Less QQ more Pew Pew

We don't balance solely around the top 5% (in PvP or PvE). I've explained before why I think it would be a mistake to do so.

On the other hand, the very best guilds are good barometers. They will stick with tradition as long as they can, but they will switch completely to a different strategy / class / tradeskill / whatever if they think it is required for the content.

The reason I bring up good guilds a lot really is this: these guilds are often phenomenally better than the average guild. They aren't 5% better. They are hundreds of percentage points better. Therefore, obsessing over a 5% buff for your class won't affect your success rate nearly as much as improving your game. I'm not terribly sympathetic to arguments that you can't improve your group's performance at all, and if that's really the case (which I find unlikely), why are you worried about hard modes anyway? The normal modes of raids are designed to be completed by most groups with any interest in raiding. Most of these players would barely detect a 5% buff or nerf to stamina. They will get far more out of making sure Demo Shout or Curse of Elements are up 100% of the time or even swapping their gems.

Translation : Stop Whining. Raiding is easier than ever, if its to hard L2P and stop sucking.

Well thats how it reads to me, and yeah its pretty true.

In other news we got Heroic Faction Champs and Twins down last night, so we can at least kill all the same bosses as we could before, so I'm pretty happy about that. Twins dropped my Boots, Greaves of Ruthless Judgement, so aside from the Band of Callous Aggression, I'm done w/ non Anub loot. I guess I'm lucky that ICC is dropping.

Antler video

I'm really starting to like this set more and more.

Been awhile since my last update. Progress took a bit of a hit for < Fire and Blood > last month. We beat our heads against the heroic Anub wall too much. Bad luck , bad RNG, bad attenedence, bad effort, bad execution, all conspired at various time to keep us from downing him. I'm guessing we had at least a couple hundred goes at him, had him down into single digits multiple times, but we just never quite got it all together. The big downside is that both our Tanks, including our raid leader got burnt out. So we are rebuilding out tanking corp which requires retraining and regearing. Still with all new tanks, we got through normal Toc and through Lord J on Heroic our first night this reset. Thats as far as all but 3 other guilds on our server have gotten. With Icecrown set to drop next week, I think It may be a while before we get back to Anub... Which sucks as I hate leaving content unfinished.

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.

Trial of the Grand Crusader

Lord Jaraxus Down
I was very impressed with how well we did on this boss last night. It is an extremely fun and chaotic fight. Lots of fire to not stand in, Buffs to Purge, Tank killing spells to Wind Shear. Portals to nuke, Volcanos to kill. He also dropped, Cuirass of Cruel Intent I already had the normal version, but heroic is a pretty big upgrade, so now I have my first ilevel 258 drop.

We had enough time left for a handfull of pulls on Faction Champions. We need work there. :)

Trial of the Crusader

Well 5 weeks in and 5 new bosses down. Now Heroic is open and from what I've read its much harder. < Fire and Blood > did a full clear of normal mode last night. We one shotted the newest and final boss, Anub'Arak. I think that he's the easiest boss in there, at least on normal mode.

Heroic mode is going to be a bit of a struggle for us at first. Normal was so easy we could just brute force our way through it, so people don't really know what they are doing. They spread fire, stand in fare, don't run away from charges, and many more. A night or so of wiping on heroic will hopefully motive people.

It also seems like people are saving DKP for heroic drops. I won 3 items last night, the last two no one else even wanted. Northrend Beasts dropped Cloak of the Untamed Predator. I think its a great looking cloak (see above). Faction Champions then dropped Icewalker Treads None of the rogues wanted them and as they were better than my brass-lined boots I took them rather than seeing them get sharded. Finally Anub'Arak dropped Hellscream Slicer I had finally gotten Golden Saronite Dragon a week or so ago, so I need to do a bit a simming to see what weapon combo works best. I'm leaning to offhanding the new Axe along with GSD rather than main handing it with a Vulmir I'd get the expertise bonus with both weapons that way, a 2.7 speed MH and a large dps upgrade OH at the cost of a small MH dps downgrade.

Catacyslm

Man I didn't realize it had been so long since I had updated. Work installed some heavy duty web blocking so I can't post in my free time there anymore.

Anyways Blizzcon '09 is going on as I type and all sorts of reports are pouring in. Lots of changes are going to happen. Some I like, like flying in Azeroth, But I'm not a fan of a lot of the major changes.

Quote from Blizzard staff

* Casters will finally get a Legendary item in one of the first raids of the expansion.
* Cataclysm will change the ways abilities are learned. Abilities ranks are gone and ability will just scale progressively with levels instead.
* Most of the Talent Trees will be changed dramatically, a lot of the passive bonuses will be removed and talent trees should be more fun. (No more "Hurray! Level up! I just got 1% more hit!)
* There is no plan to allow players to train more than 2 profession.
* There is no plan to allow more than 2 specs with the dual-spec system.
* Bags might get slightly bigger with Cataclysm.
* You will never be able to cleanse the Corrupted Ashbringer.
* Developers want shaman to be good AE healers and might buff Chain Heal even more.
* Multi-passenger flying mounts could be added in the future. They might also allow crafters to craft 310% flying mounts if they already completed an achievement rewarding one.
* Every healer class can now dispell magic, the niches will other debuffs.
* Engineers might be able to craft bows in the future.
* If you already own a 310% mount, you might be able to boost the speed of all your 280% mount to 310% just to let you use the one that you prefer.


Hunter

* Hunter's new ammos might drop from bosses or bought with emblems, nothing is decided for the moment.


Priest

* Shadow Priests will most likely get a nuke without cooldown in Cataclysm.


Shaman

* Shamans (Elemental) looks like "turrets" in PvP for the moment, the idea is to make totems funnier in the future ("put a totem down and something cool happens") but not a lot of details for the moment.


Warrior

* Warriors won't be as affected as other classes by the itemization changes, the goal is to make other classes gears look a lot like what warriors have.

Funny totems is our big change. I hope it throws a pie in the mobs face. (rollseyes)

Professions are getting some changes as well and I kind of like them

Archaeology
Archaeology is the new secondary profession that will be joining the ranks of cooking, fishing, and first aid in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Archaeology allows the player to unlock new abilities and rewards by discovering ancient treasures throughout the world. Each archaeologist uses the profession to uncover clues hidden in the world around them, such as troll relics or map fragments, and decipher their meaning, enabling the clever archaeologist to manipulate pieces of the past, learning the location of a treasure cache or valuable artifact. Such artifacts are highly sought after by the Archaeology Society, and they pay in gold and items for their return. Those who have mastered archaeology can find Titan artifacts, earning special currency used to unlock character paths and allowing the player to further customize their character.

