Gotta credit Vixsin from Life in Group 5 with this bit of wisdom.
This was his reply to someone on his blog post, but I think it deserves a page on its own.
Cataclysm Resto Shaman Stat Guide
In hard mode encounters, I would argue that Crit is your least valuable stat (Mastery and Haste are top contenders). But in normal mode encounters, Crit will come in a close second to Haste. Think of it like balancing a scale–you don’t want to load everything on one side right from the start, because the scale will simply tip over. What you want to do is load a little bit on each side, gradually working your way up to higher and higher levels.
At present, based on my own experiences in Tier 11, I would advise a Resto Shaman to pursue the following:
Pre-raiding stats:
- At least 700 haste (provided that you glyph RT, this will get you an extra tick)
- At least 1.8k Spirit
- Even contribution of Mastery and Crit
When working your way through normal mode raids:
- At least 900 haste (if you don’t have RT glyphed you will need to get > 916 haste)
- At least 2.1k Spirit
- An even contribution of Mastery and Crit
- If you’re sitting in mostly epics and haven’t gotten into hard modes yet, haste will be the key to increasing your HPS
Prior to entering hard modes:
- At least 900 haste
- At least 2.2k Spirit (this should increase to >2500 Spirit as you upgrade to ilvl372 gear)
- More than 700 Mastery
- After these points, increase your Haste or Mastery depending on your healing style and needs of your healing team. Mastery will ultimately make your spells hit a LOT harder, while haste will enable you to deliver faster heals. (I personally stack Mastery past 900 haste).
As for the reasoning as to why each stat is rated valuable or invaluable:
- Haste: in conditions where healers have plenty of mana, and thus can overheal in greater amounts without fear of running OOM, haste will be the key to higher HPS because it enables you to beat other healers to the punch. In other words, in a non-triage environment, haste will prove valuable because speed is of greater value than strength.
- Mastery: in triage conditions, Mastery will be the key to greater HPS because it increases your throughput and is at its most powerful when players are at low levels of health. (These are conditions seen in most hard mode encounters). In these conditions, healing-per-mana becomes more important than healing-per-second.
- Crit: unfortunately, it isn’t that favored of a stat this tier because of the reduced stat levels across the board. This means that its contributions through Imp. Water Shield and Ancestral Awakening aren’t as powerful as they once were, and point-for-point, your return on investment for Crit rating is comparatively lower than with Haste and Mastery. That being said, in normal mode encounters and environments where resto shaman are tank healing exclusively, crit is on par with Mastery.
- - - - - - - -- - -- - - - -- - - -
Crap does my shaman need to work on his Resto set !!
Why insert a shaman piece? So many players state guides for what stat to favor.
Int > Spirit > Haste > Mastery > Crit
Which items are BiS and which gems to use.
Nobody puts information on what minimum stats to bring to endgame content.
Some folks stop at Heroics. Some folks stop at 10 man Raids. Others shoot for 25 man Hardmodes. Each of these has a sliding scale of requirements.
Gospel? Maybe not. I'm just loving that someone listed base numbers
Showing posts with label Shaman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shaman. Show all posts
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Monday, March 22, 2010
Resto 2.0
I've been a shaman at level 80 for about 6 months. Spent the first couple of weeks as Enhancement / Elemental. Ran around swinging madly at things trying to lava lash everything I could reach. ULD/ Naxx raids and 5 mans before the new LFG group finding system. Pretty frustrating for a new level 80. Decided shaman endgame wasn't my cup of tea.
I swtiched to level my DK some and digest this problem while I was grinding levels. Dam that DK was fun to play. Hell, I liked it so much, I was playing her to the exclusion of all my other toons. For some people, it may not seem much. I have alot of toons. Like an 80 Hunter, 80 Priest, 80 Mage, 80 Warrior, 80 Shaman, 80 DK, 80 Warlock, 72 Paladin, 38 Druid, and a noobie Lv18 Orc Shaman to play on the Horde side.
