Monday, March 2, 2009
ESNN - Enhancement Shaman News Network
teh Pif has a weeklong hangover....
- We were going to do a talent guide which would address everything: leveling, soloing, and party/group specs. But things are changing with the patch so teh Pif will keep giving his thoughts on the latest changes as they make it to the PTR.
- A gear guide. He first started the post with a rant about how he hates rogues, so I stopped him and told him to focus it a little better. I think he gets it now and he'll come up with a comprehensive list for gearing up for Naxx and even a bit for gearing for heroics.
- Boss Strategy guides, from heroics to raids, what you need to know as an enhancement shaman.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Extra Extra!
- Bloodlust and Heroism now puts a debuff on you preventing you from using gaining the benefits of them for 10 mins. They now have a 5 min cooldown. (Previously had a 5 min debuff with a 10 min cooldown)
- Improved Stormstrike (Tier 8 ) now has a 50/100% chance to grant you 20% of your base mana when you Stormstrike.
- Stormstrike (Tier 7) now affects the next 4 nature attacks but only lasts 10 secs now. (Previously only affected 2 attacks and lasted 12 secs)
- Unleashed Rage (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent. It now passively increases your agility by 1/2/3% in addition to causing your critical hits with melee attacks to increase all party and raid members' attack power by 4/7/10% if within 45 yards of the Shaman. Lasts 10 sec.
- Spirit Weapons (Tier 5) now reduces all threat, just not melee threat.
- Toughness (Tier 4) now increases stamina by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of increasing armor value.
- *New Talent* Frozen Power, Tier 6, 2 point talent - Increases the damage done by your Frostbrand Weapon if it is enchanted on your main-hand weapon by 10/20%, and your Frost Shock has a 50/100% chance to root the target in Ice for 5 sec. when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.
- Bloodlust and Heroism now puts a debuff on you preventing you from using gaining the benefits of them for 10 mins. They now have a 5 min cooldown. (Previously had a 5 min debuff with a 10 min cooldown)
- Improved Stormstrike (Tier 8 ) now has a 50/100% chance to grant you 20% of your base mana when you Stormstrike.
- Stormstrike (Tier 7) now affects the next 4 nature attacks but only lasts 10 secs now. (Previously only affected 2 attacks and lasted 12 secs)
- Unleashed Rage (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent. It now passively increases your agility by 1/2/3% in addition to causing your critical hits with melee attacks to increase all party and raid members' attack power by 4/7/10% if within 45 yards of the Shaman. Lasts 10 sec.
- Spirit Weapons (Tier 5) now reduces all threat, just not melee threat.
- Toughness (Tier 4) now increases stamina by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of increasing armor value.
- *New Talent* Frozen Power, Tier 6, 2 point talent - Increases the damage done by your Frostbrand Weapon if it is enchanted on your main-hand weapon by 10/20%, and your Frost Shock has a 50/100% chance to root the target in Ice for 5 sec. when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Enhancement vs. Elemental: The Leveling Conundrum
So before even like the beginning of time and stuff, people sat around and debated the age-old question. Socrates and Plato fought over it. Leonardo Da Vinci made paintings about it. Einstein theorized about it. The question: Should I level as Enhancement or Elemental?
The simple answer you’ll see out there is that there is no right answer. Both have their pros and cons. I, teh Pif, obviously have a bias and strong inclination towards one of the two specs. I’ll let you guess which one.
But that’s not the answer you want to hear is it? Let’s look at it as objectively as possible.
Having leveled a few toons, I look at the following things when determining what is best for leveling:
Downtime – Downtime is bad. If you can just keep moving and kill mob after mob without stopping, that’s good. Stopping to drink, dying a lot, having to deal with cumbersome class mechanics, etc. all contribute to downtime.
Damage – Less important than downtime but still important is how quickly the mob will die. A resto shaman will have very little downtime once they get water shield and if they choose to melee hit instead of cast to kill things. The resto shaman will also spend 3 and a half hours killing the ten mobs needed to finish a quest.
Movement – Azeroth is a huge place. Before you get to Outlands and Northrend, you’re going to spend a big chunk of time going place to place from quest to quest and using your pitiful level 30 mount and flight paths. Nothing can help the pitiful mount and flight path but there are other tools that help you get from one area in a zone to another to finish multiple quests.
Fun – This doesn’t really determine anything. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have noticed that among my toons if it’s not fun to level as a certain spec regardless of how efficient or inefficient it is, I won’t level it quickly. I will always choose to do different things and the leveling process will be super slow. Take my warrior for instance. Fury is thought of to be THE leveling spec for many warriors. I choose to go Prot. Because it’s more fun. I like it better. So choose what’s fun.
