Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Cataclysm thoughts.


So Wrath has ended and Cataclysm has come. Guilds are already claiming world firsts on Heroic Modes. FnB is 7/12 for T11 normal so far which puts us 6 bosses ahead of the next most progressed guild on QD.

Baelor is dressed in an ugly ass set of Blues, and he misses his Sanctified Frost Witch's gear terribly. All my non set epics have been Disenchanted,  My trade skills still need leveling,and I've a dozen new  raid fights to learn, not to mention half a dozen reps to grind up. And that's just on my main!. I've got to level my hunter to herb and skin, and the DK has mining and JC to worry about. plus in never for my 'Lock to 80 even, and he's my Scribe and Alchemist.

To top that off every time I see my nameplate its says Baelor < Recruit of Fire and Blood >.  Now ain't that a kick in the pants? I've been GM of this guild since starting it almost 3 years ago. Taken it from a bunch of casual rerolls into the top guild on server, and I'm an Mother F'ing recruit. Screw you Guild Rep!

Well that's the bad.

The good?  The new zones are fantastic. Aside from going overboard on cutscenes leveling was easy and a logical progression. The new raid bosses are all interesting so far. Leaping from boss to boss on Conclave of Winds is a hoot. Once the early grinding is done, and I can get back to my more sedate pace of outside raid play I think I'll be much happier.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Epic Head


We didn't have the ideal group for Heroic RS last night, so we just killed it normal and did a chieve run in Uldaur and got a number of people their Ironbounds. Which is nice as its just about the coolest mount in the game IMO.  Except for Mimiron's head.  That's cooler.

My raid leader ninja'd master looter from me while we were on a break before Yogg 0, so when it came time to distribute the spoils I was out voted by the officers, and they gave it to me. Sometimes its good to be GL.


Also there is an update to the ptr.

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

Enhancement
•Windfury Weapon now deals 125% weapon damage when Unleash Elements is used, up from 40%.
A very nice buff, to what had been looking like an underwhelming ability.

According to Rouncer over on EJ its also increased the haste buff to our next 6 from 20% to 40% which then become 60% with 2/2 elemental weapons.
All together that should be a nice 4-5% dps gain if I'm not mistaken.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Beta Changes.

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

Elemental
•Elemental Reach now also increases the range of Searing Totem by 7/15 yards.

Enhancement
•Windfury Weapon now deals 40% of weapon damage when Unleash Elements is used, up from 20%.

Doubling the direct damge portion of UE-WF is a decent change. From what I've been hearing the dd portion of that is next to nothing right now.  The longer searing range is nice for Elementals.  Wish they'd made it baseline though.


Fire and Blood did an achievement run last night. We'd had several people who were missing out on some of the chieves for their frostwyrms. It all went pretty smoothly, aside from Sindragosa.  Frost tomb placement got a bit dicey, and we ened up having a tank get a 6th stack when the boss was at 1%. Dots took him down, so looks like we get to do that wonderful all you can eat again next week.

I had a pretty good Saurfang parse pulled 17.4 k
Of course that was with a rogue tricksing me, since there were no other rogues for him to trade with last night.

http://www.stratfu.com/kamigami/comparebot/4cd2aec88ead0ef026000000#damage

Not sure where I gained all the dps from last week. Tricks is maybe 500 dps at best.  looks like I had quite a few more Lightning Bolts.  and a bit better percentage of Lava Lash crits. I had more than 50% more WF hits as well.  Looks like RNG was good to me this week, or bad to me last.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Really GC?

So Enhancemnt finnaly got a reply in a thread.
Of course it wasnt the mostly well thought out and discussed 20 concern thread, it was in the thread where some guy need to say he was happy with the class because of indoor Ghost Wolf....

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE indoor Ghost Wolf. Its the cat's pajamas. But why does that thread get the attention. Look I'm sure that the other threads get read as well, but once again it seems that Blizzards data is not the same that the Shaman community seems to see.

We are seeing Enhancement at about the same dps they were at before at level 80, and are competitive with e.g. Fury warriors, Ret paladins and Unholy DKs at 85 as far as PvE dps goes. As always, it depends a lot on the encounter and the individual behind the keyboard.


