What will YOU use our taunt / fixate for?!

[Deleted]

As most of you probably already know Unleash Elements enhances the personal enchants we enchant our weapons with, each different enchant giving a different effect when Unleash Elements is used.

Quick refresher if no one knows what im talking about



Rockbiter Weapon - Causes the target to attack you for 5 seconds

So we have some sort of taunt in Cataclysm, where are Blizzard going with this, and what diabolical things can we achieve with this.

In my eyes its a ghetto tank save, Taunt, rocket boots away for 5 seconds, taunt wears off and boss goes back to tanks.
Not a great idea but I know how much the tanks in my guild will hate it and sadly it does make me smile.


Anyone have any actual idea or source of what this is to be used for

NOTE: Unleash Enchant is learned at level 81 meaning that using this for shaman tanking in low level instances or while leveling up is NOT viable.

Only uses over level 81
/discuss

[Daelstrom]

I believe their intent for the Rockbiter effect of Unleash Weapon is primarily for pulling off of healers.

On an unrelated note, great videos, hope to see more new stuff from you soon. :]

[Therenis]

I can only imagine the horrors that are to come for me as a tank with this ability... However, more on topic, I can see it being used to save healers from random mobs going on them, and as mentioned, a way to save the tanks. It opens up to shaman "offtanking" in instances/raids where you can't afford to bring another tank in that manner, but you need someone to taunt a boss for a few seconds/kite it. Will be interesting to see it in action though.

[DAST]

A dps with a taunt. Ah ma gad, this is new stuff

[Deleted]

One instance I found it great was the end boss in blackrock caverns, tank cannot tank all 3 mobs or it gets nasty so kiting around by me is great, taunt frost shock bounce away.

Its pretty cool anyway, i can see enhancement shaman using this to great advantage with Frostbrand and Rockbiter weapon on. or rockbiter and a shield.............

70% slow on the enemy and taunted towards the shammy. Also being able to cast it from range while strafing away

[Dindo]

If you read the description of a Shaman, they are listed as "viable off tanks."

In vanilla they were made to be healers, DPS, and off tanks, but no one took them seriously. blizz gave up BC-Wrath, and now they are probably trying to bring it back.

They can use shields for a reason more than just ele / resto...

[Nynax]

I don't see it being used effectively at all. for starters you would FIRST have to buff your weapon with rock-biter, wait a gcd THEN use the taunt. not useful for split second saves at all.

If it's used to "save" anyway, I only see it happening in group quests, MAYBE 5-mans, and definitely not in any raids.

[Koto_and_Juri]

I don't see it being used effectively at all. for starters you would FIRST have to buff your weapon with rock-biter, wait a gcd THEN use the taunt. not useful for split second saves at all.

If it's used to "save" anyway, I only see it happening in group quests, MAYBE 5-mans, and definitely not in any raids.

It's not viable because the DPS warrior has to switch to defensive stance, then taunt the mob.

Clearly blizzard has no problems with needing to wait a second.

[Gunwolf]

We are only viable offtanks in low level dungeons. In all the Beta dungeons, the mobs have been buffed and hit pretty damn hard. We can still easily tank caster mobs though, and certainly could kite melee mobs......perhaps even tank for about 15 sec with wolves and sham rage popped.

I will probably use the taunt mainly to agro casters or melee that break away from the pack and pull them in closer to the tank. There also might be some raid encounters that ask on other classes to kite or caster tank or something.

Let it be known that hunters and a few other dps have taunts as well, doesn't mean those classes are meant to kite either, just a good way to help position mobs, kite, or temp relief from the tank or heals.

[Mixelphlick]

Quick point shamans can and have tanked just about everything in wrath non hardmode. Not saying its intended or even for the most part supported, but lets think about this for a second: Blizzard took care of the important weapon unleashes for ele (flametongue) and enh (windfury) and pvp (frostbrand) and healing (earthliving) so what did they have left for rockbiter? Well when your in a situation where you don't need to do anything why not toss a bone to folks that like to play a little weird. The only real fall down point of shaman tanking at the moment is threat and with rockbiter changed even that isn't as big a problem. Like i said before don't roll a shaman thinking your going to tank, but if youve got the gear and a group willing to wing it you can, better than you could in wrath now.

