Vanishing Totems, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Windfury.

Some rather big news on the Shaman front from the Worldwide Invitational, and strangely enough, all of it good!

• Totems are being "condensed" into a smaller amount of totems, for exemple Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totems will be merged into the same totem
• A new weapon enchantment will be available "Earthliving Weapon". It will increase the healing power of the Shaman.
• Flametongue will give spell damage bonus to the Shaman.
• Totems are being moved to physical school, you can't counterspell anymore.
• Totems will also affect raid members, not just the local party.
• Shamans are getting "Hex", a polymorph-like spell on a medium cooldown allowing them to turn an enemy into a frog. The enemy cannot cast or attack but is still in control of his character.
• Windfury won't be a weapon enchant anymore and will be changed to a buff. You will be able to use it in bear form or with poison.

All straight from the mouth of Blizzard. Strength and Agility on ONE totem would be good enough for me, but nay! There's more! Raid wide buffing from most totems, and even from my Unleashed Rage. The viability of Shamans has risen a thousand fold should all these make it to the final stages of the game.

Most importantly, we're getting a CC. As the one class with no reliable CC in the history of ever, the best way to sum it up is about Goddamn time. Druids will be able to benefit from Windfury as well, and if Strength/Agility are based off of the Earth totem then Windfury will be up at all times now. Now it doesn't affect me as much, but the addition of spell damage to Flametounge and the new Earthliving enchant are overdue. Enhancement won't be the only spec using the buffs anymore.

Most important in all of this, though, is the raidwide totem change. Group makeup won't be as tough now, as any melee in range can get a taste of my delicious totems, as well as the AP buff. Now I won't expect every totem to work raidwide. Some, like Windfury or Mana Tide, hell, maybe even Totem of Wrath, might be too powerful to give to the entire raid as opposed to a group.

More info as I find it, and hopefully it's more good news!

So I'm putting the title on this post after I write it, because I don't know what I'll be rambling about this time.

The big topic lately has been the Splash page preceding any and all Blizzard websites. Diablo 3? Wrath release date? Starcraft 2 release date? Lost Vikings 3? It's anybody's guess until tomorrow. I'd love Diablo 3, don't get me wrong, but I want my expansion pack.

I wasn't sure if I'd be using this blog to talk of out of game things, but I figure why not, it's my blog and odds are nobody reads it anyway. It's been an interesting week. Sunday I went to get my hair trimmed a bit for an upcoming interview, and the lady decided instead to give me a mullet. I had my second interview for the Theater Technician position at the local high school, which had been opened for apps a second time due to no applicants having the experience the arts teachers wanted. I found out they would be flying the job a third time in the hopes of getting, you guessed it, more experienced applicants. Smart move. So I was, needless to say, a little upset. I've pulled in more hours and gotten a raise at the bar I work at now, though, so it's not a total loss.

I've been jonesing for something to play in my non-WoW time lately, too. I don't want to buy another game, but I've been thinking about picking up Diablo 2 and goofing around with that again. The barbarian was the whole reason I wanted to play a Warrior when I got WoW, so maybe that's something to do.

Now, on to WoW stuff. I haven't raided in awhile, and it feels weird. I missed out yesterday as I wasn't feeling so well, and before that it's just been poor luck or lack of sign ups. Everyone's been busy with work or school or both that it's no fault of theirs, though. I've spent most of my WoW time lately doing dailies or just standing around talking to people, which is a very constructive use of my 15 a month. No worries, though, as I enjoy talking to guildies more than most people I see every day.

As for Shaman-y things, I've just remembered. It seems the Lava Bolt talents are back. I was wondering if perhaps, even with its cast time, that the occasional LaB would be useful in an Enhance Shaman's rotation. I'm not sure, though, as I'd need to test it. Sadly I can't unless I get into the beta.

More in a day or two, perhaps even later on. But for now, away!

Leveling and Other Things.

So by request, today I'm going to rattle off a bunch of junk on how I leveled. I actually did 58-70 as Restoration since that was the initial point of Svenge, but I moved to Enhancement and found it much more enjoyable.

