Totem Talk: Leveling Enhancement 61-70
by Rich Maloy 
Apr 25th 2010 at 10:00PM
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.
<Random Enchantment>
Moving into Outlands means there more than just "of the <animal>" when it comes to random enchantments on uncommon quality items. Which ones to take and which to sell is the big question. To figure out what is an upgrade for you many people turn to the add-on Pawn. With this add-on you can assign a weight to each type of item stat and for every item it returns a total value. It's a quick and easy way to approximate upgrades. Unfortunately I didn't save any of my old Pawn values from Burning Crusade, but I did an approximation based on my "fresh level 80" values with consideration given to the lack of elemental talents, thinking about the solo-quester fighting same or slightly higher level mobs, and added in a dash of straight up pulling numbers out of my hat.
If you're playing along at home with Pawn here are the values I'm working with:
- Str - 1.10
- Agi - 1.80
- Int - 1.40
- AP - 1.00
- Crit - 2.00
- Hit - 1.75
- Exp - 1.50
- Haste - 1.40
- ArP - 1.4
- SP- 0.80
When it comes to random enchantments our top 5 in Outlands end up being:
- of the Tiger
- of the Invoker
- of the Falcon
- of Power
- of the Bandit
This is all in my Leveling Enhancement Google doc. You can save a copy for yourself and experiment with the values at the top to come up with what suits your play style. Now on to leveling!
Level 61
Talent point: finish off Unleashed Rage in the enhancement tree. After this we'll move into the elemental tree.
Spell upgrades: Fire Nova, Chain Heal
Level 62
Talent point: Concussion 1/5 is our first spend down the elemental side of things. Our enhancement build is set up around mana regen/conservation so dipping into Convection should not be necessary; spend the points for more damage.
Spell upgrades: Lightning Bolt, Water Shield
Level 63
Talent point: Concussion 2/5
Spell upgrades: Healing Wave, Stoneskin Totem, Lightning Shield, Chain Lightning
Level 64
Talent point: Concussion 3/5
New spells: Wrath of Air Totem is the new spell at level 64, not that we'll use it that much. This can be useful if you are in a very caster-heavy raid and you are the only shaman, but for 5-mans stick with your Windfury Totem because it supports you and the tank.
Spell upgrades: Flametongue Weapon
Level 65
Talent point: Concussion 4/5
Spell upgrades: Strength of Earth Totem, Magma Totem, Mana Spring Totem
Level 66
Talent point: Concussion 5/5
New spells: Earth Elemental Totem is a fun one, if sometimes disappointing. It has two main uses: decoy and annoy. It serves as a great decoy when you need to run away bravely from a bad pull. Be warned though, an elite mob will rip through as though it were a Mud Elemental Totem instead of earth. Outside of elites, it's very hand for escaping bad situations. As for annoy, I think it's an unintended design consequence of having a pet without a pet bar. We can't tell it what to attack or where to attack, it's leashed to its totem but yet still loves to run out and pull that next mob you didn't want. I will give the earth ele credit for one thing: when I was farming Kurenai rep in Nagrand I would drop it at the bonfire in Sunspring Post to collect all the Murkbloods, use a Fire Nova Totem (back in the day) and a Magma Totem, heal the Ele and then melee and Chain Lightning them down. Well, once every 10 minutes I'd do that. Annoying that earth ele is.
Spell upgrades: Frostbrand Weapon, Lesser Healing Wave
Level 67
Talent point: Elemental Devastation 1/3
Spell upgrades: Lightning Bolt, Stoneclaw Totem, Flametongue Totem, Frost Resistance Totem
Level 68
Talent point: Elemental Devastation 2/3
New spells: Fire Elemental Totem is the new and improved version of the earth ele. Whereas Earthy serves to decoy and annoy, Fire serves to destroy and annoy. Still leashed to the totem, still no pet bar, and totally no control over what it attacks, what it does, or how it does it. But what it does do is melee, cast fire blast (single target) and fire nova (AoE). It's awesome at destroying as long as the aggro is on someone else.
