3.0.2 Talent Builds

Builds are something I havent really talked about much, and seeing as I've spent under 2 weeks combined as somthing other then enhancement, I wouldnt come to me for advice on resto or elemental builds.
However, I've put together a nice enough resto kit, that I keep meaning to respec for a fun run of kara or something and the nerfed raids make it the perfect time to do so.

I was thinking of giving this spec a go.

This is my current Enhancement build

With Judgment of wisdom bugged I should probably switch from convection to concussion, but as soon as I do that they are sure to fix it.

Ledge is Hard

Twins Down last night. Get people to walk up on the ledge was harder than the actual fight. Ok not true getting people to run out when they got Conflagged was just as difficult. Aside from those two things the fight is incredibly easy now. Still took us almost the whole night to do. As I said walking up on the ledge is hard. :p We did clear up to Mu'ru and did one quick leroy charge. Got him to 67% He should go down this week.

So... DPS is pretty high right now

Friday we went to Sunwell. Took us a couple tries on Kalecgos, as our dps was such that we got very out of synch the first go. Second go portals bugged and no one got in the shadow realm so Kalec died.

Brutallus on the other hand was a joke. We one shotted him easily. Raid dps was 36.5K I was over 2700 dps which is just silly. It was pretty fun though.


Judgement of Wisdom is also Bugged. Really Bugged.


50K mana back in just over 3 minutes. Thats 1000 mp5. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Nerfed Felmyst Dead.

So Felmyst can still be difficult even after the nerf. People don't like having to run and avoid the mist or avoiding encapsulates. Still we got her down in a couple of hours. 2 conqueror 1 vanquisher and Sword Breaker's Bulwark dropped. So almost 4 months of farming Illidan everyweek, and no Bulwark of Azinoth. First kill of Felmyst finnaly gives our Main Tank and upgrade from Aldori Defender's Legacy.

I did get the Skyshatter Belt off of Brut on Friday.

Brutallus Down

In all the chaos of the new Patch I forgot to post that < Fire and Blood > Got Brut down last Sunday. Before the nerf.

Very big accomplishment for us. I'm very proud of everyone for this kill. Not just those who happened to be inside the instance, but everyone who help learn the fight, and eveyone who stood outside and helped buff the raid, and everyone who helped gather mats for consumables. It was a great way to pull together. He went down on one of my worst efforts. Usually I was in the top 3 dps on almost every go. I was 7th on the kill. Nice job of everyone else stepping their game up to cover my slack. :)

Echos of Doom

Existing content changes
Before any question, please read the Patch 3.0.2 FAQ on official forums

Once this patch is deployed, the following content will be disabled or removed :

The Atiesh quest-chain will not be completable anymore.
The Bear Mount from Zul'aman will no longer drop.
The Onyxia quest-chain has been removed from the game.
Naxxramas is "removed" from the game and moved to Dragonblight. (Unreachable until WotLK, obviously)
The ability to get titles related to Tier 4 or Tier 5 content is being removed. Of course, players who got them before the patch keep them. (Hand of A'dal, Champion of the Naaru)

Also, a few things are being changed or added :

Barbershops are now available in capital cities !
Achievements are being added to the game !
The amount of experience needed to level from 60 to 70 has been lowered.
New graphical effects are being added to the game, including the new shadow engine
The Stormwind Harbor will be available, but you won't be able to travel to Northrend until the release of WotLK. However it does have a working boat travelling between Auberdine and Stormwind.
The Caverns of Time have been slightly modified to add an entrance for CoT: Stratholme. The instance itself won't be available before WotLK, only the entrance is being added.
Mounts and Vanity Pets are now trainable spells and the old items will be used to teach you these spells. Once a mount or pet is learned you can access it through the Character Panel.
Various tokens like Badges of Justice or Honor Points are all merged in the new Token Interface. It will also remove the Badges of Justice and PvP Tokens from your bags to free up even more space !
The in-game Calendar used to schedule raids or events between your friends and guildmate will be available by typing /calendar

Item changes

+Healing and +Spell damage stats are being merged into a single +Spell power stat. Healers' talents and spells have been updated accordingly to compensate this change.
Items with magic school-specific damage like +shadow or +nature have been converted to +spell power as well. This include most of the TBC items except for some enchantments like Sunfire or Soulfrost.
Protection Paladin and Tanking Warrior sets to reflect changes on the new mechanics. A lot of non set items are also being changed. See this post.

Raid changes

Raids buffs, debuffs, and auras stacking have been revamped, please check this post for more information and our raid composition simulation tool to see how it works now.
All TBC raid monsters will have their health reduced by about 30%. (see this post)
The standard melee damage output will be reduced as well.
Boss abilities remain unchanged, except for Illidan who won't use Shear anymore.

