Filed under: Shaman

Ascendance is a new ability coming to level 87 shaman of all specs in Mists of Pandaria. For 15 seconds every 3 minutes, you'll transform yourself into an Ascended elemental form that looks very much like the trash mobs in Grim Batol or Bastion of Twilight. The actual Ascendant's appearance and the function of the form vary based on your current specialization.

For enhancement, you take on the form of an air Ascendant, making your melee auto-attacks and Stormstrike become ranged attacks that are able to be used at up to 30 yards away. They also deal pure nature damage, which means they're benefited by Enhanced Elements and ignore armor. From a PvP standpoint, melee attacks from a 30-yard range that ignore armor will be frustrating for escaping clothies and plate-wearers that you're trying to keep your distance from.

Elemental morphs into a fire Ascendant. In this form, your Chain Lightning morphs into Lava Beam. Lava Beam is similar to Chain Lightning but hits a total of five targets and doesn't reduce its damage when it jumps, which is potent AoE. For single targets, your fire Ascendancy makes your Lava Burst have no cooldown during its duration, which means back to back critical hits for 15 seconds.

The last Ascendant form is restoration's water form, which functions very similarly to the Essence of Dreams in Ultraxion. For 15 seconds, every heal you cast duplicates its healing done and splits that secondary healing amount among all nearby targets. If you cast a 100k Greater Healing Wave on your tank, she'll be healed for 100,000 and another 100,000 healing will be split among allies near her. It's very potent.

If you want more in depth views of Ascendance and the benefits and cons, Joe Perez and I recently wrote Totem Talks covering Ascendance for DPS and resto shaman.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Totemic Projection, obtainable at level 45, gives you the ability to launch your currently placed totems to any location around you within 40 yards. Fairly straightforward, really easy to use. Those of you who like setting up macros may want to start planning a little about creative uses with your totems and Totemic Projection.

• Capacitor Totem Drop this totem and count to three, then Totemically Project it toward your target. Voilà! Instant stun!
• Earthbind Totem Perhaps best used in PvP, you can setup Earthbind to root and slow down players as they're busy running away from you, allowing you to close the gap and Chain Lightning their faces.

Those are just some of the ideas I had off the top of my head. The other talents add extra functionality to your totems. Call of the Elements lets you finish off any totem cooldowns that are active, allowing you to use them again. The catch is that the cooldown of the totem needs to be shorter than 5 minutes. Sadly, this means you cannot use your Fire Elemental Totem, Earth Elemental Totem, or Stormlash Totem back-to-back. Totem Restoration is a passive ability that lets totems respawn if they keep getting destroyed. I'd say that's useful in PvP, more than anything else.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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One of the early shaman survival cooldowns that you can get at level 15 is called Astral Shift. It isn't flashy or super awesome or anything. But an emergency damage reducer on a 2-minute cooldown could be just what you need to stay alive and continue DPSing (or healing).

It doesn't reduce only magic damage.

Nor does it reduce only physical damage.

It reduces any damage!

In case you feel two minutes is too long, you have some alternatives. Nature's Guardian is an effect that can kick in once every 30 seconds, which might potentially save you (although the next hit you take could be lethal). Stone Bulwark totem is another alternative that places a shield on you which refreshes and adds additional absorb amounts every five seconds after.

The theme of the level 15 shaman talents revolves around survival and damage mitigation. Raiders may lean more toward Astral Shift, but I'm using the Stone Bulwark totem for the purposes of questing and leveling.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how

This week, we're going to talk about our level 87 ability, Ascendance. That video above is not mine, but it is pretty darn cool, so I figured I would link brandonk99ing's video here since it did such a nice job. It shows our brand new ability for Mists, which we get to play with at level 87. Each flavor of shaman gets a different version of the ability. Elemental and enchancement get some nice damage increases, while resto gets to walk around like a giant water elemental, throwing out crazy healing numbers.

Basically, while in the Water Ascendant form, all of our healing done is duplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies. I've commented that it looks just like the ability Essence of Dreams from the Ultraxion encounter -- and to be honest, that's exactly how it feels. I figured I would share with you my impressions of the ability, now that I've gotten my hands on it.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

After covering monks, priests, paladins, and druids, there is one class left to review: shaman. How are they going to fare entering Mists of Pandaria?

Totems ... gone!

Just kidding!

They're not really gone. They've switched to more of a utility focus now. Looking at the entire list of totems available, not a single one provides any type of stat increase. Totems that provided passive buffs like Flametongue Totem, Mana Spring Totem, and Stoneskin Totem have been removed. Healing Stream took a nerf cannon to the face, now only affecting a player now instead of whole groups.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Once a lonely tauren shaman in a bad Scarlet Crusade-themed transmog set, Josh Myers is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids using all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though.

When I try to think of what enhancement's most iconic ability is, a few come to mind. Windfury Weapon is a definite contender, and three or four years ago it would have been my default response. Seriously, though, what is Windfury other than a glorified auto-attack with an attack power bonus and a lower chance to miss? Likewise, Stormstrike could be iconic, but it's essentially a melee attack with both weapons with an electric graphic and a debuff. It's enhancement's Mutilate or Obliterate.

