Totem Talk: An enhancement view of Patch 4.1
by Josh Myers 
Apr 30th 2011 at 2:00PM
There are two things on everyone's mind this week. First, it's time for the royal wedding (Thrall and Jaina, if I recall correctly?). Second, patch 4.1 hit. With patch 4.1, we've seen some pretty awesome things. For instance, the Zandalari are back and dedicating their purpose to trolling all of Azeroth; queuing as a DPSer for a random heroic now takes one-fifth of the time; and frost mages got a damage buff.
Unfortunately, enhancement was barely a footnote in the greater scheme of patch 4.1, receiving a grand total of three changes. These changes range from "complete and utter nerf" to "slight AoE buff." To be honest, I'm actually not bitter about 4.1 for enhancement, as we were already competitive in PvE, where our main concern was our abysmal and complex AoE DPS. For people who play primarily enhancement PvP, this patch was considerably more of a letdown.
The bad
The main problem with 4.1 is that Grounding Totem was nerfed, going from a 15-second cooldown to a 25-second cooldown. Grounding Totem has long been one of the most unique and powerful tools in a PvP enhancement shaman's arsenal, allowing for clutch interrupts of CC and damaging spell casts while the all-powerful Wind Shear was on cooldown. It also was incredibly useful in higher tiers of PvP content, where really observant players could predict and catch instant-cast spells like Deep Freeze and Hammer of Justice. While these spells are still groundable, the 10 second-longer cooldown puts a huge dent in enhancement survivability.
The annoying thing about the nerf to Grounding Totem is that it hurts enhancement and elemental PvP more than it hurts restoration PvP, the spec that we believe Blizzard was primarily intending to nerf. Restoration was a ridiculously powerful healer in top-tier arena content in 4.0.6 and managed to retain the title of healer kings of PvP post-patch. Enhancement and elemental, specs that were already lagging behind in 4.0.6, suffered more than restoration.
In a move that makes everyone happy, Improved Fire Nova was removed from the game, and Fire Nova was made into a 4-second cooldown baseline. In a move that makes no one happy, it was replaced by the talent Seasoned Winds. At first glance, Seasoned Winds seems as if it could be worthwhile, providing 195 resistance to an interrupted damage spell's type. This stacks with the resistance offered by Elemental Resistance Totem, making subsequent spells cast on you deal less damage.
Unfortunately, this talent doesn't really help enhancement in PvP. First off, you're rarely ever interrupting damaging casts. The spells you almost always focus on interrupting first are crowd control casts, such as Polymorph or Fear. A 20k Frostbolt crit is recoverable from, whereas your healer's getting stuck in a full 8-second Polymorph because you Wind Sheared the Frostbolt will kill you. After CC spells, you generally will look to interrupting big heals, such as Greater Heal or Divine Light. It's only when you don't need to worry about the opponent casting a CC or a heal that you'll be hitting damage spells, which is a rarity.
Beyond that, we have no innate resistance to shadow. Elemental Resistance Totem gives us nature, fire, and frost resistance, but we don't have shadow. This means that interrupting spells from affliction warlocks and shadow priests, two of arena's prominent caster classes, will only bring you to 195 resistance. Nearly every competent caster in the game gems and enchants enough spell pen to make 195 resistance useless, making Seasoned Winds only useful against balance druids, elemental shaman, and frost and fire mages, unless you have someone on your team supplying shadow resistance. In the end, it's a very mediocre talent that isn't worth taking points out of Elemental Warding or Spark of Life for.
The (slightly) good
Before patch 4.1, enhancement AoE was terrible. Magma Totem was a stationary stick in the ground that removed our Searing Totem to use, killing our single-target DPS. It was impractical and nigh impossible to use effectively on any AoE situation that required moving, such as heroic Maloriak, and the global cooldowns needed to set up our AoE meant that we were less effective on adds that needed to be burst down, such as Chogall's Festering Blood.
At the end of the day, I'm actually happy with 4.1. While Grounding Totem was a nerf that I truly feel was unwarranted, I don't focus enough on PvP for it to ruin my patch day. I also feel like Seasoned Winds is a real letdown, but I can admit that I don't know enough about PvP to write it off for good. And I actually like the Fire Nova change and like the complexity it brings to playing enhancement. I actually had fun on heroic Maloriak this week!
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk: Enhancement every week. We've got enhancement-specific advice on rep gear, heroic gear, and raiding gear, plus tips on maximizing your utility skills and tactics for raiding Blackwing Descent.
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MikeLive Apr 30th 2011 2:09PM
I don't know if the new Fire Nova is easier or not, but it certainly sounds less frustrating and is definitely a unique AE in the game (I haven't had a chance to try it out yet).
Necromann Apr 30th 2011 2:47PM
It is actually reminiscent on a priest's mind sear.
Necromann Apr 30th 2011 2:48PM
But one tick off of multiple mobs.
Amaxe Apr 30th 2011 7:30PM
I tick off mobs all the time...
/duck
DTpwnz Apr 30th 2011 2:15PM
The new Fire Nova reminds me of Wild Mushrooms (Balance druids)
Hailene Apr 30th 2011 2:31PM
Fire Nova pre-4.1 didn't actually require Magma Totem—you just couldn't use it with Searing Totem, and it didn't make sense to use anything other than Magma Totem, since you were AoE'ing.
TheBlob Apr 30th 2011 2:52PM
Or Fire Elemental. The few times I ran as enhance (I'm resto main spec and only switch to enhance if we have a lot of healers or something), I would always drop FE on the second green phase on Maloriak so that we could get those adds down as fast as possible and push to the burn phase.
