Totem Talk's Matthew Rossi has had a small Horde renaissance this week, and decided to take his slightly dusty Resto shaman out for a spin, healing a heroic MgT run and then running about the IoQD doing the dailies. Turns out he learned a few things in the process. He wrote a little song about it, like to hear it? Here it goes.
Okay, I apologize, but there will be no singing. Tell you what, if enough people demand it, I'll belt one out on the next WoW Insider Show I'm on.
I've posted in the past about how to quest, grind and otherwise solo on a Restoration shaman, but I didn't go sufficiently into detail as the post ended up being about the odd things people think about shamans. So this week, we'll go more into detail. There are basically two ways you can go about doing this, thanks to the recent changes Blizzard made to healing gear: you can go out and quest in your regular healing set or you can also have a set of DPS gear. Unlike a priest and more like fellow hybrids like druids, you have a choice of what kind of DPS gear to wear. You could have a set of Enhancement mail and a big 2h weapon (since Resto shammies can't dual wield but can use 2h's now) and run around hitting stuff, or you could go for the spell damage gear and imagine that you're a powerful Elemental shaman.
My own personal preference (due to that fact that my shaman has a lot of Enhancement gear) is to go the whackity whackity route and Windfury up a 2h. But in the interests of experimentation I tried both spell damage gear and my normal healing setup, and I found that my personal preference is in fact the least effective of the three for the gear I happen to have. I'm sure no one is surprised.
At any rate, let's talk turkey. Isn't turkey delicious? Druids can turn into humanoid-turkey hybrids. None of this has anything to do with Shamans of any spec soloing anything, but I've always wondered about the phrase 'let's talk turkey' and how anyone could resist saying "yay, I love stuffing!" after it. I'll get a hold of myself now. Actual details of Shaman soloing behind the jump. Whee!
Lately a lot of the columns here at Totem Talk have been aimed at endgame issues... getting into instances and raids, PvP, etc etc... so I thought it was about time we go back to the leveling shaman and discuss an issue that really starts to matter around level 40 or so. That is, what spec is right for you?
As a versatile hybrid class, shamans can play a role as excellent melee DPS, effective long range caster DPS, or that solid bedrock of every party, the main healer. And to a degree it's possible for a skilled shaman of one spec to play another role: my resto shaman has done melee and/or caster DPS in fights where I wasn't needed to heal (although bringing a resto shaman to a five man and then saying 'well, we have a holy priest, so you can DPS if you want' is in my opinion somewhat mean, like taking a chef into a five star kitchen with all the amenities and then telling him to sit down and have some food since someone else is already going to be cooking) and my enhancement shaman has main healed fights when the real healer went down due to bad luck or what have you. I've had elemental shamans throw the heals in between DPSing and even had one run up and windfury with a 2h on a boss once, although she mostly did that to make the rest of us freak out.
So, as a service to all the new shamans I'm hoping have started rolling the class over the past few weeks because my column has inspired you (look, let me keep my delusions, okay?) we'll go over what the three specs are, what they do and don't do in a party, and what you'll be expected to do with them as you level up. If you're a level 70 shaman already, you probably already know all this, and if not how the heck did you manage to get to 70? You're telling me you didn't spend any talent points the whole time? There's three trees, man, play around a little! Since I know most of you are very knowledgeable about your chosen specs, feel free to jump in with advice and ideas.
Every week, Alex Ziebart comes to you with Hybrid Theory. A column with... theories about hybrids, I guess. I mean, that's what it says at least. I guess it could be something else, but probably not. Honestly, you should probably just read it and find out for yourself.
In the past here on Hybrid Theory, we've discussed what Hybrids are capable of doing in a raid, as far as beneficial talents and utilities. We talked about the fact that a few well-placed hybrids in your raid can take your DPS from 'good' to 'horrifyingly good.' All of this comes to the front again in a boss that many high-end raid groups are clashing against right now: Brutallus.
If you haven't read anything on this boss yet, it's the single largest gear check in WoW yet. It's Burning Crusade's Patchwerk, mostly. To beat Brutallus, you need roughly 29,000 sustained DPS across your entire raid. If you don't pull that off, you hit his enrage timer and he destroys all of you. Simple as that! If you're lucky you can burn off a final two or three percent of his health after the enrage, but that's about as far as you go. That three percent is about 300,000 health, so don't get too confident.
We've been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. I have been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. Lucky you, we're going to talk about it some more!
Magisters' Terrace is the brand new 5-man that came with Patch 2.4, so it comes across as much harder than it actually is. It is hard, sure, but not the soul-rending pain we're all feeling right now. All new dungeons require a period of adjustment. I remember when Dire Maul first came out, way back in the day. Everyone thought it was utterly horrifying.
