Reflections From The Pond

Posts Tagged ‘shaman’

Dear Blizzard,

This year, I have been a very good big girl.

I have not used cheats or exploits (well, not after they were banned at least), I have patiently endured the lag and server crashes inflicted upon me and I have sometimes helped my guildies doing the daily random dungeon or the odd group quests, even if it meant having to fly across an entire continent to do so.

And I always say thank you, which is really nice and thus I deserve lots of presents in Cataclysm this year!

So, for Cataclysm I want the following:

1. More damaging totems

The Magma and Searing totem are lovely and I use them whenever possible, but what about my other schools of magic?

I want a Snowball totem pelting the enemy with icy snowballs, I want a Rubble totem doing the same with rocks, I want a Water Hose totem drenching them and a Wind funnel blowing them away.

2. More abilities linked to totems

The Fire Nova is a wonderful ability and I would like to see more of that.

I want to be able to emit a Healing Stream Nova from any Water totem for those emergency heals and why not get rid of the Mana Tide totem for a Mana Tide to be used on any water totem, I want a Blizzard Nova causing a localized snow storm, I want an Avalanche crushing my enemies and burying them under a shitload of rubble, I want a Twister lifting those opposing me high up in the air in a whirlwind of air, I want a Flood Nova of biblical proportions washing the earth clean of any filthy scum that stands in my way.

3. Totem Grenades

While I absolutely love my cool space totems, my little helpers and guardians, and pop them whenever and wherever I can, I would also absolutely love to be able to throw them like a grenade and place them exactly where I want them.

Imagine a Fire totem lobbed right into the midst of the enemy with a Nova going off there, imagine a Healing Stream totem landing in the melee with a Heal Nova pulling them back from certain death, imagine that Avalanche blocking the enemies from escaping from or coming closer to me and my fellow adventurers.

4. More elementals

I love and cherish my Earth elemental and my Fire too, but it should not be any harder summoning a Water or an Air elemental, right? The water elemental could conjure up geysers and the air elemental could conjure up a lightning storm!

5. Ghost Wolf to be an instant cast and usable indoors

In my everyday life I am constantly communicating with the spirits, be I outdoors or indoors. Mere walls do not hinder me seeing into the world of the spirits and should thus not hinder me entering it.

Oh, and make it instant cast while you are at it, when I enter the spirit world I do in instantaneously, like stepping through a doorway. I do not need to knock on the door and ask permission to enter.

6. Ghost Eagle

I want to be able to fly!

My Ghost Wolf form is for travelling and only travelling and surely there are eagles in the spirit world too? I can totally see myself soaring over the world in the guise of a spirit eagle.

I know you have been busy and I know you have already started to gift-wrap the Cataclysm pressies, but I’d be really happy if you would consider this wish-list of mine.

Anyway, I hope you like the milk and cookies I left out for you.

Love,

Larúe

PS: Please say hi to Mrs Blizzard.

A long time ago, the Frostwolf clan of orcs were exiled to a hidden valley deep in the heart of the Alterac Mountains by Gul’dan, the most powerful warlock ever to exist and the real leader of the Horde for a long time, for refusing to embrace the curse of Bloodlust by drinking the blood of Mannoroth the destructor.

Most of the other orc clans drank and were corrupted, becoming part of the Burning Legion, the vast army of various corrupted races that seek to scour the world of all life and undo the work of the Titans. The Burning Legion has tried to invade and destroy Azeroth a number of times, but have always been defeated.

With hindsight, refusing to drink was a smart move by the Frostwolf clan and its leader Durotan.

Many centuries later, when Thrall reunited all the orc clans, the Frostwolves under the leadership of the shaman Drek’Thar chose to remain in the valley.

In recent years, the a dwarven expedition protected by a guard under command of General Vanndar Stormpike of the Stormpike Clan, a dwarven clan who also live in the Alterac Mountains, have entered the valley and set up residence in the north part to mine for natural resources and search for ancient titan relics.

Despite the dwarves peaceful intent, this has sparked an intense conflict with the territorial Frostwolves, who have woved to drive the intruders from their land.

As I was writing my last post, the one about my HealBot setup, I decided to get me some nice screenshots and double check all my settings by getting some live action. So I took my shaman and entered Alterac Valley, 40 man raid in the snowy mountains.

Was the first time for her in AV apparently, since she discovered a whole lot of places in the usual Galvangar-Drek zerg.

I counted on my preoccupation with testing my healing addon and screenshotting being less noticeable in a 40 man setting than in a 10 or 15.

What I had not counted on was how much fun I would find bg’ing! Or rather, that I would re-discover the fun of bg’ing!

It was so exciting, stopping in the Field of Strife and throw heals on those fighting there until they were at full health again and killed the hordes.