If you find that is not the case for you, let us know, but it would be helpful to provide something more than anecdotal information.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer
So I'm not on the beta, I dont know what things are like at 85, but at 80 my dps is lower on static fights, while its a bit better on dynamic fights. On average it may be about the same, but on the benchmark fights where I used to be top 5, I'm now bottom 5.  As shown with my post yesterday with the worlds best players we are behind every other hybrid dpser. Now I know someone has to be last, but it seems like its us far to often.

My Saurfang Parse form last night was better than last week. I climbed up to 13th on the meters and my dps was  up to 15.4k  Thats still 1k  under what I was pulling pre patch, and thats with replacing 264 Tiny Abomb with the 271 Sharpend Twilight Scale.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Enhancement DPS

So I found a parse on WoL rankings for Enhancement Shaman  that was post 4.0.1
http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/players/Icecrown_Citadel/Deathbringer_Saurfang/25H/Enhancement_Shaman/
The guy pulled 18.4k dps on Saurfang.  Which is very impressivve.  Its still well below the top parse pre patch.

The really sad part?
He was 17th in damage in the fight for the raid. So the #14 Enhance parse in the world finished  behind every other dpser in his raid, aside from an anomoly of a boomkin.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/pkunzzts7gps8fl9/sum/damageDone/?s=1574&e=1678#Leedsz

And this is our BEST fight.

Its a bit discouraging with other classes pulling up to 33k.
Ok so that's Mages

But lets look at the other  melee hybrids tops dps scores since 4.0.1
Feral 23.5k
Ret 22.6
Fury 26.9
Arms 18.5
Frost DK 21.9
Unholy 26.2

Now who else did the patch screw up.
Well combat got borked. I had to scan down until the 183rd ranked parse to find a post patch ranking
still it was 19.4k which is 1000dps better than the best Enhance parse.

There is a 20 plus page thread of concens on the forums.
No response from Blizzard to this point.

There is a new beta build out there.  lots of adjustments,  the only one for Shamans was increasing the cost of Chain Heal.  Hopefully our issues get addressed at some point.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Where did my DPS go?

My combat log got messed up last Wednesday on farm night, so I had to wait until last night to compare how I was doing pre and post patch.

I'll use Saurfang as a comparison.

10/6 raid   #2 on the meters @ 16046 dps
10/20 raid  #16 on the meters @ 14663 dps
a 1400 dps drop and 14 slots on the meters. Ouch that hurts.

Now some of it might be the use of fire totems. I haven't been using fire elemental since the patch.  Purely on the totems dps it looks like the fire elemental did 1750 dps and the searing did 1242 dps, so thats 500 there. No Fire Nova is another 603 dps. however that's in a vacuum.  There is also the loss of searing flames to consider, if I used the fire elemental. Searing Flames did 337 dps, in addition to that there is the Improved Lava Lash buff to consider. Lava lash is out hardest hitting ability now and a 5 stack of searing flames buffs that by 100%. Next week I'll try it with the elemental and compare.

But the thing that stick out the most to me is the loss of white damage.
4825dps vs. 2598dps
That's a 46% loss there.
Windfury dropped from  1893dps tp 1135dps

Somethings up with manifest anger as well. MH hits went from 201dps to 70dps
Spell damage stayed about the same.

Lava Lash as I mentioned shot through the roof, from  505dps to 2362dps, a whooping  467% increase.

I think a lot of this drop off is due to several things. First we had  only 1 rogue on 10/6 so I got his ToT's. However I had even better dps the week before pulling 16273 w/o ToT's. I think a big things is the further consolidation of raid buffs. Kings down to 5% and merged with Mark of the Wild, loss of the hit buffs, lowering of the haste buff, loss of improved SOE. As hybrids we lose on both the melee and spellpower nerfs.  I had to add hit, and mastery to keep my magical damage on about the same level,  I lost a ton of haste regemming and from the relic slot change, and the WF nerf. Plus they nerfed the amount of haste gained per point of rating as well.

Strat fu link to compare the parses.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Are you ready for 4.01?



So 4.01 is supposed to drop tomorrow, which means a lot of big changes for Enhancement.
New Talent tree, Changes to Stats, Reforging, New Glyphs, New rotations, its a lot.

These changes are balance around level 85, not 80, but we still have 8 weeks until Cataclysm come out, so that's 2 months of dealing with the changes on current content.

