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  • The Maelstrom
  • 0. Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 01:19:01 PDT
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Ok, about 1 month I started a topic in the hope of getting some more knowledge about the little tricks shamans can use: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=305801816&sid=1 .
By now alot of stuff has been said, I know I learned new things myself and I hope others have too. That topic has however gotten very long and it is already hard for someone to read thru it all, thus I have decided to put it all in one place, namely this topic.

I've divided the tips in 3 categories, General, PvP and PvE; General contains stuff that is valid for both PvP and PVE. I did not include 100% of what was written on the original one, but about 90% should be here. I left out many macros since they are long and there is a thread for them specifically. I also left out some things I found very obvious.

General tricks (both PvP and PvE)
- Earth Shield heals depending on the +heal you have when you cast it, not when it procs. This is why in important fights you should take the trouble of equipping your best +heal gear, put down Wrath of Air totem and cast it, then go back to the gear you will actually use in the fight (which might be mp5 oriented for example)
- For emergency interrupting I use the following macro:
/stopcasting
/cast Earth Shock
- After assigning a focus target (select the target and type /focus)
/cast Nature Swiftness
/cast [target=focus] healing wave
Is a very nice macro... for any healer (with class-dependent adjustments ofc) :).
- Alot of spells that would damage you will not destroy grounding totem, only consume its buff. for instance mana burn or dots. also when mob casts spells in quick succession, grounding will soak more of them
- You can use Totemic Recall just before your Grounding Totem or Fire Nova totem dies, and get the mana but also the totem effect will work... (EXPECT THIS TO BE REMOVED IN FUTURE PATCHES)
- Did you know that if you drop the windwall totem and then remove it, the buff it gives still stays there due to it being pretty useless and insignificant in the first place so you'd never notice. Amazing stuff !
- There's another tip in regards sentry totem, to save yourself some space on your action bars, never ever put sentry totem on there. Pretty cool.
- There's a trick to get two crits away with one Elemental Mastery. Before you cast Chain Lightning, activate Elemental Mastery. While you're casting CL spam ES for example. There's about 50% chance both will go of at exactly the same time, thus making the two of them both crits.
- Bloodlust dispels itself automatically if you get "stuck" when using it due to your size. Make sure you use it in clear zones.
- Elementals can (and should) be healed. The totem they're tied to, however, can't, so keep an eye on enemies attacking the totem.
- Lightning Bolt (Rank 1) is completely free if you have Totem of Lightning or Totem of the Pulsing Earth. This allows it to not trigger the Five Second Rule, as well as quickly proccing several effects like clearcasting or those of the kind of "chance on spellcast"
- Uses trinkets every time they're available before casting stormstrike.. For the extra damage without you having to remember to click the trinket first:
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Stormstrike
(Note: Watch out for proccing pvp trinkets with this macro. :) )
- Apparently it's possible to use both Windfury and Grace of Air totems by having a mod that shows the Windfury buff timer for party members. It's a lot of mana "wasted" but the increased DPS your rogues/warriors get should be worth it.
- This is obvious but alot of shamans don't know that poison cleansing and tremor totems tick when put down. As such to break a team mates fear just drop one near them. Same with poison cleansing. It's sometimes worth spamming poison cleansing totem to remove multiple effects quickly.
- The life of your earth elemental is the same as your life?
- If you are elemental and close to get oom: cast max rank lightning bolt then rank1 bolt, this will make you lose some dps due to global cooldown but it will give you 2x chance to get clearcast on the next bolt because the rank1 bolt is cast before the max rank bolt will arrive at your target(you have to stand at like 30yards away from the target)

