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".