A Small Macro Collection

And here I am compounding the problem – telling you how to add yet MORE buttons…

Well, not TOO many more buttons – and once you have these situational macros down, you can realistically delete all those “plain” totem buttons.

Important notes for those new to macros:

You cannot set a cast sequence delay for /castsequence macros. To cast all the totems in a particular macro – you must press or click the action button as many times as there are totems, waiting each time for cooldown to end.I’m going to split this post into a few sections to give you an example of how you can use situational macro’s with your totems to reduce button spam on your screen.

The first section is…

PvP Macros:

Example 1 – Shaman Flag Defence Totems Macro

/castsequence Earthbind Totem,Windfury Totem,Frost Resistance Totem,Fire Resistance Totem

Best set up in advance, I find this a good all purpose macro, especially if you have a melee class or two in proximity.

Earthbind is the most important to me – so it goes first. Sneaky flag stealers will take a snare, and if you also hit them with a frost shock they’ll really move slowly. Windfury is to help any melee classes dish out as much damage as possible at the point being defended as possible. Frost and fire resistance are just good back ups to help negate spell damage.

Example 2 – Shaman Attack Totems Macro

/castsequence reset=30 Stoneclaw Totem,Grounding Totem,Magma Totem

Being setup in the middle of combat, its best to use this setup if you’re approaching a combat already in progress, as dropping all three of these will take precious seconds and if you get nuked soon after you drop them all then there was obviously no point in dropping them in the first place.

Stoneclaw is good for protecting your totems and yourself (if you get the highly recommended Stoneclaw Glyph which puts a damage shield on you), so it goes down first. Grounding is next to prevent any incoming spells, and then Magma to help you continue dishing out damage to any melee classes that stun you. Take that rogues!

The other great thing about /castsequence macros, and the spells themselves in this sequence, is that it will hold the last spell of the sequence for you until you need it.

So you could for example just drop stoneclaw and grounding totem, and leave magma until you feel in danger from a melee class, saving you precious time to start unleashing with lightning bolt.

This macro has a reset value, which means it will start again if you haven’t hit magma totem in 30 seconds – the cooldown for Stoneclaw totem.

PvE Macros:

Example 3 – Shaman Leveling Macro

About to die? Don’t feel like doing a corpse run?

Use this macro.

/castsequence reset=15 Earthbind Totem, Stoneclaw Totem,Grounding Totem, Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave

Whilst running in panic from chosen foe, earthbind will slow melee, stoneclaw will hopefull take some of their aggro and stun them, while protecting you (again see the stoneclaw glyph), grounding totem to take out any last ditch spells flung at you, and then a pair of LHW’s to heal yourself up, before you proceed to keep running in panic.

Of course if you have herbalism and the Lifeblood skill, it’d be wise to put that right up at the start of this cast sequence. You don’t have Gift of the Naaru, do you? This is Horde leveling guide..!

Example 4 – Health and Mana Recharge Macro

/castsequence Mana Spring Totem, <mana item>, <food item>

These are just a few examples of Shaman macros you can use for your totems, and personally I don’t need many “miscellaneous” totem buttons after using these multipurpose macros.

Your attack totems like Magma and Searing are probably good ones to leave out for flexible usage, as are your mana and healing totems.

And if you want to just keep all your totem buttons, and use these too? That’s cool – you probably won’t notice 3 more amongst 50!

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Become Everyone’s Best Friend With Resto Spec

Resto Shaman Build

Secondary healers like Druids and Shamans are great fun – while you’re not being everyone’s best buddy by stopping them dying, you’re able to step in and do some DPS, and not to mention level at an “ok” rate when you’re out of grouping situations.

The other good thing about being the secondary healer is that everyone doesn’t expect you to hold everything together. If your main healer drops, and the rest of the group soon follows, it was his fault… right?

With all my professions of a resto Shammy being able to do other stuff while he’s not healing groups, let me be clear – the restoration Shaman is NOT going to handle solo PvE well, and is a bit of a slouch on leveling speeds.

