:00PM
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?
We'll look at the patch notes first.
Shamans
- Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
- Fire Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
- Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.
- Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes.
- Talents
- Elemental Combat
- Elemental Mastery: This talent now increases spell haste by 15% instead of critical strike chance while active.
- Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.
- Enhancement
- Earth's Grasp: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of the Stoneclaw and Earthbind totems by 15/30%.
- Restoration
- Improved Reincarnation: This talent now reduces the cooldown of Reincarnation by 7/15 minutes, down from 10/20 minutes. Reincarnation cannot be used in Arenas.
Fire Nova is a fun new ability. I haven't gotten much use out of it playing elemental in BG's yet, but when I go enhancement for five/ten man action it's a lot of fun and does reasonable damage. You can play around with positioning by running up, dropping a fire totem, then running back out to range (I've actually done this a few times when healing just for kicks) as long as you'll be within 30 yards of the totem. It's not enormous damage but it's reasonable and is very useful on big trash pulls or when running an instance with lots of adds spawning. Or if you have a DK tank who chain pulls like a lunatic and invites all the AoE you can muster. I'm just saying.
The Reincarnation/Improved Reincarnation changes can get it down to 15 minutes. On the one hand, this is longer than abilities like a druid's battle rez or a soulstone, both of which have more flexibility.Still, Reincarnation has its strengths (unlike a druid battle res, you don't lose Reincarnation just because, well, you died the way the druid will if he dies before casting it... we've all seen those ridiculous "Okay, Druidking res Druidcat, and Druidcat, you rest Druiddude as soon as you can... Druiddude, I'm going to need you to res Druidboy once you have mana" calls) and having it available every fifteen minutes is hardly a bad change, even if it seems underwhelming compared to other abilities.
It's kind of funny how often you end up saying that as a shaman sometimes. "X seems underwhelming compared to Y and Z." Perhaps the secret to being happy as a shaman player is never noticing what other classes can do. (This is both sardonic and unfair of me. I loves my chain heal.)
Since I only really play as Elemental in BG's now (and I admit, I only do it so I can Thunderstorm people off of bridges) the Elemental Mastery change was one I noticed, thought was good, and moved on. But the past week the elemental shamans in my raid group (Dasi, you're simply a beast) could not stop talking about how much better the talent is now. This makes me happy just because I've always found elemental combat to be a tree with a lot of potential that I utterly fail at utilizing, and yet even I knew the crit on the talent wasn't very compelling.
I hadn't really even noticed the change to Earth's Grasp. I'm going to leave this one up to the comments, frankly. I mean, I always like a cooldown reduction. Am I forgetting something that would make this a bad change?
We'll take a quick look at the bug fixes next. One of them makes me slightly happy.
- Shamans
- Glyph of Earthliving Weapon: Now updates the tooltip for Earthliving Weapon.
- Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: Tooltip and functionality corrected to ensure this glyph will cause extra healing from Lesser Healing Wave regardless of which shaman cast Earth Shield on the target.
- Hex: Players are no longer able to use Battlemaster trinkets while under the effects of this spell.
- Mana Tide Totem: The tooltip on this spell will now be modified properly by the Glyph of Mana Tide Totem.
- Thunderstorm: It is no longer possible to use this ability while under the effects of the Druid spell Cyclone.
In general, while shamans still have some issues with totems comparing poorly to other classes' buffs or debuffs (which we will be discussing in depth soon) this was a pretty nice little set of changes for the class. Coming up next week, a look at patch 3.3's itemization and if it suits or hinders shaman play.
Check out more strategies, tips and leveling guides for Shamans in Matthew Rossi's weekly class column: Totem Talk. Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
MeanGreen Dec 12th 2009 6:12PM
2 Words....
Boo Yah!
LuminousNerd Dec 12th 2009 6:18PM
You keep on saying that crit isn't good for elemental shaman. I'm trying to understand where you're coming from on that. If you look at elemental dps charts the bulk of their damage is from lightning bolt, and when that ability crits it does more than twice as much damage.
If you're talking about pvp, I could understand, because between having to move around a lot and having utility things to do (purge, hex, keep totems up) you don't get a chance to throw a lot of lightning bolts (it's still a very useful stat for the chain lightning, but worth a little less).
But in PVE, crit is fantastic. I just can't see how you would say repeatedly that it's a near-useless stat. Yes, we can force a crit with lava burst, but lava burst isn't the bulk of our damage. In fact without its guaranteed crit, Lava Burst is only marginally better than just throwing another lightning bolt.
