Filed under: Shaman

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Last week, we talked about the new shaman healing spell Healing Rain, a great new spell that is offering us a new option in our healing arsenal. While the visuals may be lackluster when not turned all the way up, the general response has been favorable to our new rain dance.

This week, I thought we would discuss some new information handed down by Ghostcrawler (Blizzard's lead system designer) about restoration shaman. I felt it would also be appropriate to talk about the other "new" heals we are getting in Cataclysm and how they affect our current toolbox. I am talking about Greater Healing Wave and Healing Wave. Cataclysm promises healers choice in the spells they cast, with appropriate consequences if they pick the wrong spell for the encounter. Understanding how these new spells function in relation to the other tools in our healing kit can make a big difference on the choices we make when deciding what heal to use.

Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 12 now out!)as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

Holy Stormstrikes! I'm going to refrain from using the term casual in a post ever again. Wait, I just used it there. Ah well, rack that promise up with "I'll never drink again" and "I'll never die to cutters again." Lies, all of them, lies.

We all have different definitions of the term and judging by the comments in the last post, others' definition of casual is more severe than mine. I'll get into casual vs. hardcore and the ridiculousness of those classifications in another post. For now, I hear you loud and clear, so let's refrain from diving into that now.

I digress. As I was writing last week's article I had this sneaking suspicion that I already wrote several articles on gearing your non-end game enhancement shaman. In fact I had written articles many moons ago, and they are all on my neglected blog, Big Hit Box. Time for a revisit.

Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 12 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

Casual raider? Or not fortunate enough to play a shaman as your main, but instead stuck on another, lesser class? This article is for you. If you need to go out and gear up your shaman from guild alt runs, PUG raids and mucking about in daily dungeons for your two frost emblems, then read on for your gear choices.

From the applications we received over the past few months at Big Crits, it seems that guilds and PUGs alike had a hard time getting past Deathbringer Saurfang -- that is, until the bigger ICC buff hit. Now the breaking point is 6/12 ICC, with kills on Festergut and Rotface being commonplace but little experience beyond that available. Taking into consideration how far casual guilds or alt runs can realistically get into ICC, I've listed the loot in order of progression, from easy to hard.

Last week, we went over some of the shaman updates on the latest beta build as well as a bucket list. Some readers chimed in with their thoughts on what they had for goals to accomplish before Wrath comes to a close.

This week, we are going to talk about Healing Rain, a new spell obtained when a restoration shaman reaches level 83. When we first received word of the new spells and abilities during the Cataclysm class preview, there were quite a number of people who didn't know how they felt about this new spell. Would it be good? Would it be useless? Was it really necessary? When the beta was released and the level cap moved to 83, we started to get a small idea of what the spell could do. I've been spending the better part of the last couple weeks testing it out in various situations, seeing how it complements the other tools in our healing arsenal.

Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. He's also the shaman behind TotemSpot and is looking forward to the release of Civilization V.

So, hands up: Who saw this coming? No, I don't mean the fact that Lightning Shield is now our preferred shield, but rather the Unrelenting Storm vanishing act, the mana restore when casting Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning and the introduction of Earth Shock into the rotation. Yes, that's right. Earth Shock. Seems a bit odd for us elementals to be stealing abilities from enhancement rather than the other way around. Also, some of you may be wondering why I'm on fire in the screenshot above. Well, that happens to be the new animation for the Unleash Elements Flametongue Weapon proc.

Before we begin, there has already been feedback on the forums about some internal beta changes that haven't been pushed out to the external beta yet (software in development goes alpha, internal beta, external beta, internal live and then external live), so I will be breaking down the notes and updating them with what we know as I go. I'll post a modified list of the changes at the end, too.

Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. He's also the shaman behind TotemSpot and is currently leveling a mage alt ... sshh, don't tell anyone!

Welcome to another post on Cataclysm beta information for the best spec of all: elemental. There have been one or two changes in the latest patch, along with things being fixed (Unleash Elements, for example). This means we can start doing some testing, play with the mechanics and get a better feel for how elemental is looking. First, patch notes!

Elemental

• Magma Totem now costs 18% of base mana, down from 27%.
• Lava Burst damage has been increased by 25%.

Restoration

• Totem of Tranquil Mind *New* - Summons a Totem of Tranquil Mind with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 min, causing party or raid members within 30 yards to lose 0% less casting or channeling time when damaged. (Value NYI, Concentration Aura)

As you can see, the patch notes are fairly small and are mostly balancing tweaks. The additional 25 percent damage on Lava Burst only applies to the base damage, so instead of dealing 1,441 damage (on average) it now hits for 1,801. This extra damage will be multiplied by talents as well, so that becomes 460 extra damage before considering the critical strike multiplier, which brings it up to 1,022. In other words, that 25 percent base damage increase turns out to be a 6.4 percent increase in overall damage, assuming an average critical of 16,000 before the change.

Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 10 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

The last patch of an expansion feels like the last gift of Christmas; you want it to be the most epic and the most incredible gift of them all, the one gift by which you'll remember this time forever. But instead, you're at your in-laws' doing the family gag gift exchange with a price limit of 20 bucks and a penchant for As Seen on TV products. In some ways, Ruby Sanctum is like that; it's not huge, it's not epic, it's not expensive, but it does have some potential. Maybe Ruby Sanctum is the Slap Chop of this expansion. None of this has anything to do with the article today. Except that I'm talking about Halion.

Halion, the Twilight Destroyer. Three phases, good loot and a huge scale-up in difficulty on heroic mode. It's a good fight that requires paying attention throughout the entire 8-minute enrage timer, in which one death can mean a wipe, especially on heroic. There's no 30 percent buff incoming, so you either learn it and beat it, or you don't and fail. For our part, as enhancement shaman, there are a few tricks we have up our sleeves.

Some relics -- sigils, idols, librams, and totems -- were unearthed in the latest beta patch that work in a fundamentally different way from how relics work currently in the game. They are now stat items with sockets. Currently, relics are non-stat items that confer a special effect specific to a common ability used by a particular spec, such as the restoration druid's Idol of the Black Willow, which only affects Rejuvenation. While unique and creative, relics weren't always optimal and proved difficult to balance.

The change makes relics more like other items that fit in ranged slots except that they remain class-specific, with stats tailored to a particular spec. This should be a welcome change for many players who play hybrid classes and found it difficult or constraining to use ability-specific relics. A list of the relics for death knights, druids, paladins and shaman found in the latest beta can be found on MMO Champion.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From goblins and worgen to mastery and guild changes, it's all here for your cataclysmic enjoyment.

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Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. He's the shaman behind TotemSpot and has decided to return to something he's really good at: math.

This time around, I thought I'd cover a question of increasing frequency: how will elemental scaling work in Cataclysm? After the rollercoaster ride of changes through Wrath of the Lich King, most shaman are a little worried about how things are looking. Since we're still in the early days of the beta, and since we can't get to level 85 yet, it's a bit difficult to do any in-game testing or experimentation.

However, that's never stopped me before. Rather than building a complex model on things we don't yet know the mechanics for, what we can do is look at how Lightning Bolt is going to work. Since LB comprises 70-80 percent of our damage, it's a useful measure of how damage increases with spellpower and critical/haste rating. So for some baselines, we're going to assume all the raid buffs are present, that the spells can't miss or resist, and that we've got 2.2k intellect, 15 percent haste, and 25 percent critical strike chance. I'm also going to assume a 5 percent mastery value, for when the mastery bonuses come into effect.

We then need to split things up into how they affect the spell. First we look at spellpower bonuses, damage bonuses based on passive talents, buffs and debuffs, which all need to be handled separately. Then we top everything off with critical damage multipliers, factor in Elemental Overload, and top it all off with haste.

Last week we talked a little bit about the mastery stat and how it is being implemented and what it will affect, as well as talking a little bit about how the developers are are looking at totems -- the highlight, of course, being comments from Ghostcrawler (Blizzard's lead systems designer) himself.

This last week though there was a new beta build released. Cataclysm build 12694 has hit, and with it, there have been quite a few changes that will affect restoration shaman. Various talents and spells have been moved, trimmed or otherwise adjusted. I'm certain you are wondering what new and exciting things were waiting for us.

This week I would like to take a look a these changes and give you my own impressions of them, after having tested them quite a bit. I also thought that this week we would take a look at some of the common questions I've been receiving in regards to playing a restoration shaman in the Cataclysm beta.

Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury, and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 9 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby.

With such a lame title, you'd never guess we have so much to talk about this week! Mastery bonus is all elemental damage, not just nature! Smarter Searing Totems! Four Ghostcrawler replies (11 paragraphs!) about Shamans, with four paragraphs solely about Enhancement! Longer Hex! New crit-increasing talents! Increased totem ranges! Well, okay, maybe that last one isn't as exciting as the first few. But there's so much news out there for us enhancers, I don't even know where to begin.

The logical place to start is with the biggest news: Enhancement Mastery bonus "increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating." This is a change from the first Cataclysm build that included mastery; previously our bonus was only increasing our nature damage. The nature-only mastery was great for our core spell, Lightning Bolt (LB), but with Maelstrom Weapon (MW) now including Lava Burst (LvB) we would not benefit from our Mastery bonus with LvB. This was a problem for two reasons: first LvB does more damage than LB, and second, LvB could be used to keep Elemental Devastation up. Lava Burst will automatically crit when Flame Shock (FS) is on a target, making it a smart choice to used to keep Elemental Devastation active.

That choice changed. Mastery now affects all elemental damage, which includes Lava Burst. Hence, Lava Burst plus Flame Shock plus mastery equals happy enhancer. This is a great buff for us. Because LvB has an 8 second cooldown and LB has none, we'll still keep LB handy for when LvB is on cooldown.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If in need of additional healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community.