Or running in dropping the tremor totem at Galv or Drek to counter any horde there trying to fear us out, finding who was tanking Galv and throwing Earth Shield and Riptide on her/him and then Chain Heal away.

Or capping a tower and staying in it to defend, my totems giving a cosy tea-lighty feeling in the cramped top room, and when the hordes came to assault actually manage to keep me and the few other heroic defenders alive until the tower was ours and started burning.

The bg’s I found most fun were the ones that were not a straight zerg, but rather when you actually had to do some real pvp.

The feeling of seeing someone close to death being at full health in a matter of seconds despite their being beaten on by nasty hordes is wonderful, and it’s amazing how long it takes sometimes before opposing players realise that the reason the alliance noobs are not dying is because there is a shaman healing them up all the time. And even when they do realise it, the survivability of a mail-clad, shield-wearing shaman cleansing posions and diseases and throwing heals and totems around is actually rather good, way better than I had expected :-)

There was one bg in particular, one that started with us, the Alliance, having less than five groups in the raid when the portcullis opened and the battle commenced. The bg semmed pretty ordinary though, Galv went down, so did Iceblood and Tower Point, and I stopped at the Frostwolf Graveyard to help defend it, and when it was taken and firmly ours I rode on towards Drek.

But there was a lot of Horde at Frostwolf Keep, and they killed us all off! And they had attacked the Frostwolf graveyard so we all respawned at Dun Baldar!

And then the epic fight started – the Horde had advanced and we fought them on the road just before the pass towards Dun Baldar, and they were sneaking up from under the bridge as well. They pressed on, slowly advancing on us and attacking grave yards, mines and bunkers, which we retook and then they attacked again.

It was a real battle feel to it, we were doing our best to hold out, but were ever so slowly pushed back, and when the Horde took our mine as well and kept it we were running out of supplies, and after a 37 minute long fight the Horde won.

It was fun and intense and pulse-racing and sweaty, and even though we lost it was a hell of a battle!

 I had already gotten the Damage Control achievement, which requires 300 000 heal/damage, but in this bg I threw out a stunning 1 465 889 heals!

I ran totally out of mana twice at least, I used a few of my Crazy Alchemist Potions and I popped my trusted Mana Tide totem on every cooldown, and when that failed I ran around doing nothing til my mana started filling up enough for me to pop heals again.

I can’t remember the last time I ran out of mana on a PvE raid!

Sorted on healing done you see that I am at the top of Alliance heals!

(Also, interestingly, the top three healers in this intense bg are shamans. Is it Chain Heal ftw maybe? :-))

I’m glad I decided to finally write that HealBot setup post, and I am glad I took the time to go to AV to screenshot, because I haven’t had so much fun in WoW for a long time!

Sometimes when I ran instances with my resto shaman Larue a kind druid would tell me to yell if I wanted an Innervate.

I routinely replied that I have little use for Innervate since I don’t stack Spirit and told them to save it for themselves.

I had not given this much further thought because I hardly ever run out of mana, and then someone did Innervate me without asking on a long fight where there were no Replenishment available. To my surprise, my mana bar started filling up rather quickly and I decided to actually look into it a little more.

Larue has a measly 145 Spirit at lvl 80, all of it base Spirit, not a single point from items, which gives me a mana regeneration of 123 mp5 while not casting. In combat the mana regeneration from Spirit drops to zero since I have no talents available to keep it running. (For comparison my holy priest Jools has 483 Spirit at lvl 71, and a Spirit based mana regeneration of 495 mp5 while not casting.)

So, even if I did get a 400% increase to my mp5 from the Innervate buff it would still be zero, right?

Yes it would, but the Innervate buff doesn’t end there, does it. It also says on the tooltip that during the 20 seconds the buff lasts you will have full mana regeneration, ie your mana regeneration while not casting!

And full mana regeneration for me means (unbuffed)

-214 mana per 5 seconds while in combat (none of it Spirit based)

-337 mana per 5 seconds while not casting (123 from Spirit and thus 214 from items)

Should I get a 400% increase to my Spirit based mana regeneration it would mean 496 mp5 from Spirit! Add that to the 214 mp5 from items and we are looking at a whopping 710 mp5 for 20 seconds!

710 mp5!! And with my usual buffs on it would be even more!

I know its not much compared to what a holy priest or resto druid would get (Jools, for example, would get almost 2000 mp5 even at lvl 71), but it is still a lot when your blue bar is running dry.

Never again will I decline a kind offer of an Innervate when needed! So, to answer my initial question, No, Innervate is not wasted on shamans!

*Disclaimer:  And of course I will not ask for an Innervate when there are others present who would benefit much more from it!

