Filed under: Shaman

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how

No matter what expansion, and regardless of the level of content you're doing, one of the things that comes up regularly as a topic of discussion is Spirit. A stat that took over for MP5 as the hot regen item, and rose to even more prominence and popularity among healers with the announcement of fixed mana pools. It is something that has a presence you will always feel and will never be able to escape.

This isn't a bad thing mind you, but it sparks conversations and discussion about how much Spirit you need. What is the right amount? How much is too much? Is there such a thing as too much? Is it worth it at the expense of other stats? I know that many of the fine folks I talk to have had plenty to say on the topic recently, which lead me to today's post.

Well, even more imaginary, I guess. Technically all of World of Warcraft is imaginary. But this post on the EU forums got me thinking: what kind of cool class mounts do I wish existed in the game? What with the Armored Bloodwing up for grabs in the Blizzard Store, I guess I have mounts on the brain.

For warriors, I want a mix of the fanciful and the gritty. I want an armored rhino mount. Something like the Wooly White Rhino, but with armor plates all over it, so heavily armored that it looks like a mound of metal coming to gore you. Like a rhino wearing Onslaught. A rhino wearing Onslaught with Christopher Lee's album playing in the background.

Some classes also come to mind - hunters should get to tame a mount, shaman should get a huge elemental ascendant version of a racial mount (so orc shamans would get a stone worg, while draenei would get a fire elekk and so on) and priests should get angel wings (or in the case of shadow priests, dark angel wings) like Imperius from Diablo III.

So what are your suggestions? What class mounts would you like to see?

---

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

With the Zandalari on the run, you've now moved on to trying to break into the inner reaches of the Thunder King himself. Well, rather, you would if he didn't blow up the bridge you were on and all of your flying mounts happened to go mysteriously missing. Instead, you get to play the part of Jack Burton while you crawl your way through the forgotten depths of the island to face your very own David Lo Pan.

Seriously though, the next leg of the journey through Throne of Thunder will have you playing adventurer under ground facing many of the things that go bump in the night. This is where all the failed experiments and the creatures long forgotten have taken up residence over the many years since their master and creator first ruled the land.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

Last time we spoke about the recent changes to shaman healing. We received a nice little buff in a hot patch to our Healing Rain, Chain Heal and Earthliving. The 20% increase was a quality of life improvement that did actually go a decent ways towards improving our overall healing. While I enjoy pretty much any buff we get, I still can't help but sometimes just sit down and take a look at where we are in regards to other healers.

Basically, I like to sit down and pose the question to other restoration shaman and myself. What is the one thing that you would like to see shaman healers get? What is it that you wish you could do as a shaman healer that you can't currently do? It's a great exercise in creative thinking, or even just taking a look at your own class, and can lead to some very interesting conversations and ideas when shared with other healers like I enjoy on Twitter.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

The first foray into the Throne of Thunder being over, it's time to dive deeper into the realm of the resurrected Mogu emperor. There is, however, a few more obstacles that lay before us as we take out the last of the Zandalari standing in our way. Once those pesky Zandalari are gone we can go further. The problem is those pesky trolls never stay gone for good or for long, but we can at least give them a few punches, kicks and some lightning to the face to remind them of their past follies.

This will not be a comprehensive boss guide, instead this will be a quick run down on things that you, as a resto shaman, should be aware of or tips to help make your healing of the encounter easier.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

By now I'm sure you're already knee deep into the patch, working through new and exciting dailies, taking on Dinomancers hunting down itty-bitty Toenibblers and Footslashers. There's also this whole new raid thing that people are talking about, the Throne of Thunder, that you may or may not have stepped foot in yet. By the time you're reading this, the Looking For Raid version of Throne of Thunder will just become available, and will grant you access to the first three bosses of the zone. If you haven't been able to get in a normal raid, I would highly recommend queuing up and giving it a shot.

Whether you are already a seasoned vet heading back into ToT, or just queuing for the LFR for the first time, I can tell you that for me, this raid zone is amazing fun. It combines some of my favorite aspects of raids like Ulduar and Karazhan, with modern raid building ideas. The story is awesome if you're into that type of thing, and the bosses are more about the mechanics than anything else. That said, resto shaman do have a few things we can do to help make these bosses go down that much quicker and easier for our raid group.

What I love about these posts is that little glimpse of insight they provide into the thought process that goes into balancing the class mechanics in a game like World of Warcraft. I'll be honest, I'm glad I'm not one of the people involved in that job. To me it seems like an endless headache to try and make sure all classes are different enough to feel unique, but similar enough such that a raid or dungeon group isn't punished for lacking one indispensable class, and I wouldn't have the patience for it. But I certainly admire and respect those who do!

---

Today, we are one step closer to the release of new content in patch 5.2 and a brand new tier of content to entertain ourselves with. We'll have everything from a loot grabbing scenario, new profession crafted gear, and a new raid to play with complete with new bosses and loot rewards. I mean, we play the game to have fun, sure, but part of that fun is definitely the rewards we obtain.

The period of time when a new tier is in testing on the PTR, it can sometimes be a bit of a tease since early items tend to be based off of data mined items. Add to that the fact that since it's a PTR, things can change. I think though, that we're close enough to a release that we can safely start taking a bit of a look at the gear that you can expect to see in the next tier. This is not a best in slot list, nor a gearing guide for 5.2, this is simply a list of what will be available to us when the patch goes live. Also bear in mind that even though we are close to release on the patch, stats, drop locations and other variables may change between now and then.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

I've been getting a lot of email, and pings on twitter, about finishing out tier 14 raiding. While patch 5.2 is coming and the new tier with it, a lot of folks are still working on finishing out tier 14, be it normal or heroic. It's a fair point, the patch is still at least a few weeks away, so focus on the current one while it is still relevant. That doesn't mean though that you can't prepare a little bit for the future while handling the here and now.

Getting through the content that is current will net you decent gear and experience that will be valuable going into the next tier of content, especially if you are getting some time in on heroic bosses of tier 14.

Patch 5.2 is still a very hot topic right now, and with very good reason. The content that we're gearing up to enjoy is quite extensive. Whether you love dailies and are looking forward to expanding your catalog of places to grind, new pets to tame on your hunter, battle pets that are coming soon or the epic raiding with fights like Lei Shen. Reputation changes and new legendary meta gems are also on the list of changes that are incoming.

It is a big patch, for sure, and with all that new content comes near constant testing and tweaking of all the features to make sure they work as intended; and with that testing, changes are made and classes undergo changes whether to their gear or their abilities during this time.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

Last time, we looked to the past twelve months, and the journey we took over the last year. As exciting as the past can be, and no matter what we can learn from it, the future is always so much more exciting. That's not to say that Mists of Pandaria hasn't been exciting so far, but content patch 5.2 is shaping up to be very interesting.

With the upcoming patch, one of the things that's been talked about is the new tier 15 set bonuses. Compared to the tier 14 set bonuses for most classes, what we've been seeing so far have been far and away better by leaps and bounds. Rather, that seems to be the general consensus around the internet at least. All of the information is based on what has been revealed on the latest PTR build, and is subject to potential changes before making it to live server.