Totem Talk: Enhancement buffs and debuffs in Mists of Pandaria
by Josh Myers 
Mar 10th 2012 at 8:00PM
is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids as all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though.
I'm doing my best not to be excited for Mists of Pandaria yet. This is partly because we've not even seen a hint of the beta starting yet and thus have a few more months of patch 4.3 to play before MoP comes out. This is also partly due to the fact that my new guild just started heroic Spine of Deathwing attempts, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to look forward to anything ever again. Ever.
Even though I'll never be excited for anything ever again, Blizzard has released some juicy new MoP information over the past two weeks, and a good chunk of it pertains to enhancement shaman. If you still have the ability to be excited for things, this something you want to read. If you're also progressing on heroic Spine of Deathwing, you probably still want to read this ... if only to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Thursday night, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer Greg Street), the world's classiest crustacean, posted a blog discussing buff consolidation in Mists of Pandaria. First off, buff totems are gone. This was said last fall at BlizzCon, but it's been confirmed again. This is an awesome change, since your raid buffs are going to be mobile and travel with you at all times. While this might open you up to having your buffs dispelled in PvP, I'd take that over having any class with an auto-attack or instant-cast spell or pet being able to kill them in one shot.
But they already took our Sentry Totem!
The actual buffs we're getting are interesting because we're actually losing a number of buffs. Mana Spring Totem, Strength of Earth Totem, and Stoneskin Totem will all simply not exist anymore. This isn't something shaman specifically are losing but rather are buffs that won't exist anymore. No class in the game will bring mana per 5, strength/agility, or added armor. As someone who spent the better part of the past expansion raiding 10-mans, I can't say I mind cutting the fat and consolidating the buff system. It also looks like the 20% attack speed debuff is being removed from the game, which means it will be taken off of Earth Shock. (Props to you if you knew this was on Earth Shock to begin with.)
I know that buff consolidation is a scary thing to a lot of shaman because it was what they used to justify a raid spot in The Burning Crusade, but we're thankfully not playing that game anymore. Your raid spot is now wholly justifiable based on whether or not you can AoE tiny abominations effectively or burst down a tendon down in 23 seconds. Oh, wait ...
We found buffs in a ... Deathwingless place?
On the positive side of things, we will offer some useful buffs. Every shaman, including enhancement, brings 10% spellpower. This is a little counterintuitive, as we don't actually benefit from this buff at all. (This is why Mental Quickness was buffed to be 55% of our attack power in 4.3.) Our lovely 10% melee haste from Windfury hasn't been touched too much but will require speccing enhancement to use, which I actually enjoy for flavor reasons.
Finally, what has me super excited is the juicy new +5 mastery buff that all specs of shaman will be bringing. Anyone who has followed enhancement during any of Cataclysm should know how incredibly good mastery is for us, and finally having a raid buff that enhances that stat should bring much rejoicing in our community.
More damage, fewer people = happy
Playing an enhancement shaman has given me a unique view on buff consolidation. On one hand, I did use my status as the ultimate melee buffer to jump from Karazhan to Black Temple raiding in The Burning Crusade. On the other hand, I remember playing the one spec in the game in Wrath that required every raid buff/debuff in the game to be present to do my maximum DPS, which was particularly frustrating in 10-man raids. When buffs were consolidated originally for Cataclysm, I was a huge proponent for the change, and I am in favor of it happening again.
In fact, I'm 90% happy with the changes Ghostcrawler put up. I feel the buffs fit the flavor of the spec, and I'm glad to see the fit trimmed. I won't be sorry saying goodbye to Strength of Earth or Stoneskin Totem and welcome our new mastery buff with open arms. The only thing that would make me happier would be to see us included in 10% attack power, because we had it first and I still remember the glory days of maximizing crit to ensure Unleashed Rage had 100% uptime in combat.
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk: Enhancement every week. We've got enhancement-specific advice on 4 ways to increase your DPS, the ups and downs of enhancement in Dragon Soul, and gearing up for Raid Finder raids.Filed under: Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zura Mar 10th 2012 8:49PM
This was covered in different dev water cooler, but the biggest buff I see is them adding spell hit to expertise. We'll be able to reforge more into mastery (or whatever secondary stat is best in MOP, in wrath it was haste), because the hit cap will be much easier to reach. And with hunters needing it we'll see expertise on non-set mail finally.
midnight08 Mar 10th 2012 9:27PM
Bloodlust is in the talent calc and looks exactly the same there - noting both Bloodlust and Time Warp as being affected by sated - so yeah it looks like that is not changing at the moment.
deegeejay Mar 10th 2012 9:35PM
They did mention however that just because you can bring several buffs, doesnt mean you can actually bring them all at the same time. So don't worry so much about the 10% sp being counter-intuitive because chances are it shares the same ability to bring the 10% haste or 5 mastery as well. And being Enhancement, people can find their own 10% haste, I be bringing mah 5 mastery, mmkay?