Talents and Glyphs

Lets start with spec. I'm leaning towards this 5/31/0 build for level 80. Its skipping Improved Shields in favor of Totemic Reach. Working on Heroic LK I think a larger radius is worth it.

For glyphs some more testing might be needed but Feral Spirits and Lava Lash seem to be the top 2. With the change to Stormstrike that glyph is probably not a top 3 glyph. I'll go with Windfury at least until More data is available.

Stats

The other thing we will all need to do is Reforge and Re-gem.
Agility is going to be our king stat. It provides AP, Spellpower through Mental Quickness, and Crit. We still want to cap spell hit and expertise, but not at the expense of Agi.  Since you can't reforge into Agi, you want to try and cap Hit/Exp through reforging.

If a gear has no hit, reforge haste or crit to hit. If it has hit reforge haste or crit to expertise.
If it has hit + mastery reforge mastery to exp.
If it has exp + mastery reforge mastery to hit.

Now our caps are changing as well. 
The 3% raid buff from a Shadow Priest or Boomkin are going away. So out new spell hit cap is 446 hit rating.
Unleashed rage is only providing  8 expertise rather than 9 and the Orc Racial for Axe/Fist is down to 3 expertise from 5. So we will need more expertise on our gear to reach 26. So 149 for non-orcs and 123 for orcs with axe/fist weapons.

For gemming  Gem Agi unless there is a very good socket bonus
Use Agi/Mastery gems for Yellow sockets
Use Agi/Hit for Blue sockets.

Rotation

I need to do some better testing with rotation as well, but since Fire Nova no longer works with Searing Totem, its out of our single target rotation. I'm also not sure where Fire elemental will come in in relation to Searing totem yet. But it looks like out single target rotation will be close to something like this.

Drop totems first

MW5-LB
SW
ST-0
LL
SS-0
FS-0
ES
SR (2pc T10)
SS
ST

Once Rawr and Enhsim are fully updated this might change, but early testing seems to indicate that our priority queue is a bit more forgiving than it used to be.

Things should be interesting.


Friday, October 1, 2010

Level 85 ratings

From EJ

Level 85 caps

Melee Hit : 120.109 which means with base 6% from dual wielding we need 241 hit to cap our specials.
Expertise : 30.0272 which means with 2/2 Unleashed Rage we need 541 expertise to cap.
Spell Hit : 102.446 which means we need 1742 hit to cap for raid bosses (at 17%)

That is a buttload of Hit.  542 Expertise is a hefty number as well.  Perhaps we will need to spend on the spell hit Talent.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Lions? We don't need no stinking Lions!


Not when we have Kron'Kar Annihilators.
Badass Armoured Giant Scorpions >>> Lion with a Tabard.

I can't wait to get one.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

now with extra mana savings

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Enhancement
  • Mental Quickness now reduces the mana cost of your instant spells by 75% instead of reducing the cost of shock spells by 60%.

Looks like its going to be hard to run out of mana using our normal rotation. Throwing our heals sure, but shocks and WM lightning and totems? should be fine.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Ow! That hurts!

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

Elemental
•Stoneclaw Totem now has 6186 health, up from 797. Shields your totems for up to 4143 damage, up from 664.
•Earth Shock now also reduces ranged attack speed.

Enhancement
•Dual Wield now also allows you to parry frontal melee attacks.
•Windfury Totem now increases the melee and ranged attack speed of all party and raid members within 40 yards by 10%. (Down from 20%)
•Feral Spirit now lasts 30 sec, down from 45 sec. Cooldown changed to 2 min, down from 3 min.

Restoration
•Mana Tide Totem now has a 3 min cooldown, down from 5 min.
So I saw GC comment about how valuable WF/Imp Icy Talons buff was and so I figured this was coming but a 50% nerf really hurts.

I'm guessing the the change to DW is just giving us back the old spirit weapons parry buff minus the threat reduction?

The Feral Spirit change is actually pretty nice. Allows Wolves to line up better with any 2min trinket CD's, while still maintaining a 25% uptime.


