2Her use and Shaman tanking - Official thread

[Futhark]

Guys, if they morphed Enhance into some sort of tank tree, they'd have to change what the tree's icon looks like! Something that obviously doesn't mean "Dual-wielding melee DPS".

Wait... it's already a shield? Well, WTF!

[Rezhka]

To add a bit, i think Earth Shield should stay Resto-only, with Enhance getting something like Stone Skin, increasing armor, parry chance and reduced chance to be crit.
^ Only available with 2x Rockbiter active.

hmm yea its viable i suppose. i just thinking that since Earth element is belong to tank spec, so i want it to use all earth affinity for its abilty lol. and yea, the key for this tanking spec is RB/RB, and i consider it as our "bear form" or even "defensive stance". And that stoneskin is also a great one .

[Marsc92]

Actually here were my thoughts:

Enhance Tanking and 2H would be combined. There would be no dual wield tank, or 2h dps but a 2h tank spec. This way alot of our talents could be designed around wielding 2h weapons and effectively keep the two separate. The primary change would be to shift rockbiter to requiring a two handed weapon to be enchanted onto. This would stop DPS exploiting the massive survival gains I shall suggest by using rockbiter as a main hand enchant.

Enhance Passives:
Primal Wisdom: Effect condensed with the mental quickness passive.
Stonepillar Totem: (30s duration) Summons a stonepillar totem with 7% of the shamans maximum health, each second it expends 6% of it's remaining hp and grants the shaman a shield reducing physical damage taken by an amount equivalent to 200% of the health expended, stacks 3 times. (Only first 3 stacks) Requires Rockbiter Weapon to be active. (Costs 20% of base mana, 4s CD)
Mastery:
Enhance Elements: Increases Frost, Fire and Nature Damage by X whilst dual wielding, each point of mastery increases this by 2.3%
Enhance Stonepillar: Increases the amount of damaged reduced by the shaman's stonepillar shield by an additional 30% and an additional 12.5% per point of mastery.

Suggested Talents:
Earthen Sanctuary (4th Tier): Whilst rockbiter weapon is active, the shaman's armor is increased by x% (To bring it up to par with other tanks roughly) and the shaman's chance to be critically hit is reduced by 6%.
Stone-Crushing Strike (3rd Tier): Instantly strike the target for 60% weapon damage, strikes up to 3 additional nearby targets for 120% of the damage done to your main target each. Weapon damage is increased by 200% (260% total) if your weapon is enchanted with rockbiter weapon. (Shares a CD with other strikes and is affected by the talents Focused Strikes and Static Shock.
Earthen Power: Modified to also reduce Unleash Element's cooldown to 8 seconds when used whilst rockbiter weapon is active.
Feral Spirit: Modified to reduce damage by 30% whilst at least one wolf is alive if rockbiter weapon is active.
Shamanistic Rage: Damage reduction reduced to 15% to fit cooldown more appropriately. (enhance surivival is fairly sufficient nowadays with both this and a short CD stoneclaw totem providing 17K absorbs every 20s)
Stoneborne: (Not sure where to place, actually thinking 1st tier restoration so it's easily accessible by all specs) Heals the shaman for x% of all nature damage dealt.

Baseline Modifications:
Elemental Totems: removed, instead replaced by 'Summon Elemental'
Summon Elemental: Summons an elemental lasting 30 seconds based on your main hand (Staff/2h) weapon enchantment (Obviously requires an enchantment):
Flametongue: Summons a fire elemental, which pulses fire damage each second split between all nearby hostile targets. (Ideal for Elemental)
Windfury: Summons an air elemental, granting 10% melee haste and attacking the shaman's current target. (Ideal for Enhance DPS)
Earthliving: Summons a friendly lasher which heals the targets of the shaman's direct heals for an additional 5% and increases the effect of healing stream totem and healing rain by 15%. The shaman's chain heal now has an increased range and can heal an additional target.
Frostbrand: Summons a water elemental, granting 5% melee haste and attacking the shaman's current target. Reduced movement speed of all nearby hostile targets by 20%. (The obvious pvp choice, maybe should be nerfed if OP, but enhance dps ain't great in pvp atm)
Rockbiter: Summons an earth elemental reducing damage taken by 50%, damage reduction is reduced by 1% each time the shaman is attacked to a minimum of 20%. Each time the earth elemental successful attacks it heals the shaman for a small amount.

