Back on tuesday MMO-Champion released the new totem slot items that will be available in 3.3, along with the Death Knight, Paladin and Druid equivalents. It has become commonplace to release a new totem for each spec every major patch for Blizzard since Wrath's release.
The new totem, which as I write this appears to still be unnamed, was initially announced to have the following attribute:
Your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells grant 73 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
This was jumped on quickly by the online community, due to the fact that as it stood it was going to be near useless for us and overshadowed by the previously released totems of WotLK. A thread was soon put up on the Damage Dealing forums and, to my surprise, got a very quick response from Ghostcrawler who stated it would be haste rather than crit and the time would be extended to 30 seconds.
This changes things quite a bit. It took it from being awful to being slightly better than our current best in slot, the Totem of Electrifying Wind. We will have an almost constant 219 haste, although the stacking time will factor in slightly. It may become habitual (depending if there is an internal cooldown) to spam a couple of extra shocks on cooldown at the start of bossfights to build up your stack. The 30 second timer is a nice addition as well in that it gives us a little more lenience in movement intensive fights that is currently given by Electrifying Wind. Overall it looks to be the new BiS, but not by much. Like a deluxe version of what we are already using; few more bells and whistles but essentially the same thing.
The other change that has sprung up was the reduction in cooldown on our Reincarnate spell. It currently stands at 60 minutes, although it can be talented to reduce by 20 minutes via the Resto tree which we don't spec into. The PTR patch notes showed it being reduced to 50 minutes, and GC came out saying they are considering dropping this to 30 instead. This is to keep it fair with the buffs to other 'back from the dead' abilities like Druid's Rebirth and Warlock's Soul Stones, which had their cooldowns halved also. I will update on this once it is confirmed but I expect this to be the case.
Due to a hectic week I didn't get the ToC 10 Gear Guide out but I will be working on it every chance I get. The 25 man version should follow shortly thereafter.
-Puut
Showing posts with label Totems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Totems. Show all posts
Friday, 16 October 2009
Friday, 28 August 2009
Totem of Electrifying Wind
Since last post, which I apologize for being a considerable amount of time ago, I have not been playing as much as I would have liked. My beloved laptop that has served me well over the past 4 years was finally showing its age and the lacking framerate was taking to great of a toll on my performance (at times I was averaging a mere 6-8fps during raids). I took the hint and made the decision to build a new computer which I had not done before and was rather daunted by the thought of. I am pleased to say it was a success however, and I am now playing on a beastly new machine that makes the game look completely different. Who knew you could see the Mine from the Lumber Mill in AB? Maybe you all did and I have been the one missing out all this time, if so forgive my childlike facination. I am yet to raid with the new setup, but I am excited to see the difference in a 25-man environment.
With my reduced playtime over the last two weeks I have not been regularly collecting Emblem of Triumph tokens (*tisk tisk*, I know...) and, as such, have not been able to purchase any of the token gear. Not that there is exactly a plethora of selection for us, but I am leaving the spiteful comments behind with the last post; I appreciate your feedback on that by the way. Yesterday I was finally fortunate enough to have saved enough to get a hold of the new totem slot item, the Totem of Electrifying Wind. By this point most of the more hardcore readers would have already seen the conclusions/done their own research but I still feel I should post about it because that is what this blog is all about.
From the PTR studies prior to 3.2, it showed the totem to have an extremely high percentage of uptime but for a long period no one confirmed these numbers once the patch was live. Well, now the numbers are all verified and the totem has a proc chance (i.e.: chance to activate) of 70% and an internal cooldown (or 'ICD', time delay after activation before it can activate again) of 6 seconds.
These numbers are very kind to us. Essentially this means it likes proccing and, because the buff lasts 12 seconds but can refresh after only 6, it will refresh itself a good percentage of time. Conclusion? Very high uptime.
I grabbed my new totem after the daily yesterday and took it to do some of my own testing. On pure Lightning Bolt spamming I never lost the buff once it first activated in 3 tests from full mana to OOM. When performing my rotation (i.e.: inclusion of Flame Shock and Lava Bursts), in a stand-and-deliver situation it still had a very high uptime, well over 90% for the vast majority of the testing.
From my own number punching (using my personal stats and such) I found this to be around a 155-165 DPS boost. Haste is unfortunately a difficult stat to come to rock-solid conclusions on, however, because there are certain points where a little extra haste will allow you to complete your rotation and integrate an extra spell cast. Not to make this post about stat comparisons, but basically there is points where haste can outweigh spellpower, although not on a regular basis. This means the benefit will be slightly different for your particular situations, but this is a reasonable ballpark estimate.