There was also this update earlier in the week.
Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Enhancement
•Windfury Weapon now deals damage equal to two extra attacks with 4430 extra attack power. (Up from 1395 Attack Power)
•Flametongue Weapon now increases total spell damage by 750, up from 235.
•Primal Wisdom (Talent) is gone.
•Primal Wisdom (Passive) *New* - Your melee attacks have a 40% chance to immediately restore 5% of your base mana.
•Unleashed Rage is now a 2 Ranks talent, down from 3 Ranks. Now increases Expertise by 4/8 (up from 3/6/9), increases all party and raid members' attack power by 5/10% (up from 4/7/10%)

Restoration
•Earthliving Weapon now increases healing done by 531, up from 167.
•Healing Wave base healing value reduced by 25%. Mana cost changed to 9% of base mana, up from 6% of base mana.
•Mana Tide Totem no longer restores mana, now increases the spirit of party members within 40 yards by 200%.
Which is them updating the scaling of imbues for level 85 and reiterating the freeing up of those 3 talent points. We do end up losing 1 expertise, which while not huge is still a loss especially considering how much rating you need per point at 85. That along with degrading hit rating at higher tiers, all adds up.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Well now this takes a bit of the sting out.

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

Enhancement Changes
In our current Cataclysm build, we have cut the Primal Wisdom talent (and give it as part of the Enhancement passive) and reduced Unleashed Rage from 3 to 2 ranks, but with the same overall effect. That should take care of the extra talent points that the tree seemed to have.

We are still working on making the Searing Totem a little smarter. (Source)

So there are 3 points that I've desperately been looking for. This will allow us to pick up utility talents like ancestral swiftness or totemic reach, along with all the dps talents.

Without know  for sure what things are going to look like I'm leaning towards a build like this.
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=ZbWQdJ_sN.9zi.shaman

This is welcome news after being taken behind the woodshed over the weekend.
I'm still pissed they are giving Bloodlust to Mages, but giving it to Hunters?
Bloodlust / Heroism

•Ancient Hysteria (Core Hound - E) - Increases melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 30% for all party and raid members. Lasts 40 sec.
Allies receiving this effect will become Sated and be unable to benefit from Bloodlust or Time Warp again for 10 min. / Instant, 6 min cooldown
That's just mean! They might as well kick us in the nads while they are at it.  That was after the latest build changes.

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Elemental
•Stoneclaw Totem deal and absorb effect reduced by 50%.
•Chain Lightning now has a 3 sec cooldown, down from 6 sec.
•Earthquake base damage increased by 55%. Now has a 10% chance to knock down the targets (down from 20%). Lasts 8 sec, down from 10 sec. Mana cost changed to 60% of base mana, down from 86% of base mana. Cooldown removed.
•Storm, Earth and Fire renamed to Earth's Grasp - Grants your Earthbind Totem a 50/100% chance to root nearby targets for 5 sec when cast.
•Lava Flows now also increases the the periodic damage of your Flame Shock by 20/40/60%
•Totemic Wrath is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 4.
•Elemental Precision now increases damage instead of your chance to hit.

Enhancement
•Stormstrike now increases your chance to critical strike the enemy with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lightning Shield and Earth Shock spells by 25% for 15 sec instead of increasing nature damage by 20% on the target.
•Windfury Weapon - Unleash Weapon now lasts 6 swings or until 12 sec, instead of a flat 12 sec.
•Ghost Wolf speed reduced from 40% to 30%.
•Maelstrom Weapon no longer affects Lava Burst.

Restoration
•Cleansing Waters base healing increased from [ 1916 to 2075 ] to [ 2634 to 2970 ]
•Tidal Waves no longer affects Lesser Healing Wave. Now affects Healing Surge.
•Telluric Currents is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 6.
•Improved Cleanse Spirit is now a Tier 4 talent, down from Tier 5.
•Nature's Blessing is now a Tier 3 talent, down from Tier 5.
•Improved Chain Heal is gone.
•Restorative Totems renamed to Soothing Rains - Increases the amount healed by your Healing Stream Totem by 25%, and your Healing Rain spell by 15/30%.
•Blessing of the Eternals is now a Tier 6 talent, up from Tier 4. No longer increases the critical chance of your spells.
•Nature's Guardian is now a Tier 2 talent, down from Tier 4.
•Ancestral Awakening is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 3.
•Improved Water Shield no longer affects Lesser Healing Wave. Now affects Healing Surge.
I'm not sure about the Stormstrike change. It looks like a dps nerf. 25% chance for an extra 50% damage  vs. a flat 20% boost. But because of the change to Maelstrom Weapon we may be needed that bonus crit to keep Elemental Devastation up.

