Enhancement Shaman - Need To Know 5.2

For those of you who are actively playing or paying attention to World of Warcraft, you're probably aware by now that patch 5.2 has thundered its way into Azeroth. With its arrival, a few new changes have come into play for nearly every class and specialization. Enhancement shaman is no exception.

Please note that if you've been using my old Need To Know post, the information found in there is still relevant for a fresh level 90. The purpose of this particular post is to expand upon the new talent tweaks and how they may interact with gear from Throne of Thunder.. If you're a fresh level 90 and/or just returning from the spirit realm (aka if you haven't played your shaman since Cataclysm) I highly suggest going back and reading my Need To Know post linked in this paragraph.


Talent Tweaks
As has been noted in the 5.2 Changes for Shaman post, several talent tweaks have been made. With these adjustments in mind, the following is more or less how we should think about our talent choices.

Tier 4
Elemental Mastery - Best used in burst situations and becomes more valuable during fights where our damage uptime may be a bit low (numerous target switches that cause downtime; controlled dps situations such as Titan Gas phase on LFR/Reg Will of the Emperor, or the no add lull on H-Will of the Emperor)

Ancestral Swiftness - Best for static (Patchwerk) fights. The higher uptime on a boss, the more this talent shines. Used mostly with haste builds, which will become more widely used once one acquires the legendary meta gem, along with trinkets from Throne of Thunder.

Echo of the Elements - Still the best talent choice for those who are leveling, as it can proc extra healing. Also a very solid choice for soloing in my personal opinion, again due to the chance for extra "free" healing. For competitive raiding, this talent is best when paired with mastery stacking and will shine more during AoE/cleave encounters.


Tier 6
Unleashed Fury - This talent received a slight nerf in this patch to help bring it more in line with our other two talent choices, but the nerf bat wasn't too harsh. For those of you who are still fresh level 90s/sporting t14 gear, this will still be your best overall talent choice. With this particular talent, it seems that mastery will still be your favored secondary stat.

Primal Elementalist - PE received a pretty decent buff in this patch to help it compete with Unleashed Fury. Our elementals now provide some fairly substantial burst (they did a good bit before as well, but now it's really solid), enough to the point where they'll make up for the lack of damage during their down times. This talent is my personal favorite for soloing, but unfortunately may not be the best choice for general raiding purposes until you have acquired your Capacitive Primal Diamond, plus have gotten your mits on Talisman of Bloodlust and Bad Juju. This talent *could* be useful on controlled burst fights even with current gear, however. This is of course assuming that phases of whichever encounter you're tackling line up properly with the CDs of your totems.

Elemental Blast - Like Primal Elementalist, Elemental Blast has received some love to help make it a more enticing talent to take as Enhancement. In addition to proccing extra secondary stats, EB will also proc Agility for us. Pretty neat, eh? As it stands right now though, EB is still a touch behind the other two talent choices. It's viable for use, don't get me wrong, but it is still slightly behind. Couple this minor negative with the fact that it still has a cast time (which can be negated if you have a Maelstrom Weapon stack of x5, but if you don't you'll be hardcasting), that you'll have yet another button in your already button-heavy arsenal, AND you'll have another minor CD to watch (12 seconds, so not all that different from our other rotational CDs like Lava Lash and Stormstrike), EB still remains to be a less than desirable talent for most shaman. Essentially it complicates an already somewhat hectic rotation for no actual DPS gain over the other two talents. However, if you're a diehard fan of this talent for whatever reason, you still may choose to spec into EB and not have the fear of severely gimping yourself on the meters.


Talent Choices, Secondary Stats, and You
One of the more common questions I see coming from fellow Enhancement shaman is thus:

I'm ilvl 461. How should I gem/reforge? How do I spec?

The common answer is often "Well, you're going to have to sim it." This answer is unfortunately both completely true, but can also be rather frustrating to someone who isn't familiar with either theorycrafting or the program Simulation Craft itself. The fact of the matter is, two Enhancement shaman may both have an ilvl of 461, but they could very well have a large variation in stats. One may be really heavy in Critical Strike, while the other could be Mastery heavy. A third shaman may very well have a balance of all three non-mandatory secondary stats, but is starving for things such as Hit and Expertise. Early on in the gearing process, Critical Strike can actually outweigh Mastery and Haste, because of how the synergy between the different stats works out. As you gain more gear though, Crit tends to depreciate in value, making way for the power houses that are Mastery and Haste.

Bottom line, if you're looking to min/max your shaman to the greatest extent, you will need to learn how to run Simulation Craft, aka SimC. Luckily for you, Poneria did up a post on WoW Insider about Simulation Craft. Don't balk at the fact that it's actually a warlock post; there is a ton of excellent information and links in that post to help get you started with SimC. It's a definite must-read for those who wish to push themselves a bit further.

For those of you wishing to merely get by without having to dip your toes into the wacky world of theorycrafting, there is are a few rules of thumb that you can follow to make yourself at least competitive in regards in how to gem, reforge, and spec your Enhancement shaman.


Leveling
Gems: You can stick with whatever gems you had in your level 85 gear. Most leveling gear is socketless, so you don't need to worry about this much.

Reforging: Not necessarily something you need to worry about much. You want at least some hit and expertise to make life a bit easier for you; more mastery while leveling is quite handy.

Speccing: As far as the DPS talents are concerned, Echo of the Elements (for those wonderful double Healing Surge procs) and once you hit 90, Unleashed Fury will be your best bets. All other talents are more based on preference and situation.


Fresh Level 90s
Gems: Delicate (pure Agility gems) in red sockets, Adept (orange gems, Agility/Mastery gems) in yellow sockets, Deft (purple gems, Agility/Hit gems) for purple sockets.

Reforging: You must first shoot for your Hit/Expertise caps, if possible. If you need to, you can help supplement this with Hit and Expertise enchants. For secondaries, it'll be, as I said, a bit of a toss up depending on what stats your particular gear setup actually has. I personally went Mastery > Crit > Haste on my second shaman while I was working on getting the rest of her heroic 5 man set.

Speccing: For those of you heading into those 5 mans, Echo and UF will still be great choices, since you'll more than likely be putting priority on Mastery, plus the extra chance at AoE procs from Echo (Fire Nova can proc echos) will help out nicely for all of those trash packs.


Tier 14
Gems: As with the fresh level 90s, you'll still be going for straight Agility gems, Agility/Mastery gems, and Agility/Hit gems.

Reforging: Once I started getting a decent base of crit and stopped starving for so much Hit/Expertise on my second shaman (meaning, I was starting to get purples) my priority changed over to Mastery>=Haste>Crit. You'll want to have a healthy balance of Mastery and Haste, as they're both excellent stats to have. I tend to go a bit heavier into Mastery for this particular tier though, especially with often still being specced into Echo+UF.

Speccing: With the new changes, speccing for raiding becomes rather situational. For your level 60 choice, see the Talent Tweaks section earlier on in this post. For the most part though, Unleashed Fury will be your level 90 talent of choice.


Tier 15
This is were things start to get nice and murky as far as secondary stats are concerned. Until you get your hands on the new RPPM* trinkets (Talisman of Bloodlust, Bad Juju, Renataki's Soul Charm, and Rune of Re-Origination are specifically being considered for BiS lists, see this thread for more info), you'll be speccing and reforging just as you had for tier 14. However, the game changes some once you get said RPPM and your legendary meta. Suddenly, with these items, Haste becomes a pretty big thing.

Gems: For those in LFR/Normal mode t15 gear with RPPM trinkets, you'll be most likely going with pure Agility gems, Agility/HASTE gems, and Agility/Mastery gems. If you do not have the RPPM trinkets, the t14 scheme will still be more ideal.

**Note: There is a slight possibility that we may even gemming straight Haste with the new trinkets + legendary meta gem + BiS Heroic Throne of Thunder gear. Theorycrafters are still working out the details on this, as the RPPM trinkets are still being tweaked, but the future possibility is there. **

Reforging: Again, once you get your RPPM trinkets, Haste will take a priority over Mastery. It'll more than likely be a reforge priority of Hit/Expertise | Haste > Mastery > Crit.

Speccing: This follows suit with t14 until you get, you guessed it, the RPPM trinkets. Once you do, your level 90 talent of choice will often be Primal Elementalist. There may be certain situations where UF may still be better, but with all of the Haste procs and stacking going on, PE becomes a delicious source of damage. The level 60 talent choices will be very encounter-based still, so please refer to the Talent Tweaks section of this post for more information.

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Please keep in mind that this is an extremely rough and broad guide. Your stat change over points may slightly differ depending on which trinkets you have, which set bonuses you manage to activate, and of course may depend a bit on whether or not you have acquired your legendary meta.

Also keep in mind that each of the three level 90 talents have a slightly different rotation priority. To find out more about that, I highly suggest you read up on the Ability/Rotation section of the Enhancement Guide over on Totemspot.

If you're looking for a Throne of Thunder shopping list, you'll want to keep your eyes on the Enhancement Best in Slot List for Tier 15 thread, which can also be found over on Totemspot. Keep in mind that the list is subject to change, as the TC guys are still working on simming out all of the possibilities, plus Blizzard is still tweaking trinket procs and the like.