So how does this compare to our existing BiS, the Totem of Hex? I am happy to say that we have finally found an upgrade, as Hex only equated to roughly a 95-100 DPS increase. The immense uptime of Electrifying Wind makes it a practically constant buff which I am sure many of you will be thankful for.
I have not had a chance to try it out on high-movement bosses in a raid situation as yet which may be the times where the buff does fall off for short periods but I doubt it will be too much of a factor. I am sure the situations where you have trinket procs and bloodlust/heroism going in conjunction with the totem buff will make you forget about those momentary lapses.
In summary: The Totem of Electrifying Winds is a great little upgrade from our previous best-in-slot; and only takes a few days of raiding and running daily heroics to get your hands on. Enjoy!
-Puut
With my reduced playtime over the last two weeks I have not been regularly collecting Emblem of Triumph tokens (*tisk tisk*, I know...) and, as such, have not been able to purchase any of the token gear. Not that there is exactly a plethora of selection for us, but I am leaving the spiteful comments behind with the last post; I appreciate your feedback on that by the way. Yesterday I was finally fortunate enough to have saved enough to get a hold of the new totem slot item, the Totem of Electrifying Wind. By this point most of the more hardcore readers would have already seen the conclusions/done their own research but I still feel I should post about it because that is what this blog is all about.
From the PTR studies prior to 3.2, it showed the totem to have an extremely high percentage of uptime but for a long period no one confirmed these numbers once the patch was live. Well, now the numbers are all verified and the totem has a proc chance (i.e.: chance to activate) of 70% and an internal cooldown (or 'ICD', time delay after activation before it can activate again) of 6 seconds.
These numbers are very kind to us. Essentially this means it likes proccing and, because the buff lasts 12 seconds but can refresh after only 6, it will refresh itself a good percentage of time. Conclusion? Very high uptime.
I grabbed my new totem after the daily yesterday and took it to do some of my own testing. On pure Lightning Bolt spamming I never lost the buff once it first activated in 3 tests from full mana to OOM. When performing my rotation (i.e.: inclusion of Flame Shock and Lava Bursts), in a stand-and-deliver situation it still had a very high uptime, well over 90% for the vast majority of the testing.
From my own number punching (using my personal stats and such) I found this to be around a 155-165 DPS boost. Haste is unfortunately a difficult stat to come to rock-solid conclusions on, however, because there are certain points where a little extra haste will allow you to complete your rotation and integrate an extra spell cast. Not to make this post about stat comparisons, but basically there is points where haste can outweigh spellpower, although not on a regular basis. This means the benefit will be slightly different for your particular situations, but this is a reasonable ballpark estimate.
So how does this compare to our existing BiS, the Totem of Hex? I am happy to say that we have finally found an upgrade, as Hex only equated to roughly a 95-100 DPS increase. The immense uptime of Electrifying Wind makes it a practically constant buff which I am sure many of you will be thankful for.
I have not had a chance to try it out on high-movement bosses in a raid situation as yet which may be the times where the buff does fall off for short periods but I doubt it will be too much of a factor. I am sure the situations where you have trinket procs and bloodlust/heroism going in conjunction with the totem buff will make you forget about those momentary lapses.
In summary: The Totem of Electrifying Winds is a great little upgrade from our previous best-in-slot; and only takes a few days of raiding and running daily heroics to get your hands on. Enjoy!
-Puut
Monday, 10 August 2009
3.2 Elemental Shaman Initial (Belated) Impressions
Being an avid follower of a number of WoW blogs I have noticed there exists an unwritten code regarding an ‘initial reaction to the new patch’ post. As this is the first major patch I have been blogging during the release of I am feeling obliged to comply before I go about my rebellious posting ways in the future.
My playtime in this patch release week has been pretty low. As I previously mentioned, I moved into a new place and had to wait for internet to be connected which took the better part of the week. As such I missed out on a lot of the initial release stuff; by the time I first got in on the Thursday it was already old news. I haven’t had a chance to raid the new place yet (apparently the guild cleared the first boss in very little time on the first night, so I will have to wait until Tuesday). I have seen both the regular and heroic 5 man instances, which provides little to talk about as it is rather easy and the mounted combat is really the only notable highlight.
The obvious discussion point is regarding the new totem bars. I have been configurating my personal setup which, for raiding purposes, is pretty easy (Totem of Wrath, Healing, Wrath of Air and no earth totem). I initially removed all my totems from the bars and went to just using the new UI, but realized whilst running heroics how often you go to those other utility totems such as Tremor or Cleansing. Having to reconfigure every time one of these alternate totems is required is a paining process and I have found I am resorting back to having a nearly full bar of totems for easy access in those ‘just in case’ situations. I am not complaining, as I am still enjoying the fact that I can drop my standard three at once thoroughly. I imagine I will learn to take this for granted quite soon as it will make raiding (at least in my prior experiences) a lot smoother. If you are interested, I am open to possible suggestions to totem makeups.
