Patch 5.3 is upon us! With this patch we will see several buffs to our damage and a couple of quality of life changes to boot. While these changes may not address things such as the long ramp up time for our AoE damage, they should bring our overall damage up enough to make us more competitive with other classes/specs in Throne of Thunder.
* Lightning Bolt can now be cast while moving.
The effects of the Glyph of Unleashed Lightning(a glyph that has been revamped; we'll get to that) has been baked into the shaman toolkit, minus the increase in Lightning Bolt's cast time. What does this mean to Enhance? Not a whole lot really. This will be handy in those situations where we're on the move and may not have a full Maelstrom stack available. For high movement encounters, this change may yield a minor DPS increase for us.
* Glyph of Lightning Shield (previously Glyph of Unleashed Lightning) will reduce damage taken by 10% for 6 seconds after Lightning Shield is triggered.
At first glance it seems like this glyph could potentially become a "must have" item for both PvP and progression raiding alike. However as it stands now, it is not triggered by Static Shock, which means that in order to receive the damage reduction effects, we must receive some
sort of damage (spell, melee, or ranged attack, according to Lightning Shield's tooltip) before we receive the 10% damage reduction. This pretty much means that Glyph of Lightning Shield is reactive, versus proactive.
Bottom line, unless you're receiving some sort of semi-consistent direct damage, this glyph may not be worth a slot. Of course this glyph can have its uses, but it'll be very dependent upon the situations you find yourself in. Personally, I think I'll love this one for soloing.
* Feral Spirit: The summoned Spirit Wolves are now immune to movement impairing (root and snare) effects.
This change seems to be more of a quality of life change for PvP, though there are some situations in PvE where roots/snares occur. Though we may get stuck to the floor, our pups will still be able to chase down whatever it is that we're attacking, keeping up the damage pressure and giving us some passive healing in the process.
*Lava Lash now deals 300% weapon damage, up from 250%.
Single target damage buff? I'll take it!
*Stormstrike now deals 450% weapon damage, up from 375%.
Another nice buff to our single target damage. No complaints here.
*Mental Quickness now coverts 65% of the shaman's attack power to spell power, up from 55%.
This is a little buff that will effect a number of different aspects of both our damage and utility toolkits. Without going into heavy details, this change should slightly boost our AoE damage output, increase shock damage just a touch, and will also bring up healing throughput just a smidge.
That about covers it, barring any hotfixes. Now get on out there, swing those weapons, and enjoy the buffs!
Those of you who follow me on Twitter/Facebook may recall my geekery over discovering some new ways in which I could macro a few spells together. You may have also recalled that I had promised a post on it. While I meant to make good on that promise, life/laziness managed to get in the way, yada yada. Anyways, here's that said post! Finally /cheer!
I am by nature not a huge macro person. For the longest time my macro stash only consisted of Ventrilo information macros and weird /say macros. Once I discovered how well my Synapse Springs lined up with Feral Spirits, I made a cheap macro to put those two abilities together. For the longest time, that is to say until a month ago, that is all I had. That is, until last month when I had the noob revelation about exactly how many of enhancement's cooldown abilities are actually off the global cooldown. Ladies and gents, this somewhat opened up the flood gates on my tiny stream of macro knowledge.
For my macros I have omitted the #showtooltip line, since I have the habit of using an icon of my choosing anyways and rarely have tooltips themselves showing. Please feel free to add #showtooltip to the beginning of your macros if you're not an oddball such as myself.
~Feral Spirit Macro~ Engineers
/use 10
/use Blood Fury
/cast Feral Spirit
Things to be aware of:
1) The '/use 10' portion activates your Synapse Springs on your gloves, 1 min cd.
2) Blood Fury is an Orc racial, omit if you are not an Orc. 2 min cd.
3) Two of the three potential abilities in this particular macro are on a 2 min cd, minus Synapse
Springs. Not using your Springs as soon as they come off cooldown will
slightly desynchronize the tooltip cooldown timer, as it will only show
the cd time of your Springs, not your Lifeblood/Blood Fury/Feral Spirits.
Things to be aware of:
1) Blood Fury is an Orc racial, omit if you are not an Orc. 2 min cd.
2) All three abilities are on a 2 min cd. Hooray for less tracking!
Things to be aware of:
1) The '/use 10' portion activates your Synapse Springs on your gloves, 1 min cd.
2) Blood Fury is an Orc racial, omit if you are not an Orc. 2 min cd.
3) Everything in this particular macro is on a 2 min cd, minus Synapse Springs. Not using your Springs as soon as they come off cooldown will slightly desynchronize the tooltip cooldown timer, as it will only show the cd time of your Springs, not your Lifeblood/Blood Fury/Feral Spirits.
Things to be aware of:
1) Elemental Mastery is up every 1.5 minutes. Assuming that you're able to use it on cooldown, it should line up perfectly with everything else in the list (which have 3 minute cds) every other use of this macro.
2) Berserking is a Troll racial, omit if you are not a Troll.
3) Your Fire Elemental Totem will only line up with Berserking/Ascendance the second time you go to use it if it's glyphed. Our Fire Elemental is generally a 5 minute cooldown, though with the Glyph of Fire Elemental we can bring that cd down to 3 minutes. The glyph is only recommended for those specced into Primal Elementalist.
Alternatively, if you'd like to use this macro for openers (as I tend to
do) but are not always specced into Elemental Mastery, you can list
Elemental Mastery after Ascendance so that the tooltip timer will still
show the cd of Ascendance. Just be sure you have some sort of tracking
that will alert you as to when Elemental Mastery comes off of cooldown
so that you may gain its benefit.
Alternatively alternatively, you may use the original macro, but place this in the first line of the macro: #showtooltip whateverspellyouwanthere
Things to be aware of:
1) If you're Alliance, the first line of this macro should say /cast Heroism
2) If you're a Troll, omit /cast Blood Fury. If you're an Orc, omit /cast Berserking. If you're neither of those races, omit both of those lines!
3) /cast Lifeblood is for Herbalists only. If you're not an herbalizor, remove that line!
The 'I Win' macro is my new BFF when it comes to soloing, especially since many soloing situations for enhancement tend to be a race to kill the thing before it kills you. This macro may also be used as an opener in those raiding situations where you're popping Hero/Lust right off the bat and you'd like to set yourself up for some mad burst (why wouldn't you?!).
For my openers: I tend to prepot (using a potion before entering combat), use my Feral Spirits macro, then either use my Ascendance Macro (depending on raid opener situations) or my 'I Win' macro (depending on what I'm doing). Stormlash Totem is dropped just as I hit the boss.
In the event you have on-use trinkets, place them in the spots in these macros where Synapse Springs would be IF, and only IF, the on-use is stronger than the buff that Synapse Springs provide. Synapse Springs will trigger a short cd on your on-use trinkets and vise versa, hence the need to potential macro things a bit differently. If your Springs still provide the superior buff, use your trinkets as they become available and/or in conjunction with other CDs that line up with them, assuming that your Springs don't also line up with said abilities. Place '/use 13' into your macro for the top on-use trinket, '/use 14' is for the bottom trinket.
Please keep in mind that the macros mentioned here are not perfect for all situations. You will need to use these macros intelligently and be somewhat flexible with them. These are meant to be aids in helping you to maximize your burst damage, however they may not always be applicable depending on the encounter you're facing.
Also be aware that if you have quick, twitchy fingers as I do, you may sometimes find that only half of the spells in these macros actually go off. The easiest solution? Hold the button down momentarily. It doesn't need to be some 5 second long press of the button, but actually click/press/however you activate your macro button long enough for the program to register everything you're asking of it in your macro. Quick taps just don't cut it!