Yea. I have alts disease. I don't change my primary character easily, but I've also played this game since release date. So I know the basics of pretty much every class and then some. I've now stopped trying to KILL myself getting every Weekly raid quest done on all seven raid level toons. Nowadays I hit up maybe 2 or 3 weeklys and VoA 25/10 on two characters. I only hit ICC 10/25 with my top two or three characters. No sense in keeping a half dozen characters in the endgame. Too much work grinding badges for characters I rarely use. Too expensive gemming Epic gems and Enchants.
Gearscore breakdown: They're always changing. My top toon is just bestial. Can't lie. My bottom toon is still using Relic gear. The most fun ones are the ones that have 10,000 others competing for the same raid spots. I still manage to play what I want to.
Dk 3185 Dps / 2800 Tank
Hunter 2965 Marks
Sham 2885 Resto / 2830 Ele ( Like 2600 Friday )
Priest 2400 Shadow / 2000 Holy
Warrior 2200 Arms / 2200 Prot
Mage 2100 Fire
Warlock 1970 Destro
Are my characters reduced to a stupid 4 digit number? Hardly. They're ALL me. I just see them as either needing gear or NOT needing anything. Still it gives a nice baseline to separate the 80s that are looking for 1 item from Endgame and those 80s that would take anything 232 that dropped.
My shaman, is somewhere between. Last weekend, I had enough combined gear to strike back into ICC 10 and raid endgame again. I hooked up with an old friend that was Raidleader for a pickup team I ran my DK with. She was a fantastic tank and a solid raider. We had a great time. For this run, she needed a healer, and so I go ... back into the fray.
I swtiched to level my DK some and digest this problem while I was grinding levels. Dam that DK was fun to play. Hell, I liked it so much, I was playing her to the exclusion of all my other toons. For some people, it may not seem much. I have alot of toons. Like an 80 Hunter, 80 Priest, 80 Mage, 80 Warrior, 80 Shaman, 80 DK, 80 Warlock, 72 Paladin, 38 Druid, and a noobie Lv18 Orc Shaman to play on the Horde side.
Yea. I have alts disease. I don't change my primary character easily, but I've also played this game since release date. So I know the basics of pretty much every class and then some. I've now stopped trying to KILL myself getting every Weekly raid quest done on all seven raid level toons. Nowadays I hit up maybe 2 or 3 weeklys and VoA 25/10 on two characters. I only hit ICC 10/25 with my top two or three characters. No sense in keeping a half dozen characters in the endgame. Too much work grinding badges for characters I rarely use. Too expensive gemming Epic gems and Enchants.
Gearscore breakdown: They're always changing. My top toon is just bestial. Can't lie. My bottom toon is still using Relic gear. The most fun ones are the ones that have 10,000 others competing for the same raid spots. I still manage to play what I want to.
Dk 3185 Dps / 2800 Tank
Hunter 2965 Marks
Sham 2885 Resto / 2830 Ele ( Like 2600 Friday )
Priest 2400 Shadow / 2000 Holy
Warrior 2200 Arms / 2200 Prot
Mage 2100 Fire
Warlock 1970 Destro
Are my characters reduced to a stupid 4 digit number? Hardly. They're ALL me. I just see them as either needing gear or NOT needing anything. Still it gives a nice baseline to separate the 80s that are looking for 1 item from Endgame and those 80s that would take anything 232 that dropped.
My shaman, is somewhere between. Last weekend, I had enough combined gear to strike back into ICC 10 and raid endgame again. I hooked up with an old friend that was Raidleader for a pickup team I ran my DK with. She was a fantastic tank and a solid raider. We had a great time. For this run, she needed a healer, and so I go ... back into the fray.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
LV 58 to 68 goes WAY too Fast!