Aside from these things there are other things that help you level: the professions you choose, the race/class specials you get, and even where you choose to quest. There are a lot of factors to quick and efficient leveling. That’s not within the scope of this guide or this blog as there are several resources dedicated to fast and efficient leveling.
Now let’s look at these characteristics of leveling from each spec.
Downtime
Now many people will say enhancement totally wins here. And it’s true. But only to a certain extent. You have to look at the talent tree, because those people who say enhancement has less downtime is looking at it from a high level where you already have the talents needed for efficient grinding. Grinding and leveling are similar but they are not the same.
Elemental Shaman will stand back at max range, cast, and things will usually die before they reach you or you’ll whack them once or twice until they die. However, because of the poor elemental itemization at low levels (which means your mana pools are really really small), you’ll be drinking a heck of a lot. Water shield helps but you don’t want things hitting you, now do you? Because then you’ll be spending mana healing yourself, or bandaging, or eating. All of that equals downtime. You know what though? Your drinking downtime is inevitable because there is no way your water shield will keep up while you are casting all those spells.
Enhancement shaman will run in, use their melee attacks and then move on to the next using very little mana in the process. But don’t be confused, you will have downtime too. Your mana pool is even smaller than the elemental shaman, AND you’re running in there taking more damage than the elemental shaman. You’ll spend less mana fa sho on abilities and skills but it’s the same difference as using it on healing. Once you get to level 40 though, with double windfury, things will die super uber fast as enhancement shaman have tremendous burst once we get Stormstrike and Dual Wield. But before level 40, plan on running in fighting and having to throw on a lesser healing wave or two or three before the next mob or pack of mobs.
The thing is, while enhancement shaman leveling gets better as your level gets higher, elemental shaman leveling only gets better as your mana pool increases.
The Winner
Very close but I give the slight edge to Enhancement. Enhancement wins once you reach level 40 onwards. Elemental downtime is only dependent on how much mana you have. And gear can only afford you so much as you level unless you spend time in the AH which is a total no-no while leveling.
Damage
Now, again the opinions of many I’ve heard in the past hands the damage to elemental. I, again have to agree but only to a certain extent. Elemental will make things explode pretty quickly, all the way throughout your leveling process, but once again, when enhancement reaches that magical level 40 mark, their burst damage is outright nasty.
As an Elemental Shaman, you’ve already got all your core abilities available to you at level 10 except for Chain Lightning which you don’t get until level 32. Things will die before they hit you. If they don’t whack them once or twice, and then you’ll have a heap of dead mob sitting in front of you.
The core Enhancement Shaman talents, however, don’t come into play until you get to 30 points in enhancement. Stormstrike and Dual Wield. You also don’t get the Windfury weapon imbue until level 30, another thing to keep in mind. This means you don’t have any instant attacks except for your shocks until you get to level 40 at which point you’ll start to get plenty of instant attacks at a steady pace while leveling (lava lash and then maelstrom weapon).
The Winner:
Gonna have to give it to elemental here. Like I said, level 40 is the magic level for enhancement shamans, and elemental is pretty consistent with taking down mobs quickly.
Movement:
Both classes and specs take the same flight paths and no tree has a talent that increases mount speed. The one thing that needs to be talked about is Improved Ghost Wolf.
2/2 points in Improved Ghost Wolf takes the casting time of Ghost Wolf from 2 seconds to 0. Win.
Now it’s story time:
One time there was this mob. Then teh Pif came and killed it. Then teh Pif became turned into a Ghost Wolf. He ran to another mob. Then he killed that one. Teh Pif then turned into a Ghost Wolf again and went over to the other mob. He was gonna kill the thing, but then the mob’s friends came. Teh Pif turned dropped an Earthbind Totem, turned into a Ghost Wolf and ran away.
Elemental Shaman can’t do that. They have to cast the thing for 2 seconds. I’m telling ya, it just ain’t the same. Yeah, yeah, they can put seven points into Enhancement and grab the friggin’ thing. But that means seven levels more to get those higher up Elemental Talents.
Level 80 Enhancement Shaman, even the really good ones, will forgo 2 points in dps increasing sexily beautiful talents, to keep those two points in Improved Ghost Wolf. With the changes in 3.1 and the freedom of 3 extra talent points from Unleashed Rage, I’m thinking about doing it too.
The Winner:
The guy who wrote that story! That was the best story I’ve heard in a long time!
Fun:
They’re both really fun. Honestly. And way different.
If you’ve played a caster before (which I didn’t), Elemental will feel like second nature just with different spells and totems. You’ll enjoy bigger crits than you’ll see in Enhancement. Lightning Overload and Thunderstorm are seriously awesome leveling talents when you get that high up in the tree. And let’s face it. You are shoving lightning bolts into the noses of ugly monsters.