Reforging

* Reforging is another way to customize your gear.
* It will be relatively cheap, you will need a Blacksmith / Leatherworker / Tailor / Jewelcrafter / Engineer to do it. Each profession get to reforge a type of items.
* It lets you reduce one stat for another. Some restrictions will apply, you can't put the extra stat on something that is already on the item.


Professions

* Multi-gains will be added, while you level up your trade skills, rare items will give you more points as you skill up. (Rare items will give you 5 points for example, while green bracers will only give one)
* Gathering should be a little more fun.
* Engineering is a very fun tradeskill, but it's either amazing or it sucks and everybody drops it. More convenient items like Jeeves or Wormhole Generator will be added to the profession in the future to get back to the roots of Engineering.
* Fishing will also have some big changes, no details yet but it's going to be more fun.

Itemization is getting a huge overhaul.

Itemization
In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, there are plans to streamline the statistics found on items. We want to remove all unnecessary stats, make all existing stats understandable, and make all "core" stats more appealing. Here are some examples of such plans.

* MP5: This will be removed from items and replaced with Spirit. All healers will be given a meditation-like ability.
* Spell Power: Spell Power is being removed from items as well. Don't panic, we'll be improving Intellect so that it provides mana and Spell Power.
* Attack Power: We're removing Attack Power from items as well. Instead, we're allowing Agility to provide the necessary Attack Power for leather and mail wearers. Strength will provide the appropriate amount of Attack Power for plate wearers. This means leather and mail items will no longer be desirable for plate wearers.
* Defense: The Defense statistic is also being removed from items so that players no longer have to worry about juggling around "the cap." Tanks will receive the necessary anti-crit from talents, like Survival of the Fittest.
* Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and "mathy." It is being replaced with Mastery, a stat that makes you better at what you do. More on that later!
* Haste: Will also increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.
* Block: Block Value is being removed. Blocking will now always mitigate a percentage of damage.
* Stamina: Players will notice more Stamina on gear as Defense, Spell Power, Attack Power and Armor Penetration are removed.

This is just dumbing the game down. Taking away choices, and I HATE this idea.

Legendary Item

* Shadowmourne - You won't get Frostmourne in Icecrown but Death Knights and Hunters will get a Legendary Axe named Shadowmourne.


Goblins

* Rocket Jump - Activate your rocket belt to jump up to 20 yards, every 2 min
* Rocket Barrage - Fire your belt rockets at an enemy within 30 yards, every 2 min. (Shared cooldown with Rocket Jump)
* Time is money - Cash in on a 1% increase to attack and casting speed.
* Best Deals Anywhere - Best possible gold discount, regardless of reputation.
* Pack Hobgoblin - Calls in your personal servent, allowing you bank access every 30 min.
* Better Living Through Chemistry - Alchemy skill +15, Your potions give more health / mana
* Goblins can be all classes except Paladin or Druids


Worgens

* Darkflight - Activate your true form, increasing movement speed by 70% for 6 sec, every 3 min.
* Viciousness - Increase damage by 1%.
* Abberation - Reduced duration on Curses and Diseases used against you by 15%.
* Flayer - Skinning skill +15, you skin creature fast, and you don't even need a knife.
* Worgens can be all classes except Paladins or Shamans


Worgen Form

* The Worgen Form is cosmetic only
* out of combat you can pick between Human or Worgen.
* In combat you will be a worgen.

Hunters get a Legendary STAT STICK? WTF Blizzard? WTF!
Worgen are OP. a sprint, a skill bonus, and 1%dps bonus? Goblin bonuses are pretty cool, but not overpowered.

More class changes

Hunter

* Hunter's mana is GONE!!!
* Hunters now use focus, no longer care about intellect or mana regen.
* Focus regenerates contunously, Steady shot improves the rate of getting focus bag.
* Rogue energy comes back at a 10 / sec rate, Hunter focus comes back at 6/sec (12/sec with steady shot)
* A shot costs 30 to 60 focus.
* Hunters will have fewer cooldowns on abilities
* Ammos will become an item, not a consumable.


Warlock

* Soul Shards are no longer in your bags. The goal is to make them fun, not a hassle.
* Soul Shards will be integrated to the user interface. (Just like Death Knight runes)
* You get three shards per fight, they will regen very quickly out of combat.
* It will be possible to get more for long fights or mistakes through Drain Soul.
* Soul Burn (New Spell) : Cost 1 Shard, 30 sec cooldown, off the GCD. Empowers your next spell, many (not all spells) behave differently when empowered.
* Empowered Searing Pain : Next 3 Searing Pains crit
* Empowered Summon Demon : Instant Cast
* Empowered Soulfire : Instant Cast
* Empowered Fear : Instant Cast
* Empowered Death Coil : Longer Horror, more healing received.
* They are only used in combat, summons or demons won't use your shards.

The hunter changes make sense. But, now they will need armour itemized differently from shamans again. A smell a dearth physical dps mail a mile away.

I know the expansion is a long ways off, but man, I am not liking what I see so far.
Don't even get me starting on the Lore changes. Screw that whiney baby Hellscream right in his ear!

At least Deathwing looks bad ass. :/

Patch 3.2 notes - PTR

Big changes.

First for Orcs ( and all good enhancement shamans are orcs now aren't we?

Axe Specialization (Orc): The weapon bonus from this effect now applies to fist weapons in addition to axes.

Then the class changes.

Shaman

* A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.
* All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
* Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
* Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
* Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
* Talents
o Enhancement
+ Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman's attack power, down from 30%.
o Restoration
+ Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
+ Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
+ Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
+ Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
+ Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
+ Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30 second internal cooldown, and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
+ Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
+ Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
+ Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.


The Resto changes are nice and well needed, but as this is an enhancement blog, lets talk about those.

Range on Shocks increased to 25 years is nice. Nit a biggie for PvE , but nice when switching targets none the less. Really good PvP change.

Shamanistic rage, effect halved, usable twice as often. Double uptime on mini shield wall. Really nice in PvP, situationally useful in PvE.

