wesome, tyvm

I am new to Excel 07 but there does not appear to be any excel files in the Excel 07 zip file that currently downloads from your guild website.

thanks - feel like a noob not noticing the buffs were off

Incredibly well said.

I'm a little confused and overwhelmed by this thread. I have a frost DK I'm working on and I'm not sure what to do. Since the OP is outdated can someone point me in the general direction of which sigil to use and how to gem? I've seen both ArPen and Str so I get a bit lost. I understand the priority rotation and the obvious stats to cap (hit and expertise), but I'd really appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction for starting to gear out my DK. Thanks.

I wish I had just gone to bed instead of continuing to work, as I updated mmo-champ before deciding to finally hit the sack, and was rewarded with some news that set my brain to boiling. On one hand, I know that its said this build isn't even on servers and so nothing is confirmed (how does he even have this info then and how is it some periodical updated list instead of all at once) yet on the other hand, I can't stop thinking about the ramifications should it actually be true.

While most of my brain boiling is over totemic vigor, the PvE side of me notices that of all things they decide to do (again, if this is true) for the AoE situation, its to not change it at all, regardless of their stated intention that Fire Nova was not intended for our single target use, they 180 that and give us this talent.

I also wanted to directly comment on what I thought started as a good thread of discussion on the beta forums, regarding Enhancement lacking a theme, but since this news will eclipse anything regarding that thread, i'll just sum up my thoughts on that in 3 sentences.

Enhancement's theme has always been, from the start, a physical warrior that enhances himself through the elements by imbuing himself with their powers. This theme was consistantly held to through TBC, but sight was lost in WotLK when they moved away from WF/WF, buff distribution, and introduced Spirit Wolves. Since they don't want to do an imbue overhaul it seems, they're building on an flawed toolset and further distancing themselves from what enhancement has always been.

Now i'm off to sleep, if that's even possible now.

My brain is boiling. Just before going to sleep after staying up working, I decided to check mmo-champion's site, and was rewarded with some nice news that a new beta build was out, yet mysteriously that it wasn't on the servers and so no actual confirmation was possible.

So I go down to the shaman changes, see a decent Unleash Elements boost to 40 yds, thinking "Ok, helps Ele, and I can use this to get in combat instead of an initial purge. Paired with Frostbranded, not bad". My eyes then go down one line, and my vision turns red.

"Totemic Vigor is now gone."

If I had been standing, I would then have been on the floor. I was dumbstruck. This whole cycle of beta so far, i've always been pessimistic about the outcome, yet never at the point where I actually felt that the point of no return had been crossed and they couldn't fix it eventually. Well, i'm teetering on that point now.

All throughout the inception of organized multi-opponent PvP, totem stomping has been an issue for shamans, because the potency of our buffs are tied to their totem's destructability. Then certain players discovered that totem names could be used in macros for automating the targetting of them, and thus assigning that function to macros which were tied to pet attacks as well as personal wand attacks and other spells. This meant that without putting any individual effort into anything, a person could hit their tremor stomp button, and instantly destroy the totem with a rank 1 spell/pet attack/wand, regardless of them actually knowing where the totem was.

It took Blizzard the entire expansion to fix the problem, and in WotLK it was squashed. To a degree. Players then in WotLK discovered that through the use of newly implemented mouseover macro functions they could mouseover a target and do the same thing, still without changing their personal target at all. This wasn't as mindless as the initial macro so isn't as bad, since it requires the player to know where the totem is, however the problem is this was combined with a global increase in totem pulse times from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.

For most shamans, even this isn't a game-breaking issue, because as a resto shaman or elemental shaman, their job is done at range, and so they can strategically position their totems out of LoS, or if not then their totem and themselves are still decently far from the action (situation depending of course) and so the likelihood of the fear followed by an instant totem stomp was considerably lower.

For enhancement this is not the case at all. We have to chase our targets everywhere and since our distance closing mechanic is chasing, and not an instant charge, we don't have the luxury to go off target to position a totem and then get back onto the target since we have to manually run that distance back down (which hurts more additionally because of the random contact time based nature of our damage). On top of that is that since we have to constantly chase and keep on target due to our particular distance closing mechanic, we cannot dictate where the fight takes place and thus must always reposition totems right at our target (since that is where we are) in order to not be kited our of their range.