During this period of adjustment, you're going to run into groups being far more strict about group composition. Once the community has become accustomed to the difficulty level of Magisters' Terrace, things will ease up. Currently, a lot of damage specced hybrids are having a rough time finding a group consistently due to one pretty large factor: A lack of crowd control. There are a lot of things you can(and should) do to make up for that, and knowing those things will do a lot to contribute to speeding up the adjustment period.
Welcome to another installment of Hybrid Theory, wherein columnist Alex Ziebart assures the world that he does not, in fact, hate Retribution Paladins. In fact, he raids with a Retribution Paladin. Really. He does. Pinky swear.
Let's face it, folks. A lot of raid leaders have very little idea what they're doing when they're brand new to the raiding thing. I was there once, too. Until you have some experience in the 25-man raids, you have very little idea how group synergy works or anything of that sort. As a hybrid, especially one specced in a tree other than your healing tree, this could cause you some issues when looking to break into raiding from the ground level, rather than filling a gap in an existing raid that generally knows what's what.
You will most likely find that you'll need to sell yourself to raid leaders. What can you bring to the table? What can you do that a mage can't? What can you do that a rogue can't? The answer: Quite a bit! First thing to keep in mind, though, is that as a hybrid, you will probably not do as much damage as the other DPS classes in the raid. Healing specced, you will keep up just fine. Damage specced? Well, you won't keep up on every encounter. That's okay though. You don't need to. Why? Because you specifically allow those other classes to meet their maximum potential.
I'll go through each of the damage specs one by one. Tanks, healers, sorry. You come next week. I'm writing a column, not a novel!
After Skellum of Dalaran posts on the forums asking just where all these PTR changes are coming from, Nethaera sobers us all up about what the PTR is all about: progressive testing. She says that Blizzard has said from the beginning that there will be changes in the notes, and that things we thought were the end of the world in the beginning have changed or been completely removed. Welcome to the perilous world of progressive testing.
And it occurs to me that I've broken my own rule about patience on the PTRs. When those Shaman notes dropped with only a Stormstrike icon, it didn't occur to me (or almost any other players) that Blizzard wasn't done yet. And while the latest changes still aren't done (we're still waiting for an Elemental buff), things have been fixed somewhat since then.
But is this really just players doubting Blizzard? They posted the patch notes with just one small disclaimer -- would they have been able to quell the furor a bit more if they'd made it more clear that what's posted on the PTR notes has almost no connection to what will show up on the live realms? But then again, Neth never really answered the question of where these changes are coming from -- if Shamans hadn't QQ'd so much over the Elemental Mastery and Nature's Swiftness nerf, would it ever have been reverted? Blizzard seems to be simultaneously telling players to be patient and also give feedback. If players had been patient when the EM and NS nerf came down, and it hadn't caused such an uproar, would it have been changed back at all?
Hybrid Theory returns under the banner of column-newb Alex Ziebart. Incredibly biased opinions await you. If you are reading this, you have already been made a victim of his inability to create interesting graphics. No World of Warcraft players were harmed in the creation of the previous image, though that does not mean it won't hurt you.
When I decided on my topic for today, I was mighty excited. A fire raged within me, and my fingers flew over the keyboard as soon as I sat down at the computer. My first column! Awesome! Yes! About three paragraphs in, I realized I should probably make sure my predecessor, Jason Lotito, hadn't done the topic yet. Unfortunately, he did. Fortunately, I completely disagree with what he said in every possible way.
Perfect.
What is a hybrid class? The basic answer is pretty simple: A class with multiple viable roles. Paladins, Druids and Shaman are obvious examples of a hybrid class. If you disagree with the fact that they're hybrids, you must be playing the wrong game. Holy, Retribution, Protection. Feral, Balance, Restoration. Elemental, Enhancement, Restoration. All of them are viable specs, especially in raiding. As fun as it is to mock Retribution Paladins, even they have a place in the end-game.
Basically, Shamadruidins are hybrids. Don't try to argue that they aren't because you will lose.
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. Matthew Rossi currently has a level 70 resto shaman amidst the Horde and a level 70 enhancement shaman in the Alliance, and is working on leveling up an elemental shaman. This week did not exactly make him feel good about that decision. Seriously, you're nerfing elemental shamans again? Really? You're not kidding about this?
