Mists of Pandaria: All Specs
 

Please use this thread to discuss Shamans in the Mists of Pandaria expansion. Avoid excessive wish-listing and whining. Constructive criticism is fine. Make sure you are making a useful post. "I like X" is not useful. "I like X because it allows this or that" is useful. Common sense applies, if you're not sure feel free to PM a moderator or administrator. Thanks.

Mists of Pandaria - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Looking over the talent calculator on Wowhead, I feel like our 75 and 90 talents could directly contribute to Enhancement DPS.

I believe Echo of the Elements might become the go-to talent for enhancement. A passive chance to duplicate any spell seems more valuable than 5% melee haste, but that'd probably need to be simmed out.

As for Elemental Harmony, depending on how this ends up working, I can imagine scenarios with four searing totems dropping simultaneously. Or, if the totems have to be unique, dropping searing + lava.

Elemental Harmony may actually allow enhancement to use GFE on a non-situational basis again, that would be nice. The Totem Projection sounds more geared toward elemental/resto who are more likely to use long CD totems.

I'm a bit disappointed that the 75 tier really only has one option for enhancement (under current stat values and tooltips). The fact that melee haste is omitted from using Elemental Mastery means that the proc rate on Echoes would have to be quite low for the 3 min 15% increased elemental damage cooldown to be better. Because that's really all we would get from EM, aside from one instant LvB per cast.

If fortifying waters stacks (between multiple shaman), that's going to get nerfed so hard.

I do hold onto hope that they will give us a real resource system. The discussion surrounding power bars indicates that it may actually be forthcoming.

I'm really not paying a whole lot of attention to the specifics of the talents since they are not anywhere near final, as stated by devs and as is clear from a glance at most of the trees.

During one of the Q&A's, one of the devs specifically stated that elemental harmony would not apply to fire totems since it would be a clear dps winner over the other two in the tier if it did.

As for Echo being the go-to for enhancement, there's absolutely no way to say that at this point. Enhancement will almost certainly get some sort of change to make either crit or haste much more attractive, and there is no indication at all as to what the proc rate on that talent will be. I could see NS being a better choice for high uptime fights and Echo performing better on fights with more target-switching, which seems more like their intention - talents being situational choices, not always better.

Don't forget also that we lose all our totem buffs (str/agi, melee haste) so we might need NS if the haste buff isn't covered by someone else.

They said we were losing the totems, but would be given all of our spells to compensate. I think we will still be able to provide those buffs in some other way than talents (remember, MoP talents are about free choice).

As for Elemental Harmony, there was a question about multiple fire totems in the Q&A in which the devs pretty much said we won't be allowed to drop multiple fire totems.

I don't see anyone ever using Totemic Restoration, it just doesn't seem useful at all to me. When have you ever needed to pick up a cooldown totem. Typically when you use Spirit Link, it is during a pre-planned time where your raid is relying on your CD to get through a specific part of an encounter.

Most likely to compensate PVPers for getting their totems killed.

They said in the Dev Q&A yesterday that Talents like Unleashed Rage/Trueshot/Etc would be baked into your Spec as abilities learnt as you level. Assuming they keep these buffs, I would not be surprised to see Windfury baked into UR and the only real question is how they want us to apply SoE - passively (via an Aura) or actively (Ala Horn of Winter or Battle Shout).

I would not be surprised if we actually lost some of our buffs. The only buffs (excluding debuffs) that enhancement can't provide, but wants, for itself, are kings/mark/fort, 5% crit, 3% damage.

Shaman, in general, have a lot of buffs at their disposal. Granted, range deficiencies created by totem placement currently make them subpar and more easily gained via other classes, but that will be moot come 5.0. And giving us all of the buffs that we currently can bring would be insane. I imagine that some buffs will be spec specific (i.e. WoA for resto/ele, WF for enh, SoE maybe for enh with stoneskin being ele/resto, maybe even just resto), if we keep them at all.

It wouldn't come as a shock to me if all we maintained as shaman was 10% SP/AP, WoA/WF, and of course BL/Hero. Though there is argument that we'll keep stoneskin, concentration, and mana spring in some form just because the only other class to bring either are paladins.

In that Q&A Devs said they want to remove some less interesting buffs and debuffs, specifically +bleed damage, armor, 3% damage and resists, so it seems we will lose stoneskin and elemental resistance. The list isn't complete yet so we'll see what really happens.

I can still see having some sort of elemental resistance offered if not to the raid, then personally via a glyph. It makes sense thematically.

I most want to see what is going to happen to the Enhancement rotation. My less than accurate napkin math says that we have to use more individual abilities in our rotation than any other spec. I would think it's a prime candidate to move away from the pages long priority list model with almost no outside resource other than individual ability cooldowns. Elemental has some interesting variability with Lava Flows and Fulmination, but currently Maelstrom is pretty predictable because our priority list lines up in such a way that that even without 5 stacks, we just press LB as a filler. I'd love to see it get an alternate resource bar similar to the propsed one for shadow orbs.