To Hellfire and Back again .... As a Shaman
The speed at which quests stack up and bonus XP accumulates is staggering. I took a portal to the Outlands at level 58. Racked up the two level s quickly to 60 and got my flying mount. This opened up a wealth of opportunities. Collection quests just became 50% easier when you can swoop in and grab whatever you’re after. The back and forth travel got faster. Can I afford an epic flyer? Yes. Probably. I can’t physically get it till I break the level 70 cap on 225 Riding. I’d certainly purchase it for 4200g at Honor Hold. Who WOULDN’T take the 800g tax break? Plus, most people take flying into Shadowmoon Valley like going into Bangladesh, Darfur, or Tiajuana. Avoid it if you can.
I hit Lv64 before I left Hellfire Peninsula. There are THAT many quests in the zone. You can’t avoid making a couple of levels and my drop rate on some of the “kill these for item x” quests were pretty good. I hit 66 wrapping up Zangarmarsh. Get the 30 min buffs to spellpower and attack from the Treant guardians in Cenarion Enclave. Even hybrids can benefit from this cheap and easy buff.
Cenarion Faction. I’ve done this several times and it’s a huge boost to Cenarion Expedition faction gains. DO NOT take any quests in Zangarmarsh without collecting / buying up 200 unidentified plant parts. Ideally the max number is around 300, but the turn ins for the plant parts are repeatable. Grind your faction up to Honored thru turn-ins. Then any quest XP will guarantee your character reaches Revered with the Expedition. All of the tradeskills have one or two good patterns / recipies with this group. Why not max out your faction early? The swamp was going green as the mob level was falling below mine quickly. I needed the faction with the Kurnei in Nagrand as well, so I decided to stick it out. This was also setting up some important quest chains.
Terokkar forest. Not much to say. I hardly knew ye. There were no significant blue drops. I did a few quests and stopped when the rest became green or instance quests. No time to mess around with Auchunei crypts or Mana Tombs. No one goes to those places any more. Off to Nagrand. I got into the zone after hitting Neutral / Friendly with the Kurnei. This is a must. Then you can get the Ortor my Old Friend quest + Sunspring villiage cleansing + Murkblood corruption + another quest. This gives you 5 quests for the same spot. All 5 involve burning or killing something in the area. You can just go to town. The whole carnage took 5 minutes. The flight there and back was more tedious. Shamen don't get AOE, but we can chain lightning rather quickly with Malestorm weapon. We also get wolves and elementals to summon. Too easy.
Gear Upgrades
I gemmed out the Helm from Zangarmarsh and the blue cape from the goblin + Jump-o-Tron . Using a flying mount on the Jump-o-Tron is priceless! I was so over-geared, the Windrock Matriarch was beat down quickly solo and I got the blue DPS cape. Quickly, getting a +22 AGI enchant and crossing cloaks off my list. Both the Old crone and Zelgor the Wise died in seconds. Even 20 minions were trivial matter. Elites like the Felguards and the Demonic Engineers are painful. Luckily, I tagged along with a very nice 80 Paladin and a pair of DK’s at level 69. We did the Ring of Blood and the first Forge Camp: Hate quest chain. Easy 80k xp there plus some gold, potions, and a blue 2H Axe. Am I gonna use the axe? Probably not. I’ve been selling off or replacing my caster set since level 40.
I have the Relic 2 set for Caster Mail Armor. No big. I’ll dual spec Heals at level 70 or 72. This is just to multiply my Raid viability at Lv 80. For leveling, I can stick to grinding out Enhance Shammy dps and shredding anything I meet. Durn the Hungerer? Not quite. Everything else - Yea. It’s toast. I'll ride along with my blues till mid 70s. I've seen 80s with green gear in pickup runs. I plan on being light years ahead of them.
I hit 68 last night . The upper 60’s as a Shaman are just rockin’ good. Level 60, Spirit wolves. Every minute I get to call them in for 15 seconds. I don’t use them enough because, I can’t get mana back from Shamanistic rage. You get that from hitting things. The combined dps of the wolves + myself + totems is too darned high. That’s right. The wolves just tear up stuff for 15 seconds and I have nothing left to hit for mana. 1 minute cool down is quick. Nothing survives long. Mob density is rarely high enough to warrant using them all the time. If I’m in a confined space with enough creatures to absorb all the dps, I’ve screwed up or I’m facing an elite mob alone.
