Raiding and totems..what to use

[Nasanna]

Do WF attacks reset our weapon timers?  If so, that's just an extra MH sword spec proc for us rogues.  If it also resets OH, I'll poison your drink if you drop it 

Nope. It just adds more damage to your MH attack. It shouldn't affect your OH at all since WF totem only affects your mainhand item assuming that you have no wizard oil/mana oil/sharpening stones/poisons/etc. on it.

[LastDyingBreath]

So Panz... you gonna cough up that WF totem for me? I got some imp Might with your name on it.

bring a friend, then yes!

[un4]

since it attacks instantly as if there is no time between the attacks, i would assume it doesn't reset the timers.

Sword spec is the same way, but resets the weapon timer.

[Arcdelad]

I ran a 5 man tonight with gren's shammy....look at how with 5 man raid buffs, no food buff, no idol of terror proc, no hourglass of the unraveler proc, and zero potions; the WoA totem can have a great impact....my 2 cents from a druid view - this thing is crucial. look at AP and crit:

[LastDyingBreath]

careful now, you mean GoA.  Your screenie helpfully illustrates why I use it as my default air totem.

[Arcdelad]

lol...right...grace of air....you guys have too many totems...

[Nasanna]

Yeah... if I was elemental there'd be "Totem of Wrath" (fire totem, 41 point elemental talent) and "Wrath of Air Totem". I wish Blizz could come up with some more creative names.
But they're finally adding totem timers to the default UI in 2.4, so I guess they've been busy.... took em long enough

[Gutboy]

No doubt they will add Fel Totems, Nether Totems, and Fel Nether Totems when they get around to it... 

GB

[Trismus]

Rule 2 - If a DPS warrior is in your group, he needs Windfury for his rage feedback mechanism. Windfury provides a larger DPS gain to a DPS warrior than any other totem to any other class.

This is amazingly true, but it can be broken down further: WF gives MS warriors a greater benefit then Fury warriors, although they both receive a huge upgrade. For warriors, GoA is entirely useless imo, although it does make my crit look pretty.


For example, with Windfury and full raid buffs I can put out about 800-900 DPS on normal target, and about 750-850 on boss targets (reference = guild parsing). This comes in enormous bursts. One such burst happened the last time we killed lurker, where I had a ~2900 point white hit, followed by a ~3200 point MS, a ~3800 point Heroic Strike, a ~2700 point whirlwind, then another ~3000 point white hit, and then a 6700 point execute. This happened in approximately 4 seconds (all hits were critical). That's roughtly 22.4k damage in 4 seconds. True, this is several SD's from the norm, but the ability to burst out 5000dps is not something to laugh at. The only real problem with this DPS is the threat generated which can only be described in terms of Cosmological Relativity 

Windfury gave the extra umph to give me the rage to land that ENORMOUS execute (if the mob had more life I would have slammed away until my abilities refreshed). Windfury for a MS warrior is like NOS + cold air intake for a sportscar... is pushes us over the limit and into dangerous territory. Over an extended fight our dps drops to normal levels as the law of averages kicks in and we get strings of non-crits and misses (my hit rating is low) but it gives us an enormous amount of rage with which to work.

Other benefits include thunderclap, demo shout, blood frenzy (rend), B/Cshout, sunder, and pummel. Without windfury warriors have a tendency to get rage-starved and have to choose between keeping buffs up or to keep DPS up (sometimes which buffs to keep up if rage is lacking enough). We also run into situations where we need to either compromise our functionality in some regard (aforementioned) OR duck into some damage, such as a cave-in on Gruul or a fire-pit on Nightbane to turn damage taken into rage into DPS / Debuffs / whatever. This is obviously dangerous and if mismanaged can lead to death or even a wipe.

Another way to illustrate this is PvP: in 5v5 with an enhancement shaman and I can demolish most classes VERY quickly (while supported by other classes). Allo and I killed a hunter and a warlock in 5v5 literally within 15 seconds of the gates openning in the Nagrand Arena, simply by getting lucky with a few early WF procs. These were s2 geared players on a team that had beaten us the time before (we screwed up our placement and targetting, broke sheep, etc, it was a mess).

Anyways, yeah, I guess this is all a digression on the quote. But anyways, I think it's a VERY true point.

-Tris

[Kuulomi]

Are there any cases where you'll want to use a Tranquil Air Totem?

[Nasanna]

I will use it in raids if I am in a group with another shaman and there are no tanks in the group, or if I am in a group that constantly has to watch their aggro (due to knockbacks during the fight or something, like melee on Void Reaver). If I'm just in the healer group, I'd rather drop Wrath of Air.

Here's how salv and Tranquil Air work:
Salv is a 30% reduction, TA is a 20% reduction. Using both together is a (1 - (0.7 * 0 . 8 ) ) = 0.44, or 44% reduction in threat.

** lol fixed the smiley that came from the 8 and )

[un4]

Using both together is a (1 - (0.7 * 0.) = 0.44, or 44% reduction in threat.

Never forget to multiply by constant smiley!