Titusx Mar 10th 2012 11:08PM
Well, this hole thing did leave earth shock on an "up in the air" position. Although I believe I saw something on the talent calculator that implied that it will add one of the new debuffs. Also of note is the fact that debuffs and buffs share their names.
I recall reading something in the lines of "this spell generates the "weakened blows" effect" or something like that. So you know what buffs and debuffs you are getting regardless of who is providing it.
About unleashed rage: its the expertise part that worries me not so much the AP. At least the new expertise system, and the fact that it integrates hunters into it, will make it a great deal easier to share loot with our gun wielding friends.
If anything, I wish they scale the size of totems them self so they are more visual. When a shaman drops a totem it will be for a strong reason and it will help showcase the power of totems by making them a bit more distinguishable. Considering warriors are getting their own kind of totems. =/
staffan.johansson Mar 11th 2012 8:03AM
Expertise won't be as much of a problem in Mists since (a) mail will have Expertise on it because both shamans and hunters will want it, and (b) you no longer need ridiculous amounts of hit to get your spells in.
Currently you need to stack lots of Hit to get to the spell hit cap, and that leaves less room for Expertise. As a compensation, you get 8 Expertise from Unleashed Rage. But in Mists, Expertise will also help you with hitting with spells, so you don't need all that Hit - it's better to balance out Expertise with Hit.
WoWinitup Mar 11th 2012 5:21AM
Anyone heard anything about the cd on wind shear? If I don't have a 5 sec cd on wind shear I feel like I'll be screwed in PvP...
Titusx Mar 11th 2012 9:50AM
I bet wind shear will end up like our cleanse is on the talent calculator. Meaning, each spec will have its own version like how enhancement/elemental have a cleanse that only does curses and restoration gets one that clears curses and magical effects.
That's one of the things of the new system, it makes it way easier to "tweak" single specs without messing the hole class.
Dave Mar 11th 2012 8:12PM
As I understand it, no one will have a sub 10 second interrupt in MoP and PvP is being adjusted accordingly.
Glaras Mar 11th 2012 9:51AM
And welcome to the Alliance, Josh. Good to have you. Have you gotten used to the *DING* when you pop Hero, yet? About the only thing I like when I played a Horde-side shaman was the enraged-murloc-on-steroids sound when Bloodlust got fired off.
Greg Mar 11th 2012 9:53AM
My only concern is that melee haste is not good for enhancement shaman anyway. Unless there is a change prior to MoP, the trend will continue. It's already strange bringing a buff that I can't really use.
That being said, I have no problems dropping windfury because well- what else we got?
Nyold Mar 11th 2012 11:34AM
This may not be directly related to the article, but I kinda would miss shaman being a "buffer" class. Right now that kinda role doesn't fit anywhere in wow, but shaman used to be a "quintessential" 5th group member, as people would say, kinda how like bard or dancer class are in other games. With these changes, shamans are less and less about buffs and debuffs and more and more about their personal contribution.
staffan.johansson Mar 11th 2012 12:16PM
Working as intended :)
vlad_dracul2k2002 Mar 11th 2012 12:16PM
Which goes back to the 'bring the player not the class' mentality. If I'm in a top-tier raiding guild, should I be there for what I can contribute in terms of buffs or for the amount of DPS I'm doing? I personally like being able to pick and choose which buffs I can bring based on the buffs other players bring (Shadow Priest bringing spell haste? I'll drop down a Windfury Totem. Druid/Paladin bringing out Mark of the Wile/BLessing of Kings? BAM! Have Stoneskin Totem)
celtspatssox Mar 12th 2012 3:53PM
IIRC, Unleashed Rage was passive and Flurry was the attack speed proc from crits.
Rollo Mar 11th 2012 11:34PM
Alright, so we lose some buffs. Good, good... But what will we get? Any new icons at all?
Kagitaar Mar 12th 2012 5:27PM
Traitor!!!
First, why do people keep asking about BL being in MoP when looking at these? BL is a raid CD not a buff, why would this affect it?
I've already responded on the official thread that I think the system still needs more work because as it stands, it actually makes it harder to get all the buffs and debuffs for 10 mans. My own raid's setup would lose the +4% physical as we have no consistent str dps, just the off tank warrior, and even worse, we would have to choose between fort and AP as the same warrior would be the only one able to apply these.
Other buffs like the spell haste are too narrow as well, being only able to be applied by hybrid dps casters, aka 3 specs, making it by far the least acquirable buff. My suggestion was to further consolidate haste and AP/SP as they did crit so as to make it much simpler to get proper buff coverage.
@both Traitor Josh and deegeejay
The MoP calc has both the SP buff Burning Wrath and the mastery buff Grace of Air (yay for that name's return) as passives like the majority of the buffs in the game.