Ok guys, sorry for not posting anything new lately, but I do have something big planned. My roommate and I got ourselves a virtual ticket to BlizzCon 2010 and while I won’t give you guys all the information that we see from the event, I’ll try to give you guys a recap of things that I think are important from that day. That all starts this Friday though so that gives me plenty of time for other stuff before then. I’ll see you guys then.
This is Gisanazil signing out.
Just in case some of you haven’t seen the post on mmo-champion yet, here is what shaman tier 11 is going to look like. Keep in mind that it’ll probably look better on races that aren’t human, but since Blizzard makes all their tier models on humans, there’s not a lot else I can say.
Here’s the link for the male:
http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2010/october/tier11_shaman_male.jpg
And here’s the link for the female:
http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2010/october/tier11_shaman_female.jpg
This is Gisanazil signing out.
So while I’m sitting at my computer waiting for Blizzard to bring the servers back up (they most likely will have guys standing there with fire extinguishers just in case they catch fire), I decided that now is as good a time as any to post the rotation guide. So without any further adieu, here we go!
Elemental:
I should probably take the time here to say that all of these rotations are based on the assumption that you are capped for all of your basic stats e.g. hit, expertise, etc. so if you aren’t capped in one of your basic stats reforge your gear to compensate for that.
Make sure you have Flametongue Weapon on and that you are using Lightning Shield, this is kind of common sense, but I’m just covering all my bases here.
So the first thing you want to do when you see a mob is drop your totems; the totems I would recommend dropping are Stoneskin Totem for earth, Flametongue Totem (keep in mind that the talent Totemic Wrath will overwrite the flametongue effect) for fire, Totem of Tranquil Mind for water, and Wrath of Air for air.
The first actual spell you want to cast is Flame Shock, this will essentially set you up for your entire rotation and will keep a dot on the target (which is always nice) for the duration of the fight as long as you refresh it when it’s about to fall off. If I’m not mistaken this shock takes a higher priority than does earth shock, so when lightning shield hits nine stacks and both earth shock and flame shock are up (which will be all the time since they share a cooldown), you want to flame shock first.
After flame shock has been applied, you want to start casting Lava Burst so you can get a big crit right off the bat. You want to be casting this ability whenever it comes off cooldown, so whenever you see that it has come off cooldown or that Lava Surge has reset the cooldown, cast lava burst on the next possible spell (for example, if you are in the middle of a chain lightning or lightning bolt, finish casting that, then cast lava burst).
After casting lava burst you want to use a Chain Lightning to get a quick powerful spell in there. This is will also let you damage multiple targets if you are up against a group of adds instead of just one; this will also stack lightning shield up faster because it’s damaging more than one target. There are some however, who would say that unless you are up against an AoE pack that this spell probably isn’t worth it. They may be right, but honestly the difference between using it and not using is so little that I don’t think it’ll matter much.
After opening with those two spells, you need to start your spamming of Lightning Bolt. This is your main damaging spell and as such it should be the spell that you are casting most often. Only interrupt this spell when lava burst or chain lightning come off cooldown, or when you need to refresh flame shock (or lightning shield hits nine stacks which will be discussed next).
What is listed above is the basic rotation for elemental; there is however, one more spell that you have to work in. With the addition of Fulmination, you want to wait until lightning shield reaches nine stacks then Earth Shock. Other than flame shock and lava burst, this spell has priority over all of your other spells, so be sure to be using at the appropriate time.
Now i realize that all can be a little confusing so let me try to summarize (remember to have the appropriate buffs on and totems queued up):
Fight starts => Drop totems => Flame Shock (reapply when time on DoT is almost up) => Lava Burst (cast whenever off cooldown) => Chain Lightning (cast whenever off cooldown) => Lightning Bolt (spam) => Earth Shock (only when Lightning Shield has reached nine stacks) => repeat
So there you go, the elemental rotation I would say is largely priority based, depending on what spells are off cooldown or not. The enhancement rotation is largely the same, but much more simple seeing as how you have a lot less abilities that you need to worry about.
Enhancement:
As with elemental, make sure you have lightning shield cast on yourself. As far as weapon enhancements, have Windfury Weapon on your main hand and have Flamtongue Weapon on your offhand (once again, pretty self explanatory, but I’m just covering all of my bases here).
