by Joe Perez
Specializations at level 10 are now implemented in the game. When you reach level 10, before you can put your first talent point in any tree, you first have to select which tree you are going to specialize in. Behind that choice are the all-new, lean and mean 31-point talent trees. When you pick your specialization, you are locked into your chosen tree until 31 points have been spent in your talent tree. After that, the other two trees become available to you to spend your remaining talent points. Don’t think you can cheat the system and hit respec and shuffle points as you want; I tried this last night on the PTR, and you reset the specialization choice as well when you respec, starting you right back at zero.
The new system is not without its benefits, though. By choosing a tree, you gain access to mastery specializations, as well as having some talents now become baseline abilities. The masteries replace some of the baked-in talents that we have been used to taking and instead gives them to us just for choosing to specialize in that tree.
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by Rich Maloy
The way things stand now, leveling as enhancement doesn’t feel like enhancement until the 30s, when we get Windfury, or 40s, when we currently get Dual Wield. That stretch of 20s and 30s really is rough right now, if you are true to the path of enhancement. But no more! We will be enhancement from the beginning with dual wield plus hit, attack power conversion to spellpower and an off-hand attack!
The talent tree is highly streamlined, but with only 41 talent points to spend, we won’t be painting the trees with points. I don’t see any tough choices in the enhancement tree, and getting down to Feral Spirit should be easy with something like 0/31/0. The last 10 points could look something like 8/33/0, but that remains to be seen.
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by Matt Sampson
First off, the overall tree bonuses, abilities and the description: The elemental shaman is a spellcaster who harnesses the destructive forces of nature and the elements. A fairly apt, if short description. For abilities, we get two passive abilities in addition to Thunderstorm. Eye of the Storm combines the old Lightning Mastery bonus of 0.5 seconds off the cast time for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst with the normal 70% pushback resistance. We also get the 100% crit damage bonus of Elemental Fury by default.
Talents
Making an unexpected appearance at the top of the tree is an unchanged Elemental Devastation, obviously there for the Enhancement shaman to get as part of their sub-spec. Convection drops to two points for a 5/10% mana cost reduction, while Concussion gets an extra percentage point of damage, going up to 6% at three points rather than the old 5%. It’s a fairly easy choice to make here, 3/3 Concussion, 2/2 Convection.
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by Rich Maloy
Granted, there’s not as much hate on melee in Wrath as there was in The Burning Crusade, but our DPS is still limited by time on target. We are after all, melee. Yet the great thing about enhance is when we’re not in melee range, we can still lob some spells and drop some fire bombs all while running around dodging those whirlwinds.
It was Sindragosa’s Permeating Chill that first got me thinking about maximizing my damage output while I’m not doing melee attacks. Also, her Blistering Cold got me wondering about ways to keep damage on boss even while running in the complete opposite direction. What follows are some of my simple strategies for maximizing time on target and keeping the damage pumping even while running around.
Maximum hit box range
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by Joe Perez
As you enter the sanctum, you will see the lush green setting of a mountain valley. As you look around, you can see the fallen bodies of the red dragonflight defenders laying limp and lifeless. In their place are the agents of the black dragonflight.
Baltharus the Warborn
This big fella resembles one of the drakonids we used to see summoned by Nefarian in Blackwing Lair and that we can now view standing guard in front of each respective chromatic portal in Wymrest Temple. As a healer, he has a few tricks up his sleeve that you need to be aware of.
Blade Tempest Baltharus spins his blades with fury and causes all those around him to take damage. This ability inflicts 70% of weapon damage to everyone within 15 yards every second for four seconds. It is like a giant whirlwind. Be ready with a Nature’s Swiftness and a Chain Heal, because melee will take a lot of damage in a very short period of time. Being prepared to snap a fast heal off can help save them from some untimely deaths.
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by Rich Maloy
With a new instance out everyone is asking, “What’s in it for me?” But my question is, “What’s in it for enhancement?”
The short answer is ArP. For a stat that’s going away in a few months, we’re seeing a lot of it in Ruby Sanctum gear from both the 10- and 25-man versions of the raid. Armor penetration (ArP) is not the ideal stat for enhancement. Not ideal, but definitely usable. There are some definite winners among the RS loot — on both 10 and 25.
I’ve created a new enhance gear spreadsheet on Google Docs including the new loot. It’s read-only, so either make a copy to your Google Docs file or save a copy to your desktop as an Excel file. I’ve also included some sample EP values for different levels of play, including EP values derived from the latest Elitist Jerks BiS gear, setup and rotation.
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by Rich Maloy
This week we’ll use the 25% buff and power-clear the rest of the instance.
Rotface
Regular and Heroic Another fight where Heroism off the start is the best way to go. The oozes come out faster the lower his health gets, so my theory is to get as much damage on target early on. At the end, things are hectic and too much damage is lost as too many people are running around or dead. You can pre-pot here to have another Potion of Speed available to use later on in combat. An early Hero makes cooldown management easy; use at the beginning and then again at every opportunity.
Festergut
Regular When to Bloodlust depends on how long the fight lasts in your group. When we were first starting this fight, we would use BL about five seconds before the second Pungent Blight late in the fight to help the healers through the raid-wide damage increase. But if you’re tearing through this on regular, then an early Hero may be your best use. Don’t time your fire elemental with a late Hero or he won’t get used; just bring him out early and let him have his un-lusted fun.
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by Joe Perez
Power Auras Classic is a powerful and versatile addon. You can track various different conditions in the game that can have a large impact on how you heal.
Trinkets and Rings
Trinkets and rings are some of the items we have that can often times be overlooked. That said, paying attention to trinket procs and buff durations can be very useful for a healing shaman. Take a look at Purified Lunar Dust, through normal healing the trinket can proc causing the Revitalized buff which increases your MP/5 by 304 for 15 seconds. Knowing how often the buff is up can help how conservative you are with your heals, or when you may kick it up just a little bit while still maintaining a good regeneration rate. Power Auras can help keep track of when this buff is active or when it falls off, and it can be very helpful in knowing how often it does indeed proc. The same can be said about Ephemeral Snowflake which can grant a healer an additional
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by Rich Maloy
In some cases I kept the enhancement abilities because they bring other abilities in addition to just straight damage. Here’s a quick rundown of our major cooldowns for the unenhanced:
- 10 min – Bloodlust/Heroism – you know it and love it
- 10 min – Fire Ele (5 min with glyph) – yeah he’s dumb but what do you expect, his brains are on fire
- 3 min – Berserk & Bloodfury – Troll & Orc racials, respectively
- 3 min – Feral Spirit – two wolves who do damage and heal you simultaneously. Rad.
- 2 min – on-use Trinkets – Currently my trinkets are not on-use but I take them into account in case yours are
- 1 min – Shamanistic Rage with t10 2pc – normally this is a mana-regeneration and damage-reduction spell but with 2pc t10 it increases damage.
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by Joe Perez
RaidTotems
RaidTotems is a complementary addon to Totem Timers and is geared towards a leadership-minded restoration shaman. This mod is very similar to PallyPower in the fact it allows you to control assignments between players. RaidTotems allows a player to set what totems are being dropped by any shaman with totem timers installed. This is particularly handy in large raid environments with multiple shaman. You can ensure that all necessary totems are being dropped; if one is not necessary, you can skip it and allow a shaman to save some mana. After all, if five shaman are dropping Flametongue Totem, chances are likely one can skip it unless someone dies. The other beautiful thing about this is you can assign where each Earth Shield in the raid is going. This way you can make sure each tank is covered and no one will overlap and cancel out each other’s Earth Shields. It is also very simplistic in its approach as far as handing out assignments and even saving them.
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