Level 64, Earth Elmental with 10 minute cooldown. Level 68, Fire Elemental with separate 10 minute cooldown. Level 70, Heroism with a 10 minute net cooldown. That’s a lot of dammed power available for oh-shit moments. What shamen don’t get? Aggro reduction. Once I win the threat war, I get to tank. I did a crushing amount of DPS compared to the others in an instance run because I’m a shameless twink. My gear is ugly powerful. However, I don’t get to drop threat. At all. In any manner.
Aggro Reduction
Hunter – Feign
Mage – Invis
Warlock – Soul Shatter
Rogue – Vanish
Priest - Fade
Pally - Bubble
Warrior - ?
DK - ?
Druid -?
Shaman - ?
I can’t think of any way these classes can drop agro. The top 3 classes have Tank specs. Warriors / DKs / Feral Druids can handle a beating. Kitty Druids, Fury Warriors, and Blood DKs get hosed, but I kinda see how that spec is a choice and agro reduction shouldn’t be a guaranteed ability held by all classes. Pure DPS should get aggro reduction. Healers should get aggro reduction. Hybrids…. Meh.
We get Reincarnate. Lol. 100% Guaranteed to drop your threat to 0 every time. Usable every 30 minutes without glyph. Repair costs are at a variable rate for use.
The speed at which quests stack up and bonus XP accumulates is staggering. I took a portal to the Outlands at level 58. Racked up the two level s quickly to 60 and got my flying mount. This opened up a wealth of opportunities. Collection quests just became 50% easier when you can swoop in and grab whatever you’re after. The back and forth travel got faster. Can I afford an epic flyer? Yes. Probably. I can’t physically get it till I break the level 70 cap on 225 Riding. I’d certainly purchase it for 4200g at Honor Hold. Who WOULDN’T take the 800g tax break? Plus, most people take flying into Shadowmoon Valley like going into Bangladesh, Darfur, or Tiajuana. Avoid it if you can.
I hit Lv64 before I left Hellfire Peninsula. There are THAT many quests in the zone. You can’t avoid making a couple of levels and my drop rate on some of the “kill these for item x” quests were pretty good. I hit 66 wrapping up Zangarmarsh. Get the 30 min buffs to spellpower and attack from the Treant guardians in Cenarion Enclave. Even hybrids can benefit from this cheap and easy buff.
Cenarion Faction. I’ve done this several times and it’s a huge boost to Cenarion Expedition faction gains. DO NOT take any quests in Zangarmarsh without collecting / buying up 200 unidentified plant parts. Ideally the max number is around 300, but the turn ins for the plant parts are repeatable. Grind your faction up to Honored thru turn-ins. Then any quest XP will guarantee your character reaches Revered with the Expedition. All of the tradeskills have one or two good patterns / recipies with this group. Why not max out your faction early? The swamp was going green as the mob level was falling below mine quickly. I needed the faction with the Kurnei in Nagrand as well, so I decided to stick it out. This was also setting up some important quest chains.
Terokkar forest. Not much to say. I hardly knew ye. There were no significant blue drops. I did a few quests and stopped when the rest became green or instance quests. No time to mess around with Auchunei crypts or Mana Tombs. No one goes to those places any more. Off to Nagrand. I got into the zone after hitting Neutral / Friendly with the Kurnei. This is a must. Then you can get the Ortor my Old Friend quest + Sunspring villiage cleansing + Murkblood corruption + another quest. This gives you 5 quests for the same spot. All 5 involve burning or killing something in the area. You can just go to town. The whole carnage took 5 minutes. The flight there and back was more tedious. Shamen don't get AOE, but we can chain lightning rather quickly with Malestorm weapon. We also get wolves and elementals to summon. Too easy.