Unleash WF is a flat out nerf. Unless we are moving we will normally have a lot more than 6 MH attacks in 12 seconds.

Poor Ghost Wolf. Not a huge nerf, but 10% is 10%

And of course they are once again taking Lava Burst off of Maelstrom Weapon. There goes our auto crits. There goes our near 100% uptime of Elemental Devastation. There goes our instant burst damage. They did this to us in Wrath so I guess I shouldn't be surprised they did it again. Just one more thing I was really looking forward to being removed, like Path of the Titans and guild talents.

On top of that the the stoneclaw shield is being cut in half.  The only positive is the cooldown on Chain Lightning is being reduced to 3 seconds, so on multi target fights we should be able to use it for every MW proc.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Glyphs!

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


•Chain Heal - Increases healing done by your Chain Heal spell to targets beyond the first by 15%, but decreases the amount received by the initial target by 10%. (Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.)
•Earthliving Weapon - Increases the effectiveness of your Earthliving weapon's periodic healing by 20%. (Increases the chance for your Earthliving weapon to trigger by 5%.)
•Elemental Mastery - While your Elemental Mastery ability is active, you take 20% less damage from all sources. (Reduces the cooldown of your Elemental Mastery ability by 30 sec.)
•Fire Nova - Increases the radius of your Fire Nova spell by 5 yards. (Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Nova spell by 3 seconds.)
•Ghost Wolf - Your Ghost Wolf form grants an additional 10% movement speed.
•Healing Stream Totem - Your Healing Stream Totem also increases the Fire, Frost, and Nature resistance of party and raid members within 30 yards by 150. (Your Healing Stream Totem heals for an additional 20%.)
•Hex - Reduces the cooldown of your Hex spell by 15 sec. (Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.)
•Lava Burst - Your Lava Burst spell deals 10% more damage. (Your Lava Burst spell gains an additional 10% of your spellpower.)
•Totemic Recall *New* - Causes your Totemic Recall ability to return an additional 50% of the mana cost of any recalled totems.
•Lightning Shield - Your Lightning Shield can no longer drop below 3 charges from dealing damage to attackers.
•Grounding Totem *New* - When your Grounding Totem absorbs a spell, it attempts to reflect that spell on its caster, but the cooldown of your Grounding Totem is increased by 45 sec.
•Arctic Wolf *New* - Alters the appearance of your Ghost Wolf transformation, causing it to resemble an arctic wolf.
•Shamanistic Rage *New* - Activating your Shamanistic Rage ability also cleanses you of all dispellable Magic debuffs.
•Water Shield - Increases the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield spell by 50%. (Up from 30%)
Well I'm not seeing anything that makes me think I'll be switching any of my major glyphs.  There does appear to be some healing nerfs with chain heal and healing stream. Earthliving seems to be a boost, and the resistances from Healing stream look to be ok.

Well 10% to lava burst is very nice on 2nd glance. With LvB being on Maelstrom Weapon we will be using it on CD as much as we can to keep elemental devastation up.

There is a lot of situational use here though, and with the swapability of glyphs I can certainly see  using Hex when you need CC, SR on certain fights, and Fire Nova for big add fights.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

New Beta build

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Elemental
•Magma Totem base damage increased by 33%.
•Fire Nova base damage increased by 33%.
•Rolling Thunder is now a Tier 3 talent, down from Tier 4. Mana regeneration increased from 1% to 2%.
•Improved Fire Nova moved to Enhancement.
•Elemental Reach no longer increases the range of Thunderstorm, now affects the range of all your Shock spells. (Old - Just Flame Shock)

Enhancement
•Unleash Elements now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
•Totemic Vigor is gone.
•Improved Fire Nova is now a Tier 4 Enhancement Talent - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova by 10/20% and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 sec.

Restoration
•Improved Water Shield now also procs from Greater Healing Wave.
The increased range on UE will be nice for openers I guess. Otherwise its mainly for Elementals.
Losing Totemic Vigor means nothing for PvE as you would never take it.  The imp FN change is a bit odd. It seemed like they were stearing us away from using it in our rotation, and now not only is it in Enhance, its in Deep Enhance.