There you have it, all of the nuggets of insight I gained a month ago! I swear, I feel like I should have thought of these things an expansion or two ago. Just goes to show, even an old ghost wolf can learn new tricks sometimes.
For those of you who are actively playing or paying attention to World of Warcraft, you're probably aware by now that patch 5.2 has thundered its way into Azeroth. With its arrival, a few new changes have come into play for nearly every class and specialization. Enhancement shaman is no exception.
Please note that if you've been using my old Need To Know post, the information found in there is still relevant for a fresh level 90. The purpose of this particular post is to expand upon the new talent tweaks and how they may interact with gear from Throne of Thunder.. If you're a fresh level 90 and/or just returning from the spirit realm (aka if you haven't played your shaman since Cataclysm) I highly suggest going back and reading my Need To Know post linked in this paragraph.
Talent Tweaks
As has been noted in the 5.2 Changes for Shaman post, several talent tweaks have been made. With these adjustments in mind, the following is more or less how we should think about our talent choices.
Tier 4 Elemental Mastery - Best used in burst situations and becomes more valuable during fights where our damage uptime may be a bit low (numerous target switches that cause downtime; controlled dps situations such as Titan Gas phase on LFR/Reg Will of the Emperor, or the no add lull on H-Will of the Emperor)
Ancestral Swiftness - Best for static (Patchwerk) fights. The higher uptime on a boss, the more this talent shines. Used mostly with haste builds, which will become more widely used once one acquires the legendary meta gem, along with trinkets from Throne of Thunder.
Echo of the Elements - Still the best talent choice for those who are leveling, as it can proc extra healing. Also a very solid choice for soloing in my personal opinion, again due to the chance for extra "free" healing. For competitive raiding, this talent is best when paired with mastery stacking and will shine more during AoE/cleave encounters.
Tier 6 Unleashed Fury - This talent received a slight nerf in this patch to help bring it more in line with our other two talent choices, but the nerf bat wasn't too harsh. For those of you who are still fresh level 90s/sporting t14 gear, this will still be your best overall talent choice. With this particular talent, it seems that mastery will still be your favored secondary stat.
Primal Elementalist - PE received a pretty decent buff in this patch to help it compete with Unleashed Fury. Our elementals now provide some fairly substantial burst (they did a good bit before as well, but now it's really solid), enough to the point where they'll make up for the lack of damage during their down times. This talent is my personal favorite for soloing, but unfortunately may not be the best choice for general raiding purposes until you have acquired your Capacitive Primal Diamond, plus have gotten your mits on Talisman of Bloodlust and Bad Juju. This talent *could* be useful on controlled burst fights even with current gear, however. This is of course assuming that phases of whichever encounter you're tackling line up properly with the CDs of your totems.
Elemental Blast - Like Primal Elementalist, Elemental Blast has received some love to help make it a more enticing talent to take as Enhancement. In addition to proccing extra secondary stats, EB will also proc Agility for us. Pretty neat, eh? As it stands right now though, EB is still a touch behind the other two talent choices. It's viable for use, don't get me wrong, but it is still slightly behind. Couple this minor negative with the fact that it still has a cast time (which can be negated if you have a Maelstrom Weapon stack of x5, but if you don't you'll be hardcasting), that you'll have yet another button in your already button-heavy arsenal, AND you'll have another minor CD to watch (12 seconds, so not all that different from our other rotational CDs like Lava Lash and Stormstrike), EB still remains to be a less than desirable talent for most shaman. Essentially it complicates an already somewhat hectic rotation for no actual DPS gain over the other two talents. However, if you're a diehard fan of this talent for whatever reason, you still may choose to spec into EB and not have the fear of severely gimping yourself on the meters.
Talent Choices, Secondary Stats, and You
One of the more common questions I see coming from fellow Enhancement shaman is thus:
I'm ilvl 461. How should I gem/reforge? How do I spec?
The common answer is often "Well, you're going to have to sim it." This answer is unfortunately both completely true, but can also be rather frustrating to someone who isn't familiar with either theorycrafting or the program Simulation Craft itself. The fact of the matter is, two Enhancement shaman may both have an ilvl of 461, but they could very well have a large variation in stats. One may be really heavy in Critical Strike, while the other could be Mastery heavy. A third shaman may very well have a balance of all three non-mandatory secondary stats, but is starving for things such as Hit and Expertise. Early on in the gearing process, Critical Strike can actually outweigh Mastery and Haste, because of how the synergy between the different stats works out. As you gain more gear though, Crit tends to depreciate in value, making way for the power houses that are Mastery and Haste.
Bottom line, if you're looking to min/max your shaman to the greatest extent, you will need to learn how to run Simulation Craft, aka SimC. Luckily for you, Poneria did up a post on WoW Insider about Simulation Craft. Don't balk at the fact that it's actually a warlock post; there is a ton of excellent information and links in that post to help get you started with SimC. It's a definite must-read for those who wish to push themselves a bit further.
For those of you wishing to merely get by without having to dip your toes into the wacky world of theorycrafting, there is are a few rules of thumb that you can follow to make yourself at least competitive in regards in how to gem, reforge, and spec your Enhancement shaman.
Leveling
Gems: You can stick with whatever gems you had in your level 85 gear. Most leveling gear is socketless, so you don't need to worry about this much.
Reforging: Not necessarily something you need to worry about much. You want at least some hit and expertise to make life a bit easier for you; more mastery while leveling is quite handy.
Speccing: As far as the DPS talents are concerned, Echo of the Elements (for those wonderful double Healing Surge procs) and once you hit 90, Unleashed Fury will be your best bets. All other talents are more based on preference and situation.
Fresh Level 90s
Gems: Delicate (pure Agility gems) in red sockets, Adept (orange gems, Agility/Mastery gems) in yellow sockets, Deft (purple gems, Agility/Hit gems) for purple sockets.
Reforging: You must first shoot for your Hit/Expertise caps, if possible. If you need to, you can help supplement this with Hit and Expertise enchants. For secondaries, it'll be, as I said, a bit of a toss up depending on what stats your particular gear setup actually has. I personally went Mastery > Crit > Haste on my second shaman while I was working on getting the rest of her heroic 5 man set.
Speccing: For those of you heading into those 5 mans, Echo and UF will still be great choices, since you'll more than likely be putting priority on Mastery, plus the extra chance at AoE procs from Echo (Fire Nova can proc echos) will help out nicely for all of those trash packs.
Tier 14
Gems: As with the fresh level 90s, you'll still be going for straight Agility gems, Agility/Mastery gems, and Agility/Hit gems.
Reforging: Once I started getting a decent base of crit and stopped starving for so much Hit/Expertise on my second shaman (meaning, I was starting to get purples) my priority changed over to Mastery>=Haste>Crit. You'll want to have a healthy balance of Mastery and Haste, as they're both excellent stats to have. I tend to go a bit heavier into Mastery for this particular tier though, especially with often still being specced into Echo+UF.
Speccing: With the new changes, speccing for raiding becomes rather situational. For your level 60 choice, see the Talent Tweaks section earlier on in this post. For the most part though, Unleashed Fury will be your level 90 talent of choice.
Tier 15
This is were things start to get nice and murky as far as secondary stats are concerned. Until you get your hands on the new RPPM* trinkets (Talisman of Bloodlust, Bad Juju, Renataki's Soul Charm, and Rune of Re-Origination are specifically being considered for BiS lists, see this thread for more info), you'll be speccing and reforging just as you had for tier 14. However, the game changes some once you get said RPPM and your legendary meta. Suddenly, with these items, Haste becomes a pretty big thing.