I am also looking forward to getting into the arena as I am sure the feature will be more influential there. I have crafted my anti-gank rogue setup already (Earthbind, Fire Nova and Cleansing all in the one) which, teamed up with the new Ghost Wolf (again, yet to really experiment with) should help avoid the perils of stunlock. I will have to do some reading to work out how to get ‘good’ with these new abilities, or a lot of trial-and-error.
My final comment is regarding itemization. I know we should be used to it, but it is kind of disappointing to not see any items bar the new totem available from the Emblem of Triumph vendor. Hopefully there will be more of a relevant selection with the future vendors, but based on the track record I would guess it is going to be more of the same. The one item we do have, the Totem of Electrifying Winds, is likely to replace the Totem of Hex we have been using for a long time now but this is dependent on what the actual uptime of the proc is. On the PTRs it was having an extremely large uptime but no results are out yet (and I am FAR from having enough emblems for it to test myself on account of missing out on so much of this week) on what actually made it to the release. If anyone gets info send me an email and let me know.
-Puut
My playtime in this patch release week has been pretty low. As I previously mentioned, I moved into a new place and had to wait for internet to be connected which took the better part of the week. As such I missed out on a lot of the initial release stuff; by the time I first got in on the Thursday it was already old news. I haven’t had a chance to raid the new place yet (apparently the guild cleared the first boss in very little time on the first night, so I will have to wait until Tuesday). I have seen both the regular and heroic 5 man instances, which provides little to talk about as it is rather easy and the mounted combat is really the only notable highlight.
The obvious discussion point is regarding the new totem bars. I have been configurating my personal setup which, for raiding purposes, is pretty easy (Totem of Wrath, Healing, Wrath of Air and no earth totem). I initially removed all my totems from the bars and went to just using the new UI, but realized whilst running heroics how often you go to those other utility totems such as Tremor or Cleansing. Having to reconfigure every time one of these alternate totems is required is a paining process and I have found I am resorting back to having a nearly full bar of totems for easy access in those ‘just in case’ situations. I am not complaining, as I am still enjoying the fact that I can drop my standard three at once thoroughly. I imagine I will learn to take this for granted quite soon as it will make raiding (at least in my prior experiences) a lot smoother. If you are interested, I am open to possible suggestions to totem makeups.
I am also looking forward to getting into the arena as I am sure the feature will be more influential there. I have crafted my anti-gank rogue setup already (Earthbind, Fire Nova and Cleansing all in the one) which, teamed up with the new Ghost Wolf (again, yet to really experiment with) should help avoid the perils of stunlock. I will have to do some reading to work out how to get ‘good’ with these new abilities, or a lot of trial-and-error.
My final comment is regarding itemization. I know we should be used to it, but it is kind of disappointing to not see any items bar the new totem available from the Emblem of Triumph vendor. Hopefully there will be more of a relevant selection with the future vendors, but based on the track record I would guess it is going to be more of the same. The one item we do have, the Totem of Electrifying Winds, is likely to replace the Totem of Hex we have been using for a long time now but this is dependent on what the actual uptime of the proc is. On the PTRs it was having an extremely large uptime but no results are out yet (and I am FAR from having enough emblems for it to test myself on account of missing out on so much of this week) on what actually made it to the release. If anyone gets info send me an email and let me know.
-Puut
Monday, 6 July 2009
3.2: Totems and Tier
The upcoming 3.2 patch holds a lot of promise, not only for elementals but all shamans and pretty much every other class. A lot of changes to class dynamics are planned and the class Q&A session is a good indication of how Blizz is looking to meet the player's wants and needs for the first time in a long time, definitely since WotLK has been released.
Totem Mechanic
So far the most major things related to our spec that have been announced is the change to our totem mechanics, plus our new spec-specific gear. I announced a while ago when the totem mechanic changed was announced (here) but did not give an opinion on the topic. Unfortunately I am not going to change my position, but I am going to open up discussion a little. The ability to drop 4 totems concurrently is a deliberate attempt to increase our ease of use of totems and make them more viable for how the game works now. They are an outdated design and this change has been needed for a long, long time. It will provide benefits on both the PvE and PvP sides of the spectrum. How much? Well, that is to be seen.
