Posts with tag enhancement-shaman-totem-talk

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.

When I try to think of what enhancement's most iconic ability is, a few come to mind. Windfury Weapon is a definite contender, and three or four years ago it would have been my default response. Seriously, though, what is Windfury other than a glorified auto-attack with an attack power bonus and a lower chance to miss? Likewise, Stormstrike could be iconic, but it's essentially a melee attack with both weapons with an electric graphic and a debuff. It's enhancement's Mutilate or Obliterate.

To me, Maelstrom Weapon is the answer. If there's one ability that encapsulates what enhancement is -- a brutal melee class that weaves instant spellcasts between their weapon strikes to harm their opponent or heal themselves -- I believe it's Maelstrom Weapon. It's enhancement's Death Strike, Arcane Blast, Chakra, or Raging Blow -- abilities that, at a glance, offer an insight into what makes the spec different from other specs in their role.

There's a problem here, though. If Maelstrom Weapon is enhancement's iconic ability, why is it currently so awful?

It's here!

As I'm writing this, it's past midnight Thursday night on the east coast, which means I could be referring to two things. If you're a preteen or, like me, you have a very odd and indescribable man crush on Josh Hutcherson, I'm probably referring to the Hunger Games movie. More likely, though, I'm referring to the Mists of Pandaria beta, which was released in the middle of the night on Wednesday. Probably.

MoP beta brings with it a lot of things, and chief among them is our long-awaited level 90 tier of talents. If you remember correctly, the first incarnation of this tier was awful, and everyone hated them. Fortunately, Blizzard listened to feedback and scrapped those, but new talents weren't included in the updated talent calculator a month ago, and we've been living in a state of suspense since then.

These new talents are all game-changers. The cool thing about them is that every one of them is going to impact your rotation in a new and interesting way, and I can see uses for all three of them. Those are the sort of talent choices that have me jumping for joy, and I'm very excited to see how this all plays out.

A long time ago, in a Mulgore far, far away, I was a young tauren shaman who was attempting to gear up as enhancement after hitting level 70 for the first time. Enhancement shaman who have only started playing within the last two years won't remember the confusing beast that was enhancement gearing of yesteryear, but it was an adventure.

First off, we gemmed strength exclusively. Yes, strength. Despite sharing gear with hunters, we got more (read: any) attack power from strength than we did from agility. More importantly, and this is where Mists of Pandaria changes will come into play, the enhancement shaman of The Burning Crusade didn't try for hit rating on their gear. In fact, we avoided it like a bear tank gemming agility avoids sunders on Warmaster Blackhorn. We did like expertise, which made the few items it existed on like Shard of Contempt best in slot, but it was almost never included on items, and there were no expertise gems. As a result, the majority of enhancement shaman ran with nearly zero hit rating and zero expertise.

If you're reading this today, your jaw might have hit the floor. Never, you'll say, while pulling up your character sheet and crying over the whopping 2,284 secondary stat points we need to put into hit rating and expertise. Yes, you read that correctly. We spend 2,284 stat points simply making sure we can actually hit the boss.

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
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.

That said, I'm terribly excited for Mists of Pandaria. Part of the excitement is that for once in my life I'll have a horde race to play that isn't tauren as I hate all the other choices, and The Amazing Panda Adventure was possibly my favorite movie from 1995. Another part of the excitement is that Mists of Pandaria is new and shiny and it's only human to love things that are new and shiny. I love some of the new ideas Blizzard has cooked up for level 90 players, from PVE scenarios to companion pet battles. Yes, I was young enough to play Pokemon when it was relevant, but I'm also old enough to not be ashamed of wanting to play it again.

Most importantly, though, I'm most excited for the potentials changes coming to enhancement in MoP. Enhancement has had some pretty glaring issues for a good part of this expansion, even if we regularly remained competitive. Thankfully, some of the changes that came in last week's updated talent calculator look like they'll be on the road to solving these issues when Mists drops.

When the Mists of Pandaria talent trees first debuted, I wasn't the most pleased DPS shaman on the block. I wasn't exactly displeased, either; my emotional involvement was most summed up by the word "meh." Stone Bulwark Totem looked interesting; Healing Tide Totem had me super psyched; and Echo of the Elements looked insanely powerful, stacked with elemental's mastery. On the flipside, the entire third tier of talents looked super boring, and the top tier of level 90 talents was so underwhelming that I almost wrote off the new talent system as a lost cause.