Gems: For those in LFR/Normal mode t15 gear with RPPM trinkets, you'll be most likely going with pure Agility gems, Agility/HASTE gems, and Agility/Mastery gems. If you do not have the RPPM trinkets, the t14 scheme will still be more ideal.
**Note: There is a slight possibility that we may even gemming straight Haste with the new trinkets + legendary meta gem + BiS Heroic Throne of Thunder gear. Theorycrafters are still working out the details on this, as the RPPM trinkets are still being tweaked, but the future possibility is there. **
Reforging: Again, once you get your RPPM trinkets, Haste will take a priority over Mastery. It'll more than likely be a reforge priority of Hit/Expertise | Haste > Mastery > Crit.
Speccing: This follows suit with t14 until you get, you guessed it, the RPPM trinkets. Once you do, your level 90 talent of choice will often be Primal Elementalist. There may be certain situations where UF may still be better, but with all of the Haste procs and stacking going on, PE becomes a delicious source of damage. The level 60 talent choices will be very encounter-based still, so please refer to the Talent Tweaks section of this post for more information.
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Please keep in mind that this is an extremely rough and broad guide. Your stat change over points may slightly differ depending on which trinkets you have, which set bonuses you manage to activate, and of course may depend a bit on whether or not you have acquired your legendary meta.
Also keep in mind that each of the three level 90 talents have a slightly different rotation priority. To find out more about that, I highly suggest you read up on the Ability/Rotation section of the Enhancement Guide over on Totemspot.
If you're looking for a Throne of Thunder shopping list, you'll want to keep your eyes on the Enhancement Best in Slot List for Tier 15 thread, which can also be found over on Totemspot. Keep in mind that the list is subject to change, as the TC guys are still working on simming out all of the possibilities, plus Blizzard is still tweaking trinket procs and the like.
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The long and short of this post is thus: 5.2 has moved us away from what was nearly a cut-and-dry spec set up as far as our DPS talent choices were concerned, and dumped us into the realm of situational choice. Everything - your gemming scheme, spec choices, and reforges - is dependent upon your particular gear set up and raid encounter situation. From a min/maxer's stand point, this kind of makes things both chaotic and interesting. From the view point of someone more casual, this simply means you have a bit more leeway in choosing how to play.
The difference between talents is rather small now, so you very well could simply choose a combination of talents that you like the feel of and still be rather competitive. If you're not trying to eek out every last drop of damage from your character, you have plenty of room to experiment with. Personally I've been playing around with a high-burst build on my main shaman for soloing situations (it's pretty damn awesome, I'll tell you what!). Would I use my current build in a current raiding situation? Hell no, since I know I don't have an optimal gear set up to make my EM/PE + Haste stacking as competitive in damage as say, being a tad more Mastery heavy and rocking AS (or whatever talent depending on encounter)/UF. Since I'm not raiding for the moment though, it's very fun to toy around with. Sometimes experimenting to see how far your gear can take you in certain scenarios is a very fun thing to do, or perhaps I'm too much of an Enhancement/soloing nerd for my own good.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this topic or anything else shaman related, please don't be shy!
*For those of you who are confused as to what RPPM means,
it stands for Real Procs Per Minute. This is essentially the internal
system that's in place that determines how certain trinkets and enchants
proc. If you want to read up on some of the nitty gritty details of
this system, you should check out this series of blue posts.
Hello everyone and welcome to a new patch! For those of you who were wondering, enhancement hasn't changed a whole lot with the implementation of 5.2. There have been several tweaks made to both our spec and the class overall though, so we're going to take a dive into those changes in this post. Now, if you're looking for a complete list of patch notes complete with spell links/tooltips, I suggest heading on over to Wowhead.
Spells Chain Lightning will now deal the same damage to subsequent targets as it does to the first.
- Stronger AoE for elemental shamans and better cleaves for enhancement? I'll take it!
Lava Beam's damage now increases with jumps. Each jump increases the damage by 10%.
- Lava Beam is Chain Lightning for elemental shaman in their Ascendance form. Stronger AoE for them? I approve.
Shamanistic Rage is now available to Elemental Shamans as well as Enhancement Shamans.
- Giving another survivability tool to our elemental brothers and sisters is a good thing. I know when I was specced elemental on my second shaman, I was always looking for this cooldown! Glad to see both DPS specs with this ability now.
Flame Shock's duration has been increased by 25%.
- In 5.1 we needed to use Glyph of Flame Shock in order to extend FS's duration by 25% at the cost of some initial damage. With this glyph being reworked (see Glyphs below) Blizz has decided to make the extended duration a permanent thing. An excellent change, in my opinion.
Lava Burst base damage has been reduced by 33% but now always deals a critical strike. When cast on targets affected by Flame Shock, it now deals 50% more damage.
- Another tweak aimed at our elemental brothers and sisters. It's nice to see Lava Burst always crit now, and perhaps the increase in damage will help bring their over all damage up a bit. Not completely sure on the math on that one though, so be sure to check on the theorycrafting work done by Binkenstein and friends over on Totem Spot.
When summoned, the Stone Bulwark Totem has health equal to 10% of the casting Shaman's health.
- This was mainly a PvP buff to make it so that players couldn't simply 1-shot our shielding totem.
Talents The talent Nature's Guardian now preserves the player's health percentage when its maximum health boosting effect expires. - This talent increases your health pool. Originally when this was implemented, if you were at say, 97% health when the buff expired, your health percentage would drop. Now when the buff from this talent expires, your health will remain at the example health of 97%.
Stone Bulwark Totem now absorbs 25% more damage. - More absorbs mean less damage taken! This is a decent little buff from both PvE and PvP perspectives.
The talent Totemic Restoration
now has an additional effect. Any totems that have been destroyed or
replaced behave as if the totem had been active for at least 1 second. - You got me. I'm assuming that this is an adjustment or fix for some sort of unintended behavior from replacing totems too quickly (fat fingering something and instantly replacing it with another totem of another school perhaps, not resetting the original totem as intended?), but as to what that is specifically, I'm unsure.
Elemental Mastery now has a 90-second cooldown (was 2 minutes).
- This change actually makes Elemental Mastery attractive to enhancement in certain situations. By lowering the cooldown to 90 seconds, we can line up every other EM usage with Ascendance, creating some delicious burst situations.
Ancestral Swiftness now increases spell haste by 5% and melee haste by 10% (was 5%/5%).
- This buff makes Ancestral Swiftness viable for use in more static situations. The theorycrafters are still working on the numbers, but this may be the talent of choice for this tier with certain t15 trinkets + the legendary meta gem. More on this later in the 5.2 enhancement Need To Know guide.
Conductivity no longer requires that the target be within the area of effect of Healing Rain.
- To my understanding this means that if you heal someone outside of the Healing Rain, those IN the Healing Rain gain the healing effect. Say for example, you're taking on Feng in Mogu'shan Vaults. Ranged are stacked up in the middle, you place Healing Rain on the ranged. You directly heal the tank, which is over on the side with the boss. Those within your rain get 30% of the direct heal you just landed on the tank. This adjustment was made to make this talent a bit more appealing and slightly less situation bound.
Ancestral Guidance now copies 60% (was 40%) of the amount healed.
- While this buff to the healing portion of AG can be applied towards elemental and enhancement shaman, this is mainly geared towards restoration to make this talent choice more appealing to them. For the most part, us elementals and enhancers don't tend to heal while we pop AG, unless we're soloing and near death.
Unleashed Fury Flametongue now increases Lightning Bolt damage by 20% (was 30%), and Lava Burst damage by 10%.
- This tweak is a buff for elemental shaman to make this talent more appealing to them, and a minor nerf for us enhancement shaman, bringing it slightly more in line with the other two talent choices for this tier.