Because of that fact, this build is fairly specialized and doesn’t offer much in the way of options to tweak for different play styles.

Either you use this build to heal groups in PvP or in instances, or you just love the Resto Shammy and don’t care that you’re leveling a little slow.

Key tip: Resto Shamans are the king of chain heals, which means the Shaman will be in charge of healing groups of players at a time, particularly larger raid groups being hit by AoE’s.

Your healing wave spells are great and all, but Druids and obviously Priests trounce your single target heals. Chain heals are also great for PvP in battlegrounds or larger arena fights, but obviously you lose your biggest draw card in 2v2.

This build will be a good general purpose healing build for PvP or instances of any size. If you’re a raiding junkie I’d investigate optimizing your chain heals by picking up the appropriate gear and making every talent point count.

The Restoration Shaman Build

Row 1 (Improved Healing Wave, Totemic Focus)

Nothing fancy here, IHW gets maxed with 5 points to reduce your cast time half a sec. Leave totemic focus alone.

Row 2 (Improved Reincarnation, Healing Grace, Tidal Focus)

We don’t need reincarnation for PvP, and it shouldn’t be your main focus in groups to rez, so leave it be, 0/2. Healing Grace, max it with 3/3 – great for managing your threat levels, especially when you start spamming chain heals. Tidal focus also gets 5/5, especially handy again in groups where you’re doing a lot of healing – you’ll save 5% mana per cast with this maxed.

Row 3 (Improved Water Shield, Healing Focus, Tidal Force, Ancestral Healing)

I leave IWS – I know some people think the pay off is worth the chance at gobbling a water shield orb, but I’m not convinced 3 points are worthwhile here – especially when chain heal isn’t on the menu.

Healing Focus – an easy one & doesn’t really need explaining, 3/3 reduces pushback suffered from damage by 70%.

Tidal Force is another no brainer – increase the crit chance of your core healing spells including chain heal by 60% for a limited time and great as part of an “oh sh*t” macro if and when things get a little crazy.

Ancestral Healing is part b to the “oh sh*t” button I referenced above – give your target an extra 25% armor for 15 seconds after a crit heal.

Row 4 (Restorative Totems, Tidal Mastery)

One of the most commonly used totems in a raid is the mana spring totem. Your priest loves it, the mage loves it… everyone loves it because the benefits help us all out at the end of the day. Max out 3 points to get an extra 20% mana out of your spring, or if you have your healing totem out, and extra 45% healing.

Tidal Mastery, max it out at 5% to get those lovely crit heal percentages up.

Row 5 (Healing Way, Nature’s Swiftness, Focused Mind)

Healing Way gets no love on this line, I’m just not big on the Shaman’s healing wave spells and think points are best kept for other uses.

Nature’s Swiftness is another great panic button to include on a macro. 1/1 gives you an insta cast healing spell.

Focused Mind is great for PvP and reduces Silence or Interrupt effects by 30% which can be the difference between saving your friend’s skin and not. Max it with 3 points.

Row 6 (Purification)

All on its lonesome is Purification — you can’t miss its 10% bonus to all heals. Nuff said -5/5.

Row 7 (Nature’s Guardian, Mana Tide Totem, Cleans Spirit)

Nature’s Guardian is a bit of an optional one for me. If you don’t find yourself in PvP very often I can see the wisdom in dropping it in favor of some other resto lines here. If you engage in PvP its a must, max it. If you don’t, it can still be handy in tough fights and makes you just a little bit more survivable.

Mana Tide Totem, a great pick for you raiders, it can add a huge mana regeneration boost in the thick of battle, drop a point in here for sure. If you never raid, drop it.

Cleanse Spririt is handy in all sorts of situations and takes down a poison, curse and disease effect at the same time with an insta cast. 1/1 here too.

