This is sort of my "wish list" of spells and abilities I'd like to see shamans get when Wrath of the Lich King is released. Never mind if they're overpowered.

EDITED: Jan. 29 2008 & Feb. 10 2008


NEW: Chilling Winds
A true warlock-style DoT. The target takes X frost damage over 15 seconds (could be the first Frost-based DoT). Additionally, their attack and casting speed is slowed by 10%. This is something that would help shamans be a little more useful in groups. Probably would need a 5-second cooldown so you can't just DoT up everything you see.

Tricky Totems
Your totems cause an opposite affect to enemies within range. For example, Strength of Earth would cause nearby enemies to have 77 less strength. Healing Stream would cause 20 dmg to enemies as well as 20 health to party members. Mana Stream (or Mana Tide) would leech mana. Earthbind could give allies a speed boost. Obviously this wouldn't work with stuff like WF, Magma, Stoneclaw, etc.

Totemic Detonation
The currently-selected totem explodes, giving half its bonus as a 10-minute buff to every party (or perhaps even raid) member in the totem's range. 2-minute cooldown. Might also need a reagent. This would be another good way to give some much-needed portability to our buffs, and also to allow shamans to give their group a little extra "oomph" in the right area. It would also allow you to effectively have four and a half totem buffs at once, instead of four. Damaging totems and certain others (Grounding, Earthbind, Stoneclaw, Sentry) would not be eligible for "detonation".

Lightning Storm
Kinda like a mix between Cone of Cold, Arcane Missiles, and Star Wars Force Lightning. It should be channelled, maybe for 4 seconds or something, but instead of hitting one target, it hits all targets in a cone in front of the caster. This would give us an interesting type of AOE that Elemental shamans could really use. While channelling, your character should strike a Palpatine-like pose, and possibly scream "POWAH! ABSOLUTE POWAH!" See screenshot above.

Ethereal Form
A WC3 spell that hasn't made it into WoW yet. It should probably be an Elemental talent. When activated, reduces all incoming damage by 50% for 10 seconds, reduces threat by 20%, and increases spell damage by 10%. 2 or 3-min cooldown.

Molten Blast
A re-imagined version of a spell we had in Beta. A 4-second cast nuke. 15-second cooldown. Causes a debuff to the target that causes LB and CL to cause Fire damage instead of Nature for 15 seconds. This would give us a nice mage-like nuke, and also give Elemental a way to actually cause damage to nature-immune mobs.

Hex
Of course I want a REAL form of CC, and NOT one tied to a totem. This is essential; nobody wants to group with a DPS player without CC. This would just turn the target into a frog (or maybe a random tropical creature) for a certain amount of time. It should last about 15 seconds, probably have a 15-sec cooldown, so it can be cast over and over. Maybe each race could turn the target into a different animal.

Totemic Recall
Transports your currently-active totems to your current location, refreshing their durations (if they're normal 2-min totems). 10-second cooldown. If no totems are active, summons your previous 4 totems used (one for each totem type, of course). This gives us a way to deal with the increasingly-mobile fights in the game, and also gets rid of the annoying 6-seconds-of-dropping that we have to do every time a fight starts, and every 2 mins after that. Mana cost should be directly tied to how much the totems cost, and how much time they have left.

Spirit Wolf
We shamans have been bitching about this one for years. My version would be a wolf that lasts for 15 seconds, 1 min cooldown, that attacks the currently-selected target and has a 25% chance to stun the target for 3 seconds each time it does damage. For extra fun, it could be invulnerable and cause a lot of threat, so it could be a 15-second tank (and get rid of Stoneclaw if it's implemented).

More Chaining!
How about new talents that let our Chain Lightning and Chain Heal jump more than 3 times? Or maybe give them a decent chance to split and hit TWO targets on the next jump? So, the possibility of hitting 7 targets, or 3 targets multiple times. It should still decrease jump-for-jump at the same rate. OR! Maybe it could add a chaining effect to our other Lightning and Healing spells. Remember the 8-piece bonus for Earthfury? Like that.


I'll add more as I think of them.

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I encountered this bizarre graphical glitch when I took my hunter Inebrius (still lvl. 67) into the Netherstorm for the first time. It was probably caused by a slight malfunction in one of the swirly sky textures and its transparency. I suppose it's also possible (nay, likely) that I am The One.

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

At this point, I feel the need to point out that you should be putting at least 40 points into the talent tree of your choice. Trying to be a hybrid shaman is BAD. Rather than being good at casting, melee, or healing, you're going to suck at all 3, and then you're worthless. Unfortunately, there are still some talents that make it look like you CAN be a hybrid, but don't be fooled.