Well basically this covers everything. Critical Strike reduction. Armour is equal to other tanks, extra damage reduction. Enhance should now in a way mirror the mechanics of feral. Requires almost identical gearing. Agility will provide dodge, and should be modified to give a fair bit more. So basically gemming for agility will be ideal as it provides dodge and self healing via stoneborne. Instead of form/stance switching it requires having pre enchanted weapons and having a weapon swap macro if you plan to swap mid combat. From here, mastery would be king, though you'd reforge dodge off to make up for lacking parry and to keep them balanced.
The stonepillar mechanic works very simply and is best with higher levels of haste and stamina. It places an absorbs down on you based on hp the totem has just expended, each absorb is less effective than the last. So the more you attack and get mana returns via primal wisdom, the more consistently you may refresh it to put your mitigation back up. Here are some numbers to illustrate how it would work at different gear levels:

120k HP, 12 Points of Mastery (380%): / 150k hp 12 Points of Mastery (380%): / 180k hp 15 Points of Mastery (417.5%)
1st: 1915, 2394, 3156
2nd: 1800, 2250, 2966
3rd: 1692, 2115, 2789
4th: 1590, 1988, 2621
5th: 1495, 1869, 2464
10th: 1097, 1371, 1808
15th: 805, 1006, 1327
20th: 591, 738, 974
30th (final): 318, 397, 524

As you can see stonepillar might scale a bit too well, but it still shouldn't be capable of being refreshed all too fast and should still be a minor source of mitigation, perhaps via nerfing the mastery effect. It's mana cost means 5 refreshes would run one out of mana, shamanistic rage would allow for constant refreshing at no cost except for GCD's. If it can be refreshed too quickly, perhaps it's mana cost can be pushed up a tad. But generally mastery will further increases it's effect, haste would allow for more refreshes. I won't calculate the value of stamina vs mastery. It looks currently like mastery is in front a fair bit, but of course values are easily adjusted. Another thing to point out is that this is designed for all sorts of uses. When add tanking, you get the normal pulses, for slow hitting bosses, the pulses can stack to make up for the larger amount of damage you're about to take. As for pvp in this spec, it should function similarly to other tank specs, only a threat if attacked and vengeance can stack. Killing the stone pillar totem will be rewarded by running the shaman OOM faster. Or one can cast an attack or two on it every now and then to reduce it's effect.
This is just an idea I've spent a while working on. Im sure there would be balance issues. But I have a paladin, death knight, shaman and warlock, and regularly play all specs. I'm not as up to date with PvP balance. But I'm sure adjusting numbers can allow for balance between PvE and PvP. The aim is to keep Enhance DPS untouched and unaffected. All this does is provide a small nerf in damage reduction via shamanistic rage, but I raid with my enhance shaman, and admitedly, this ability doesn't see much use. I have stoneclaw kept almost always on CD, and with ghost wolf at 35% (?) and instant, our survivability generally is quite good. With access to a water elemental with it's current effect it should make up for it both as being a nice boost in damage and utility, and stonebourne providing some passive but minor self healing. Enhance DPS should be the ideal spec for PvP as well, with 2H being a viable option, but perhaps not optimal.

And for those wondering, despite being male and lacking a shield, I'd like to see shamans have above average mitigation if played correctly (via stonepillar etc). With smaller health pools to make up for it. Meat tanks are just bad, and inversely, tanks with mitigation far superior to others is too good. I'd like a tank that is generally just above average, but something that requires skill. Managing mana correctly and refreshing stone pillar when needed provides better mitigation, trying to maximise dps output makes for some additional self healing (preferably very minor, perhaps like 500 hps if 10k dps) Players would actually have sufficient reason to want to maximise output, and would need to know fights well to maximise how much damage they mitigate.

