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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsTotem 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 2 of 2)
Azraha May 1st 2011 1:58AM
These changes are somewhat devistating..... I also wanna know what is the UI setup you are using it looks less complicated then what i have
Jacob May 1st 2011 7:32AM
Yea, nice UI. Could you post a link to where we can get our hands on it, thx. ;D
ZephyrSP May 2nd 2011 10:27AM
For those of us running regular old dungeons as not-85's, or at least me as a 67 shammy, the new fire nova mechanic is really tricky to use well.
The reason for this is simply the pace with which stuff dies. When you're in a world where half your party will have heirlooms - most likely of all the tank, you're moving quick. Keeping up good damage while on the move like that means sticking to my standard rotation of totems-LL-SS-earth shock.
For one, I feel like putting flame shock on the target the tank and/or I are working on is a waste, because they'll very possibly die before I get to nova in rotation. So i try to pick out the mob most likely to survive longest and quickly switch away from him. And still for all but the biggest pulls, I feel like my DPS is hurt for my effort for taking the first potentially critical earth shock out of rotation and having to switch back and forth.
On the one hand, you could call this a happy problem. Stuff is dying so fast I can't aoe well. Tank aoe is drastic, especially below 85, so I should just enjoy the ride. I'm no DPS-meter junkie, but I like to try and contribute as much as I can. At least I still have maelstrom chain lightning (which having just hit 3/3 is amazing).