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The long and short of this post is thus: 5.2 has moved us away from what was nearly a cut-and-dry spec set up as far as our DPS talent choices were concerned, and dumped us into the realm of situational choice. Everything - your gemming scheme, spec choices, and reforges - is dependent upon your particular gear set up and raid encounter situation. From a min/maxer's stand point, this kind of makes things both chaotic and interesting. From the view point of someone more casual, this simply means you have a bit more leeway in choosing how to play.

The difference between talents is rather small now, so you very well could simply choose a combination of talents that you like the feel of and still be rather competitive. If you're not trying to eek out every last drop of damage from your character, you have plenty of room to experiment with. Personally I've been playing around with a high-burst build on my main shaman for soloing situations (it's pretty damn awesome, I'll tell you what!). Would I use my current build in a current raiding situation? Hell no, since I know I don't have an optimal gear set up to make my EM/PE + Haste stacking as competitive in damage as say, being a tad more Mastery heavy and rocking AS (or whatever talent depending on encounter)/UF. Since I'm not raiding for the moment though, it's very fun to toy around with. Sometimes experimenting to see how far your gear can take you in certain scenarios is a very fun thing to do, or perhaps I'm too much of an Enhancement/soloing nerd for my own good.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this topic or anything else shaman related, please don't be shy!


*For those of you who are confused as to what RPPM means, it stands for Real Procs Per Minute. This is essentially the internal system that's in place that determines how certain trinkets and enchants proc. If you want to read up on some of the nitty gritty details of this system, you should check out this series of blue posts.

Healing As Enhancement

New visitors! Please be aware that much has changed since this post was written. WoD has changed off healing capabilities drastically. Expect an updated guide somewhere in the near future.

If you're just now returning to the game, or if you're leveling an enhancement shaman for the first time, you may be wondering "How the heck do I heal?" Enhancement healing is relatively simple, yet can seem a bit complex at times to the untrained shaman.

Some of you old-timers may be wondering about where the heck Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave ran off to. Well, both of these spells have decided to get permanently hitched to our restoration brothers and sisters, effectively dumping us. That's right, our only actively cast healing spells are now Healing Surge, Chain Heal, and Healing Rain. I see you giving Healing Surge the stink eye; try not to judge it quite yet, it's more potent than it looks.

Please note that I will only be covering the spell modifiers (mainly talents and glyphs, not necessarily procs/secondary stat scaling) that directly effect healing. There are several other glyphs/talents that boost resistances and help to dispel, but I will not be including those within this article.

Healing Surge

Unless you're hard casting Healing Surge for some odd reason, this spell is more than adequate for the pinch healing that you'll need during leveling/soloing/raiding. Trust me, this spell has been saving my shaman butt for months now. Check out these modifiers that makes Healing Surge more potent for us.

Modified by:
1) Maelstrom Weapon - For each stack of Maelstrom Weapon, Healing Surge will both cost less mana and heal for greater amounts.
2) Healing Storm - This glyph will cause your healing done to be increased by 20% per Maelstrom Weapon stack.
3) Echo of Elements - This talent can cause your Healing Surge to "echo," effectively casting Healing Surge a second time without any extra effort from you or resource cost. Both the original spell an the echoed spell can crit independently.

Might not be so bad, eh? Now let's break down some of our other healing abilities.

Chain Heal

Chain Heal is not a spell commonly cast by an enhancement shaman unless said shaman is within proximity of several raid mates and their healers are struggling. Remember, it is your job as a dps to do damage, not play healing hero. In the event that your healers are oom, you may use Chain Heal and Healing Rain as last ditch efforts to save your raid team long enough to make a kill. If you need to save yourself in the event that you accidentally stood in the bad though, use Healing Surge. Chain Heal doesn't heal for a ton single-target, and can unfortunately only bounce so far.

Modified by:
1) Maelstrom Weapon - For each stack of Maelstrom Weapon, Healing Surge will both cost less mana and heal for greater amounts.
2) Healing Storm - This glyph will cause your healing done to be increased by 20% per Maelstrom Weapon stack.
3) Echo of Elements - This talent can cause your Chain Heal to "echo," effectively casting Chain Heal a second time without any extra effort from you or resource cost. Crits will behave as if you had cast Chain Heal twice, meaning they'll do their own thing regardless of what the original spell did.

Healing Rain

Much like Chain Heal, Healing Rain is not a spell commonly cast by an enhancement shaman unless said shaman is within proximity of several raid mates and their healers are struggling. Healing Rain can help to stabilize a group's health, though overall doesn't do a ton of healing. Remember, it is your job as a dps to do damage, not play healing hero. In the event that your healers are oom, you may use Chain Heal and Healing Rain as last ditch efforts to save your raid team long enough to make a kill. If you need to save yourself in the event that you accidentally stood in the bad though, use Healing Surge.

Modified by:
1) Maelstrom Weapon - For each stack of Maelstrom Weapon, Healing Rain will both cost less mana and heal for greater amounts.
2) Conductivity - Causes the duration of Healing Rain to be extended when certain abilities are used; more on this later.
3) Healing Storm - This glyph will cause your healing done to be increased by 20% per Maelstrom Weapon stack.

Patch 5.4 Edit: Healing Rain is no longer affected by the glyph Healing Storm. Due to this change, Healing Rain's effectiveness has been severely nerfed for Enhancement.


Healing Stream Totem
This totem has been a healing staple for us shaman for quite some time now. While it has had a bit of a makeover since Cataclysm, this totem can still put out a good little bit of healing. Currently this totem is a single target smart heal, and prefers to target those in the shaman's group who have the lowest health. The Mists of Pandaria version only lasts for 15 seconds at a time and has a cooldown, but said cooldown is relatively short (30 seconds). If you're in dire need of a second Healing Stream Totem, and fast, you may reset the cooldown if you're specced into Call of the Elements (3 minute cooldown on this talent).

Modified by:
1) Call of the Elements - Resets the 30 second cooldown on this totem. Usable once every 3 minutes.
2) Rushing Streams - Causes your Healing Stream to heal two targets (up from one) for an increased healing amount of 15% per tick.
3) Totemic Persistence - Allows you to have up to two totems per school activated at the same time (Healing Stream + Healing Tide = Whoa totem healing, Batman)


Healing Tide Totem
It's a totem and it's a "major" healing cooldown! As of patch 5.4, Healing Tide Totem is now a baseline ability for all of the shaman specializations, as opposed to being a talent choice prior to this patch. More healing utility for us, huzzah! This bad boy is great for re-stabilizing the raid in a pinch, or even saving your own butt in a soloing situation.

Modified by:
1) Passive talents that only Restoration has which boosts all of their healing, including totems.
2) Haste plateaus, which Enhancement doesn't shoot for.
3) Totemic Persistence - Allows you to have up to two totems per school activated at the same time. (Healing Stream + Healing Tide = Whoa totem healing, Batman)


Ancestral Guidance
This particular talent currently offers us dps shaman types the biggest bang for our talent point...assuming we can swat at things. Ancestral Guidance yields the highest output while we are in our Ascendance form, though please keep in mind that tying the two together may result in a complete waste of Ancestral Guidance, unless there's an increased damage taken and received phase, such as the gas phase on Will of the Emperor normal mode. For soloing purposes however, if you happen to pop AG while in Ascendance, you could very well see yourself go from nearly dead to full very quickly. Stormstrike/Stormblast, Lava Lash, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lighting, the initial impact of shocks (meaning NOT Flame Shock's tick, just the impact when you first cast it), and Fire Nova all essentially become means of healing through this talent for a short duration.

Modified by:
1) The use of dps cooldowns in conjunction with this ability.


Conductivity
This talent has received a major overhaul with patch 5.4. Conductivity now extends the life of our Healing Rain by 4 seconds each time Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Earth Shock, or Stormstrike is cast. The Healing Rain has a maximum duration of 40 seconds. Between this change and the removal of Healing Rain from our Healing Storm glyph, this talent has pretty much become useless for us Enhancement types.


Feral Spirits
That's right, even our wolves heal us! Just us though, they really don't like anyone else. Every time they attack, 150% of the damage they deal heals both them and us. Pretty neat, eh? But that's not all! If you have Glyph of Feral Spirit in, they deal another 40% in healing, which is to say pretty darn potent. Yeah that's right, our wolves aren't just a little damage cooldown that looks all flashy, but they're also a fairly decent self healing cooldown as well. Pretty hard to take us down when we have our wolf pals out!

Modified by:
1) Glyph of Feral Spirit
2) Mastery - The Feral Spirits attack using a spell called Spirit Bite, which deals nature damage. Due to our Enhancement Mastery, the more mastery we have, the stronger our wolves will attack. The stronger their attacks, the more healing we receive.
3) Battlegear of the Witch Doctor (4pc) - Tier 15 (Throne of Thunder) The cooldown of your Feral Spirits is reduced by 8 sec each time Windfury Weapon is triggered.
4) Assurance of Consequence - This is a trinket that comes from the Sha of Pride in Siege of Orgrimmar. Our wolves are one of the cooldowns affected by this trinket.