The totems you should be using (if you’re dropping them) should consist of your melee totems. For earth, you are going to want to drop Strength of Earth Totem (yeah it’s going to overwrite a DK’s Horn of Winter but who cares? It’s their fault for not rolling a shaman and they mainly use it for runic power generation anyway). For fire, you want Searing Totem in order to get the DoT on the target and the increased damage to lava lash (Note: you will have to reapply this totem every minute so don’t forget to do so). Your water totem should probably be Totem of Tranquil Mind (if you’re the only shaman; if not, you could probably get by with dropping Mana Spring Totem or even no water totem at all). Your last totem, the air totem needs to be Windfury Totem so you can buff yourself and other melee with haste.
Once the fight starts and you’ve dropped your totems, you need to open up with a Stormstrike in order to do some major damage and to apply the increased nature spell crit chance debuff (wow that’s a mouthful) on your target. Other than just your auto attack, stormstrike is one of your biggest hitters, so it would be prudent of you to stormstrike whenever it is off cooldown.
After you stormstrike, immediately Earth Shock. Earth shocking after the stormstrike will increase its chance to crit by 25% thus allowing it to do (hopefully) a little more damage. Seeing as how the stormstrike debuff will be on the mob almost constantly, you should be earth shocking constantly as well.
After earth shocking, and waiting for searing totem to stack its debuff on the mob five times, you should Lava Lash. As far as your rotation goes, you should be lava lashing whenever it’s off cooldown AND when searing totem has five stacks.Doing it at any time other than this is a waste of a cooldown.
At this point, your Maelstrom Weapon should have hopefully hit five stacks (if not, just continue the rotation listed above until it does), which will give you a free and instant lightning bolt or chain lightning (chain lightning may do more damage, but at 85, it’s going to cost more mana so you’re probably better off just casting lightning bolt). This always takes priority; no matter what you’re doing at the time, when you get five stacks of maelstrom, you lightning bolt… period.
That’s pretty much the rotation guys; once again I know what I just went through can be kind of confusing, so here it is in simpler form:
Fight Starts => Drop totems (at least searing) => Stormstrike => Earth Shock (use whenever it’s off cooldown) => Lava Lash (at five stacks of searing totem) => Lightning Bolt (at five stacks of Maelstrom Weapon) => repeat
Some of you may have noticed that I didn’t mention Feral Spirit or Elemental Mastery. Well that’s because ele mastery is more of a cooldown and should be used when the group bloodlusts or uses heroism effects (spells like time warp and the core hound ability also fall under this category), and feral spirit doesn’t actually increase your damage as far a recount is concerned. For both of these spells, I would say to use them when you need a big damage boost (like at a soft enrage or other tough point in the fight).
Also guys keep in mind that I’m leaving out one key spell in a level 85 shaman’s rotation: Unleash Elements. This spell changes depending on what enhancement you have on your weapon and as such, will work its way into your rotation at level 81. This is not Cataclysm however, and as such, you cannot go past level 80, so just disregard this spell for the time being.
Well I’m done guys, the servers are finally up so I’m gonna get on that and then do homework.
This is Gisanazil signing out
So here’s the final installment of the shaman patch 4.0/Cataclysm guide.
Restoration:
So let me preface this by saying you need healbot. Go download healbot right now. Oh god this puppy will die if you don’t get healbot (points to puppy). Look at that guy over there, he’s downloading healbot. Your mother called, she wants you to download healbot. Now that I’ve successfully told you all to DOWNLOAD HEALBOT (or grid), I’ll tell you why. Healbot (or grid) is a UI mod that that is an absolute must for healers; it offers several spiffy (yes I just said spiffy, deal with it) features that make healing sooo much easier. You could probably get by without it in Wrath five-man heroics or Cat 5 man normals, but from what I’ve heard about 5 man heroics and raids in cat (and to a lesser degree raids in wrath once 4.0 launches), the damage is going to tanks and the raid is going to be ridiculous. So do yourself a favor and download healbot.
The spells and talents for restoration are about as diversified as the previous two specs, differing only in the fact that they deal with (you guessed it) healing.