Row 8 (Blessing of the Eternals, Improved Chain Heal, Nature’s Blessing)

More critical healing love comes from BotE — 2 points gives you a 4% boost, and gives you an 80% boost to the chance of Earthliving to apply on your target when they’re under 35% health. 2/2 here, please.

Improved Chain Heal, 2 points here gives your chain heals a 20% boost, need I say more?

Also max out Nature’s Blessing with 3 points, which with Ancestral Knowledge maxed out gives you an awesome boost to every heal you do (15% of intellect added to each heal).Row 9 ()

Row 10 (Ancestral Awakening, Earth Shield, Improved Earth Shield)

AA is left alone in this build — again I’m not keen on optimizing non chaining heals, and even with riptide getting this bonus I’m not keen on it. Leave it out.

Earth Shield is awesome with just 1 point and can be good to use on your primary healer or tank. Improved Earth sheild doesn’t convince me and I leave it out to give us some points in enhancement which make a real difference to our heals.

Row 11 (Tidal Waves)

Tidal Waves is a good talent to make your single target heals more useful. Giving your next two healing wave spells after Riptide or Chain Heal a 30% faster cast with a 20% healing bonus is definately worth the 5 points. Fill it up and move on to Riptide.

Row 12 (Riptide)

Finally at row 12 we Shaman’s get a good healing over time (HoT) spell! Riptide would be great alone, but with the bonus it gives your Chain Heals to the same target, its really an invaluable and kick ass addition to the resto line.

Round out your Resto with some Enhancement thusly:

Ancestral knowledge 5/5 – great for that extra mana and crit ability.

Thundering strikes 5/5 – ditto.

Improved Shields 2 or 3 points here out of 3. If you go 2 points, place your last point into Shamanistic Focus for the cheaper shock spells (good for you PvP’ers out there to conserve mana).

There you have it, a great Resto build for Shaman’s who love PvP and raiding – its easily tweaked if you’re a raiding fanatic, but what I have here is solid even if you are.

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Wield Nature’s Weapons With an Elemental Shaman

Elemental Shaman Build

Today I’m looking at an Elemental build for Shamans that has a monster crit strike bonus built in, and has some great utility spells to round it out.

This build is great for solo players, good for raiding shamans, and great for PvP play where you want to get off huge crits as often as possible.

These huge crits won’t hurt while you’re leveling, or while you’re grouping of course…!

This is another of my favorite Shaman builds – the Elemental Shaman to me is like fighting in bear form as a Druid, its what they were made for, you know?

But enough rambling – here’s the build. Its flexible, but definitely skewed to leveling or small groups where you can do secondary healing and secondary DPS duties.

Elemental Shaman Talent Build

Row 1 (Convection, Concussion)

Your Elemental shaman is going to be pumping out a ton of spell damage in his time with this build, so its important to make that casting efficient and effective. Max out Convection and Concussion to save 10% on mana and increase damage by 5% for Shock, Lighting Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Burst.

Row 2 (Call of Flame, Elemental Warding, Elemental Devastation)

I’m not a big fan of any of this line, but we need points to unlock talents later on down the tree, so I put 3 points into Call of Flame, to get the Fire Totem and Lava Burst damage bonus, and 3/3 into Elemental Warding to reduce all damage we receive by 6%.

Row 3 (Reverberation, Elemental Focus, Elemental Fury)

While Reverberation is a potential choice, and one I’ve used a lot before, for this build I just want to focus on other more useful talents. Elemental Focus is a definite – 1/1 in there to get Clearcasting which reduces mana costs by 40% for your next two spells. Very handy to keep you casting longer. Elemental Fury is a keystone of this build, 5 points go here to up our crit damage by 100% for Searing, Magma, and Fire Totems, and Fire, Frost, and Nature spells.

Row 4 (Improved Fire Nova Totem, Eye of the Storm)

Leave IFNT alone, unless you’re looking at making your Shammy more PvP focused, in which case the 100% chance of stunning from a Fire Nova is gold. Put 3 points into Eye of the Storm to help you keep pumping out those spells even under constant attack – reduce pushback by 70% for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst and Hex spells.