Glyph of Flame Shock
You will personally be healed by 30% of the damage your Flame Shock does. If you were to spread your Flame Shock via Lava Lash and had multiple Flame Shocks rolling at once, you'll receive healing from those Flame Shocks.

For single target, this glyph isn't all that powerful. However, in situations where you're able to spread your Flame Shock around, it does a decent little bit of healing. I find myself running this glyph often enough (though generally one of the first I switch out if utility calls) because hey, extra passive healing is always nice.



That's everything we have currently. So let's break it down into simple terms, going by what is typically specced for and glyphed:

Personal/Single Target Healing: Healing Surge, Feral Spirits, Healing Stream Totem, Flame Shock (with glyph)
Party/Raid Healing: Chain Heal, Healing Rain (not ideal), Healing Stream Totem, Ancestral Guidance (or Healing Tide Totem)
Healing Glyphs: Feral Spirit, Healing Storm, Flame Shock

Also, don't forget your professions and racials. If you're an herbalist, Lifeblood can help you out in a pinch (plus the extra haste is pretty neat) and if you just so happen to be a Draenei, Gift of the Naaru can restore 20% of your (or a friend's, or Tsulong's) health to you (or your friend, or Tsulong even) over the duration of 15 seconds. Can't beat free healing!


I hope this article has helped you out some, even if it is rather lengthy. Remember, enhancement shamans have a ton of healing utility within our bag of tricks, so there's no need to feel helpless if you're hurting!

Is Enhancement Viable For Raiding?

One question that seems to be commonly asked within class forums pertains to whether or not X class is currently "viable" for the latest raid content. Before we get much further into this post, let us first define what viable means.

Viable: Adjective Capable of working successfully; feasible

This essentially means that to be viable as a raiding spec, said spec would have to be able to be able to compete on whatever chart with its fellow peers within a certain percentage. Let's look at some charts to see how well Blizzard has been doing in regards to balancing the various DPS specializations in our current available raiding formats.

Click on the images to enlarge!

The above images have been taken from the site RaidBots. This site shows us the top 100 parses averaged over the whatever time frame you set it up to show you. Now, please be aware that this site is to be used as a reference, not a bible. Your damage output may vary from what is shown on this site due to either gearing differences, the difficulty you participate in, and not to mention potential player error.

Now, what you're looking at here is the average output of each respective DPS class and spec over the course of the last 60 days for all encounters. Notice how the dark blue squiggly line representing enhancement is smack dab in the middle of the pack of squiggly lines. Let me assure you, this is a very good place to be! For the most part, enhance seems to be within the roughly 10k median range, most often right smack dab in the middle. If you so wish, you may venture over to the site and look how enhance preforms on various encounters. For the most part though, we do indeed preform in an average manner. In some cases we preform better than other DPS classes, some we struggle with, but such as it is with diverse encounters.

What this essentially means is that we're currently not over powered, thus not in the queue for the nerfbat come the next patch, nor are we under preforming to the point where a raid team wouldn't consider taking us to a raid. We will be receiving some minor tweaks come patch 5.2, but these changes shouldn't make or break us, they will simply allow us to swap between out tier 4 and 6 talents to more effectively take on encounters. It also means that we're more than capable of keeping up with the vast majority of our peers on most encounters. Except for those pesky affliction warlocks and arcane mages. We won't really consider them for the moment though.

With all that said, I'd now like to touch on a related subject: how much does viability matter?

This is a rat's nest of a topic, but it is my personal opinion that viability as it were is a rather fluid thing. What I mean by this is that a given class is only as viable as the player behind it and the gear on the character itself. Yes, each class has a maximum potential ceiling that most of us try to strive for. However, unless someone is a robot on a perfect internet connection with all of the available buffs and have the RNG proc luck of the gods, most of us will never see that very top most performance ceiling. It's not that we don't try, it's that we all have our hindrances, be it latency, lack of best in slot gear, or even *gasp* human error.

This is where averages are good to consider. While yes, the above graphs were taken from the top 100 parses, thus represent some pretty fantastic players, they only give us a very broad idea on how each class preforms on average. Some specializations represented are capable of more but are skewed by funky raid comps or lack of representation. Again, this should be viewed as a reference, not a bible. I cannot stress this point enough. The above information needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

The fact of the matter is that unless you're a member of a top 100 guild, the so-called viability of most classes may not matter a whole lot to you since your guild's focus probably isn't aimed at acquiring world firsts, thus you have no real need to know how to stack which classes paired with what to put out the absolute maximum DPS numbers. For the typical WoW player, number crunching down to the last possible percentage isn't necessary. Chances are pretty good that most of you who will read this are in a middle of the road guild, perhaps either fairly casual and just doing your thing or dedicated to the point where you're pushing heroic modes. Chances are also pretty good that the talent within your raid team may vary to a certain degree. That's completely okay. All that means is that the above information shouldn't sway how you play to the degree that it would for the incredibly hardcore players in this game. Should it still be taken into consideration? Perhaps to a small degree, but I think the average player/guild will ultimately find more success in worrying about the people they bring into their raid environment versus worrying about what the top hot classes are for the current patch.

I'll let you in on a little secret: Any well-played class/spec can beat out any so-called overpowered class poorly played. I know this fact first hand.


The TL;DR version of this post is this: Bring the player, not the class/spec. While yes, you should always consider raid composition and loot distribution when you're trying to plan out raids, it ultimately won't matter much if you have a perfect raid comp when half of the players may not be capable preforming up to the group's standards. A decently geared enhancement shaman can very well beat out a similarly geared warlock or mage; it just depends on the capability of the players.

Enhancement is indeed viable. We are represented in higher end guilds. There are enhancers out there who have taken down Heroic Sha of Fear in Terrace of Endless Spring and we are more than capable with keeping up on the damage meters, regardless of the type of PvE content we find ourselves in. We also bring some pretty stellar hybrid healing utility, not to mention personal survivability, to the table. Plus, we're sexy beasts. Why wouldn't you want to play/have a sexy beast on your team?

The End of an Era...Kind of.

Guys, I've done something drastic. I'm officially stepped down from raiding, at least for the moment.

I don't think this fact has truly set in for me yet. Raiding for me has been that thing I've always done, it's what has been the consumer of the bulk of my in-game time since I began playing "seriously" back in the Burning Crusade. While I do enjoy a good reputation grind, the hunt for those elusive rares, and playing dress up with my latest alt, raiding has always been where I've sent the vast majority of my energy. Why on Azeroth would I remove myself from something I love so wholeheartedly, even temporarily?

The answer to this question is rather complex, but the TL; DR version is simply: Burnout.

I've been raiding full tilt for a bit over a year now, much longer if you add in my prior years of raiding. I came back into the raiding scene shortly after the initial nerf to Firelands after a lengthy forced break and haven't had a whole lot of down time since. Mists of Pandaria, while fantastic on so many levels, has proven to be an incredibly overwhelming experience for me. Between the rush to level 90 - which was great fun and one rush that I'm unlikely to repeat - and the reputation grinds and the mad hurry to get geared up, get through this raid, loot dramas, fight this boss, show up every night, oh crap we need to recruit, do up the videos, write some posts, run this, organize that, solo all the things, raid raid raidsmashfaceonkeyboardginger shamanistic raaaaaage...it has kind of all piled up on me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that I'm somewhat masochistic when it comes to this game and all of my projects. I'm everywhere at once, and I have a tendency to take everything upon myself. Is it necessary that I be the keeper of combat logs, maker of pixelated kill videos, manager of the guild's website, and the one who is first to jump up and say "I'll do it!" whenever the guild needs recruitment forum posts? Absolutely not, but I've always enjoyed doing all that because some of those things need to be done anyways, and I like to make it so that my guild may have nice things. There's also absolutely no reason why I should be the only person to have a hand in the Twitterland Raiding site, but I have that terrible habit of taking it all on by myself. Making guides on this blog or videos for Youtube isn't mandatory for enjoyable game play, but I do it anyways because I know that there are a few select folks who enjoy seeing that sort of thing. The things mentioned in this paragraph are all things I highly enjoy. I do not believe that my issues lay within all of my projects, but rather in one aspect of my favorite pastime.

For the past several months, logging on to raid has felt like more of a chore than something I looked forward to. Instead of thinking to myself "Yes! It's raid night!" my thought processes were more along the lines of "Fuck, I have to raid tonight." This shift in the way I thought about my evening activities were brought on by a number of things, things I shan't go into detail at this point in time, but let's just say I'm not very happy with this change.

Needless to say, my negative way of thinking has impacted me on several levels. Where I was hyper aware of what was going on in the raid, I tend to find myself on auto-pilot, even on new encounters where such a thing can be incredibly hazardous to a boss kill. Where I was once able to easily joke and bullshit with my raid mates, I'm finding myself to be grumpy and resentful. Where I was once relaxed, I'm finding myself feeling anxious and often end up with stomach aches and massive tension headaches. Raiding, for as much as I love the thrill of seeing a new boss fall, love pushing myself to perform on the next level, love getting that new weapon upgrade...it just, it doesn't feel right anymore. It feels bad. I don't enjoy having something that I adore so much feel so wrong.

