ShockAndAwe is a WotLK replacement for DisqoDice. Disquette of of Sargeras was the original author of this mod. He has stopped playing the game and he kindly allowed me to take over the mod. I renamed it to ShockAndAwe as I felt that that was a more appropriate name for an addon devoted to helping Enhancement Shamans Shock, StormStrike and Windfury (and Lava Lash and Lava Burst ) their way to their maximum dps.

I have updated it to work with WotLK and patch 3.0.8 and I actively invite testers to comment, provide bug reports, and make suggestions for improvements.
Bars

* Feral Spirits: Shows two bars the longer one is the 3 minute cooldown of before you can use the Feral Spirits again and the smaller bar shows the 45 second duration of the Feral Spirits out and active.
* Shield: shows red when shield is inactive, shows time left on shield when active. Displays as pale grey when water shield active, blue when lightning shield is active, and green if some other shaman has cast an earth shield on you. It also displays the number of orbs charges you have left on the bar.
* Maelstrom: Shows 30 second cooldown and stacks of Maelstrom charges. Shows number of charges on the bar and lights up when you have a full 5 stacks of Maelstrom, this is to show that an instant cast spell (Lava Burst, Lightning, Chain Lightning) is possible. Option flash the bar and/or play a sound when you get 5 stacks.
* Stormstrike: bar shows when SS is active, duration is modified by Imp.SS talent – overlayed on this bar is hidden Windfury cooldown, so when WF procs you can see how long it will be before SS is ready and whether its worth waiting to proc WF off a SS.
* Shock bar: shows the type of shock cast (green – earth, orange – flame, blue – frost, grey – wind) and duration before shock is next available. Duration of bar is modified by Reverberation talent.
* Global Cooldown: shows expiry of GCD
* Lava Lash: shows cooldown of Lava Lash

Uptime Box

New frame that shows uptime of our major buffs : Flurry, Unleashed Rage, Elemental Devastation. May also add Lightning Speed (Mongoose proc), Elemental Strength (Stonebreaker Totem proc) however these will probably be replaced by new lvl 80 buffs so will probably wait until those are implemented. Display has both session uptimes and last fight uptimes.

Now supports SharedMedia, so you can configure your bar textures to suit your UI. Also now supports altering colours to suit your own preferences.
Priority Box

Now you can configure a priority queue so it will show you the icon of the next skill thats off cooldown that gives highest dps. User configurable options for priorities. Defaults are MW5_LB, ES_SS, SS, ES, LL, ST, LS as those are showing top DPS according to EnhSim. Will also optionally show windshock icon if your threat is overtaking the tank.
Other Features

Now warns if your weapons are missing buffs on entering combat – warns when shield expires.

Now can flash Maelstrom bar when you get 5 stacks, and optionally play a configurable sound every few seconds. Plus can do the same for 4 stacks – feature requested by community.

Displays an optional WF & SS dmg totalizing and option to output to scrolling combat text. So now you can see the total dmg you do from a WF or SS hit.

Gives options to keybind your weapon buff choices and your shield choices.

Ability to export your character data for use in the Enhancement Shaman Sim so you can calculate your dps and the best kit stats for your personal setup.

To configure the addon

Simply type /saa config to bring up the config panel to allow you to configure it.

One of the most common requests for changing the config is to adjust the frame/bar widths, and to change the sounds for MW4 & MW5. These are easiest changed on the Blizzard Config options.
On the TODO list

If you have any suggestions for improvements or want to report a bug please submit a ticket this makes it a lot easier to track individual problems. Please submit one ticket per issue at the following URL.

A big thanks to all who kept the localization of TT up-to-date. To make that easier I switched to the localization system at CurseForge. There you can find and edit missing entries more easily and you don’t have to upload files anymore.
Manual

In TT the four totem timer buttons are referred to as Timers, the timer buttons for Reincarnation, shields and weapons are referred to as Trackers. The three “Call of …” spell are referred to as multicast spells.

Hovering over a timer button opens a flyout menu containing buttons for all totems for that timer’s element. Leftclicking a button casts that totem, rightclicking assigns that totem to the active multicast spell and to the timer button; leftclicking the timer button will then cast this totem. The assigned totem is displayed as a small icon (referred to as mini icon) in the lower right corner of the timer button. The last button of each flyout menu serves to delete a totem from the active multicast spell.

The multicast spell button works similar: Leftclicking a spell in the flyout menu cast the multicast spell; rightclicking selects it as the active spell, assigns it to the multicast button and updates the four timer buttons accordingly.