Row 5 (Elemental Reach, Call of Thunder, Unrelenting Storm)

How can you NOT want to be an Elemental build with such awesome talent names as these? Unrelenting Storm, anyone? Yes please, many!

Ok so back to reality – Call of Thunder is another keystone for this build.. an extra 5% bonus chance to crit is HUGE, and you MUST take it for this build (and I’d be surprised if I didn’t see it in every enhancement build). Just keep in mind this is only for Lighting, Chain Lightning and Thunderstorm, which is where you’ll be doing most of your big damage crits.

Now for my favorite — Unrelenting Storm.  For this build, you really, really want to be covered in +int gear because of the big crit bonus you get to spells from high int… and since you’ll be working to increase your int, this talent will keep your mana ticking over really well every 5 seconds. Max it out at 3 points.

Finally, 2 points into Elemental Reach. The 6 yards more mean another cast, and another chance at hitting a crit. The extra radius on Thunderstorm is nice, too.

Row 6 (Elemental Precision, Lighting Mastery)

Whats a good crit chance without a high chance to hit in the first place? Max out Elemental Precision and make every cast count – you’ll also get 30% less threat from your Fire, Frost and Nature spells. Also max out Lightning Mastery and reduce your cast time for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst by half a second. More casts, again equals more crit chances, and more damage.

Row 7 (Elemental Mastery, Storm Earth and Fire)

Max out the whole line, Elemental Mastery is the most pivotal talent in this line. Get this up in PvP, or really any situation, and your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst spell becomes and instant cast spell, and your Fire, Frost, and Nature damage spells get an EPIC 15% bonus to crit hit chance for 15 seconds.

Row 8 (Booming Echos, Elemental Oath, Lightning Overload)

I’m leaving BE & EO alone for this build, only Lightning Overload gets some love – max it out for a 33% chance to cast a second similar spell on the same target at no extra mana cost. In addition your spell won’t cause any extra threat which is great for groupers and raiders. You might consider taking Elemental oath if you’re doing a lot of grouping – its excellent for big groups – check it out, but for this build hold off.

Row 9 (Astral Shift, Totem of Wrath, Lava Flows)

While this line has some cool factor with Astral Shift, we’re going to avoid it unless you’re a heavy PvP player (in which case take it because rogues and pallys are our doom), and only put 1 point into Totem of Wrath which is yet another crit boosting tool in your arsenal. Get 3% extra crit chance while the totem is up, and increase party spell power by 100 for 5 minutes. Sold!

Leave Lava Flows, yawn worthy performance unless you’ve got the hots for your Fire based spells. Lightning is where this build is at.

Row 10 (Shamanism)

Getting to the end of the tree and things keep getting better — max out Shamism with 5 points and get another 10% damage bonus to your lightning attacks. By this stage I’m sure you’re stringing together how all your lightning based attacks are stacking, and with all the crit bonuses and high chance attacks, you’re going to be doing a lot of damage from a distance.

Row 11 (Thunderstorm)

The top of the tree is Thunderstorm, one of my favorite talents for obvious reasons… it looks really cool!

On top of its awesome effects, Thunderstorm kicks ass with a two pronged bonus, helping you, and damaging everyone else, throwing them back a massive 20 yards and restoring 8% of your mana back to you. Another great bonus is that you can use this while stunned, making it great for PvP and all manner of tight spots you need to get yourself out of. If this spell crits, which it has a decent chance to with this build, you can do some stunning damage to a large number of enemies.

For this particular build, where I want to continue to max out my crit chances and keep my mana costs low, I’ve gone a bit of an odd 3 tree build which includes:

5/5 Ancestral knowledge for the 10% increase in Intellect (go you critty thang).

5/5 Thundering Strikes for another 5% bonus to crit chance.

1/1 Shamanistic Focus to get 45% cheaper shock spells.

