Totem Talk: Gearing your enhancement shaman for Raid Finder

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

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

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

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

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Totem Talk: Gearing your enhancement shaman for Raid Finder originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman, welcome to patch 4.3

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

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

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

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Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman, welcome to patch 4.3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement gear in patch 4.3

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

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

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

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Totem Talk: Enhancement gear in patch 4.3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement gear in patch 4.3

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

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

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

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Totem Talk: Enhancement gear in patch 4.3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement talents in Mists of Pandaria

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

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

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

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

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Totem Talk: Enhancement talents in Mists of Pandaria originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman changes in patch 4.3

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

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

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

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Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman changes in patch 4.3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Choosing to play an enhancement shaman – Joystiq

Totem Talk: Choosing to play an enhancement shaman
Joystiq
In World of Warcraft, character creation is a system of choices: What race will you be? What gender will you be? What faction will you choose? And, of course, the most important choice: What class will you be? If you're reading, this, I assume you made

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Totem Talk: Choosing to play an enhancement shaman

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

Any seasoned video game veteran is used to the idea of choices. In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you made choices that determined your character’s alignment. In Pokemon, you chose between Squirtle, Bulbasaur, and Charmander, and that choice determined your rival’s team for the rest of the game. In World of Warcraft, character creation is a system of choices: What race will you be? What gender will you be? What faction will you choose? And, of course, the most important choice: What class will you be?

If you’re reading, this, I assume you made the right choice and chose a shaman. You spent the first 10 levels in an awkward, liminal space where you weren’t quite sure whether or not you were supposed to melee mobs or cast at them. Maybe you did both, casting Lightning Bolts in between your Primal Strike and Earth Shock cooldowns. If you’re stuck in this in-between area, where you’re not quite sure what you’re supposed to be doing or what the purpose and playstyle of the two DPS specs for shaman are, this is the right place. Today, I’ll discuss enhancement.

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Totem Talk: Choosing to play an enhancement shaman originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Crit vs. mastery for enhancement shaman

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

I spend a lot of time talking about gear. In the past, I’ve made loot lists for upcoming content, wrote a guide to enhance stats in Cataclysm, and devoted an entire post to talking about why haste is such a terrible, terrible stat for us. Gear is our only physical (as much as pixels on a screen can be physical) reminder of the boss we killed, and it’s the only way for our characters to grow once they meet max level.

In my talks about gear, I’ve paid a lot of attention to how horrible haste is. Unfortunately, while I’ve mentioned in brief tidbits that mastery is our best secondary stat, the hot fudge on the ice cream sundae of our gearing, I’ve gone into little detail on why it’s so good. Even worse, I’ve totally neglected discussion critical hit rating and why it isn’t as good. To fully understand enhancement gearing, this is stuff you need to know.

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Totem Talk: Crit vs. mastery for enhancement shaman originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Crit vs. mastery for enhancement shaman – Joystiq

Totem Talk: Crit vs. mastery for enhancement shaman
Joystiq
If you've played World of Warcraft to level 85, you've definitely seen critical hits happen before. Your critical strike rating and agility determine your chance to get a critical strike with your melee attacks, which hit for 200% (or double) normal

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