Elemental

Improved Fire Totems

Reduces the delay before your Fire Nova Totem activates by 1/2 sec. and decreases the threat generated by your Magma Totem by 25/50%.

This is another lackluster talent. First, let's look at the Fire Nova element.

Fire Nova takes 5 seconds to activate, so this talent brings that down to 3 seconds. That's still quite a long time to wait for an AOE. It's kinda nice in PvP, though these days the only people bothering to kill totems in the heat of battle are ones who have specific totems (like Grounding and Earthbind) macroed into their spell rotation. I don't think this part of the bonus is worth it, so already this talent is looking bad.

The second half of this talent is probably even worse. For starters, it affects aggro, so it's worthless in PvP. While soloing or doing dungeons, Magma totem usually doesn't do enough damage to pull any aggro anyway, as long as somebody has caused some aggro on the mobs being attacked. If a mob hasn't been attacked, no amount of aggro reduction is going to prevent it from attacking what's attacking them.

It's basically just a lousy talent. Skip it.




Eye of the Storm

Gives you a 33/66/100% chance to gain the Focused Casting effect that lasts for 6 sec after being the victim of a melee or ranged critical strike. The Focused Casting effect prevents you from losing casting time on Shaman spells when taking damage.

This is our anti-pushback talent in the Elemental tree, and it leaves a bit to be desired. I'd rather have this be a flat 70% chance to ignore pushback when taking damage (like the 4-piece Gladiator gear bonus). As it is, it's almost worthless for dungeoning, though it's a little bit useful when soloing.

Its real strength is in PvP, when you're getting crit all the time. As Elemental, if you don't have this talent, expect to be ineffective if you're being attacked.

Once you have 4 pieces of Gladiator's Mail (Season 1, 2, and 3 are interchangeable for the bonus now) you may want to drop this talent, since the 4-piece bonus makes your LB 70% uninterruptible.



Elemental Devastation

Your offensive spell crits will increase your chance to get a critical strike with melee attacks by 3/6/9% for 10 sec.

This is another Enhancement talent in the wrong tree, like Nature's Guidance. Let's make this clear: if you're going full Elemental, YOU SHOULD NOT MELEE. Unless you're out of mana. This talent is there for Enhance shamans looking for more spell synergy. That's all. If you're going Elemental, ignore it.

I would recommend it to Enhance shamans, but I honestly don't think it's going to provide you with much of a bonus. Your spell crit isn't very high, and the bonus is only 9%, and only for 10 seconds. It helps to proc Shamanistic Focus, Flurry, and Unleashed Rage more often, though. I guess I wouldn't even recommend this to Enhancement shamans unless you have over 10% spell crit.

Enhancement

Flurry

Increases your attack speed by 10/15/20/25/30% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike.

Get it. This talent is one of the reasons why crit is so important to an Enhance shaman. With a lot of crit, this talent will proc all the time. And the more often you attack, the more often you crit. The more often you crit, the more often you proc Flurry. And Shamanistic Focus. And Unleashed Rage. It's the circle of life (well, circle of death maybe). Flurry is so much more than what it looks like on its own.



Toughness

Increases your armor value from items by 2/4/6/8/10%.

This is another talent left over from the early "shamans can kinda tank" days like Shield Spec. However, unlike Shield Spec, this talent is useful. Though it IS far too expensive.

First, 10% more armor when you're wearing mail isn't nearly as good as if you're wearing Plate. Prot Paladins and Prot Warriors both have the exact same talent, and it's definitely worthwhile to them. Shamans can get a lot more out of this talent by wearing a shield, but most of the time you'll be dual-wielding or two-handing.

If this talent was 5 points for a 20% bonus instead of 10%, I would definitely recommend it. But at 5 points, I just don't know.

Restoration

Restorative Totems

Increases the effect of your Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems by 5/10/15/20/25%.

Not a bad talent to have for dungeoning/raiding Resto shamans (though pretty worthless if you're only PvPing). And it's required if you want Mana Tide, which many shamans think is pretty stupid.

The effect on Mana Spring is mediocre, though any boost is welcome in most caster groups. Max rank MS gives 20 mana every 2 secs, which is 50 MP5. With this talent, it bumps it up to 62mp5. Not too bad.

Then of course, there's the bonus to Healing Stream. Resto shamans have pretty powerful HS totems (thanks to scaling with +heal gear, which we didn't have for a long time) and giving them 25% more power is pretty nice.

If you're a dungeoner/raider, go for it. If not, it's probably not worth it.



Tidal Mastery

Increases the critical effect chance of your healing and lightning spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.