5/5 Totemic Focus to reduce totem mana costs 25%, and finally,

2/2 Improved Reincarnation to reduce your reincarnation cooldown by 20 minutes – just a bit of utility to round off a very crit heavy ranged spec.

Give this spec a go and I have no doubt your Elemental Shaman will enjoy blasting your foes with some killer critting lightning bolts and elemental fury!

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Enhancement/Elemental Shaman

Shaman’s are one of my favorite classes – they offer amazing flexibilty, and some really great tools that help you get by in your day to day leveling and adventuring.

One of those paths is the Enhancement Shaman. I’ve spent a lot of time putting together this Shaman spec to make it well suited for players who want some flexibility. One day you might be raiding, the next some PvP, and then maybe some solo and perhaps dailies when you level to that point.

With that in mind, the build below will serve well as a DPS focused build. This means you’ll be doing a lot of damage, and will be well suited for groups, PvP or solo work.

Solo is always better to do with a strong DPS build, and raids obviously will need an assortment of roles – DPS being one of them.

Row 1 (Enhancing Totems, Earth’s Grasp, Ancestral Knowledge)

The first row is totem heavy, with a nice intelligence buff.

Since this build includes a talent further down the tree that takes strength from high intelligence, max out 5 points in Ancestral Knowledge, and put 3 points into Enhancing Totems to give yourself another 15% Strength of the Earth effect, and 15% to Flametongue. Leave Earth’s grasp – we’re looking for damage per second, not extra tanking ability.

Row 2 (Guardian Totems, Thundering Strikes, Improved Ghost Wolf, Improved Shields)

Leave Guardian totems alone, it can be great for adding to a raid or party but not in this build. Put 5/5 into Thundering Strikes – the 5% extra chance to crit is too good to pass up on a DPS build. Leave Improved Ghost Wolf, but put another 3/3 points into Improved Shields for an extra 15% buff to your lightning, water and earth orbs.

Row 3 (Elemental Weapons, Shamanistic Focus, Anticipation)

This row includes one of the enhancement Shaman’s biggest draw cards – a buff to their impressive Windfury Weapon effect of 40% to damage. I recommend everyone use Windfury above any other weapon effect, its been proven by countless players as the highest DPS of them all. So 3/3 into Elemental Weapons is an easy one.

Put 1 point into Shamanistic Focus – reducing the mana cost of one of your best instant cast spell lines is another no brainer – 45% savings is awesome and welcome to any Shaman.

I leave Anticipation, the benefits just aren’t worth it, maybe PvP players will consider putting 3 points into it, otherwise leave it alone.

Row 4 (Flurry, Toughness)

Flurry is another killer Shaman talent you can’t afford to miss. 5/5 points here to get an increased attack speed of 25% for 3 swings after you crit – great to combine with your previously taken Thundering strikes. Toughness is another great talent, 5/5 gives your stamina a 10% boost, and reduces movement slowing effects. Being all geared for damage can make you a little fragile so take this talent.

Row 5 (Improved Windfury Totem, Spirit weapons, Mental Dexterity)

A great row, with some attack boosting effects and reduction of threat. Max out this entire line – Mental Dexterity gives you a big boost in attack power thanks to your row 1 selection of Ancestral Knowledge.

Row 6 (Unleashed Rage, Weapon Mastery, Frozen Power)

We begin this row by leaving Unleashed Rage — points can be better spent elsewhere to provide you a more balanced Shaman, but if you’re big into raids you might consider filling it. Weapon Mastery is up next letting you increase damage you deal with all weapons by 10% – A big, big boost and another no brainer for a DPS build… all 3 points go in here. Frozen Power gets 2 points for a 100% chance at an ice root effect, which is awesome for PvP or tight spots you and party need to flee from.