To me, Maelstrom Weapon is the answer. If there's one ability that encapsulates what enhancement is -- a brutal melee class that weaves instant spellcasts between their weapon strikes to harm their opponent or heal themselves -- I believe it's Maelstrom Weapon. It's enhancement's Death Strike, Arcane Blast, Chakra, or Raging Blow -- abilities that, at a glance, offer an insight into what makes the spec different from other specs in their role.

There's a problem here, though. If Maelstrom Weapon is enhancement's iconic ability, why is it currently so awful?

Do alts even count as alts when half of them are the same class as your main and the other half are rarely played?

I have a troubling relationship with the concept of playing an alt. First off, I don't really get alts. I know people who have four or six or even eight level 85 characters, geared and kitted out for raiding or Arena/RBG play. One woman I know has completely filled up two servers with level 85 characters (full character window, a server she plays Horde on and a server she plays Alliance on) that can at least run a random Hour of Twilight heroic. I accept that this exists, but I can't imagine doing it.

See, I'm middling at best about my achievements in game, but there are things I've done that you can't do anymore. I mean, every time I ran the 5-man Zul'Gurub, I kept thinking about how I'm a hero of the Zandalar tribe. Shouldn't they at least try and talk me out of killing them? Shouldn't I at least have the option to say, "Hey, guys, it's me, can we chill out on this?" and then we could express our sorrow at having to come to blows?

I can't do that on an alt. Well, OK, I can do it on the other two warriors who are also heroes of the Zandalar tribe, but you get my point. An alt's not going to have all those titles I barely realized I was earning, or my Mimiron's Head, or a Sulfuras in the bank laughing at me every time I got to the trasmogrification ethereal and get a hit of sweet, sweet gear changery.

"Elamism, Savior of Azeroth" has a nice ring to it. For the first time in my time raiding, I'm officially done with a tier of raiding before the next has been released, and I'm pretty psyched about that. (The fact that I picked up two heroic No'Kaleds for my enhancement spec has me grinning ear to ear.) With Dragon Soul behind me, I can start focusing on the future, which makes it very timely that my invite to the Mists of Pandaria beta came last night.

Before my raid tonight, I got to spend some time playing elemental on the beta, and I have some good news and some bad news to report. The bad news? Not much has changed from live for beta elemental shaman. The good news? Not much has changed from live for beta elemental shaman.

Part of this is a level cap issue. Pandaria is only open for leveling up to level 86 at the moment, which means that you don't yet have access to any of the real game-changers being introduced in Mists of Pandaria. Ascendence, our new DPS cooldown and all-around coolest spell in the game, will be our prize for hitting level 87, and the tier of talents that includes Elemental Blast, Unleashed Fury, and Primal Elementalist isn't available until level 90. Since those talents are all complex and will all drastically effect your DPS, there's a lot to look forward to.

Those of you who were waiting with bated breath to finally find out whether the pandaren shaman totems would be kegs, well, wait no longer. MMO Champion has datamined the totem models for pandaren shaman in the latest Mists of Pandaria beta patch, and they are definitely kegs. Hey, at least one shaman race got the beer totems they deserved, Blizzard.

Check out the earth and water totems after the break!

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how

Time to revisit this topic again. You're probably asking yourself why we're talking about this again. Well, to be honest, it's because it's the end of an expansion cycle. While we're prepping for the next expansion that will shake up mechanics and stats, we find ourselves at a point of speculation -- and therefore, things like Telluric Currents find themselves back in the crosshairs, so to speak.

The talent itself is something you use, or you don't use. There are some hard facts about the talent. You do not need to stack hit to make it useful, only to make sure every bolt hits. It is not mana neutral, using the talent and casting Lightning Bolt will indeed fill up your mana bar. It can be used to supplement low spirit totals for beginning healers, and can be used in certain phases on raid bosses to maintain healing mana totals. Whether it is optional or mandatory depends on a lot of factors up to and including the team you're healing with and the content you're healing through.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

You'll notice that there are a ton of new glyphs that have been added for all the classes. That list is by no means exhaustive. I also noticed some slight changes in the way certain spells work. I can assure you it won't be anything too drastic, but these changes are enough to keep you interested and wondering. This week, I'll be rounding up what we know healers will be getting, as well as any other notable modifications.

New for druids

Cenarion Ward appears to be a Prayer of Mending-like spell without the subsequent charges. Good spell to open with before an engagement. Won't have to pre-HoT as much. Just remember to pre-Ward.

Wild Mushroom: Bloom! Hope you love 'shrooms, since you'll be gaining the use of these in addition to your Balance friends. Anticipate a moment where big AoE healing is needed, and plant 'shrooms. Detonate after raid group takes a hit, and relish in the healing spores that explode.

Regrowth can be glyphed to remove the HoT component. Benefit? 40% increased chance of a critical heal. I guess you can configure a HoT-based class to switch to a non-HoT direction.