Raid Synergy Vol.2

Rogues:
All Specs:
-Expose Armor: Finishing move that exposes the target for 30 sec, reducing armor per combo point:
1 point : 410 armor
2 points: 820 armor
3 points: 1230 armor
4 points: 1640 armor
5 points: 2050 armor
This is a decent substitute for sunder armor when a warrior is not available or present.

Assassination:
-Improved Expose Armor: Increases the armor reduced by your Expose Armor ability by 50% bringing your rank 5 EA up to 3075, 475 more reduction than 5 full stacks of Sunder Armor. Combat rogues sometimes spec into this ability in order to add raid synergy and drastically increase physical DPS output for the rest of the raid.

Combat:
-Improved Expose Armor: (in assassination, but still obtainable). See above.

Subtlety:
-Hemorrhage: An instant strike that deals 110% weapon damage and causes the target to hemorrhage, increasing any Physical damage dealt to the target by up to 42. Lasts 10 charges or 15 sec. Awards 1 combo point. Hemo is a highly debated skill which can lead to a potential increase in raid DPS, although the personal loss of DPS can easily outweigh the benefits. Generally speaking, the better your personal DPS, the less of a potential net gain is available.


Shamans:
All Specs:
-Totems:

-Air Totems:
-Grace of Air: summons a Grace of Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the agility of party members within 20 yards by 77. A very useful DPS and tank oriented totem. As a tank, the agility adds both dodge and armor, for DPS, it adds critical strike percentage and Ranged Attack Power.
-Windfury: Summons a Windfury Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem enchants all party members main-hand weapons with wind, if they are within 20 yards. Each hit has a 20% chance of granting the attacker 1 extra attack with 375 extra attack power. This is the quintessential melee DPS totem and will dramatically improve damage done by any melee damage dealer, tanks included.
-Tranquil Air:
-Nature Resistance Totem: Summons a Tranquil Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem reduces the threat caused by all party members within 20 yards by 20%. Given that Tranquil Air is multiplicative with Blessing of Salvation it will only add roughly 15% threat reduction on top of Salvation’s product. This totem is an extremely useful tool for agro sensitive fights and phases.
-Windwall Totem: Summons a Windwall Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem protects party members within 20 yards, reducing ranged damage taken by 102. This totem is more or less garbage is it’s damage reducing effect occurs before mitigation is processed. As well, the limited occurrences of ranged tanking situations render this totem nearly non-applicable.
-Wrath of Air: Summons a Wrath of Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. Party members within 20 yards of the totem have their spell damage and healing increased by up to 101. This is the quintessential caster DPS totem and can provide very large increases for your caster DPS.

Water Totem:
-Mana Spring: Summons a Mana Spring Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 2 min that restores 20 mana every 2 sec seconds to group members within 20 yards. This is a very important mana return totem and should be down at all times, unless Mana Tide is being used.
-Healing Stream: Summons a Healing Stream Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 2 min that heals group members within 20 yards for 18 every 2 sec seconds. A generally useless totem as the mana returns far outweigh the healing benefits.
-Mana Tide (resto only): Summons a Mana Tide Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for [13 sec - 1] sec that restores 6% of total mana every 3 sec seconds to group members within 20 yards. A very important healer mana return totem.

Fire Totem:
-Flametonuge Totem: Summons a Flametongue Totem that enchants all party members' main-hand weapons with fire if they are within 20 yards. Each hit causes 19.3766 to 59.68 additional Fire damage. Semi useful for tank threat when GOA is down and totem twisting is entirely improbable, i.e. heavy healing situations like Eredar Twins.
-Frost Resistance Totem: Summons a Frost Resistance Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 2 min. The totem increases party members' frost resistance by 70, if within 20 yards. Useful for fire based boss fights and phases.
-Totem of Wrath: (stacks) (Elemental Only) Summons a Totem of Wrath with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the chance to hit and critically strike with spells by 3% for all party members within 20 yards. This totem provides an amazing amount of DPS for caster DPS and does in fact stack if you are lucky enough to have 2 highly consistent Elemental Shamans.