Change is absolutely needed, so it is with a heavy heart and an "aw crap, this sucks" look on my face, I am removing myself from the raiding scene for now. I'm unsure if this will be a permanent change, but it is most certainly one that shall remain for the time being. Whether I'll return with a renewed vengeance in a few weeks, a few months, a few tiers, or a few years, you can bet your butt that I'll come out swinging harder than ever.

So, what now? Why am I bothering to write this post at all? Well for starters, this post is me working through a massive knot that's been building in my belly for quite some time. My thoughts about stepping down have stricken me with quite a bit of internal conflict, and in a way I just needed to get it down in writing. Like most bloggers, I have that need to just get crap off my chest, and I prefer to do it in my own little realm of the internet. This post is also in part to inform my readers that, despite me removing myself from one of my main activities, I do plan on remaining quite active in the game. Saz will not be laying down her weapons anytime soon, but she will definitely be taking a bit of time to hit up the spa and relax her weary muscles.

What can you expect of me in the future? A lot, I hope. It is my deepest wish to get back into the loop with the lovely blogging community, as it feels like I have been neglecting you all for ages. I also hope to start doing more content videos, be it guides, soloing, or random crap I happen to be doing. I have plans that will hopefully breathe new life into the Twitterland Raiding project, and goals for both in game and out of game growth on a personal and social level. As per usual, I plan to take on a crapload of projects. Without raiding on the schedule though, I hope to bring these projects to you all, and the greater WoW community, both more efficiently and with better quality.

As you can see, I have a lot of hopes, a lot of plans. In this apparently post-apocalyptic world I shall be making a point to begin anew. Perhaps not so much anew as bringing about a massive turning point that should hopefully bring about more happiness for at least myself, if not those around me as well. That's the ultimate goal: to create something(s) that not only make me happier, but to also bring some happiness to my fellow internet friends. After all, happiness breeds happiness, and negativity is always sure to be a continuous downward spiral.

Let's all keep on swingin'. Here's to new leaves being turned over, new projects, new horizons, and a soon to be new year.

How To Enhance: Combat Openers and the Cooldown Toolkit

Whatever it is you do, be it raiding, PvP, brawling, or soloing, knowing how and when to use your DPS burst capabilities - regardless of your class - can often mean the difference between a win and a corpse run.

Once upon a time, enhancement was known for its turtle-like damage. Slow, steady, always statically dependable. It didn't have that fancy thing called "burst" and often suffered on certain gimmick fights *coughspinecough* because of this. Those days are no more though. We shaman are now the kings and queens of mean burst, and how to get the most out of this bursting capability is what I'd like to talk about today.

First, let's cover which abilities actually give us our high burst.

Primary
Ascendance - Our big "lolol I WIN" button. This is pretty much our biggest source of burst these days, and the best part is that it can be used at range. Super handy for certain situations, like say for the air phase on Onyxia or the head on Mimiron.
Heroism/Bloodlust - Tasty, tasty haste! Generally this is considered a raid cooldown, but for soloing it can be either an "I WIN" button or can be saved as a panic button.
Stormlash Totem - Oh Stormlash Totem, allow me to sing you a song of my love! While this is a very potent raid cooldown, it is also a humungous personal cooldown, given how it weaves together with Windfury, our special attacks, and our auto attacks.
Fire Elemental Totem - Big Red is now a viable DPS cooldown for us! He slices, he dices! Oh wait...no. He just burns all the things. He'll happily apply Searing Flames stacks for you, making your Lava Lash hit harder, plus he can do okayish AoE, provided he has something to actually hit (he's kind of completely useless on Lei Shi's Hide phase). This guy is a pretty nice bursty CD, so use him often! You can have him out even more often if you have him glyphed, but it's not recommended to do this unless you're a Troll. Even if you're a Troll, you only may want to do this if you're elemental, or maybe even a restoration shaman regardless of race. Maybe.
Feral Spirit - Our beloved pups, how silly you two are! These guys aren't the hardest hitting DPS cooldown in our arsenal, but they are one none the less. They give you some pretty potent passive healing, especially if they're glyphed, so definitely use these guys often.

Optional
Elemental Mastery - This isn't a talent that's typically taken by enhancement shaman, though certainly has some uses in certain situations. I recommend this talent for certain encounters where you need very focused burst, or for those solos that require you to kill the bad thing before your cooldowns run out and it kills you. Times up nicely with your wolves, and if you're an engineer like I am, your Synapse Springs, for those longer boss fights.
Synapse Springs - The glove enhancement for engineers, which may be applied in addition to our usual glove enchant. Synapse Springs are on a 1 minute cooldown, so I personally macro them to my wolves, which are on a 2 minute cooldown. So long as you use your springs as soon as they come off of cooldown, these two things should always line up nicely for you. They may not always be as ideal as a static stat boost, such as an enchanter's ring enchants, but they are awfully nice for kicking out extra burst.
Berserking - This be da Troll's racial, mon! It's a nice little haste buff that can be timed up very well with Ascendance. If you're a Troll, use this. Love this. Own this!
On Use Trinkets - Use trinkets are thus far not as prevalent in MoP through PvE content, though they still do exist. Most of the use trinkets will provide more of a boost as far as burst is concerned in general, and more than likely will be more powerful than your Synapse Springs (assuming you're an engineer). Keep in mind that trinkets and springs do trigger a 20 second cooldown when one or the other is used, so you will not be able to stack them. My advice is to tie in the stronger of the two options in with whatever DPS cooldown lines up the best with that trinket's on-use cooldown, then simply use the other once that 20 seconds of lockout time is up for the other item.

In addition to what is listed above, pre-potting is also a highly encouraged option (not always applicable, depending on the start of a fight). Being able to use two pots within a single encounter is an easy way to get the biggest bang out of your damage.

I'd also mention gear swapping here, but as of the last patch (5.1) Blizzard has officially broken the ability to swap a gear set and keep the buff it a given set provides. The biggest example being: it was a pretty nice DPS increase for both enhancement and elemental shaman to equip the tier 13 restoration 4 piece set, activate Spiritwalker's Grace for the haste bonus it gave (30%), and then to swap back to their normal gear just before a pull. Now when you switch back to your normal gear, you lose the Spiritwalker's Grace haste buff, making the gear swap completely pointless. You may now safely vendor your old restoration set, unless you want it for transmog, and remove your gear swap macros from your macro book.

Alright, now that you know the toolkit, let's put it into practice. Your opener, regardless if you're soloing or simply raiding with your buds, can often mean the difference between beating that enrage timer or going splat. It requires a certain finesse. You often want to put out the highest damage possible off the bat, but if you're in a raiding environment, you want to do so without pulling threat off of your tank(s) as well. You'll have to learn how many seconds you need to count before you can open up on a boss (less if you have a strong, geared tank and/or 2+ misdirects from rogues and hunters going out, more if you are missing these things) on your own; each group is a bit different and each gearing plateau is a beast of its own. Right, so a standard opener for raiding looks something like this:

- 5 seconds before pull: Use Spirit Walk, if you need a gap closer between yourself and a boss.
- 3 seconds before pull: Use potion
- 2 seconds before pull: Pop your Fire Elemental totem.
- 1 second before pull: Pop wolves (this would be your Synapse Springs + Feral Spirit macro, if you're an engineer)
- PULL
- Give the tank a tick or two to hit the boss, doing his/her aggro thang.
- Unleash Elements as you close in on the boss.
- Flame Shock if you're not quite there yet.
- Stormstrike
- Ascendance + Heroism/Lust + Stormlash Totem (Hero/Lust assuming your raid wishes to have it at the beginning)
-  Stormblast (aka Super Stormstrike)
- Lava Lash (you should most certainly have 5 searing stacks up by now; if you don't, check the pulse of your fire elemental)
- Swing into your usual rotation of using SS/LL/UE on CD, weaving in your Flame Shock and Earth Shock in as normal, plus using Lightning Bolt (or Chain Lightning in cleave situations) with 4-5 Maelstrom Stacks up. Use Fire Nova only after you've used Lava Lash to cleave your Flame Shock to multiple targets, and only if you need to spellcleave.

If you're a Troll and/or if you're specced into Elemental Mastery for a given encounter, it may be best to stagger your haste CDs some, especially at higher gear levels, simply because you'll hit that ceiling where your haste is just, well, a waste! If you're not using Hero/Lust off the bat, you can burn these two cooldowns right off the get go, then simply continue to use them with their paired DPS cooldowns later on (wolves with EM, Berserking with Ascendance/Glyphed Fire Elemental Totem). If you ARE Heroing/Lusting off the bat, the use of these other haste CDs can get a little funky. Apply them to the best of your abilities and where they make the most sense for the given encounter. For soloing, especially those shortish fights that are to short for using your cooldowns a second time, but long enough to outlast Hero/Lust, simply pop your secondary haste abilities once Hero/Lust wears off.