So, my shaman Larue dinged 70 recently and have been trying out the Resto way for a little while. I have been healing mostly on my priest and a little dabbling on the side in the druid way of healing while still specced feral. In short, I have healed very little on my shaman, and while there are many similarities to the priestly way of doing it, there are also differences and it takes some getting used to.

A brief spell comparison
(Casts times with talents, mana costs without talents, healing amount without heal bonuses, spells or effects from set bonuses, trinkets and similar not included)

Slow large heal
Priests have Greater Heal, 2,5 secs cast, 825 mana, heals for about 2550, while shamans have a similar ability, Healing Wave, 2.5 secs cast, 720 mana, heals for about 2300.

Faster smaller heal
Flash Heal for priests, 1.5 secs cast, 470 mana, heals for about 1200. Lesser Healing Wave for shamans, 1.5 secs cast, 440 mana, heals for about 1100, so not much difference here either.

HoTs
Priests have Renew, instant cast, 450 mana, ticks for 222 heals every 3 seconds (about 255 with Improved Renew)

A draenei shaman has the racial ability Gift of the Naaru, which has a 1.5 secs cast, costs no mana and heals for (your level * 15 + 35) damage in total over 15 secs, which for a level 70 character means 217 heal every 3 seconds. This spell has a 3 min cd, which makes it marginally useful unless you have some way of remembering that its cd is up and its available for use.

Shamans also have Healing Stream totems, which can be considered a form of HoT as long as the group members stay in range of it (within 30 yards if the shaman has the talent Totemic Mastery). The Healing Stream costs 90 mana to pop and heals 18 damage (23 with Restorative Totems) every 2 seconds for 2 minutes. (Its not as low as it seems, Larue’s current heal bonus of 931 makes this totem heal 81 damage every 2 seconds.)However, this totem can’t be used at the same time as Mana Spring totem though, they both use the water totem.

Group heals
Priests have Prayer of Healing and (if specced for it) Circle of Healing. PoH has a cast time of 2.5 secs, heals group members within 30 yards of the priest for about 1000 and costs 1070 mana. CoH is instant, heals the target and group members within 15 yards of her (not the casting priest) for about 430 and costs 450 mana.

Shamans have Chain Heal, their white lazer beam heal with a 2.5 secs cast that heals up to three targets for about 900, 450 and 225 respectively (1080, 540 and 275 with Improved Chain heal) for a cost of 540 mana.

On-damage heals
Priests have Prayer of Mending, an instant spell that for 390 mana throws a frisbee to her target. When the target takes damage the frisbee heals her for 800 damage and then jumps to another group member within 20 yards.

Shamans place an instant cast Earth Shield on their target. The shield is instant cast, costs 450 mana and stays on the target with 6 charges that heals for 270 every time the target gets hit.

Oh-shit heals
When that oh-shit moment turns up, a priest pops a Power Word: Shield on the target, quickly followed by a Flash Heal or if time permits, a Greater Heal.

When a shaman needs an emergency heal, she pops Nature’s Blessing, followed by presumably a Healing Wave.

Aggro dumps
A priest has Fade, which drops her aggro level for 10 seconds, and by the time Fade fades, someone else usually has worked up enough aggro to keep the mob from going for the priest again.

A shaman has a Tranquil Air totem that she can pop. However, since this affects the entire group within range (30 yards if you have the talent Totemic Mastery) it’s usefulness is very limited.

Luckily, since a shaman can wear mail she usually can take a little beating before she goes down, which hopefully gives the tank or other enough time to re-establish aggro. (As a comparison, my freshly dinged shaman in greens and blues has 7200 armor whilme my epicced-out priest has 1500).

Mana preservation and regeneration
Mana regeneration for both priests and shamans at lvl 70 are calculated in the same way. Priests have a talent, Meditation, that allows 30% of this mana regeneration to keep going while they cast. Shamans have a somewhat similar talent, Unrelenting Storm, but this is deep in the Elemental tree and out of reach for a Resto shaman.

Priests have the talent Inner Focus that gives you a free spell cast every three minutes, and also a talent Holy Concentration that may give you another freebie.

A talent in the Discipline tree, Divine Spirit, also gives a buff that improves the priest’s Spirit-based mana regeneration, and the Improved version also increases the healing bonus. (This talent requires at least 21 points (23 for the Improved version) so if you choose this one you can’t have the Circle of Healing from the Holy tree)

Priests also have a Shadowfiend, a pet on a 5 minute cooldown that gives the priest mana back when the pet deals damage.

Shamans have no talents for mana-free spellcasts but they have a Mana Spring totem, that for a measly 120 mana pops a totem that with Restorative Totems will replenish 2800 mana for the 2 minutes its up.

Resto shamans also get the Mana Tide totem, which has a 5 minute cd like the Shadowfiend and gives mana back to all group members withing range.