[Deleted]

I don't see it being used effectively at all. for starters you would FIRST have to buff your weapon with rock-biter, wait a gcd THEN use the taunt. not useful for split second saves at all.

If it's used to "save" anyway, I only see it happening in group quests, MAYBE 5-mans, and definitely not in any raids.

well all you need is a weapon and shield in your inventory, and you can press a macro to equip the 2 items and then to use rockbiter, obv make sure its enchanted on weap before the fight

[Edds]

seems rather useless. blizzard is pretty much done with shaman talents. how are they going to fit tanking with any of our specs? resto? i dont see anyone enchanting their weapon with rockbiter and then unleash weapon, all within a dps/healing overaggro time limit. why dont paladins use hand of reckoning instead. my only guess is kiting mobs.

[Taalyn]

Anything hunters use Distracting Shot on a shaman can use UE/Rockbiter on. Blood Beasts on Saurfang, Deformed Adherents/Fanatics, Blistering Zombies. Plenty of uses for UE/Rockbiter. The only thing I personally don't like is that we'll likely weapon swap.

[Nynax]

It's not viable because the DPS warrior has to switch to defensive stance, then taunt the mob.

Clearly blizzard has no problems with needing to wait a second.

the difference with that tho is that the plate wearing warrior first makes a survivability change, then taunts.

well all you need is a weapon and shield in your inventory, and you can press a macro to equip the 2 items and then to use rockbiter, obv make sure its enchanted on weap before the fight

Going further, having to hold onto a weapon to switch out to use a skill is kinda clunky. Rogues used to swap weapons during fights for better dps, but blizz didnt like that and added a gcd to weapon changes (+other rogue changes i think)

[LyskaWF]

What's the big deal? Get a grey 1h and keep it imbued with rockbiter. Put that in a macro with UE and switch your weapons back before anything happens.

I know this is what I will be doing with pvp weapons. If I don't need a target to be super slowed then it's UE with FT. I personally think that it should be its own GCD if we can do this now, but getting a second weapon (especially since this is largely utility based) is not that big of a deal.

[Deleted]

I'm surprised noone mentioned PVP and pets? (Which is about the only real use I can think of)

[Deleted]

Rockbiter Weapon
8% of base mana
Instant castImbue the Shaman's weapon with the fury of the earth, increasing all threat generation by 30% and reducing damage taken by 5%. Lasts 30 minutes.

i don't see a big difference between a warrior reducing damage taken by 10% and a shaman reducing it by 5%. in both cases, the player gives up damage for survival. in addition, both the shaman and warrior will still take crits. in addition, while the shaman might have less armor from the stat, he makes up for that partly with his agility, which gives armor and dodge.

when comparing the sanctified frost witch and the sanctified ymirjar lord's battlegear (both 277), the plate set has 2889 AC and the mail one has 797 AGI. after converting AGI to armor and dodge (using lvl 80 conversions, since i can't find the lvl 81 ones), the plate set has 1295 armor versus the AGI set that has 13.30% dodge. in addition, while the shaman's jewelry and trinkets also have AGI and thus help scale, the warrior's have STR, but no armor, and thus don't help scale.

[Deleted]

remove GCD from enchanting weapon would be nom.

never really played a paladin, but is that how their auras work

[Omanley]

blizzard gave every weapon imbue a uw-effect.
why they went through the trouble of making one for rockbiter, where they could have simply removed the imbue from the game alltogether, is beyond me.

but it´s shamans and blizzard we´re talking about. we all know there´s something fishy going on there.

anyway, im never ever going to use this ability in the more and more unlikely scenario where im actually ordering cata.

[Deleted]

Taunting + fixating i guess