2Her use and Shaman tanking - Official thread

[Daez]

I know of some people that actually did tank on their shaman back in Vanilla. I've heard tale of shamans that tanked in TBC (including heroics) so honestly a shaman probably could tank heroics now (although they lost shield specialization). Although, honestly, I think you could do heroics without a tank now as long as the healer was good and the dps could keep aggro off of the healer.

I personally like the idea of 2h spec. I personally don't like the concept of DWing (especially the way its done in WoW...there is no other game where you have a lesser chance to hit with your off hand than you do with your main hand). I think the real reason that DW died though is because of how easy it was to kill someone in PvP in one lucky windfury proc. I absolutely loved dropping casters in one hit at level 39 using Staff of Jordan and a restoration spec back before the WF nerf.

[Daez]

I figure if you got like offset tank gear (cloak, neck, trinks, rings) and with PVP gear, you could probably get pretty close to def cap with the high level of +def on TOC gear.

You don't need tank gear at all. You would use all pvp gear. You also don't need defense (at all) to get to uncrittable in PvE. You can use resilience to do it and it takes less resilience to do it (the reason people use defense in PvE is because it also increases block/parry/dodge/missed chances as well).

For a shaman tanking you would stack stamina/hit/expertise/resilience (to crit immune). Threat might still be an issue but with ToT and MD it shouldn't even be much of one.

[Daez]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOCyKbOCmAg

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...mi&gn=Masquers

[Fenrir The Phantom]

I'm getting http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/50052/lightborn-spire/ for some pvp action

[Cursed]

Hi.
My shaman got a tanking spec, full (I mean all gear is tanking gear) epic/green tanking gear (he is def capped thanks to some green mail with defense rating) including 232illvl items, brewfest trinkets and partially frost resistance set with stamina gems and enchants all, etc. His avoidance and hp aren't great, but acceptable for easy heroics like Nexus or UK.
So talking about survivabilty he is like regular tank in blues in the beginning of WotLK.
Yes, he actually needs to be healed unlike a real tank in heroics like Utgarde Keep, but it never was an issue when WotLK started and everyone farmed heroics with not very geared tanks.

The real problem though is my threat. I tried to maximize frost shock effectiveness as much as I could without survivability sacrifices but its just not enough.
I actually went to UK with my friends to test my tanking shaman. My friends patiently waited for me to get some threat with frost shocks but literally a single cast pulled aggro. I've spent so much time gathering all my tanking gear to face such a fail...

Yeah, I thought about takng a hunter and a rogue to each heroic shaman tanking run but it doesn't seem very comfortable or even effective way. Though if it works I can at least make a video of tanking shaman.

And now, thanks to Sharicasmi, my hope of shaman tanking is renewed.

[Cursed]

BTW, Sharicasmi, how much mana do you have in your tanking gear and spec?

And why you don't use frozen power talent + frostband weapon for trash?

[sharicasmi]

I usually have about 13-14k mana in tank spec, i use flametongue+caster weap in extreme AOE situations. I dont use frostbrand because i'm not spec'd for frozen power (my tier9.5 4peice actually puts my avg tps up to 2350-3400 from 2k-3k). Grats on being the first shaman to reach crit immune through defense in Wotlk.
I kinda worry about what your threat might be if your using the frost resist gear, Shaman are like underglorified bear tanks in the fact that we can use just about every offensive stat to increase our MW proc rate, and our AP increases our SP which increases our healing done. In 3.2, rogue md was vastly superior to hunter MD, and i suspect tricks glyphed rogues will remain the ultimate "feed you threat" class for 3.3. A rogue with tier10 2peice has no excuse not to be tricksing their tank every time its up since it turns their tricks of the trade into a free 15 energy button.

