Thursday, March 13, 2008

Patch 2.4 soon?





Well the background downloader is working at inserting the 2.4 files into our computer. The patch notes are getting smaller and less frequent. I'm guessing 2.4 will go live with 3/25 maintenance.

Here are the latest shaman notes

Shaman

Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
Chain Lightning: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.
Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds.
Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
Stormstrike has a new icon.
Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%.
Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4 seconds.
The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.


Its quite a mixed bag. The big changes were redacted. The shared cooldown between NS and Elemental Mastery was removed for now. And of course the MS debuff for Flame Tongue was nixed. Was it over powered? Perhaps a tad. Was it the best fix for enhamcement shamans in Arenas? No, but at least it was something. Take it back if you will, but give us somethng back please. Give us an Airshock that stuns like Hammer Of Justice, or have Ghost Wolf remove CC like Druid shifts. The Toughness change isnt enough. It turns a worthless talent into something to consider, having it apply only to slows and not roots, doesnt help enough. We will still die to rogues stunlocking us 9 times out of 10.

Now lets evaluate the changes being implemented.

Call of Thunder. Nerf, and the reasoning for it bad as well.
Chain Lightning. Buff, not breaking sheeps makes this useable much more often
Earth Shield. Very Tiny Buff, the mana per charge is slightly reduced but it needs to be cast more often
Flame Tongue. Nerf, but a valid fix
Ghost Wolf. Buff, will be very handy. Really one of 2 redeeming changes for this patch for me.
Totem GCD. Buff, 2 seconds less spent dropping totems really does add up.
Healing Grace. Buff, but not useful to any but full resto. 30% isnt that signifigant.
Rockbiter. Cosmetic change on a usless ability that shouldnt be used past level 10
Shamanistic Rage. Small Nerf, Nondispellable helps in PvP and is a buff. Duration halved is a big nerf, that half the damage reduction. Twice the mana in half the time should equal out to be the same, but there is less time to spend any extra you might gain so thats a slight nerf as well.
Stormstrike. Cosmetic, but still cool.
Totem Timers. Cosmetic, I'll still use a 3rd party add-on.
Toughness. Buff, but not as good as it could be.
Tremor Totem. Buff, less fears out of range is certainly needed. I'd like to see it reduced to 2 sec or increase the range.
Fire Nova. Fix. Now if only it wouldnt get destroyed before it goes of 75% of the time in PvE.

Overall there are more buffs than nerfs, but the removal of the FT debuff doesnt make it feel that way. I hope they still plan on helping enhancement more in Arena than that one try. Shamans were hosed on one review, lets not make it two.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The Earth Shield thing is really a mixed bag for me (Resto Shaman, primarily, though I do all three specs). While the reduction in mana cost is nice, it will mean a lot more jumping around, particularly in positioning fights. Going to have to ponder it a bit more as 2.4 gets closer, but for now I'm withholding judgment!

Unknown said...

(oops! this is Anna of http://www.toomanyannas.com - another Blog Azeroth member)