I'd just like to see them increase the damage/healing value of each MW charge while reducing the stack rate to compensate. Give it enough of an increase to move it back up to the top of our priority list and I would be happy going forward from there.

Thing I want to see is more game changers in that talent tree, especially things that have nothing to do with totems. Seriously hating on that last tier. Something like Feral Spirits vs Fire Elemental vs Earth Elemental or maybe TC vs EQ vs Flame Shock spread.

As for our buff totems going away, it's unfortunate, but likely, that they'll be limited to spec. I'd rather it be that they functioned like auras where we could choose if we wanted to provide WoA or WF, for example, but it's more likely that we'll see them only give WF to Enhance and only give WoA to Resto/Ele. Knock on totems all you want, but they certainly provide us with a lot of options.

Our talents are just far too totem focused. I like totems as much as anyone, and they belong in the earlier talents, but I hope we see some variety injected into the higher tier talents in the form of Execute/Pet/Cooldown tiers.

From how i see these new talent builds, they all seem incredibly situational. (http://www.wowhead.com/mists-of-pand...calculator#shm is the talent build i'm thinking of using at the moment)

I like the Stone Bulwark Totem simply of a small shield of damage for 30 seconds which can be used if you are taking constant damage. The Nature's Guardian i see as not really that brilliant due to the fact that it only decreaces your threat on that target and your health pool if you are brought under 30% health, i don't see this as viable due to the fact you have to go under 30% health and more often than not we have no issue with threat or not having enough maximum health.
Also the Astral Shift i can see myself going for in more survival than dps fights so that for example, i could take more stacks of the shard on Baleroc HC.

For the next tier, i have gone for Tranquil Mind Totem as i find in PvE that its less often to have movement reduce effects on you than it could do a raid wide silence so i simply put, went for the Anti-Interrupt totem. The other two are against movement impairing effects directly on you (Improved Ghost Wolf) or people near you (Windwalk Totem).

At the level 60 tier, i have gone for Ancestral Guidance due to the fact that if i were to stand close-ish to the tanks 40% of my dps would turn into hps so if i were to typically do 30k dmg on a boss i would be doing 12k hps to a nearby tank which would be very beneficial for the healers. I could have also gone with the Healing Tide Totem which would basically do 5k healing over 10 seconds to nearby targets, which would be good for AoE fights say when Smoldering Devastation is being done on Beth'tilac HC. The other talent to chose from is when people were standing in healing rain they took 10% less damage from magical attacks, i see this being mainly the healer choice out of the three adding another defensive CD, however if there is high AoE magical damage i can see myself swapping this in and out to suit ithe fight the best.

At the level 75 tier, a shaman can chose from a cooldown giving one instant cast 15% damage increase and 20% spell haste for 15 seconds i see this as more of an Elemental talent due to the instant cast and spell haste which Enhancement would have little use for but depending on how the other talents (which i will move onto in one moment) play out. Nature's Swiftness is quite nice due to the free instant cast of a baseline of 10 second (maximum) spell and a passive 5% melee and spell haste which i would link a lot more closely to be viable for elemental due to the passive haste and maybe a free Lava Burst. The last talent is the one i've chosen which is the Echo of the Elements which is essentially Elemental Mastery at the moment, and i see this as the best choice for Enhancement due to the fact of (i'm hoping) that the Echo could maybe copy Windfury Weapon Proc of maybe even Lava Lash? Which would be fairly strong.

At the last tier, a shaman can pick Elemental Harmony, Totemic Restoration and Totemic Projection. Elemental Harmony allows for a shaman to pop more than one totem per element so for example of the current totems: Tremor and Earthbind totems at the same time. It is worth noting that Blizzard said in one Q&A panel that this would not apply to fire totems which is what made me go away from this talent. Totemic Restoration i see as more of a PvP totem for when, say and enemy tries destroying one of the cooldown totems, like Stone Bulwark Totem, but besides Majordomo Staghelm, i have not met a totem-hating boss so this isn't optimal really. Totemic Projection i have chosen due to the fact that Enhancement, as a melee dps often has to move around a bit so just throwing the totems somewhere else would be viable such as when moving between the two location for dealing with Ragnaros HC's seeds.

Granted it doesn't turn up often, but on bosses that do have abilities that can be absorbed by grounding totem, it seems like Totemic Restoration w/ glyphed grounding totem would be quite useful, since chances are you'll have windfury/woa from other sources anyway so don't need to worry about losing them. Unless they prevent totemic restoration from working with grounding, which is altogether possible given the intent of grounding.