Earth Totem:
-Stoneskin Totem: Summons a Stoneskin Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem protects party members within 20 yards, reducing melee damage taken by 43. A practically useless totem as it provides it’s damage reduction before mitigation is processed.
-Strength of Earth: Summons a Strength of Earth Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the strength of party members within 20 yards by 86. A very useful melee DPS totem and tank threat generation totem, should always be used for said players.
-Tremor Totem: Summons a Tremor Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that shakes the ground around it, removing Fear, Charm and Sleep effects from party members within 30 yards. While not a typical synergy buff, this is the only group based AE anti fear in the game and is an important facet to Shamans raid roles in PvE and PvP.

Enhancement:
-Enhancing Totems: (Resto Shamans should also spec into this) Increases the effect of your Strength of Earth and Grace of Air Totems by 15%. This is a very important talent for maximizing raid DPS, tank mitigation and increasing Shamans synergy overall.
-Unleashed Rage: Causes your critical hits with melee attacks to increase all party members' melee attack power by 10% if within 20 yards of the Shaman. An enormous group based buff for any Physical DPS dealers, tanks included.
-Improved Weapon Totems: Increases the melee attack power bonus of your Windfury Totem by 30% and increases the damage caused by your Flametongue Totem by 12%. Another very important Melee buff as it will increase an entire party’s benefit from Windfury procs enormously.
-Guardian Totems: Increases the amount of damage reduced by your Stoneskin Totem and Windwall Totem by 20% and reduces the cooldown of your Grounding Totem by 2 sec. A totally useless talent in PvE, the reduced Grounding Totem time has benefits in PvP.

Elemental:
- Totem of Wrath: (stacks) (Elemental Only) Summons a Totem of Wrath with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the chance to hit and critically strike with spells by 3% for all party members within 20 yards. This totem provides an amazing amount of DPS for caster DPS and does in fact stack if you are lucky enough to have 2 highly consistent Elemental Shamans.

Restoration:
-Mana Tide (resto only): Summons a Mana Tide Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for [13 sec - 1] sec that restores 6% of total mana every 3 sec seconds to group members within 20 yards. A very important healer mana return totem.
-Ancestral Healing: Increases your target's armor value by 25% for 15 sec after getting a critical effect from one of your healing spells. A very important tank buff generated through any Shaman healing critical.
-Healing Way: Your Healing Wave spells have a 100% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on that target by 6% for 15 sec. This effect will stack up to 3 times. A very important healing buff placed on the Shaman’s healing target when using normal Healing Wave as opposed to Chain Heal. An amazing single target healing buff which is vital to PvP healing effectiveness as well as PvE.
-Restorative Totems: Increases the effect of your Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems by 25%. This is a very important MP/5 buff for Mana Spring and should be used by all Resto Shamans in PvE.
-Enhancing Totems (Enhancement Tree, still obtainable): Increases the effect of your Strength of Earth and Grace of Air Totems by 15%. This is a very important talent for maximizing raid DPS, tank mitigation and increasing Shamans synergy overall.

Warlocks:
All Specs:
-Curse of Recklessness: Curses the target with recklessness, increasing melee attack power by 135 but reducing armor by 800 for 2 min. Cursed enemies will not flee and will ignore Fear and Horror effects. Only one Curse per Warlock can be active on any one target. Likely, the single most important Physical DPS buff in a raid as it works raid wide and [b]will dramatically improve tank TPS and overall DPS. Use Demoralizing Shout and Screech from an owl pet to negate the gained AP if need be. [/u]
-Curse of Shadow: (deprecated as of 2.4.3) Curses the target for 5 min, reducing Shadow and Arcane resistances by 88 and increasing Shadow and Arcane damage taken by 10%. Only one Curse per Warlock can be active on any one target. In the near future (2.43) Curse of Elements will be combined with Curse of Shadow making one uber buff to say the least. As is, it is the best caster buff available raid wide as 2 classes benefit from it, Locks and Shadow Priests.
-Curse of Elements: (2.43 Description) Curses the target for 5 min, reducing Arcane, Fire, Frost, and Shadow resistances by 88 and increasing Arcane, Fire, Frost, and Shadow damage taken by 10%. Only one Curse per Warlock can be active on any one target. Prior to patch 2.43, Cure of Elements only affected Fire and Frost spells.