Spell upgrades: Frost Shock, Fire Resistance Totem, Windfury Weapon, Chain Heal
To Northrend! At level 68 we are allowed to head to Northrend and experience all the glory that is Wrath of the Lich King. Definitely head out and start questing right away. Unfortunately there are no boars in the frozen north. Which means no BBQ, no Beer Basted Boar Ribs, and no pulled boar sandwiches. It's a shame really, there's nothing quite like lightning-struck barbequed boar.
Pro tip:Change out one of your minor glyphs to the Glyph of Water Walking because in the starter zones there's plenty of island hopping and water running and you'll be happy to be both a shaman and one that doesn't need reagents.
Level 69
Talent point: Elemental Devastation 3/3
Spell upgrades: Earth Shock, Searing Totem, Ancestral Spirit, Healing Stream Totem, Water Shield, Nature Resistance Totem,
Level 70
Talent point: Call of Flame 1/3
New spells: Bloodlust / Heroism. Oh sweet momma! Let's take a moment to reflect on the greatness of Lust/Hero. (A moment of chin-stroking contemplation passes) Yes indeed, we are now complete. You thought you could solo elites before? Now you can smash those elites down with barely a scratch to your sexy enhance hide. Group quest for 3? Might not even need Lust/Hero. For 4? Probably going to give you a run for your money. For 5? That's a real challenge, are you ready for it?
Stoney's Sexytime Slaying Strategy: Drop totems out of range of the elite mob. I use SoE, Healing, Magma, WF but if the mob fears then substitute in a Tremor Totem. If they poison sub in a Cleansing. Pull from max range with LB. Use the next cooldowns for, in this order: Feral Spirit, Bloodlust/Heroism, Shamanistic Rage. DESTROY. Use MW4-5 procs to heal yourself up with a Healing Wave when your health drops below 65%. Otherwise MW5s go to LBs.
If you died or that didn't pan out my alternate strategy is to pop Sham Rage after the wolves despawn. That gives you 45 seconds of Lust/Hero + wolf heals then another 15 seconds of reduced damage. I was able to solo every elite quest I came up against while leveling in WotLK using this strategy, except for the Amphitheater of Anguish and one other one in Icecrown. Granted I was in full T6 / Black Temple level gear, but the strategy is still the same. (And I did go back to the Amphitheater in Naxx gear and soloed everything but Vladof; it was a lot of fun)
Spell upgrades: Healing Wave, Stoneskin Totem, Lightning Shield, Flame Shock, Fire Nova, Chain Lightning
That brings us to the final spec of : 9/52/0 which is great for leveling but not ideal for instances and definitely not for raiding. We'll finish out with the leveling and the leveling spec next week.
May all your hits be crits!
Shaman, follow the path of enhancement with Rich Maloy's leveling guide by starting with with levels 1-20, 21-40, and 41-60. Tune in next week as we finish it off with levels 71-80.Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Gamer am I Apr 25th 2010 10:16PM
Regarding solo-ing elites, I usually use MW for Lightning Bolts only. I wait until my health hits 50% before I pop Feral Spirit, and their passive healing usually brings me back up to full health, by which time the enemy is near dead, so I almost never need to use it to heal myself. I also wait until I have used a bit of mana before I use Shamanistic Rage, though I don't wait too long, because by the time SR has run out, I may have popped FS, in which case the wolves will taunt the elite off of me, meaning I won't be able to take full advantage of the damage reduction of SR.
Stoneybaby Apr 26th 2010 2:25AM
That's a good strat, too. We have so many cooldowns and killer abilities it makes for some great combos and different plays we can make against elites.
Future Shock Apr 25th 2010 10:22PM
WOAH, not only is this a great article, it's also from, THE FUUUUUUTURE! I'm reading this at 9:20PM, but it says it was posted at 10:00PM! FUUUUUUTURE!
