Tier 1 • Tier 2 • Tier 3 • Tier 4 • Tier 5

This is Part 2 in my 9-part series detailing the ins and outs of the shaman talent trees.

Elemental

You can skip this tier if you want, because none of the talents are essential to any build. However, you'll probably have to come back to it to go deeper into the tree eventually. So, if you're still levelling, it's probably a good idea to skip it for now (you should have put 10 points into Concussion and Convection if you're going for an Elemental build).

Earth's Grasp

Increases the health of your Stoneclaw Totem by 25/50% and the radius of your Earthbind Totem by 10/20%.

This talent is lousy. Even with 50% more HP, your Stoneclaw is only good for distracting an enemy you haven't damaged yet. It can't function as a tank or anything.

And it only increases the radius of Earthbind by TWO YARDS. Don't bother.



Elemental Warding

Reduces damage taken from Fire, Frost and Nature effects by 4/7/10%.

Not a bad talent to have, especially in PvP. This'll help you last longer against most casters in the game, and comes in pretty handy everywhere else too.



Call of Flame

Increases the damage done by your Fire Totems by 5/10/15%.

For Elemental shamans, your fire totems are already going to be pretty powerful, and making them moreso is a good idea. But it all depends on how often you use them. You should be using Searing Totem or Fire Elemental on most boss fights, so it's worthwhile there. UNLESS you're going to be taking Totem of Wrath, in which case you shouldn't bother with this talent. More on that when I get to Tier 9. Here's a preview: don't get ToW unless you're raiding.

Basically, if you need to put points into one of the Tier 2 Elemental talents, you should put them into Elemental Warding if you need more defense, or Call of Flame if you need more DPS.

Enhancement

Guardian Totems

Increases the amount of damage reduced by your Stoneskin Totem and Windwall Totem by 10/20% and reduces the cooldown of your Grounding Totem by 1/2 sec.

Meh. I don't think this is worth 2 points. Stoneskin is kinda nice to use occasionally, but an Enhance shaman will probably be using Strength of Earth Totem most of the time anyway. Windwall is barely ever useful. Grounding Totem has a cooldown of 15 seconds. Does a 2-second decrease in that cooldown seem worth it? Not to me. Skip it.



Thundering Strikes

Improves your chance to get a critical strike with your weapon attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Get it. Extra crit is always good, and it's a prerequisite for one of the best talents in the tree: Flurry. It also helps to activate Shamanistic Focus more often, which will help your mana efficiency immensely. AND it helps to activate Unleashed Rage more often, which increases the DPS of you AND your group.



Improved Ghost Wolf

Reduces the cast time of your Ghost Wolf spell by 1/2 sec.

The only reason to get this talent is if you like to do a lot of flag-running in Warsong Gulch and Eye of the Storm, and even then it's not all that useful.

I suppose it's also handy if you're on a PvP server and need to be able to run away from others in a hurry, but you're probably better off relying on Frost Shock and Earthbind Totem to slow down your enemies instead.

Also consider that Nature's Swiftness (in the Resto tree) can be used with Ghost Wolf to make it instant-cast. I'd recommend using that instead.



Improved Lightning Shield

Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 15%.

This can be a nice (though certainly not essential) talent to have in your Enhance build. With the recent buff to Mental Quickness (which now gives you 30% of your Attack Power back as +Spell Damage and +Healing) this talent can make your LS quite powerful. However, most Enhance shamans that I've seen use Water Shield, due to their small mana pools and poor mana efficiency. But it can be handy in PvP, where every non-Resto shaman is usually killed before they run out of mana.



Restoration





Improved Reincarnation

Reduces the cooldown of your Reincarnation spell by 10/20 min and increases the amount of health and mana you reincarnate with by an additional 10/20%.

This can be handy if you're in a raiding guild, and it can be nice to have when leveling. But...there's nothing essential about it. If you ask me (and that's why you're here) don't bother.



Ancestral Healing

Increases your target's armor value by 8/16/25% for 15 sec after getting a critical effect from one of your healing spells.

This is pretty nice to have if you're going full Resto. The extra survivability you can provide your group (and more importantly, your tank) with this talent should not be underestimated. Remember that you can always spam Rank 1 Healing Wave on your tank to keep this buff up (along with Healing Way, a Tier 5 Resto talent), and every jump of Chain Heal can apply the buff.

You should definitely get Tidal Mastery (Tier 4 Resto talent) if you decide to get AH, and +Spell Crit on healing gear is easier to come by these days, since it's so useful to Paladins. And throwing a few crit and Intellect gems in your gear doesn't hurt.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stack with the Priest talent Inspiration (which is exactly the same as AH) but Priests don't get that very often.



Totemic Focus

Reduces the mana cost of your totems by 5/10/15/20/25%.

This is a VERY good talent for ANY talent build if you're doing a lot of grouping or raiding. Totems get expensive, especially when you have 3 or 4 down in each battle, and this talent can give you a significant boost in your mana-efficiency.

It's also worth pointing out that the mana returned by Totemic Call is based on the totem's cost BEFORE talents are considered, so if you're on the ball, you're saving 50% on your totems.

