Rz

So far, it seems as though Blizzard has rather randomly assigned caster weapons to be either "Main hand" or "One-hand." I'm not aware of any ilvl implications of the assignment either way. Until now, no caster has been able to dual wield, so it didn't matter.

In the TBC, you could potentially spec 0/31/30 as a Shaman, retaining good healing spec and picking up the ability to Dual Wield. This means that with current gear, you could equip Scepter of the False Prophet and The Widow's Embrace and then enchant both for +458 healing. By comparison, examine various versions of Atiesh: http://www.wowwiki.com/Atiesh

Obviously, of course, the "upgrade" here is slightly less than what I have shown since Shamans can already equip "held in off-hand" and shields with +healing.

Does anyone else see this as a problem? Should all caster one-hands be changed to 'Main Hand'? While dual wielding caster weapons is a creative way to increase stats, it seems it would scale FAR too well (since you're operating on two ilvl curves instead of one) and the arguable intent of the Enhancement tree is for DPS, not for improving healing ability.

If not, why? Are Nature's Blessing, Imp Chain Heal, and Earth Shield so good that we shouldn't worry about this? Is it obviously the intent of the designers to let dual wielding shamans use twice the healing weapons? Do Shamans need this to compete for other reasons?

 

Bibdy

I really don't see a problem with it at all, unless they start going 30/31/0 and taking 2 one handed +damage daggers ;)

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

probiscus

Aren't the stat allocation budgets still 100% for 2h'rs and only like 42% for 1h weps? That's at least how it works for warriors / rogues.

 

◊ Praetorian

Yes, but the exponential component to budgeting gets in the way of that. You can get more +dam out of two separate weapons with 84% of the raw budget of a single two-hander. (Put differently, +50 damage on one weapon and +50 damage on the other is far cheaper than +100 damage on a single weapon.)

 

probiscus

Good point, I'd kinda forgotten that many of the caster 1h weapons are all ~40 DPS. I guess they have no need to 'pay' for that stat, and any increases in ilvl go straight to +dam/healing/stats.

 

Jaerel

The extra +55 healing or 30 spellpower enchant isn't too shabby either.

 

oldmandennis

This is faulty math. The problem is not that you are operating on "two curves instead of one", , raising it to the 2/3 power fixes that.

The "problem" is that 1h weapons get pretty good when you sacrifice about 30 or so DPS. It looks like the staffs are only sacrificing 15-20. In addition, weapon enchants (and oils) are way better then those for casting shields.

We'll just have to wait and see how good earth shield is.

 

Rz

Sorry, but you are incorrect.

If I have an ilvl 100 staff and two ilvl 100 1h maces, and I fill both with +healing, then I will get more +healing out of the maces, even if no weapon sacrifices any DPS in exchange for more ilvl value.

 

oldmandennis

Untrue, according to the Hyzenthlei formulas that I think everybody accepts.

A level 90 epic staff will have a ivalue of 159, a 1h will have 42% of that or 67.

If the weapons are straight spell damage, with no DPS reduction, you can have

Staff: 82 damage - ((82* 192)^3/2)^2/3 / 100 = 157

Mace: 34 damage - ((34* 192)^3/2)^2/3 / 100 = 67

82 * .42 = 34

Adding other stats just makes the math harder to type. Try and see if you aren't convinced. The key is that 2/3 coefficient at the end restores balance.

The difference is a two weapon combo has two items to subtract DPS from. And two (useful) enchant slots. And that as of yet, they haven't made shields which trade armor/block for caster stats.

 

Fjord

Have you looked at how awesome shields are?

 

Nite_Moogle

Nevermind the fact that you're giving up massive talents in Restoration or Elemental to get down to Dual Wield, and there's no way that DW alone will offset these losses.

Frankly, I love the idea of having to manage which two weapons I'm using and whether or not I should be only 31, or 40, or 41 points in Resto if I want to use two weapons. Do I just go for Dual Wield to get more AP procs? Do I get the extra 10% hit for more JoW? Is Shamanistic Rage a better talent for my playstyle than Nature's Swiftness? Do I try and maximize my personal DPS or do I focus on just supplying the buff? Should I just put my shield on for this encounter? There's a lot of big, new questions at the bottom of the tree that was previously reserved as a pure PVP build and it's viable because of the new use of one-hand caster weapons.

 

oldmandennis

Shield from KT = 6 mana and 59 heals. Mace from KT = 8 mana and 239 heals.

No, but weapon totems and unleashed rage are enough to make you think about it.

 

Xard

I really think in the expansion that unless the earth shield talent is completely awesome that you can't NOT get deep enhancement as a shaman since it gives you so many of your best buffs. In a 9 class, 25 man setting, most of the shamans are going to end up in either tank or melee dps groups, and thus being able to buff your best melee totems is going to give them a really big boost, as well as the bonus from the rage talent. If you can do respectable dps on top of that, all the better imo.

 

Fjord

Its +238 and the shield has one more stat point, oh AND 3425 ARMOUR! When you're not theorycrafting, armour is indispensable.

 

◊ Praetorian

This is kind of simple, really.

Will an Enhancement shaman with two healing weapons be a better healer than a Resto shaman? No.

When an Enhancement shaman needs to heal, however, does it offer a potential benefit, the helps narrow that gap, in situations where melee damage isn't a concern? Yes.

 

Andrise

I doubt they'll retroactively change things, but I suspect all caster 1Hs introduced in the expansion would be Main Hand. Purely speculative at this point, though.

 

Nite_Moogle

This would be about as idiotic as restricting Swords to main hand only.