Colten Apr 25th 2010 10:26PM
How close is a full set of BOA gear (minus the fishing ring) to what you used in terms of soloing group quests? I wonder because I'm trying to decide between Enhancement Shaman and Ret Paladin for the class I'm going to reroll in Cataclysm. They seem a lot alike, and I can't really see any huge differences in PVE survivability, "rotations," or anything like that. And I can off-spec healing for both classes if I wanted.
Signed, Arcane Mage and Bear/Tree Druid.
Tom Apr 25th 2010 10:35PM
I doesn't address your question, but I'm having a whole lot more fun with my Shamans than my Paladins while leveling. Granted, I don't have a Shaman at 80 yet and my main is a tankadin, but yeah, I can't go back to leveling as a Retribution Paladin. :P
Angus Apr 25th 2010 11:02PM
A ret paladin is around 3-4 times as likely to survive a bad encounter as a shaman. Shaman are glass cannons, ret are more akin to APCs. A shaman can try to heal through damage giving up significant damage to do so, a ret paladin heals themselves with their rotation, can judge light to heal while doing damage for little to no cost (mana), and if pressed can also instant heal or even bubble and heal to full or (heh) hearth.
Plate vs Mail is huge currently and the difference in BoAs favors the paladin as 1 weapon is all that is needed and the one available with the best enchant available is pretty effective. (Crusader on a paladin is nice)
If I go ret on my paladin I can cut through a huge amount of mobs with little effort wearing worse gear than my shaman. Same sort of group requires the wolves to be up or I will die. Those puppies are a major factor in an Enhance shaman's ability to solo things.
before level 58, they are about equal. Once you hit outlands, it gets bad.
theRaptor Apr 26th 2010 12:04AM
BoA items are about as good as the best blues for that level. I levelled my enhance shaman with the BoA chest plate and I rarely found anything that was as good or slightly better than it (and even then the difference was too minor to want to lose the XP boost).
And there is a survivability difference between a shaman and a paladin as the shaman lacks a good oh-shit-runaway button (totems are okay but so random they aren't reliable). When I needed to run I ended up using most of my cooldowns even when successful.
Eldoron Apr 26th 2010 4:41AM
well, you can be a retardin and play the most played class in WoW and faceroll, or you can be a Shaman, the least played class in WoW.
Gamer am I Apr 26th 2010 6:51AM
The shaman is indeed more difficult to play, but I think that it is a more rewarding class, overall. Once you hit 60, you'll have enough tools that you'll almost match the retadin in survival, but you'll also have more moves at your disposal. Having spent a significant amount of time playing both classes, I would say without hesitation that the shaman is the more fun of the two classes.
Angus Apr 25th 2010 10:56PM
Good guide with one mistake that baffled me.
"Well, once every 10 minutes I'd do that. Annoying that earth ele is."
You leveled when? Patch 3.3: "Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas."
Double check stuff Stormy, you have some of the most helpful and accurate information out there. When you do mistakes like this it looks bad and that is a shame, because you are one of the only people I would take Enhance advice from.
Your spec is dead on at this point, with IGW still being way too good to pass up and everything else someone needs.
Tom Apr 25th 2010 11:07PM
Perhaps he's been in that situation since 3.3, and perhaps not. Either way, the information is valid, and this is no way makes him look bad, at least to me.
vazhkatsi Apr 25th 2010 11:33PM
if i remember correctly there are/were talents to bring the cd down to 10 minutes
Hih Apr 26th 2010 2:31AM
Who the **** cares what the CD was before. It doesn't really change the anecdote any. So he may have remembered wrong. Big freaking whoop. It doesn't change the actual advice in the column.
Mike Apr 25th 2010 11:04PM
Decided to check out Pawn, and while it's usefulness is definitely obvious, it seems to have horrible built-in information regarding gems. For an Enhancement Shaman it recommends, for example, Hit/SpellPen for blue gems... which just seems off. It doesn't even have a rating for, say, AP gems. I imagine I could get these values by figuring out my stat scaling with a tool like simcraft, but I don't know how they got values for gem slot colours.