Totem bar changes are a nice buff

And Finally 7% more health. THANK YOU!. Having less health than clothies bothers me. 2k less than lesser geared rogues, as much as 8-10k less than DK's, Warriors, and Retadins sucked. Now perhaps I wont always die on every Trash pack that includes whirlwinding mobs!

Change is gonna come

We have changed these spells for 3.2. And yes, there are some other changes. The main buff to Chain Heal is likely to come in increasing the jump distance to 10 yards and buffing the amount of healing decrease with subsequent targets to 40% down from 50%. CH, HW and LHW should all be doing bigger numbers when you consider all the talent changes.

We'll try to get the full notes out soon, but even then remember that this is a major "new tier" patch and is likely to have more iteration due to PTR feedback than the last few patches.


We have changed Healing Way to work better with HW and we have changed Improved Water Shield to also work with CH. We also dropped the cooldown of NS to 2 min so that you can HW more often. We'll try to make a post of all of the Resto changes soon.

[...] Improved Water Shield procs will not consume Water Shield charges. The tooltip says something like "as if you had consumed an orb.


There comes a time in all shaman’s lives when they must learn to harness the power of nature and wield powerful totems. As they grow in power, so do the opportunities to use these instruments of healing, protection, and destruction. In the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, the shaman will be able to quickly place totems of each element, aiding them in managing these powerful focuses of nature.

We wanted to provide some insight regarding the upcoming shaman-specific interface addition, the Totem Bar. Shaman will be able to utilize this new bar to manage their fire, earth, water, and air totems in a more accessible and convenient way. This bar will appear on the left-hand side above the standard toolbar, similar to warrior stances or druid forms. The bar contains space for four totems of the player’s choice, one of each element. Clicking the respective button will drop that totem. To the right of the four totems is a button for Totemic Call, which we have renamed Call of Earth. To the left of the four totems is a new ability named Call of Fire which will drop all four totems on the bar at once. The mana cost is the same as if the shaman dropped all four of the totems one at a time. However, it takes but a single global cooldown.

Questing shaman will be able to quickly move their totems of choice forward, while a shaman in an instance, Arena, or Battleground will be able to replace their totems if they have to move or if the totems are destroyed.

Shamans will also be able to customize their bar to set Call of Fire to drop less than four totems if they choose. Access to this functionality is made available at the same level as Call of Earth (currently level 30.) At higher levels, Shaman will gain two additional spells, Call of Air and Call of Water. These function exactly the same as Call of Fire, essentially giving the shaman three different sets of totems that can be placed at once. New key bindings will also be made available for all of these slots.

As with all new content under testing, we want to caution players that, as a new part of the interface, there may be additional changes during the period of the PTR until the release of the Call of the Crusade content patch. We look forward to constructive feedback once it is available for testing.

Some nice resto changes. Longer jesus beams healing for more? Awesome. Reduced CD on Natures Swiftness? Nice. Some watershield stuff is ok as well I suppose.

But the big thing is totem changes. Perhaps not all that they hinted at, in fact no where near that, but still one GCD to drop all 4 totems is still pretty damn awesome. Now I just need to make sure I don't land a triple WF crit right away and pull agro. Dropping 4 totems kinda kept threat down at the start. :p

Shaman Q&A

The Developers have posted their Shaman class Q&A here

Yogg Down

A bit late on the update, but < Fire and Blood > finally downed Yogg-Saron on Friday the 22nd. Boy did it feel good. Now its time to start working on hard modes.

The Clouds are so Pretty

We got General Vezax down on Friday night which left us two full nights to work on Yogg-Saron. Sunday was a complete mess. People were drawn into the fluffy green clouds like moths to a flame. I think we only managed to get to phase 2 maybe 3 or 4 times with less than about 8 watchers up. Last night it went much better. We managed to get to phase 2 fairly regularly, and we made steady progress. We only got to phase 3 once, and we had to many people down to do more than wipe at that point, but I'm pretty optimistic that we should be able to down him this week. The super leet raiders are pobably posting on forums about how easy Yogg is, but man there is a ton going on in that fight. I can certainly say its going to feel good when we finally get his ugly ass down.

In other raiding news Thorim dropped Vulmir, the Northern Tempest. Man thats a sweet looking hammer. He also dropped, Pattern: Belt of Dragons, so I scored two upgrades. I did have to drop about 1000 gold getting Leatherworking from 445-450. I hadn't bother previously as nothing required 450 LW to make.

Eggcelent Smithers

As we were buffing before an attempt on General Vezax, I noticed that someone had gotten a proto drake whelp pet from a freshly hatched oracle egg, and I realized that my egg should have hatched. So I click on it and Boom! Reins of the Green Proto-Drake I love the proto drake models, and I hadn't been able to get one yet, so I'm pretty happy about this. Plus its green and purple. Orc colors!

Progress.

Friday night we downed Thorim for the first time. Sunday we took out Mimiron. Mimiron is a fun fight. Takes a bit to get the hang of it, lots of ways to die if you arent careful. But You get to kill VOLTRON! (Well V-07-TR-0N to be accurate).

I got T8.25 Legs off of Thorim, so I've abandoned all my 7.25 pieces aside from the shoulders.

Tonight we try for General Vezax! We are finally back on top of horde progression, so it would be nice to stay there for a bit.

Set Bonuses

First night of raids for the reset this week, and we cleared 8 bosses. Heavy nerfs on the first two wings by blizzard. Personally I'm a bit disappointed in this. I understand wanting to let more people experience these raids, but at the same time, cant they leave them challenging for a few months at least? At least keep the 25 man versions Heroic! If blizzard wants to make things so easy just eliminate the bosses and put a chest behind the trash that everyone can loot.

Ok enough complaining. I did get 2 nice upgrades last night off of Thorim. Both the Conqueror's Worldbreaker Chestguard and the Frost-bound Chain Bracers are best in slot and by decent margins currently.

Equipping the chest meant breaking up my T7 4 piece Set Bonus though. 5% haste on flurry is a pretty serious bonus.Flurry is up about 80% of the time, so in effect its virtually and extra 4% melee haste. in 3.1 it takes 25.21 haste rating to give a shaman 1% haste. so that is equal to ~101 melee haste rating. As we are almost always casting instant spells the value of haste for us in mostly in how it effects out white damage and spell haste is of little consequence to us. my current EP value for haste is 1.65 so that would give the the 4pc bonus a rough value of 167 EP, maybe a bit lower since its only melee haste, but not much lower. The 8.25 chest is a huge upgrade of 113 EP from 7.25 but losing the set bonus makes it a net loss in a straight up swap.