Thankfully, we're not in even the closed friends-and-family beta yet, and so I knew changes would definitely be implemented in time. I've been looking forward to Wednesday's talent calculator update for nearly three months now, and I'm glad to see that I wasn't terribly let down. While there still are some definite issues with the tree as it stands, Blizzard's already said that we were one of the two classes that it's currently focusing on, which is why our level 90 tier of talents is still empty. As long as the original talents don't come back, I can only get happier. To top it all off, the new talent tree reveal also showed us our level 87 spell, which is looking to be one of the coolest in our arsenal.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.)

I've said in the past that enhancement is in a good place in 4.3, and that's the truth. Despite some really awful itemization and some as-yet-unresolved issues with the spec, enhancement is remaining a strong middle-of-the-pack contender. In non-cutting-edge raid groups that don't have multiple Dragonwrath-wielding casters, we're even better.

Dragon Soul is a great instance for enhancement in 4.3 because it offers a variety of fights. Some play to enhancement's strengths, some highlight its weaknesses, and some fights are Ultraxion and your DPS spec doesn't matter, provided you can push buttons and click a shiny purple dot on his screen every 45 seconds. For the purpose of brevity, I'm going to assume you're familiar with the normal-mode mechanics of these fights (and if you're not, some are conveniently covered by my frenemy Tyler Caraway in the Ready Check column) and just speak to how enhancement specifically fares on these fights.

Chopping Morchok

There's nothing particularly special about Morchok for enhancement, except if you're doing the fight on heroic. Shamanistic Rage and Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem make Morchok's Stomp damage negligible, but Stomps don't really hit hard enough on normal to worry about. However, if you have a healer in line of sight during a black phase (and you've done nothing in recent memory that would cause them to hate you), Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem and Shamanistic Rage will let you stay on the boss for most if not all of the phase. If you don't have a friendly healer, enhancement still fares better than most melee on this fight, as cast Lava Bursts and Lightning Bolts still hit hard.

So one of the best things about 2011 was the changes made to address a lot of those issues. Ancestral Swiftness gave us the normal bonus run speed that classes like ret paladins received, and since Ghost Wolf was changed to be usable indoors, we're much better at maximizing time on target. Armor penetration was thankfully removed from the game (coincidentally, I'm fairly certain that 4.0 saw a significant drop in headache medicines to WoW players), and the awesomely cool mastery stat was added in its place.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. This week, Josh Myers, the dean of DPS shaman, and Joe Perez, the Robespierre of restoration, do a Dragonball-Z style fusion dance and combine their class knowledge to bring you a concise shaman leveling guide.

So, young padawan, you want to play a shaman. You're following in the footsteps of some of the greatest characters in World of Warcraft lore -- Nobundo Farseer, Thrall, and yours truly. Just know that you have the full support of myself and Mr. Joe Perez, and we'll only judge you a very small amount for not choosing shaman sooner.

The shaman class has three distinct specs that each fulfill very different roles. Enhancement, which we'll talk about first, is a melee DPS class, which means standing very close to bosses and whacking them repeatedly with blades or maces imbued with flame and wind. Elemental is a ranged caster DPS class, preferring to stand at a safe distance while hurling balls of lava and electrocuting enemies. Restoration, the last spec we'll talk about, is a healing spec, revitalizing friends by creating super-soothing puddles for them to stand in. Seriously.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.)

So, you want to queue for the Raid Finder on your enhancement shaman, but you don't quite have the required 372 item level for it yet. We've all learned tips and tricks over the year since Cataclysm launched to cheat the ilevel restrictions, like wearing restoration gear to inflate our ilevel. However, if you want to actually benefit the raid and increase your chances of downing bosses, those tricks are not the best way to go. There are multiple accessible 378 items for near every slot.

The first rule of getting geared for Raid Finder is to avoid Hour of Twilight like the plague. There's seriously only one drop in the instance that's worth getting, and that's the Clattering Claw. Dawnslayer Helm? Both our Erupting Volcanic Helmet and Scalp of the Bandit Prince put that ugly hit/haste helm to shame. Betrayer's Pauldrons are a possible good choice, if only because extensive testing by yours truly has proven that Mantle of the Fiery Protector does not actually exist. It's a myth. Flickering Shoulders of the Zephyr/Windstorm are both good choices to use over the Hour of Twilight shoulders, but getting a useful random enchant on an already random drop is not a sure bet.