Enhancement is also way fun. You’ll go in and whack the mobby mobbersons for some decent damage. The real fun comes when you get your arsenal of stormstrike, lava lash, and maelstrom weapon going. That’s when you really start to feel the hybridness of Enhancement.
The Winner:
A tie. I mean, it’s totally up to you how you want to play. Some people like leveling as Resto for jeebus sakes!
The Score:
Downtime: Enhancement
Damage: Elemental
Movement: The guy who wrote the story
Fun: Tie
So we have a tie breaker here! For me, in all honesty. I could’ve been an elemental shaman at 80. It really was between Thunderstorm and Feral Spirit. And I have to tell you, Mugsy and Molly are soooo cute. I could never ever let them go.
So that’s it folks. Mugsy and Molly makes the last minute three-pointer to win it for Enhancement Shamans. Hurray!
Disclaimer: What spec you choose to level with, how you level and where you quest is not anywhere half as important as having fun while you’re doing it. Do what is fun for you. If you got a lot of gold, do what I did. Level as both. :)
MOAR SPIRIT! NEED MOAR SPIRIT! /bonk
Blog Review: More dots! More dots!
Attack Priority List: A To Do List
A priority list means that you will always choose to attack with whatever is highest on the priority list as long as the cooldown is up. If you have the choice between two or more spells, refer to the list and choose whatever is higher up on the list.
So what is this list?
The Attack Priority List
- MW5 LB
- Stormstrike
- Earth Shock
- Lava Lash
- Totem Refresh
- Shield Refresh
We talked ad nauseam about MW5 LB’s here and how Maelstrom Weapon works. You noticed how MW5 LB’s are the highest on the priority list? The reason is because we need to keep those Maelstrom Weapon stacks going smoothly and consistently. Let’s say you have five stacks and DON’T let that MW5 LB loose. You stormstrike, then earth shock, then lava lash following the list. During that whole rotation you could have had ANOTHER 5 Maelstrom weapon stacks allowing you to let loose yet another Lightning bolt. But you didn’t. Because you still have 5 stacks that you haven’t let loose yet. Always always always always let loose the lightning bolt when you have 5 stacks.
The Stormstrike seems somewhat obvious. With the Stormstrike glyph it’ll beef up several of your attacks: Static Shock, Earth Shock and MW5 LB’s. You need that debuff to be on the boss. The stormstrike debuff increases all nature damage that you put out so it needs to be up 100% of the time and it’s possible to keep that debuff on the boss 100% of the time. You can do it, so do it.
Earth Shock is our highest damage shock. I know that it used to be that flame shock with its initial damage and full dot duration was the highest damage, but with our Stormstrike glyph and the debuff being for the enhancement shaman only, Earth Shock totally blows flame shock out of the water. The only time I use flame shock is in PVP when I’m trying to keep a stealthed person unstealthed. Sometimes I’ll use it to proc Lava Burst on mobs where Melee Pif would die and Caster Pif has to come to the rescue. Moral of the story? Use Earth Shock, and love it.
I don’t know how to put this, Lava lash stinks. It is so annoyingly bad and it’s only on the list because it’s just another instant attack we can fit into the rotation. Lava Lash does about 3-4% of my total damage on boss fights. Lava lash does do more damage with flametongue imbued on your OH weapon and I always run with the Flametongue weapon imbue. Lava lash will do better damage with a slower OH because it’s based on your weapon’s damage (not it’s dps), but like I said, lava lash is such a bad attack that you don’t want to waste itemization options on your lava lash. Focus on your other attacks.
This attack is exactly the reason why we have an attack priority list (other than MW5 LB’s being completely random in timing). Let’s say two minutes into a boss fight and you’re about to lava lash but notice your earth shock cd is available. You earth shock because it’s higher on the list. Then MW5 LB is ready so you let that loose. By that time you’re stormstrike is up so you stormstrike, THEN you lava lash. All those things were higher on the attack priority list so they went before lava lash.
After that notice I put down totem and lightning shield refreshes. To be honest, totem refreshes should be first. A loss of your totems in the fight is a major loss of dps not only to other classes but to yourself as well. Now I put it there on the list because if you are watching your cooldowns you can keep up your totems without interrupting your attack priority list. Stormstrike is an 8 second cd, Earth shock is a 6 second cd, Lava lash is also a 6 second cd. After going through those three attacks you may have one or two GCD’s (global cooldowns = 1.5 seconds for us shaman) free while your just auto attacking. Use them. Use them to refresh your totems and lightning shield. Just make sure you aren’t interrupting your attacks.
And that, my sexy enhancement shaman brothers and sisters, is our attack priority list.