I just dont know where the points will come from to take it. Taking all the dps talents without Imp FN takes 41 points. Thats also skipping Ancestral Swiftness and Totemic Reach.  Ideally I'd like all of those, but where can I find 6 points?  Possibly take 3 out of imp shields. Maybe lose one from Acuity.  Thats 4.  I guess its going to take a lot of testing to see whats worth losing and what isn't.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Ghost Cralwer has been busy

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Tier 1 Enhancement
Right. The problem with tier 1 Enhancement is you have Focused Strikes, which clearly is for Enhance and nobody else. Then you're left with Elemental Weapons, a good talent for all 3 specs, and Improved Shields, a good talent for Enhance and Resto. That leaves Elemental with only 3 points they want to spend in tier 1 and a strong desire to get to tier 2. But, as I said above, if Elemental did care about shields, then presumably they could care about Improved Shields. (Source)

Making Shaman fun
Fun is obviously very important to us, but it's also a really difficult thing to talk about. I read these forums constantly, and it's pretty typical to see the class who had exciting changes a few weeks ago now bored of those and eager for new changes. The grass is greener mindset is huge around here, perhaps understandably since it's hard to stay in touch with the changes going on for all classes at once. When you drill down sometimes on what players are looking for to make their class fun for them, you often get a list of ideas that would be terribly overpowered or just not work in our game, or both. That doesn't mean it's not a goal. It just means that delivering what is fun for one player means something very different than what is fun for another player. (Source)

Fire Nova
We'd like to downplay Fire Nova in lieu of Earthquake (in addition to Chain Lightning of course). We also agree that Fire Nova should be used for true AE situations and not against single targets. (Source)

Elemental Rotation
We didn't set out with the goal of change for the sake of change though. Most of the new rotational abilities we've added were to fix problems with the class. Prot warriors for example are going to be hitting the same buttons they hit in LK because we think that works. Elemental is getting Unleashed Weapon (and Earthquake), and beyond that we think you have the right number of buttons to hit, so we're hesitant to cram a new button in there. Nor are we excited about giving you "Super Duper Lightning Bolt" that lets you take Lightning Bolt off your bar just for the sake of having a new button. I'd characterize the Elemental playstyle as closer to a mage, who isn't managing a ton of different nukes, but does have to react to what is happening in terms of procs, short cooldowns and movement. Lava Surge, Elemental Mastery and Unleashed Weapon are examples of those respectively.

We'll definitely take the feedback under advisement though. (Source)

Feral Spirit Scaling
Feral Spirit should scale like all pets. (It doesn't yet). Losing Parry was a consequence of losing Spirit Weapons, but we'll give it back somewhere. (Source)

Thunderstorm
I agree that Enhancement's choice at level 10 is transformative. I disagree that Resto similarly plays very differently at level 10. I also think you're downplaying Thunderstorm. Now you can Lightning Bolt and when a target gets closer to you, Thunderstorm them back and then Lightning Bolt them again. (Source)

Unleash Weapon
Elemental's range talent needs to affect Unleash Weapon too. (Source)
The trouble Enhancement Tier one is that I cant afford to take all of the talents.
I can spend 33 points in enhancement and get all the current dps talents, That leaves 8. There are 10 dps talents in the first 2 tiers of elemental. So I have to skip 2 and it looks like that's reverb. Now that build also skips ancestral swiftness and totemic reach. Fights are so movement intensive, I find it hard to believe that AS isn't going to be a pretty big dps boost as well not to mention the simple utility and survivability it brings. So where do we get the 2 points for that? Imp shields is my guess. That still leaves us skipping Totemic reach.  Look I appreciate that totems are no longer 2 minutes and 20 yards. Really I do. I can drop 4 at once. That's awesomesauce! But with everyone else's auras being like a 100 yd radius would it kill you to give us a 40 yard baseline radius?

Not being on Beta I had no idea that Feral Spirits were not scaling.  I wonder at what level they will scale? I hope its at the Ferocity pet level.

Getting some free parry is nice I suppose. Since I don't PvP it shouldn't matter much.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Lots of new stuff.

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Elemental
•Magma Totem now costs 18% of base mana, down from 27%.
Lava Burst damage has been increased by 25%.