I really didn't see this coming. Perhaps I'm naive. Perhaps I simply don't keep track of these things in a sufficient manner. But if you'd told me that shamans were going to be nerfed again in patch 2.4, I honestly would have laughed. No way, I would have said confidently, there's no way they'll nerf shamans again. Clearly, I underestimated the capacity for nerfing inherent in the shaman class. Now, I've already heard all the responses... that it's a PvP nerf to keep elemental shamans from outputting crazy burst damage. Yes, I've heard tell that Kalgan promises buffs as well as nerfs in 2.4 and that's good. But the bare fact of it is, yet again, a specific shaman spec gets a direct DPS nerf. By themselves, these nerfs aren't any major deal. But when you see a series of them popping up like this, it's extremely disheartening and all the nebulous promises of incoming buffs (with no specifics or concrete details) don't counter the disappointment and in some cases outrage of seeing your talents and abilities become less useful.
Now, every class has been and will experience changes like this, it's the nature of attempting game balance between wildly disparate classes with varying abilities. There's no conspiracy here. Rob Pardo's daughter does not hate shamans (to my knowledge). And yes, I still enjoy the class myself and like playing a shaman. I think we bring a lot to raids and instances. But I also worry for the future of the class, especially when I see veteran players getting ever more frustrated, angry and fed up with it.
Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi not only plays a shaman, he's come to appreciate their presence even when he's playing one of his other characters. That's his ridiculously mustached human warrior (who is still wearing a green belt to tank in SSC) next to one of the raid-saving shamans.
It can at times be easy to forget why we rolled a shaman in the first place. Sometimes it seems shamans are overlooked and underplayed, and its fair to say that the last year hasn't been the kindest to the class. With all this negativity and upset, it's fair to say that sometimes shamans must feel like there's no point to playing their class at all. So here I am to tell you that, while shamans may indeed have suffered (especially in PvP) over the past year, they're still incredibly viable in PvE, and if anything I wish we had more of them.
We've talked before about the shaman as a pinch hitter or panic button class, and these are both functions that they do excel at. But in running the 10 and 25 man instances, another aspect of shaman versatility is their broad array of totems and abilities - there's almost always a situation where a totem, a shock or a special ability like Heroism can help immensely with an encounter. I know having the ability to cycle in shamans to our DPS groups for heroism made a huge difference in our Tidewalker and Lurker kills, as well as finding the particular strength of Chain Heal very, very useful when a group of us are trying desperately to keep those murlocs tanked. Furthermore, I personally love having an elemental shaman in my group taking care of the priest add on Fathom-Lord Karathress, not only due to the damage they can inflict (and having seen it, I have had to re-evaluate my understanding of elemental shaman DPS - it's much, much better than I'd believed when geared properly) but due to their ability to buff not only their own DPS but the healer's healing at the same time with Totem of Wrath and Wrath of Air as well as being able to interrupt the heals after a tidal surge.
Yes indeed, odds are that if you talked to a Shaman this weekend about patch 2.4, you got pretty much the same feeling that the video above conveys: Shamans, especially enhancement Shamans, aren't really thrilled about what we got out of the patch. We've been hoping for (finally) buffs, including an update on how Blizzard is going to deal with our totem and mana problems. We were hoping for shields to get reinvigorated and redesigned. We were hoping to see big changes to the class, and instead we got... a new Stormstrike icon, and a totem timer?
The biggest Shaman change is the one to Earth Shield (which only affects Resto, since they're the only ones that can use it-- it costs less mana, and lasts for six charges instead of 10 (not great for raiders, but not bad for PvPers), and there was a small buff to Healing Grace (now gives a chance to avoid dispells). There is one Elemental change-- Call of Thunder now gives 5% crit rather than crit only to Lightning spells. But those changes do nothing to alleviate Shaman concerns (and you might have heard that there were many), and the rest of the changes are bugfixes and UI updates almost no one was asking for.
Yes, yes, QQ more and all that, but the story here is that Shamans have been basically ignored yet again, even while Blizzard admits that there are problems with the class. So when are the fixes coming? Blizzard has already said they're not making sweeping changes to any classes in these content patches-- maybe our chance as Shamans will finally come with the expansion.
All the World's a Stage is skipping class (gasp!), and playing with roles every Sunday evening.
Our spells are shiny and bright, well worth using in more than just combat situations! Last time we talked a bit about this idea, as well as how druids, hunters, and mages could use their spells to entertain their friends. Today we turn to the remaining classes: priests, paladins, rogues, shamans, warlocks and warriors.
Each roleplayer would do well to sit down and examine his or her action bar to pick out those spells which can be used outside of combat, and think of whatever opportunities imaginable to make good use of them. Chances are, if you put your mind to it, you can come up with some really creative ideas.