Thanks to Dawn and Allison for filling in for me while I was away at Laguna Seca. Dawn did an excellent job discussing pointers about paladin-less healing. Maybe the next time I join a raid that doesn't have a holy paladin, it won't take hours to get off the ground. Then Allison comes along discussing what is considered good and bad when applying to guilds. What's scary is that some of those seem familiar. It's as if she looked at one of my guild applications years ago.

Got an email this week from a reader. We'll call him G. I'm sure it's a question that many raid leaders or loot masters had to struggle with over the years.

[...] When cloth item A drops, our caster DPS and healers always /roll on it; the caster DPS doesn't seem to mind if it's MP5 or spirit. Let's take an example of the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner. Our warlock says spirit is good for him and he /rolls; our priest says it's healer gear [because] of the spirit [as] regeneration for him; and our mage of course wants this also.

The healer complains the caster DPS gets to roll not only on items like this but also on cloth stuff with +hit, effectually rolling on everything cloth in ICC. I can kinda see what he means. My question is what's an easy way to differentiate "healer" gear from caster "DPS" gear, or is it all rolled into one big pot now?

Thanks for any help you can give me, I am not the guild leader but I am the full time loot master, the guild leader has given it to me to decide, as he's never played any caster at all.

Welcome to another article by elemental shaman specialist Matt Sampson, otherwise known as Binkenstein. By day, he's a geek; by night, he's also a geek, but with spreadsheets. He's the shaman behind TotemSpot, the new shaman community site/forum/wiki and might have been a hunter if only hunter pets hadn't sucked when WoW was launched.

Hello again, fellow elemental shaman. All you nonelemental types can stand at the back of the room and keep quiet. I've already rambled on about talents, twice even, but so far haven't touched on the new abilities yet. There are a few goodies for all the specs.

Before we begin, a brief word from our sponsor. No, wait, sorry, I mean Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer).

We're fine with totem health given how easy totems are to replace. We also think it's fine to have to (sometimes) choose between a buff totem and a non-buff totem given how many different things a shaman can do.

However, we are going to increase buff totem range (and possibly other totem range) and we have figured out a way to make Searing Totem attack your target, instead of a random and probably inappropriate target.

source

The increase of buff range will be a godsend. Hopefully they increase it to the standard 100-yard range of all other auras, preventing the classic "the raid just moved and now I have to redrop totems a few times to make sure everyone is covered" problem. The other side of that is with the additional instant-cast spell in Unleash Elements, and the casting-while-moving ability that is Spiritwalker's Grace, there will be less running time during which to recast totems.

The Searing Totem change is also very, very nice, not to mention something that we have been asking the development team for for a while. The question remains whether the totem range increase will be applied to Searing Totem as well, to avoid the "I can be 36 yards away from the target for everything but my DPS totem" problem.

Earlier this week, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) responded to some posts regarding totems. There have been some doom-and-gloom comments and, unfortunately, very few positive ones. (Nice to see Strawberry get a mention in one of GC's replies.) Since I'm now the elemental shaman columnist here, I thought I'd weigh in with my own thoughts on the matter.

Quote:
Why does a DK not have to choose between horn of winter and desecration?

Because that is pretty much all the DK gets.

The shaman on the other hand gets to choose among Strength of Earth Totem, Windfury Totem, Wrath of Air Totem, Flametongue Totem, Tremor Totem, Healing Stream Totem, resistance Totems and Earthbind Totem, which doesn't even count Bloodlust / Heroism, and things like Unleashed Rage or Elemental Oath. If your buff was as competitive as theirs and you had so much versatility, we fear we'd see raids with many, many shaman in them. As it is, there's still a good chance for 3 shaman in a 25-player raid, while the DKs might get 2 slots if they're lucky.

You should get a slot because you are a good player, not because your buff rules.

source

From what GC is saying here, we can see that because we have multiple potential choices in buffs via totems, these buffs won't be quite as good as the ones provided from other classes. The problem with that is that even in a min-max raid environment, the shaman selects totems based on what other buffs are provided, rather than being brought along to specifically provide totem buffs. It's also worth noting that most of the differences between the buffs a shaman provides and those from other classes boil down to either range, activation or both. As it stands at the moment, you will make sure you have one shaman for Wrath of Air and an enhancement shaman for talented Strength of Earth. That will cover the only shaman-specific buffs you require for the average raid. In fact, you are more likely to stack paladins in a raid than shaman, to get three blessings on everyone (Sanc, Kings, Might or Wisdom, although enhancement shaman and retribution paladin would like to have all four), compared to having one shaman dropping Wrath of Air, Totem of Wrath/Flametongue and possibly Mana Spring, with a second doing Windfury and Strength of Earth, which will cover all of the "primary" raid buffs.