Affliction:
-Malediction: Increases the damage bonus effect of your Curse of the Elements spell by an additional 3% as of 2.43. Prior to 2.43, this worked with only one curse at a time, either Elements or Shadow. If you use an Affliction lock, make sure one of them has this spell as it will provide a lot of damage for the raid.
-Shadow Embrace: Your Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life and Seed of Corruption spells also cause the Shadow Embrace effect, which reduces physical damage caused by 5%. A very good buff to for tank mitigation. May as well have it if you are using an Affliction lock in your raid.
-Blood Pact/Imp Blood Pact: Increases party members' Stamina by 66. Affliction locks may also want to spec into improved Imp (demonology tree) which brings Blood Pact up to 86 Stamina, making an Affliction Warlock very useful in a tank group.

Demonology:
-Improved Imp: While imps are almost NEVER used by a Demonology Warlock, this talent resides in their tree and brings Bloodpact from 66 stamina to 86 stamina for the Affliction Warlock and their group.
-Improved Healthstone (top tier, available to ALL specs easily): It is ESSENTIAL that your Warlocks all spec into a different rank of Improved Healthstone as many encounters will make great use out of multiple Healthstones. It is important to note that ALL SPECS of Warlocks can switch around their points in this talent without sacrificing much of anything. There are three ranks of healthstones, make sure that if you have 3 locks, they all have a differing rank.

Destruction:
-Improved Shadow Bolt: Your Shadow Bolt critical strikes increase Shadow damage dealt to the target by 20% until 4 non-periodic damage sources are applied. Effect lasts a maximum of 12 sec. This is a very important buff for both Shadow Priests and Warlocks as it will increase both classes DPS enormously. Any Shadow Spell will consume the charges of Improved Shadow Bolts, including procs from certain items like Syphon of the Nathrezim.


Warriors:
All Specs:
-Sunder Armor: Sunders the target's armor, reducing it by 520 per Sunder Armor and causes a high amount of threat. Can be applied up to 5 times. Lasts 30 sec. Stacks up to 2600 Armor Reduction and is the most typical Melee buff found in raiding. Despite how universally used Sunder Armor is, Improved Exposed Armor provides 475 more Armor Ignore and is rarely used in place of Sunder.

-Commanding Shout: Increases maximum health of all party members within 20 yards by 1080. Lasts 2 min. A very important Tanking buff as well as a situational group survivability buff.
-Battle Shout: The warrior shouts, increasing the melee attack power of all party members within 20 yards by 232. A very important and standard Melee DPS buff.

Arms:
-Blood Frenzy: Your Rend and Deep Wounds abilities also increase all physical damage caused to that target by 4%. An extremely important PvE physical DPS buff. Despite the fact that 33/28 MS warriors cannot do nearly as much DPS as fury warriors, this 4% extra physical DPS will usually outweigh the losses over an entire raid and will improve tank TPS slightly.

Fury:
-Commanding Presence: (easily Speccable by Arms Warriors) Increases the melee attack power bonus of your Battle Shout and the health bonus of your Commanding Shout by 25%. Turns Commanding Shout into a 1350 HP buff and Battle Shout into a 290 Attack Power bonus. This is an essential Talent for ANY DPS warrior, Arms of Fury.

Protection:
-Devastate: This ability is simply the Prot Warrior’s replacement for Sunder. Sunder the target's armor causing the Sunder Armor effect. In addition, causes 50% of weapon damage plus 35 for each application of Sunder Armor on the target. The Sunder Armor effect can stack up to 5 times. It provides the same synergy as Sunder Armor in terms of Armor Ignore, but delivers more threat to the Prot Warrior.