Arguing over the internet is like wining the special olympic. You might have won, but you're still retarded.
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  • The Maelstrom
  • 1. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 01:19:52 PDT
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PvP tricks
- Natures Swiftness works with ghost wolf for an instant cast travel form in emergencies.
- In arenas and BG stay in GW when not fighting to become immune to sap, but if you see a Hunter or Druid, quickly change out.
- Water is your friend. If a mounted person is chasing you(this happened to me a lot pre-40 pvp) ghost wolf and jump into water, this forces them to dismount.
Also having water walking on a button is handy, if you are pvping near water cast and run across the top, you can outmanouver and ranged cast someone to death this way.
- pop stoneclaw against pets, can really help and confuse hunters :>
- Casting water walk or water breathing after your Earth Shield in the arena makes the opponents purging you needing more time to dispell your important buffs. (needs reagents even in arena atm)
- Grounding Totem eats a hunter's Freezing Trap
- Grounding Totem eats a paladin's Hammer of Justice
- You can use Searing Totem to force opponents to enter combat, for instance when you see a warrior running up to you. He'll be forced to intercept instead.
- Purge removes buffs in a random fashion. The order in which you placed the buffs does not matter. However, using more buffs, even useless ones makes the chance of the enemy purging smth important smaller.
- Versus those pesky mages that steal earthshield:
Earthshield rank 1 costs 600 mana. Spellsteal costs 649. You can easily mana drain mage in 1v1 situation. (they need that mana to do damage. if they dont do it you dont need that mana to heal)
Same can be applied to watershield vs spam purging shamans. Sucks them dry in under a minute.
- Rank 1 LB is nice to pewpew down enemy grounding totems, and they are hard to interrupt since they are 0.5 sec cast.
- When you try to get behind a warrior 99% of the time you will gain enough distance to use an CL before he can hit you again, thus it is most likely to not be interrupted by pummel and such. (since most dont use mouse to turn around quick)
- Rank 1 earthshock s nice in mana dependent fights (holydins and stuff)
- Other interesting points include dropping stoneclaw against rogues and feral druids who like to kill ur totems . . . small stun always helps especially against a rogue who goes round and kills all ur totems while ur stunned like i see a lot doing . .
- Stoneclaw forces Oomkins' treants to attack it.
- When you fight an other shaman and he drops a fire elemental totem be fast and drop stoneclaw totem. Stoneclaw will ^taunt^ the elemental.
- Far Sight can be recasted while channeling it, allowing you to see even further - and will often let you peek inside tunnels and other indoors locations if you "guide" your Far Sight inside them.
- If solo flag defending in AB, just drop magma totem and earthbind near the flag and then keep a safe range from attackers - it's amazing how often they ignore the fire totem while trying to cap.
- In AV or AB, try to cap GY's in Ghost Wolf form. Some people don't seem to realize that you can cap flags while shapeshifted. You can also use Orb of deception in conjunction with GW for maximum confusion.
- As Draenei, use Gift of the Naaru when you know your opponent has an interrupting effect (counterspell, kick etc.) up. It doesn't lock down the nature tree and is actually pretty often interrupted.
- Use fire nova rank 1 to break rogues from stealth with low cost.
- Did you know, that you can switch weapon, shield and relic in combat? Equip healing items to these slots while already casting a heal to gain +healing effect (could be +600 on big heal). You need to have itemrack, wardrobe or any other mod, that allows to change equipment quickly for that. Bind keys for most common sets.
Have a keybinding for 1-hand + shield; dual weapons; 2-hander; healing weapon + healinshield and... no weapons at all. Last keybinding saves money - unequipping your weapons sec before a wipe saves a lot of repairbill.
- Be a leatherworker. Theres 4 different drums to help you. From haste to hp/mana back, fear and runspeed.
- Have frostband on your OH in pvp if you DW in pvp. Target in range is better than potentially more damage but no target in range.
- Remember instance called Uldman? It has one shield that might interrest you. Hint: slowfall.
- Be a tailor if you pvp - tailor net is all you need to catch up with a fleeing target.
- Also remeber your ghost wolf form can be purged/dispelled.
- Dropping searing to eat up other shamans grounding as it goes for it straight away.
- Macroing a /target windfury totem /cast earthshock rank 1 for pesky 2 warrior teams in arena.
- When you have felpuppy on you always recast a rank 1 water shield on yourself before instant healing as if pets on autodevour it will eat your natures swiftness. The rank 1 water shield puts it on CD.
- Go to Elwynn Forest, drop a sentry totem and hide in the bushes. Somehow alliance finds these totem hard to not hit them. So when a happy alliance trails along and slap the totem he just flagged himself for pvp. You can imagine the rest !
- Fighting rogues: If you see a rogue stealthing coming for you drop the searing totem posion clansing totem grace of air and STONECLAW totem and move away form them like 10 yards. The rogue will sap you and then go destroy the totems, the stun will give you time to go out and frostshock him.
- When you're facing someone with an interrupt-spell (i.e. mages counterspell), fakeheal with the hearthstone!
- When I spot incoming phisical damage dealers, I cast the appropriate totem sequence and start spamming rank 1 healing wave on myself before I am engaged into the fight. Expecially useful against stunlockers when they have the jump on you. Attention: be careful of mages as healing loops tend to light their counterspell keybinding...
- normaly, when a priest popped a shield i always FIRST spammed purge then did the lightning bolt. now i do the lightning bolt, and while its in the air i can do aprox 2 purges, wich almost always purge the shield. helps me alot :D. ofc dont use when the priest is close ;)