Now I do have some other options, being that I have all 5 pieces ofValorous Earthshatter Battlegear. I was using the gloves, legs, chest, and shoulders, along with Blue Aspect Helm Blue Aspect is worth about 78EP more than T7.25. I also have Frosted Adroit Handguards, which were in the bank since I needed the gloves for the set. The Frosted gloves are about 35EP better than the 7.25 gloves.

So I have two sets I can experiment with. I can build a set with the 8.25 chest and the 7.25 helm, gloves, shoulders , and legs, or I can punt the 4 pc bonus and drop down to only the legs and shoulders for the 2 pc bonus, along with Blue Aspect and Frosted Adroit. Using Enhsim I ran sims for both sets of gear and keeping the 4 piece bonus simmed out at about 40 dps higher, even considering that the helm and gloves are inferior gear. I guess its a nice change from TBC where the set bonuses were mediocre at best and the tier gear was suboptimal too.

Looking ahead the set bonuses on T8 are nice for both the 2 piece and the 4 piece. Looks like there is nothing to do but finish upgrading to full T8.25. :)

Ulduar Week 2

< Fire and Blood > Made some progress in week 2 of Ulduar. We are back to 4 nights of raids. Wednesday we cleared everything that we had gotten down in week 1. Friday we had some attendance issues. Not enough tanks to work on progression, so considering that, and in light of the fact we had 2 raiders who had switched classes and had recently dinged 80 we went to Naxx. We also took along several social members so all in all while it was disappointing to not progress, it was worthwhile.

Sunday saw us back in Ulduar where we downed Ignis, and one shotted Auriaya. We then spent the rest of the evening working on Thorim. Last night we decided to go for Hodir and Freya, and we did down both of them, to make it 4 new bosses this week. Not exactly tearing through the bosses, but its steady progression at least. Hopefully by this time next week, I'm posting that we are working on Yogg-Saron.

Ulduar

So one week into Ulduar and we didn't get as far as I'd hoped. I missed half the raids due to family visiting. Bad timing with that. But we did manage to get. Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Assembly of Iron, and Kologarn.

My initial thoughts. I'm glad Ulduar is harder. It shouldnt be cleared in one week , by any but the hardest of hardcore guilds even if that. I've missed trash that couldnt just be grouped up and AoE'd down. I've missed working on bosses. I'm actually not a big fan of hard modes, but I understand why Blizzard went that route. So considering their bad players should still see all content philosophy I'm pleasently suprised at the difficulty I've seen so far.

I also got a cloak upgrade.Drape of the Lithe I need to run enhsim and get some new EP values. But my computer is on life support at the moment. It freezes up quite often when playing WoW, and I'm not sure why. It will freeze at other times but much less often. Its rapidly approaching 4 years old, so I ordered up a new core i7 rig the other day. It should be ready in the next day or so. Looking forward to running with nice video settings again. I've had to turn them all the way down since Wrath launched.

GC on ulduar weapons

Shaman (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Orc Shamans and Axe Racial
We looked at the loot table of Ulduar and were satisfied that there were sufficient slow off-hands available. However, we do think there is some validity to orc shamans not often being able to benefit from the axe racial. With so many one-handed items to make, we get much more use out of itemizing maces, fists and swords, since those can be used by more classes. (Source)

So it sounds like there is more than one slow OH, Yay! Vulmir is damn sexy, but I'll be happy if there is more than one option, as the PRT had only revealed, the Golden Saronite Dragon as a Shaman weapon and that MH only. Now Insanity's Grip had been found as well, but thats MH only also.

Ulduar

Bad luck last night trying to raid Ulduar. It was out first night so we were proceeding a bit slow, got to Flame Leviathian. pulled, and the instance went down. stayed down for about an hour or so. Got back on and took FL to 1% before wiping. Should have killed him easy. Got him down next go with ease. Moved on to Razorscale. Got 2 pulls in. People have gotten to used to trash being mindless. As we try and run after wiping the second time the Instance server grashes again. We wait for an hour or so before calling the raid for the night. :(

3.1 updates

General

Applying a glyph no longer requires a Lexicon of Power. The same rules for switching between dual talent specializations now apply to switching glyphs and cannot be performed while in combat, Battlegrounds (except when Preparation is up), or Arenas (no exceptions).

Races: General

Command (Orc Racial): Applies to shaman pets, and now correctly applies to death knight pets.

Classes: General

The damage threshold for Fear, Psychic Scream, Hex, Intimidating Shout, and Turn Evil to break early has been significantly reduced.
The shaman’s Fire Elemental and Spirit Wolves, mage’s Water Elemental, and druid’s Treants have all gained avoidance from area-of-effect damage similar to what warlock and hunter pets already have.

Shaman (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)

Earth Elemental Totem: The summoned Earth Elemental should now have significantly more health and slightly more armor.
Fire Elemental Totem: The summoned Fire Elemental should now have moderately more health and mana, and its damage scaling has been increased. In addition, the Fire Elemental’s spells now cost less mana.

and finally the most important changes

Clams

A new clam, the Giant Darkwater Clam, can be obtained by fishing in Wintergrasp. This mighty clam has a greatly increased chance to drop pearls, and yields up to five times the regular amount of clam meat.
Loot from clams now stacks correctly!
Changed the icon for Succulent Clam Meat so it doesn't look quite as disgusting.

Some nice changes. I hate forgetting to go the the Lexicon when changing a glyph. Buffs to pets are great. Coomand working on wolves is great,avoidence, buffed elementals.... they should be worth using again.

Hex breaking easier sucks though. They should reduce the CD to compensate.

T8 set bonuses

Enhancement 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the damage done by Lava Lash and Stormstrike by 20%.
Enhancement 4Piece Bonus -- Increases the frequency of Maelstrom Weapon being triggered by your melee weapon attacks by 20%.