Another neat thing is that your Poison and Disease Cleansing Totems actually cost LESS MANA than your single-target Poison and Disease Cleansing spells with TF.

Continued...

Tier 1 • Tier 2 • Tier 3 • Tier 4 • Tier 5

Here's another of those "features" I've been trying to focus on lately. What I'm going to do is go over all the talents in the shaman talent trees, and write what I know about each of them, and say whether you should or shouldn't get them, and so on.

But I'm going to do it a bit differently than you'd expect. I'm going to go tier-by-tier, doing all 3 talent trees at the same time. Which means that this will be a 9-part series.

I should also mention that I know the most about the Elemental tree, slightly less about the Resto tree, and not a lot about the Enhance tree. Remember that when considering my advice.

I'm also using a 5-star (bloodlust icon) rating system. 5 = great, 1 = bad.

Elemental

Convection

Reduces the mana cost of your Shock, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Essential for any Elemental build, and decent for an Enhance build. The benefits should be obvious: less mana = more longevity. And longevity is something that Elemental and Enhancement shamans can have a hard time with.



Concussion

Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Shock spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Another essential Elemental talent. It may not seem like much, but you'd be a fool not to take it for an Elemental build. It's also pretty nice for Enhancement; a Concussion-enhanced Earth Shock on an enemy under the effects of Stormstrike will do some pretty decent damage.

Enhancement

Ancestral Knowledge

Increases your maximum mana by 1/2/3/4/5%.

This talent kinda sucks. I would encourage you to skip it, but your other option is even worse. It sucks the most as an Enhance talent, due to the fact that Enhance shamans have very small mana pools. You'll be lucky if that 5% gives you enough mana for an extra Earth Shock. If you need to go deeper into the Enhance tree, get this talent. If you don't, avoid it.



Shield Specialization

Increases your chance to block attacks with a shield by 1/2/3/4/5% and increases the amount blocked by 5/10/15/20/25%.

Probably the worst shaman talent available. It's an obsolete holdover from a bygone era, like a vestigial tail. Shamans don't tank anymore (and never really did to begin with).

When you're leveling (as Enhance), you should be using a 2H weapon until you get Dual Wield. If you need to get deeper into Enhance, put points into Ancestral Knowledge, which sucks slightly less than Shield Spec does.

Restoration

Improved Healing Wave

Reduces the casting time of your Healing Wave spell by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 sec.

If you're going to be a healer, this is an essential talent to have. It lets you cast your big, mana-efficient heal faster, which means better survivability for you and your group. And Healing Wave has a lot of synergy with other talents, like Healing Way and Ancestral Healing. A nice side-effect is that it makes your Rank 1 HW cast in just one second, so you can quickly stack Healing Way on your tank and keep it up pretty much as long as you want.

If you're just going after talents in other tiers (like Elemental shamans usually do) it's usually better to go with Imp. HW than Tidal Focus. You probably won't be healing enough for the mana decrease of TF to make much of a difference, but everyone loves having a huge slightly-faster heal when things get rough.



Tidal Focus

Reduces the mana cost of your healing spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Essential for healers. It's not a huge decrease, but as I mentioned before, getting every little bit of mana efficiency for your primary role is key.

Well, that's Tier 1. Tune in next time (whenever the hell that is) for Tier 2.

Continued...

I just hit Exalted for the 4th time. I am by no means a reputation freak, but I try to get them all as high as possible when I can.

I remember my attempts to grind up my Argent Dawn and Cenarion Circle rep. There were some pretty cool rewards you could get if you were successful, but I just have no interest in killing the same guys over and over for 2 rep points per kill, or collecting items with low drop rates for 50 points per turn-in.

The first faction I ever got to Exalted with was the Brood of Nozdormu. You gain points with them primarily by killing stuff in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (aka AQ40), though you can also get a little by killing bosses in the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ20). Since I was raiding AQ40 from the time it opened and we eventually managed to clear the place (first guild on our server to clear it) I got a ton of rep points. The reward for that was some very nice gear, and a very nice ring (at the time) that you could turn in for a better one each time your rep increased.

I've always found the way that Reputation works in WoW to be kinda...strange. You would think that everyone in the raid would go directly to Exalted as soon as you kill their main boss. For the Hydraxian Waterlords, that was Ragnaros (who I killed countless times), for the Brood of Nozdormu, that was C'thun. For Cenarion Circle, that was Ossirian. For the Argent Dawn, Kel'thuzad. Sha'tar, Kael'thas. Cenarion Expedition, Vashj. And everyone wants Illidan dead. It's just weird that a faction NPC would say "You've slain our greatest enemy. Never again will the world be subjected to his/her nefarious deeds. Here's 12 gold and 350 reputation points."

Anyway, I digress. Second faction to Exalted was the Sha'tari Skyguard. But that's a faction that is MADE for everyone to be able to easily get to Exalted with. Same with the Netherwing (my third) and Ogri'la (my fourth).

I wasn't even trying to get my Ogri'la rep up. There's nothing I need from them. But the quests are easy, and I've been doing them solely for the cash reward.

Continued...