Angus Apr 26th 2010 12:15AM
Tom: "use a Fire Nova Totem (back in the day) and a Magma Totem, heal the Ele" Unless he was using Fire Nova after it was removed in the same patch the cool down was lowered, he is wrong somewhere in here.
Only glyphs to lower CD never got it to 10 minutes. It got down to 16, then 10 minutes after 3.1. So unless he was farming rep after that, (and from the context it does not seem likely) he had it wrong.
Guys, I am not trying to harp on him, but he has been picked apart by some people on these columns since he started. They have gone after him for every little detail and been jerks about it. I am trying to impress upon him that he needs to check this stuff before it goes live a little better.
I have his website as a bookmark. It is the #1 site in the "Enhance" folder. Not because I am a fanboi, but because he has not given me crap information once. EJ is not as effective at getting the info translated from the theorycrafters to the normal folks as Rich is.
As far as I am concerned the site picked the absolute best person for the job. I thought about applying for the position but since most of my information came from his site I thought I would not be able to do more than post things like "go here." When I heard he got the job, I was stunned.
So believe me when I say there was an error and he needs to check on those, I come from the view that Rich should catch them. If people doubt his stuff because of small errors, the big things get doubted, and he is absolutely right on that stuff. I want him to succeed and my pointing it out is probably a much nicer way of doing it than some I have seen in this column.
If you got the impression I am attempting to be a jerk, I apologize, that was not the intention.
Jackwraith Apr 26th 2010 12:31AM
Heh. It's pretty easy to tell which class is really in need of (pardon the term) enhancement. Wow.com covers every class in the game and the 3 shaman columns are the ones that take the most grief from commenters, who always insist that there is only ONE way to do things and if any "bad" info is given out, it will be CRIPPLING.
Will it? I don't know. But the majority of people being locked in to such a touchy mindset has to mean something. With that in mind, the best thing about the Cat previews had to be the total lack of mention of shaman survivability...
FWIW, I don't think anything that any of the 3 has said has been direly heretical. I liked Rich's column about saving yourself or the group if you need to (in fact, I did just that in a heroic today when the healer was about to go down) and I like all 3 columnists' willingness to talk about different avenues to the same goal. Here's hoping that the talent changes in Cat actually make it possible to survive without the one, true build...
Stoneybaby Apr 26th 2010 2:58AM
I think the lesson here is that I need to either a) stop referencing anything from Burning Crusade or b) have an eidetic memory for all specs, spells and abilities from BC.
I'm looking for a site where I can look up abilities from the past and double check so that we don't have to have multiple threaded comment discussions around my unfortunately bad memory. Any recommendations where I can look up abilities from the past. You know, where I can double check that spell that did the thing with the stuff. The one with the timer that ran out after a while? That one we used to use back in the day, in the place with the mobs that dropped that item you always wanted. That'd be awesome.
But I digress, the 10 min reference was a memory miscalculation like a few of my past missteps (Tier 5 2pc bonus anyone?) You guys rock, but seriously cut a brother with a jumbled memory some slack.
Eldoron Apr 26th 2010 4:39AM
Don't care about the trolls :)
theRaptor Apr 26th 2010 6:11AM
Seriously mate, f**k the trolls and the pendants. If it had of been "every 20 minutes" they would have jumped all over it because the cool down is now 10 minutes, completely ignoring the anecdote was about BC. Hell the whinging threw me off because I thought in 3.3 the CD was reduced from 10 minutes to 8 not 20 to 10 and had to look it up *(I've been away for a few months and have been playing my priest more, for which most of the long cooldowns did go 10 to 8 in 3.3).
The anecdote makes perfect sense NOW and would only be bad advice if someone was playing on a pre-3.3 server.
* WoWWiki is my first stop for ability history.
Angus Apr 26th 2010 7:35AM
Wowhead, I looked it up there.
And you do fine. It was not meant to be mean.