Totem Talk: Dual-wielding topics
by Rich Maloy 
Jul 25th 2010 at 6:00PM
This week I'm dual wielding topics. Neither one was enough to keep you entertained, my lovely and intelligent readers, for a full week's worth of enhancement, but combined together I think we can accomplish something. Consider a Stormstrike post with fire elemental mechanics in one hand and Cataclysm changes in the other.
If you're firmly in the "don't tell me anything about Cataclysm" camp, then just read the first section and skip the rest, though all I'm talking about are the recent changes to the shaman talent trees. If you don't mind a sneak peek at enhancement 4.0 as it stands now, then enjoy!
Fire elemental mechanics
A few weeks ago, I was on the Raid Warning Totem Recall shaman roundtable podcast. You may have seen me mention it once or thrice in the weeks leading up to it. Representing enhancement was yours truly, along with Juggynaut from Lorehound and everyone's favorite theorycrafter, Rouncer from Elitist Jerks. One topic that came up was the Fire Elemental Totem and how it interacts with Heroism/Bloodlust. My articles from June 19 and June 26 were about cooldown management in ICC, including when to drop a fire elemental. There was some good-natured debate in the comments about the timing of fire elemental. I've not forgotten the questions, and I've not been satisfied with my own answer to the question of when to drop the totem.
After that post, I did some testing with a few guildmates in the Nagrand arena -- followed by recapturing Halaa for the Horde, thank you very much. Unfortunately, after our quick round of tests, the results were inconclusive. Granted, we only tried six times, which took 30 minutes with the Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem. The results were skewed slightly towards a priority of totem then lust, but it wasn't enough to feel we conclusively proved anything.
Enter Rouncer and Juggy. Both confirmed the theorycrafting research to support that ... (drumroll, please) Heroism/Bloodlust does not affect Fire Elemental Totem at all. It absolutely does not impact the elemental after it's out because it's not buffable. Furthermore, because Hero/BL does not increase your attack power, thereby increasing spellpower, it does not impact your elemental if you pop BL before dropping the totem. Therefore, you should drop your fire elemental when it will have the maximum impact on the raid, regardless of when BL is used. The best use of the fire elemental is when it will get full use, the most amount of time on the boss, and damage any adds as well.
What does affect your totem is Maelstrom Power. What's that, you say? It's the four-piece set bonus for tier 10 enhancement gear. Waiting until that effect procs and then dropping your fire elemental can significantly increase your DPS. Since Rouncer suggested it to me, I've been experimenting with it by keeping my character screen open and only putting down my elemental when my AP is above 9,500, and I've seen my AP go over 10k with Maelstrom Power and other buffs.
Latest Cataclysm changes
It was a shocking week for enhancement changes in Cataclysm (no pun intended; we'll leave the shock puns to our elemental brothers and sisters).
Ancestral Knowledge was moved to the elemental tree, making our tier 1 talents that much more palatable. Looking at the new enhancement tree, I suspect we'll fill up all the talents in tier 1, though if you're just now leveling, I highly recommend starting with Primal Strikes.
Elemental Devastation was moved from the elemental tree into the enhancement tree, down to our second tier. This only makes sense, as it's a talent no elemental shaman in his right mind would take.
The big mystery for a few days was the third talent in the second tier, which was just an empty shell with a broken image link and Rank 0/0. That broken talent, and the noticeable absence of Ancestral Swiftness, was a bit disconcerting. Ancestral Swiftness, oh, how we hardly knew ya! You were the love of leveling, raiding and PvPing enhancers everywhere, come unto us from upon high only to tease and leave. Let's have a moment of silence for th --
Wait. What's that, Ghostcrawler? Ancestral Swiftness was not removed! Praise the blues! It's still there, just moved up to tier two. In fact, you can see it on wowtal.com, and that broken talent link was just a placeholder for it in the second tier. Let's all breathe a giant sigh of relief.
Moving right along, Frozen Power has returned, bringing our rooting ability back to PvP. And Improved Lava Lash was reduced from three points to two.
Shamanistic Rage has also seen changes in this build. It now reduces the mana cost of skills, totems and offensive spells by 90% for 15 seconds. However, I'm not concerned about the lack of mana regeneration; I've heard that Primal Wisdom is more than adequate to restore mana on a continuous basis.
I suspect we'll be looking at a spec of 7/34/0 for PvE, provided Totemic Vigor is not needed for specific fights. With Reverberation being moved down to the third tier of elemental, there is absolutely no way we'll dive down far enough to take that while still remaining effective.
Email me at rich@wow.com with any questions you have about enhancement, and I'll put together a reader mail bag post in the future. In the meantime, may all your hits be crits!
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Matt Sampson's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, we have you covered.Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Bludstorm Jul 25th 2010 6:16PM
Well It's still beta, So I am hoping they will make Primal Wisdom baseline to our talent tree and give us two more points to play with. I'm thinking a build along the lines of http://www.wowtal.com/#k=Wb2AApxX.9q4.shaman (Provided that Primal Wisdom becomes a tree passive of course)
BenMS Jul 25th 2010 6:32PM
I would say they almost certainly won't, two reasons: they have already announced the starting abilities core to Enhancement and it's not in there, and secondly other classes that have a similar thing have to spec into them as well. But I'm more than happy with how it has panned out, as a part-time windfurious shaman.