This is a pretty decent talent for Resto shamans. The extra 5% healing crit works nicely with Ancestral Healing. Many healers underestimate the power of healing crit normally, but it's a nice thing to have at times.

However, notice that it also affects Lightning spells. Yes, it gives Resto shamans some much-needed effectiveness for soloing, but it's even better for Elemental shamans. If you need to know why +crit is so important for an Elemental build, read what I said about Call of Thunder (Tier 3 Elem).

In fact, I consider this talent to be ESSENTIAL to a proper Elemental build. So, anyone going Elemental should plan to put at least 20 points into Resto so they can get Tidal Mastery.

Well, that was a short one this time. Which is nice, because usually once I get to the Resto tree I'm thinking "god I wish this were done". Must be my poor attention sp

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Those of you with better-than-average powers of observation may have noticed the new ad boxes on the left, under the TOC. And there boxes under the first three posts of any given page.

So, what do you think? Are they too flashy, not flashy enough? Can you ignore them if you want to? (I'm aiming for "yes".)

I'm trying to make a little money selling adspace here, since I'm currently dead broke (I'll probably have a week or two this month without WoW). I've been doing the boring Google ads for a while now, but I just added the new Project Wonderful ads on the left yesterday. Those ads will probably be much more interesting, since those are paid for with a bidding system. Right now, a single penny will get you a box on this blog for a little while, but hopefully it'll go up eventually.

So yea, let's hear some thoughts.

Continued...

Well, here's my brand new video I alluded to in yesterday's post. You can see a higher-res version on the new Baluki Facebook Page.

In it, I demonstrate the ins and outs of the sport I invented, called Beam Jumping (or Baluki's Beam Jumping, if you're going to try to form a league). Think of it as a mix of skydiving and darts.


I worked pretty hard on this one, and it's actually pretty long. I can't tell you how many times I threw myself to my death, just to entertain you.

I managed to whip it all up on my ancient copy of Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 (they're up to version 5 or something by now) and once it was all done, I had a hell of a time getting it to render right. And THEN, once I had attempted to render it about 20 times (which took about 2 hours each time, though once it actually took 12) the program just wouldn't load the project anymore, so I thought I was screwed. Finally I figured out that I had to run it in WinXP Compatibility Mode (I'm "rocking" Vista) and run it with Administrative permissions. Oy.

If you've never seen my previous video, "Baluki and the Ring of the Law!", here it is too. I made it about a year ago (pre-BC) in Windows Movie Maker, which didn't give me any trouble at all. (I used WMM because I couldn't get Premiere to install at the time.)

Continued...

I just made a new page for Baluki on Facebook. Check it out. It'll show up in the "Fan of" box that was recently added to Facebook. By becoming a Baluki fan on Facebook, you'll be notified of every genius-filled post I make on this blog (if the RSS feed wasn't enough for you).

And I'll be posting high-res videos there too, so no more watching grainy YouTube vids. If you're thinking "yea, like you're EVER going to make videos", I must point out that I've already created TWO: Baluki and the Ring of the Law, and the just-released Baluki's Beam Jumping!

Also, if you've ever wanted to link to this blog from your own site, I've made a little button for you to use, if you like.

Continued...

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

This is Part 3 in my 9-part series detailing the ins and outs of the shaman talent trees.

Elemental

Elemental Focus

After landing a critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature damage spell, you enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next 2 damage spells by 40%.

Let me make this simple: IF YOU'RE ELEMENTAL, YOU NEED THIS TALENT.

Elemental shamans are all about crits, and once you have about 30% crit chance, you're going to have Clearcasting up almost constantly. This will be a huge help, since our mana efficiency isn't very good otherwise.

Elemental Focus can proc from any jump of a Chain Lightning, all shocks, LB (of course), and I think it can even proc from a Lightning Overload (Tier 8 Elem talent).

There are a couple other classes that have Clearcasting talents, but the shaman version is very different. For one, the bonus lasts for TWO casts, not just one, though the bonus is much less than the Mage and Druid versions. Second, it procs on spell crits; it's not just a 10% chance, so it gets more useful as your spell crit rate increases. Third, it only costs ONE TALENT POINT.

If you're going Elemental, you'd be a fool not to get this talent.



Reverberation

Reduces the cooldown of your Shock spells by .2/.4/.6/.8/1 sec.

Not a bad talent, especially in PvP. This will allow you to cast your shocks more often, which can be useful (though not very mana-efficient). Flame Shock doesn't need a shorter cooldown, but it can be handy in PvP to slow people (like flag runners) more often, and it's most useful with Earth Shock, so you can interrupt a casting opponent more often.