Squeek Dec 12th 2009 7:14PM
It's not that crit is bad. It's that Haste and Spellpower are more than twice as good. Where you might socket a nice Yellow with SP+Haste, you'd never throw in a Crit gem.
Without even stacking Crit, I'm at about 45% in full raid buffs. It's already to the point where Clearcasting is up nearly 100% of the time (meaning the 10% damage buff is always up). That's all you're trying to achieve with Crit for the most part, anyway. When you get your T10 4PC bonus, Crit will actually diminish in value even further, since Clearcasting will almost always be up.
Sure, you do more damage when you crit, but I (and most theorycrafters, it seems) would rather cast faster.
Daniel Dec 12th 2009 7:16PM
@LuminousNerd
The haste gain from Elemental Mastery is a huge gain compared to the crit gain...
Consider that the ele tree is full of crit talents already, as well as our gear
Having this extra haste % is like having a mini Bloodlust all to ourselves, yes the more crit the more likely we'll actually crit, but there is a limit as to when your crit % is enough and when more is just ineffective or unnoticeable
Ive noticed a huge gain when i use it, as well as a gain from Fire Nova... talents like Clearcasting state gained from Elemental Focus reduces the cost of this spell and Elemental Fury allows it to crit hard; its more than just an AoE ability, I would suggest incorporating it into a standard Ele rotation (this has to do more with the article than ur comment)
Bartleby42 Dec 12th 2009 7:14PM
First off, crits only do 150% damage.
Secondly, in PvE the main reason you want to crit is to have elemental focus up, so you don't burn through your mana.
As far as damage goes haste trumps crit in every way. Sure crits do more damage, but right now all spell mail has comical amounts of crit and you will be critting frequently. Although that's the weak argument, Lighting overload is the reason you want haste instead of crit. Lighting overload does more damage than any crit, and scales with haste.
It's not that crit is bad in everyway, it's that for ele shamans: Haste>Spell power>crit.
Kay Dec 12th 2009 7:16PM
The problem with crit is not that it is worthless, but rather that other stats are worth more.
There is still enough damage % that comes from Lava Burst that it needs to be taken into consideration. And without breaking into the long version of the theorycraft numbers, which do you think is worth more...a stat that affects a portion of your damage (crit), or a stat that affects ALL of your damage (spellpower for example). There's other classes you can observe this with, but it's further aggravated by the fact that Lava Burst scales 0% with crit, making that other portion of your damage benefit precisely none at all from crit.
Grumblecakes Dec 12th 2009 7:17PM
It's not so much that crit is near useless. Stacking crit just won't give you as much DPS as stacking haste will. Keep in mind that lava burst (which is a still a good chunk of our DPS even though it's not our most damaging spell) will not benefit from crit at all, while it will from haste.
Robert Dec 12th 2009 7:24PM
Its not that crit is a bad stat for ele shaman its that from talents and totem give a +13% crit. Making crit a lesser needed stat.
Menno Dec 12th 2009 8:42PM
What he means is that we hit a softcap for Crit really quickly. you only need 25-30% crit and you're golden (rest of it coming from totems, built in buffs, and elemental oath).
Haste is a much better stat because it gets out Lightning bolt cast time down.
Right now I am sitting at 28% crit (mainly ulduar gear). 5% from call of thunder, 5% from Elemental oath. so we are at 38% already. Then drop totem of wrath and you are over 40%.
So yes, crit is important, but Haste will help your dps more once you're 0ver that 25% than more crit will.
Sky Dec 12th 2009 9:19PM
crit's value drops once you reach around 30% unbuffed which is what the people above already pointed out. Also the primary reason why elemental shamans hate crit is because they know they can always force a crit if needed (with Lava Burst).
LilBanshee Dec 12th 2009 9:23PM
@Bartleby
"First off, crits only do 150% damage"
Um... no. http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=16089 five points in that talent doubles the critical strike damage bonus from +50% to +100%. Throw in the standard dps metagem http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41285 and it's actually 203% before even accounting for the nice side-effects of crits.
In spite of the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about, you are nonetheless correct in your conclusion that crit is inferior to haste for elemental shamans. I only know that because I've read a lot of information from reliable sources online, I don't claim to be able to prove it with a simple post like this, but it is true. With shamans, Crit is best for resto, haste is best for elemental, although both specs derive some improvement from both stats.
Sky Dec 12th 2009 9:33PM
@Lilbanshee
Haste is also more important than crit for resto. Your comment is just flat out wrong
LilBanshee Dec 12th 2009 9:54PM
@Sky
Okay, why? Clearly we've heard different things, so let's examine our respective viewpoints.
