lol with the new valor system nerf (7 Zul'agains = max valor for the week from raids), I'd say this article is unfortunately appropriate. Bec you guys will be on the hamster wheel for a while with the same two heroics, until 4.3 comes. Nothing too surprising with Activation-Blizzard cashing in on its cash cow.

I'd have to disagree Impresssunrise.

With valor gear becoming justice gear, and normal BWD/BoT/To4W raids being nerfed to hell and back there will be little need for ZA/ZG gear. Even a casual will be able to deck himself out in ilevel 359s granted the RNG loot gods favor him/her.

It will officially become the maelstrom zone. Lot's of bosses giving epics, and the content will eventually become out-dated enough to the point that pugging bear mounts will be a joke.

I don't want to bash Sarah here a lot, but talking about the ZA/ZG gear is really pointless. Even if it becomes the new valor farming site the gear will be irrelevant by all but the extreme non-raiding casuals.

The JP 359 kids will still heed hats, shoulders, weapons, wrists and all that other jazz you can't buy with points.

connor and murder, i think you missed impress's point.

Which is that you cap out on VALOR, not justice, by simply running the 2 troll heroics 7 times in a week. meaning a lot of people will be running it, whether they need loot or not. So to have a little handy guide available for maybe 1 or 2 specific pieces isn't so bad.

That means full current tier badge gear at the same rate as firelands raiders, without ever having to step into a firelands raid.

(I haven't kept up with the news on that, so I don't know if that's actually true, but that's what impress was saying.)

Pyro,

If this was a boss fight guide I'd agree, but there's no point to a guide about the gear when a ton of it's going to be gotten through VP. Not to mention a fair chunk of the ZA/ZG gear is not ideal for elemental. The helm and leggings are crap for us, and the hex-blade, and wrists aren't ideal.

Even if people are running them 24/7 now they still won't need much of the gear because more people will be running the nerfed BWD/BoT/To4W for other gear which will win out over this gear. This is loot that people will not (unless they are RNG unlucky) hold onto for very long, which is why I don't feel that a discussion about it is very necessary at this point in time.

More to the point though: information about this gear has been readily available for awhile. This information isn't really new or ground-breaking.

And personally I think, especially with 4.2 around the corner, articles should mainly be focused around the future of things to come for us, and what to expect. Not gear to get from heroics that will be replaced by nerfed raid content.

Interestingly enough, there was another Totem Talk article for Enhancement shaman posted by Josh Myers within 2 hours of this article - if you browse through that it is a very nice overview of upcoming gear, it was more of this type of thing which would have been great. Enhancement and Resto have been getting excellent coverage on WoW Insider, and I am envious.

Of the last 38 Totem Talk articles, 6 have been written for Elemental Shaman. Of those, there is this article, which really offers nothing new, and a Level 1-20 guide, which may be useful for some starting an alt, but not for the vast majority of established Elemental Shaman enthusiasts. Not to beat a dead horse, but I am really crossing my fingers and hoping for more frequent posts of better quality for us, as there really isn't much of a community for us to follow otherwise (Totem Spot is updated once every 2 months or less, and Zamir at Planet of the Hats has semi-retired his ele shaman musings). I totally understand that RL has been hectic, it happens to all of us, but when the articles are so few and far between, I think we would really like to see something on par with the articles put out by the other columnists - some fresh, new and intriguing information and/or insights.

Dreadmist,

This is Liax from below. For some reason when I put in my email in it just started calling me connor.carleton which means I may get stalked now if someone is good with computers. Good thing I don't FB at least...

If you'd like I wrote up a fairly informative 4.2 gear list for my own personal use/reference. If you want to create a bogus email to post for me I'd be more than happy to send it your way. It's not complete since not all the gear has been listed, but I'm pretty sure I've seen all the loot information that is currently available.