Now, the above advice is by no means perfect, but I've been finding that it works very well for me. It puts out some pretty incredibly high opening numbers, while at the same time it *usually* keeps my threat under that of my tanks. If it doesn't, the panicked Wind Sear gets thrown out there, and on occasion I do find myself toggling off my auto attack in a mad hurry. For the most part though, the above has been serving me incredibly well with both raiding and soloing.

H'okay so, we've covered the opening. What about your burst later on in the encounter? Well, this completely depends on the encounter. On a standard Patchwerk like fight, which are quite rare these days, you'd simply use your cooldowns again as they came up. With many encounters, this theory still works fine, but on others you may find that you can't - or shouldn't - always use them all willy nilly. There will be times when you may want to hold off on popping a cooldown lest you get gimped by a boss mechanic, effectively wasting your cooldown (I find that Amber Shaper is great for this; I've learned to hold off on Ascendance especially if Reshape Life is about to go out since he just LOVES to cast it on me if I've just popped Ascendance). Timing is absolutely everything. Until I can get around to dissecting each encounter and get around to writing a guide for them all, I'm afraid you're all on your own with figuring out how you should pop your cooldowns on a given fight. I'm not terribly worried though, you're all smart cookies and are more than capable. I mean, you all chose to play enhancement after all!

As always, if you have any questions about the topic covered here, or any aspect of enhancement for that matter, please do not hesitate to drop a comment here or to contact me through either Twitter or my email (listed under 'Contact' on this blog). I'm always happy to answer questions. I promise I don't bite too hard!

Until next time, keep swinging!

MoP Enhancement Shaman - Need To Know Guide (90)

Yes, this is a nearly identical post from the original Need To Know guide that I did shortly after 5.0.4 dropped. I have however tweaked a few things so now it reflects what you need to know as a level 90 Enhancement Shaman. This guide has been updated to reflect changes that have taken place in patch 5.4.

What's Changed

Stats
- Hit and expertise caps are no longer what they were. You need 7.5% hit and  7.5% expertise, respectively. 7.5% = 2550, or 2210 for those of you who have racial bonuses that grant hit or expertise.
- Haste is no longer completely garbage. At level 90 mastery, haste, and crit are all roughly equal; the stat that is strongest will depend on your personal gear. Haste will increase RPPM procs (legendary cloak, legendary meta gem, certain trinkets) and is the preferred stat when using the talent Primal Elementalist. Haste will also increase the number of ticks done by our healing totems, depending on how much haste one has.
- Mastery in 5.4 is generally the preferred secondary stat, but it may depend on your gear set up. Mastery increases all of the fire, nature, and frost damage we do (which is to say a large majority of our spells) and becomes very strong with AoE situations.
- Critical Strike becomes less of a focus for Enhancement once we've surpassed roughly 20% crit. Once we're around that percentage point, Flurry uptime becomes adequate (making haste worth our time) and everything beyond that is just bonus. Crit, along with excess hit and expertise, tends to be our reforge stat.

Mechanics
 - Searing Flames (x5) no longer build up on a target; instead they stack on us, making target switching less of a pain.
- Buff totems have become auras, thus our clunky totem bar is gone. What totems you have left are now cooldown-type deals, save for the Searing and Magma totems.
- Our Fire Elemental has had his CD reduced to 5 minutes and should reset once an encounter is either completed or a wipe has occured. He now gives us Searing Flames, which makes him not only a viable totem to use, but a rather powerful CD.
- Our Earth Elemental can now be considered to be a minor DPS CD. He should no longer taunt off of someone who is rocking a tank specialization, but he may still try to taunt little adds that haven't been picked up by a tank yet. Keep an eye on him.
- Feral Spirits have lost their control bar. Because of this change, we no longer have their stun ability. The ability they used to grant, called Spirit Walk, is now a separate ability that has a relatively short CD, especially when glyphed.
- Pets such as our Feral Spirits and our Fire/Earth Elemental totems will no longer "snap shot" stats and will adjust to your current procs and stats as they roll out. No more double-dipping on Heroism for your puppies, but no more sitting around for the proc-gods to line up either.

Rotation
Our rotation varies slightly depending upon the talent choices we make. For more information on this, please read the rotation portion of the complete Enhancement guide over on Totemspot.

Spec
For the most part, you'll be adjusting your spec on a per-fight basis. I'm going to suggest talents that you'd use depending on encounter. Please note that specs are no longer of a "set it and forget it" mindset; adjust to your needs accordingly!

Tier 1: Stone Bulwark Totem or Astral Shift
- SBT is a great general use talent. This ability has decent uptime with a relatively short cooldown, so feel free to use it liberally.
- AS is for those moments when you need a large damage reduction cooldown, but only for a very short window of time.

Tier 2: Earthgrab Totem or Windwalk Totem - Both of these talents have utility uses. These are abilities that are often forgot about, but they can be incredibly handy in a large variety of raiding and soloing scenarios.

Tier 3: Call of Elements or Totemic Persistence or Totemic Projection
-  CoE will allow you to use your Capacitor Totem, Earthbind Totem /Earthgrab Totem, Grounding Totem, Healing Stream Totem, Stone Bulwark Totem, Tremor Totem, and Windwalk Totem more often. Great for encounters that require you to use your utility totems more often.
- Totemic Persistence allows you to have up to two totems of the same school up at the same time. This does not include fire totems. Having your Earth Elemental out and still being able to pop a Tremor Totem or Stone Bulwark totem at the same time without despawning your Earth Elemental is a wonderful thing.
- Totemic Projection does have some uses, though as a general rule we don't often need to move a totem to any place besides our feet.

Tier 4: All three talents at level 90 pretty much on par with each other. Each has its use, depending on your situation.
- Elemental Mastery is for situations where you need higher, concentrated burst in a pinch. Also a nice talent for single target encounters where you may have down time in between where you can hit something.
- Ancestral Swiftness is preferred for single target static fights.
- Echo of Elements is great for AoE/cleave encounters, as well as for leveling and soloing

Tier 5:  Ancestral Guidance or Rushing Streams
- Ancestral Guidance is a very strong healing cooldown, so long as you're able to hit something while it is active. This talent can produce some pretty ridiculous healing numbers when tied in with Ascendance, however it's not always possible to have both of these abilities rolling at the same time. AG is the perfect talent for when burst hybrid healing is necessary.
- Rushing Streams causes our Healing Stream Totem to heal for an increased amount of 15% and to hit two targets (instead of just one). This is a very solid choice for general static healing, especially for those still running with haste builds.

Tier 6: All three talents are fairly close to each other, even with the various combinations from tier 4. What you choose to use will rely on a combination of gear, the encounter, and your comfort zone.
- Unleash Fury With mastery back in action in Siege of Orgrimmar, UF has once again become an appealing choice. This ability will buff your personal damage (not that of your Elementals or wolves, sadly), and becomes a very solid choice with the t16 2 set bonus.
- Primal Elementalist is an amazing burst cooldown choice, even though it prefers haste builds over mastery. Even when using a mastery build, PE still can treat you well, depending on the encounter.
- Elemental Blast is a strong talent choice, though it does complicate the Enhancement rotation some. If you're unfamiliar with the Enhancement priority rotation, or are working on a fight that has a lot of high movement, this may not be the best choice. Complications aside, it is very viable, as it will buff your pets and all of your abilities for a short amount of time.

Major Glyphs
- Flame Shock causes this ability to heal for 50% of the damage it does.
- Healing Storm increases any of your direct healing done. This is to say that it makes Healing Surge and Chain Heal stronger by 20% for each stack of Maelstrom Weapon you have. Fairly potent and pretty much a necessity for soloing.
- Feral Spirits increases the healing done to you by your wolves or raptors (if you have the Spirit Raptors cosmetic glyph) by 40%. Excellent for extra passive healing when they're up, also very helpful for leveling/soloing.
- Lightning Shield is a glyph that has some niche uses. The major downside to this glyph is that it is reactive, instead of proactive. If you're not receiving hits within a rapid succession (which in a raiding environment it's pretty rare that you will be) the proc of this glyph is pretty much a waste, as it has a rather short duration for the 10% reduced damage. I've found that this glyph is absolutely fantastic though for soloing.
- Fire Elemental Totem can be used in certain situations, though its use often results in a DPS loss. Times to use this glyph include short windows of increased damage where this glyph will allow said windows to line up with your Fire Elemental cooldown, or fights that last a certain duration and allow you to stack other cooldowns with your Fire Elemental.

Minor Glyphs
- There is only one minor glyph that has a non-cosmetic function: Lava Lash. This glyph is necessary in those situations where you don't want to break CC via spreading your Flame Shocks around, or if a boss fight requires you to control your cleave. It's just a "per basis" sort of glyph, like many of the majors.
- All other minor glyphs are purely for fun. However, I find that Spirit Wolf can be pretty handy to have around.