Primal Earth Elemental and Primal Fire Elemental now deal 20% more damage.
- The buff for the primal versions of our elementals (via the Primal Elementalist talent) is meant to make this talent more attractive for us DPS-type shaman.
Elemental Blast now has a chance to increase the caster's Agility for Enhancement Shamans.
- This change is a buff is intended to be a buff/addition geared towards enhancement shaman. The verdict is still out as to whether or not this change is enough to make this particular talent appealing (so far it looks like the other two talents pull a good bit ahead of this one), but it's a step in the direction of talent balance.
Glyphs Glyph of Purge now adds a 6 second cooldown to Purge.
- A change geared towards PvP balance.
Glyph of Flame Shock has been redesigned. This glyph now causes the Shaman to heal for 50% of the damage dealt by Flame Shock.
- Originally this glyph extended the duration of FS by 25% at the cost of Flame Shocks' initial damage. The made the 25% extended duration baseline, and reworked this glyph so that FS will heal us for 50% of the damage it deals. Over all this is a fairly piddly heal, as Flame Shock doesn't tend to do a whole lot of damage single target. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you don't have anything better to put in a glyph spot for a certain fight, an extra little bit of healing is never a bad thing!
Elemental Specific Elemental Focus now increases the Shaman's spell damage by 15% (was 10%). Shamanism now increases the damage of Lightning Bolt by 70% (was 50%).
- Two buffs to help bring elemental's overall damage up a bit.
Enhancement Specific Mental Quickness now lowers the cost of shocks by 90% (still lowers the cost of other “beneficial, instant, damaging and totem spells” by 75%).
- Not completely sure why this change happen, as we don't tend to have many mana issues at max level. There it is though, and I won't complain any.
Edit: According to the 5.2 Class Review done by Blizz, this change was geared towards helping out enhancement shaman in PvP scenarios. Apparently with low melee uptime, enhancers were finding themselves OOM. I still won't complain any, as this change can likewise help in certain solo situations!
Spirit Walk now has a 1-minute cooldown (was 2 minutes).
- More mobility is never a bad thing, especially as a melee class. This change is super handy for those movement heavy fights.
As I said a bit ago, most of these changes are really more minor tweaks. A few are quality of life changes, some are simply balancing our talents so that we may choose talents based on either preference or situation, instead of simply choosing a particular talent because "it's always the best one." Naturally, changing certain talents in and out can change your playstyle to a certain degree, but more on that later. Go forth and enjoy the new content!
For those of you who may have missed my tweets or Facebook post, on March 1st I had the pleasure of being a guest on The Training Dummies podcast. On the show we spoke about soloing and they allowed me to geek a bit about alts and enhancement shaman as well! I highly recommend giving the show a listen, as these fellas put out some pretty good content.
If you've been waiting with bated breath (it's torturous I'm sure, as 5.2 launched only yesterday) for an updated enhancement guide, fear not! I am currently working on a post that covers the 5.2 changes for shamans in general, and I shall be following that up with a tweaked enhancement guide for this new patch.
Also in the plans is to get out a few more soloing video guides, as well as potentially a walk through on how to enhance your way through the new raid LFR style, once that becomes available. Videos are always on my maybe pile though, as those buggers tend to be time consuming as all get out.
So yes, good things coming soon. Until then, enjoy the podcast!
So, you've seen this nifty title around town, Herald of the Titans. You've looked it up, sort of, and have found out that in order to acquire this this title you must have a level 80 character. Beyond this little tidbit of information, you're finding yourself in need of a little help. This article is here to lend you a hand.
Edit: This achievement was temporarily bugged to where a group of 90s could gain this FoS/Title. DPSing down the boss before it could register the gear and levels of the group can be considered an EXPLOIT, as it is not intended for level 90s to be able to achieve this Feat of Strength. It should be known that using/attempting to use an exploit is a bannable offense according to the Terms of Service that Blizzard has in place, thus isn't something you should be attempting. This bug has also been hotfixed, so stop trying to find a way to circumvent the system that's in place.
The Herald of the Titans is a title acquired by a team of level 80 characters, all in gear of item level 226 or less, taking down this star guy called Algalon. Algalon is remembered as one of those bosses that straight up resonated with all players, both lore-wise and with his encounter. His is an epic fight to experience. Originally Algalon's encounter had a 1 hour time limit in which you could make attempts on taking him down attached to it, but this is no longer the case.
Herald of the Titans has been moved to a Feat of Strength. It is still obtainable however, and the title is account-wide. For a short while after the account-wide titles became a thing, it was thought that this was one title that would forever remain character bound. It turned out though that this was just a bug. Once you achieve the Herald of the Titans FoS, you unlock this nifty title for all of the characters on your account!
Locking Your Character at 80
Freezing your character's XP gain is fairly simplistic. If you're Alliance, you'll want to visit Behsten, who is located in the Stormwind Keep. For Horde, you'll want to speak to Slahtz, who is located in the Valley of Honor. Both of these fellas are stealthed level 19 rogues, though you shouldn't have much issue tracking them down if you click on the provided links.
If you wish to continue on leveling your character after you receive your title, you simply talk to these guys again to turn your XP gain back on. The cost to either toggle the XP gain on or off should only be about 10g.
Gear
In order for the group to qualify for the achievement, everyone must be sporting gear of an item leveling of 226 or lower in all slots, with an exception for weapons, which may be item level 232. Crafted gear, BoEs, and Justice Point gear can all fill gaps quite nicely, and in some cases turn out to be best-in-slot items.
Best-in-slot gear is not required for the achievement, but the more 226 gear you can get on your character, the better. Shoot for making your character sport at least all epic items prior to attempting this encounter.
Gemming
For this Feat of Strength it is preferred that all participating characters to be gemmed with the epic quality Wrath of the Lich King gems. For *most* classes, folks will want to gem their primary stat (Agility/Intellect/Strength) with the exception of possibly tanks and/or healers, who may prefer a mix of their primary and preferred secondary.
Enchanting
Like gemming, it is preferred that all participants have their characters enchanted with the best enchants available to them. It is understandable if a character is on a server that a player may not have a dedicated enchanter to provide materials/enchants for the Herald character (assuming that the Herald toon isn't an enchanter his or herself), however all participants should at least have some sort of enchant on every piece of their gear.
Professions
Professions, while not 100% required, can be a huge help in both gearing and optimizing your Herald character. Like at max level, crafting professions (Tailoring, Enchanting, Jewel Crafting, Leatherworking, Black Smithing, Engineering, and possibly Inscription) are generally preferred over gathering professions (Herbalism, Skinning, Mining). Again, not something that is absolutely needed, though if you have the resources available to you to level up your Herald character's professions to the Cataclysm level, it can help out immensely.
Food
Cataclysm foods are permitted for the Herald of the Titans achievement. It is advised that you stock up on some Cataclysm foods in your primary stat for personal use in the event that a feast is not able to be provided.
Flasks/Potions
Again, for this achievement Cataclysm consumables (in this case, flasks) are permitted. Since group cauldrons are no longer a thing, it is advised that you come prepared with a few flasks in your primary stat.
Likewise you may use Cataclysm potions for this event. While a full stack of a potion of your choice (for DPS this would be a potion that provides your primary stat, for healers this may be a mana return potion, and for tanks this may be either a healing potion, an armor increase potion, or an Agility/Strength potion for increased DPS) probably won't all be needed, it is advised that you have several of these potions on hand. For those of you familiar with double potting, that will not be necessary for this encounter, as the time from entering combat and the time that Algalon actually engages is nearly the full duration of the initial pre-pot. Save your potions for the burn phase!