KPB Jul 26th 2010 12:09PM
I have to wonder what leveling enhancement shaman will do for mana as prmal wisdom won't be available until level 42, if I did my calculations correctly.
Glimdrel Jul 25th 2010 8:28PM
Ancestral Swiftness confuses me. Does it increase general movement speed, or only that of ghost wolf form?
"With Reverberation being moved down to the third tier of elemental, there is absolutely no way we'll dive down far enough to take that while still remaining effective."
It is actually impossible to grab talents from the third tier of another tree than your primary.
Calaana Jul 26th 2010 3:36AM
Ghost wolf has a move speed increase, as does the talent. When you are not in GW, the talent provides 15% movement bonus. It also reduces the cast time of GW, and should you cast that you effectively gain a 40% movement bonus(with a pretty graphic). As the bonuses don't stack, you don't get 15+40= 55% movement bonus, you get the highest(40%).
SO!
the talent could be read as "Reduces the cast time on ghost wolf by 2 seconds, Also, it provides a passive 15% movement speed bonus when not under the effect of other movement speed bonuses."
Toppi Jul 25th 2010 6:33PM
why do we not hear aboudt how mach xp we need to gain per lvl so we not are lvl 85 in 1 day as last time
jooohn Jul 25th 2010 6:42PM
Because every single number in the game is changing.
Imnick Jul 25th 2010 6:45PM
Because this is a column about shamans not about levelling
MusedMoose Jul 25th 2010 6:48PM
Wow, you hit level 85 in one day in WotLK?
Ricohardt Jul 25th 2010 7:15PM
Lately I've been thinking it would be awesome if they allowed for a 2 handed enhancement spec. I wasn't around in vanilla, but I hear it was the main enhance spec once upon a time. Blizz seems to be allowing for fury to use every weapon in the game, so any word on if this could happen, or if it's a bad idea that needs to be shot dead?
maybesew Jul 25th 2010 7:47PM
It wasn't the main spec, it wad the only spec. Shaman didn't get dual wield until TBC and even had to spend a talent point to use 2 handers.
We had a shaman with hand of rag on our server
Flolyn Jul 25th 2010 7:55PM
I believe it was GC who said, "Enhance is intended as a dual-wield tree. We aren't going to support a competitive 2H spec. We aren't going to prohibit it, but it won't be competitive." However, this was from a blue.
Docseuzz Jul 25th 2010 8:03PM
You might have answered your own question. If they are aiming fury warriors to have that flexability be their signature... it's unlikely they will do that with another class...
Pyromelter Jul 25th 2010 8:20PM
Shamans should be able to weild 1h swords. Rogues are still gonna have +agil swords, then they would be the only class to do so (because blizz has stated they will have +str 1handers for dk's and prot pallies and prot warriors). It only makes sense that another class has the ability to roll on +agil swords that would actually use them (I guess hunters could dual wield them too but just as a stat stick... meh).
Redsnake Jul 25th 2010 9:28PM
"With Reverberation being moved down to the third tier of elemental, there is absolutely no way we'll dive down far enough to take that while still remaining effective."
You make it sound like there is a choice. My understanding was that with spec selections, you can't reach the third tier of a second tree if you WANTED to.
Titusx Jul 25th 2010 11:00PM
Holding on the Elemental until I had the largest AP, and by consequence the largest SP, was pretty obvious. I currently try to time it to a shammy rage/trinket combo mainly because the T10 proc is a bit hard to keep track of. I have seen my AP go pass the 10K mark and a few days back saw go over to 11K thanks to a very lucky streak of procs... but, I still rather manage the totem around the stuff I can control (but thats just me).
Cinnamilk Jul 26th 2010 12:22AM
I've been wondering a couple things about the beta and enhance.
Since locks are having their 10 minute guardians (Infernal/doomguard) focus on their targets with a bane, I was curious if shamans would receive something similar for fire ele and searing, most likely using flame shock.
Also I was wondering if searing totem itself was going to scale with haste, both the actual frequency of the Searing Bolts and the Searing Flames dot.
alpha5099 Jul 26th 2010 12:23AM
Why Ancestral Knowledge? I would think a 10% boost to our meager base mana pool wouldn't be as good a ten percent reduction to our major mana drains.
I'm definitely interested to see how Elemental Precision stacks up. Obviously the spirit-to-hit conversion part will be wasted on us, but that 3% spell hit might turn out to be extremely helpful.
I'd also like to hear what the status of Unleashed Rage is. There was a post a while back where Ghostcrawler more or less said that most of the talents that are giving us stats like strength, hit and expertise are getting the axe. And of course, most other classes that had expertise talents have lost those talents. Will Unleashed Rage lose that bit? Expertise is such a pain to get, I hope they let us keep that talent.
Lankey Jul 26th 2010 10:00AM
I think the main reason for it is down to the whole "Int=Spell Power". I'll admit to not being 100% on that (it may be from gear only) but I think its the general idea.
KPB Jul 26th 2010 12:07PM
The talent is 10% more mana not int so it won't add any int and we won't have any int on our gear to increase our mana pool so it will be a weak talent and won't scale at all. Convection, on the other hand will reduce the cost of our major spells and will scale as it will save more mana as we cast more spells from MW stacking faster. Tier 1 elemental is going to be convection and concussion for enhancement shaman.