It's also quite good for Enhance players. Probably more than Elemental players, in fact. Being able to Earthshock more quickly while Stormstrike is up is handy.

I don't ever get this talent though. A full Elemental shaman is only rarely going to be using his shock spells, since LB and CL do so much more damage, and are more mana-efficient. In fact, I think this talent should be in the Enhance tree. Maybe it can replace Shield Spec.



Call of Thunder

Increases the critical strike chance of your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells by an additional 1/2/3/4/6%.

Going Elemental? Get it. Crit is key to your success as an Elemental shaman. It helps you proc Clearcasting more often, thus increasing your mana efficiency. And of course it increases your damage output.

And no, that's not a typo. It DOES go 1-2-3-4-6.

Enhancement

Enhancing Totems

Increases the effect of your Strength of Earth and Grace of Air Totems by 8/15%.

Definitely get it if you're going Enhance. SOE and GOA are two of the most useful totems you have, since Strength and Agility are useful to all the melee classes (and hunters). And it's only two talent points. The extra 15% may not seem like much, but remember that's an extra 13 strength or agility for your whole group.



Shamanistic Focus

After landing a melee critical strike, you enter a Focused state. The Focused state reduces the mana cost of your next Shock spell by 60%.

Basically, this is Elemental Focus for Enhance shamans. Once you get Dual Wield, this will be incredibly useful, since you'll be critting so much more often. It also greatly benefits from Thundering Strikes (higher chance to crit) and Flurry (faster attacks, so you crit more often).

This also helps a lot in the mana-efficiency department. Enhance shamans have even worse efficiency than Elementals, and their mana pools are usually quite small.

In fact, you'll be critting so often that you'll probably always have this ability ready for your next shock. Look at it as a flat 60% decrease in the cost of your shocks, for ONE talent point.

It's basically worthless for Elemental and Resto shamans, since they shouldn't be meleeing at all.



Anticipation

Increases your chance to dodge by an additional 1/2/3/4/5%.

5% extra chance to avoid melee attacks. It's simple, it's effective. Not a whole lot to say about it.

I recommend it, since we shamans tend to take a lot of damage, and you forgo a lot of protection when using a 2-hander or dual-wielding.

Restoration

Nature's Guidance

Increases your chance to hit with melee attacks and spells by 3%.

This is a weird talent, because it doesn't help your healing at all. It's basically there to give Resto shamans a better chance at doing some damage.

Enhance and Elem shamans may find it useful (especially Elem, since they should be going into the Resto tree anyway) but 3 talent points for just 3% extra hit chance is kinda...crummy. If you're really hurting for +hit, you should grab it. Don't be afraid to grab it now and ditch it later; that's what respeccing is for.

If you're a PvPer, I think there's also a cap on +hit versus other players. I don't know what that is, but I think Elemental PvPers will want to skip this talent if they already have 3 points in Elemental Precision (Tier 6 Elem talent). I'll update this when I've learned more.



Healing Focus

Gives you a 14/28/42/56/70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any Shaman healing spell.

Helps you heal yourself quicker while taking damage. Very nice for any spec, especially in PvP, where you're usually on your own for healing.

I think it's essential to Resto shamans, and also very good for Elem and Enhance. As Elemental, I usually put 4 points into this talent, and one into Totemic Mastery.

Combining this talent with Earth Shield (Tier 9 Resto talent) or the Concentration paladin buff basically ensures that your heals will be free from pushback.



Totemic Mastery

The radius of your totems that affect friendly targets is increased to 30 yards.

If you ask me, totems should have a 30 yard radius by default. Paladin and Hunter auras cover 30 yards, AND they're mobile. But until Blizzard fixes that issue, we've gotta put up with it.

This talent can be pretty handy, since the stationary nature of totems makes it harder to position your groups.

Hey, it's not fabulous, but it's only one talent point, and it actually helps more than you'd think.



Healing Grace

Reduces the threat generated by your healing spells by 5/10/15%.

For a full Resto shaman doing dungeons & raiding, this is very useful. If you haven't figured it out by now, pulling aggro is bad. And if you're Main Healer (MH) on the Main Tank (MT), you're going to be causing a LOT of threat. This talent will be very helpful for keeping the baddies off your ass.

For a full Resto shaman doing nothing but PvP, this is worthless. Your human opponents don't care how much threat you cause, because they work it out for themselves, and usually focus-fire you dead before everyone else.

Elemental and Enhancement shamans don't do enough healing, so don't bother.

Well, that's all for this round. Tune in next time, when I tackle Tier 4! Things are really starting to get interesting.

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