Totem Talk: Elemental changes, part two
by Matt Sampson 
Jul 29th 2010 at 3:00PM
Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets.
Hello again, dear readers. It's time for me to waffle on again about elemental shaman. A few weeks ago, we saw the talent tree revamp down to seven tiers, and there have been a number of changes in the builds since then. Some of the changes are small, but there's one or two in there that I think you'll like, if you haven't heard about them already.I've also spent a little time on the beta, and aside from being totally unfamiliar with the UI, I'm enjoying it. Earthquake is fun to use, although I do wish that the cooldown didn't exist. As you can see from the image above, the current animation isn't quite finished yet, but looks promising.
But before we get started, I'd like to let you in on a little project I've been working on lately: TotemSpot. TotemSpot is our new Shaman Community Site that's been set up by a few shaman bloggers, and we're currently in beta (everything is there, but there are a few layout issues and changes we are working on). There is a forum, a blog/news front page, and a Wiki as well. Pop on over and have a look.
Swapping talents
In build 12539 last week, we saw the ugly stepchild of the elemental tree, Elemental Devastation, depart and become a tier two talent for enhancement after its journey from tier two elemental to tier one. It shall not be missed. In its place we have gained the formerly enhancement-based talent, Ancestral Knowledge. This still increases mana by 5/10/15% and will have to contend with Convection for the remaining two points to be spent in the first tier (the first three points will, of course, go into Concussion).
The interesting question is going to be whether increasing your mana pool, and thusly increasing the regen from Thunderstorm, will be of more benefit than reducing your mana costs by 10%. It is also quite likely that Unrelenting Storm will come into the mix when considering which mana related talents to use. You may recall that I did something on this last year, and I plan on revisiting this after Cataclysm hits. Subsequent to this, Improved Shields is now the three-point filler talent in enhancement tier one that we'll be using. Nothing flashy, but more mana from Water Shield charges is better than improving an ability we won't even use.
Old dogs with new tricks
As you know, Elemental Mastery has long had a shared cooldown with Nature's Swiftness from the days when it had a 100% crit chance rather than the current version we have today. Now that we've seen a reduction to 41 talent points and the restriction to one tree until 31 points are spent, the 11 point talents in enhancement and restoration are no longer available to us. Build 12604 removed that cooldown link, most likely to reduce the code behind both talents, and also added a nice new bonus to the spell. Elemental Mastery now increases your damage by 15%, in addition to the current 20% spell haste and next spell instant-cast benefits.
But wait, it gets better. Shamanism has been moved into a "base" ability for elemental, leaving a three-point talent gap at the top of the tree. In its place is Feedback, which is a 1/2/3 second cooldown reduction on the Elemental Mastery cooldown for every Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning hit. Say hello to the two-piece tier 10 set bonus in talent form. In other words, assuming no haste and only spending one minute casting Lightning Bolts, you've reduced your three-minute cooldown to 1 minute and 30 seconds. (Lightning Bolt cast time is 2 seconds, 60 seconds divided by 2 is 30 hits. 30 multiplied by 3 is 90 seconds off the cooldown). Obviously, this is just a rough example, but you begin to see how much of a change this is.
Armor bonuses
The mastery bonuses from wearing mail armor have been removed and replaced with "Armor Specializations." These give you bonuses when you're only wearing mail, ours being aptly named Elemental Mail Specialization, which increases Intellect by 5%.
This means that if you want to consider using a cloth or leather item as an upgrade, and you have 2,000 intellect, the upgrade needs to be worth 100 intellect more than the mail item you are replacing. As your intellect increases, so does this bonus, to a point where I'd only expect to see non-mail being used in the very early stages of dungeons and heroics, or newly-levelled characters who have been unlucky with drops.
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)
Alchemistmerlin Jul 29th 2010 3:08PM
"In its place we have gained the formerly enhancement-based talent, Ancestral Knowledge"
Hey! Give that back!
I mean we probably win this trade, but still.
Lousy elemental shamans, comin' into our tree and touchin' our stuff.
Angus Jul 29th 2010 5:24PM
Actually it going from tier 1 elemental to tier 2 enhance was a lose-lose for everyone.
In tier 1 elemental it was ignored by everyone but Enhance. Now enhance has to spend points on cheaper spells or a cruddy amount of extra mana.
In tier 1 enhance ancestral knowledge resto and elemental BOTH had a spot to put points that didn't suck in order to get ancestral swiftness.
This move actually forces all three specs to waste points on talents to get to the decent stuff on tier 2.
It is not a good thing. It ruined a lit of synergy.
Mike Jul 29th 2010 3:09PM
I'd still very much like to see Elemental get a Fire Shield that acts like Lightning Shield + Static Shock, but for casted spells or periodic ticks, etc.
On-topic, I'm liking where Elemental is going, coupled with using the same gear as Resto, it's starting to compete heavily with Enhancement for my alt spec.
Sharvis Jul 29th 2010 3:51PM
Yeah, I'd love to see Elemental get its own shield. Enhancement gets one and Restoration gets two to fiddle with. It's so lame to use a shield that doesn't really feel like a DPS shield to begin with and has no talents to involve it directly in a DPS-like manner.
"As you can see from the image above, the current animation isn't quite finished yet, but looks promising."
I was going to say it looked bad on the edges there with uneven terrain. I have a feeling the animation will get better but the terrain issue may continue to look silly if you're not on a flat surface. :\
Mike Jul 29th 2010 4:04PM
To be honest, I want to see it not because Water Shield doesn't directly contribute to DPS (especially with Elemental's other mana-returning mechanics), but because it's a glaring hole in the Shaman's control of the elements. There's Totems in Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. There's Shocks in Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire (including Wind Shear, which was only renamed to have it on a separate cooldown). There's Shields in Earth, Wind, Water, and... that's it. There's a Fire Shield in the game, but Imps have it for some reason.
