Enhancement Leveling Talents

Guess posted on BigHitBox.

Here I just want to go over some of the things that I personally think a leveling enhancement shaman should look at.
First and foremost I am a very strong believer in the fact that people should do what they want to, especially when leveling. Questing and leveling are, by far and away, the most “solo” aspect of WoW (in my opinion anyways), and for this reason do whatever you would like.

Leveling Spec

This is the way I would do things, feel free to tweak as YOU see fit
The Bee Spec My choice of leveling glyphs as well

Levels

10-14 — Enhancing Totems 3/3 ** Earth’s Grasp 2/2
15-16 — Imp. Ghost Wolf 2/2
17-21 — Thundering Strikes 5/5
22-25 — Shamanistic Focus 1/1 ** Anticipation 3/3
26-30 — Flurry 5/5
31-35 — Toughness 5/5
36-39 — Spirit Weapons 1/1 ** Mental Dexterity 3/3
40-41 — Dual Wield 1/1 ** Stormstrike 1/1
42-44 — Dual Wield Spec. 3/3
45-47 — Lava Lash 1/1 ** Imp. SS 2/2 *** Its only one point but at this point u could go respec and drop any mana conserving talents like Shamanistic Focus.
48-50 — Unleashed Rage 3/3
51-54 — Shamanistic Rage 1/1 ** Mental Quickness 3/3
55-59 — Maelstrom Weapon 5/5
60 — Feral Spirit 1/1
61-69 — Imp. Shields 3/3 ** Elemental Weapons 3/3 ** Weapon Mastery 3/3
70-74 — Concussion 5/5
75-80 — Elemental Devestation 3/3 ** Elemental Warding 3/3

Now you are level 80, please respec

Talents

I am going to list from the top of the tree down, I am going to then give importance of each (Must have, Important, Filler, Optional, Useless)
Enhancing Totems – Optional/Important – Increases SOE our most used totem. Obviously more and more useful the higher rank totem.
Earth’s Grasp – Optional/Important – Makes two very useful totems even more useful. I personally like this talents because survivability is key when leveling and I can not count how many times I had to pull the old escape manuever (Drop Stoneclaw, instant ghost wolf until Stoneclaw dies, drop Earthbind, instant ghost wolf). Basically surviving tons of things.
Ancestral Knowledge – Filler/Useless – I personally dont like this talent, however if you like to quest without dropping totems this would be more beneficial than Enhancing Totems.
Guardian Totems – Useless – even for pvp this talent is extremely useful, however for grouding spells it does have its place. For leveling I do not suggest this talent.
Thundering Strikes – Must Have – Take this talent for many reasons (regardless of spec). A constant 5% crit in the second tier of a talent tree is very nice, plus its the predecessor to Flurry (also an important talent)
Imp. Ghost Wolf – Important – I highly suggest putting your first point in at lvl 15 and your second point in at lvl 16 since Ghost Wolf is learned at that point. This talent gives you an instant 40% speed buff, that CAN be used in combat (also immediately gives the player full weapon skill, and allows melee; so for an enh shammy you can melee nicely in this form).
Imp. Shields – Important – Regardless of whether you are OOM, or full on mana; any shaman should have a shield up, and increasing the damage done or the mana restored is incredible for leveling.
Elemental Weapons – Filler/Useful – This one is hard since WF weapon is not learned until lvl 30, however once that is acquired I do like this talent.
Shamanistic Focus – Important – I would suggest taking this talent as soon as possible when you are leveling, however once you acquire Imp. SS, it is a wasted talent.
Anticipation – Important – I like this for leveling, I personally do not mind grinding, I shoot for survivability. Also ENH shamans are the squishiest melee, this improves on that slightly.
Flurry – Important/Must Have – Shamans will always use slow weapons for multiple spells/abilities, this greatly increases the speed of our slower weapons.
Toughness – Important – 10% stam. increase is great for leveling and staying alive, a dead player can not kill NPCs or finish quests.
Imp Windfury Totem – Filler – Nice, I agree, a 4% melee haste is nice for our slow weapons, however at this point in the tree there are more important talents we want to get to ASAP.
Spirit Weapons – Must have – The fact that you can now parry is incredible, reducing threat is nice for raids/dungeons, but its the predecessor to DW (If you don’t know yet, this talent is awesome).
Mental Dexterity – Important/Must Have – Clearly a very important talent for shamans (since we have few talents that “convert” other stats(like rogues/hunters/pallys)).
Unleashed Rage – Must Have – The expertise buff that this got in patch 3.1 was incredible and made it mandatory, before then it was a raid buff.
Weapon Mastery – Important – Nice regardless of level.
Frozen Power – Useless – A PvP talent, could be useful when facing humanoids, or for people wanting to just toy around with the game…
Dual Wield Spec. – Must Have – Unbelievably great for leveling, the amount of hit it takes to make up for 6% is well worth this talent.
Dual Wield – Must Have – Again Dual Wielding is going to blow your dps up quite a bit.
Stormstrike – Must have – The first specific melee ability we recieve.
I just realized that this ^^ tier of the enhancement tree is awesome 😛
Static Shock – Filler/Useful – Nice to increase orbs, however our shields require nothing more than a GCD (just refresh your shield after each fight) so I suggest saving these talents until you are actually NOT getting hit (dungeons and raids)
Lava Lash – Must Have – Not as nice as stormstrike, however useful for leveling/damage.
Imp. SS– Must Have/Important – There are some raid specs that do not require this, however for leveling you do not want to toy around with your mana, staying at 100% mana as much as possible is ideal. Mana per talent point is best spent here.
Mental Quickness – Important – Shamans rely more on spellpower than any other melee, DKs a close second. This helps in that area.
Shamanistic Rage – Important – Before patch 3.1 this was our mana regen, now can be used more as an “O SHIT” button.