Feedback would be appreciated

[Therm]

Running with this spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZfcG...oMhM:qkaobrmzM
Here is armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nator/advanced
Only have the ilvl 359 2h Axe atm, will test T2 2h Axe next week once i get more points.
From my little testing of a few hours in BGs, this is real fun when you have all your gear and can spend points on the weapon. I'm getting 13-24k wf procs on most targets i can tell is 3k+ resil(Which is about full resil set with no gemming resil) Im getting some great 30k-40k on semi resil targets(1500-2500 resil) and some nasty 50-60k wf procs(Tripple Crit) on little to no resil targets.
Here is a Screenshot from a nice crit that dropped a Priest in 5sec from 100% to 0 without having Stormstrike(You all know the feeling of WF procing when you SS) http://i.imgur.com/SB7UJ.jpg

From the fun im having i will run this a lot in BGs once i get the 372Axe and maybe have some fun 2s with it.
Also: I am thinking of trying to reforge to all crit and see how that goes, with out being able to use Lavalash Mastery seems like not that big of a deal if i drop a few to add better chance of nasty WF procs.

[Deleted]

Hehe, i can confirm that running with 2h is fun and it's also surprisingly effective in BGs. Currently trying to collect some material to release 2h BG montage. Wouldn't use it in arenas (well, tried... ) as it heavily relies on proccing that one big WF crit serie. Also, opposed to therm i think mastery is still great for 2h enhance, as shocks are your only reliable source of dmg along with searing totem. I think tomorrow i'll get better spec for myself and see if that helps getting the material together.

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...a1nthos/simple

[Therm]

I didn't mean mastery would be useless, im just looking for a little more crit so when RNG gods are on my side, i blast people away without them even seeing what hit them xD

[Deleted]

but but... but.. oh well true : D Just cba to reforge myself back and forth with crit and mastery (though crit is quite good for DW also, unfortunately the value diminishes faster than masterys =/)

[Jokerjesus]

Hehe, i can confirm that running with 2h is fun and it's also surprisingly effective in BGs. Currently trying to collect some material to release 2h BG montage. Wouldn't use it in arenas (well, tried... ) as it heavily relies on proccing that one big WF crit serie. Also, opposed to therm i think mastery is still great for 2h enhance, as shocks are your only reliable source of dmg along with searing totem. I think tomorrow i'll get better spec for myself and see if that helps getting the material together.

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...a1nthos/simple

To be honest I wish Blizzard would make us 2H but for PvP only. I think it would really set us apart from other PvP specs and just be a little bit different in PvP and more fun. Here is my suggestion.

[Frost Lash] - Requires a 2H weapon - 6 second cooldown.
You swing your weapon dealing 110% weapon damage as frost damage slowing the target by 5% and causing Frozen Embers dealing 5% of the total damage over 12 seconds stacking up to 3 times.

[Frozen Power] - Rank 2
Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Lash, Frost Lash and Shock spells by 10% on targets afflicted by your Frozen Embers or Frostbrand Attack effect, and your Frost Shock has a 100% chance to root the target in ice for 5 sec. when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.

[Deleted]

To be honest, that sounds fairly simple to implement... could even be 100% of weapon dmg for all i care, though the slow effect could be 10, 20 and 30% or just straight out 30%... hell, you could even remove the dot from it... All 2h enhance needs is just one more melee attack... one that ignores armor... and there we would have it... You could also tweak the talent that makes lava lash hit harder with searing stacks and make frost lash apply slow + smaller dot that way... So many quite simple solutions for making 2h enha atleast viable alternative for DW (wouldn't be on par, but it would be viable)

[Jokerjesus]