They seem pretty good at first glance. The 4 pc depending on how they apply the 20% could be incredibly OP. I'm guessing they will apply it multiplicitively however



ETA
Found this post by Levva on EJ
very nice breakdown

T7.25 vs T8.25

Armor 5224 vs 5337 = +113
Agi 303 vs 305 = +2
Sta 351 vs 324 = -27
Int 247 vs 268 = +21
Sockets 4R, 1Y, 2B, M vs 3R, 3Y, B, M = -R, +2Y, -B
Crit 182 vs 190 = +8
Haste 31 vs 187 = +156
AP 778 vs 920 = +142
Exp 82 vs 74 = -8
Hit 130 vs 126 = -4

Socket Bonuses +6 Crit, +8 AP, +27 Sta vs +10 Agi, +12 AP, +4 Crit, +6 hit = -2 Crit, -27 Sta, +4 AP, +6 hit, +10 Agi

and of course set bonuses

* 2 pieces: Your Lightning Shield damage is increased by 10%.
* 4 pieces: Your Flurry effect provides an additional 5% melee haste.

vs

* 2 pieces: Increases the damage done by Lava Lash & Stormstrike by 20%
* 4 pieces: Increases the frequency of Maelstrom Weapon being triggered by your melee weapon attacks by 20%

The thing that stands out is a LOT more haste especially when melee haste is getting a +30% stats boost anyway.

Looks like stat breakdown is pretty much a wash aside from adding a lot of haste and AP, and better socket bonuses.

Twilight Drake

Got my Twilight Drake on Sunday. Yay Me!

Pretty

Well if there aren't any axes, then I guess I'll take a dragon's head strapped to my forearm.

Undocumented changes

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

Spirit Weapons now decrease the threat on all attacks by 30% (Old - Only Melee attacks)
Enhancement

Nature Resistance Totem, Stoneskin Totem, Fire Resistance Totem, Frost Resistance Totem, Strength of Earth Totem, Flametongue Totem, Wrath of Air Totem, Windfury Totem descriptions have been changed to reflect the latest changes, they now affects all raid members.
Earthen Power now also make you and nearby friendly targets immune to snare effects for 5 sec when it pulses.
Restoration

Healing Stream Totem range increased from 20 to 30 yards.
Mana Spring Totem now restores 91 mana every 5 seconds at max rank. (Old - 34 mana every 2 seconds)
Nature's Swiftness changed to - When activated, your next Nature spell with a base casting time less than 10 sec. becomes an instant cast spell. Nature's Swiftness shares a cooldown with Elemental Mastery.
Restorative Totems now Increases the effect of your Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Down from 5/10/15/20/25%)
Healing Grace has been moved from Tier 3 to Tier 2.
Ancestral Healing has been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 3.
Elemental

Thunderstorm is now useable while stunned.
Lava Flows now Iincreases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst spell by an additional 6/12/24%, and when your Flame Shock is dispelled your spell casting speed is increased by 10/20/30% for 6 sec.
Lightning Overload changed from 5 to 3 ranks, now Gives your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells a 7/14/20% (Up from 4/8/12/16/20%) chance to cast a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes half damage and no threat.
Elemental Mastery has been changed to - When activated, your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst spell becomes an instant cast spell. In addition, your Fire, Frost, and Nature damage spells a 20% increased critical strike chance for 15 sec. Elemental Mastery shares a cooldown with Nature's Swiftness. Instant, 3 min cooldown
Storm, Earth, and Fire changed toReduces the cooldown of your Chain Lightning spell by .75 sec (on all ranks, down from 0.75/1/2.5sec), your Earthbind Totem also has a 33/66/100% chance to root targets for 5 sec when cast and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 20%.
Elemental Reach now also increases the range of your Flame Shock by 7/15 yards.
Glyphs

Glyph of Totem of Wrath -- When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for 5 min. (Old - until cancelled)

Hmmm.
Well the Spirit weapons change was in before..... But now as then its really nice.
Tooltip changes to totems.. big whoop.
Snare immunity to Earthen Power is nice for PvP

Underwhelming changes for Enhancement.

Resto changes... the increased range on Healing Stream is good.
The change to Mana Stream is a very slight buff, adding 6 MP% but coming in less often offsets some of that gain IMO especially talented as its only 3 more mp5 with that nerf.

No idea behind the reason for the Talent Tier Swapping.

Not sure at the Elemental changes. Some nice buffs in there. Elemental Mastery has now become a Better Natures Swiftness rather than a sure Crit. Seems like a PvE buff.
S,O,&F seems to gain some utility.
Elemental Reach change is very welcome I'm sure. Flame Shock is part of the rotation and having to be within 20 yards is not good as elemental.

ETA

Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating.
Haste Rating: Shamans, Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.

I missed those changes somehow.
Both are very nice. They make those two less desirable dps stats a bit better. The haste may even help make up for the flurry nerf.

Latest PTR Build

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Enhancement

Frostbrand Weapon damage has been increased. (From 442 to 530 damage for Rank 9, from 386 to 463 for Rank 8, etc ...)
Frozen Power now Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Lash and Shock spells by 5/10% on targets afflicted by your Frostbrand Attack effect
Flurry now Increases your attack speed by 5/10/15/20/25% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike. (Down from 10/15/20/25/30%)

Buffs for PvP are nice.

5% haste nerf sucks. I guess we needed to pay for that expertise buff from UR somewhere.

Finally!

Calamity's Grasp
Only 3 months of clearing Naxx to see our first one.

Personally I think its ugly as sin. But as its the best non-caster MH in the game at the moment, I'll deal. Plus I can make extra gold trimming the weeds in Dalaran.



Just a few more pieces to fill in now. I've got all 5 pieces of 7.25 So If I manage to get Blue Aspect Helm I can swap in the gloves as there is a bigger difference from T7 helm to Blue Aspect than from T7 gloves to Frosted Adroit Handguards. I still could use Drape of the Deadly Foe as well, and of course Surge Needle Ring, but I've got all my high priority upgrades at this point.

New PTR build changes

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Enhancement

Stormstrike now lasts 12 sec (Up from 10 sec), cooldown lowered to 8 sec (Down from 10 sec)
Unleashed Rage now properly increases the expertise by 3/6/9 instead of the agility.

Whew.
The correction to Stormstrike is a relief. It was a decent sized nerf the other way around

The change to Unleashed Rage is AWESOME. The 3% agi was worth ~43EP
9 Expertise is 73 Exp Rating or about 150-200 ep if under the expertise cap. There is almost no non Tier mail with expertise so this allows us to not fill every single gem slot with expertise gems.

