Windfury or Wrath of Air

It’s been a hard night of wiping against a single boss. Everyone is still pushing hard, but you can tell that folks are dispirited. The raid leader announces that this will be the last attempt for the night. You think, “What can I do to make this last attempt a success? Would a different mix of totem buffs put us over the top?”

Most of the decisions about selecting totems are straightforward. If there’s an Elesham, he gets to drop Totem of Wrath. Don’t drop Mana Spring if a paladin is blessing Wisdom. And so on. The air category totems, however, have a longer decision tree than most. This is the one slot where we are forced to choose what subset of the raid we are going to buff.

First, we will set the stage with our actors. Windfury Totem gives 16% melee haste to the raid. Wrath of Air Totem gives 5% spell haste. In the back ranks stand the various situational totems: Nature Resistance Totem, Grounding Totem, and Sentry Totem. Take a bow, fellas.

Melee and spellcasters. Almost everyone in the raid is one of those. (Hunters are left out of both, sadly.) Where should you commit your resources to maximize the raid’s chances? Let’s go to the chart!

Update on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 7:31PM by Llyra

Chart image corrected as per comments.

Update on Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 6:38PM by Llyra

Corrected another Death Knight issue, thanks to the Elsydeon.

Aura Watch

Months ago I posted about how to configure Grid to watch for the Kel’Thuzad’s Frost Blast attack. When I discovered that functionality, I felt like I had solved the riddle of the Sphinx. A flower of information had unfolded before me, and I had an urgent need to share it with everyone. I have since learned that many, better healers before me had long known how to configure their unit frames of choice to scan for specific debuffs.

My approach to new content has changed with capability. It is not enough to know what a boss can do to wreck our lives. I have to know exactly who in the raid he is doing it to. When a supercharged Steelbreaker applies Static Disruption to a raider, increasing lightning damage taken by 75%, that’s something I need to know. And when Ignis hugs your body in his marsupial’s pouch, you don’t need to tell me on Ventrillo. I know.

Over time my aura watch list has grown woolly. Some of these I’ve even forgotten where they came from. Mistess’ Kiss? Who’s been making out with my raiders, and why do I need to know? Here they are, in cheatsheet form.

Naxxramas auras:

• Frost Blast

Ulduar auras:

• Flash Freeze (Hodir)
• Freeze (Hodir)
• Napalm Shell (Mimiron)
• Slag Pot (Ignis)
• Static Disruption (Iron Council)
• Stone Grip (Kologarn)

Trials of the Crusader auras:

• Impale (Gormok)
• Snobolled!
• Burning Bile (Acid/Dreadmaw)
• Paralytic Toxin
• Mistress’ Kiss (Jaraxxus)
• Incinerate Flesh
• Penetrating Cold (Anub’arak)

Restosham cheatsheet

I keep finding myself going back to my Enhancement cheatsheet whenever I need to upgrade gear, so this is a similar entry for my healing set. Note that the choices below are personal. In particular, they represent my professions, which give me no special upgrades. For a more complete list, see the EJ Restosham Think Tank.

Gems:

• Green: Dazzling Eye of Zul
• Green: Energized Eye of Zul
• Blue: Lustrous Majestic Zircon
• Purple: Royal Dreadstone <blue>
• Orange: Luminous Ametrine <red>
• Orange: Reckless Ametrine <yellow>
• Red: Runed Storm Jewel
• Meta: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond

Enchants:

• Head: Arcanum of Blissful Mending / Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
• Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Crag / Greater Inscription of the Storm
• Back: Greater Speed
• Chest: Greater Mana Restoration
• Wrist: Superior Spellpower
• Hands: Exceptional Spellpower
• Legs: Sapphire Spellthread
• Feet: Greater Vitality
• Weapon: Mighty Spellpower
• Shield: Greater Intellect

Totem scope

In the old days, there was no ambiguity about who could benefit from your totems. A totem could buff your group and that was it. This put raid leaders in the difficult position of trying to arrange groups to get the greatest impact from limited scope totem buffs. Most classes had similar group-wide buffs that made raid optimization a calculus-level feat.

Since then, many buffs have been expanded to raid-wide effects. Many, but not all. One of my responsibilities as a shaman is making sure that my totem buffs are covering their entire intended audience. Part of that is just keeping track of range, which Totem Timers helps with. Another key element is remembering which totems a group-wide and which are raid-wide.

To help with that, I’m making a little cheat sheet.

Raid-wide

• Mana Spring
• Flametongue
• Nature Resistance
• Frost Resistance
• Strength of Earth
• Stoneskin
• Wrath of Air
• Windfury
• Totem of Wrath

Group-wide

• Tremor Totem
• Healing Stream
• Cleansing
• Grounding
• Mana Tide

Enhancement Cheatsheet

There I was, minding my own business in Ulduar one night, when what should drop: Ironaya’s Discarded Mantle. No hunters present. No enhancement shamans present. The raid leader doesn’t want the item level to go to waste, so someone has to take it.

So now I have a nice enhancement shoulder. And I think back to those fist weapons I kept in my bank when I was selling off the rest of the leveling enhancement set.

And I think back to the last time I had a legitimate enhancement set. I’ve been resto since level 50. It was definitely a lot of fun, blasting through mobs with my twin spinning hammers in a vortex of destruction.

Today, I took the plunge and switched my offspec to enhancement. I am now melee. I am part of the problem.

I have a lot of work ahead of me assembling gear, enchants, gems, proper talent specs. It takes only a very small amount of looking to see that there’s a ton to learn. Enhancement is much more involved a DPS spec than Elemental.

While I’m working on that, I’m going to dump a bunch of links on this post to stuff I’m examining.

Enchants:

• Head: Arcanum of Torment
• Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Axe
• Back: Major Agility
• Leg: Icescale Leg Armor
• Chest: Super Stats / Powerful Stats
• Wrist: Expertise
• Weapon: Mongoose / Berserking (if I get weapons worth this much)
• Hands: Expertise / Crusher
• Feet: Icewalker / Tuskarr’s Vitality

Gems:

• Meta: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond
• Orange: Wicked Monarch Topaz <red><prismatic>
• Orange: Deadly Monarch Topaz <yellow>
• Orange: Potent Monarch Topaz
• Orange: Accurate Monarch Topaz
• Green: Jagged Forest Emerald
• Green: Jagged Eye of Zul
• Purple: Balanced Twilight Opal
• Purple: Balanced Dreadstone <blue>
• Purple: Guardian’s Twilight Opal
• Yellow: Smooth Autumn’s Glow
• Red: Precise Scarlet Ruby

Advice:

• PvE Enhancement Shaman in Wrath FAQ
• How to Not Suck at Shaman, Enhancement Edition - Gear
• How to Not Suck at Shaman, Enhancement Edition - Stats
• EJ Theorycrafting Think Tank: Enhancement Shaman

Tools:

• EnhSim
• Rawr

Addons:

• ShockAndAwe
• TotemTimers

Hit cap:

• 420 versus raid boss
• 341 with Misery/the moonkin thing

I’m posting this as a work on progress. There’s a lot left to go. Enhancement shamans — fill the comments with your thoughts. This healer could use all the advice you’ve got.