Row 7 (Dual Wield Specialization, Dual Wield, Stormstrike)

A great line of talents, being an Enhancement Shaman to me means going Windfury, Flurry, and Dual Wield to the max, which means this whole line gets filled up, DWSpecialization means you’ll hit more often, which is very important for our dual wielding DPS Shammy. Stormstrike, I’m on the fence about, but with a good selection of shocks after your Stormstrikes, a 20% damage increase can’t be passed up.

Row 8 (Static Shock, Lava Lash, Improved Stormstrike)

A sparse line for those wanting to keep their DPS ticking along strong. 0/3 for Static Shock – the lazy man’s shield solution, 1/1 in Lava Lash for an ok instant cast that can be combined with Flametongue, but which I really only took to open up the next line. Improved Stormstrike, again on the fence about this one, getting 40% mana back after a SS is awesome, but its robbing us of more important DPS generating effects right now. Come back & fill it after you max out the Enhancement tree, and I won’t scoff at you.

Row 9 (Mental Quickness, Shamanistic Rage, Earthen Power)

Max this line out – Mental Quickness benefits from our two intelligence talents earlier and piles on the benefits, Shamanistic Rage lets you shrug off 30% of damage with a 2 min cooldown, and Earthen Power can be great again for groups in tight spots of PvP with snaring opponents.

Row 10 (Maelstrom Weapon)

Hold out here, and go straight to Row 11. Insta cast spells are good and all, but as Shaman’s we’re already loaded with them, so I see these as five wasted points. Perhaps a good idea for builds that want to be able to deliver emergency heals.

Row 11 (Feral Spirit)

Feral Spirit, the end of the enhancement tree and a great DPS burst for big bosses, or for the occassional one of when the time is right in pretty much any other time in WoW.  The three min cooldown and 45 duration make this pair of wolves difficult to time well, but just hold off on the temptation to overuse them and you’ll be fine.

This build is great for people who want a Shaman that fights toe to toe with his foes. He’s great for any part of the game, but not super specialized. If you want to take a tertiary healing role while you dole out big damage, or you just want to help a single grouping buddy out better as you level up, go resto.

If you’re keen to raid or PvP, Elemental is the obvious choice.

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Talents! Those juicy extra toppings you get every level which can either make the perfect leveling sandwich or spoil your fun like off mayonnaise.

How do you choose them, and which ones are right for your class?

First off, we need to establish that we are in fact picking talents to optimize your leveling speeds for PvE. Some of my readers here do in fact like to pick talents which allow them to dominate in PvP – and rightly so – its a fun and different part of the game we can all enjoy.

But for those of you who simply want to get up those levels, and fast, its time to do a little research.

Here’s just a few quick & dirty tips on choosing the right talents (an entire NEW book could be written on the details of the below points):

1. Stick to one tree! This is the worst sin we can commit in picking talents… if nothing else, be sure that you stick to one tree until its complete, then, and only then…
2. Build up ONE of your second preference talent trees.

   World of Warcraft is a well balanced game, and if you follow just these two steps your leveling speeds will be very respectable.

3. Picking PvE talents will reduce your efficiency in PvP, and vice versa.
4. Some builds are geared towards group play, while others are tailored to solo play – shadow priests for solo, and holy priests for group play are two good examples.

   If you’re going to be examining your talent lists, keep in mind that most of your time will likely be spent solo… or…

5. If you have friends or a guild you’re regularly playing with, be sure to pick builds which are effective when friends are around.

Some basic truths about each class when it comes to talent builds:

1. Priests are a support class designed for healing, not soloing.
2. Hunters & Warlocks are the best solo classes, bar none.
3. Retribution Paladins are the best solo, keep the other specs to group play.
4. Shamans – go elemental if solo, otherwise, stick to group or PvP.
5. Rogues – get assassination/combat balanced out & you’ll do fine.
6. Mages – get into the frost tree, you’ll probably do just as well as fire, but survive more fights.
7. Warriors – Fury all the way, unless grouping in which case I always recommend protection.
8. Druids – I like balance for PvE, or restoration for group based PvE.

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