The weapon buff tracker also has a flyout menu: Leftclicking will cast a spell; rightclicking assigns it as the leftclick spell to the tracker button; shift-rightclicking assigns it as the rightclick spell to the tracker button (TT 10.1). The flyout menu contains two spell combos for enhancement shamans that can be assigned to the tracker button as leftclick only (by rightclick). Then the first leftclick on the tracker button casts Windfury Weapon, the second leftclick casts either Flametongue or Frostbrand.
Additional Totem Sets (TT 10.1)

The reincarnation tracker serves as an anchor for up to 8 additional totem sets. Rightclicking the ankh tracker saves the configuration of the active multicast spell. Leftclicking the ankh tracker opens a menu with all totem sets, each menu button displays four icons containing its saved totems. Leftclicking a menu buttons loads that set to the active multicast spell, overwriting the active totem configuration. Rightclicking a menu buttons deletes its set.
Additional totem dependant cast buttons

In TT 10.1 for each totem timer button 2 additional smaller cast buttons are introduced. Initially hidden they can be configured to show additional totems, which are then available to cast without opening a totem menu. The totem spell which they contain is always dependant on the active totem assigned to the multicast spell and totem timer button (and can/has to be configured for each totem). For each totem in the game two spells can be assigned as additional casts (options gui -> Totems -> Cast Button 1 and Cast Button 2). If a totem is then assigned to its timer button or the active multicast spell is changed, the two cast buttons change to the two spells assigned for that totem.

A possible configuration could be: The current assigned totem for the water timer button is Mana Spring Totem. The additional buttons show Mana Tide Totem and Cleansing Totem. The player changes the active multicast spell to Healing Stream Totem. In his configuration the cast buttons now change to Mana Spring Totem and Mana Tide Totem.

The PlayerBar: Whenever anyone is healing you a bar will appear, showing you your own health, how much healing will be done by this particular heal, who is healing you and when it will complete. If several people are healing you, the heals will be sorted and stacked on a third bar at the end of the first two. The information about the next incoming heal will be displayed, and the part of the bar representing the next heal will gradually change color to green indicating the time left before the heal completes. This makes is easy to determine whether or not anyone is healing you, or you should drink a potion or use bandages (or heal yourself if you are a healer).

The HealBar: Whenever you cast a healing spell a bar will appear, which shows the health of the target, the incoming heal from others that will land before yours as well as the healing you are about to cast. This makes it extremely easy and fast to determine whether or not the heal is going to overheal.

VisualHeal significantly helps cooperation in large groups by showing exactly what is going on in a compact and easy to read format that makes it possible to react to the information before it is too late. It is also useful when not in a group, because it visually shows the size of the healing your are casting in relation to the health of your healing target, and instantly makes it clear whether or not the size of the heal is adequate.

Configuration: Type ‘/vh’ or ‘/visualheal’.

Addon Communication: VisualHeal uses LibHealComm-4.0 for communicating healing. Ideally all healers in the group should have VisualHeal or another addon that uses LibHealComm-4.0 installed. VisualHeal will continue to function even if some healers don’t have it, but it will not be aware of healing cast by these players. VisualHeal also contains a backward compatibility layer so it will be able to communicate with LibHealComm-3.0 users.

What it isn’t intended to be the is be-all-end-all of Elemental theorycrafting. We’ll delve into more complex stuff later on.

Let’s get started!
1. What is Elemental?

Elemental is the ranged DPS tree available to the shaman class. You deal damage from afar with Nature and Fire spells.

2. Elemental benefits

* A simple rotation and easy mechanics.
* Damage increases dramatically once you acquire Lava Burst, making you competent DPS immediately at 80.
* Lots of buffs to nearly every class/spec you could party with.
* Little mystery in gear upgrades.

3. Elemental drawbacks

* A boring rotation. Very little to watch for or keep track of.
* Your damage doesn’t scale as well with increasingly powerful gear compared to other classes/specs after the initial boost from Lava Burst. You’ll notice.
* Few “unique” buffs and many buffs that are trivialized by ones provided by other classes.
* Highly specialized gear means it’s harder to find from bosses — and Blizzard doesn’t provide much emblem gear suitable for Elemental, either.
* Elemental has few worthwhile instant-cast spells or DoTs, making them ineffective in any fight that involves moving around.