I have this keybound, and macroed

Earthen Power – Useless – Another PvP talent, I can not think of a leveling situation where this would be worth the two points.
Maelstrom Weapon – Must Have – Man I hate spelling maelstrom. If a cast time clips a melee swing, then that swing starts all over, with this talent we can now cast all of the spells listed in the tool tip without having to stop melee (obviously there needs to be 5 stacks).
Feral Spirit – Must Have – Honestly one of the coolest 51 point talents, this “pet” has multiple useful abilities; a stun, a dash/pvp trinket, the ability to tank/taunt, and most importantly their healing is absurd.

Other Trees

I WILL not analyze each talent here, I will however look at interesting ones.
Concussion – Important – Obviously increases damage, at this point mana should be ABSOLUTELY no issue.
Elemental Devestation – Must Have – This talent is in the ele tree for enh. No questions take this if u dip into ele.
Elemental Warding – Filler/Useful – Damage reduction is great for little downtime.
Elemental Fury – Filler/Useful – Enh actually uses more fire totems than ele (because of Totem of Wrath).
Reverberation – Filler/Useful – For leveling not as useful, for raiding/pvp its great.
Call of Flame – Filler/Useful – Aside from the fire totem buff, leveling I actually found a place for Lava Burst just for the fun factor.
Totemic Focus – Filler/Useful – When leveling you only wanna drop totems if you will be able to reach approximately 3 or more opponents with those totems, however it is still nice to save a little mana (basically a filler to reach this next talent).
Imp. Reincarnation – Filler/Useful – I personally dont like to bank on the fact that I may die, I like to focus on NOT dying, however having a free 40 min self-res, with a fair amount of health/mana is nice.

Glyphs

I actually only have one notable glyph for leveling others are really common sense.
Glyph of Ghost Wolf – It is very minimal but regardless, this is a minor glyph. I honestly spent a fair amount in GW form, even in northrend, and a passive 1% health regen is cute.
My link up top has all majors and minors I would pick (while leveling)

Miscellaneous

If you had not heard, Dwarfs can be shamans as well in the Xpac. There is news on totem updates.

It would be awfully silly to see Dwarven Shaman lugging those big ol’ Draenei totems around, wouldn’t it?