[ Post edited by Rotundjere ]


Arguing over the internet is like wining the special olympic. You might have won, but you're still retarded.
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  • The Maelstrom
  • 2. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 01:20:25 PDT
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PvE tricks
- Select a mob/boss which can cast heals etc and type /focus. Then using the macro "/cast [Target=Focus] Earth Shock(Rank 1)", you are able to interrupt the mob immediately, without having to deselect the tank/raid members you are currently healing. (Very useful on the Fathomlord Encounter vs the Healer). Would also work with purge to allow you to remove buffs from bosses without having to select them.
- When you have to monitor a mob with unstanble aggro for interrupts but you have already a "focus" target, you can simply heal the target of the mob whatever this is in the moment you press the macro:
/cast [target=targettarget, help] Healing Wave(Rank 12)
(note: this generally works to heal the target of your target e.g. target the boss and heal whoever it is targeting)
- In Black morass u can purge the rage-buff that the second or third boss gets. it helps alot =)
- Aggro a critter with an earthbind totem, then use water shield to make him generate mana for you throughout fights.
- Heroism can ofc be purged off mobs if you get mind controlled and pop it.
- Spam healing wave rank1 on tanks before pull. This buffs Healing Way and has a chance to proc Ancestral Fortitude (+25% armor buff).
- Water Shield procs off almost everything, unlike Lightning or Earth Shield which only work on damage.
- Chain Heal is an efficient, "smart", healing spell. It will jump to most wounded targets in range,
- Lesser Healing Wave has a bad efficiency ratio, definitely not a spell to be chain casting in mana intensive encounters!
- HW rank1 and Totem of Maelstrom from SSC: Cost=0, five seconds rule not triggered, 300-600heals + 25% armor buff; simply imba.
- In raid, just before boss pull, be in healing gear and drop healing stream totem. Then switch into dps gear. Healing stream will stay down and heal your group for next 2 min. It ticks for 120 hp every 2 sec in my case... Could be 20-30k worth grouphealing.
- Equipping spelldamage weapon just before you drop a searing or magma totem is well worth it. You can equip your normal weapon back right after you dropped totem. Added +spelldamage on totem will remain.
- You can ground the pyroblast one of the mobs use in cot-blackmorass : takes away alot of dmg on the tank while doing heroic
- You can ground the shadowbolt volley from the first boss in mana tombs?
- While doing slave pens, just before you jump down in the water there, buff a member with waterwalking, and let them freak the hell out of themself if they take the dmg when landing on the water, or in some occacions even die :p *evil laughter*
- In PvE you can generally avoid fears by staying away from the mob/boss that does it, then run in and drop the totem to clear the effects. Most fear spells have a 10-20yd range of effect.