4. Stats to look for

Besides the ever-present intelligence and stamina, which will be on all the gear you want anyway, you’ll be looking for four main stats:

* Spell power. Obviously, you want a lot of it. More spell power equals more damage.
* Haste. Haste does two important things: increases your spellcasting speed, allowing you to fit more spells into your rotation in between cooldowns; and decreases your global cooldown down to a minimum of one second, allowing you to cast more spells in shorter periods of time.
* Crit rating. Besides the obvious factor of making more of your spells critical strikes, crit rating also helps keep important Elemental talents, such as Clearcasting and Elemental Oath, active.
* Hit rating. Elemental shaman should focus on hitting the spell hit cap as soon as possible. You want a total of 14 percent or 368 rating if you’re anything but a draenei, who need 13% or 342 rating. Remember: After you hit 14%, hit is 100% useless.

In terms of priority, it’s: Hit (until capped), spell power, haste, then crit.
5. Stats to avoid

Just as important as what to look for is what not to look for.

* Spirit. This is not a “shaman stat.” None of the shaman specs, Elemental included, have talents that give us extra benefits from spirit and, quite frankly, our built-in mana regen is plenty.
* MP/5. While it’s a good stat for Restoration, Elemental doesn’t need it. Avoid it.

There are exceptions to these rules, mind you — many of the first available post-80 badge rings have some useful stats (SP, haste/crit) but also have spirit on them. If they’re the best you can get or afford, it’s okay to have gear with a little bit of spirit or mp5 as a stopgap until you can get something better.

6. Typical PvE talent setup

The Restoration tree has no viable benefits for Elemental in the early tiers, so you’ll be sub-speccing Enhancement.

Here’s an Elemental sample tree. You have two points remaining, which can be used for either Improved Ghost Wolf (if you PvP), Improved Fire Nova (for extra AoE damage), or a few points in Convection (if you’re having mana problems).

7. Talent overview:

Elemental talents in italics are considered expendable. You’re free to move those points around as you wish. Talents that are struck out are ones you should avoid. For Enhancement, we’ll only be discussing ones that are viable talents for this spec.

Elemental:

* Convection: A small decrease in mana cost of spells. We only partially fill this one up, or not at all, as the points are better used elsewhere.
* Concussion: A must-have set of damage increases to your bread-and-butter spells.
* Call of Flame: A solid damage increase to Lava Burst and our newly-useful Fire Nova.
* Elemental Warding: Not a necessary talent for DPS, but it’s one of the few non-PvE/PvP-specific talents in a tree not known for bloat, and that 6% is handy in a pinch.
* Elemental Devastation: This is a purely Enhancement talent. As Elemental, you’ll never be using your weapons to melee. Don’t put points into it.
* Reverberation: As Elemental, Flame Shock is the only Shock spell you’ll be casting regularly; its direct damage is negligible and you lose DPS from the DoT when you recast it and clip it before it’s over. To that end, this talent is unnecessary.
* Elemental Focus: Vital! Clearcasting, the proc from this talent, is incredibly important in reducing our mana consumption. Each time you get a crit with a spell, the buff will refresh; with high enough crit rating, you can have almost 100% Clearcasting uptime, making all of your spells much, much cheaper.
* Elemental Fury: Another no-brainer, this talent doubles the damage bonus of our critical strikes.
* Improved Fire Nova: Given Fire Nova’s newfound usefulness and the lack of other, more compelling talents to throw two points into, this talent is a fine choice.
* Eye of the Storm: I originally had this listed as a don’t-grab, but many readers disagreed with me. If you find your casts getting pushed back often enough to merit a change, this is a fine choice for a few talent points.
* Elemental Reach: A range of benefits to your basic spells. Grab it!
* Call of Thunder: For one talent point, you get an additional 5% crit on your main damage spell. Definitely worth it.
* Unrelenting Storm: Sort of in the same boat as Elemental Warding — not a necessity, but there’s little else to put your points into, and additional mana regen on top of Clearcasting and Water Shield can’t hurt.
* Elemental Precision: Necessary both for the increase to our spell hit and threat reduction.
* Lightning Mastery: Reduces our base Lightning Bolt cast time to a maximum of 2 seconds, which is further reduced by haste. Necessary for a proper rotation.
* Elemental Mastery: Elemental’s only on-click cooldown, EM is best used early and often. If you have a lot of haste, you might consider not popping it during Heroism due to decreased benefit from the spell’s new haste buff, but as you run heroics or early raids, you may find the DPS boost pretty reasonable when used in conjunction with your other cooldowns.
* Storm, Earth, and Fire: Besides helping with AoE (Chain Lightning cooldown reduction) and emergency add rooting (roots on initial Earthbind Totem cast), SE&F also dramatically boosts your Flame Shock DoT damage, making this a vital talent.
* Booming Echoes: As Elemental, your use of Frost Shock will be extremely limited, but the direct-damage boost to Flame Shock is at least worthwhile enough to merit popping points into this talent.
* Elemental Oath: Vital! This talent is the equivalent to Moonkin Aura, providing you and your party members an additional 5% spell critical chance, but beyond that, it also grants you 10% more spell damage while Clearcasting is active. Like Elemental Focus, the buffs from this talent are nearly always active, depending on your crit rating.
* Lightning Overload: If you’ve leveled as Elemental (why?), you know how neat this talent is when you get it. At the level cap, though, it’s really just another DPS boost, albeit one you’d be crazy not to get. The second bolt that procs is threat-free, which is a nice touch.
* Astral Shift: A pure PvP talent. Not worth getting in a PvE build.
* Totem of Wrath: Get it. Performing the same functions as both Heart of the Crusader and Demonic Pact, this totem will be your bread-and-butter Fire totem unless you happen to party/raid with a very geared Demonology warlock.
* Lava Flows: Though the first portion of the talent is undoubtedly PvP oriented, the additional Lava Burst crit damage makes this a must-grab.
* Shamanism: An obvious necessity.
* Thunderstorm: A great source of emergency mana regen and a surprisingly useful skill if adds get loose. You can always glyph it to receive some bonus mana recovery and remove the knockback completely. If you’re a big baby.