Tremor totem pulses when it is relaid, and so you can lay down the totem and then there is that 4 second delay before it can pulse again, so when you're constantly relaying a totem you can't even place it with strategic timing to "predict" a fear for it to break you before it's destruction. So as a result of all these factors, what happens 95% of the time against a quality opponent, is you get feared and instantly your totem is destroyed through an instant spell or melee attack from themselves or a pet which happens before your totem can pulse again (even if it has been up 3.8 seconds already and is .2 sec away from another pulse, because of the effects of client-server lag). I say quality opponent, because those not classified as quality simply don't totem kill ever in the first place, before or after a fear at any time.

I can literally be spamming tremor totem on every GCD and this can still occur where the totem is killed immediately after the fear because the totem's position is tracked through nameplates and the fear is timed for their convenience of proximity. There is literally nothing I can do at all to prevent fears against quality opponents, and this cornerstone totem is what our utility is based around. Again, elemental and resto have the luxury of being able to protect their totems through strategic placement as well as good opponent positioning foresight to prevent the instant totem death .5 sec after themselves getting feared (does it always work? no, but they have options at least).

So after all this wall of text, pretty much when the NDA was lifted I was extremely happy to see that this problem was identified by Blizzard and Enhancement was receiving some totem protection that at the very least would provide anti instant kill reduction. Any totem kill from there out would likely require a solid 1.5+ cast spell, since totems don't share my resilience. Time enough for tremor to be in the middle of its pulse timer and still trigger before its death if I didnt get unlucky. I brushed off all the resto/ele complaints and wishing for vigor to be tier 1/2 because they simply didn't understand why enhancement actually needed it compared to them.

Now its gone, and nothing was added to replace the problems it solved. With our reliable mobility outside of spirit wolves CD still unaddressed for a PvP scene where combat time is emphasized for longer duration than the existing short fights (as well as CDs not resetting on death in a BG) and CCs having more of an important role for healing/damage disruption, well all I can say is the light at the end of the tunnel got that much darker this morning.

Not specifically for the loss of this talent even though it is needed and good for us, because it could always return, but for the fact that because this is being removed in the first place means they're either giving in to class pressure (sort of the situation where the parents give a sibling a toy and that sibling's brothers freak out that they want it too. to quell the nagging, eventually, instead of giving the others the same thing they just take the toy away from everyone) or that they don't identify its need as relevant to enhancement anymore. And that outlook from either point doesn't bode well for any other more important Enhancement issues.


Now I hope this hasn't turned into a whine/cry post, its late and I was attempting to illustrate why Enhancement needed this talent in the first place and what its loss will mean. Again, as bolded in the beginning, the info is from a beta build not on servers and so is unconfirmed, and I'm commenting on it because mmo-champ is usually pretty accurate in the things it reports. All I can do is pray that this is one of the few times they're wrong, despite the positive news of UE going to 40 yds.

Improved Chain Heal is almost as bad as Restorative Totems talent design wise, and needs to get axed. Hopefully all totem talents are being looked at due to Totemic Vigor being removed, and Totemic Focus + Totemic Reach soon follow it.

There are so many things wrong with Druids I don't even know where to start, I just want to say that Health % detonating lifebloom is probably the best idea I have heard yet.

It may no longer be relevant, but I did find a possible increase in BM dps. Replacing Sylvanus' Cunning with Shadowvault Slayer's Cloak(H), gemming the cloak with a Rigid King's Amber, replacing the three mainhand delicate cardinal rubies with fractured cardinal rubies, and replacing the hand enchant of Precision with Crusher increased dps from 13,806.78 to 13,852.64.

Of course, I just realized I posted this to the wrong thread, sorry.

No, I fully understand that - I conceded that this was valid when I did the original math. What I'm saying is that, even though that would be considered optimal, we don't know if it's physically possible yet because we haven't seen the gear and it is currently a rather large target to achieve. So, I find it hard make a conclusive statement on EP either way until I at least have the item stats sitting in front of me and i can start shifting around the pieces to meet all needs - including Expertise. Once I can do that, well, if we want to Spell Cap then EP will either be needed, might be needed for a bit, or simply won't. I'd agree that whether or not that is necessary at all though is a question looking for an EnhSim. But from looking at what people are saying and as you allude to at the end there, the potential of a single missed spell in that newfound holy trinity - be it FlS to make LvB crit, LvB itself to keep ED up, or even potentially the Flametongue buff component of UW to jack LvB damage further - gives the impression that there are opportunities to risk reasonable DPS from that side of the table as it stands.