Reforging
For a Herald character, reforging can be a bit tricky. If you are aware of the exact number you need for your hit and/or expertise caps, using a site such as WoW Reforge can come in pretty handy. In the event that you're not completely aware of what your caps are, an addon called ReforgeLite can help you out greatly.
Before you begin reforging, it is advised that you research which secondary stats your class/spec prefers. For most level 80 classes, Mastery tends to be the most powerful stat available regardless of the level 90 preference of said class/spec. However, for DPS specs it is incredibly important that you must first reach your hit and/or expertise caps before you begin to stack Mastery or any other secondary stat. Tanks, it is likewise advisable to look into how important it is to reach your hit/expertise caps for both threat generation and resource regeneration.
Rotations
Spell priorities and rotations for most classes can be gleaned from their level 90 counterparts, and guides on these spell priorities/rotation may be found on various blogs and/or sites such as Icy-Veins. Naturally, as a level 80 you will not have all of the nifty spells that a level 90 does, but you should have most of the meat and potato spells for your spec. Make minor adjustments as needed.
The Gearing Process
There are several ways to begin the gearing up process, many of which may need to be employed depending on how lucky you are with drops.
1) Crafting - There are several pieces out there that may be crafted for a Herald character. However, these recipes are often subject to droprates, so if you personally or your guildmates do not have the recipe, it may be a bugger to find the right pattern. For 226 specific gear, there are belts and boots available for crafting. If you're in dire need of a chest and glove filler, 200 gear is likewise available for crafting, provided you have the recipes.
2) Wrath 5 Mans - Queuing up for heroic Wrath of the Lich King 5 mans is not necessarily the most efficient way to go about things, unless you have a ready-made group of five. The option is there, however, to have a level 90 solo these instances for you. While most of the heroic-mode 5 mans either sport gear that is rather low in item level (200 or so) or too high (the ICC heroics sport 232 gear), they can provide some decent fillers. Here are some instances that you'll want to focus on to get your filler gear:
Heroic ICC 5 Mans: While most of the gear in these heroics cannot be used for Herald of the Titans, what can be used are the weapon drops. Remember, weapons of ilvl 232 may be used! These heroics will provide that. Normal ICC 5 Mans: The gear that drops in the normal version of these dungeons drop 219 gear, which is perfectly acceptable. Easily chain farmed if you have the time available to you.
Heroic ToC 5: This instance will provide you with 219 gear on heroic. While still not the easiest solo for even a level 90, it is doable by some tank and DPS classes. Regular ToC 5: Soloable by most level 90 classes, ToC regular provides ilvl 200 gear. While not the most optimal, this instance provides Heralds characters with an easily obtained/farmable trinket. Most of these trinkets were desirable up into even Icecrown Citadel if a raider at that time was unlucky.
3) Cataclysm Dungeons
Justice Points can be used to purchase a variety of gear from the vendors found in Dalaran. Some of these purchasable items are BoE, so they can be bought by another character who has excess JP laying around. However, many of the items are BoP and will require farming on your Herald toon.
There are two Cataclysm dungeons that are available to level 80s: Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns. Queuing up for these randomly, at least one per day for your daily boost in JP gain, is pretty much the best way to farm for your needed Justice Points.
Given the fact that you'll be farming these two Cataclysm dungeons over and over again, chances are you'll end up with two different sets of gear; one for farming, one for Herald of the Titans. It is perfectly okay to wear items that are above the 226 requirement while you are farming for your Herald gear. As a matter of a fact it's encouraged to have a higher item level set, especially if you're having a friend solo instances for you, as it greatly increases your chance of survival in some situations. If you're running with a gear group through Ulduar, wearing higher gear generally yields higher damage output, which naturally speeds up the farming runs a bit.
4) Ulduar
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, farming Ulduar for gear is another option. There are a few things to remember though:
- Ulduar 10 provides 219 gear from normal modes; 226 gear from hardmodes and Algalon
- Ulduar 25 provides 226 gear from normal modes; 239 gear from hardmodes and Algalon, which is not usable for Herald of the Titans
- Be sure to not save yourself to Algalon the week you plan on attempting the achievement. Remember, the lockouts have changed. If you kill Algalon on 25 man difficulty, you will also be locked out of Algalon 10 for the week.
- Be mindful of possible lockout issues if you were to participate in a partial run through Ulduar. While lockout issues should not occur if you were to say, kill 3 bosses and someone else cleared everything besides Algalon himself, it is possible that funky things could occur. Just play it safe during the week you plan on attempting the achievement.
If you happen to have either a second account with a max level character on it, you could very well solo a good chunk of Ulduar for gear as well, with your Herald toon in tow. If this option isn't available to you, if you happen to have a friend who is generous with their time and is a capable soloist, they could potentially run you through the instance as you try to keep yourself alive. Again, a few things to remember before you attempt duoing this with a friend or yourself:
- Ulduar 10 is mostly soloable by several level 90 DPS classes currently as well as most level 90 tank classes, with the exception being Thorim, who takes some tricky engineering work to get around.
- Ulduar 25 likewise should be soloable by a level 90 DPS or tank type, though mileage may vary depending on gear and skill.
5) Other Raids
If you really need gear with a quickness, do not forget to run Naxxramas 10 (ilvl 200) or 25 (ilvl 213), Malygos 10 (ilvl 213) or 25 (ilvl 226), Obsidian Sanctum 10 (ilvl 200/213 with bonus drakes) or 25 (ilvl 213/226 with bonus drakes), and Onyxia 10 (ilvl 232 weapons).
The tier 7 set bonuses are often decent and can/should be used if you're unable to get yourself a 2 and/or 4 set tier 8 bonus.
Naxx 10: Should be fully soloable by most LFR geared DPS and tank classes Naxx 25: Should be fully soloable by most tank and high-burst plate DPS classes; some DPS classes may struggle with Patchwerk/Instructor Razuvious, though the rest of the instance *should* be soloable. Malygos 10/25: 10 is easily soloable by most DPS classes, 25 is doable by those who are semi decently geared, have some higher burst abilities, and those who are capable with the drakes in phase 3. Obsidian Sanctum 10/25: OS3D 10 should be soloable by most higher burst classes who are at least sporting some LFR or normal mode t14 gear. 25 should be doable by some high burst classes that have either full normal mode gear with 4 piece bonuses or are in heroic mode t14 gear.
Onyxia 10: Soloable by most DPS/tank classes even at level 85 (with Dragon Soul gear), let alone level 90.
6) BoEs
Remember to check the auction house if you've already tapped all of your raiding resources, because BoEs drop from Naxx, OS, EoE (Malygos), and even Ulduar itself. These BoEs can certainly fill in a space in a pinch, and generally only go for a few hundred gold at most these days.
7) Extra Sources of Justice Points Edit: With making this guide, I completely forgot about the conversion of Honor Points to Justice Point. If you had leveled via PvP, you may trade your extra HP for JP at the Honor vendor in your faction's main city. Below is a quote from one of our commenters, Evlyxx, advising us on how to gain even more HP to trade over for JP:
However, 1 vital source of Justice Points is missing from the guide, the
PVP quests in Venture Bay, which give 200 honor per day that can be
converted into Justice Points every other day. Not a lot by level 90
standards but the return per minute is huge as the biggest unforseen
problem I and my friends encountered was getting Justice Points as the
Wrath dungeons didn't reward any.
The Fight
Alright, so you've got the gear and it's all dazzled up, you've got your required raiding consumables, and you're ready to get down to business. As it is with current end-game raiding, it's wise to look at the fight ahead of time. Here's the original Tankspot guide on how to tackle this encounter.