Restoration
•Totem of Tranquil Mind *New* - Summons a Totem of Tranquil Mind with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 min, causing party or raid members within 30 yards to lose 0% less casting or channeling time when damaged. (Value NYI, Concentration Aura)

Enhancement
•Maelstrom Weapon now also reduces the mana cost of the spell.
Some really great changes here. Cheaper Magma totem for AoE packs, Harder hitting Lava Burst. and Maelstrom reducing mana cost are great.  It doesnt say much much the cost is reduced, but It would make sence if it were equal to the cast time reduction, so free at 100% would be fine by me.
Relics class requirements gone in Cataclysm

You are looking at existing, Wrath of the Lich King, items. Those are currently only used by those classes, so there isn't a great motivation or need to change them.
Cataclysm-level relics can be used by any paladin, shaman, druid or DK, though there may still be some class-specific ones from time to time. (Source)



Relic changes.
Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

Shaman Q&A (Source)

Lots of questions. I don't have time to answer them all, but I will hit a few.

When will ele not have to run into melee to do aoe?

When you're casting Earthquake?

1) Are resto shaman now the only healer being forced to spec into a hit talent to supplement their active mana recovery ability? Paladins now apparently get the hit that was in enlightened judgements for free?
Our goal was to not have all of the healer talent trees to be mirror images of each other. So a priest might get one thing for free and have to talent into something else. As long as the end result is pretty similar (e.g. the priest can't get everything for free and just be able to spend talent points on candy) then it should be fine.

Personally, I'd like to know the rationale behind the fact that the Elemental Shamans did not recieve any spells that alter their rotation on 'primary' targets. Their level 10 effect was something halfway between a mana restore, an AoE, and a pvp gimmick. Our capstone of the talent tree is an AoE. I can't think of any other dps spec that doesn't get something 'unique' that changes their rotation from the other specs.
That's just part of the shaman design though, namely that Enhancement still cares a lot about spells instead of being a 100% melee weapon class. I'd argue that Enhance and Elemental still play fairly differently (such that you do have to adjust when respeccing). I'm not sure the mage design, where there is virtually no overlap among talent trees, is a superior model. It's just a different model.

Mana - I've heard mana has recently begun to be an issue for Enhancement in the last few beta builds. Will the ultimate solution just be to tweak Primal Wisdom s'more? Oh, and what about all that discussion about moving Primal Wisdom to being part of Enhancement's lvl 10 skillset? It's going to be hellish on new Enhancers not having their primary mana restoration technique until much later. Also on the table here, and I'm sorry it touches on totems again - a full set of totems or an AoE rotation kills Enhancement's mana very very quickly. It'd be nice if the mana cost got reduced on some of these abilities.
It's not the intent that Enhancement has to worry about mana a lot. Generally you should have enough mana to do what you want to do. It's a model we're still adjusting. We haven't quite established a base regen for the casters and healers that we're happy with and every time we tweak that, it affects the Ret paladins and Enhancement shaman, who aren't really supposed to be mana-constrained.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Tier 1 of Enhance is one of the bigger culprits. While tier 2 has one talent that's really attractive (nigh on required for Elemental and Enhance), tier 1 is pretty bland. People would prefer to skip over Imp Shields, and Elemental Weapons is a flat spell power buff that scales with level rather than gear.
The model we're trying to use for all the classes is that you can't just soak up no-brainer talents in the first few tiers. Often there is a dps talent, and then a survival talent and then maybe an efficiency talent. You definitely get the first one, but you often need to get one of the others to progress down. This is what we mean about not being able to cherry pick just throughput-oriented talents and skipping everything else that is utility, etc. It's an evolving process though. I'm not sure I could point to a class yet and say "There. We nailed it."

Also, Enhance has 9 "required" points in Elemental - would be 10 if it weren't for Ancestral Swiftness - on top of their own tree being filled up, which highly limits their utility options (well, to be more specific, limits them to 0). Even if an additional point or two were freed up, they may feel obligated to spend those to grab the third point in Acuity (which I don't like as 3 points to start with - it creates a 'floater' point in Elemental specs rather than getting us stuck around tier 4 needing to pick a full utility talent, which I think is a good thing. But I digress), or Improved Shields, even though all three are fairly marginal DPS gains.
Yup. This is a challenge. As I mentioned above, Enhancement likes spell damage so it's hard to put anything in Elemental that Elemental wants that Enhancement also doesn't want.