WF/FT update from Ghostgrawler

Here is a mini Enhancement enchant update. I know you guys have been itching for this for awhile. It just took the designers some time to sit down and discuss the issue, and then I had to catch up with the discussion after being out.

1) The extra AP for the Windfury Weapon Glyph is not intentional and I believe has been hotfixed.

2) Our goal is WF / FT on main hand / offhand.

3) Our goal is Enhancement generally favors slow weapons for main hand / offhand.

4) To satisfy 2 & 3, we are normalizing flametongue's damage to weapon speed. If you use a fast weapon now for FT, your damage will come down. If you use a slow weapon, your damage will come up. Please keep that in mind as you continue to gear up preparing for patch 3.1.

5) Our intention with these changes is not to nerf Enhancement damage overall. However, we are concerned that Enhancement PvE damage is quite high (compared to where other classes are in the 3.1 space) so it's possible that we will end up lowering your damage slightly. But the changes outlined above are not intended to do that.

6) Overall, we are really happy with the basic attack rotation of Enhancement. Shamans are pushing the buttons we want them to push and generally doing what we expect. PvP utility is still something we are looking at however.

If your question is will the Windfury Weapon glyph in 3.1 provide an additional chance per swing of triggering the proc by 2%, the answer is yes (subject to continued testing of course). We just thought the difference with and without the glyph was too great at 5%.

We don't believe with these changes we will see a lot of FT / FT setups, but you are welcome to try and convince us otherwise. :)

As far as the dps target for Enhancement in an idealized PvE setting, yes you should be just below the rogues, mages, locks and hunters and even with warriors, DKs, druids, etc. On some fights you will do better than that and on some you will do less. Really talented Enhancement shammies with excellent gear should be topping the meters. Less-talented Enhancement players will do a whole lot worse. This is still a whole lot higher than the target we had for you in BC.

FFS.
Well I hope they have a few more weapons for us to use then. A couple of Axes would not be unwelcome.

At least I dont need to take a Torch of Holy Fire.

PTR 3.1.0 Notes

Shaman
Elemental
Skills

Fire Nova Totem's mana cost has been reduced.
Talents

*New Talent* Booming Echoes, Tier 8, 2 point talent - Reduces the cooldown of your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 1/2 sec., and increases the direct damage done by your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 10/20%.

Enhancement
Skills

Bloodlust and Heroism now puts a debuff on you preventing you from using gaining the benefits of them for 10 mins. They now have a 5 min cooldown. (Previously had a 5 min debuff with a 10 min cooldown)
Talents

Improved Stormstrike (Tier 8 ) now has a 50/100% chance to grant you 20% of your base mana when you Stormstrike.
Stormstrike (Tier 7) now affects the next 4 nature attacks but only lasts 10 secs now. (Previously only affected 2 attacks and lasted 12 secs)
Unleashed Rage (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent. It now passively increases your agility by 1/2/3% in addition to causing your critical hits with melee attacks to increase all party and raid members' attack power by 4/7/10% if within 45 yards of the Shaman. Lasts 10 sec.
Spirit Weapons (Tier 5) now reduces all threat, just not melee threat.
Toughness (Tier 4) now increases stamina by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of increasing armor value.
*New Talent* Frozen Power, Tier 6, 2 point talent - Increases the damage done by your Frostbrand Weapon if it is enchanted on your main-hand weapon by 10/20%, and your Frost Shock has a 50/100% chance to root the target in Ice for 5 sec. when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.

Restoration
Skills

Poison Cleansing Totem and Disease Cleansing Totem have been merged into 1 totem.

Thoughts:
-Cheaper Fire Nova is nice.
-I don't get the Bloodlust changes.
-Mana Regen from Stormstrike...Always a bonus, but I rarely oom in raids. Will be nice for solo, PvP, and 5 mans. So Base SS has 4 charges. Duration decreased. Does improved SS still decrease the CD by 2 sec? If that's removed this is a nerf to our raid damage.
-Unleashed Rage. Not the 3 point reduction as originally planned. 3% agility seems nice. That's 24 agi for me. Well its nice for a bonus, and it scales a bit, but its not as good as 2% crit. So this is a much smaller buff than the original planned change.
-Spirit Weapons. Scaling just leads to a greater percentage of our damage as magical. this is a very nice and needed change.
-Toughness looks like a decent PvP buff
-Frozen Power another PvP talent. Frost Shock Roots? Yes please.
-Poison/Disease totem. Combiniting these is long over due. I dont see mention of Healing/Mana though which makes me sad. Thats the one I really was looking forward to.

They are also adding new crafting patterns for Boots and Belts similar to what was found in SSC/TK

Dual Spec ability costs 1000 gold

PS. There seems to be conflicting versions of changes. One set of patch notes says the SS cooldown is reduced by 2 seconds the other states the duration is decreased. Lets hope its the cd. Big difference there.

A couple of other changes
Thunder Capacitor again requires four charges.
Thunder Capacitor's cooldown functions. Well I'm assuming with the cooldown this isnt a viable trinket. Without the c/d it was becoming a huge dps upgrade with a fire knives set up.
Tremor Totem: Now correctly pulses every 3 sec, up from 1 sec. I didn't realize it was bugged.

ETA: New Glyphs are avaialble as well.

Glyph of Thunderstorm *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 sec.
Glyph of Feral Spirit *new* -- Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
Glyph of Riptide *new* -- Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 sec.
Glyph of Earth Shield *new* -- Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.
Glyph of Totem of Wrath *new* -- When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for .
Glyph of Hex *new* -- Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.
Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem *new* -- Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.

Some nice PvP glyphs A 6400 hp shield is nothing to sneeze at.
Feral Sprits will need to be examined a bit more closely. May be a viable PvE choice.

Thank You

For at least letting us know you are looking into the WF/FT issue. :)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Earth and Fire Elemental
The Earth Elemental isn't supposed to be a tank like paladins can be a tank. They are there as an oh snap button, such as in a situation where the tank goes down, or can't control all the adds or something. Understandably, it is going to be more useful in 5-player dungeons than in larger raids.