Fire nova is a VERY useful aoe tanking tool. For fights with adds constantly spawning, your healer can just sit on your fire totem, so you can just detonate fire nova if it looks like they've picked up aggro. Fire nova costs ALOT of mana, so you'll pretty much have to be pounding mana/alchemist pots in order to chain pull heroics like how I do. Reverb will produce better single target threat per point, improved fire nova will help your AOE threat. With this new button, it's very easy to let your lightning shield drop by mistake, and its best to rebuff lightning shield after a frost shock/chain lightning to ensure that your best threat generating spells are being spammed as they become available.

The mobs in the new icecrown heroics tend to pull as soon as you start casting, so we can't take 6seconds to set up our traditional lightningbolt/lavaburst/chain lightning/frost shock pull. The best way to handle the mobs in the new heroics is to simply throw down stoneclaw totem, run up to the mobs, throw down your totems and fire nova. If you stoneclaw, then quickly totemic recall while running up to them, you'll get initial healing threat from the mana gained. Now that they're clustered up, you can quickly throw down your totems and fire nova, resuming melee rotation of frost shock/stormstrike/Chain lighting at MW5.

Some under the table changes were made to resilience to discourage people from resilience tanking, resilience does not provide crit immunity in tier8+ content unless you flag yourself for pvp upon entering the instance. This can easily be done by right clicking your character portrait, and setting 'player vs player' to enable. This is NOT an exploit, all dps classes have the right to wear pvp gear if they're unsure that their tank can hold aggro for pugging heroics. This is just to discourage raiding tanks from using the pvp shoulder and leg enchants to get crit immune (plate classes look pretty silly with only 525 defense and like 75 resil.) Plate classes should have no excuse not to be def capped theres already so much of it on your gear.

The new lfg system won't let shaman put our role to tank for the random heroic, but I've found that there's an easy way to work around this if you want your 2 emblem of frost/26g. You simply have to que up with a premade group that consists of you, (a shaman with role set to dps) a healer, and 3 dps. One of the dps must be warrior/paladin/death knight/druid so they can set their role to tank.
The LFG system sees 1 healer, 1 tank 3 dps, You still get the bonus rewards at the end of the instance regaurdless who tanks it, its just how you que up that matters. The dps with their role set to tank doesn't even need to have a prot offspec or even tanking gear.

Coming soon Icecrown Citadel heroics
http://www.youtube.com/user/sharicasmi

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...s&n=Sharicasmi
my tanking shaman
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...us&n=Afarceius
my bear tank
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...us&n=Goremisha
my warrior tank

[Cursed]

I usually have about 13-14k mana in tank spec

Wow, thats a lot. I only have 7k.
The reason is lots of +def greens and frost resistance epics in my gear.
So I have a tough choice between def cap and good threat.
And practice (your shaman) shows, that def cap is not a 1st priority.
Here's my shaman's gear:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...83%D0%BB%D0%BB
(no tanking spec there though, I drop talents when I try t tank).
He's def capped for heroics in this tanking set. Though I can change one of the trinkets for http://www.wowhead.com/?item=36993 to become def capped for raids. Unfortunately Repelling Charge (+84 def rating) is to be obtained yet.
34% avoidance unbuffed.

I kinda worry about what your threat might be if your using the frost resist gear

My main mistake was taking Spirit Weapons.
And my second one was that I put survivability on the top of the priority list, when threat should be there. That affected both my gear and my spec and I ended up with 7k mana and very low threat level. Now I'm going to partially drop def and stamina gear for threat

BTW is elem gear better than enh?
Because of Spell Power.

Fire nova is a VERY useful aoe tanking tool

Wait. Fire Nova gives threat to you, not like the magma totem?

And how much damage is your usual frost shock hit?

[Cursed]

including 232illvl items

Oops, I messed up.
Actually 226ilvl is max.

[sharicasmi]

<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-whr-G6c92c...</param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-whr-G6c92c&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

You may benefit from the naxx defense trinket more if your that worried about defense. Always have 5.6% reduced chance to be crit, and if you need to use resilience, toggle pvp on.

my frost shock hits for 1800 avg critting for 3600 without flametongue/frozen power. Frost shock is on a x2 threat multiplier, so for every 1 damage it deals 2 threat. With flametongue+caster weapon it hits for 2300 critting at 4600.