First up on our multi course meal that is the restoration tree are two abilities that can be a little confusing for veteran shamans. Greater Healing Wave (which is essentially a renamed old spell (healing wave)) and Healing Wave (which is a newly added new spell) are two of your new spells that you should become familiar with. Greater healing wave (which is the newly renamed old healing wave) is mainly going to be used for getting a low health party or raid member up quickly (though you shouldn’t spam this ability seeing as how the mana cost is absurd at 85) while healing wave (which is the newly added new spell) is going to be a shaman’s “go to heal” (according to Blizzard). Everyone confused yet? Yes? Good; as it stands right now, healing wave (the newly added new spell) heals for about 5k with the capability of critting for around 8k while costing 371 mana at 80 (keep in mind this number will increase at a rapid rate past 80, so expect your healing wave to cost about 3k at 85); greater healing wave (the newly renamed old spell) heals for about 13k with the capability of critting for around 20k while costing 1238 mana (remember, that number will increase).
The next heal that Blizzard has added to our repertoire is Healing Surge. This little heal is going to be (or at least should be) used a bit more than greater healing wave because it’s essentially a heal with the cast time of the old lesser healing wave (which is gone now) and the healing power of a tuned up healing wave (cata version not wrath). So basically healing surge is going to be the heal you go to when someone in your party or raid is at extremely low health and you don’t really have the time to cast a greater healing wave or a healing wave. Because of this, you should be getting pretty familiar with this heal over the course of the expansion.
Chain Heal has been changed to heal four targets instead of three now and had it’s healing reduced. Other than that there’s rally nothing to report here.
Next on the list is not a new ability to the game, but a new ability to shamans . Blizzard has taken concentration aura away from paladins and given it to us in the form of Totem of Tranquil Mind. I don’t expect all shamans to use this totem all the time in five-mans, just so long as in a raid situation someone has it down (assuming the raid has multiple shamans, if you are the only one then you need to be dropping this). Doing so will greatly help out your ranged DPS seeing as how a big chunk of their DPS comes from continuously casting and not having any (or as little as possible) pushback. Any spec can drop this totem.
The only talent really worth mentioning is Improved Cleanse Spirit as well as Cleansing Waters. It is really nice to see that Blizzard is offering a bit more incentive for shamans to cleanse. The spell Cleanse Spirit has also changed somewhat as it no longer cleanses poisons or diseases. Some shamans have griped about this on the shaman forums but to me, it’s really not that big of a deal.
Your basic resto spec is most likely going to look something like this at level 80
As far as splashing goes, you have a few options. You could go into elemental and get 3/3 Acuity for the 3% increased crit and then go into enhancement for either Totemic Reach or Ancestral Swiftness for the increased mobility. These two variations of essentially the same spec are nice because of the juicy increase to crit (which in Cataclysm, is going to be a lot more valuable when you do crit than it is now). Alternatively, you could spec into enhancement to get both ancestral swiftness and totemic reach and then spend your final talent point in acuity. Compared to the spec listed above, this spec really isn’t going to help you much. Because of this, the best spec i can give you guys would be to get two points in ancestral swiftness and three points in acuity. This is going to give you both increased crit and increased mobility in sticky raid situations.
I haven’t compared myself to other healers on the PTR but I can say that resto shamans are going to be one of the most sustainable healers until cataclysm launches seeing as how heals cost almost no mana and we have the best mana regening abilities with water shield and mana spring totem. In a raid setting I predict that if you do everything right (e.g. using all your heals on a situational basis and having at least some situational awareness), you should be near the top of the healing charts consistently.
Glyphs for resto were actually a lot easier to figure out than the other two specs because it’s a lost easier to tell which are clearly PvP and which are PvE glyphs.
The first prime glyph you should have as restoration is the Glyph of Water Shield. This is a must have for restoration, the increased mana regeneration that it gives is going to be key to sustaining your mana at level 85. Without it, you are probably going to go oom in well under a minute so definitely pick this glyph up. The next prime glyph you need is Glyph of Earthliving Weapon. Earthliving itself should be doing a pretty large chunk of your healing without the glyph; with the glyph you can expect you healing to go up by a noticeable percentage. Your last prime glyph should probably be Glyph of Earth Shield. In a regular five-man, earth shield should be doing about a fourth of your overall healing (depending on the damage that is being put out by trash and bosses, this number will probably change) so a 20% increase to the amount healed by it is extremely helpful.