The Fire Elemental hasn't kept up with the rest of the shaman arsenal, and probably needs a buff. (Source)

Windfury vs. Flametongue
The designers are very aware of the WF vs. FT discussion. We are still talking about the issue and exploring different ways we can shift numbers back and forth. This is something I very much want to discuss with my team some more and it would be irresponsible for me to comment on our direction or solutions until that time. (Source)

This is a relief. They might end up nerfing FT of course, but at least they are aware of the WF scaling problem.

Sigh

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game.

2/18/09:

-Icy Prisms are now unique, they cannot be mailed but can still be traded.
-The Rogue ability Mutilate now does its appropriate damage based on talents.
-Raise Dead now properly detects the presence of Corpse Dust in your inventory.
-The Glyph of Windfury Weapon will not apply additional attack power.
-A Grounding Totem is now properly destroyed even if the grounded spell did not do damage.
-Tremor Totem now properly pulses every 3 sec.
-Crippling Poison now has a PvP duration of 10 seconds.
-Wound Poison now has a PvP duration of 10 seconds.

Well crap. Just tell me why Blizzard. Why Windfury? You cant mean for a caster MH with FT to be our best weapon choice. It makes no sense!

Blizzard have HAM OVER EYE!

So... Yesterday I'm stewing with anger over the fact that Blizzard was making changes which made WF non competive as a raid worthy imbue. I mean for Thrall's sake Windfury is our class defining mechanic, even more so than Totems in my opinion.The thought if using dual flame tongue and a fast caster weapon really just felt wrong.

Well it looks like we have gotten at least a temporoary reprieve. People are testing out the new glyph and while it appears that the proc chance was indead reduced to 2% bonus from 5% it appears that the original 40% ap bonus from the glyph has never been removed. Wether or not this is intended is certainly up for debate. Will it be fixed? Will the tooltip get corrected? Who knows. But for now, at least, I can not worry about taking the Torch of Holy Fire from a pure caster, and can go back to hoping Calamity's Grasp finally drops.

I do wish that we could get an official Blizzard statement on this though. Ghostcrawler has been very good about updating the community with both good and bad news, but this has not always been the case. Blizzard denied for a long time that WF had a hidden cooldown. I just want to be able to make informed decisions on how to gear.


PS. If you dont understand the title just google it. Epic forum thread from the EU forums a year or so back.

Incoming Nerf

Glyph of Windfury Weapon -- Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)


Patch 3.0.9 is scheduled to drop this week with a slew of changes.

Personally I dont get the nerf. Its not like Enhancement is topping the charts.

ETA:
Ugg looking at the EJ forums its looking like this is the death knell for WF. Torch of Holy Firewith Flame Tongue is now our Best in Slot Main Hand.

Aw Yeah!

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.
Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.
Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.
Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.

So these are tentative changes planed for 3.1

Thoughts:
CL : I'll have to see about this. I use CL on aoe packs, so if the overall damage is more, then its a situationlly good change. If the total damage done is the same or less then its pretty crappy.

S,E,&F: Elemental dps is fine now, and this gives it a slight boost.

Spirit Weapons: Mechanics have changes so upwards of 45% of my damage is magical, this is sweet news. Especially on AoE packs, I often tend to aggro the skull, since well, our aoe sucks all we have is single target dps.

UR: Woot! Makes this talent cost/benefit in line with DK's Abomintaions might. A 60% cost reduction and 2% melee crit as a bonus? Yes please!

Totem Steamlining: I just commented in a forum thread the other day that I'd love for the disease/poison totem to be combined. (Someone wanted decurse to be trainable also, and I said to stick that on the totem as well, but that of course would be overkill) No more choosing between mana/health is pretty awesome as well.

And Finally a bit of PvP love would be welcome.

Looks like some very welcome changes are afoot.

Twlight Vanquisher

< Fire and Blood > downed Sarth plus three drakes for the first time last night. It had been a while coming. We'd been hindered by abscences from a few of our better players, as well as the lag which had made hard raiding impossible, and even got so bad as to make Naxx unplayable.

So the only real challenge left in the game is to get "The Immortal".

Totems

No, not the ones that a shaman drops every fight, although those have issues of their own. I'm talking about the ones you equip in your ranged weapon slot.

Frankly They Suck. In 3.0 Blizzard did do something pretty cool, and let them function as your Air, Earth, Fire, and Water Totems that we all quested for when leveling up. That freed up 4 bag slots. Unfortunately they still take up 4 bank slots. But that's besides the point. Rogues and Warriors get to equip guns, bows, and throwing weapons. While they are pretty much useless as a ranged damage dealing attack, they do provide very tangible stat benefits.

Lets take a look at a throwing weapon from Heroic Naxx.
Spinning Fate
16agi, 24sta, 32hit, 16crit, 62ap.
Using generic non hit capped EP numbers that weapon is worth 215.6 EP
Not too shabby.

However Shamans can't equip ranged weapons. So along with Druids, Paladins, and now Death Knights we use Relics. Thye are broken down by class into Totems, Idols, Librams, and Sigils.

Enhancement shamans have several Totems to choose from.
Totem of Splintering
Totem of Dueling
Deadly Gladiator's Totem of Indomitably
There is also the old TBC Standby
Stonebreaker's Totem
and finally
Totem of Hex deserves some consideration as well.

EJ has a pretty in depth breakdown of the merits of the various totems in the Theorycrafting Think Tank so I'm not going to get to into the mechanics of each option. Breaking it down in brief from EJ Indomitablity > Dueling > Splintering. The trouble with Indominatibity is that it is obtained through Arena play and requires a personal rating for 1930 (down from the original 2030) Many Enhancement shamans are unlikely to achieve that rating.(Myself included)

Anyways DGToI provided the best theoretical EP of 120. That's if Lava Lash is used right at every cooldown. In practice it gets used much less often. Theorycrafting has shown that LL is 4th in priority behind a 5Stack Lightning Bolt, Stormstrike, and Earthshock. Looking at the WWS report from my last Naxx 25 run. I have On Boss dps time of 26:33 and 67 lava lash hits. That works out to once every 24 second, or on average an EP value of 30.