To be honest, that sounds fairly simple to implement... could even be 100% of weapon dmg for all i care, though the slow effect could be 10, 20 and 30% or just straight out 30%... hell, you could even remove the dot from it... All 2h enhance needs is just one more melee attack... one that ignores armor... and there we would have it... You could also tweak the talent that makes lava lash hit harder with searing stacks and make frost lash apply slow + smaller dot that way... So many quite simple solutions for making 2h enha atleast viable alternative for DW (wouldn't be on par, but it would be viable)

Since it is dealing it as frost damage it scales with our sp and mastery so it would ignore armor and hit a lot harder. However you are right the slow could be more like 10% a stack, the dot is more of a reason to allow frozen power to work without frostbrand, it would also be a physical Dot so it would not be dispelled much like the frostbrand proc.

[Deleted]

Since it is dealing it as frost damage it scales with our sp and mastery so it would ignore armor and hit a lot harder. However you are right the slow could be more like 10% a stack, the dot is more of a reason to allow frozen power to work without frostbrand, it would also be a physical Dot so it would not be dispelled much like the frostbrand proc.

You can just make the slow it causes to be physical (much like DK:s chillbain). No dot required, as i think more dots for enha would be bit awkward ^^ Also i wish they could have just merged the effect of unleash elements work with earth shock instead (would give shaman tanks the long needed taunt with shorter CD). Would require quite a bit tweaking to be balanced though so i do not wish to see it implemented too soon. : )

Edit: Oh and for fuck sake, don't you dare making it scale with SP! Make it physical attack that deals frost dmg (thus ignoring the armor) so it would scale with AP + Mastery. This change could make 2h enha viable in pve also since i've seen few brave shamans saying that they've done somewhere along 15k dps in BH with 2h. Giving 2h a nice extra attack could boost the dps enough to make it competitive with some of the mid tier dps classes (ie. frost mages).

[Therm]

I'd fall in love with my shaman again if they rechange the imp fire nova thing(atm on ptr Enh gains even more talents to be anti caster) because having windshear doesn't make us less anti caster LOL. Just make it ether a stun on a semi short CD or make it a talent for 2h, Something thats useful or fun, i hate that we get another useless talent to tank casters when its the melee(ret/warrior) that are walking around 3shotting people like its nothing.(I have the best pvp gear atm, and i will get zerg damn hard by any good ret/warrior player in a few seconds when they pop CDs)

[Araun]

long post inc. TL;DR: enha tanks could be awesome.
my build is mostly focused at max level, so some things might not work that great at lower levels, especially about the mastery, but not sure how to fix that or if it even matters. also names have gotten like zero attention so don't focus on that to much. some of it is kinda hard to explain so the order it's written might get a little confusing.

where to start hmm.
specialisation; the stuff you get for speccing enha would be:
agi -> parry. this makes agi give the same parry as it does dodge.
agi -> SP. basic spellpower conversion for threat.
dual wield. explains itself.
vengeance. same as all other tanks get.
Storm Strike(ss). consumes all excess lightning charges dealing weapon dmg + x. basic high threat high dps attack on a 6 sec CD, highest tps attack you have.

mastery; static shield: your melee attacks generate lightning charges, when you reach 10 charges(LC) you will gain x dmg reduction for 4 sec. 1.5% dmg reduction for each point of mastery. lightning charges does not release when you get hit like the current lightning shield. you only get the dmg reduction when you reach 10 charges so staying at 10 is a waste.

talents: I haven't made a comprehensive list of talents only the ones that are the most important for the spell to work.
Charged lightning: makes chain lightning instant, unlimited targets, loose no dmg on jumps but reduces base dmg and it can only be used at 10 stacks of lightning charge. this is the aoe dump for LC's, so you choose between aoe burst or single target with CL or SS.
Primal strikes: using primal strike causes you to regain x% of base mana.
thunderstomp: does nature dmg to spread to all targets within 15yd and spreads earth shock to nearby enemies if it is on the primary target. high amount of threat, 6sec cd shared with fire nova.
maelstrom weapons: stacks to 5 makes next Greater healing wave instant and cost no mana. using the charges causes a 15 sec cd on building stacks again. this a bit like WoG for prot palas and the main source of healing for tank shammies. I guess this could also still be allowed to cast lightning bolt.