Necromann Apr 30th 2011 2:45PM
The new fire nova is awesome.
alpha5099 Apr 30th 2011 2:48PM
There are currently two floater points in our Enh spec. A lot of players had those points in Improved Fire Nova, but now I suppose the only DPS talent we can put them in is Improved Shields. As IS doesn't actually provide much of a DPS gain, would you recommend putting those two points somewhere else for utility? Toughness or Totemic Reach or maybe even Frozen Power, if only to take advantage of the Frost Shock root.
Crispn Apr 30th 2011 3:08PM
What is your spec... I have a spec that doesn't take then IFN/SW points, and don't quite understand how your speccing.
Saeadame Apr 30th 2011 3:21PM
I was personally debating between IS and Totemic Reach... I know that good totem placement can often make it useless, but I'm not always good at totem placement. I always forget Frost Shock exists, so I probably won't pick up frozen power, although a spec with it could probably make a decent off-PvP spec if you only PvP once in a while (regular BGs, that kind of thing). You could make a case your Toughness, I suppose, although with all the damage reduction or healing abilities in Enh Shaman's spellbook you hardly need it. I've tanked some mobs for 10-20 sec with SR/Wolves/Glyphed Stoneclaw Totem/MW5 Heals and taken hardly any damage, and if I do start to take damage I can break out the Earth Elemental.
For me I might pick up IS for now, the extra damage is minimal but it's extra damage.
Josh Myers Apr 30th 2011 3:24PM
That's a great question, actually!
For PvE, I'm putting the points in Improved Shields now, just because it's the only DPS upgrade...even though it's a terribly small amount. If you find yourself dying to unavoidable stuff a lot or are slightly slower to move out of the bad than you should be, Toughness could also be a contender.
Totemic Reach really isn't all that useful for us, though hunters do have to be mindful of where they're standing to make sure they get WF/SoE. Frozen Power isn't really a PvE spell at all. D:
alpha5099 Apr 30th 2011 4:23PM
@Crispn
The Enh spec I'm currently using (and I assume a lot of us are using) is this:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hZffG0s0hRGo
The 2 points in Improved Shields could go somewhere else, as IS is a rather trivial DPS boost for Enh. They have to be in the Enh tree somewhere, but none of the other options are hugely compelling either.
Amaxe Apr 30th 2011 7:35PM
@alpha
That's pretty close to mine. The only difference is I have 32 points in enhancement and 3 points in improved shields. There might be something I should add in the ele tree on my part but I don't see a lot of use for the 10th point there
alpha5099 Apr 30th 2011 7:52PM
@ Amaxe
What's your ele subspec look like? I'm running 3/3 Acuity, 2/3 Concussion, 2/2 Call of Fire, and 3/3 Elemental Precision (not for the Spirit-to-Hit part obviously, the rest of the talent is essentially extra Mastery).
Improved Shields is easily the weakest DPS talent in the Enh tree. Taking that last point and putting it in pretty much anything else. There's a fair amount of leeway between how to invest into Acuity, Concussion, Call of Fire, Reverberation, and Elemental Precision.
ryohki May 1st 2011 4:58AM
that's pretty much what I'm using, except I've got 3/3 acuity, 3/3 concussion, 2/2 call of fire and 2/3 elemental precision
I figured the extra damage from lightning bolt and shock, outweighed the 1% bonus to everything. I may be wrong.
Vitos Apr 30th 2011 3:33PM
About seasoned winds, could it be useful in PvP? Interupting Arcane Annihilator or Maloriak's Power Torrent might be a small help, or no?
zelcor1 Apr 30th 2011 4:03PM
I find the new FN system to be a tad awkward in most aoe situations the mob hardly ever lives long enough and when you do hit nova it ends up not working cause the add that had the flame shock is dead. Plus the idea of multi dotting is just awful since as it was mentioned the FN dmg isn't all that fantastic when it would just be easier to single target and leap from one add to another having a firing Nova the whole way for some extra dmg
Personally the new nova works only really well if there's 1 strong target in the middle of many small ones the two elites in zg right after one of the red cauldrons works out really well.
I think a really nice change would allow fire nova to also emit off of our searing flames target since that has a really good uptime and switches easy from target to target
Condor Apr 30th 2011 4:32PM
What you said.
I think it'd be great if the Fire Nova would emit from yourself if there was no Flame Shock on-- or maybe that could be a major glyph or something...
In order to use fire nova to its full potential, I have to spend precious seconds finding a target, throwing a FS on him, hitting nova, then switching back to my main target like the boss or something. Why can't we just get a 'click on the ground where you want to nova' like a Mage's blizzard or something. Even if it briefly stopped us from auto-attacking, we could work that into a rotation where AoE was needed.
I wasn't crazy about the old system but this new one isn't any better.
Eleph Apr 30th 2011 6:40PM
I found FN to be quite weak in AoE situations. As commenters have said, it's quite a feat to get three of 'em up simultaneously within a pack of a dozen squishier mobs. It was awkward at first, but the AoE dps improved slightly as I got more comfortable with it.
That said, I kept FN at lowest priority during BoT today. If everything was on CD (Unleash, MWx5LB, Lava Lash, Shocks) I'd hit FN. Over the course of a 1-minute fight that probably happens three times. DPS didn't suffer; can't say it improved any, either.
Back when FN CD was shorter, I hit that thing every time it was up with great success, so a part of me is glad that I get to use FN again. It's just that it has that "What's the point?" kind of feel.