You’ll see what we have up our sleeves for Shaman in the expansion. After all, I think Tauren are getting tired of sharing theirs, too.

The dwarf totem (still in beta stage)

Float Life a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee.

Catacl-Enhanced

Guess posted on BigHitBox

I know that stoney has already written a summary of Cataclysmic changes, I’m not trying to steal his thunder. As he has stated I am just here to put my spin on things.

Basically what I am trying to say is that stoney is like Dr. Dre, you know he comes in and puts the best possible spin on things, and just does a great job. And I am like … like … Keven Federline (sp?) where I come in and just hack it up for comedic pleasure. 😛

Regardless, I am putting my thoughts on shamanism, enhancement and other small details about the next Xpac

Cataclysm

**Shamans (Elemental) looks like “turrets” in PvP for the moment, the idea is to make totems funnier in the future (“put a totem down and something cool happens”) but not a lot of details for the moment.**

I have heard some ideas that I think would be really neat.
– Throwing totems at a range into the mix of a fight. I like this idea especially for ele, and even resto/enh.
– Targetting a totem and casting something at it to cause some kind of effect. Think like a totem on a cooldown that when targetted with say lightning bolt or chain lightning would actually cause multiple (would really fix some of the aoe issues for enh and even ele). However this would be very difficult and would need some form of tweaking. Also on a resto side note, think along the same lines except possibly say a totem we could place then target with riptide which would in turn place the HoT on a certain amount of targets within a preset range. (I know that I am completely making up random stuff here, just brainstorming.)

**Developers want shaman to be good AE healers and might buff Chain Heal even more.**

I hope they can think of a very shamanisic way to buff it other than just MORE healing and/or MORE range.

**Enhancement Shamans do not use INT anymore and will be given talents to not need it just like Retribution Paladins.**

I think a lot of Enhance are really missing the point here which is…

**Hunters Mana is GONE**

With hunters mana being gone I had wondered what would happen with our gear, considering we are a class that only shares gear with 1 other class, this is really just a way for Blizzard to keep itemization simple.

**Enhancement Shamans having to run in and out of melee ranges to redrop totem and sacrifice DPS is a legitimate problem, they don’t want enhancement to have to run out like that. **

I am not really sure what Enh totems we are having to run out to redrop. The range on all totems have been equalized, and on very few fights are we spaced out enough that this is an issue. I’m on the fence with this post, tell me what you guys think, maybe something I am missing.

Goblins can be shamans

A picture from Blizzards gallery of a goblin shaman

I am not going to list all the racials here just ones that actually affect the playstyle in specific.

**Rocket Barrage – Launches your belt rockets an an enemy, dealing fire damage. 2 min cooldown.
Rocket Jump – Activates your rocket belt to jump forward. 2 min cooldown.**

FYI shared cooldown, so you have to choose between the two every two minutes. Obviously this is nice either way, we can choose to move (say on XT’s light bomb, or out of any big black/blue circles) or to do additional damage (the first ever racial to do DIRECT damage (other than racials that increase damage output or various stats). Think of it like a free burger (sorry I just find that picture to be hilarious for some reason)

**Racial – Time is Money – 1% increased attack and casting speed.**

Great for enhancement, elemental, and restoration (regardless of how you view it). O plus stoney is a haste junky.

Stoneybaby as he melee's mobs

PTR changes

**Totem of Quaking Earth now gives 400 attack power for 18 sec each time you use your Lava Lash ability. (Up from 200 Attack Power)**

I know PTR changes are not current yet, but more than likely this would not be nerfed back, and if so I will let you guys know in a future post.
Otherwise, this is obviously a good buff, I have absolutely no information in front of me but I think this may be near BiS now. Because now you have a constant 400 AP (even considering that lava lash is nearly our last priority, it should be used before the 18 second buff drops.)

Hello Cataclysm!

Welcome to (what for now is being called BB blog) BB blog! This blog will continuously be a work in progress. Especially for the first week or two. Check the About  section to see where this blog will be headed. A biography (of my gaming career) will be incoming.