This is obviusly the biggest bunch of changes since TBC, and maybe even since implementation. Gameplay is going to be changing for everyone. Many class mechanics have been entirely revamped. Speaking of that lets get to the Shaman changes

Well those havent been updated in weeks on the offical ptr site and the patch notes dont have them

So lets get to inscriptions

Major Glyphs
Glyph of Chain Heal (Req. lvl. 40) - Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.
Glyph of Chain Lightning (Req. lvl. 32) - Your Chain Lightning strikes 1 additional target.
Glyph of Earth Elemental Totem (Req. lvl. 66) - Reduces the cooldown of your Earth Elemental Totem by 4 min.
Glyph of Earth Shock (Req. lvl. 15) - Reduces the global cooldown triggered by your Earth Shock ability by 1 sec.
Glyph of Earthliving Weapon (Req. lvl. 30) - Increases the chance for your Earthliving weapon to trigger by 5%.
Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem (Req. lvl. 68) - Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Elemental Totem by 4 min.
Glyph of Fire Nova Totem (Req. lvl. 15) - Increases the radius of Fire Nova Totem's effect by 2 yards.
Glyph of Flame Shock (Req. lvl. 15) - Increases the duration of your Flame Shock ability by 3 sec.
Glyph of Flametongue Weapon (Req. lvl. 15) - Increases spell critical strike chance by 2% while Flametongue Weapon is active.
Glyph of Frost Shock (Req. lvl. 20) - Increases the duration of your Frost Shock by 2 sec.
Glyph of Healing Stream Totem (Req. lvl. 20) - Your Healing Stream Totem heals for an additional 20%.
Glyph of Healing Wave (Req. lvl. 15) - Your Healing Wave also heals you for 20% of the healing effect when you heal someone else.
Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave (Req. lvl. 20) - Your Lesser Healing Wave heals for 20% more if the target is also affected by your Earth Shield.
Glyph of Lightning Bolt (Req. lvl. 15) - Reduces the cost of your Lightning Bolt ability by 10%.
Glyph of Lightning Shield (Req. lvl. 15) - Increases the damage from Lightning Shield by 20%.
Glyph of Mana Tide Totem (Req. lvl. 40) - Your Mana Tide Totem grants an additional Spell Power of each target's maximum mana each time it pulses.
Glyph of Stormstrike (Req. lvl. 40) - Increases the nature damage bonus from your Stormstrike ability by an additional 8%.
Glyph of Strength of Earth Totem (Req. lvl. 15) - Your Strength of Earth Totem also grants 1% melee and ranged critical strike chance.
Glyph of Totem of Wrath (Req. lvl. 50) - Your Totem of Wrath also grants 1% spell haste.
Glyph of Water Mastery (Req. lvl. 20) - Increases the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield spell by 30%.
Glyph of Windfury Weapon (Req. lvl. 30) - The attack power bonus on the additional attacks granted by Windfury Weapon is increased by 40%.

Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Astral Recall (Req. lvl. 30) - Cooldown of your Astral Recall spell reduced by 2.5 min.
Glyph of Ghost Wolf (Req. lvl. 20) - Your Ghost Wolf form regenerates an additional 1% of your maximum health every 5 sec.
Glyph of Renewed Life (Req. lvl. 30) - All stats increased by 5% for 1 min when you Reincarnate.
Glyph of Water Breathing (Req. lvl. 22) - Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent.
Glyph of Water Shield (Req. lvl. 20) - Increases the number of charges on your Water Shield spell by 1.
Glyph of Water Walking (Req. lvl. 28) - Your Water Walking spell no longer requires a reagent.

From What I've seen at 70 out 2 major glyphs should be SOE and SS

Minor I'm leaning towards Renewed Life, Water Shield, and Walter Walking

Hot Lava!

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)Update on Lava Burst.

We ended up buffing the damage by about 10%. You should now have a lot motivation to use it and Flame Shock once you hit level 75. Lightning Bolt isn't going anywhere so you still have your old standby, particularly for 3.0.2 and until you gain a few levels.

An extra 10% is nice. Going to have to figure out where and when to use this.