Looks a bit complex, eh? Try not to fret too much, as the encounter is actually much easier, thanks to our little friend called Mastery. That's right, because of this one little (and rather potent) stat addition, overall DPS *should* be higher than it was when Algalon was current content, healing throughput *should* be a bit stronger, and tanking likewise *should* be a bit smoother. I strongly accentuate the word should simply because often Herald toons are not sitting in full BiS 226 gear, nor at Herald toons generally a class someone plays as a main. Despite everything, Mastery as a whole tends to help make up the differences of both skill and lack of BiS gear.
While yes, the fight is much easier with a group of twinks and semi-twinks, do not allow yourself to be lulled into a false sense of "this is easy" however. For most groups, it will take several pulls before everyone is acclimated to how the encounter feels on their particular character. If everyone has prepared correctly though, the learning process and achievement gain should be fairly painless.
I hope that this post has helped a few of you out! As always, if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to ask. I wish you all luck with your gearing. Now go have yourself some fun!
If you're just now returning to the game, or if you're leveling an enhancement shaman for the first time, you may be wondering "How the heck do I heal?" Enhancement healing is relatively simple, yet can seem a bit complex at times to the untrained shaman.
Some of you old-timers may be wondering about where the heck Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave ran off to. Well, both of these spells have decided to get permanently hitched to our restoration brothers and sisters, effectively dumping us. That's right, our only actively cast healing spells are now Healing Surge, Chain Heal, and Healing Rain. I see you giving Healing Surge the stink eye; try not to judge it quite yet, it's more potent than it looks.
Please note that I will only be covering the spell modifiers (mainly talents and glyphs, not necessarily procs/secondary stat scaling) that directly effect healing. There are several other glyphs/talents that boost resistances and help to dispel, but I will not be including those within this article.
Unless you're hard casting Healing Surge for some odd reason,
this spell is more than adequate for the pinch healing that you'll need
during leveling/soloing/raiding. Trust me, this spell has been saving my shaman butt for months now. Check out these modifiers that makes Healing Surge more potent for us.
Modified by:
1) Maelstrom Weapon - For each stack of Maelstrom Weapon, Healing Surge will both cost less mana and heal for greater amounts.
2) Healing Storm - This glyph will cause your healing done to be increased by 20% per Maelstrom Weapon stack.
3) Echo of Elements - This talent can cause your Healing Surge to "echo," effectively casting Healing Surge a second time without any extra effort from you or resource cost. Both the original spell an the echoed spell can crit independently.
Might not be so bad, eh? Now let's break down some of our other healing abilities.
Chain Heal is not a spell commonly cast by an enhancement shaman unless
said shaman is within proximity of several raid mates and their healers
are struggling. Remember, it is your job as a dps to do damage, not play
healing hero. In the event that your healers are oom, you may use Chain
Heal and Healing Rain as last ditch efforts to save your raid team long
enough to make a kill. If you need to save yourself in the event that
you accidentally stood in the bad though, use Healing Surge. Chain Heal doesn't heal for a ton single-target, and can unfortunately only bounce so far.
Modified by:
1) Maelstrom Weapon - For each stack of Maelstrom Weapon, Healing Surge will both cost less mana and heal for greater amounts.
2) Healing Storm - This glyph will cause your healing done to be increased by 20% per Maelstrom Weapon stack.
3)
Echo of Elements - This talent can cause your Chain Heal to "echo,"
effectively casting Chain Heal a second time without any extra effort
from you or resource cost. Crits will behave as if you had cast Chain Heal twice, meaning they'll do their own thing regardless of what the original spell did.
Much like Chain Heal, Healing Rain is not a spell commonly cast by an
enhancement shaman unless
said shaman is within proximity of several raid mates and their healers
are struggling. Healing Rain can help to stabilize a group's health, though overall doesn't do a ton of healing. Remember, it is your job as a dps to do damage, not play
healing hero. In the event that your healers are oom, you may use Chain
Heal and Healing Rain as last ditch efforts to save your raid team long
enough to make a kill. If you need to save yourself in the event that
you accidentally stood in the bad though, use Healing Surge.
Healing Rain also plays a part in how the talent Conductivity works. More on this a little bit later.
Modified by:
1) Maelstrom Weapon - For each stack of Maelstrom Weapon, Healing Rain will both cost less mana and heal for greater amounts.
2) Healing Storm - This glyph will cause your healing done to be increased by 20% per Maelstrom Weapon stack.
Healing Stream Totem
This totem has been a healing staple for us shaman for quite some time now. While it has had a bit of a makeover since Cataclysm, this totem can still put out a good little bit of healing. Currently this totem is a single target smart heal, and prefers to target those in the shaman's group who have the lowest health. The Mists of Pandaria version only lasts for 15 seconds at a time and has a cooldown, but said cooldown is relatively short (30 seconds). If you're in dire need of a second Healing Stream Totem, and fast, you may reset the cooldown if you're specced into Call of the Elements (3 minute cooldown on this talent).
Modified by:
1) Call of the Elements - Resets the 30 second cooldown on this totem. Usable once every 3 minutes.
Healing Tide Totem
It's a totem, it's a talent, it's a "major" healing cooldown! That's right, Healing Tide Totem is not a standard water totem for us damage dealing shaman, but it is available to us via talents. Unfortunately, this talent is second to Ancestral Guidance in terms of healing output capabilities, mainly due to the fact that it doesn't really scale all that well for us. Plus, it's fickle and likes to oscillate on how many ticks of healing it'll put out. There are situations where this totem could potentially be more useful, however. If your raid needs a healing cooldown during periods where you're not able to hit a boss, for example. Though, for the most part your healing team should be able to plan around mechanics to make it so they can make the greatest use out of your hybrid healing abilities (which would be to use Ancestral Guidance whilst you are parked on a boss/pile of adds). This totem can also be highly useful in soloing situations where you find yourself kiting more often than hitting something, though those situations are rather rare.
You may not have Healing Tide Totem and Healing Stream Totem out at the same time; popping one while the other is out can end up being a slight waste in both the totem itself, and the GCD.
Modified by:
1) Talents that only restoration has which passively boosts all of their healing, including totems
2) Haste plateaus, which enhance doesn't shoot for
Ancestral Guidance
This particular talent currently offers us dps shaman types the biggest bang for our talent point...assuming we can swat at things. Ancestral Guidance yields the highest output while we are in our Ascendance form, though please keep in mind that tying the two together may result in a complete waste of Ancestral Guidance, unless there's an increased damage taken and received phase, such as the gas phase on Will of the Emperor normal mode. For soloing purposes however, if you happen to pop AG while in Ascendance, you could very well see yourself go from nearly dead to full very quickly. Stormstrike/Stormblast, Lava Lash, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lighting, the initial impact of shocks (meaning NOT Flame Shock's tick, just the impact when you first cast it), and Fire Nova all essentially become means of healing through this talent for a short duration.
Modified by:
1) The use of dps cooldowns in conjunction with this ability.
Conductivity
What this talent does essentially is give anyone within the shaman's
healing rain either 20% of their healing done (say, you cast Healing
Surge on yourself while in your own healing rain, each person standing
in your rain will likewise receive 20% of the healing that Healing Surge
did to you) or 50% of their damage done is turned into healing (again
you and a few raid mates are standing in your rain, Lava Lash hits for
150k so everyone in that rain gets a split healing total 75k). Currently
Conductivity is a dps loss due to having to waste Maelstrom resources on
dropping Healing Rain, suffers from positional issues, and overall has a
lower HPS output than both Ancestral Guidance (our current best talent
option for that tier) and Healing Tide Totem. Conductivity will be
getting some love come patch 5.2 by having its "standing in the Healing Rain" requirement removed, but chances are pretty good that most
of us will be sticking with Ancestral Guidance as our primary choice.