Next are the major glyphs, and these present a little bit more option than do the prime glyphs. First on the list should be Glyph of Hex. I chose this glyph because Blizzard has made it clear that they want to bring crowd control back into the game and this glyph ensures that you can contribute to a group’s CC rather than just sitting there twiddling your thumbs. Second should be Glyph of Healing Stream Totem because of it’s incredible usefulness. Not only are you healing your group for essentially zero mana, the increased resistances could mean the difference between a wipe and a kill (I know it’s not very clear on the link, so let me just say that it increases resistances by 130). You’re last glyph should be Glyph of Chain Heal; this may be confusing to some people who still think that chain heal is going to be amazing in cataclysm so let me just say it’s not. It’s worse than in wrath without the glyph and it’s worse than in wrath with the glyph, without the glyph, it heals for about 5.3k and with the glyph it heals for about 4.7k on the initial hit. The glyph sort of reverses the spell and makes it a reverse chain spell (increasing damage/healing with every target(although that’s not exactly it)). Trust me, it is going to be weird using this glyph (it was for me as well) but it is fairly useful and hey, if things change and it turns out you don’t want to be using this glyph, good thing you took my advice and went ahead and bought all your glyphs eh?
Minor glyphs are the same for all shaman specs so if you want to know what to put in these slots check out the enhancement guide directly below this one.
Now I know I promised you guys a rotations guide but I feel that I’ve bored you all enough with my typing. I promise that the rotations for ele and enhance will be up tomorrow so just bear with me. Until then I’m going to play Civ.
This is Gisanazil signing out.
So I just got finished playing around in enhance and let me just say, getting the enchants and the gems required to do viable dps as this spec took me ages. Because of that, sorry that this guide is a little late in coming, but better late than never I suppose.
Enhancement:
From what I could tell from enhancement on the PTR right now is that it is how it is on live: very, very, very gear dependent. The 9.5 quality gear that all premades get on the PTR definitely made itself apparent as I was trying my hardest to live up to the damage I was doing as elemental. That being said, I do feel that with the right level gear, enhancement is going to be a very powerful spec indeed.
As far as new abilities and things go, enhancement really doesn’t have as much cool new toys to play around with as elemental does, but the new things and changes are worth taking a look at.
The first ability (and it is in fact one of the first abilities you will get as a shaman) is Primal Strike. This ability is learned around level three and is going to make leveling a whole lot easier seeing as how you won’t just be sitting around waiting for your auto attacks to kill your target. The ability is nice, don’t get me wrong, however it quickly falls out of use once you lean stormstrike
Speaking of which, Stormstrike has been changed somewhat in order to allow for a more continuous damage increase. The ability will now increase the crit chance of all of your damaging nature spells by 25%. As I said before, this change provides the shaman with a more continuous increase in their overall damage rather than its current effect of increasing the damage of your next two nature attacks by a certain amount.
Next on the list is Searing Totem. While the totem itself hasn’t changed, there is a rather nice talent in enhancement called Searing Flames that makes searing totem quite nice and possibly the only totem and enhancement shaman should be using. Some of you may look at that talent and think to yourself, “Wow, that talent really looks worthless considering the amount of damage searing totem actually does.” Those people are actually right, however, it is not the searing flames talent itself that makes searing totem so amazing now, as it is the talent below it. When coupled with searing flames, Improved Lava Lash really brings some power to an otherwise lackluster (in my opinion) attack. After playing around with this ability for a while on the PTR (and trust me, it wasn’t easy considering searing totem doesn’t actually attack the target dummies) I found out that when a target has five stacks of searing totem on them, lava lash hits like a TRUCK, easily critting for 13 or 14k damage. After seeing this it quickly became clear to me that my previous thought of enhancement being a boring and relatively low dps spec quickly changed.
