Tag Archives: enhancement

Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman vs. Alysrazor

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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.)

When I was a youngling, my family didn’t have a lot of money. As a result, we didn’t have a lot of discretionary income for video games. When my neighbors were getting Nintendo 64, I was getting Sega Genesis. Getting Pokémon the first Christmas it was out was a really big deal.

As a result, my first exposure to Star Fox 64 came nearly two years after the game was released. Star Fox 64 had everything 12-year-old-me could have wished for in a video game: anthropomorphized animals with annoying voices, epic space battles, and barrel rolls. I was in heaven. I slept over my friend Francis’ house every Friday night for three months just to play Star Fox. (I’d always skip the water zone, though. That place makes heroic Ragnaros look simple.)

When Blizzard released Patch 4.2 and Alysrazor came out, I was faced with a fight uniquely suited to my skillset. Half of the fight, I’m an enhancement shaman: half of the fight, I’m flying through the air dodging incendiary clouds and collecting gold rings like a boss. Unfortunately, the half of the fight that doesn’t involve pretending to make fun of Falco over Ventrilo is the part that enhancement excels on.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman vs. Alysrazor originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: An enhancement guide to Shannox and Baleroc

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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.)

Every fight in Firelands has its positives and negatives for enhancement shaman. Rhyolith takes reduced damage for 60% of the fight, but he goes molten at 25%, and you need to burn him before he burns you. Beth’tilac spends the first 3 minutes making you run around like a confused wildebeest while you try to avoid scary fire on the ground, but then he gives you a nice, long burn phase at the end.

This seems to be the Firelands model, at least in the first four fights. Every fight has periods of low damage to the boss followed by intense DPS phases. Shannox, the Hagrid of Firelands, is no different. His first phase will either make you want to rip your movement keys off your keyboard or make you want to reroll an arcane mage, while his second will just make you want to roll arcane.

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Totem Talk: An enhancement guide to Shannox and Baleroc originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman vs. Beth’tilac and Lord Rhyolith

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shot web? The answer to the first two is “no,” and roll a hunter for the third!

If you’re an enhancement shaman in a regular raiding guild, congratulations! You’ve weathered the worst of the storm. Our last-minute Stormstrike buff coupled with the nerfs to 4.1′s prominent DPS has put us in a nice place for entering Firelands raiding. Our single-target DPS is solid now. Even better, Firelands has practically no fights with silly AOE phases that we have to participate in! If that sentence alone doesn’t get you pumped for 4.2 raiding, I don’t know what will.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t fights with AOE phases. On the contrary, both fights I’ll be talking about today require good AOE. Thankfully, that busy work is best left to your casters. They can cry about it all the way to their legendary. Fortunately for us, Lord Rhyolith and Beth’tilac are the two encounters in Firelands you’ll most likely encounter first, and both have unique mechanics that are well handled by the apt hands of a masterful enhancement shaman.

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Totem Talk: Enhancement shaman vs. Beth’tilac and Lord Rhyolith originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Why enhancement hates haste

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shot web? The answer to the first two is “no,” and roll a hunter for the third!

The era of Icecrown Citadel was a strange time for enhancement shaman. After spending 2/3 of the expansion gemming primarily attack power, haste rating became our king. I still remember the odd whispers I got from concerned guild members as they saw all yellow gems lighting up my gear, and how my go-to jewelcrafter was always certain to ask “are you sure” every time I asked him to cut a Quick King’s Amber.

The enhancement of ICC breathed haste. It sped up our white attacks, which in turn increased Flametongue procs, Static Shock procs, and the then all-important Maelstrom Weapon procs. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing, because nearly every other melee at the time was scaling with armor penetration, a non-linearly scaling stat that absolutely murdered its victims. While other melee classes and hunters saw their damage climb steeply, the graph of enhancement shaman’s damage plodded on in a straight line.

Cataclysm brought about a change for enhancement shaman and their old wingman, haste rating. With Maelstrom Weapon being lowered in the priority list, Static Shock being tied into our weapon abilities, and having our actual abilities hit for more damage, haste rating went from being our best friend to our worst enemy. It’s like high school, but for stat ratings.

To understand why haste is so bad for us now, it’s necessary to first understand what makes it so good for other classes. Up first, HOT and DOT classes.

