Glyph of Stoneclaw totem

[Otlecs]

I've seen this mentioned in a few threads, and I've brought it up myself, but I'm really agonising over the decision as to whether I really want to use it now I'm closing in on being more useful in PvP.

It was a no-brainer for my resto spec - I didn't lose anything useful - but it's tougher for my elemental specs.

At the moment, they each use Glyph of Lava, Glyph of Lightning Bolt and Glyph of Flame Shock (sorry, no item tags there because it just makes the text unreadable).

I DO struggle to stay alive against more than one whirl-winding warrior, even with instant GW to bug out, so I could definitely use some more survivability, but I don't know which of the existing glyphs I would drop.

So, for you more experienced PvPers.... could you tell me if you use this glyph, and what your thought processes were in deciding what glyphs to actually run with?

Thanks in advance.

[remanz]

Don't know about others. But I use this glyph on all my shamans. The way I see it is this: Let's say without it, you have to hit your "spread out" button to get out to avoid AOE dmg. Then no doubt you will stop casting and lose damage. And if you cast one less lightning bolt due to this "moving out". That to me, is a huge loss.

So personally, i don't think other glyphs are as good as this one. It absorbs around 4k dmg after you drop the totem. You can immediately replace the stoneclaw totem with others (earthbind, tremor). And not lose the buff.

(I couldn't access my old forum user, make a new user and start over -__-)

[Naysayer]

I use it. 4000 health shield.

power word: shield shaman

[asonimie]

Otlecs it depends whether you are talking about open PVP or arena.

[heyaz]

I never found it too useful in arena, seemed like it was gone instantly, and none of the glyphs I had before were ones I could really sacrifice: lava, shocking, and thunder

[asonimie]

Ya stoneclaw is useless in 5v5. Open pvp its ok, but still kinda pointless.

[Clovis]

I thought the general thought was this was a required totem? Ditch the lightning bolt, that's pretty useless for pvp where as the stoneclaw can make the difference in close fights.

[Naysayer]

Most of the top 5v5 shaman use it. It's not useless...

[Gares]

As a single player shaman its good in arena, but as a boxer shaman in arena its fairly useless

[Otlecs]

Interesting stuff.

I'm talking about BGs and WG at the moment, where I'm gaining experience before suffering the humiliation of my first dip into level 80 arenas, so ultimately it would be for arenas too.

You can immediately replace the stoneclaw totem with others (earthbind, tremor). And not lose the buff.

Although losing one of my existing glyphs is somewhat of a difficult choice for me, the bigger problem was that I was finding it hard to rationalise losing my other earth totems (tremor, stoneskin and often earth bind too).

I didn't realise before that the buff wasn't lost on dropping a new totem, so that's really useful information.

It's a cheap experiment in any case, so armed with all the information in this thread, I think I'll give it a bash this weekend.

Cheers all.