[Baabinator]

Ok guys, so i started a little project of mine.

I tried to make the most of two-handed shaman.
using this spec:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#d6dQ5Mf3vfhVc,ONr,10958

So i stacked up on haste and ArP gear.
Had around 50%~ passive ArP, 20% passive Haste, Fully hit-capped, Expertise-capped, and almost 4000~ AP self-buffed.
And i used http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47734, and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40256.

My weapon-speed was roughly 2.25~ (I did this for the purpose of proccing more Windfuries and MW charges.
My weapon of choice was: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50267
For more than 1 reason;
-1: Slow
-2: ArP
-3: Haste
-4: Allowed for another hit-gem
-5: Raids wouldn't let me get raid-weapon (but i respect that of course)

My priority of attacks was:
-Wolves
-MW5_LB
-FS DoT
-SS
-Magma Totem
-ES
-Fire Nova

Problems i faced:
-Hitcapped (but solves this by using the easily obtainable Mark of Supremacy)
-Burning out of mana rather quickly, but that wasn't too aweful.
-Getting my expertise capped out (Since there is NO mail gear with ArP AND Expertise, this was mostly done by gemming)

I managed around 4.0-4.5k single target dps
And i managed around 6.0-6.5k dps on 3~ targets. Fire Nova was obviously a HUGE winner here.

My highest WF proc? (normal encounter, 10 man,didnt try any 25mans)

12500 x2.

Loved it.

Of course I have no proof, just needed somewhere to vent my heart. Hope you like it if you have any intentions of making a two-handed enhancement shaman!

[Wolfclaw]

Hi

I've been tanking with other shamans many times

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjlWiWXo9Og
10 shaman naxxramas(anub'rekahn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzQQIWp6fxQ
Felina

and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5eP69raD5g
naxx 10 shamans clear (10min cut)
http://live.afreeca.com:8079/app/ind...TitleNo=275582
this is Full ver.(35min)

Our team have enh tanker and ele tanker

The advantage of enh is useful cooldowns for tanking (shaman wrath & spirit wolves & fire storm).
the case of ele is threat and self healing (fire weapon)

Mainly I equiped PvP set for avoid crit dmg from mob(5.6%).
than, I put the health gems in raid items for get more threat.

Also, our team tired ToC 10 shamans but Gormok is the one of the hardest boss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75NT6PNbww

Good luck to every shamans =)
Sorry for my lack of english skill.

[TerryBogard]

Sharicasmi, do you think this build would be more effective with the changes made in the recent patches for shaman tanking?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?sham...L,yOfReH,10958

I was thinking the last glyph would either be lightning shield or fire elemental (to help with aoes). Do you think the SS glyph is necessary? Im not worried about the extra crit from elemental devastation as I think its minor in overall DPS/TPS generation. The new Fire Nova definately will help with AoE pulls threat generation.

Also, are you using windfury weapon all the time? Do you have any thoughts on the Fire Shock glyph and rotating Frost/Fire shock on the main target?

[sharicasmi]

the build you linked lacked improved lightning shield and i probably would have put less points in a few things to put more points in reverb. Other than that it looks like a solid aoe build. The only problem with taking points out of reverb for the new fire nova is that takes away from the biggest part of your single target threat - frost shock.
Moving points over from elemental devestation to call of flame isnt a bad idea, since it's a less proccy and more reliable dps buff. I'll be reviewing my tank spec the next few days and take these suggestions to point thanks for your input

[treem]

Ok guys, so i started a little project of mine.

I tried to make the most of two-handed shaman.
using this spec:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#d6dQ5Mf3vfhVc,ONr,10958

So i stacked up on haste and ArP gear.
Had around 50%~ passive ArP, 20% passive Haste, Fully hit-capped, Expertise-capped, and almost 4000~ AP self-buffed.
And i used http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47734, and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40256.