Last on the list of changed abilities is the updated Shamanistic Rage. The ability still reduces incoming damage by 30%, however the mana management part of the spell has been changed a bit. The spell now just reduces the cost of all your abilities by 100%. Now it does seem that this is a nerf for the ability but after using this ability in a raid situation I don’t think so. In addition to not being a very mana intensive spec on the PTR, enhancement has never had much mana anyway, so your mana pool doesn’t really deplete fast enough to merit the old mana regen portion of this talent anyway.
I do like enhancement for the fact that you do have a little bit more choice when speccing. Unlike elemental where the correct PvE spec is pretty much laid out before you, enhancement is a little bit more of a cost benefit analysis. It did take me a bit longer to figure out, but the best enhancement spec that I could think of follows.
The big choice in the enhancement tree is whether or not to get totemic reach or ancestral swiftness. When looking into the choice further, I realized that enhancement shamans really aren’t going to be dropping very many totems in the first place (save for searing of course), and if they do, like they should if they are one of the only shamans in the group, then the default radius should be more than sufficient to cover their entire party or raid.
As stated earlier, the enhancement tree does have a little bit more choices when speccing and that includes the choices enhance has for splashing. You’ll want to get the talents that are listed on the picture and then finish out Concussion but once you get to tier two, you have a few options. One option is to max out Elemental Precision for your final three talents. The increased spell hit from spirit wouldn’t really make much of a difference considering that enhance gear probably isn’t going to have spirit on it anyway and the 3% increased damage is really nice. A second option is to max out Call of Flame and then spend your last point in elemental precision in order to give your searing totem a little boost in damage. This option is really dependent on how much of your overall damage is coming from your searing totem and in my honest opinion isn’t all that great. The last option is to max out Reverberation and then spend your last point in elemental precision. To me, this spec seems to be on equal footing as the straight 3% increased damage from maxing out elemental precision because earth shock is a large part of an enhancement shaman’s rotation. Whether or not you take it is dependent on how much you think that one second reduction on the cooldown of earth shock will increase your DPS. In my opinion, I would probably max out elemental precision based on the fact that a constant increase to damage would give me more of a DPS increase than the other two options.
On its own, enhancement does about 4.4 or 4.5k DPS self buffed (including totems) on the PTR right now. However, searing totem will not attack the training dummy so it’s kind of hard to estimate the true DPS of enhance. Conservatively, I would tack on an additional thousand or so DPS taking into account searing totem is always down and lava lash is used at five stacks. On the liberal side, I would probably add an additional 1.5k DPS to the base DPS without lava lash. I should say at this point that I only gemmed and enchanted my gear, there was no reforging in order to get more mastery or any more of a particular stat. Because of this, the DPS that I’ve previously stated is subject to change depending on how well you reforge your gear.
Speaking of mastery, an enhancement shaman’s mastery, known as Enhanced Elements is a pretty good mastery (though I will say it is one of the more boring masteries) considering it can really increase the damage done by your lava lash combined with searing totem. I’m still up in the air on whether or not you want go out and reforge all your gear to have mastery on it but it may or may not be something worth looking into.
As far as stats are concerned, haste is still HUGE for enhancement. Considering all of enhancement’s damage comes from essentially four abilities, two of which really set up the damage for the entire spec, having them off cooldown as much as possible is key to a powerful spec. Because of this, I would suggest (even though I told myself I wouldn’t suggest gems to use seeing as how I may be wrong) to expect to be purchasing a lot of purely haste gems over the course of the expansion.
One thing I forgot to do on the elemental guide is glyphs. Seeing as how they are a pretty big part of your damage, I’ve going to show you guys what glyphs enhancement should use (I’ll do elemental glyphs afterwards).
The prime glyphs are going to provide you with most of your damage so it is important to have the right ones. I’m going to suggest Glyph of Feral Spirit as your first prime glyph. You should be using your wolves whenever they come off cooldown and this ensures that when you do use them, you’re getting the most out of them. The second prime glyph should be Glyph of Lava Lash; with the changes to the way lava lash works this glyph is absolutely essential to maximizing your damage. Last of the prime glyphs is Glyph of Stormstrike; this is your most used ability and because of that, it should be doing as much damage as possible.