Latest News

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)Tidal Waves -- Riptide now also procs this effect.
Riptide -- We're going to increase the initial healing component.
Storm Reach -- now called “Elemental Reach” and includes Lava Burst.
Improved Fire Nova Totem - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20%, and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire Nova Totem for 2 sec.
Thunderstorm -- We will probably boost the mana return to 8% of total mana. That seems more in line with similar effects. We talked a lot about buffing its damage, but decided that may not be a good idea. With its short range, it isn't a great rotational spell for a raiding Elemental shamans, and making you run up to hit a boss and run back is giving up a lot of cast time. Instead we're going to try to keep the damage and knockback more situational (in PvP it will get used a lot) and make the mana return the big PvE raiding focus.
Maelstrom Weapon -- We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it's balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we'd have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we're going to let this ride for now. It's something to keep an eye on, but we aren't going to change it yet.
Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt -- And now for a few words on Elemental damage. One of the things we were trying to do to make Elemental dps more interesting was to have a Lava Burst + Flameshock variant. We also themed some new deep talents to support this play style. The problem is that lightning still seems to do more damage than fire, which in turn makes the new talents feel lame because they benefit fire and not lightning.

Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you'd partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells.

We talked a lot about just buffing Lava Burst and a deep fire-based talent or two. This will make Lava Burst too good on paper, but it might work out okay in the game itself. We'll just have to see. We aren't 100% sold on this course of action, so I'll update when we decide for sure.

Once again, these decisions were the consensus of our design team, so please don't give me the credit. In fact, if there are any changes you specifically don't like -- those I had nothing to do with

Mostly Elemental news, but they are warning us that they are going to nerf Maelstrom again.

Well that build isnt going to last long.

I hate to be a doom and gloomer. Really I do. And if our Wrath DPS was out of line then sure bring it back. But they way they went around it was pretty poorly thought out.
So within a day we get this post

Here are our concerns: Lavaburst makes scaling from spell damage so good that Enhancement shamans were debating wearing Elemental gear. Enhancement shamans were also looking at using caster daggers to maximize procs. Both of these trends would cause us severe item headaches down the road and also don't fit the kit of the tree.

We're changing Maestrom Weapon to no longer affect Lavaburst. We are also changing the proc rate to a proc per minute mechanic instead of a chance on hit.

To compensate for lost damage, we are raising Flurry back up to 30% max haste and raising Dual Wield back up to 6% hit.

I don't expect this news to be popular based on previous receptions to my posts here, but I remain an eternal optimist that you'll eventually come to realize that we are trying to get all of the classes balanced. Please try to keep that in mind.

And for all the intelligent, articulate suggestions and feedback, we do thank you

So we do get back 5% flurry and 3% DW hit. But this is the 3rd change to how MW works in 3 days from 100% chance on crit, to 15% chance on hit to a flat ppm. This lot affecting Lavaburst means enhancement will no longer use this. the auto crit from LvB synched incredibly well with Elemental devestation. Now.. not so much. Blizzard really just seems to be tossed crap up against the wall to see what works. 2 months ago was the time to be taking that approach. Less than 2 weeks before this stuff goes live is not.


ETA well at least they are listening. Shamans complained that out 51 pt talent was to scale based on str, which we no longer have.
Ghost crawler replies

From a quick glance, it looks like the wolves are not set up to scale the way the elementals are. This is a bug and we can get it fixed. And yes, it should be AP, not Strength.

Pets always showing up in autocast is annoying especially with so many pets now. We're trying to decide whether to fix it or overhaul the whole autocast system.

Along came the nerf bat

Skills
Enhancement

Fire Resistance Totem now increases fire resistance by 130 (Up from 70) and lasts 5 minutes. (Up from 2 minutes)

Talents
Elemental

Totem of Wrath now lasts 5 minutes. (Up from 2 minutes)

Enhancement

Maelstrom Weapon proc chance changed from 20/40/60/80/100% on critical hit to 3/6/9/12/15% when you deal damage with a melee weapon. Now affects Chain Heal as well.
Dual Wield Specialization now Increases your chance to hit while dual wielding by an additional 1/2/3%. (Down from 2/4/6%)
Stormstrike doesn't affect Fire or Frost damage anymore.
Unleashed Rage now increases both melee and ranged attack power and works within 45 yards. (Old - Affected only melee AP, 20 yards)
Flurry now increases your attack speed by 5/10/15/20/25% (Down from 10/15/20/25/30%) for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike.
Restoration

Ancestral Awakening now affects Riptide as well
Improved Water Shield now affects Riptide as well

Raid Buffed I'm running 40% crit so Malestrom is going to proc 15% vs 40% That is a Giant nerf.
Dual Weild Spec is cut in half. In addition to the removal of Nautures guidance this cuts our hit % from 9% to 3% Fricking ridiculous!

Removing Frost and Fire from Stormstike means we arent going to be using the debuffs. Another huge nerf.

A 5% loss in Flurry speed as well also a large dps loss.

Wow. Thanks a lot. You remove our utlity by giving many of our buffs to other classes. Now you nerf our DPS the hell as well. This really hurts.