Res Jul 29th 2010 6:39PM
But there are only 3 elementals, it's not as if that's the only hole. That sounded bad.
Mike Jul 29th 2010 6:40PM
I knew there was one I was forgetting. Water (or Frost, maybe?) Elemental Totem and Wind Elemental Totem should also be spells.
Kunikenwad! Jul 29th 2010 3:11PM
Binkenstein is the best addition to WoW.com. Ever.
Firestyle Jul 29th 2010 3:31PM
So, if ancestral knowledge is in elemental, are they expecting resto to go down the elemental tree? If so, where is ancestral swiftness currently? I'd be kinda pissed if I couldn't get this 15% speed bonus for pve in basically every spec - specifically resto, since that's what I raid as.
Pyromelter Jul 29th 2010 3:48PM
Firestyle, you've got a wrong assumption there. Assuming the trees all stay the same (which is almost guaranteed they won't), then you will take 3 points in elemental, at least 5 in enhance, and then at least 31 in resto. The other 2 points you can then put into ancestral swiftness, but you will likely be giving up something useful in resto (like having 2/3 instead of 3/3 in http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=30869 ). Other than Ancestral Knowledge, the elemental tree does not have anything that would help a resto shaman to heal, and you definitely want improved shields and elemental weapons talents from the enhancement tree.
Mohsus Jul 29th 2010 11:21PM
another layer can be added here- resto gets mana back from the damage they deal with LB from telluric currents. I almost wonder if having LB hit 6% harder (more mana return) or costing less in general would be more beneficial than the SP from the elemental weapons.
(or better yet, might it even be possible to put at least one point in the spirit--->hit talent so that when we DO want to smack things around we can actually hit them?)
This is all assuming that using LB can be used to get some mana going on a boss fight, if it just covers the lb cost then ofc those talents aren't worth it.
At some gear lvl though, one would have to think that LB would become mana positive.
AmIBroken Jul 29th 2010 3:39PM
Slightly disappointed to see Lodur being involved in yet another shaman blog. His game knowledge is extremely limited to the point where you begin to wonder whether he writes his posts by simply copying and pasting spell tooltips, and then adding his own half-baked musings. His guild just recently killed Lady D on heroic. Couldn't you invite someone more experienced, like Vixsyn, who's doing LK on heroic for almost two months now?
Matt Sampson Jul 29th 2010 3:42PM
Then you should probably check out the forum member list, Vixsin is in there.
AmIBroken Jul 29th 2010 4:58PM
Thanks, will do.
It's not that I don't like Lodur, it's just that he clearly tends to direct his posts for casual players.
AmIBroken Jul 29th 2010 5:00PM
*at casual players
pewter Jul 29th 2010 5:34PM
There are a lot of people involved with totemspot.com, with varying degrees, and only a couple of wow.com folk 'at the fore'. Lodur may well chose not to contribute to the front end blog, but in terms of advice and community moderation. We also have Borsk, Vixsin, masanbol, zamir and a host of others on board ;)
We want to make space in our community for the casual player and the theorycrafting :)
Firestyle Jul 29th 2010 3:46PM
Much the same as the casual direction of cata, I suggest many fansites/blogs will also be catering to the casual players. There are many more casual shaman and shaman alts than there are those of us who have been playing the class in end-game raiding.
Blogs have webhits. Webhits + RSS feed volume basically equate into advertising dollars.
Ant Jul 29th 2010 3:48PM
@ Firestyle
No worries about not having the speed bonus. As it stands now if you roll with a 3/7/31 build you'll be golden for all three useful things in the enhance tree and AK in the ele.
I imagine playing with something like( http://www.wowtal.com/#k=m1AcLwbm.9q4.shaman )but you still have a few choices in the resto tree to fit your style. I took the damage dealing talents but you could go with more survivability or the increased healing on earth shield target if you'd like.
Firestyle Jul 29th 2010 4:19PM
Thanks guys, my browser at work doesn't work with the talent tree things on wow-head, so I can't see them as they change. I was stoked for the 15% run speed increase, since basically 50% of raiding is movement anymore. It's a phenomenal buff.
staffan.johansson Jul 29th 2010 4:26PM
I'm not an expert on shamans, but I think reducing the mana cost of your most common spells by 10% (Convection 2/3) would give you more than increasing your maximum mana by 10%.
For an example: let's say you have 20k mana normally, and your Lightning Bolt costs 440 mana. That means you can cast 45.5 lightning bolts before running out (before considering mana regen). If you increase your max mana by 10%, you will be able to cast (22k/440=) 50 bolts before running out, and if you reduce cost by 10% you will be able to cast (20k/396=) 50.5 bolts. OK, in that particular case the difference is not quite enough to actually matter, but you can see how it would still be a larger number if the margins were different.
Furthermore, let's say you bring out your Mana Spring Totem. Currently, MST returns enough mana to cast another Lightning Bolt in about 24 seconds (91 mp5, and a LB costs about 440 mana at level 80). With Ancestral Knowledge, you'd still get an extra bolt per 24 seconds, since it doesn't care about max mana. But with Convection, it would only be 22 seconds. The same goes if you use e.g. a Runic Mana Potion: it normally gives you (4300/440=) 9.8 bolts, but (4300/396=) 10.9 bolts with Convection.
Now, there are some tradeoffs there. If you're casting spells that aren't affected by Convection, like a Healing Wave, or totems, Ancestral Knowledge starts catching up pretty fast, since AK helps no matter what you're casting. But I guess that's up to each shaman to figure out how much that matters.