Ruby Sanctum: Enhancement Shaman Gear

We’re gotten some e-mail — and quite a few people searching — about Patch 3.3.5’s new raid instance, Ruby Sanctum, and gear of interest to Enhancement Shaman players.

The good news? There’s a sweet ring, the Signet of Twilight, that features AP, Crit, Hit, a ton of Agility and a yellow gem slot.

The bad news? That’s about all we know for right now. Although bits and pieces of the loot table (mostly for the 25-man version), have been pieced together by the pro data-miners over at MMO-Champion, the majority of loot drops are still a mystery. With news that Ruby Sanctum itself will be delayed (it won’t open immediately when Patch 3.3.5 drops), it’s possible we won’t have a complete picture of Halion’s loot tables for some time.

As a consolation prize, check out this Halion video from the PTR — and fair warning, like most other guild vids it’s heavy on the Eurotechno, so get ready to hit the mute button:

One less totem to drop in 3.1

Shields Up!, a Resto Shaman blog, has a post up titled, “Why 3.1 Mana Spring Totem change doesn’t kill kittens.”

Surprisingly, Resto players don’t seem to mind that Mana Spring will be remade into a carbon copy of Blessing of Wisdom, the drawback being that the two buffs won’t stack.

I’m not upset and I don’t even think it is a bad change. This is a nerf to all shamans, yes, but it’s not the nerf bat hitting us because our mana regen was totally out of line. It was a change that comes in the line of many we have seen over the last few months, letting every class provide more raid wide buffs and reduce group based spells/buffs. And a pretty powerful Mana spring Totem that even stacked with additional manaregen Totems is just not ok with the path blizzard wants to take.

For Resto, the main concern is that they’ll still have to put talent points into Restorative Totems to get to Mana Tide. Restorative Totems has been streamlined from five points down to three, but that’s still bloat and not much consolation for having to waste three points that could better be spent elsewhere.

Of course, this isn’t a Resto Shaman blog, so you might be wondering why I’m writing about it. Put simply, this is another totem we will no longer be able to drop, one more tiny bit of utility taken away in favor of class homogenization. As it stands now, Mana Spring stacks. I often find myself dropping only Mana Spring and Magma Totem in my guild’s 25-man raids, because our Death Knights provide both Horn of Winter and Icy Talons. Neither may be as good as the fully-talented Shaman versions, but on fights like Grobbulus and Heigan, a buff with constant uptime is a better choice over an immobile totem.

And let’s face it — there isn’t massive QQ out of the Enhancement Shaman community because fewer totems to drop means more global cooldowns to use for our own personal DPS. But as each small piece of utility is stripped away, you’ve gotta wonder how much actual enhancement remains in Enhancement.