In reference to Lissanna over at Restokin, and because Blog Azeroth opened the question up to be answered, I’ve spent the past 12ish hours pondering: If I could change/remove/seperate/annihilate/lick any talent in the enhancement tree, what would it be? After less than 5 minutes of thinking, I had the answer: the rest of the day was spent wading through work, getting annoyed we had to cancel raiding again due to attendance (btw we’re recruiting, just saying), ToC 10, Dailies, complaining about my headache, commenting on other peoples blogs, and lacking the actual willpower to write. However, I have buckled down and started, and here is my answer: Shamanistic Rage.
I think, to any raiding/pvping/anything Enhancement Shaman, the awesomeness that is Shamanistic Rage is readily apparent. Between our regular mana heavy rotation, dropping magma totem every twenty seconds, and situational mana uses (Purge and Wind shear are both 329 mana each- I spend a good 4-5k mana minute on just those on Jaraxxus), we’re mana hogs. Being able to replenish our mana from nearly 0 to full every minute is awesome.
You know what else is awesome? Not dying. Shamanistic rage helps us with that. While we’re pewpewing our lives away, we might notice the scary boss man is unleashing his lightning nova of doom. We somehow missed the gigantic pedowolf voice telling us to run away. What do we do? (Well, I don’t know about you, but I have enough HP now- a tier later- to survive Emalons lightning nova with 1.5k hp to spare. That’s besides the point, though.) We shamanwall!
Heroic Training Dummy begins casting Lightning Nova?
And herein lies the problem- what happens when both happen at different times? What happens if we know the boss is a heal check, like XT-Deconstructor pre-nerf, and we know that Shamwalling the tantrums will lead to an easier time for the healers, which in turn leads to more mana for healers, which might mean downing the boss. Do we take a dps hit of possibly going oom because we used shamanistic rage at a suboptimal time?
Or, on another note, what happens when an unforeseeable large hit of doom comes up, and you just popped shamanistic rage 20 seconds ago to regain mana. What can we blow when the Vezax trash warrior comes spinning towards us with his 15k bladestorms? Our fingers might twitch to our Shamanistic Rage button, but since we needed that cooldown to continue dpsing we lost out on our one possible “get out of death free card.”
And, all of this is only pve. There is a myriad of situations in pvp where using Shamanistic Rage is a huge choice- “Do I think my healer can keep me up while I try to live through this rogues vanish-opener? I’m pretty low on mana.” “Do I think now is a safe time to use SR, or is his burst cooldown going to come back up within the next 60 seconds?” Etc.
So, we have in Shamanistic Rage a kind of spec-defining attribute/flaw/cool thing- combining dps and survivability cooldowns into the same thing. (Much like the RP generation aspect of Anti-magic shell!) We see this in Feral Spirits: Dash, Spirit Walk, and their healing ability all make wolves a survivability cooldown, but their beast damage makes them our ONLY burst cooldown as well. Maelstrom Weapon gives us the potential for high damage attacks, but also allows us to heal at the cost of damage. Shamanistic Rage allows us to continue bringing the pain, or helps us avoid having the pain brought to us. (If you’re like me and like to stand in Lightning Nova when at low mana and hit SR to maximize time on target, it helps you do both! But shh, don’t tell my healers. They might get mad.)
I love the design philosophy behind Shamanistic Rage. I love the hybridized feel it lends to the Shaman Class. Part of me even loves the fact that it requires thought and choice to use.
I’m just not sure it works.
(Totally unrelated note, I went into ToC10 tonight and got myself a…caster staff! Because, that makes sense. It’s now a part of my badass walking around/log off set. It’s also better than my spectral kris+shield of assimilation combo, but seeing as I don’t have a resto spec currently we’re going to ignore that. But srsly, look at me, being badass:)
Using a Staff on a Shaman is like eating the second slice of chocolate cake: Possibly socially unacceptable, definitely fattening, but it just feels so right!
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Shaman On Ramen: The Diary Of an AP trinket! 
Ragin’ about shamanistic rage!
Nice article. I personally like the dual function of SR, but i can see where it causes problems. I think part of their “solution” to the SR dilemma was to cut the CD to 1 min and reduce the mana getback. Of course, it’s rare when you don’t get a full bar of mana each time you use this, a long as you have decent gear.
Don’t think i’ve ever heard anyone call it shaman wall, but i guess it makes sense, since w/o it, i can’t survive the ‘sploding spawns on Yogg p1…
I think I might have been a little unclear. xD I -love- the dual function idea behind SR because it feels quintessentially hybrid, and I do like how they changed it to the 1minute Cd to try and deal with this very issue. However, I’m just not sure that style of class design really works when there are 9 other classes that get to choose either dps or survive. (Note, dispersion works kind of like this as well!)
And, I have to admit- with 4PCt9, it’s best to spec out of Improved Stormstrike and into Reverb. I was running in ten man ToC today without replenishment and no imp. ss, and there was one time on icehowl where I actually had to pop a runic mana pot because I timed my sham rage wrong and he knocked back and froze me, so running oom does become a slight possibility.
And hehe, I’ve called it Shamwall for the longest time- it’s one of my favorite phrases in the Shaman-English dictionary!
Thank you for your comment! 😀
I like how I can’t edit my own comment. -.-;
I wanted to add in- isn’t it so much fun to Sham Rage exploding yogg adds? xD