Enhancement:

* Enhancing Totems: If you don’t regularly party or raid with death knights, this can be a useful talent to help your melee friends with a boosted Strength of Earth Totem. Definitely not a necessity, though.
* Ancestral Knowledge: Can’t argue with 5% more intellect. Grab it.
* Thundering Strikes: Doesn’t just boost melee crit — it’s all attacks, including spells. A necessity.
* Improved Ghost Wolf: If you do world PVP, this is a nice pickup for those shamans constantly on the move. If you have extra points lying around, that is. Remember that it doesn’t work indoors.
* Elemental Weapons: An additional 30% spell damage on Flametongue Weapon, the only weapon enchant you should rightfully be using as Elemental.
* Shamanistic Focus: Given that you’ll only really be casting the Flame edition of your Shock spells, this talent normaly wouldn’t be worth it — but at only one point, it’s a welcome addition to your talent repertoire.

8. Leveling as Elemental

In a word? Don’t. It’s incredibly tiresome and only picks up at two points: The first is when you first get Lightning Overload, and the second is when you get Lava Burst. Even with Lightning Overload, though, you’ll essentially be pressing your Lightning Bolt button over and over and over for 74 levels until you get Lava Burst. It’s not pretty, it’s not fun, and it’s certainly not engaging. Level as Enhancement.

If, for some reason, you feel that you absolutely must level as Elemental, then you’re at yet another disadvantage, because the shaman-specific Mystical Pauldrons of Elements and their companion chest are loaded with mp5 instead of more useful stats. Want to go to cloth? Too bad! Everything else has spirit on it. Given the mana issues that players of this spec encounter early on, though, you could do worse than some mp5. You could just certainly do better.

As far as weapons are concerned, while you’d normally go for mace and shield at max level, you’re better off using a Dignified Headmaster’s Charge to level with. Feeling concerned that your spec is one of the only ones that doesn’t really have leveling gear to support it? Just wait until you get to 80, my friend. Just wait.

Where talents are concerned, just fill in your Elemental tree first and then move down Enhancement. Nothing in Enhancement is necessarily a mandatory leveling talent.

9. Your basic Elemental rotation

Elemental, as mentioned several times above, has a very simple rotation.

1. Cast Flame Shock to apply the Flame Shock DoT.
2. Cast Lava Burst, which is a guaranteed crit on a target afflicted by Flame Shock.
3. Cast Lightning Bolt until Lava Burst’s cooldown is up.
4. Cast Lava Burst again.
5. Cast Lightning Bolt until the Flame Shock DoT expires.
6. Go to 1.

This flowchart, courtesy of Propaganda Hour at Something Awful’s WoW subforum, represents the rotation visually.

As you acquire more haste, you’ll be able to squeeze in more Lightning Bolts in between Lava Bursts. There’s little variation in this rotation until you acquire certain set bonuses which affect the way that Flame Shock and Lava Burst work.

