Filed under: Shaman

I'm back.

OK, not really. Relax, enhancement shaman. I am not here to write about enhancement full time. As much as I love the class and the spec, I don't have the time to devote to enhancement the way I can to all things warrior. But my current alt of choice is an enhancement shaman, and I intend to level him in Mists of Pandaria, so I thought a guide to what's changed and what we can expect would be worth writing.

There are a lot of little changes that improve quality of life, but they also take some getting used to.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests.

Imagine my delight when I realized that the raid finder in the Mists of Pandaria beta was available for testing. The only instance available at the moment is Mogu'shan Vaults, but heck, who cares? I've been dying to get more practice in. I must've waited around 50 or so minutes before we had enough players to jump in. There were times where we had two tanks, six healers, and 11 DPSers. Other times we had 17 DPSers, 6 healers, and no tanks!

The raid finder for Mogu'shan Vaults has been split into two parts. You can't access the second half of it until you clear out the first three bosses in the first half.

There are some spoilers after the cut. Consider yourself warned!

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how.

I'm sure that you've been busy preparing for Mists of Pandaria, logging into the beta and testing things out for yourself. Maybe you haven't gotten into the beta yet but have been testing things out on the PTR. Either way, with the announcement of the release date for Mists, things have been kicking into high gear. More beta invites are going out, and now more than ever, player feedback is incredibly important.

Over the last two weeks, I've been thinking about a recent change restoration shaman have had to their level 45, or tier 3, talents. I've had a few discussions about it on Twitter with fellow shaman in the community, and after much deliberation, I've decided that it would in fact be the major topic for this week's article.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how.

Two weeks ago, I was gushing about how much fun I was having in Mists. I still am having a blast, and I truly enjoy healing through the new dungeons. I haven't had a chance to test out shaman healing in one of the new raid encounters yet due to the times they've been scheduled, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a time that lines up with my being home so I can bust in some raid skulls.

Over the course of the last two weeks, however, there have been a number of updates to the beta client, as well as statements and replies from the developers at Blizzard Entertainment in regards specifically to a shaman talent in the expansion. One of the updates also contains the first glimpse of our tier 14 bonuses for both two-piece and four-piece sets.

Keep in mind that all of this information is based on the latest Mists of Pandaria beta build and is subject to change at any time.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Once a lonely tauren shaman in a bad Scarlet Crusade-themed transmog set, Josh Myers is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids using all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though.

I'd like to preface this post with an apology. I'm sorry, shaman. I didn't mean to disappear for the past month, but I started a new job this month, and the ensuing chaos left me neglecting my monster-slaying duties. On the plus side, I didn't leave you guys for Diablo!

Luckily, not much has changed for enhancement on beta since I slipped into solitude. And by "not much," I mean that there's been a single solitary patch note with class changes since I last posted. Flurry has been reduced to a 20% haste increase on crit, and you also gain a 50% additional benefit from haste on items.

This change is obviously intended to address our incredibly lackluster scaling from haste. It's very reminiscent of the change in patch 3.1 that gave all melee classes an additional 30% haste from items. Prior to 3.1, haste was a lackluster stat for enhancement. By the end of Wrath of the Lich King, we were gemming straight haste rating. When Cataclysm hit, shaman were changed significantly to do less passive damage. The 30% haste rating benefit we enjoyed for over a year were reverted, and our benefit from haste rating plummeted.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how.

The big news this week is that the level cap on the Mists of Pandaria beta has been raised to 90. You can go and explore Dread Wastes and Vale of Eternal Blossoms, but there isn't any raid content or Pet Battles, and some of the scenarios and Battlegrounds are not yet available. At the time of writing this, the premade template characters were not available yet for level 90, so you'll have to climb the level ladders the old-fashioned way right now.

I'm sure you're thinking that it took long enough, but to be honest, this is a bit sooner than I anticipated. While we've seen the talents, we haven't have the chance to work with them quite yet. Now, we finally get to dive in and play with them, experimenting for what will be our best choices in any given situation. It's like unwrapping a brand new toy for the first time, and I'm pretty excited.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how

So with all the excitement over the release of Diablo III, Mists hasn't been one to sit idly by and just be completely quiet. There have been a number of changes to shaman in general over the last few builds. I figured if you could tear yourself away from the eternal struggle of the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, then we could take a look at some of those changes.

One of the most underrated aspects of the new expansion, in my opinion, is the glyphs themselves. There's a lot to be said about the importance of the glyphs in the new expansion. I personally feel that they will become much more useful as tools to help define our healing kits for the fights, much more so than talents currently do.

