Sunday 27 January 2008

15/46/0

I play PvE, which comes with a PvE spec. Mine is 15/46/0. Please note that my current build is slightly different, as I'm saving for my Epic Flying mount. It's just 1 point different, so not a big deal. Anyhow, let's start.

Elemental Tree
The Elemental Tree is actually very useful. Stormstrike (enhancement) grants a 20% bonus to the next 2 sources of Nature damage. Since Earth Shock is Nature damage, well, I assume you can do the math. Earth, Flame and Frost Shock are all affected by the following talents:

Convection 5/5 - This reduces the mana cost of your shock spells with 10%. I have found that the shocks are the main reason my mana bar needs a little Shamanistic Rage from time to time. the less mana you use with your DPS routine, the more mana you have to throw a fast heal or refresh your totems.

Concussion 5/5 - This increases all damage done by my shocks by 5%. This may seem little, but in the long run it is alot of damage. Especially when you combine this talent with some of the Enhancement talents, you will see that it adds up. With Stormstrike up, I do around 1200 damage with my Earth Shock.

Reverbration 5/5 - Reduces the cooldown of the shock spells by 1 second. Especially when you're on counterspell duty in, let's say, Karazhan (Aran) or H Arcatraz, it is useful to have. It also ups your DPS, but that's obvious.

Enhancement Tree
46 points in Enhancement, so this is the beefy part of the post. I personally like to buff myself and my party, rather than just me, since this is a PvE oriented spec.

Astral Knowledge 5/5 - Increases my manapool by 5%.

Thundering Strikes 5/5 - Increases my melee crit chance by 5%. This is very, *very* useful, as alot of my buffs proc on crit. More about those on the buff talents themselves.

Enhancing Totems 2/2 - My Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totems have their effect increased by 15%. When I have a druid tank, druid DPS, rogue that loves his poisons too much or any other something that would prefer Agi over WF, I use Grace of Air, since that ups my own crit chance.

Shamanistic Focus 1/1 - On *every* melee crit, I get a 60% mana cost reduction on my shock spells. See, this is where all that crit comes in handy. Believe me, this procs alot with a feral druid in my party and dual mongoose.

Anticipation 3/3 - This is some filler that grants me 3% dodge chance. Nothing to see here, moving on.

Flurry 5/5 - FLURRY! This grants 30% faster attack speed on the next 3 swings after a melee crit. Again, this is where I love my crits. This combined with Shamanistic Rage equals alot of mana.

Improved Weapon Totems 2/2 - Increases the effect of my WF totem by 30% and 12% of my Flametoungue totem, which I never use. This is useful for when I have warriors or non-poison using rogues. They all love me.

Spirit Weapons 1/1 - Parry chance, meh. 30% threat reduction on melee attacks, oh yes! When everyone is complaining about getting too much aggro, I'm at the bottom of the DPS division of the threat meter, whilst doing the same damage. Which is great. Add in a Blessing of Salvation and you're not overaggroing soon.

Elemental Weapons 3/3 - A very long tooltip, let me sum it up: WF is 40% better now, the other three (rockbiter, flametounge and frostbrand) are useless in my opinion, so I took it for the Windfury bonus, which is almost pernamently on my weapons.

Mental Quickness 3/3 - 6% mana cost reduction on instant cast spells (Shocks, anyone?) and increases your spell damage (again, shocks anyone?) by 30% of your attack power. Which can be alot. Remember when I said that I did 1200 damage with my Earth Shock? That's because of this talent.

Weapon Mastery 5/5 - 10% additional damage done by your weapons. Useful.

Dual Wield 1/1 and Dual Wield Specialization 3/3 - Allows you to dual-wield weapons and actually hit something that isn't the size of a barn, since the DW Specialization grants 6% hit chance when Dual-Wielding.

Unleashed Rage 5/5 - Adds 10% to your AP whenever the Shammy crits with a melee attack. This doesn't stack, only refresh, as far as I know. This is a nice boost for Shamanistic Rage.

Shamanistic Rage 1/1 - One of the best spells that I have. When I go oom, I use it and watch my mana bar fill itself again. What it does is that is gives your melee attacks a chance to regain mana equal to 15% of your AP. Is usable anywhere, any time, aslong as you are hitting things. I used it once when I was alone with a paladin, making my mana go from 0% to 100%. The pally said: "Wow. That makes me feel so useless.", most likely because their mana regen spell isn't as good as mine.

Restoration Tree
If you read the title, you'd know that I used no points in Restoration. However, there is one good talent, if you die alot in instances, which is Improved Reincarnation. You need to use 5 points before you can put points in it though, which is a shame and reduces it's usefulness. It nerfs your spec, by lack of points to put in the earlier 2 trees.

This was my first attempt at describing a spec, please post comments or questions and I'll be happy to answer them. Short and easy go as a comment, long and hard will be in the next post (if possible, could be later).

EDIT: I just realised I said I'd post again on monday, but I bought an USB WiFi adapter for my laptop. And btw, if you (dis)liked the song "Boten Anna" by Basshunter: He has redone the song with lyrics that make sense now. Linkage via younoob.

2 comments:

Jabari said...

All the ENH/Ele specs I've seen are slightly different that what you have here.

On the Ele side, Convection is useless, as you already get 60% off your Shocks (from ShamFocus). Take those points and put them into Call of Flame and Elemenal Warding instead (steal the 6th point for that from Anticipation, obviously).

Call of Flame + Mental Quickness makes your Fire Totems hit quite a lot harder - it's a pretty significant DPS gain.

Elemental Warding is situationally good - better for later raiding (Req of Souls, etc).

ENH tree looks good!

Anonymous said...

I know I'm dredging up an older post but I wonder if it's not worth pulling a point out of Anticipation and putting it in either Elemental Focus or Elemental Devastation.

Elemental Focus only seems worth it if it actually stacks with ShamFocus and Mental Quickness. Then casting shocks would only be 110 mana (assuming a a sequential stack, ie 6% off, then 10% off that, then 60% off, then 40% off). It could be even lower though, I've never looked.

Elemental Devestation on the other hand, 3% more crit every once in a while! Maybe it's not so needed with how well you're geared, but with pre-Kara stuff, I could definetly use it.