Totem Talk: Shaman Itemization resists a clever title
Filed under: Shaman, The Burning Crusade, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm
Totem Talk is the column for shamans. This installment sees Matthew Rossi contemplating the incoming influx of gear and how current itemization affects shamans. Also, sorry but you get Alliance shamans this week. I can’t wait until I can race change to a dwarf.
The thing is this: I hate doing gear lists.
My editors (I like to imagine them as an old Marvel Comics cosmic entity like The Living Tribunal) quite rightly point out to me from time to time that with Patch 3.3 so close, we’re effectively at the end of Wrath of the Lich King and therefore all sorts of new loot will be entering the game. Loot from the new five mans at Ulduar 10/25 quality! Loot from the new raid exceeding all previous iLevels! We’ll be awash in the best gear we’ll ever see until Cataclysm drops and we start it all over again. And of course they’re right. It helps me to accept this if I imagine that cosmic entity spinning a giant head around with different faces on it like Reliquary of Souls. (No, sorry, we didn’t call it Reliquary of Souls all those weeks just to be corrected by Blizzard. Heck, you guys even brought it back in Icecrown.)
The next couple of weeks, however, I’m going to look not at gear but at itemization itself and how it interacts with shamans. I was inspired by the change to Elemental Mastery, the talent in the elemental combat tree that currently grants 15% crit when activated as well as making your next spell instant cast. On the surface, this doesn’t look like a bad talent all told, so why would we even want to change it? Because of the way shaman talents and spells interact, an extra 15% chance to crit is somewhat useless to an elemental shaman. Specifically, we’re talking about Flame Shock and Lava Burst.
Because of these two spells and their interaction, elemental shamans can basically crit every eight seconds or so. They can guarantee an Elemental Focus clearcasting state to reduce mana cost by 40%. Stacking crit doesn’t really do anything for them: they’re going to crit anyway. Most of the elemental tree has synergy with spell haste in comparison, with abilities like Lightning Mastery and Storm, Earth and Fire already reducing cast time on various spells.
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Totem Talk: Shaman Itemization resists a clever title originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