Ascendance is a new ability coming to level 87 shaman of all specs in Mists of Pandaria. For 15 seconds every 3 minutes, you'll transform yourself into an Ascended elemental form that looks very much like the trash mobs in Grim Batol or Bastion of Twilight. The actual Ascendant's appearance and the function of the form vary based on your current specialization.

For enhancement, you take on the form of an air Ascendant, making your melee auto-attacks and Stormstrike become ranged attacks that are able to be used at up to 30 yards away. They also deal pure nature damage, which means they're benefited by Enhanced Elements and ignore armor. From a PvP standpoint, melee attacks from a 30-yard range that ignore armor will be frustrating for escaping clothies and plate-wearers that you're trying to keep your distance from.

Elemental morphs into a fire Ascendant. In this form, your Chain Lightning morphs into Lava Beam. Lava Beam is similar to Chain Lightning but hits a total of five targets and doesn't reduce its damage when it jumps, which is potent AoE. For single targets, your fire Ascendancy makes your Lava Burst have no cooldown during its duration, which means back to back critical hits for 15 seconds.

The last Ascendant form is restoration's water form, which functions very similarly to the Essence of Dreams in Ultraxion. For 15 seconds, every heal you cast duplicates its healing done and splits that secondary healing amount among all nearby targets. If you cast a 100k Greater Healing Wave on your tank, she'll be healed for 100,000 and another 100,000 healing will be split among allies near her. It's very potent.

If you want more in depth views of Ascendance and the benefits and cons, Joe Perez and I recently wrote Totem Talks covering Ascendance for DPS and resto shaman.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Totemic Projection, obtainable at level 45, gives you the ability to launch your currently placed totems to any location around you within 40 yards. Fairly straightforward, really easy to use. Those of you who like setting up macros may want to start planning a little about creative uses with your totems and Totemic Projection.

• Capacitor Totem Drop this totem and count to three, then Totemically Project it toward your target. Voilà! Instant stun!
• Earthbind Totem Perhaps best used in PvP, you can setup Earthbind to root and slow down players as they're busy running away from you, allowing you to close the gap and Chain Lightning their faces.

Those are just some of the ideas I had off the top of my head. The other talents add extra functionality to your totems. Call of the Elements lets you finish off any totem cooldowns that are active, allowing you to use them again. The catch is that the cooldown of the totem needs to be shorter than 5 minutes. Sadly, this means you cannot use your Fire Elemental Totem, Earth Elemental Totem, or Stormlash Totem back-to-back. Totem Restoration is a passive ability that lets totems respawn if they keep getting destroyed. I'd say that's useful in PvP, more than anything else.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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One of the early shaman survival cooldowns that you can get at level 15 is called Astral Shift. It isn't flashy or super awesome or anything. But an emergency damage reducer on a 2-minute cooldown could be just what you need to stay alive and continue DPSing (or healing).

It doesn't reduce only magic damage.

Nor does it reduce only physical damage.

It reduces any damage!

In case you feel two minutes is too long, you have some alternatives. Nature's Guardian is an effect that can kick in once every 30 seconds, which might potentially save you (although the next hit you take could be lethal). Stone Bulwark totem is another alternative that places a shield on you which refreshes and adds additional absorb amounts every five seconds after.

The theme of the level 15 shaman talents revolves around survival and damage mitigation. Raiders may lean more toward Astral Shift, but I'm using the Stone Bulwark totem for the purposes of questing and leveling.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how

This week, we're going to talk about our level 87 ability, Ascendance. That video above is not mine, but it is pretty darn cool, so I figured I would link brandonk99ing's video here since it did such a nice job. It shows our brand new ability for Mists, which we get to play with at level 87. Each flavor of shaman gets a different version of the ability. Elemental and enchancement get some nice damage increases, while resto gets to walk around like a giant water elemental, throwing out crazy healing numbers.

Basically, while in the Water Ascendant form, all of our healing done is duplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies. I've commented that it looks just like the ability Essence of Dreams from the Ultraxion encounter -- and to be honest, that's exactly how it feels. I figured I would share with you my impressions of the ability, now that I've gotten my hands on it.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

After covering monks, priests, paladins, and druids, there is one class left to review: shaman. How are they going to fare entering Mists of Pandaria?

Totems ... gone!

Just kidding!

They're not really gone. They've switched to more of a utility focus now. Looking at the entire list of totems available, not a single one provides any type of stat increase. Totems that provided passive buffs like Flametongue Totem, Mana Spring Totem, and Stoneskin Totem have been removed. Healing Stream took a nerf cannon to the face, now only affecting a player now instead of whole groups.