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Totem Talk: Why enhancement hates haste originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 25 Jun 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: Why enhancement hates haste – Joystiq

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Totem Talk: Why enhancement hates haste
Joystiq
After them, we have the rest of World of Warcraft's casters, the ones who cast direct nukes. Arcane Blast, Lightning Bolt, Wrath; these nukes all have one thing in common: the faster they cast, the more DPS a caster does during a fight. …

world of warcraft news – Google News

Totem Talk: Last call for enhancement buffs

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shot web? The answer to the first two is “no,” and roll a hunter for the third!

Patch 4.2 was barely a week away, and things were looking bleak for enhance shaman everywhere. Enhancement shaman were watching their calendars in much the same way normal people watch Fox Van Allen and Tyler Caraway interact on Twitter; with much trepidation and little hope for the future of mankind. Fortunately for enhancement shaman everywhere, on the Thursday before (rumored) Patch Day, Blizzard came through for enhancement like a last minute visit from Santa Claus and gifted us with two tasty buffs. Unfortunately, neither Blizzard or Santa Clause can do anything for Fox and Tyler’s Twitter followers.

Unleash Wind now deals 175% weapon damage, up from 125%.

Stormstrike now deals 225% weapon damage, up from 125%.

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Totem Talk: Last call for enhancement buffs originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Enhancement shaman itemization and the end boss effect

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As you may or may not be aware, I’ve started gearing up my enhancement shaman and have been having a really good time playing him. I enjoy enhancement for a lot of reasons, including how different it feels from playing a warrior or feral druid, the other two melee classes I’m familiar with.

However, finding weapons can be a bit of a pain. The best weapons for me outside of a raid are the two fist weapons in ZG, which drop from a randomly summoned boss. So you may not even get the boss who drops them, and the off-hand doesn’t even drop from the same boss as the main-hand — and in either case, it means I’m leveling archaeology on a fourth toon because half the time, no one can summon any of them.

As annoying as this is, for raiding, it can get even worse. Getting a 2.6 speed agility main-hand weapon from raiding means killing Nefarian and praying that this week he drops your axe. (You can get an off-hand from trash, but you can’t use it in your main hand, meaning you need at least one Neffy axe). Blizzard has come out and said it’s fine with this for now.

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Enhancement shaman itemization and the end boss effect originally appeared on WoW Insider on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: State of the enhancement shaman address

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shot web? The answer to the first two is “no,” and roll a hunter for the third!

Despising Blizzard Entertainment is easy. When things go wrong in a raid, when filthy boomkins and surly shadow priests pass over you on the DPS charts, or when buff homogenization leaves you feeling like there is no reason for your raid to bring you to progression content anymore, it is exceptionally easy to point to Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) and say, “This is your fault.”

The complaint I most often hear used to demonize Blizzard goes something like this: “Blizzard doesn’t care about enhancement shaman. We’re the redheaded stepchildren of WoW.” Beyond just being offensive to the fiery-follicled and to stepparents everywhere, Blizzard does have a history of dealing with enhancement shaman issues.

So today, we’re taking a journey of perspective. The Burning Crusade has long been heralded as the pinnacle of enhancement’s glory, at least in terms of PVE. To me, it was enhancement’s high school jock years. We may look back with fond remember whens and nostalgic feelings of pride and accomplishment, but the real thing will never measure up to the stories we tell about it.

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Totem Talk: State of the enhancement shaman address originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 04 Jun 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Totem Talk: State of the enhancement shaman address – Joystiq

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Totem Talk: State of the enhancement shaman address
Joystiq
Unfortunately, nostalgia in regards to World of Warcraft is often remembered while wearing rose-colored glasses. While there's truth that being an enhancement shaman guaranteed you a raid spot in The Burning Crusade, playing one was much akin to being …

world of warcraft news – Google News

Totem Talk: Why enhancement AOE doesn’t work

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shot web? The answer to the first two is “no,” and roll a hunter for the third!

I love making the best of a terrible situation. When life gives me lemons, I make a cake. When I’m at the gym in the morning and the only thing on the television is Rachael Ray’s talk show, I focus hard on committing delicious recipes to memory. And, when Blizzard hands us the worst area of effect ability in the game, I write a post about how to maximize its limited potential. I’m moving away from that line of thinking today. Instead, this post is dedicated to diagnosing why Fire Nova is so bad and what Blizzard can do to change it.

To begin, I’d like to say that I actually enjoy our AOE at its most basic level. Fire Nova erupting from Flame Shock to me really fits enhancement, which is a spec defined by its use of shocks and other instant-cast spells. I think the actual feel of the spell works and fits with the overall theme of enhancement, and the problem lies in the actual implementation of the ability.

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Totem Talk: Why enhancement AOE doesn’t work originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 21 May 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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