2.4 Respec

Being the type of player who like to dabble in the various aspects of WoW, I tend to favor the jack-of-all-trades approach to both gear and spec. A typical night usually involves dailies, a raid/instance and PvP. If you're a min/max'er, those are distinctly different scenarios, but given my class, playstyle and interests, flexibility is key so I'm always trying to find the right balance.

With the advent of 2.4 and my increasing PvP activity, I've been tempted to spec into insta-cast Ghost Wolf (as well as improving raid utility) so last night I switched from 0/45/16 to 0/47/14.

Basically I took points away from cheaper totems and gave them to Improved Ghost Wolf*, since I tend to only drop one or two totems while soloing, and mana is not an issue in groups. Having instant travel form is pretty fantastic, especially on the new dailies where it's a race to tag your mob first. PvP gains a lot from this talent, like immunity to sap and faster maneuvering on smaller maps like WSG and EotS. I also took a point away from Anticipation and max'ed Improved Weapon Totems for raid utility (Windfury for all FTW).

On the resto side I moved the first five points from cheaper heals to faster heals - usually when I'm healing it's in PvP or in some other emergency basis, so faster seems better for the moment.

*Note that if you're pre-62 (when Water Shield becomes available) and don't do a lot of PvP, I still wouldn't recommend Imp GW over Imp Lightning Shield (or Anticipation).

Patch 2.doh

Patch 2.4 news is pretty big on the Shaman front, specifically in regards to PvP viability. Sadly, some of these changes translate to significant PvE nerfs. For example, even though Shamanistic Rage now increases mana regained from 15% to 30%, the duration of the ability is reduced by half. Doh! I often use this to mitigate damage during boss and AOE fights (SR reduces damage taken by 30%), so the reduced duration is a serious PvE nerf.

Flametongue (both weapon imbue and totem) now cause a debuff that lowers healing on the target by 50% during a 5-second refreshable duration. Again, great for PvP, but kinda meh for PvE except on certain fights when bosses take healing in some form. Ghost Wolf cast time reduced to 2 seconds, so conceivably a fully talented Improved GW will make it insta-cast, good for PvP and perhaps for a soloing non-Enhancement Shaman, I guess. For Enhancement those points are still better spent elsewhere.

And the biggie - ZOMG Karazahn attunement removed.

Enhancement

It's generally accepted that Enhancement is the spec of choice for solo'ing and leveling, so that's what I went with for Exelus. There were admittedly slow spots here and there, but after 40 things changed. That's when dual-wielding came into play, and mobs started dropping like flies. I'm a rogue without all the sneaky-peaky! I'm a fury warrior without all the "need more rage!" Brilliant.

My current spec is (headed towards) 0/44/17, which is pretty standard given that there's much synergy between Enhancement and lower-tiered Resto talents. First lets look at some key Enhancement talents:

Shamanistic Focus - don't shock without it being up, since our limited mana pool drains fast without it. Mental Quickness, prior to patch 2.3 was kind of meh, but now comes with a nice 30%-of-your-attack-power increase to healing and damage spells. Huge buff. And of course the top talent, Shamanistic Rage gives us 30% damage mitigation plus returned mana. My only mistake is not using this all the time, every time the cooldown is up. Notice a pattern here? Knowing when and how to use our limited mana pool is paramount.

Next let's look at those supportive Resto talents:

Nature's Guidance and Totemic Mastery are the main reasons for reaching into Resto. NG gives us an additional 3% to hit, which helps mitigate our misses since all "special attacks" (like dual wield) comes with a huge miss penalty. It's also important at end-game, when you're facing bosses several levels higher than you and you need all the "to hit" you can get. Totemic Mastery is great for soloing, as well as group utility since it gives you a noticeable increase in totem range. Along the way I picked up Totemic Focus, with a 25% reduced mana cost, which becomes more important and you start to group more in the upper levels.

So while I'm totally happy with Enhancement's dual-fisted pew pew playstyle, my alt-itis is urging me to start an Elemental/Resto Shaman to try out that side of things. (If only to take advantage of all the great Elemental/Resto Outland gear) When I do, I'll report on the leveling progress and compare/contrast with Enhancement.