I do not understand those who claim it will act to our detriment. This simply does not make sense. If you want to treat it like it is now and drop individual totems then you still can as I understand. You can, if you so desired, act like nothing has changed at all. Although I don't see the point of not utilizing the new design, the option will be there to act like it is non-existent. These naysayers not only annoy me but mislead the less experienced players into believing their personal opinions as fact. There may be teething problems, the mechanic may be awkward and almost non-functioning in the worst-possible circumstance but it will not ever be a downgrade from what is here now because it is simply an addition to the existing. I hate to vent, but sometimes the ignorance of the stubborn frustrates me.
PTR
To answer a few of you, I am not on the PTR. I do not tend to joint the PTRs in that there is still a lot that could happen before the patch and I find preaching about what is happening on the test realms will inevitably end up making you look foolish later when things you have been complaining about are not implemented. I would rather judge the end product when it hits with the patches then worry about things that *might* occur.
Tier 9
The new tier set bonuses have been announced, and ours is as follows:
2-set bonus: Increases the duration of your Flame Shock spell by 9 seconds.
4-set bonus: Increases the damage done by your Lava Burst spell by 20%.
These set bonuses, although rather plain in comparison to our t8, should prove rather powerful. The 2-set extends out DoT time on FS from the 18 seconds (assuming you have it glyphed, which you probably do) to 27 seconds. This means in the time we currently have to cast 3 Flame shocks we will not only have to cast 2, giving us as spare GCD once every 54 (27 + 27) seconds. May not seem like too much but that little extra window of time should prove useful.
The 4-set is fairly notable. A pretty sturdy 20% slap on top of our Lava Burst will be nice. It may alter our glyph setup back to including Lava (which most shaman dropped in favour of ToW in 3.1) and potentially the inclusion of the seemingly useless [Thunderfall Totem], our spec's designated totem in Ulduar which has been making more use as a bank slot decoration. This is highly doubtful though, as [Totem of Hex] still provides beneficial for so much more of our damage so unless they magically buff up Lava Burst damage on top of this set bonus I can see that bank slot being filled for a long time to come.
New Totem Slot
All this talk of Thunderfall vs. Hex is a nice lead-in to our new totem for 3.2: Totem of Electrifying Wind. Now, the talk on the forums is that this baby has practically no cooldown and an uptime of close to 100%. This is good, because it would have to be close to this to beat out Hex. They keep pushing this haste-proccing totem idea for some ungodly reason; both our last 2 badge reward totems ([Totem of the Elemental Plane] and [Skycall Totem]) have been the same concept.
I have been holding off doing my totem comaprisons until 3.2 to see just how good the final Electrifying Wind product turns out. For now we will just have to wait in eager anticipation of just how good this thing turns out to be. As I said before, I rather judge the end product and not what is being seen on the PTRs.
-Puut
Totem Mechanic
So far the most major things related to our spec that have been announced is the change to our totem mechanics, plus our new spec-specific gear. I announced a while ago when the totem mechanic changed was announced (here) but did not give an opinion on the topic. Unfortunately I am not going to change my position, but I am going to open up discussion a little. The ability to drop 4 totems concurrently is a deliberate attempt to increase our ease of use of totems and make them more viable for how the game works now. They are an outdated design and this change has been needed for a long, long time. It will provide benefits on both the PvE and PvP sides of the spectrum. How much? Well, that is to be seen.
I do not understand those who claim it will act to our detriment. This simply does not make sense. If you want to treat it like it is now and drop individual totems then you still can as I understand. You can, if you so desired, act like nothing has changed at all. Although I don't see the point of not utilizing the new design, the option will be there to act like it is non-existent. These naysayers not only annoy me but mislead the less experienced players into believing their personal opinions as fact. There may be teething problems, the mechanic may be awkward and almost non-functioning in the worst-possible circumstance but it will not ever be a downgrade from what is here now because it is simply an addition to the existing. I hate to vent, but sometimes the ignorance of the stubborn frustrates me.
PTR
To answer a few of you, I am not on the PTR. I do not tend to joint the PTRs in that there is still a lot that could happen before the patch and I find preaching about what is happening on the test realms will inevitably end up making you look foolish later when things you have been complaining about are not implemented. I would rather judge the end product when it hits with the patches then worry about things that *might* occur.
Tier 9
The new tier set bonuses have been announced, and ours is as follows:
2-set bonus: Increases the duration of your Flame Shock spell by 9 seconds.
4-set bonus: Increases the damage done by your Lava Burst spell by 20%.