 

◊ Praetorian

But then what will hunters offhand for sick arcane shot damage?

 

Andrise

Touché

 

Rz

I mean, really though? Just with current gear (Widow's Embrace ilvl 81 vs Death's Bargain ilvl 83) you're talking about an extra 187 +healing (including enchant) and 14 spirit (not that spirit matters for shaman, but we could be looking at equivalent mp/5). Minus 1% crit and 4 mp/5.

If you have more than 623 Int, then yeah, obviously Nature's Blessing clears the gap. If not, then do Earth Shield and Imp Chain heal do it? I don't see that they necessarily would... maybe I'm missing something else but it seems to me that when it just comes to putting Healing Waves on the MT, 30 points in Resto gets you all the talents you need and 31 points in Enhancement gives you all the best buffs for your MT (except maybe that Earth Shield?), like Imp Weapon Totems mentioned supra. So it's not immediately obvious to me that a 0/31/30 Shaman is an inferior MT healer.

 

niaina

Dual wielding shamans seem to me to have quite a few melee DPS options available to them. Weapon mastery to me seems more improtant than purification since it boosts both weapons' damage. 13% to hit increase from DW spec and nature's guidance is more than what is available to rogues and warriors. Yes, there are some melee DPS talents missing such as a lethality type talent. But, the shaman gets 2 MAP per point strength as opposed to the rogue. Giving your DW shaman 2 misplaced servo arms and stormstrike would be a very good melee DPS option. Dual wield seems to me to be a waste if used for caster type weapons.

Totem of wrath and lighting overload are too good to waste on DW just for a second caster weapon. So, a dualwielding elementalist shaman is a waste. Healing wise, I don't see how giving up the shaman class' only option for a H.O.T. (earth shield) is going to be countered with a second healing weapon. Nature's gaurdian acts like a fade spell with a healing component. Nature's blessing could use an increase in it's effectiveness from 30% of intellect, but who knows what your intellect score is going to be at 70? The healing buff from intellect along with a fade and hot talents are more appealing to me than dual wield.

But, just in case we need to see the stats. Here is the best DW healing setup: main hand cthun's mace http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=21839 then off hand Kelthuzad's mace http://www.worldofraids.com/v2/?page=viewitem&idd=49 then enchant both maces with 55 healing of course. The total here is a whopping 535 bonus to healing spells. KT's mace is 293 by itself. The best shield is KT's shield of condemnation http://www.worldofraids.com/v2/?page=viewitem&idd=67 with no healing enchant for shields the total stays at 59. 234 points of healing is needed to be made up for through the intellect talent of nature's blessing. 234=.3x or 234/.3=780 intellect. That's a lot of intellect required from a resto shaman in order to meet the healing bonus of gear. If nature's blessing was a 5 point talent then only a reasonable amount of 468 intellect would be needed to counteract KT's mace.

 

Mendoza

Uhm... why? I have very little knowledge of melee weapons so I don't really understand this.

Anyway, it ultimately comes down to what Blizzard's intentions for the talent is. If they designed the talent only for the purposes of melee dps and the enhancement talents, and not with the intention of shaman being able to DW +dmg or +healing items, then I guess they'll make all caster 1h MH only. If not, they won't.

My gut feeling is that they designed it for melee and not for any extra casting benefits. It's also worth noting that melee 1h drop rates are based around the fact that (apart from tank 1h) they're all going to be used for DW-ing. How do you deal with the caster 1h drop rates when 5 classes will only be using 1 at a time and the other can use 2?

 

Mendoza

Ofc, there's also the third option - make most 1h caster weapons MH only, then have the remaining caster weapons as OH only purely for shaman.

 

Nite_Moogle

Why not? Because giving up extremely powerful healing talents so you can wield 2 weapons with 40 dps that have stats on them is a better idea to be a good healer than just going down resto? An extra brilliant mana oil and slight itemization increase is not going to turn dual wielding Shamans in to incredible healers that somehow supplant the resto shaman as a healer of choice. Any Shaman who chooses to DW healing/damage weapons is going to give up a considerable amount of melee DPS (about 20 raw weapon DPS by the time you're in AQ, which makes up most of a Shaman's per-swing DPS in pre-Stormcallers), healing between swings resets your swing timer so you lose even more DPS to healing, etc. Giving a shaman two awesome healing weapons is not a silver bullet to making an awesome shaman that can do everything. If anything it's a consolation to enhancement shamans by recognizing there are a lot of fights that they won't be able to melee on (see that big list of hunter pet no-no fights in the "are these talents placeholders" thread).

How many Shamans do you see marching around with a two-handed staff on their backs in comparison to how many you see with a Zulian Defender/Malistar's/RDP? With the exception of the BQR there is no staff in the game I would use over a solid 1her and shield at this point in the game. Simply due to the fact they are the only class on their faction that can use caster shields, Shamans have been by and large already pigeon-holed into using one handed weapons even if it wasn't the intent of guilds to do it.

Do you restrict your Warriors to using 2h weapons just because they can use them, and save your 1hers for your Rogues? There have been one-handed caster weapons in the game for a very long time now and they added more of them in Naxx, and you can't tell me with a straight face they didn't itemize Naxx without knowing about the Paladin/Shaman crossover and a not having pretty good idea of where they were going with the talents. This isn't unplanned, and to be frankly honest I'd write off Enhancement being a truly viable raid spec if they did remove the ability to have caster weapons in both hands.

 

• frmorrison

Poor idea, since having a caster off-hand weapon only works for one class and only one spec of it.


I think caster weapons will continue to be one hand weapons (to allow more options for Shaman).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.