Buffing, for instance: You've got these beautiful abilities that can benefit anyone around you, no matter what class or level they are. If you're going to bless them with such a neat thing, why not say something about it while you do so? You can say, "<Deity Name> guide you, sir!" or, "you look pretty dumb -- have some extra intellect!" or whatever expression sounds right for your character.
Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi just got his internet connection fixed and after a week of forced hiatus, managed to beat Mass Effect last night. It's a fun game, but it would be better if it had shamans in it.
Last week, we discussed gear for the Elemental spec attainable from quests in Hellfire, Zangarmarsh and Terokkar. This week, we'll be completing our look by seeing the quests available in Nagrand, Blade's Edge and Netherstorm. As before, we'll be looking at mail armor rewards: while a shaman can wear cloth and leather, that's beyond the scope of this guide. I'm probably going to leave the instance rewards for a final column on elemental gear covering level 70, focusing on Shadowmoon Valley and the instances.
Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi has two 70 shamans and is considering a third so that he can dedicate it to elemental, the most fundamentally shamanic of the three specs. No, I'm sorry, this week's column is not about Sentry Totem. Begging will do you no good.
One of the nice things about The Burning Crusade when it released was that the gear available through questing was often more than sufficient to replace whatever you had when you came through the Dark Portal, and often it was for specs that had not seen as much love prior to its release. Frankly, it's very tempting to spec elemental when you hit Outland if you haven't already, as there's a lot of decent +spell damage mail available just from quests. In fact, my enhancement shaman's healing set is in fact mostly made up of elemental shaman kit that I got through various quests and simply held onto rather than vendoring it on the off chance I might want to spec elemental at some point. Now that I'm contemplating a third shaman to explore elemental with (I can't respec my resto shammy as he has way too much healing gear to even consider it, and I like the enhancement squidface just like he is... I think a tauren or troll elemental shaman could be a lot of fun) I'm looking back over those quests that reward solid elemental pieces.
This installment focuses on Hellfire Peninsula, Zangamarsh and Terokkar Forest, assuming that you play through them in that order. It focuses on quest items and not instance drops, although I will link to appropriate level instance drops at the end of each zone's section.
Hello, saga of Shamans in patch 2.3! We haven't had a post about you in, oh...a day or so. Time for an update, don't you think? And this one ought to be pleasant to most of you readers. But first, a recap.
Yes, it's true. Eyonix has recently made a post in the Shaman forum promising an imminent hotfix to the PTR, to the tune of a 5-6% increase to the damage coefficients of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. According to the whelp, this works out as follows:
<1100 +damage: slight buff to DPS (as compared to 2.2)
1100-1200: no change
>1220: slight nerf
Well, it hardly seems to be the buffs that were promised back in the day, but hey, it beats a nerf! How about it, Shaman players? Are you pleased now, and ready to go back to your regular totem-dropping lives?
Patch 2.3: the patch that just keeps on alternately disappointing and bringing joy to the player community. Apparently, the staggering 4000 honor that had been previously reported to be the reward of the new daily battleground quest was a typo, of the "extra zero" variety. The correct reward is 400 honor, still up from its original value of 200:
It's off by a factor of 10. Battleground Daily quest bonus honor is supposed to be equivalent to 20 player kills at your level, ie 400 honor at level 70. (Drysc)
The new Priest talent Focused Will, reported yesterday, is going to be redesigned, so don't bother commenting on it in its current state. This is a good thing, because as far as I know no-one really liked the talent they proposed that much.
We wanted you to know that we're going to be redesigning the new discipline talent, focused will, so please hold off on providing further feedback on the ability until the new version is announced and/or it's pushed to the public test realms. The goal of the talent will still focus on survivability. (Eyonix)
The intention of this talent is provide an alternative to the holy talent, blessed resilience, so the priest who desires a talent of this nature has more than one option, adding more flexibility to the talent choices they make leading up to either. (Eyonix)
And finally, the changed-up Shaman Elemental tree is under much scrutiny from the dev team at the moment: Though not the best thread to plug this into give what was provided, I'd like to state that we are looking into this [Elemental] quite extensively at the moment. (Eyonix)
Totem Talk's Matthew Rossi has had a small Horde renaissance this week, and decided to take his slightly dusty Resto shaman out for a spin, healing a heroic MgT run and then running about the IoQD doing the dailies. Turns out he learned a few things in the process. He wrote a little song about it, like to hear it? Here it goes. 
Lately a lot of the columns here at Totem Talk have been aimed at endgame issues... getting into instances and raids, PvP, etc etc... so I thought it was about time we go back to the leveling shaman and discuss an issue that really starts to matter around level 40 or so. That is, what spec is right for you?
After Skellum of Dalaran 
Hello, saga of Shamans in 
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