Major glyphs are also important to the utility of any class although they have more options that to prime glyphs. The first major glyph of enhancement should be Glyph of Hex seeing as how this is a very big crowd controlling ability for shamans; seeing as how Blizzard is bringing CC back, this glyph is a must. Next on the list of major glyphs is Glyph of Lightning Shield in order to ensure that you don’t have to keep applying lightning shield all the time. The last glyph is kind of your choice but I went with Glyph of Ghost Wolf for the added mobility; you could go with Glyph of Shamanistic Rage if you find yourself getting a lot of magic debuffs put on you.
As far as minor glyphs are concerned, you really only need Glyph of Renewed Life so you don’t have to carry around a lot of ankh’s but the rest are pretty much up to you (this goes for all specs).
For elemental, the first prime glyph you should get is Glyph of Lightning Bolt seeing as how that is your main spell. Next on the list is Glyph of Lava Burst; this glyph is essential to your damage seeing as how lava burst should always critting. The last prime glyph could either be Glyph of Flame Shock or Glyph of Flametongue Weapon depending on what you see as more useful. I would probably go with the latter seeing as how the increased crit will probably do more for you than 50% increased flame shock duration.
Major glyphs for elemental share one in common with enhancement in Glyph of Hex but have two differing ones. The first being Glyph of Thunder which will give you more mana regeneration in addition to just general usefulness. The third could go between Glyph of Ghost Wolf or Glyph of Chain Lightning. Ghost wolf will add more mobility however chain lightning striking more targets is pretty nice (though the 10% reduced damage of the initial hit does make me pretty sad).
Well there you go; wow that took longer than I thought it was going to. Be on the lookout for the resto guide soon in addition to the rotations for the two DPS specs. I’ll try to have that post up by tomorrow night for you guys but until then, I’m tired of typing.
This is Gisanazil signing out.
Just a heads up guys, I am in the process of hashing out an enhancement guide like the one I did for elemental. Some of you may have realized that on my elemental guide I didn’t really put what gems or enchants I used. Well that’s because all I really did was just throw some random gems and enchants onto my gear that looked good (I did do some research into gems though which is how I came up with the intellect gem change that is stated in the ele guide). I’m not going to post gems and enchants because I really don’t recommend using all the same things that I used (mainly because I most likely did something wrong).
Well that’s it for now, the enhancement guide will probably be up tonight so keep an eye out. The resto guide will probably take less time as it is the spec with which I am most familiar.
This is Gisanazil signing out
Ok guys, I promised you a “guide” to shamans on the PTR (and by extension, Cat) so here is the first of the three “guides” I hope to be putting out there.
Elemental:
As it stands right now on the PTR, the elemental shaman is one of the most powerful casters I’ve seen, in addition to the fact that elemental may or may not be the shaman’s most powerful spec at the moment (I haven’t gotten the chance to try out enhancement yet seeing as how on the PTR the Exodar doesn’t want to load). With the addition of Lava Surge, the elemental rotation has gotten much more, oh what’s the word I’m looking for, fire based. The shaman will find themselves casting an absurd amount of Lava Bursts and because of this you’ll see a lot more of those juicy crits we all love.
The second big talent that elemental shamans all drool over, is Fulmination when combined with Rolling Thunder. Now I do have somewhat of a tendency to exaggerate some things, but it is no exaggeration when I say that I’ve see Earth Shock crit for 21k with nine stacks of Lightning Shield. The first time I saw it happen, I about fell out of my chair. Because of this, Earth Shock is absolutely essential for a shaman’s rotation.
The third really big new talent for ele is definitely Feedback (sorry no link). I didn’t really use Elemental Mastery when trying out DPS because I was trying to get a feel of how a good shaman’s consistent DPS was. I may come back and visit this talent at a later date.
An elemental shaman’s mastery is really not so much a cool new thing (like holy paladins, even though that is just a re-hashed set bonus masquerading as a mastery) as it is an old mechanic that was taken out of the talent tree so the player can have some better options when speccing. Lightning Overload as I know it, is gone and has been replaced with Elemental Overload. The new thing here is that Lava Burst can now benefit from this effect well which makes this mastery, in all honesty, one of the best I’ve seen.
Now, on to specs; as far as I can tell, the basic elemental shaman PvE spec is going to be something like this at 80.
