Antlers?

Finally the Shaman Tier 10 set is revealed, and apparently we are slaughtering and wearing Rudolph.

Go Go Elementals.

Shaman

•Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
•Fire Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Fire Elemental is a bit more damage that Magma totem, but being on a 20 minute cool down I tend not to use it much, as I want to "save" it for when I think I really need it. with a 10 minute c/d I think I'll use a lot more. Glad to see this change.

patch 3.3 notes

New Relics (totems)
Shaman

•Item - Shaman T10 Elemental Relic (Shocks) - Your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells grant 73 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
•Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement Relic (Stormstrike) - Your Stormstrike ability grant 146 attack power rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
•Item - Shaman T10 Restoration Relic (Riptide) - Your Riptide spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

So depending on how the stacking works this could be a nice little upgrade. Stormstike is much higher on the priority list than lava lash so its less likely to fall off than the buff from Totem of Quaking Earth So with a full stack this gives 438 AP compared to 400 for ToQE. It does have the drawback of taking a minimum of 16 seconds to get the full stack. As uptime of ToQE is close to 100% this ends up being a pretty small upgrade, but an upgrade is an upgrade.

In addition to the totems we also get this little boost.

Shaman

•Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 50 minutes (Improved Reincarnation will continue to lower the cooldown by 10/20 minutes).

A 10 minute reduction is a nice little bonus for free. I miss my improved reincarnation from the old TBC enhance/resto build.

ETA: on relics, looks like the elemental relic is going to be a very solid choice for Enhancement as well. 12 seconds to get a full stack as opposed to 16 seconds and right now Crit is simming as higher than 2ep for me.

Apparently the elemental bonus is going to be Haste rather than Crit, which with the 4pc T10 bonus is probably going to be very valuable.

T10 set bonuses

Shaman

•Item - Shaman T10 Restoration 2P Bonus - Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
•Item - Shaman T10 Restoration 4P Bonus - Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over until cancelled.
•Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus - Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.
•Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus - The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 15 sec.
•Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement 2P Bonus - When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 sec.
•Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement 4P Bonus - Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

Lets look at the 2 pc first: an additional 12% damage for 15 seconds every minute. Or an extra 12% damage 25% of the time, which averages out to 3% extra damage. At 7k dps thats 210dps. Seems pretty nice to me.

The 4 pc set is a bit trickier to do napkin math on. Due to RNG it can take anywhere from 2 seconds to 20 seconds to gain 5 charges. Lets say on average its 6 seconds. I doubt the procs would stack, but the duration is longer than the average chance to proc, so lets say up time is 15% lets use 6000 as an average AP in raid. So the bonus is 1200ap 15% of the time or 180 ap average. 6000 ap is probably a bit low in an optimized raid, so the better your buffs the better this bonus is. I think i need someone a bit smarter than I am to work out the value of the 4 pc. :)

Twins Down.

After a 3% wipe late Friday night < Fire and Blood > downed the Twin Valkyrs on 25 man Heroic ToC last night. Got them on our second go of the night. We have 24 attempts to use on Anub tonight. Wish us luck.

Not wasting much time.

patch 3.3 is up on the PTR. looks like a lot of changes, many of witch are aimed at reducing mana costs of lower level spells. I'm guessing this is to help people leveling rather than to bring back downranking.

New totem graphics are in this patch.

Really? Axes? Now don't get me wrong as an orc I love my axes, but thats the best they could come up with for our totems?


Meanwhile the troll totems kick ass.


The dwarven totems are OK. Better than the orc, not nearly as cool as troll.

Class changes

Shaman
Elemental

•Fire Nova now Causes the shaman's active Fire totem to emit a wave of flames, inflicting 893 to 997 Fire damage to enemies within 10 yards of the totem.
•Elemental Reach now affects Fire Nova
•Improved Fire Nova now Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova by 20% and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 sec.
•Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock, Flame Shock, Searing Totem, Frost Shock, Stoneclaw Totem, Magma Totem had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.

Enhancement

•Stoneskin Totem, Nature Resistance Totem, Strength of Earth Totem, Windfury Weapon, Fire Resistance Totem, Flametongue Totem, Frostbrand Weapon, Flametongue Weapon, Frost Resistance Totem had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.

Restoration

•Healing Wave, Chain Heal, Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem, Lesser Healing Wave, Mana Spring Totem had the mana cost of their lower ranks reduced.

I'm wondering how the fire Nova change will work. Say I'm using magma totem... which of course I almost always am. Do I get an additional bit of fire damage? If so its pretty awesome. Fire Nova is the only thing changes aside from mana costs for us so far.