spells: a quick overview over the spells that a tank shammy would use.
primal strike(PS): causes damage, 3 sec cd.
flame shock(FS): causes fire damage and places a 12 sec dot on the target, 6 sec cd. (the glyph would be buffed so it would be the same as it is now for elementals).
Earth shock(ES): causes nature damage and reduces the targets attack and cast speed by 20% for 12 sec, 6 sec cd, causes high amount of threat with rockbiter weapon active.
Fire nova(FN): causes fire damage and spreads flame shock to nearby enemies for the remaining duration. 6 sec cd shared with thunderstomp.
Thunderstomp(TS): causes Nature damage and inflicts nearby enemies with earth shock if it is on the target. 6 sec cd shared with Fire nova.
Chain lightning(CL): hits all targets within 20yd for high damage, requires 10 lightning charges.
Storm Strike(SS): causes high nature damage, requires 10 lightning charges.

a general rotation would look like this:
ES -> PS -> TS -> PS -> FS -> PS -> FN -> PS -> ES -> PS... and so forth. with PS swapped out for SS or CL every time it is possible.

tanky stuff: here comes the important stuff for the tanks, the survivability.
dual wielding with rockbiter weapon will give a base 10% dmg reduction and 60% threat increase.
the mastery should have an uptime around 50% with 2 1.5 weapons and some haste. at average item level 359 20 mastery should be relativly easy to get and that would net the shaman an average of 15% damage reduction.
at 359 the shaman should have 5% dodge and 10% parry without any reforging.
this sums up to 40% reduction on average, this is the lowest of the current tanks, but it's aimed a little low particularly on the dodge and the mastery, and in comparison to the other tanks the mastery is a % reduction of all dmg which is pretty nice.

CDs: not much special here, I've chosen to tie them to the totems, but that's not the best idea, unless those totems are untargetable, it would suck to have your 50% dmg reduction totem destroyed I also considered just having it tied to the dropping of the totem, only problem is that the cd is very hard to track that way. but in general it will just be a 20%/1min, 50%/4min and grounding totem that absorbs spelldmg and charges the static shield.

Gearing. this was a bit tricky, but I think I've made a good mastery so that gearing will not require completely new gear just for the tanks. agi will be the primary stat of choice since it gives dodge and parry in addition to some offensive stats. that's already on the gear yay. mastery is also to find on the usualy agi mail gear, and it increases the survivability as well yay. then came the hard 3rd stat. there are for obvious reasons no parry or dodge on mail at the moment, but I think haste will be really good with the mastery, the faster we can stack the charges the higher uptime we can get. then there's the 3rd tier of stats, hit/expertise. since we're dual wielding we would need loads and loads of both, and there's not natural expertise on mail gear. I think expertise should be gotten through some of the talents, dunno if it should be all of it or just some of it, the same goes for some of the hit at least on the offhand. being white hit capped is really important for the mastery to stack up fast. so you'd pretty much want agi > exp/hit > mastery > haste. all 3rd tier stats should be reforged to dodge or parry at high enough gear levels and after caps. so an ideal item drop would be agi + mastery + haste(reforged to dodge) assuming caps have been reached.

I think it's a pretty good way to have enhancement tanks. ofc it would ruin enhancement as a melee spec, but for me it's been feeling out of place since like forever. any and all critique is appreciated, if it turns into something good I'll take it to the official forums.

[Naris]

Guys, if they morphed Enhance into some sort of tank tree, they'd have to change what the tree's icon looks like! Something that obviously doesn't mean "Dual-wielding melee DPS".

Wait... it's already a shield? Well, WTF!

They could just have enh be dps and tank in one tree. I mean they already do it with the Feral tree.

[Deleted]

No thanks!

[Deleted]

I would much rather they generally made wielding a 2h for damage viable instead of trying to make Enhancement a hybrid DPS/Tanking spec.