Utility Totems
- Stormlash Totem is a wicked little thing that buffs the raid for 10 seconds, causing them to pump out some extra nature damage. Naturally (har har) this gets slightly buffed through our own mastery. Sadly it's on a five minute cooldown and isn't reset through Call of Elements. Also, does not stack with other Stormlash Totems.
- Healing Steam Totem no longer works like the old, static HST. This one is a single target SMART heal, which will always try to choose the target with the lowest health. Can have its timer reset by the talent Call of Elements. May also be improved through the talent Rushing Streams.
- Healing Tide Totem is no longer a talent, but a cooldown that is baseline for shaman of all specializations. Great AoE healing utility.
- Capacitor Totem, Earthbind Totem /Earthgrab Totem, Grounding Totem, Healing Stream Totem, Stone Bulwark Totem, Tremor Totem, and Windwalk Totem are all great minor utility totems. Remember them, use them, love them.

If you wish to read more in detail about each of the spells, glyphs, and various other Enhancement-related MoPish things, please take a look at the Enhancement Guide for Mists of Pandaria, which can be found over on TotemSpot. If you're looking for some macro tips, check out my Enhancement Macro post, and for all things totems, there's my Pandaria Totem guide at your service.

How To Enhance: Heroic Spine of Deathwing & Heroic Madness of Deathwing

We are now in our eighth month in being saddled with Dragon Soul. The 30% buff has been presented to us, allowing some of us to burn even faster through this long-lived raid, and giving others a chance to finally take down what is undoubtedly the two most painful and unsatisfactory end game boss encounters.

Let me be incredibly blunt: the heroic modes of Spine of Deathwing and Madness of Deathwing are NOT the most friendly boss encounters for an enhancement shaman. With the nerfs Spine has become a little more forgiving for us, but the fast paced theme (for a DPSer anyways) of Madness leaves our numbers...well, it's been leaving me rather disappointed personally.

Heroic Spine of Deathwing



As I've said, Spine is not really a fight for enhancement. Our ability to pump out high burst damage on command is dismal. The DPS trinket recommended to use for this fight, the Kiroptyric Sigil, has a base stat of haste (which is complete and utter garbage until MoP). Oh, and good ol' Derpy McDerp Searing Totem would much rather wail away at anything BUT the exposed tendons. His preference target seems to almost always be the Corruptions.

Yeah, not an ideal fight for us.

Now the video above is from a restoration shaman's point of view in the fight. Why? Because of one major thing: the group that I run with has a less than ideal raid composition. There are essentially two basic builds you can go with this fight: A) 1 tank, 2 heal or B) 2 tank, 3 heal. To run set up A your group's tendon burst damage needs to be deliciously high. This means that you have yourself at least one, if not two, sub rogues (in a 10 man), and an arcane mage. Other classes such as warriors and feral kitties are also capable of some pretty fantastic burst tendon damage. We don't have this with my group. Adding myself and an offspec dps warrior unfortunately does not burn the extra 30-40% of the health left on the tendon of our usual burn phases, thus we are stuck with the harried B strategy.

Yeah, Spine is still the one fight that I'm stuck swing healing on. Healing with an agility flask and food buff ftw.

There's not a lot we can do to up our performance with our spec's current dismal performance on a burst fight like this, but there are a few things that can help maximize our potential - not to mention survivability - on this incredibly frustrating encounter.

Spec Changes:
None necessary

Glyph Changes:
Keep your standard Prime Glyphs. (Lava Lash, Stormstrike, Windfury)
Keep your semi-standard Major Glyphs (Lightning Shield, Ghost Wolf, Stoneclaw) If no one is putting out a fire resist aura of sorts, swap out Ghost Wolf for the Healing Stream glyph.

Totem Changes:
None, but you'll definitely want to be twisting in Stoneclaw totem throughout this fight.

Damage
1) Get yourself a Kiroptyric Sigil if you haven't already. Reforge the haste into mastery. You shouldn't be needing to reforge that haste into anything else if you're using the other, much more beneficial trinkets.

2) Macro the Sigil in with your puppies. I'm no macro queen, but the following is incredibly simple and works just fine.

/use Kiroptyric Sigil
/cast Feral Spirit

To get really fancy, you can also add in a target + pet attack command in there:

/tar Burning Tendon
/use Kiroptyric Sigil
/cast Feral Spirit
/petattack [target=playertarget]

Again, I'm no macro queen, so if you have suggestions on how to clean up a macro such as this, I'm all ears.

3) If you're an engineer like I am, and have a tenancy to macro your gloves to your wolves, be sure to not use that macro for the tendons. Why? The Sigil trinket and your gloves will set each other on a short cooldown. The Sigil's agility bonus is much greater than the one our gloves give us. For this fight, tie the trinket to your wolves and use your gloves as soon as they're off cd, assuming the tendon is still up. Otherwise you can save your gloves for doing a bit of damage on the amalgamation or while you're taking care of bloods.

4) Get yourself some decent weapons. This is the one fight where a pair of heroic Morningstar of Heroic Wills would possibly be better than regular version of a pair of No'Kaleds. Why would they be better? Well, you have a gem socket for more agility, plus the heroic Morningstars have more raw weapon damage than the regular NKs, plus you can also pick one of the rather crappy secondary stats on the Morningstar (probably the extra expertise) and reforge it into more mastery. The proc rates on the NKs, while delicious for any other encounter, become an unreliable factor for this fight; better to go with consistent raw damage than to rely on a proc.

Heroic Morningstar *might* also be a touch better than heroic No'Kaleds for this fight just because, again, you can net yourself a little more agility through the gem sockets plus you can still reforge into a bit more mastery. However, you do lose out on some raw weapon damage. It's kind of a tight call and I unfortunately do not have raw SIM data in front of me to confirm which would be better for this fight. Personally I'd just stick with my heroic NKs simply because I don't want to gem/enchant my heroic Morningstars. Yes, I'm that lazy/cheap. No I don't think I'll get any legitimate use out of the Morningstars anytime soon. /hangs head

5) As with the choice of going with the consistent damage of a pair of Morningstars as weapons, you want to try and avoid proc-based trinkets for this fight. If you have, say, either a combination of Wrath of Unchaining and either Vial of Shadows (if you're so lucky!) or a Matrix Restabilizer, you'll want to trade out either the Vial or Matrix for your Sigil trinket. Stacking trinkets such as WoU have an incredibly fast ramp up time, so you shouldn't need to worry about anything there. Take out the RNG trinkets, give yourself a little more control over your damage.

Survivability
There are a few difficult moments that your healers must deal with on this encounter.

1) Super Heated Nucleus; happens just before Nuclear Blast
2) Rolls
3) Searing Plasma + any damage you may be taking

My suggestion is to use a glyphed Stoneclaw totem for the amalgamation pulses that happen just before the Nuclear Blast. Use Shamanistic Rage during the rolls. Use any racial survivability/healing cooldowns you may have if your health is getting sketchy while you have the Searing Plasma debuff. If you feel the need to use your survival cooldowns elsewhere, go for it. Use them liberally. If you're dpsing in a 2 tank, 3 heal composition, your healers will thank you for whatever little help you can give them in the damage reduction department. Even with gear and with this being incredibly nerfed, Spine can be a healing intensive fight towards the end of the third plate, especially if you're having to do double lifts (aka exposing the tendon twice) on each plate.

Loot
Wrath of Unchaining - One of our two best in slot trinkets. Get this asap! (May your roll hacks be with you, if you run with a crapton of agility users like I do.)

Overall, this is an incredibly repetitive and boring fight. There is a ton of waiting around, then a mad rush to maximize dps the exposed tendon in a short span of time, then a ton of more waiting. Bring your sharpest weapons, a load of patience, and for the love of all things cuddly, teach your dogs not to randomly dive after a corruption. If you can do those things, you'll be well on your way to experiencing Deathwing's Madness.


Heroic Madness of Deathwing



Ahhhh madness, how frustrating you are. Once you manage to sweat and swear your way through his spine, you now get to deal with what is one of the most anticlimactic encounters you will ever face. Much like Spine, Madness is one of those fights that takes you 10 minutes of waiting around before the real hard parts of the encounter begins. Seriously, this fight is a cake walk until you hit the fourth platform. The forth platform and the head phase are the only really difficult parts of this fight, so you must do what you can to survive until those parts.

Kiss your sanity goodbye, my shaman friends.

Alright, this fight isn't all doom and gloom. Madness is by and large easier on us than Spine is, but it's still a fight that can leave you wanting to pull your hair out at the end of the day. Let's go through a few things that can help to ease yourself away from premature balding from scalpel abuse, shall we?

Spec Changes:
None necessary

Glyph Changes:
Keep your standard Prime Glyphs. (Lava Lash, Stormstrike, Windfury)
Keep your semi-standard Major Glyphs (Lightning Shield, Ghost Wolf, Stoneclaw) If no one is putting out a fire resist aura of sorts, swap out Ghost Wolf for the Healing Stream glyph.

Totem Changes:
Swapping to Magma totem on this fight may be beneficial if you can get it down just before the bloods spawn. If they've already spawned, don't bother wasting the extra GCD. If you see the ground doing it's bubbly thing and you can get over to it before the bloods become target-able, drop a Magma totem on their heads!

Twisting in Stoneclaw totem during heavy moments of damage is definitely recommended.

If your group's composition is a bit light on slows (hunter's ice patch traps, boomkin's mushrooms, DK's chilblains, etc) you'll want to be twisting in Earthbind totem to slow the bloods during the head phase of this encounter.