As far as 81-85 talents, you’re probably going to want to max out Convection and then splash more into enhancement for Ancestral Swiftness and Totemic Reach. People may look at me strange for wanting you to splash into Ancestral Swiftness but keep in mind, Ghost Wolf is usable indoors now in addition to the fact that that talent eliminates a shaman’s need for any movement speed increasing enchantment like Tuskarr’s Vitality. Totemic Reach is there really because there isn’t a lot else you can go in to. The main problem I have with shamans in the beta and on the PTR now is that their spec choices are severely limited. Blizzard has said before that they want to give players more of a choice when speccing out their characters but as far as I’m concerned, with the way a shaman is built (between ranged DPS, melee DPS, and healing) the choices that the talent trees give you is seriously lacking.
With the spec listed above (and after reforging a lot of the resto gear that premades are forced to use as ele gear on the PTR) I was able to consistently pull off about 6k DPS on target dummies. Now some of you may look at my previous screenshot and say, “Well in that shot you only had about 4k DPS.” That is true but keep in mind, there were three other people in my group competing for damage along with me AND all the mobs in DTK (which was the instance I had just gotten out of) all died too fast to give an accurate representation of my overall DPS. If you need further proof, look at this
Keep in mind that all premades on the PTR start in tier 9.5 gear, with no glyphs, and at level 80. Also I realized a little while in that apparently Blizzard had taken out the Runed Cardinal Ruby (+23 spell power). After I discovered that I freaked out for a while until a kind soul informed me that any increase in intellect now has the same effect as gemming for spell power. Therefore, if you were to put all +20 intellect gems in your gear (which are red gems now) it would be the same thing as gemming for straight spell power. At any rate, the damage shown above is not a reflection of what you will be like at 85, as I’ve stated before it is in tier 9.5 quality gear, at level 80, and without any glyphs.
Overall impressions of Elemental: I really enjoyed this spec. All the abilities of the spec really meshed well together and created an experience that I could see many people falling absolutely in love with. Elemental is already a fun spec, but this blows the ele spec of Wrath completely out of the water (kind of like what wrath did to BC).
Well there you go all you bolt-casters out there, I hope this guide helps. Keep in mind that Cat isn’t scheduled to launch until December 7th so all of this is still subject to change (even though I don’t think it will seeing as how patch 4.0 is right around the corner). If you guys have any comments or corrections to what I’ve said feel free to drop a comment below.
This is Gisanazil signing out.
So I’ve realized that as a dude who writes about shamans, I’ve kinda been leaving something out: specs. Now, don’t think that I have all the answers (because I most definitely do not) but what I will try to give you guys in the next post, Is a comprehensive look at some different shaman specs in Cat. Be on the lookout for the post sometime in the next few days after I’ve had some time to play around with all the different specs (especially enhancement seeing as how I haven’t played enhancement in God knows how long) and come up with something definitive to get to you guys.
All that being said, I’m gonna go get on that.
This is Gisanazil signing out.
Correction to my previous post,
An article on mmo-champion today said that patch 4.0 will most likely not be coming out this week. That being said, I do have some advice for you guys. Buy out all of your glyphs, all of your glyphs, before the patch. I say this because once the patch goes live the scribes are going to markup their glyph prices to outrageous levels because of the fact that glyphs no longer have to re-bought each time you change up a spec. Now, whether or not you guys will listen to anything I have to say is still up in the air, but hey, at least I tried.
This is Gisanazil signing out.
Hey guys,
My apologies for this post taking so long but I have been fairly busy as far as school goes. Anyway, there’s not going to be much to this post so let me just get started.
As many of you may already know, there was an article on mmo-champion recently that said that patch 4.0 is close to hitting the live servers and could be out this week. If this is the case, be on the lookout for more posts from me involving some of the stuff I think is cool in the new patch.
Once again guys I apologize for just dropping off the face of the earth like that, but between school, raid, and Civ V (yes I got Civ V and I highly recommend it for those of you looking for a good strategy game) I haven’t really had time to keep up with my little blog here.
Well that’s about it guys, once again be on the lookout this week for a post regarding patch 4.0 (if the servers have recovered from their inevitable meltdown).
This is Gisanazil signing out.