Karazhan
- Earthbind totem works like a charm in the 2nd phase of the nightbane fight to slow down the skeletons.
- Romulo's Daring and Julianne's Devotion are both purgeable.
- During the Netherspite fight, I've found that on Banish phase my Water Shield's charges are consumed even when I'm far away near the windows (and not hit by his aura). Be sure to recast it every time you can during this fight (in Portal phase his debuff's ticks trigger Water Shield as well), as it greatly helps to save mana!
- Grounding totem works at the Maiden of Virtue as well (for the holy fire)
- During Netherspite (Kharazan) - when you block the green ray - your plus healing increases greatly, while you mana falls. Just before you completely out of mana drop a healing stream totem. After that your group won't need a heal for the rest of the fight - they will be getting pus 500 per tick for 2 minutes.
- While doing Illhoof, use your fire elemental to deal with the imps. If you have 2 shamans use it after eachother, not together.

PvE:Serpentshrine Cavern
- Lady Vashj's 'stun' ability used in P1 and 3 of the encounter can be grounded. The CD on that ability seems to exactly mimic the un-improved Grounding Totem Cooldown. ( http://i15.tinypic.com/6c5b5hu.jpg )
- Leotheras can be 'taunted' back to the middle after he switches to human phase, or after he ends a Whirlwind, by using Searing Totem. It seems the threat the totem generates during his WW is not reset at the end of WW, like all other threat. Just keep it up 100% of the time when he is Human phase, and it will make the switches go a lot smoother.
- It may have been a fluke but I once managed to drop a fire elemental totem just as Leotheras divided into demon and human (elf?) form at the end. The elemental got aggro on the demon and tanked him successfully to the end (elemental ofc being immune to fire =P)
- In the hydross fight in ssc, when marks of hydross are applied they consume a charge of watershield even though you don´t take damage, not much but it is "some" mana back.
- When you are fighting karathass in SSC, you can use grounding on the shaman to absorb the frostshock.. that's around 6.000 frost damage that wont hit the tank

PvE:The Eye
- Kael'thas throws alot of normal fireballs at the main tank that can be interrupted, he does that alot so top rank ES can make you go oom fast :-)
- Also if he spawns a phoenix right under him or the MT then the mt has to back out so he doesn´t take too much damage, Kael can then start to cast fireball instead of following the MT, interrupt that and he will run straight to the maintank.
- The arcane watchers (or the mobs that look like them in tempest keep) use a charged fist ability. This can be interupted with an earthshock. This can save the healer alot of stress and mana.
- The first miniboss at Kael (Tsomething) Has a strange aura. That aura does no DMG but water shield charges from it so you get alot of mana while he is running. Same in Phase3 when he is up. Use WaterShield and you will get mana back
- High Astromancer Solarian can target totems for arcane missiles, so it's very useful to have all 4 down. You can ofc use rank1 of the ones you don't really need so you don't gimp your mana. Also, if you place them far from her, she can send even 2-3 missiles to them until the first one hits to destroy the totem.

PvE:Mount Hyjal
- The first trash wave in MH just before the 4th boss (Azgalor), it has a load of necromancers and they all cast shadowbolts on the first target they see at pretty much the same time. Get yourself in the MT group, have your tank stand at the front and drop a grounding totem and watch as like 6+ shadowbolts get eaten by your 1 grounding totem.

PvE:The Black Temple:
- use Ghostwolf at Supremus phase2 to easily avoid volcanos
- When casting Fel Acid, Bloodboil will often target totems.
- If you are in a group taking Bloodboils the Healing Stream can heal ~100k in a fight. Very useful.
- @Teron: Windfury totem will be a prime target of Dark Blossom in later stages of the fight, Grace of Air will not.
- EoS phase1, might be the only plase to actually use Stoneskin totem. Since armor is negated, Stoneskin will do its full effect which toghether with other similar effects (BoSanc, BoSac) can add up to quite a nice amount.

[ Post edited by Rotundjere ]


Arguing over the internet is like wining the special olympic. You might have won, but you're still retarded.
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  • The Maelstrom
  • 3. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 01:22:34 PDT
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I would like to ask the Blizzard moderators to make a link to this topic instead of the old one in the 'Informative and useful Shaman threads'.

Also, if anyone has more info to share, stuff that is not here, I will edit it in from your posts ;).