Although it really does make you think, what on earth is the point in Rockbiter?

It's frustrating they made Rockbiter like it is now, albeit it's now more useful than it's previous incarnation, it's effectively pointless outside raiding/low level dungeons and even then, what is the real chance that a Shaman will ever be asked to off-tank? perhaps if that Boss is on the <5% and the tank is dead and the shit is hitting the fan and people are starting to panic, then sure, it would be useful.

It seems some things with Shaman Enhancement class design are clunky are awful right now. For example, the Searing Totem -- LL mechanic.

[capslocked]

I would much rather they generally made wielding a 2h for damage viable instead of trying to make Enhancement a hybrid DPS/Tanking spec.

Although it really does make you think, what on earth is the point in Rockbiter?

It's frustrating they made Rockbiter like it is now, albeit it's now more useful than it's previous incarnation, it's effectively pointless outside raiding/low level dungeons and even then, what is the real chance that a Shaman will ever be asked to off-tank? perhaps if that Boss is on the <5% and the tank is dead and the shit is hitting the fan and people are starting to panic, then sure, it would be useful.

It seems some things with Shaman Enhancement class design are clunky are awful right now. For example, the Searing Totem -- LL mechanic.

Shaman's are beastish tanks. When a tank goes down in a heroic pop on rockbiter, unleash elements > Shamantastic rage > Frost shock spam on cd(While keeping earthshock debuff up for physical bosses) > and use all your instant casts to use greater healing wave. Obviously this can't last too long, but when you're out of cool downs throw out your earth elemental, and win.

[DrakeWurrum]

I would much rather they generally made wielding a 2h for damage viable instead of trying to make Enhancement a hybrid DPS/Tanking spec.

Although it really does make you think, what on earth is the point in Rockbiter?

It's frustrating they made Rockbiter like it is now, albeit it's now more useful than it's previous incarnation, it's effectively pointless outside raiding/low level dungeons and even then, what is the real chance that a Shaman will ever be asked to off-tank? perhaps if that Boss is on the <5% and the tank is dead and the shit is hitting the fan and people are starting to panic, then sure, it would be useful.

It seems some things with Shaman Enhancement class design are clunky are awful right now. For example, the Searing Totem -- LL mechanic.

It's current use is to allow a Shaman to range kite, or at least help with positioning adds and getting them off healers, since the Unleash effect is just like distracting shot - it forces the target to attack you without actually doing any threat.

If you were, for whatever reason, assigned to kiting a single add, you could go double Rockbiter, and kite with UE and FS and EB. Obviously, ranged DPS are better at it, especially Hunters. Oh, and Frost DKs. But you could still do it.

It has nothing to do with off-tanking... right now anyways.

That being said, Rockbiter DOES serve a very strong off-tanking niche for 5-man Heroic dungeons. Just not in raids.

[Shyzhi]

Only reason i want a 2h shaman would be because of vanilla. I remember playing my m8s outside BRM and i frost shocked a druid and then WF proced and i pretty much 1shot him. It was funny and good (Ofc i dont want it to THAT extent) but it was nice to use a pro 2h mace as an orc shaman and i think blizzard should take advantage of that like frost DKs can DW or 2h. I think it would put a nice bit of variety in the enchance shaman gameplay.

That being said id also like to tank as my shaman but you cant have both in the same tree as DW there isnt enough space to mash 20000 specs into one tree. If shamans could tank i think a few would role a tanking shaman. So LFG groups would go faster as more tanks, Its a double edged sword as people want one and the other be nice if blizzard implomented it but i think it be to much work to get a shaman tank (new sets and such) and be easier just to change a few talents to make it so 2hance can be used.

[Arinnaya]

I still find it annoying how they change the Frost tree for DKs, because they want to offer a 2-handed spec for DK DPS (without a pet like Unholy), and they change Fury for Warriors to allow them to have the option to use 1 handed weapons instead of 2, if they choose, and take the time to balance those two choices against each other, but specifically say they don't want to do the same for Enhance Shaman.