These set bonuses, although rather plain in comparison to our t8, should prove rather powerful. The 2-set extends out DoT time on FS from the 18 seconds (assuming you have it glyphed, which you probably do) to 27 seconds. This means in the time we currently have to cast 3 Flame shocks we will not only have to cast 2, giving us as spare GCD once every 54 (27 + 27) seconds. May not seem like too much but that little extra window of time should prove useful.
The 4-set is fairly notable. A pretty sturdy 20% slap on top of our Lava Burst will be nice. It may alter our glyph setup back to including Lava (which most shaman dropped in favour of ToW in 3.1) and potentially the inclusion of the seemingly useless [Thunderfall Totem], our spec's designated totem in Ulduar which has been making more use as a bank slot decoration. This is highly doubtful though, as [Totem of Hex] still provides beneficial for so much more of our damage so unless they magically buff up Lava Burst damage on top of this set bonus I can see that bank slot being filled for a long time to come.
New Totem Slot
All this talk of Thunderfall vs. Hex is a nice lead-in to our new totem for 3.2: Totem of Electrifying Wind. Now, the talk on the forums is that this baby has practically no cooldown and an uptime of close to 100%. This is good, because it would have to be close to this to beat out Hex. They keep pushing this haste-proccing totem idea for some ungodly reason; both our last 2 badge reward totems ([Totem of the Elemental Plane] and [Skycall Totem]) have been the same concept.
I have been holding off doing my totem comaprisons until 3.2 to see just how good the final Electrifying Wind product turns out. For now we will just have to wait in eager anticipation of just how good this thing turns out to be. As I said before, I rather judge the end product and not what is being seen on the PTRs.
-Puut
Friday, 5 June 2009
Upcoming Shaman Q&A
The latest talk around the official forums is about the upcoming Question and Answer session the developers will be having regarding each class. Obviously there is a feeling of discontent amongst the entire shaman community as all three specs are having difficulties at the moment.
The interesting ting to see will be the responses by the developers. Some are already fearing the dreaded 'working as intended' or 'known issue, working on it' responses that we have seen from blue posts in the past. Hopefully in this session they will have the common sense to at least elaborate to a greater extent and calm the concerns of the community some.
Posts are already going up discussing what questions should/will be asked so I am putting my opinions up as to what the most important questions are for us. A couple of these points are general for all shaman specs I will admit off the bat:
The interesting ting to see will be the responses by the developers. Some are already fearing the dreaded 'working as intended' or 'known issue, working on it' responses that we have seen from blue posts in the past. Hopefully in this session they will have the common sense to at least elaborate to a greater extent and calm the concerns of the community some.
Posts are already going up discussing what questions should/will be asked so I am putting my opinions up as to what the most important questions are for us. A couple of these points are general for all shaman specs I will admit off the bat:
Scaling: This is an issue that has plagued elemental shaman since the Burning Crusade. The inability to scale up well as we move into deeper content is worrying. We are the only caster class without benefit to our spell damage from base stats such as intellect or spirit; the easiest method of scaling there is. With the latest improvements to Moonkin Druids giving them significant benefit from spirit, elemental shams are now scratching their heads wondering when we are going to get a bone thrown our way. Seems we are becoming the forgotten casters, and it is not a fun spot to be in.
Totem Viability: When WoW was in its early days, shamans were a necessity as the benefits that their totems bought to a raid group was unmatched. This presence has lessened consistently as the game has evolved until this latest expansion where, in order to make raid makeups more flexible, they have made almost every totem's benefits replaceable by another classes buffs. In essence this is a good idea, because the developers want this game to not restrict the player's experience based on their class. However, being the buffing class we are we have gotten a raw deal here as we now have non-unique buffs that are bulky and awkward to use in that totems have limited range and have to constantly be recast. I would imagine this will be the hot topic of discussion amongst all specs.
PvP: PvP is generally not a topic of discussion for me as I am far more into my raiding than anything else, but I do hit the BGs every now and again and am in a 'just for kicks' 2's team with my Boomkin housemate (we stay in PvE gear/spec and see how many we can win blowing heroism and spamming like hell!). I know like every other elemental shaman how incredibly vulnerable we are, especially to the likes of rogues/feral druids. We are easily stunnable and have literally NO way of getting out of CC apart from our trinkets. I do not have any huge issue with it, but I know serious PvPers are demanding changes to even the playing field a little.
These are the three biggest I can think of off the top of my head, but here is where I am turning it over to you. I have received emails from readers in increasing amounts (which I really appreciate, I might add!) but I am asking you guys to leave comments and let me know what you think about this whole Q&A deal. What questions do you have? Do you have any suggestions? Do you foresee us getting any changes? Hit the comments at the bottom of the post and let me and the other readers know.
- Puut
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