Chain Lightning technically does more damage than Lightning Bolt, but has a considerably higher mana cost. If you can get to the point where you can Chain Lightning regularly without offsetting the mana cost with Thunderstorms, you can replace Lightning Bolt with it, but for most beginners, you’ll have a long way to go before that’s possible.

For AoE: you’ll be switching to Chain Lightning over the stock version and aiming for whatever has the most health. Drop your Magma totem in a convenient location and hit Fire Nova on every cooldown for maximum AoE damage. Unfortunately, shaman AoE is still clunky, and we’re essentially the only ranged class that’s required to get into the thick of it to maximize our AoE damage.

10. Gems

Basic Elemental gemming follows some pretty simple rules.

* Gem only for SP and haste. Reckless Ametrines and their blue-quality brethren are a fine choice for any slot, but you can choose to stack either one or the other if you’re trying to hit a certain landmark (enough haste for another Bolt between Bursts, for example).
* Never gem for crit. We’ll go into this at more detail at a later date, but the general idea is that you tend to have enough crit on your gear and with your talents that it’s less effective to gem it than SP or haste.
* Never gem for int, spirit or mp5. Int and mp5 are for Resto, not you, and spirit is objectively awful.
* Use the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond as your meta and Glowing Dreadstones to meet the two blue sockets you’ll inevitably find in your tier gear to get your meta bonus.
* For jewelcrafters: Use Runed Dragon’s Eyes in three available red sockets in place of whatever you’d normally use.
* Don’t worry too much about matching sockets unless the bonus is particularly good (read: it’ll offset the loss of stats from the gem you would normally use in that slot) or it’s to get a meta bonus.

11. Glyphs

There are a number of major Elemental glyphs, though some edge others out slightly in the late game. For now we’ll talk about the top four.

* Glyph of Lightning Bolt: A static 4% increase to your most-used spell. Should be on everyone’s glyph page.
* Glyph of Flame Shock: Remember, you should have close to 100% Flame Shock uptime, so this glyph adds a good chunk of DPS (usually around 4%).
* Glyph of Totem of Wrath: Whenever you put Totem of Wrath down, you get an extra 30% (84) of its spell power for five minutes. Just you, though.
* Glyph of Lava: This glyph is outclassed by the one above until very late in the Wrath game. You’ll need above 3900 active spell power for this one to be better.

As for minor glyphs, there aren’t any that really directly affect your DPS. They’re all quality-of-life improvements. I take Astral Recall, Water Shield, and Renewed Life.

12. Enchants for the endgame

* Mace/Dagger: Mighty Spellpower
* Staff: Greater Spellpower
* Shield: Greater Intellect
* Helm: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
* Cloak: Greater Speed (or Lightweave Embroidery for tailors)
* Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Storm (or Master’s Inscription of the Storm for scribes)
* Chest: Powerful Stats
* Bracers: Superior Spellpower (or Fur Lining – Spell Power for leatherworkers)
* Gloves: Exceptional Spellpower (or Precision if under hit cap, or Hyperspeed Accelerators for engineers)
* Belt: Eternal Belt Buckle (of course)
* Pants: Sapphire Spellthread
* Boots: Tuskarr’s Vitality (or Nitro Boosters for engineers)
* Rings: Greater Spellpower for enchanters

That should be enough to get you started.

WUT’S CAIHN HAEL!?
Chain Heal is your best friend. You have picnics with it and you prance with it merrily in the poppy fields while the sun shines down upon you. You love Chain Heal, and Chain Heal loves you. So you use it – a lot.

Basically, the facts you need to know about Chain Heal are:

1. It has a 12 yard jump range. Anything larger than that, and Chain Heal won’t bounce.

1. It activates Tidal Waves, a useful Resto Shaman talent that lowers the cast time of your next two Healing Waves. You should like Healing Wave too, because with enough haste it’s awesome for tank healing (and raid healing!).

1. It’s awesome if you glyph it, because it hits 4 targets instead of 3, and your Earthliving Weapon will proc more as well. Lots of pretty green numbers all over your screen!

1. It (Tidal Waves) increases the crit chance of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 25%, which is never a bad thing.

WHAT’S RIPTIDE, PRECIOUS? WHAT’S RIPTIDE, EH!?
Riptide is our 51 point talent. It’s an instant HoT that heals for about 1.7k (baseline) and another 1.7k over 15 seconds. It’s a nice instant heal. With the current talents, using Riptide is not completely necessary, but it can help save a life and you should be very vigilant about this. You’re a healer after all!