My weapon-speed was roughly 2.25~ (I did this for the purpose of proccing more Windfuries and MW charges.
My weapon of choice was: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50267
For more than 1 reason;
-1: Slow
-2: ArP
-3: Haste
-4: Allowed for another hit-gem
-5: Raids wouldn't let me get raid-weapon (but i respect that of course)

My priority of attacks was:
-Wolves
-MW5_LB
-FS DoT
-SS
-Magma Totem
-ES
-Fire Nova

Problems i faced:
-Hitcapped (but solves this by using the easily obtainable Mark of Supremacy)
-Burning out of mana rather quickly, but that wasn't too aweful.
-Getting my expertise capped out (Since there is NO mail gear with ArP AND Expertise, this was mostly done by gemming)

I managed around 4.0-4.5k single target dps
And i managed around 6.0-6.5k dps on 3~ targets. Fire Nova was obviously a HUGE winner here.

My highest WF proc? (normal encounter, 10 man,didnt try any 25mans)

12500 x2.

Loved it.

Of course I have no proof, just needed somewhere to vent my heart. Hope you like it if you have any intentions of making a two-handed enhancement shaman!

this one sounds really nice and logical

[phai]

I'm very interested in this whole topic of using two handers.

Recently, while pugging through Pit of Saron, Scourgelord Tyrannus dropped his Axe once more and no one needed it. Thoughts came to my mind for PvP, but since enhancement shaman is dead for PvP I decided to disenchant the Axe.

But now, while reading through this whole topic, an idea popped up.
I watched over the axe again and compared it to the only "enhancement friendly" (stat-wise) axe I have available:

[Betrayer of Humanity]
Drops from Kel'thuzad in Naxxramas (25).

This weapon fits our stats perfectly. It's a bit faster than [Tyrannical Beheader] and has lower top-end damage, but it has lots of crit and AP. Now is the question: Which weapon to choose?

I will use it for PvP only.

[Banshee]

Im just asking because i really dont know anything about enhancement.

As i understand it the reason you would want to use two weapons is because the synergy of the spec works best that way as in giving you more mana and more chanses to proc and the like. is this the case or am i just miss informed ?

Secondly if the above statement holds true.
If we disregard stats of a weapon when at what speed/dps would a twohander out do a dualwield 2.60 speed weapon setup ?

And ummm, another thing ive been thinking about if the mana regen is soo much worse on a twohandersetup compared to a dualwield one wouldnt that alone dissqualify a twohander for pvp ?

Just to set it straight im not dissing im just genuinly intressted.

[sharicasmi]

well to answer your questions, Tyrannical Beheader may outdps dual wield 200/213 weapons for you in pvp (in 226-245 enhance dps gear), but not much else.
mana regen is never a problem for me when i go 2h pvp for fun . When i do, my maestrom doesnt proc as often as it should, but yeah it sometimes procs to 4-5 almost instantly.
If your 2h dps is better than your dual wield dps then you probably have horrible weapons or gear to begin with. It can sometimes be nice for pvp for those lucky 7k double WF crits. You just remove lava lash from the rotation and use fire nova instead (which eats mana).

[Isar]

Just a quick question about using two-handers: I assume most of the damage comes from SS, but what to do when it's on cooldown? It feels stupid to just autoattack for 8 seconds.

This is for pvp, of course.

[Oktabi]

I don't have access to link my armory and spec etc etc but I have a tanking set/spec that puts me at 510 defense using a 1h and a shield. I've tanked a few heroics with a disc priest.

On a similar note, I regularly tank some of the easier heroics as Elemental without swapping any gear. As long as I hit the mobs with a CL and FN first, I won't lose aggro. And bosses... Pffft. I end up tanking those even if we have a conventional tank :P