The Encounter
The  differences between normal and heroic mode are few, but the few differences that are there can be rather deadly. Most groups now 1 tank, 2 heal this fight, which means that a dps must soak impales so that the tank may have his or her cooldowns up at key points, and that healing during certain situations can get rather tight.

If you watch the video closely, I'm often running away from the big bad floppy tentacly thing that spawns soon after the raid engages each new claw/wing tentacle. Why am I running? Because as an enhancement shaman I cannot eat an impale and survive, even with Shamanistic Rage and Stoneclaw totem up. No way, no how, I'm gonna die if I eat that impale. With my raid, we have a hunter soak the first impale of platforms 1-3, and then we have other dps help soak both impales of platform 3. During this time all melee must vacate the melee range of the Mutated Corruption; this tentacle will focus the impale on the person in melee range with the highest threat. Guess what, because of Misdirect a hunter will probably have much less threat than any melee. The same theory applies if you're using a shadow priest to soak. Having a rogue soak an impale is kind of a toss up, but because of Tricks of the Trade, chances are again that they will have less threat than you do as an enhancement shaman.

General rule of thumb: if a dps is soaking the impale, GTFO.

Another difference on heroic is that a random player will be chosen to get a Corrupting Parasite, which will explode when it drops off of the person (it doesn't hurt the person it's on when it drops off). The general rule with this little ball of squiggly death is to drop it in the Time Zone (while you still have it), near the arm/wing tentacle, but not in the tentacle. On the green platform, you can just leave it be and Dream through the damage. If you drop one off of yourself on any other platform though, it is imperative that it gets damaged to at least 30% health. The rule we run with is that if you drop it and you're not a healer, you help damage it (I kind of forgot to on one of my parasites in the video...whoops), otherwise ranged should be able to simply take care of it.

Bolt is another thing that the melee in our group rarely take care of, but I find often that I must run out of melee range of the Mutated Corruption anyways, since the second impale of any platform and the bolt are often timed pretty close together. More often than not I hang around and take out the bolt, unless we're able to quickly kill off the MC so we can completely negate the second impale from going off all together.

Regenerative Bloods and Spellweave procs = the money dps increasers of this fight. Funny enough, not only do the bloods bloat the dps meters, but the Spellweave procs are a vital component to this fight. Ideally the bloods should be brought over to the wing/claw and/or the parasite so that the spell cleaves can do their work. With Spellweave, all of the things should die incredibly quickly. Unfortunately for us enhancers, quickly is not our thing. Our window of time to get out our AoE is incredibly slim, especially with the 30% nerfs in place. Your best bet is to watch your timers, run over to the spawn point of the bloods, drop Magma Totem, Flame Shock the first blood that shows its ugly bubbly head, then Lava Lash + Fire Nova as soon as there's more than four of them out. Unless your raid's AoE is really slow, chances are you probably won't have time to get an Unleash Elements off before a Fire Nova (aka creating a 'Super Nova' for yourself), but if you can manage to squeeze in another GCD before everything dies, go for it.

Head phase: if you've gotten this far and the raid hasn't had to use any battle rezzes yet, you're doing great! Or even if you have, and you've made it this far, you're still doing pretty damn well. /highfive!

This final "phase" is yet another hurry up and wait type deal. You will go from waiting around for certain adds to spawn, to dpsing a bunch of bloods down as quickly as you can mash your buttons, to quite possibly waiting around again to push Deathwing down another 5% health.

Alright, so here's the deal with Deathwing's noggin.

Elementium Fragments will pop out of the ground, just like on LFR/reg mode. If you can Flame Shock cleave them + Fire Nova them, go for it! So long as you won't end up spell cleaving DW too much that is. You don't want to accidentally push him down past 15%/10%/5% before your group is ready to handle the bloods. These fragments will occasionally cast Shrapnel on a random person. If that person is you, simply hit the big green Dream button that pops up. Have another Shrapnel cast on you, but your Dream button is on cooldown? Shamanistic Rage + Stoneclaw totem, plus give your healers a heads up so they can top you off before you get smashed in the face. If you don't do these things, chances are pretty good that you'll end up being dragon soup.

Shortly after the Fragments spawn, two big dudes called Elementium Terrors will pop up, just like they do in LFR and regular modes. Like everything else, these guys can be spellweaved. However, ideally your raid will want to keep one of these guys up, despite their stacking debuff on the tank. Why? Because when the bloods DO spawn, the tank can move the Terror from the Time Zone (where they should be tanked) over to the bloods. You cleave off of the Terror into the bloods, which is much more ideal than getting a Flame Shock on a blood, only to die stupidly quickly from the AoE, and you missing out on hitting a Lava Lash, thus missing out on Nova AoE. Chances are pretty good though that your Terrors will just die very quickly, like they do in my run, and you'll have to suck it up and somehow deal with less than ideal AoE situations.

/grumbles about enhancement AoE on nerfed content

This is what I generally do when bloods spawn. See the bubbling on the ground, Ghost Wolf on over as quickly as possible, drop a Magma totem. You'd also drop an Earthbind totem here, or on another designated spot if your group is short on traps/slows. I *try* to Stormstrike the first one out, just to get some damage rolling, but most often I find myself scrambling to get a Flame Shock on a middle blood (these suckers go down FAST if your group is on the ball with AoE, as they should be) and spreading as soon as that global cooldown swings around. Nova, Chain Lightning, and Stormstrike as they come up.

My raid tends to do a bit push between 10% and 5%, with spawning the blood packs back to back. This is when I use my wolves and Heroism (Bloodlust for you Horde folk) gets popped. The extra Chain Lightnings from our tier 13 four piece bonus is kinda handy here. Our wolves with hero rolling pop Maelstrom procs like it's their job. Utilize that as much as possible when you're unable to Nova.

This fight is all about rinsing, repeating, and being aware of health percentages on Deathwing's various extremities. It's all about control and being on the ball with your AoE. If you and your raid team can master that, this fight is an easy-ish win in the bag.

Loot
No'Kaled - Hands down, our best in slot weapons for the expansion. Combat rogues will want one of these bad boys for their main hand for some fights, but these are pretty much custom tailored to suit an enhancement shaman. If a rogue tries to take one of these over you, BITE THEM. Same goes for DKs. Tell them to bugger off, because these things are not only super sexy base stat and raw weapon damage wise, but two of their three procs scale off our mastery, and these buggers proc often. So very, very sexy for us.


So there you have it ladies and gents. Apologies about not getting all of the segments of this guide out in a timely fashion, but I certainly hope that it helps at least a few of you out. As always, if you feel that I need to make a correction, or you have a question/comment/concern, please do not hesitate to leave a message as a response to this post, or to contact me directly through either my email address listed on this site or Twitter.

Good luck guys and may the RNG gods be with you!

How To Enhance: Heroic Ultraxion & Heroic Warmaster Blackhorn

You've done it! You and your raid team have hacked and slashed your way through the first four bosses in Dragon Soul on heroic. Well, chances are pretty good you've also been knocking out Ultraxion on heroic long before you all managed to down heroic Zon'ozz and perhaps even heroic Yor'sahj, but there's still a nifty trick or two you can learn as an enhancement shaman for that rather dull fight.



The video above was one of the first I took in Dragon Soul. I can't recall if it was taken when the instance was still at full strength, or if the 5% nerf had already taken hold. Regardless, one thing was very clear: it was incredibly difficult for an enhancement shaman to soak an Hour of Twilight. By that I mean it was damn near impossible unless you were 100% topped off, had Shamanistic Rage up, Stoneclaw Totem up, had an external healing cooldown rolling on you, possibly a warrior's Rallying Cry out, and if the stars aligned just so, you might have lived. It was just easier to be a sacrificial lamb and to ankh back up if your 10 man raid team was really that hard pressed for soakers.

These days Ultraxion is much easier to deal with on heroic mode. Guess what? Having an enhancement shaman soaking an Hour of Twilight is no longer such a song and dance, and is very easy to deal with. As of right now, I have about 150k health unbuffed as enhance. Shamanistic Rage + glyphed Stoneclaw totem + a warrior's Rallying Cry = a successful soak. It's not often that I have to soak an Hour of Twilight, but if I must I generally take the third Hour of Twilight (these days I believe we only get about four Hour of Twilights total, maaaybe five tops if we lose someone to a button failure). It can still be a bit dicey, especially since my team single heals the encounter with a druid, but it is rather doable.

Spec Changes:
None necessary

Glyph Changes:
Keep your standard Prime Glyphs. (Lava Lash, Stormstrike, Windfury)
Keep your semi-standard Major Glyphs (Lightning Shield, Ghost Wolf, Stoneclaw) 

Totem Changes:
Run your usual set up, just twist in a Stoneclaw if you need to soak an Hour of Twilight or if damage gets a bit heavy at the end (this should only happen if dps is low for some reason).