GLOBAL COOLDOWNS
As a Resto Shaman, you’ll become highly aware of global cooldowns. We need to refresh Water Shield quite frequently (especially if we’re being hit by AoE or splash damage) and refresh totems if a lot of movement is involved in a given fight. We also need to refresh Earth Shield on the tank(s) and use Riptide at the most opportune moments. Global cooldowns will become a big part of how well you play and how well you can manage them. Many a time I have let someone die because of poor GCD management!

KEYBOARD TURNING IS OKAY, REALLY.
People get alot of flak for keyboard turning, but you know what? We’re healers. Keyboard turning is necessary if we’re using mouseover macros. A lot of healers tend to use Grid+Clique or similar setups, and we need to use our mice to heal raids since it’s much quicker and easier for us. This means our other means of movement is keyboard turning, an important thing to do if you need to maintain situational awareness (especially on fights like Professor Putricide, where blobs and missiles can easily come your way).

Hell, it’s PvE. You can get away with it.

STATS! OH MY GOD, STATS!
Personally, I’m a haste freak. I’m trying to get as much haste as humanly possible right now. Mp5 comes naturally with gear, as does intellect and spell power. Crit is also a nice stat. Basically, the only caster stats you don’t want are spirit and hit, which should be obvious anyway!

There will come a time when your Lesser Healing Wave cast time is faster than your global cooldown. This is a wall I hit a while ago and it did make things awkward. I think it happened when I reached around 700-800 haste. I’m approaching 1k haste now and I’m used to it. LHW is an awesome spell when hasted, for pew pew healing. Healing Wave has about a 1.1 second cast time for me with the 2 piece T10 set bonus and Tidal Waves up, which is also awesome. Resto Shamans make powerful tank healers (after Paladins) with this going on. Maybe I’m not accurate about the cast time, but I’m too lazy to check. Yes, I am lazy.

Either way, haste is awesome. You should download Qaurtz so that you can see your cast time latency and heal as quickly, as powerfully and as efficiently as possible.

Intellect is important for Resto Shamans. Mp5 comes naturally with gear, and so does spell power. Personally, I gem full haste. I’d recommend this of all Resto Shamans who are working on T9+ content.

ADDONS JESUS SHIT
I already mentioned Quartz. This is an awesome addon for casters, as it shows your casting latency. We all have latency, and knowing that latency and working with it helps massively.

Like a lot of healers I am a Grid+Clique hoe, so I’d recommend this setup. Grid is a lovely compact addon and Clique is just awesome. It’s extremely easy to configure, appearing as another tab in your spellbook and allowing you to simply choose your mouse/key bindings right there and then. Grid is also handy because it can show raid debuffs, which is important for healers. On Saurfang when people get Mark of the Fallen Champion and they need to be spammed, healers need to know who have that debuff. Usually assignments go like “healer A heals the first person with the mark, healer B heals the second person” and so on.

It’s also handy for Anub’arak 25 (heroic), where people get Penetrating Cold and are marked by the raid leader. You need an additional addon for both of these purposes (RaidStatusDebuffs and RaidMarks respectively).

I also use an addon called ShieldsUp, which tracks how many charges of Earth Shield the tank has left on him/her, as well as how many charges of Water Shield I have left. In the middle of combat it is easy to forget about your shields, the addon simply displays it for you anywhere you want on your screen.

TOTEMZ
Ah yes, those pesky totems. Usually I see if there is a DK in the raid before I decide not to drop Strength of Earth. Usually I use Stoneskin totem. Then I see if there’s an Elemental Shaman, who will most likely drop Wrath of Air and TOtem of Wrath. I’ll use Nature Resistance on the fights that require it instead, and I use Healing Stream Totem since a Paladin is usually around to give me Blessing of Wisdom. I’ll use Searing Totem or Magma Totem if there’s a ToW already down. Every little helps!

I have no idea why I wrote this guide. I’m not even sure how much of it makes sense. I could tell you about the different talents you need to pick up, but eh.

TALENTS
Resto tree is pretty bloated, and there’s really only one or two “correct” specs to take as a healer. My talents are probably out of date now, but you can find them here.

All of those talents are pretty much MANDATORY as a Resto Shaman, though you could live without Healing Way if you’re a strict raid healer, and if you’re just starting out, go for the reduced mana cost in totems on the first tier since mana is more of a problem early on than later, when you get more gear for it.