Both haste and crit help keep your 10% reduced damage buff on the target by either having a higher chance to crit or having more chances to crit, so that's a wash.
Aside from increasing healing done, getting a crit reduces mana costs and procs Ancestral Awakening. All positives.
Aside from increasing healing done, haste increases mana expenditure due to these extra spellcasts. Only a negative.
What is the basis of your claim that haste is better than crit for resto shamans?
pietrex Dec 13th 2009 4:38AM
@LilBanshee
It's been proven that haste is THE stat for restoration shaman. There's a very informative post about it on drug's blog: http://www.shieldsup.ch/2009/11/16/it-all-comes-back-to-haste/
Crit is nowhere near that.
LilBanshee Dec 14th 2009 10:32AM
I did some research and I agree with you now; my information was outdated. Apparently when patch 3.2 hit, and tier 8 fell by the wayside, the stat priority for resto shamans got turned on its head and now haste is not only better than crit but better than spellpower as well.
Vaulkner Dec 12th 2009 6:37PM
I'm probably going to roll a dwarf shammy for cataclysm, and I like that Blizz is slowly fixing some of their issues.
Unfortunately, maybe it's just me, or the design concept of the class but Shamans still feel rather disjointed. By that I mean, it feels like they threw a whole bunch of different abilities in a pot, stirred, and poured out the Shaman class. They have tons of abilities, making them very versatile, but the synergy of those abilities with eachother seems lacking - especially between different talent trees.
They are making the most progress on this front with enhance probably, weaving normal spells in with maelstrom weapon procs, but the rotation still has that disjointed feel, because it's all (almost completely unrelated) cooldowns with 1 proc. Other classes also have this problem with cooldown-based rotations, such as ret/prot paladins and marks hunters.
The only real synergy elemental seems to have from a playstyle point of view is the flameshock/lava burst combo.
Resto atleast has the synergy between riptide/chainheal and healing wave/lesser healing wave - and a little more with the lesser healing wave glyph, but it still kinda feels like an elemental just started throwing out healing spells. The only healing spec with similar problems is probably the prot paladin.
Perhaps it's also partially the totem mechanic's fault, but even though I've played other hybrid characters, the Shaman is the only one that feels like random abilities were mashed together to make my class, regardless of what spec I play.
/shrug - could just be me. I hope future changes by Blizz remedy this somehow.
LilBanshee Dec 12th 2009 9:31PM
"Unfortunately, maybe it's just me, or the design concept of the class but Shamans still feel rather disjointed. By that I mean, it feels like they threw a whole bunch of different abilities in a pot, stirred, and poured out the Shaman class. They have tons of abilities, making them very versatile, but the synergy of those abilities with eachother seems lacking - especially between different talent trees."
This is true, and it's actually what I like best about the class. We're a true hybrid class, able to heal reasonably well as elemental. To some degree priests have that, but shaman do it best. We're the most genuinely hybrid of all the hybrid classes, the trees don't specialize you all that much. For example I ran halls of reflection with my non-overgeared elemental shaman the other day, and the resto druid died during both of the lieutenants' trash but I was able to pick up healing and carry the party through both the boss both times. No other hybrid class can do that for a long fight - maybe shadow priests but not quite as well I don't think.
Vaulkner Dec 12th 2009 6:41PM
*the only healing spec with similar problems is probably the holy paladin
Typo, or freudian slip, you decide :p.
Azizrael Dec 12th 2009 6:54PM
"this is longer than abilities like a druid's battle rez or a soulstone"
Create Soulstone is on the same 15 minute cooldown, down from 30 minutes as of the latest patch. Obviously this isn't an issue if you bring more than one Warlock.
Vashni Dec 12th 2009 7:03PM
Your right shamans have become a clas that seems to be missing continuity and unfortunatly having almost all our buffs given to other classes and there far more superior makes me wonder which direction blizzard is trying to take the class. Our hybrid tax is far too high for the maybe 2 unique buffs we bring to a raid (Bloodlust/Heroism, and Tremor totem), sure we can heal but not as a ele or enhancment spec.Our dps is still horrid in comparison to the other hybrids.
Here is hoping that the change to ele mastery is going to bring through more changes that finally once and for all fix the class like they did to pala's before Wrath . heres me crossing my fingers. love the idea of nova now all we need is a way to stay ranged and drop that fire totem in melee.
But decent changes all except the complete nerf to elemental's 4 set tier 9. The dps loss is way too much and in my eye's was not needed.