Focusing on WF totem:

What is the general concensus about whether to spend 2 points to get the extra AP for the WF attacks on the totem? (I'm assuming that the totem's talent doesn't work only grats additional AP rather than scaling all of the windfury attack - like elemental weapons does.)

edit for clarity:

Elemental weapons increases total windfury damage by 40% (base damage plus the extra AP), so it's (Weapon Damage + 475)* 1.4, whereas from the wording of the imp weapon totem the extra 30% is only applied to the bonus AP and not to the base damage: Weapon Damage + 445 * 1.3

Can you spend a moment and clean that up, because it just reads and gibberish to me.

The AP bonus from the totem is not very significant. It is far from a poor investment of points, but it's not a staple either.

Filling out the 5th rank of enhancement talent points on my alt shaman got me 1/2 in Imp Weapon Totems, 1/1 Spirit Weapons 3/3 Elemental Weapons being the others. I also have 2/2 Enhancing Totems (for GoA and SoE totems).

I'm still leveling this character up but it sounds like going back to pick up 2/2 in Imp Weapon Totems is not always done then? I was heading towards a 20/41/0 build (our guild has no enhancement shamans right now -- 1 resto, 1 elemental, and that's it -- the character would be an alt for me that I might bring only for the raids that could be stacked correctly, plus it's just really fun to play). At one point I thought 19/42/0 would be better to get the 2nd point, or is there something else I should be doing? (I presently don't have Mental Quickness nor was I planning on it).

Elemental/Enhancement is pretty crappy synergy to be honest. You aren't making use of any of it when you're in melee except for around 10% of your damage if you spam shocks and have Searing totem down, which isn't always the right thing to do. Going 19 in Resto for the .5 off Healing Wave means you can heal if you have to, 3% spell/melee hit is incredibly useful for melee damage and for ensuring your interrupt shocks land, totem range is an important if you get stuck with hunters a lot, and healing pushback protection is always useful. I keep meaning to respec, but the only thing I'll really change is 1 point that is currently in Toughness to Imp Weapon Totems. I'll save that for after I respec resto some day to make our usual Restos look bad

I never bothered with imp weapon totems; the main benefit is the extra swing, not the AP bonus. But I haven't tested it, so I certainly wouldn't take that as gospel.

You DEFINITELY shouldn't take toughness.

I personally ditched improved weapon totems for extra dodge, back when it still was an occasional life saver against cleaves. The benefit isn't huge, from what I remember at 60, the benefit of having improved weapon totems was a 5 dps gain for everyone getting it. Not overly much, but still a decent enough boost.

I'd probably respec back to it if we had more dps warriors around, we're pretty feral druid heavy, right now I don't drop WF totem enough to make it worth the 50g to respec Still miss the battleshouts though.

Have you done the math? Toughness is actually one of the worst talents shamans get.

It was good when I was leveling and wearing greens, I haven't changed specs since then :P

I did the math awhile ago; wearing full 2.0 gladiator gear and shield, toughness is roughly half as effective as anticipation. Anticipation isn't a great talent either, since we shouldn't be getting hit. The only advantage to toughness is that dodge only works from the front.

What spec are you all promoting that doesn't involve taking 2/2 Improved Weapon Totems? :/ Seems like a no-brainer to me. If it helps the dps of my group, I can surely sacrifice one point in <insert talent that only helps me and isn't vital to my dps>.

I usually drop the 2 extra points into anticipation, because an extra 20 group DPS is pretty minor. I guess a dedicated raid spec would take it, but not a big deal.

Agreed, of course you'll be getting hit, I'm just saying that I'd rather spend my precious talent points offensively. Mathematically it's a 1% improvement, so anticipation is balanced, unlike toughness.

If I get hit on a fight where it matters (i.e. not trash), I'm going to die unless I dodge, especially considering I'm not wearing a shield. There are far more fights where it's a race between your raid's DPS and the enrage timer than there are fights where I need to worry about getting hit with a physical attack. I just don't see the benefit of, say, Toughness. What's 2% additional armor when we're not using a shield and we're using a mish-mash of leather and mail?