Gear Upgrades
I gemmed out the Helm from Zangarmarsh and the blue cape from the goblin + Jump-o-Tron . Using a flying mount on the Jump-o-Tron is priceless! I was so over-geared, the Windrock Matriarch was beat down quickly solo and I got the blue DPS cape. Quickly, getting a +22 AGI enchant and crossing cloaks off my list. Both the Old crone and Zelgor the Wise died in seconds. Even 20 minions were trivial matter. Elites like the Felguards and the Demonic Engineers are painful. Luckily, I tagged along with a very nice 80 Paladin and a pair of DK’s at level 69. We did the Ring of Blood and the first Forge Camp: Hate quest chain. Easy 80k xp there plus some gold, potions, and a blue 2H Axe. Am I gonna use the axe? Probably not. I’ve been selling off or replacing my caster set since level 40.
I have the Relic 2 set for Caster Mail Armor. No big. I’ll dual spec Heals at level 70 or 72. This is just to multiply my Raid viability at Lv 80. For leveling, I can stick to grinding out Enhance Shammy dps and shredding anything I meet. Durn the Hungerer? Not quite. Everything else - Yea. It’s toast. I'll ride along with my blues till mid 70s. I've seen 80s with green gear in pickup runs. I plan on being light years ahead of them.
I hit 68 last night . The upper 60’s as a Shaman are just rockin’ good. Level 60, Spirit wolves. Every minute I get to call them in for 15 seconds. I don’t use them enough because, I can’t get mana back from Shamanistic rage. You get that from hitting things. The combined dps of the wolves + myself + totems is too darned high. That’s right. The wolves just tear up stuff for 15 seconds and I have nothing left to hit for mana. 1 minute cool down is quick. Nothing survives long. Mob density is rarely high enough to warrant using them all the time. If I’m in a confined space with enough creatures to absorb all the dps, I’ve screwed up or I’m facing an elite mob alone.
Level 64, Earth Elmental with 10 minute cooldown. Level 68, Fire Elemental with separate 10 minute cooldown. Level 70, Heroism with a 10 minute net cooldown. That’s a lot of dammed power available for oh-shit moments. What shamen don’t get? Aggro reduction. Once I win the threat war, I get to tank. I did a crushing amount of DPS compared to the others in an instance run because I’m a shameless twink. My gear is ugly powerful. However, I don’t get to drop threat. At all. In any manner.
Aggro Reduction
Hunter – Feign
Mage – Invis
Warlock – Soul Shatter
Rogue – Vanish
Priest - Fade
Pally - Bubble
Warrior - ?
DK - ?
Druid -?
Shaman - ?
I can’t think of any way these classes can drop agro. The top 3 classes have Tank specs. Warriors / DKs / Feral Druids can handle a beating. Kitty Druids, Fury Warriors, and Blood DKs get hosed, but I kinda see how that spec is a choice and agro reduction shouldn’t be a guaranteed ability held by all classes. Pure DPS should get aggro reduction. Healers should get aggro reduction. Hybrids…. Meh.
We get Reincarnate. Lol. 100% Guaranteed to drop your threat to 0 every time. Usable every 30 minutes without glyph. Repair costs are at a variable rate for use.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Dual Wield and + Hit
Just a few weeks ago, I decided to dust off my shaman and get him going again. At level 20, the new patch of WoW gives you tremendous bonuses to grind from a riding mount to Relic gear to XP reduction on pre-60 levels. IMHO the most beneficial things to have while levelling are the 2 piece Relic Armor, a Relic weapon, and a high level "buddy".
I took the Enhancement tree to spec before level 80 and the dps has been really great lately. The combat is very intense and visceral, instead of casting 3 dots and fear or Pyroblast and Fireburst. Totem layout and mana recovery being your biggest steady state issues. Afterwards, it's gearing up correctly. The first big hurdle is level 40 = Dual wield.