Focused Mind and Nature’s Guardian are more PvP-oriented talents. Cleanse Spirit, Mana Tide, Earth Shield and Riptide are essential, as you will always want to use these as a Resto Shaman. It’s also worth speccing into Ancestral Knowledge, Thundering Strikes and Improved Shields in the Enhancement tree.

Well, that’s all I can think of for now. I was really bored so I wrote this silly guide. Hope you at least got a laugh or two out of it, because I don’t know if my “style” is going to suit every Resto Shaman out there!

There’s a lot to cover so let’s just get to it, shall we?

We’ll look at the patch notes first.

Shamans

* Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
* Fire Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
* Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.
* Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes.
* Talents

* Elemental Combat

o Elemental Mastery: This talent now increases spell haste by 15% instead of critical strike chance while active.
o Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.

* Enhancement

o Earth’s Grasp: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of the Stoneclaw and Earthbind totems by 15/30%.

* Restoration

o Improved Reincarnation: This talent now reduces the cooldown of Reincarnation by 7/15 minutes, down from 10/20 minutes. Reincarnation cannot be used in Arenas.

I’ve already stated that I like the shorter cooldowns on the elementals… I’m generally always in favor of shorter cooldowns on abilities when I get to use them and against them for classes I don’t play, because I’m selfish and horrible and make no apologies for it. I’m okay with the totems not being usable in arenas because, frankly, they wouldn’t even be a speed bump in an arena setting anyway. How long is it going to take any DPS to kill a totem? Heck, I think I could ignore the totem itself and just two shot the elemental on some characters.

Fire Nova is a fun new ability. I haven’t gotten much use out of it playing elemental in BG’s yet, but when I go enhancement for five/ten man action it’s a lot of fun and does reasonable damage. You can play around with positioning by running up, dropping a fire totem, then running back out to range (I’ve actually done this a few times when healing just for kicks) as long as you’ll be within 30 yards of the totem. It’s not enormous damage but it’s reasonable and is very useful on big trash pulls or when running an instance with lots of adds spawning. Or if you have a DK tank who chain pulls like a lunatic and invites all the AoE you can muster. I’m just saying.

The Reincarnation/Improved Reincarnation changes can get it down to 15 minutes. On the one hand, this is longer than abilities like a druid’s battle rez or a soulstone, both of which have more flexibility.Still, Reincarnation has its strengths (unlike a druid battle res, you don’t lose Reincarnation just because, well, you died the way the druid will if he dies before casting it… we’ve all seen those ridiculous “Okay, Druidking res Druidcat, and Druidcat, you rest Druiddude as soon as you can… Druiddude, I’m going to need you to res Druidboy once you have mana” calls) and having it available every fifteen minutes is hardly a bad change, even if it seems underwhelming compared to other abilities.

It’s kind of funny how often you end up saying that as a shaman sometimes. “X seems underwhelming compared to Y and Z.” Perhaps the secret to being happy as a shaman player is never noticing what other classes can do. (This is both sardonic and unfair of me. I loves my chain heal.)

Since I only really play as Elemental in BG’s now (and I admit, I only do it so I can Thunderstorm people off of bridges) the Elemental Mastery change was one I noticed, thought was good, and moved on. But the past week the elemental shamans in my raid group (Dasi, you’re simply a beast) could not stop talking about how much better the talent is now. This makes me happy just because I’ve always found elemental combat to be a tree with a lot of potential that I utterly fail at utilizing, and yet even I knew the crit on the talent wasn’t very compelling.

I hadn’t really even noticed the change to Earth’s Grasp. I’m going to leave this one up to the comments, frankly. I mean, I always like a cooldown reduction. Am I forgetting something that would make this a bad change?

We’ll take a quick look at the bug fixes next. One of them makes me slightly happy.

* Shamans

o Glyph of Earthliving Weapon: Now updates the tooltip for Earthliving Weapon.
o Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: Tooltip and functionality corrected to ensure this glyph will cause extra healing from Lesser Healing Wave regardless of which shaman cast Earth Shield on the target.
o Hex: Players are no longer able to use Battlemaster trinkets while under the effects of this spell.
o Mana Tide Totem: The tooltip on this spell will now be modified properly by the Glyph of Mana Tide Totem.
o Thunderstorm: It is no longer possible to use this ability while under the effects of the Druid spell Cyclone.