Edit: mind you, I'm all for survivability talents. When I'm resto spec I go with 8/0/53 and pick up Nature's Guardian and Elemental Warding. I just don't feel that the 1 or 2 points spent elsewhere than Improved Weapon Totems is really worthwhile, unless you're trying to go with a more pvp-style spec and pick up something like Improved Ghost Wolf or two-handed maces/axes.

I'm sure I don't need to elaborate why armor is useful. Seriously, go read the WoW Priest class forums and watch those guys begging for extra armor so that they don't die to a single cleave as a stray mob runs past. (I'm fairly certain there's a few threads on this board that diverge into that topic as well) My rogues complain about it on a daily basis.

When I was healing back in the Naxx days I was one of the few shaman that refused to take cloth/leather gear, and I was very frequently one of the few healers left alive to keep the tanks up. C'thun trash I was the lone survivor and it was because I could eat the damage.

Besides, if you don't have a shield bound to a hotkey that you can strap on in a hurry, you haven't been trying hard enough.

I send some PMs with Gurg about this pre 2.0, he was more referring to this as 'heal tanking'. Aka: making the mob run to someone in mail (since we didnt have plate healers back then) instead of a priest.

This is the reason why some palas now often heal with imp RF on

edit: too elaborate: armor is defenitly usefull, but I wouldnt make sacrifices as enhancement shaman to get toughness. Even with super reflexes, your often dead before you can equip your shield and if you arent, the palas have had more then enough time to BoP you anyway.

Just catching up to this today, thanks for the responses. It seems that I was right to feel like there are some options here with those 2 points, basically coming down to 3 choices:

2/2 Imp Weapon Totems
fill out 5/5 Anticipation (vs 3/5 before)
2/5 Toughness

And thanks for the comments on the 0/42/19 build, I think I will head that direction instead for the +hit synergy and the decent improvement in healing capability.

I do tend to spam shocks right now while leveling, woohoo level 47 and climbing. It means a lot of water usually, but you kill things so quickly...

(One thing I hadn't worked out perfectly since I got stormstrike -- is it more beneficial to alternate flame and earth shocks to always keep the flame dot ticking, or start with flame shock then switch to earth/earth/stormstrike rotation due to the increased nature vulnerability?)

The only time I use flame shock in my rotation is when I'm grouped with a fire mage, and the scorches are stacked up. That said, I generally run 5-mans with a druid tank and no other melee dps to take advantage of Imp. Weapon Totems, so I put the points into anticipation and mental quickness. I still do the dps I always did, I can just do it for far longer, given my tiny mana pool. Combined with totemic focus it makes for an additional degree of sustainability, even though totemic focus is actually pretty bad, as talents go.

Just a note, the main reason many of the priests complain about armor doesn't stem soley from cleave issues. While that is a portion of the complaints, the majority of the complains stem from the fact that pre-BC, getting armor was actually a viable way to survive as a PvP healer or as a shadow priest, simply because inner fire and shadow form made us have a -lot- more mitigation than we have now, and as a healer, it was uncommon, but not unheard of, to pick up some of those quest reward armor rings for PvP because the armor did make a difference, wheras it has belittled effect in current PvP

I always get improved weapon totems in my enhancement spec, its still a dps increase and your really not missing points in anything too important to pick it up.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GZxV0bAMsAuqoxbez

-- Not saying toughness is usless, there is a use for it. Just not in any of my builds.

Yes this is the more efficient way of doing it. I saw a visible DPS increase when I started using this rotation earlier this month and wish I'd realized the rotation ages ago. I always wondered why flame shock was a 12 second DoT, now I think this was the intended rotation.

I personally think that putting two points into imp. weapon totems does not make that much of a difference. Well i use to: But after some extensive testing on the ptrs, It can confidently say that a point in imp. weapon totems shows no immediate increase in dps, but after a long instance run with dropping WF totem, the dps of a warrior can be increased by a noticeable amount.

It seems to scale better with time rather a instant increase: If that makes sense..