By level 30, you get your windfury weapon enchant and your windfury totem. Lava Lash is a talent that gives 100% of your offhand weapon damage instantly every 8 seconds. If your offhand is enchanted with Flametongue, you get 125%. I have a slow offhand weapon and was using the PvP Relic dagger. My dps at level 40 was a respectable 69 dps. Getting a slow mainhand works GREAT with Windfury effects. I got a second Relic Mass of McGowan. I enchanted it with Crusader and jumped up to 96 DPS.
Now my only problem is that I'm missing everything I'm attacking. Missing horribly. Nothing could be worse on scrolling combat text and my Recount than Miss, Miss, Miss, Hit, Miss, Miss, Glancing Blow, Miss, Miss. Wow Dual wield sucks. Maybe I sucked. Time to fix things!
I swapped some gear around and got more +hit. Getting more +hit is actually VERY difficult at lower levels. Nothing has gem slots. The first few talent points after Dual Wield must be placed into your three "Accuracy" talents that give +hit. Re-spec if you haven't done this already. Looking at the DPS charts = Pro hint. DPS charts are entirely for YOUR benefit. I don't like to link charts. They're for me to see the fight. Even on my hunter rocking more than 6k DPS on some fights... it's just not cool. So, looking closely, my dps chart gave me a 25% miss chance against level 42-44 mobs at Level 40. The opponents are higher level. They naturally dodge and parry more. It's an uphill battle. I'm probably killing them more with Lightning shield than my own weapon / spell damage. I have to fix that.
Take your +hit talents. Get the +hit necklace made from Jewelcrafting ( Lev 39 crafted item). Hunt down any +hit items. I wound up getting the Mail legs from Marudon, the DPS ring from Princess Theladras, and some +8 hit mail gloves from the AH. All this trimmed my miss percentage to below 10% and my dps from 96 to 250. What a huge jump!
I took the Enhancement tree to spec before level 80 and the dps has been really great lately. The combat is very intense and visceral, instead of casting 3 dots and fear or Pyroblast and Fireburst. Totem layout and mana recovery being your biggest steady state issues. Afterwards, it's gearing up correctly. The first big hurdle is level 40 = Dual wield.
By level 30, you get your windfury weapon enchant and your windfury totem. Lava Lash is a talent that gives 100% of your offhand weapon damage instantly every 8 seconds. If your offhand is enchanted with Flametongue, you get 125%. I have a slow offhand weapon and was using the PvP Relic dagger. My dps at level 40 was a respectable 69 dps. Getting a slow mainhand works GREAT with Windfury effects. I got a second Relic Mass of McGowan. I enchanted it with Crusader and jumped up to 96 DPS.
Now my only problem is that I'm missing everything I'm attacking. Missing horribly. Nothing could be worse on scrolling combat text and my Recount than Miss, Miss, Miss, Hit, Miss, Miss, Glancing Blow, Miss, Miss. Wow Dual wield sucks. Maybe I sucked. Time to fix things!
I swapped some gear around and got more +hit. Getting more +hit is actually VERY difficult at lower levels. Nothing has gem slots. The first few talent points after Dual Wield must be placed into your three "Accuracy" talents that give +hit. Re-spec if you haven't done this already. Looking at the DPS charts = Pro hint. DPS charts are entirely for YOUR benefit. I don't like to link charts. They're for me to see the fight. Even on my hunter rocking more than 6k DPS on some fights... it's just not cool. So, looking closely, my dps chart gave me a 25% miss chance against level 42-44 mobs at Level 40. The opponents are higher level. They naturally dodge and parry more. It's an uphill battle. I'm probably killing them more with Lightning shield than my own weapon / spell damage. I have to fix that.
Take your +hit talents. Get the +hit necklace made from Jewelcrafting ( Lev 39 crafted item). Hunt down any +hit items. I wound up getting the Mail legs from Marudon, the DPS ring from Princess Theladras, and some +8 hit mail gloves from the AH. All this trimmed my miss percentage to below 10% and my dps from 96 to 250. What a huge jump!
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