As Enhancement you won't have the same survivability of Resto. However, you can potentially do enough damage to make up for that. First off, never be afraid to blow a cooldown. Make liberal use of Shamanistic Rage in order to mitigate as much damage as you can, and if you can get to it take the points in Resto to reduce the casting time of Healing Wave.

Some Elite quests will be soloable, some, however, will spank you. Not in the good way, either. Don't forget you have Grounding and Tremor totems, and hell, even Stoneclaw might save you a couple hits or give you time to throw a heal on yourself without interruption. Make good use of all three, and if you don't need those Strength of Earth and Grace of Air will be your companions for most of your stay in Outlands.

Most times you'll need to buy greens to get the slow weapons you need, and you'll probably wear a lot of Rogue gear. Continue to socket for strength, though. Keep your weapon speed as close to 2.6 or 2.7 as you can. Haste doesn't hurt, but you won't find any of that until well into you 70 career.

Now, on to Other Things. I've been spending some time on my old pre-BC raider, Inisule. He's currently Arms and I enjoy it, however with the coming talent trees I'm really taking a shine to Fury. I imagine it's going to be a staple of every raid as always, but the idea of Monkey-gripping two massive swords and hacking things to bite-sized bits is very, very appealing to my inner Conan. There's plenty of threat reduction in there too. Sadly Arms doesn't look nearly as enticing and I might have to dump the old girl in favor of the new-car-smell Fury tree. Maybe I'll try to get Inisule into a Kara this week and see about snagging him some Fury gear. A weapon or two and some Rogue leather to build up hit and then gem it all up for Strength. It could work.

Vymes will remain Prot. I love Ret, however two DPS is enough and Prot tanking is a good deal of fun.

So It Begins.

In search of better ways to use up spare time, I decided to make an effort in the realms of blogging. For those who stumbled upon the site randomly, my condolences and welcomes. How those two go together I haven't the foggiest but there you go.

I'm planning to use this blog to talk about Enhancement Shamans and their place in WoW, as well as anything else that crosses my mind when it comes to my various characters, guild, whatever. I'm a chatty Cathy, what can I say.

For my first trick, the new Alpha talents I totally haven't seen and probably shouldn't delve too deeply into. They look great and I'm incredibly excited for them. Now the big deal I'm seeing with them is the addition of INT converting into raw AP. This means I might actually be able to gear Svenge in Hunter gear as opposed to stealing Rogue and Feral leather out from under them.

For the time being I am raiding on a Protection Paladin, Vymes. We lost our previous tank and I decided to fill the gap in order to try something I'd wanted to do for awhile. Overall it's been a lot of fun, though not as enjoyable as Svenge. However there's certain fights I've gotten to Main Tank, such as Leotheras, that were a helluva rush. Morogrim needs to find the nearest fish fry and hop on the stove, though. He can take his Murlocs with him. Solarian is good fun too, though her adds get awfully friendly with our healers regardless of my best efforts.

Back to Shaman-ing, though! One of my biggest pet peeves when I inspect random Shamans (yes, I do this, no, it's not creepy, by the way the tree outside your window is a bit overgrown, I'd trim that a bit) is seeing fast offhands. Now, if you've got nothing else to use, fine, throw a Flametounge on it and call it a day. But for the love of God, a Fang of Vashj and any other dagger you may find is not a viable weapon for you. I know it's pretty, yes yes, very shiny indeed. But a Syphon of the Nathrezim or Rising Tide is so much shinier, and part of your complete DPS breakfast as well!

Now gems. Oh, these are always fun to see. "But Svenge," you might say, "AGI raises my crit, and I always need hit!" Well first off, shut up. Second, as it currently stand on Shaman gear STR is a rare commodity and should always be your top priority when gemming. Hit is different for Enhacement, in that we have no magic number like other classes. What you have is usually enough, and there's no need to strain for more.

There's more, but for later. Off to work.