Modified by:
1) Elemental Blast - This is currently a talent that no enhancement shaman should be taking because of its lower damage output compared to Unleashed Elements and even Primal Elementalist, but due to its massive secondary stat boost plus some of the love it will be receiving in patch 5.2, it's worth noting. In 5.2 it is said that EB will also give a boost in Agility every time it is cast for enhancement shaman who choose this talent, which in turn will make the healing done via Conductivity a bit more powerful. However, due to resources (both Conductivity and Elemental Blast consume Maelstrom Weapon stacks, so you'd have to potentially hard cast one of these abilities) this combination may not be the best for enhancement. While it appears that tier 14 will allot us more Maelstrom procs, I have my doubts of this combination being worth the hassle for our spec.
Feral Spirits
That's right, even our wolves heal us! Just us though, they really don't like anyone else. Every time they attack, 150% of the damage they deal heals both them and us. Pretty neat, eh? But that's not all! If you have Glyph of Feral Spirit in, they deal another 40% in healing, which is to say pretty darn potent. Yeah that's right, our wolves aren't just a little damage cooldown that looks all flashy, but they're also a fairly decent self healing cooldown as well. Pretty hard to take us down when we have our wolf pals out!
Modified by:
1) Glyph of Feral Spirit
2) Mastery - The Feral Spirits attack using a spell called Spirit Bite, which deals nature damage. Due to our Enhancement Mastery, the more mastery we have, the stronger our wolves will attack. The stronger their attacks, the more healing we receive.
Glyph of Flame Shock
While this glyph's changes won't be implemented on live servers until 5.2 (at the time of writing this post, this glyph adjusts the damage and duration of Flame Shock), assuming that it makes the cut, I figured that it would be worth mentioning to those of you who are reading this in the future. Come next patch, you will personally be healed by 30% of the damage your Flame Shock does. My assumption is that if you were to spread your Flame Shock via Lava Lash and had multiple Flame Shocks rolling at once, you'd likewise receive healing from those Flame Shocks.
I'll admit that this glyph looks pretty good on paper, but from the sounds of it this may end up being a fairly lackluster choice at first, since Flame Shock doesn't do a ton of damage by itself. It may however end up scaling nicely towards the end of this expansion. We'll have to wait and see what the theorycrafting community's verdict on particular glyph is to know for sure though.
That's everything we have currently. So let's break it down into simple terms, going by what is typically specced for and glyphed:
Also, don't forget your professions and racials. If you're an herbalist, Lifeblood can help you out in a pinch (plus the extra haste is pretty neat) and if you just so happen to be a Draenei, Gift of the Naaru can restore 20% of your (or a friend's, or Tsulong's) health to you (or your friend, or Tsulong even) over the duration of 15 seconds. Can't beat free healing!
I hope this article has helped you out some, even if it is rather lengthy. Remember, enhancement shamans have a ton of healing utility within our bag of tricks, so there's no need to feel helpless if you're hurting!
One question that seems to be commonly asked within class forums
pertains to whether or not X class is currently "viable" for the latest
raid content. Before we get much further into this post, let us first define what viable means.
Viable: Adjective Capable of working successfully; feasible
This essentially means that to be viable as a raiding spec, said spec would have to be able to be able to compete on whatever chart with its fellow peers within a certain percentage. Let's look at some charts to see how well Blizzard has been doing in regards to balancing the various DPS specializations in our current available raiding formats.
Click on the images to enlarge!
The above images have been taken from the site RaidBots.
This site shows us the top 100 parses averaged over the whatever time frame you set it up to show you. Now, please be aware
that this site is to be used as a reference, not a bible. Your
damage output may vary from what is shown on this site due to either
gearing differences, the difficulty you participate in, and not to
mention potential player error.
Now, what you're looking at here is the average output of each
respective DPS class and spec over the course of the last 60 days for
all encounters. Notice how the dark blue squiggly line representing
enhancement is smack dab in the middle of the pack of squiggly lines.
Let me assure you, this is a very good place to be! For the most part, enhance seems to be within the roughly 10k median range, most often right smack dab in the middle. If you so wish, you may venture over to the site and look how enhance preforms on various encounters. For the most part though, we do indeed preform in an average manner. In some cases we preform better than other DPS classes, some we struggle with, but such as it is with diverse encounters.
What this essentially means is that we're currently not over powered, thus not in the queue
for the nerfbat come the next patch, nor are we under preforming to the point
where a raid team wouldn't consider taking us to a raid. We will be receiving some minor tweaks come patch 5.2, but these changes shouldn't make or break us, they will simply allow us to swap between out tier 4 and 6 talents to more effectively take on encounters. It also means that we're more than capable of keeping up with the vast majority of our peers on most encounters. Except for those pesky affliction warlocks and arcane mages. We won't really consider them for the moment though.
With all that said, I'd now like to touch on a related subject: how much does viability matter?
This is a rat's nest of a topic, but it is my personal opinion that viability as it were is a rather fluid thing. What I mean by this is that a given class is only as viable as the player behind it and the gear on the character itself. Yes, each class has a maximum potential ceiling that most of us try to strive for. However, unless someone is a robot on a perfect internet connection with all of the available buffs and have the RNG proc luck of the gods, most of us will never see that very top most performance ceiling. It's not that we don't try, it's that we all have our hindrances, be it latency, lack of best in slot gear, or even *gasp* human error.
This is where averages are good to consider. While yes, the above graphs were taken from the top 100 parses, thus represent some pretty fantastic players, they only give us a very broad idea on how each class preforms on average. Some specializations represented are capable of more but are skewed by funky raid comps or lack of representation. Again, this should be viewed as a reference, not a bible. I cannot stress this point enough. The above information needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
The fact of the matter is that unless you're a member of a top 100 guild, the so-called viability of most classes may not matter a whole lot to you since your guild's focus probably isn't aimed at acquiring world firsts, thus you have no real need to know how to stack which classes paired with what to put out the absolute maximum DPS numbers. For the typical WoW player, number crunching down to the last possible percentage isn't necessary. Chances are pretty good that most of you who will read this are in a middle of the road guild, perhaps either fairly casual and just doing your thing or dedicated to the point where you're pushing heroic modes. Chances are also pretty good that the talent within your raid team may vary to a certain degree. That's completely okay. All that means is that the above information shouldn't sway how you play to the degree that it would for the incredibly hardcore players in this game. Should it still be taken into consideration? Perhaps to a small degree, but I think the average player/guild will ultimately find more success in worrying about the people they bring into their raid environment versus worrying about what the top hot classes are for the current patch.
I'll let you in on a little secret: Any well-played class/spec can beat out any so-called overpowered class poorly played. I know this fact first hand.
The TL;DR version of this post is this: Bring the player, not the class/spec. While yes, you should always consider raid composition and loot distribution when you're trying to plan out raids, it ultimately won't matter much if you have a perfect raid comp when half of the players may not be capable preforming up to the group's standards. A decently geared enhancement shaman can very well beat out a similarly geared warlock or mage; it just depends on the capability of the players.
Enhancement is indeed viable. We are represented in higher end guilds. There are enhancers out there who have taken down Heroic Sha of Fear in Terrace of Endless Spring and we are more than capable with keeping up on the damage meters, regardless of the type of PvE content we find ourselves in. We also bring some pretty stellar hybrid healing utility, not to mention personal survivability, to the table. Plus, we're sexy beasts. Why wouldn't you want to play/have a sexy beast on your team?
Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a wonderful holiday and that you didn't find yourself at the bottom of a cask of Dwarven Ale during the New Year celebrations, at least not without supervision. My holidays pretty much consisted of having a house full of family for about a week and a half, roughly two days of me being feverish, and a whole ton of sleeping. It was a super productive stretch of time, let me tell you.
Despite the lunacy that was the holidays, there has been a good bit of exploration of the solo content going on. While the raiding break has been kind of awkward, I've definitely been keeping busy. Alts? Two more are sitting at 90, one of which is a second shaman. Pet battles? Diggin' them. Working my way through old raids? You bet. Brawler's Guild? Just hit rank 8 and let me tell you, those bosses mean business!
Slowly but surely I've also been working on putting out video guides. I don't just mean "Hey, watch me tackle things while music is playing in the background!" sort of videos either. These guides actually have words that are verbally spoken by me. Let me tell you, moving from a text-based mindset into a speaking one is awkward at best for me. While I have a tendency to be verbose in text, I'm often easily tongue-tied and rather soft spoken. It's been an interesting project thus far, one that's certainly pushing my comfort zone.
So, it is with much excitement and dread that I present to you my Brawler's Guild guides. I say dread mainly because it's painfully apparently how much of a learning process this series will be for me format wise, and I say excitement because videos of this nature are something that I've been wanting to do for some time. I only have ranks 1 and 2 complete at the time of writing this post, but rank 3 should be out within the next day or two. I really cannot wait to be able to share ranks 7 and 8 with everyone!
Right, videos.
So what do you all think? Is this enough, or would you all prefer supplemental text guides that broke things down even more? I know these videos are fairly fast paced, and that was kind of the intent. I wanted short and sweet versus something that drones on, but I realize that it may not be quite enough for some. Toss me some feedback, I'd greatly appreciate it!
One top of all the Brawler's stuff, I'm hoping to get out guides on how to solo old raids fairly soon. Once those are published I'll be linking those on the What's Soloable By Enhancement post, but for best results watch either Twitter, Facebook, or even Youtube itself for announcements of when they're posted.
Anyways, off I go to tinker with more video footage and hopefully acquire my 'Brawler' title. Like I said earlier in this post, those rank 8 bosses mean business. So much fancy footwork involved and if you're a bit slow, BOOM. You're a splatter on the ground. Needless to say, I've died a lot so far to rank 8. So much fun! No sarcasm, because as frustrating as Brawler's Guild can become, it really is a friggen blast. I definitely encourage you all to go check it out at some point.
Guys, I've done something drastic. I'm officially stepped down from raiding, at least for the moment.
I don't think this fact has truly set in for me yet. Raiding for me has been that thing I've always done, it's what has been the consumer of the bulk of my in-game time since I began playing "seriously" back in the Burning Crusade. While I do enjoy a good reputation grind, the hunt for those elusive rares, and playing dress up with my latest alt, raiding has always been where I've sent the vast majority of my energy. Why on Azeroth would I remove myself from something I love so wholeheartedly, even temporarily?
The answer to this question is rather complex, but the TL; DR version is simply: Burnout.
I've been raiding full tilt for a bit over a year now, much longer if you add in my prior years of raiding. I came back into the raiding scene shortly after the initial nerf to Firelands after a lengthy forced break and haven't had a whole lot of down time since. Mists of Pandaria, while fantastic on so many levels, has proven to be an incredibly overwhelming experience for me. Between the rush to level 90 - which was great fun and one rush that I'm unlikely to repeat - and the reputation grinds and the mad hurry to get geared up, get through this raid, loot dramas, fight this boss, show up every night, oh crap we need to recruit, do up the videos, write some posts, run this, organize that, solo all the things, raid raid raidsmashfaceonkeyboardginger shamanistic raaaaaage...it has kind of all piled up on me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that I'm somewhat masochistic when it comes to this game and all of my projects. I'm everywhere at once, and I have a tendency to take everything upon myself. Is it necessary that I be the keeper of combat logs, maker of pixelated kill videos, manager of the guild's website, and the one who is first to jump up and say "I'll do it!" whenever the guild needs recruitment forum posts? Absolutely not, but I've always enjoyed doing all that because some of those things need to be done anyways, and I like to make it so that my guild may have nice things. There's also absolutely no reason why I should be the only person to have a hand in the Twitterland Raiding site, but I have that terrible habit of taking it all on by myself. Making guides on this blog or videos for Youtube isn't mandatory for enjoyable game play, but I do it anyways because I know that there are a few select folks who enjoy seeing that sort of thing. The things mentioned in this paragraph are all things I highly enjoy. I do not believe that my issues lay within all of my projects, but rather in one aspect of my favorite pastime.
For the past several months, logging on to raid has felt like more of a chore than something I looked forward to. Instead of thinking to myself "Yes! It's raid night!" my thought processes were more along the lines of "Fuck, I have to raid tonight." This shift in the way I thought about my evening activities were brought on by a number of things, things I shan't go into detail at this point in time, but let's just say I'm not very happy with this change.
Needless to say, my negative way of thinking has impacted me on several levels. Where I was hyper aware of what was going on in the raid, I tend to find myself on auto-pilot, even on new encounters where such a thing can be incredibly hazardous to a boss kill. Where I was once able to easily joke and bullshit with my raid mates, I'm finding myself to be grumpy and resentful. Where I was once relaxed, I'm finding myself feeling anxious and often end up with stomach aches and massive tension headaches. Raiding, for as much as I love the thrill of seeing a new boss fall, love pushing myself to perform on the next level, love getting that new weapon upgrade...it just, it doesn't feel right anymore. It feels bad. I don't enjoy having something that I adore so much feel so wrong.
Change is absolutely needed, so it is with a heavy heart and an "aw crap, this sucks" look on my face, I am removing myself from the raiding scene for now. I'm unsure if this will be a permanent change, but it is most certainly one that shall remain for the time being. Whether I'll return with a renewed vengeance in a few weeks, a few months, a few tiers, or a few years, you can bet your butt that I'll come out swinging harder than ever.
So, what now? Why am I bothering to write this post at all? Well for starters, this post is me working through a massive knot that's been building in my belly for quite some time. My thoughts about stepping down have stricken me with quite a bit of internal conflict, and in a way I just needed to get it down in writing. Like most bloggers, I have that need to just get crap off my chest, and I prefer to do it in my own little realm of the internet. This post is also in part to inform my readers that, despite me removing myself from one of my main activities, I do plan on remaining quite active in the game. Saz will not be laying down her weapons anytime soon, but she will definitely be taking a bit of time to hit up the spa and relax her weary muscles.
What can you expect of me in the future? A lot, I hope. It is my deepest wish to get back into the loop with the lovely blogging community, as it feels like I have been neglecting you all for ages. I also hope to start doing more content videos, be it guides, soloing, or random crap I happen to be doing. I have plans that will hopefully breathe new life into the Twitterland Raiding project, and goals for both in game and out of game growth on a personal and social level. As per usual, I plan to take on a crapload of projects. Without raiding on the schedule though, I hope to bring these projects to you all, and the greater WoW community, both more efficiently and with better quality.
As you can see, I have a lot of hopes, a lot of plans. In this apparently post-apocalyptic world I shall be making a point to begin anew. Perhaps not so much anew as bringing about a massive turning point that should hopefully bring about more happiness for at least myself, if not those around me as well. That's the ultimate goal: to create something(s) that not only make me happier, but to also bring some happiness to my fellow internet friends. After all, happiness breeds happiness, and negativity is always sure to be a continuous downward spiral.
Let's all keep on swingin'. Here's to new leaves being turned over, new projects, new horizons, and a soon to be new year.