Arguing over the internet is like wining the special olympic. You might have won, but you're still retarded.
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  • Earthen Ring
  • 4. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 08:09:27 PDT
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PVE trick:
It requires a shaman with 3/3 ancestral fortitude. Spam rank 1 healing wave (it's faster and cheaper than rank 1 lesser healing wave, believe it or not) on the tank. It usually gives him more than 5% damage reduction (I have 10k armor and it actually gives me 5% more damage reduction). It's a good start with bosses and asks no mana.

PVP trick:
guess what? When I spot incoming phisical damage dealers, I cast the appropriate totem sequence and start spamming rank 1 healing wave on myself before I am engaged into the fight. Expecially useful against stunlockers when they have the jump on you. Attention: be careful of mages as healing loops tend to light their counterspell keybinding...

I am a supporting class. I love it.
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  • 5. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 09:09:45 PDT
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sticky plx!
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  • 6. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 14:43:50 PDT
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Rotundjere you hero!
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  • 7. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/09/2007 14:44:09 PDT
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PvP trick:

When you're facing someone with an interrupt-spell (i.e. mages counterspell), fakeheal with the hearthstone!

Since it has the same green glow as a regular heal, many mages will throw themselves on the counterspell button, giving them CD on counterspell and allowing you to heal yourself unbothered :)
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  • The Maelstrom
  • 8. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   04/09/2007 01:50:19 PDT
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Added, except the HW rank1 spam in PvE, that is mentioned, in a slightly different (more comprehensive) form.
I'm sure the hearthstone trick was in the original thread, but it seems I had missed to put it here.

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  • Burning Steppes
  • 9. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/10/2007 04:43:11 PDT
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May have already been mentioned, but stoneclaw totem works on those annoying little snakes summoned by hunter's viper trap.

These usually spell death for a shammy but pop stoneclaw and watch them get pulled away, leaving you free to DPS the hunter into the ground :)
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  • 10. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/10/2007 05:14:34 PDT
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sticky....
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Tharfor
Blizzard Poster
  • 11. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   03/10/2007 07:09:47 PDT
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Looks good to me.
Added this to the compilation sticky:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=305841000&sid=1

"Daiguren Hyōrinmaru"
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  • 13. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   04/10/2007 02:46:19 PDT
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Here's something i use that helps while grinding
only works for draenei
When you get to low hp and low mana and only have enough for 1 small heal,
pop a healling or spelldamage trinket place a healing totem use Gift of Narru and a lesser heal
You should be at about 80% hp back after you stop drinking
(Saves the mana of healing after drinking)
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  • Kul Tiras
  • 14. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   04/10/2007 12:01:54 PDT
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Black Temple
Bloodboil: using Healing Stream on Fel Rage will make it tick for alot under 2min. I am elemental so mine does 200hp/2sec.. thats 12000hp
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  • 15. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   04/10/2007 14:34:48 PDT
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My favorite:

Defend LM in AB. Then use Far Sight exactly at the spot the of the ST/BS/farm flags(wichi you can see from LM). This creates the same animation as actually capping the flag, resulting the defenders of ST/BS/farm to go nuts and think there's some stealther haxxing the flag in some way. You will see mages spam arce explosion etc etc. Makes defending in AB alot of fun.

wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
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  • Auchindoun
  • 16. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   04/10/2007 15:43:23 PDT
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Great, now we will get 29 nerfs next patch :(

[ Post edited by Chengli ]


\_/¯\_/¯\_/¯\_/¯\-> Bring back the old Chain Lightning sound! <-\_/¯\_/¯\_/¯\_/¯\_
You no-good devs!

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  • Haomarush
  • 17. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   04/10/2007 19:27:53 PDT
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You forgot to buff waterwalking on your raidleader on the Lurker below fight just before spout.
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  • The Maelstrom
  • 18. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   05/10/2007 07:51:23 PDT
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Q u o t e:
You forgot to buff waterwalking on your raidleader on the Lurker below fight just before spout.
Imba :) I'll have to try that

Real Shamans QQ gracefully
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  • Neptulon
  • 19. Re: Shaman tricks (gathered)   18/10/2007 08:55:14 PDT
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well, i sometimes use bloodlust+berserking for slightly faster astral recall ^^

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