The Encounter:
Perform your optimal rotation. Know your latency/reaction times when dealing with Hour of Twilight. For me, I have a latency of 22ms. This allows me to exit the Twilight Realm at about .9 seconds left on the castbar (careful, that bugger is quick on heroic!) and still be able to comfortably get into the safe realm, which will allow me to either get a few more white swings in, or even possibly an extra special ability. However if your latency is higher, you'll obviously not want to cut it nearly as close as I do. This fight is all about maximizing your dps; misjudging your game's reaction time can turn you into a dead dps. A dead dps does no dps, so know when you can safely click that button!

Loot:
Bracers of Looming Darkness - Our BiS bracers. The drop rate on these buggers is pretty low, so snatch them up when you can!

Chest of the Corrupted Protector - Turn this token in for our BiS chest piece, Spiritwalker's Cuirass.

Morningstar of Heroic Will - There has been a ton of theory crafting debate over this mace vs No'Kaled. Is a heroic MoHW better than a heroic N'K? Which weapons should I use in which hand? Personally, I preferred my normal No'Kaleds and their procs (which are boosted by our mastery bonuses) over trying to reforge and balance out the craptastic secondary stats of the Morningstars. However, this mace does have it's place: heroic Spine of Deathwing. During this encounter you want to maximize your burst potential, which means to minimize the RNG of procs. A pair of these maces could potentially help you out with that. Otherwise, this mace is complete garbage for us. Potentially better than the LFR No'Kaleds due to pure weapon damage and agility increases, but ultimately you'll want to run a sim to see which weapon(s) is better for your personal set up.

Seal of Primordial Shadow - A ring that has a chance to drop off of Morchok, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Hagara, Ultraxion, and Warmaster Blackhorn. Best in slot item.

Vial of Shadows - A trinket that has a chance to drop off of Morchok, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Hagara, Ultraxion, and Warmaster Blackhorn. Best in slot item, though heroic Matrix Restabilizer is a contender for this trinket slot. Better for your feral dps/rogues/hunters, but still a sexy trinket for us. If you have a Matrix, consider passing the Vial off to those other classes until they all have it.



Taking on Warmaster Blackhorn as a DPS is...special. As a ranged you DoT all the things, as a melee you spend more time chasing mobs than you do damaging them it seems. Hang on to your breeches kids, it's gonna be a bumpy air ride.

Spec Changes:
None necessary

Glyph Changes:
Keep your standard Prime Glyphs. (Lava Lash, Stormstrike, Windfury)
Keep your semi-standard Major Glyphs (Lightning Shield, Ghost Wolf, Stoneclaw)

Totem Changes:
Run your usual set up. Pop a Stoneclaw when soaking Twilight Onslaught to help your healers out a little, and also when damage gets heavy towards the end of Blackhorn's life.

The Encounter:
Dealing with the melee adds - Ideally, you want to be on the melee adds. Dancing out of the way of their charges can be an absolute pain, but if your tanks keep them together, you can "cleave" them. Flame Shock, Lava Lash, Nova, and Chain Lightning these two buggers down asap. Be mindful that these guys do have a cleave, and that their cleave at the end of their charge is particularly brutal. Never be anywhere near their red charge line if you can help it, because it hurts pretty damn bad on heroic, and will most likely kill you.

Drakes - If you have to be on drake duty, you can get behind them and be able to hit them with specials without hopping around like an idiot. However, this sweet spot is right on the edge of the ship, right behind their tails. Be careful when positioning yourself! I may or may not have accidentally fallen off of the side of the ship with my feral druid while trying to pull off this maneuver. This isn't ICC's ship folks. If you fall, you be dead.

Sappers - I tend to pop my wolves on the first set of melee adds so that they're up when we need a sapper stun during the third Onslaught (often the damn thing is running through a crapload of fire, and depending on the raid composition for the evening we might not have our priest soaking that Onslaught...pop wolves, target the active sapper after he's done vanishing, hit Bash on your pet bar and let your puppies stun/chew on him while you and your raid soak Onslaught or dance through fire). Sappers will go down fast, provided your DPS are switching to these buggers fast enough. Generally I Unleash Elements on them until they get in range, then choose my shock accordingly: if there's no slow on him, Frost Shock; if he's slowed and no where near the door and dying kinda slow, Flame Shock; if he's close to the door, Earth Shock. *Generally* by the time I've UE'd, Stormstriked, and Shocked them, they're dead. Throw instant Lightning Bolts into a sapper's face if you've got them, naturally. If a sapper gets into the door of the ship and doesn't die nearly instantly as he reaches that point, he will detonate. If you've chased after him and he detonates in your face, you will die. At least you would have died trying to do your job.

Dealing with Twilight Barrages - On heroic your team wants to be soaking as many Twilight Barrages as possible. Yes, even with the nerf it is extremely helpful to soak as many of these things as possible. Ideally you always want to soak these with one other person, especially if you already have a stack of the Twilight Barrage debuff. You can however soak ONE of these barrages solo - use Shamanistic Rage to live through it though. No rage, pretty good chances of no living. Keep your SR ready for that oshi...moment when you realize that your soaking partner or other melee buddies won't reach you in time.

Deck Fire - This mechanic is kind of a pain in the butt to deal with on heroic. More often than not Deck Fire will bug out, both taking its dear old time being extinguished by our flying gnome friends, or it will continue to spread during phase two, making the encounter nearly impossible to deal with. During phase one, avoid it to the best of your abilities. If you must run after a sapper, or run to an Onslaught, Ghost Wolf your way through it as quickly as possible. Don't do this of course if your health is low, watch out for any possible charge lines (which is difficult, as the fire and the charge lines are nearly the same color), and be wary of any Twilight Barrage marks down. A combination of any of these things and the fire will more than likely kill you, even with the nerf, if you are not careful. If the fire bugs out and lasts through phase two, just do your best to dodge around under Goriona's tail and make sure not to get hit by Blackhorn's shockwave somehow. It gets tricky, but can be done.

Warmaster Blackhorn - When he first becomes active, feel free to whack away on him for a little while. Do not however get his health to drop too low before killing Goriona. If you do, he'll start sucking the health from her. If this happens, "the health drain inflicts damage equal to 20% of Goriona's remaining health, and heals Blackhorn accordingly" according to Wowhead. Translation: damage Blackhorn too much, and bad bad things will happen.

Goriona - As soon as she comes down, give the tanks a moment to pick her up and position her next to Blackhorn. Once this is done, take down that dragon! She doesn't have a tail swipe, but I do believe she has a typical dragon melee cleave. It's her breath however that you absolutely want to avoid. If she casts Consuming Shroud on someone near you, Shamanistic Rage to help lower the damage to yourself. If your team is AoE healing the group and everyone's receiving heals through this mechanic, it shouldn't hurt all that much, it's just merely annoying.

Blackhorn - Once Goriona lifts off (and hopefully she does this properly and doesn't stay hovering on the ships deck, aka bugged out) Blackhorn is exactly the same for us as on normal mode. He has more health, his roars hit harder, and his shockwaves hurt a hell of a lot more. Actually, pre-nerfs the shockwaves would one shot you. This isn't so much the case anymore if you're topped off, though you should be avoiding shockwaves at all costs regardless. This shouldn't be all that difficult to achieve as a melee, as the coned area of which we need to step out of is rather small. Shamanistic Rage, healing/damage reduction racials, and Stoneclaw Totem before a roar is very helpful here for your healers, especially as the boss's health dwindles.

TL;DR
1) Cleave the things
2) Soak the things
3) Stop the things from going into the ship and going boom
4) Don't eat a charge
5) Stay out of fire; beware of bugs
6) Stay out of purple
7) DPS Blackhorn down, but not too much or you will die
8) Nuke Goriona; beware of bugs
9) Nuke Blackhorn
10) Collect purples

Loot
Crown of the Corrupted Protector - The token for our BiS helm item. Turn this in for the Spiritwalker's Helmet.

Belt of the Beloved Companion - Despite its crappy secondary stats, this is our BiS belt.

Starcatcher Compass - This is NOT an item for enhancement shaman. You are a bad, bad shaman if you use this item, especially if you're pairing it with Matrix Restabilizer (if this trinket procs, and Matrix decides to proc while the buff from SC is on, guess what? You get a haste proc instead of your beloved mastery proc.). Unless your trinkets are for some reason absolute garbage, don't bother with this trinket. Yes, the agility on this is nice, but the proc is useless. LFR/regular Vial of Shadows, regular Matrix, and any of the versions of Wrath of Unchaining are all vastly superior to this trinket. Leave this one to the ferals, rogues, and/or hunters if they want this trinket for some reason.

Seal of Primordial Shadow - A ring that has a chance to drop off of Morchok, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Hagara, Ultraxion, and Warmaster Blackhorn. Best in slot item.

Vial of Shadows - A trinket that has a chance to drop off of Morchok, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Hagara, Ultraxion, and Warmaster Blackhorn. Best in slot item, though heroic Matrix Restabilizer is a contender for this trinket slot. Better for your feral dps/rogues/hunters, but still a sexy trinket for us. If you have a Matrix, consider passing the Vial off to those other classes until they all have it.


There you have it folks. As always, if you feel that a correction must be made or if you have a question about any of these encounters, please feel free to comment! Good luck, have fun, and may you loot rolls be strong.