Dueling drops off of Instructor Razuvius, and vary rarely off of Gluth as well. It finally dropped for us last week which I believe was our 9th clear. Wowhead reports a drop rate of 7% So statistically about 7 weeks gives you a 50/50 chance to have seen it. Not to bad. Dueling provides 60 haste when using SS which talented is every 8 seconds. So max uptime of the buff is 75%. Haste varies greatly in value depending on the rest of your gear and buffs. I've had it sim as high as 2.2EP and had it sim at negative values as well. So to be safe we will use the generic value of 1.3 Max genric value is 60*1.3*.75= 58.5 EP. In practice SS doesn't get used every 8 seconds on the nose either. Last week on Thaddius I achieved 37 Stormstrikes in 5:23 of dps time or once every 8.7 seconds or a 54 EP value on that fight.

Quickly to finish off. Splintering is purchased for 15 emblems of heroism. The extra ap on WF isnt worth all that much. In fact some people theorize that this is bugged and does not add any ap to the WF procs. Stonebreaker's is purchased for 15 lv 70 badges of heroism. It gives 110ap per proc. uptime is about 40% or 44EP value.

Doesn't an item that provides a constant 215 EP seem quit a bit better than our totems?

Ding!

So I hit 80 on Tormund last night. His gear is pretty lousy, but I did craft him a few pieces. Giantmaim Leggards and Ice Strider's Cloak as well is Virulent Spaulders and Swiftarrow Helm I alsp purchased a couple of BoE blues on the AH. The biggie though is Nesingwary 4000. I've got a guildie making that for me. Dropped about 700g in the AH on mats, not counting the Orb which I already had. Much cheaper than buying the gun which was up for 1350g.

I've been using my gorilla pet pretty much exclusively to level, so I need to level my other pets. Sadly I said goodbye to SerPounce my black panther. I don't want to spend days looking for the Spirit Beast to tame, But I think that the Cursed Offspring of Har'koa are even cooler looking.
Black with glowing red eyes > White with blue eyes in my opinion. I am planning on replacing my wolf as well. I had a Ghostpaw Alpha from back in Ashenvale, I replaced it with one of the pitch black worgs in the oilfields of BT, but when tamed the black went away, and its just gray. So I need to decide whether to get a black worg or a white worg. I'll probably go White and name him Ghost again. An Orc hunter should have a wolf pet.

Free Respec in 3.0.8

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

All shaman talent points have been refunded. Please visit your trainer to learn spells and abilities.


This I've been thinking about tweaking a couple of minor things with my spec anyways, so this works out nicely.
I'm probably going to go with This Build. I'll swap the 2 points I have in Convection into Call of Flame

Latest Phat Loots

Webbed Death and
Slime Stream Bands dropped last night. The wrists replaced my last blue.
Frosted Adroit Handguards Dropped last week.
That's three best in slot upgrades. Nice. Although BiS is really relative Hit halves its value after you get to 367, and expertise is worth virtually nothing past 214, so there is a lot of wiggle room in the rankings.

What I still need.
A better helm.
Blue Aspect Helm is the best by a fairly wide margin but I'd take T7.25 as well. Firstly it looks much better, and Secondly the 4pc T7 bonus is really really good. So I need the T7.25 Chest as well. The T7.25 Gloves would not be amiss either. I've never had a full Tier set and It would allow me to sub in the best non set piece like the Blue Aspect Helm.

The next biggest upgrade is still Surge Needle Ring, and Calamity's Grasp would be pretty nice to have as well even if it is completely ridiculous looking.

Latest patch notes

Shaman (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Elemental

Storm, Earth and Fire now Reduces the cooldown of your Chain Lightning spell by 0.75/1.5/2.5 sec (Up from 0.5/1.5/1.5 sec), your Earth Shock and Wind Shock range is increased by 5 yards and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 60%.

Restoration

Healing Grace now reduces the chance your helpful spells and damage over time effects will be dispelled by 10/20/30%. (Old - All spells)

Glyphs

Glyph of Earth Shock - Renamed to Glyph of Shocking - Reduces the global cooldown triggered by your shock spells by 0.5 sec. (Old - Reduced the GCD triggered by Earth Shock by 1 second)

I guess they couldn't fix the bugged ES glyph? This glyph is the only change that really effects Enhancement. And it just means that we dont have to keep waiting for it to get fixed.

In other gear news, I'm no longer in need of expertise. I aquired Ruthlessness and Mark of Norgannon last week, then finally got Valourous Earthshatter Shoulderguards this week.
So I'm now 39 expertise over cap. I could not use the trinket but that would leave me 30 short still. The ideal situation would be to get a better ring. Ruthlessness is a suboptimal ring, the Str is only half as effective for shamans as plate classes. But it was still better than what I had especially since no one else wanted it, and I was short on expertise at the time. The other issue is I'm now no longer hit capped. I'm sitting at 331, which is fine as I can eat 40 hit food and be capped.
So Get a ring w/ hit rather that expertise. Well the only rings 36 hit on it are pvp rings or caster rings. What I really would love is for Surge Needle Ring to drop. Its best in slot, and has 32 hit. I'd just need to swap out one gem to get capped. Cmon Maly. Daddy needs a new ring!

So long 2008

The year in WoW, 2008. Well 2008 was the start of my 2nd year playing WoW, and boy has a lot changed. A year ago today, I was still playing Bannonn, on Argent Dawn EU. I was doing my weekly Kara run at 7am Saturday morning. Running ZA, I think we had 3 bosses down there. I had some nice gear. S2 mace, The Decapitator, Bear Shoulders from ZA. S3 helm. Hourglass of the Unraveller. I was pretty happy.

Then my other American friends playing on AD approached me about rerolling on a US server. "But... But... I can't transfer! I'll lose all my stuff! I'll never get all this great gear again!" But in the end they talked me into it. We'd level up and farm kara and get new gear. Maybe we'd get a chance to do SSC and TK too. Mask of Sorrow, our guild on EU was work in T5 raids, but I only got to go in if I had a day off from work. I had done Leo, Karathress, and Hydross, I'd done Void Reaver, but I wasn't a raider.

So we rerolled on Quel'dorei. I rolled a priest. My friends said wtf? so I rolled a hunter. I got about 4 levels and realized, I was a Shaman at heart. So I rolled Baelor. He turns 1 in a couple of weeks. He's downed every raid boss in TBC, and every raid boss in Wrath. He had best in slot or near best in slot gear for pretty much everything pre-Wrath. My friends and I built our guild from our group of 6 into a guild of over 180 characters. We went from hoping to run Kara, to being the only Horde guild to down Kil'Jaeden on QD.

2008. It was a good year for me in WoW.