Hour of Twilight also has the Cinch of the World Shaman as a quest reward. I'm so glad Blizzard decided to create an agility belt with shaman in the name and itemize it to be absolutely awful for the only spec of shaman that uses agility. Well played, Blizzard. If you're fresh to 85, this will unfortunately be your main belt choice, as the Firearrow Belt requires you to be honored with Avengers of Hyjal. However, you're a lucky shaman who has to run Firelands to deal with the itemization woes of the 4.3 heroics anyway, so you should be honored in no time at all!

I'm going to start this post by talking about how excited I am. For those of you who've read my About The Bloggers, you'd know that I considered the last patch of Icecrown Citadel to be the absolute worst patch this game has ever seen. In hindsight, 4.2 was probably the second worst. Enhancement's DPS was mediocre unless you abused a gimmick. Our AoE was pathetic. Firelands was an exercise in trying to discern how much red and orange the human mind could take in before making us go totally mental and putting a fist through the monitor.

But now, 4.3 is here! Fresh, new heroic 5-mans are here, complete with a beautiful new axe for enhancement shaman who couldn't get Gatecrasher to drop. Dragon Soul has been introduced, offering various backdrops for your boss slayings, a new super-easy mode option, and mechanics that actually seem to favor having an enhancement shaman present. Most of all, though, we received a terribly needed buff to our AoE, breathing a new quality of life to being an enhancement shaman.

At first glance, the loot lists of 4.3 make me a sad enhancement shaman. Everywhere you look, beautiful agility gear is being marred by haste and critical strike rating, often found together. Since our mastery is such an incredibly potent stat, seeing even a single slot that doesn't have a mastery option could be disheartening. Seeing our final tier of gear have three pieces without any mastery on them is just downright depressing.

Never fear, though. Despite some really awful itemization, enhancement is actually in a really good place next patch. And by really good, I mean really, really, good. Besides some of the buffs I talked about last month, we've also got the beautiful 10% additional attack power buff, which is just some sweet icing on a delicious cake of shamanism. Combine that with a beautiful, dual-wieldable axe that has a proc that scales with our mastery, and Dragon Soul raiding shaman will be in a very nice place in 4.3. (Need some proof? Load this profile into Simcraft to see some of our projected numbers.)

At BlizzCon last week, Blizzard unveiled its plans for an entirely new talent system in Cataclysm. Designed to try and eliminate cookie-cutter specs, the new talent system includes practically no DPS-increasing talents and focuses mainly on utility. (Don't fear losing some of your familiar talents; those are being rolled into the specs you choose at level 10.)

Part of the problem with utility talents is that they tend to gravitate toward becoming PVP talents, particularly when you reach max level. Sure, Frozen Power or Earthgrab Totem might be excellent for soloing, but at level cap, you rarely do much soloing. And the soloing you do do comes in two forms: soloing old raids, where the mobs would be immune anyway; and dailies and quests, where heightened gear levels will eventually allow you to blow away mobs in a Windfury proc.

That said, some of the tiers look like they will have potential. As a result, I'm going to do my best to keep my doubts about whether or not we'll actually be able to utilize some of this utility in check, and do a tier-by-tier review of the talent tree for enhancement in Mists of Pandaria. Please remember, these are all subject to change ... and hopefully, some of them do. (I highly recommend keeping up the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator in another tab while reading this, as since most of these spells don't exist yet in game, I can't link to them like I normally would.)

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.)

I won't lie: The past few months have left me fairly disillusioned about playing an enhancement shaman. Nothing in Cataclysm will ever match the absolute horror that was the last patch of Wrath of the Lich King for enhancement. However, our total lack of scaling with secondary stats that aren't mastery, horrific AOE DPS every patch, and our total lack of any form of worthwhile DPS cooldown have all been ingredients in the lukewarm dish that is enhancement. If this was Iron Chef: America, even Alton Brown would be hard pressed to make us sound good.

Thankfully, the 4.3 PTR is up, and with it comes some changes to enhancement shaman that have me excited.