A tooltip update for Earthliving is all well and good, but the Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave change is nice and the Hex change is very nice indeed. Sure, Hex is still basically a glorified silence/disarm, but at least now when you’re trying to kill someone under its effects they can’t get more health on you. Losing Thunderstorm when Cycloned is unfortunate but most likely necessary. I still hate it, but I can’t honestly complain about it.

In general, while shamans still have some issues with totems comparing poorly to other classes’ buffs or debuffs (which we will be discussing in depth soon) this was a pretty nice little set of changes for the class.

Anyone in the raid who is running HealAssign is free to assign or unassign himself/herself. To assign or unassign others, Assistant or Leader is required.

There is no graphical UI for assigning yet – it is command line only.

Please see the ReadMe file for a complete command list.

It should work with most languages, even though Curse is a bit slow on updating it…

Here are a few off the functions:

- Remind/alert for Elemental Shields and Weapon Enchants when fading or missing in combat (with sound support)
- Show total Windfury damage with options to include advanced info: Crits, misses and which hand the procs come from.
If it procced of Stormstrike, the data from both hits are summed together and adds to the damage.
- Show a message when Lightning Overload procs, optionally together with total damage and number of crits.
- Separate frame allowing for easy Earth Shield tracking and recast
- Show buffs removed by Purge and/or broadcast it to the chat window
- Show spell interrupted by Wind Shear and/or broadcast it to the chat window
- Show when your Grounding Totem aborbs a spell and/or broadcast it to the chat window
- Show when one of your T5 bonuses procs
- Can print messages in MSBT, SCT, Parrot and a few other places.
- Announce to your group whenever you cast Bloodlust/Heroism, Mana Tide, or Feral Spirits
- Uses spellID when available, this reduces the amount of localization.

Of course you can choose yourself which functions you want. It is built on Ace3 for increased effiency and perfomance, with low memory footprint.

“/sf” or “/shamanfriend” to show the GUI.

A big thanks to all who kept the localization of TT up-to-date. To make that easier I switched to the localization system at CurseForge. There you can find and edit missing entries more easily and you don’t have to upload files anymore.
Manual

In TT the four totem timer buttons are referred to as Timers, the timer buttons for Reincarnation, shields and weapons are referred to as Trackers. The three “Call of …” spell are referred to as multicast spells.

Hovering over a timer button opens a flyout menu containing buttons for all totems for that timer’s element. Leftclicking a button casts that totem, rightclicking assigns that totem to the active multicast spell and to the timer button; leftclicking the timer button will then cast this totem. The assigned totem is displayed as a small icon (referred to as mini icon) in the lower right corner of the timer button. The last button of each flyout menu serves to delete a totem from the active multicast spell.

The multicast spell button works similar: Leftclicking a spell in the flyout menu cast the multicast spell; rightclicking selects it as the active spell, assigns it to the multicast button and updates the four timer buttons accordingly.

The weapon buff tracker also has a flyout menu: Leftclicking will cast a spell; rightclicking assigns it as the leftclick spell to the tracker button; shift-rightclicking assigns it as the rightclick spell to the tracker button (TT 10.1). The flyout menu contains two spell combos for enhancement shamans that can be assigned to the tracker button as leftclick only (by rightclick). Then the first leftclick on the tracker button casts Windfury Weapon, the second leftclick casts either Flametongue or Frostbrand.
Additional Totem Sets (TT 10.1)

The reincarnation tracker serves as an anchor for up to 8 additional totem sets. Rightclicking the ankh tracker saves the configuration of the active multicast spell. Leftclicking the ankh tracker opens a menu with all totem sets, each menu button displays four icons containing its saved totems. Leftclicking a menu buttons loads that set to the active multicast spell, overwriting the active totem configuration. Rightclicking a menu buttons deletes its set.
Additional totem dependant cast buttons

In TT 10.1 for each totem timer button 2 additional smaller cast buttons are introduced. Initially hidden they can be configured to show additional totems, which are then available to cast without opening a totem menu. The totem spell which they contain is always dependant on the active totem assigned to the multicast spell and totem timer button (and can/has to be configured for each totem). For each totem in the game two spells can be assigned as additional casts (options gui -> Totems -> Cast Button 1 and Cast Button 2). If a totem is then assigned to its timer button or the active multicast spell is changed, the two cast buttons change to the two spells assigned for that totem.

A possible configuration could be: The current assigned totem for the water timer button is Mana Spring Totem. The additional buttons show Mana Tide Totem and Cleansing Totem. The player changes the active multicast spell to Healing Stream Totem. In his configuration the cast buttons now change to Mana Spring Totem and Mana Tide Totem.