Cleansing
Priests can Cure Disease and Abolish Disease (for those nasty mobs that keep contaminating people), they can Dispel Magic and Mass Dispel (extra powahful area dispell)

Shamans can Cure Disease and pop a Disease Cleansing Totem when hanging around unwashed mobs crawling with germs. They can also Purge mobs, but can’t dispel magic effects from friends. They can however Cure Poison and use Poison Cleansing Totems.

Fun-ness
I have been healing on my priest for so long now I can probably do it in my sleep (but don’t tell my fellow raiders I do this! ;P) and I still enjoy it. There are certainly still things to learn and ways to improve, but overall I am pretty happy with my priest at the moment. I will not bring her to Karazhan anymore because that probably would make me fall asleep, although she still could use some of the drops in there I have been there too many times to find it even remotely fun on my priest. I save the ZA and 25-man runs for Jools, that is where I enjoy playing her the most.

Shaman healins is not yet as instinctive but it’s novel and fresh and although there are many similarities it is different enough to be interesting, and I am really looking forward to honing her skills and abilities in normal and heroic 5-mans and it would be great fun to take her to Karazhan.

Muhahaha I just discovered something! Your totems are always placed in the same spot relative your own position when you cast them.

I was in IF fiddling around with my new addon Totem Timers when I realised that no matter which the casting order was, they were always placed in the same way!

The Fire totem is to your front left, the Earth to your front right, the Air behind you to your left and the Water behind you to your right.

If you want to place all totems on top of each other you have to turn between each cast.

(Maybe not ground breaking news, but it was an aha-thing for me ;P)

Like everyone else who usually plays Alliance I started a draenei shaman when TBC came out. She got to lvl 10 and there she hibernated for a long time.

I pulled hero ut of hibernation some weeks ago and now she has reached the mature level of 36. Shaman is a pretty interesting but rather confusing class to play so far, not like any of the other classes I have played (and as you know, I have played a few).

As I leveled her, I encountered many hmm- and wtf-situations, most of the regarding totems. Totems, totems, totems…

Having never really even played with a shaman except very recently at lvl 70 these took a while to get used to, and their special attributes took even longer.

Searing totem – fires a firebolt at the enemy. Sounds good, doesn’t it? I learned the hard way that ”the enemy” is not always the same mob you have targeted for a lightning bolt that already happen to be sizzling through the air… The last thing you want to do when trying to single-pull some orange mob is another orange mob running to you and beating your fragile but hostile totem to pulp and then turning its unwelcome attentions to you.

Even if you drop the searing totem after you have pulled it might misfire (pun intended ;P). You are sitting there peacefully by the body of a dead mob drinking your way back from low to full mana when some other mob passes in range of your totem who merrily starts firing away. Yippie!

Another interesting thing about totems is that if you prepare for a fight by placing yourself somewhere along the path of the mob you want to pull and start setting up totems – stoneskin perhaps, and a mana spring maybe – occasionally the totem itself will aggro the mob which will charge in and destroy it, and then look for the totem’s owner.

I guess the totem happened to be placed inside the mobs aggro radius, but I wonder if totems have the same aggro range as the shaman, or if maybe even different totems have different aggro ranges. Stoneskin totem at least seemed to be very affronting to mobs.

And let’s not forget that you don’t get the skill to recall the totems until level 30. Before that level, you had to leave your totems behind to die on their own. This resulted in many wtf’s as you are in a place clearly devoid of any hostile agents but still you see the red ”Entering Combat” text float up without being targeted by someone/something. Wtf? But of course, its that sweet little totem of yours far behind you that has aggroed some mob. Coincidentally, its that same mob which now is charging towards you, intent on striking you down.

Shaman must be somewhat of a master of fight planning, since totems have a limited range for their abilities. Cheap mana-saver that you are, of course you don’t want to waste mana by popping totems all over the place, or waste time when you are fighting actually popping them, so you try to stay in the general area of your totems, pulling mobs to you rather than running after them in some haphazard way. ”Ah, this looks like a great spot for taking down a few of those wandering treants. In firing range to at least 3-4 of them, which should be enough to get maximum use of my totems.”

I am a slow learner so I am still figuring out which totems to use and when, and how useful they really are. I suspect that I will be a little less uncertain about these things some months after I ding 70 ;P

Last of my hmm-thoughts about the shaman class is: what the hell is she supposed to wear? (Yes I know I ask this a lot, maybe its in the female psyche or something…I have nothing to wear! Better go out shopping then!…)

She needs intellect for her mana since she uses totems and cast spells, she needs agility and strenght since she whacks the mobs over the head when they get too close, she needs stamina to be able to withstand the mobs whacking on her, she needs bascially everything!

Maybe it will get easier as she levels up and get more specialised, but for now she looks like a hopscotch of assorted hand-me-downs…