Crafting wise there are new Icecrown Citadel patterns coming.

•Legwraps of Unleashed Nature have been added to the game.
•Blessed Cenarion Boots have been added to the game.
•Bladeborn Leggings have been added to the game.
•Footpads of Impending Death have been added to the game.
•Lightning-infused Leggings have been added to the game.
•Earthsoul Boots have been added to the game.
•Draconic Bonesplinter Legguards have been added to the game.
•Rock-steady Treads have been added to the game.

They all take 6 icecrown thing of crafting things though. :p

A couple of new enchants added as well.

•Enchant Weapon - Black Magic now cause your harmful spells to sometimes increase haste rating by 250.
•Enchant Weapon - Unholy Weapon now inflicts Shadow damage in addition to the damage reduction effect.

Depending on the proc rate Black Magic might be replacing Beserking as the enchant of choice for Enhancement. With my curent EP for haste above 2.6 if the uptime is the same this is more than 50% better.

No new bosses downed last week. We had attendence issues and struggled to get the first 3 bosses in Heroic ToC 25 down. Took us dozen or so tries to get beasts down on Wednesday of this week. Hopefully Lord J and Champs go smoother this weekend or we will make no progress on Twins again. As consolation though I did get the best in slot cloak. Cloak of the Untamed Predator

Faction Champs Down / 3.2.2 dropping

After wiping all night to the Faction Champions on 25 man Heroic Sunday night, we managed to take them down on our 3rd go Monday. I really felt that we had it, as we were making good progress as the night went on Sunday.

The difficulty of the fight really varies based on which comp you happen to draw. We had Disco Priest, Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, Ret Pally, Shadow Priest, Mage, Hunter, DK, Warrior, Rogue. We ended up burning down the Disco, Resto Shaman first then taking out the Dps one by one. Its a fight that if you can get the first couple down with out losing many people it gets so much easier.

We spent the next couple hours burning through 19 tries on Valkyr Twins. We died to balls to the face a lot. But getting people to see the fight and learn was good.

Patch 3.2.2 drops today. Updated Onyxia should be fun.
The following are the key changes for shaman

Shaman

•Cleansing Totem: No longer pulses instantly when dropped.
•Flame Shock: The duration of all ranks has been increased by 6 seconds.
•Lava Burst: This ability no longer ever consumes a Flame Shock debuff off of the target.

Elemental Combat

•Shamanism: Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus damage effects.

Enhancement

•Earthen Power: No longer causes Earthbind to pulse a persistent snare immunity aura. It does still remove snares from allies as an instant pulse, but there is no lingering immunity. Earthen Power now also brings Earth Shock’s melee attack speed reduction up to -15%/-20% (with 1 or 2 points in it, respectively).

A bit of a nerf to cleansing totem. A nice buff to Flame Shock. It looks like it should now go into our rotation. 3:1 ES/FS looks to be the ratio I think. I also need to keep an eye on EJ to see of the new Flame Shock glyph is a worthwhile addition. (Dots can crit)

The change to earthen power is a pvp change so I dont really care much.

Also if you are a Leatherworker like myself they are bringing back drums.

Leatherworking

•Added a recipe for Drums of Forgotten Kings. These drums increase all stats by 8% for all players in a raid. The effect of these drums is exclusive with Blessing of Kings.
•Added a recipe for Drums of the Wild. These drums grant a buff equal to the highest rank of Mark of the Wild (untalented) to all players in a raid. The effect of these drums is exclusive with Mark of the Wild.

Just a way to fill out some missing buffs.

They buffed the enahncement Totem to bring it in line with the other T9 relics

•Totem of Quaking Earth: Attack power value increased to 400.

and as I mentioned above they redid glyph of flame shock

•Glyph of Flame Shock: Redesigned. This glyph now makes Flame Shock periodic damage able to be critical strikes.

Should be a nice little buff, and might replace glyph of windfury.

finally the bug fixes

Shaman

•Grounding Totem will now properly protect against the Death Grip spell.
•Lava Burst can no longer deal critical damage to targets who are immune to critical strikes (due to, e.g. Roar of Sacrifice, Blessed Resilience).
•Lightning Shield: This spell will no longer set off some trinkets when it is cast.
•Stoneclaw Totem's pulses will no longer break stealth on nearby hostile units.
•Thunderstorm and Shamanistic Rage can no longer be used while Frozen, Cycloned, Sapped, or Incapacitated.