Lightning and Water shield do not seem that useful for Elemental in many ways.
Agreed. This is something we're discussing. A new shield doesn't have to be the answer though.

- Nature's Blessing doesn't feel like a bonus when healing earth shielded targets, it feels like a penalty when healing targets without it. If the intent is to make shamans better tank healers, perhaps make it work in some other way. Perhaps change it to Earthliving or Riptide instead of Earth Shield?
This is the kind of feedback we struggle with a lot on most classes. As soon as something grants a bonus, it feels like a penalty when it's not up because players are very efficiency-focused. If it was say Riptide, wouldn't it feel like a penalty whenever Riptide wasn't available? Or a penalty because every heal cost that extra GCD for Riptide in order to behave at maximum efficiency?

Honestly GC when our dps is competitive with the other hybrid specs you barely ever see us whine. We just really want to be as good as others. It's when it isn't that we come out in masses to whine about everything. Since our totems are our thing they are what is an easy target for our QQ. I guarantee you that if we do competitive DPS and never fall behind the endless Shaman crying will be puddles instead of rivers.
I agree with that. I think a lot of the complaints about "we're the only class" or "are buffs aren't awesome enough" only come to bear when dps is low. As I said recently, we think Enhancement dps was competitive when there wasn't a lot of movement involved and when you weren't competing with guys using orange weapons. We can fix the movement problem. We don't think we need to fix the legendary "problem" because those Shadowmournes will all be banked at level 85.

I honestly don't see how healing rains AND chain heal are needed. Both are AoE heals fill the same role (heal people grouped together).
They are different spells with different niches. Chain Heal excels when you have a small number of players injured and Healing Rain is more for those big bursts when everyone takes damage. There are enough occasions when you need to heal say more than just the tank that we think healers can stand to have several different strategies to deal with it.

(4) Any chance that the stoneclaw glyph can become baseline or something? I'm mostly fine with the totem utility vs. buff thing, but it seems fairly weird to have this non-scaling bubble as a secondary effect of a totem. If it can't be baseline, is it being compensated for? Hance isn't exactly a survivability powerhouse.
We are changing a lot of glyphs. It's too early to know which ones we are keeping. If this one dies then we might consider putting in the functionality elsewhere.

At this point tho, after getting the current tier hit/spirit cap, I'm pretty much forced to handpick items with no or little crit rating however. Mastery and haste just seem so overwhelmingly better.
That's not the intent. Hit / spirit can be capped, but if you start viewing haste, crit or mastery as junk compared to another stat, then we need to change something. It's fine if one stat is slightly better than another. Remember that crit values overall are going to be far lower than the 70%+ that some players can reach in current content. Lava Burst crits, sure, but you cast a lot of spells besides Lava Burst.

3. Whether it will continue to attack stuff we are not in combat with (especially if it's range is increased).
This is something we are trying to fix. We already have the totem choosing your target. Next we need to make sure it doesn't "helpfully" grab additional mobs.


I'm the first to admit, that I'm not the greatest player out there, but I'd occasionally top the meters back in Ulduar.  I cant even come close now. I was doing some WoL comparisions and looking at Saurfang fights. Kresh, the top Enhancer in the US on that fight is a bit over 2kdps ahead of me. I can deal with that. the discouraging thing though is that the best Shaman in the US is only 7th best dps in his guild.  GC says not to worry about our damage, as Shadowmourne is being reset. Well what happends when they get new Legendary Weapons? We fall behind again as im guess they aren't going to be giving out any Slow 1H melee weapons.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

More changes.

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Elemental
  • Hex now lasts 1 min. Up from 30 sec.
  • Searing Totem now prefer to target enemies that are afflicted by your Flame Shock or Stormstrike effects.
  • Reverberation is now a Tier 2 talent. Down from Tier 3.
  • Improved Fire Nova is now a Tier 3 talent. Up from Tier 2.
  • Elemental Warding now reduces magical damage instead of all damage.
  • Ancestral Knowledge is now named Acuity and Increases your critical strike chance with all spells and attacks by 1/2/3%.
  • Convection now Reduces the mana cost of your damaging offensive spells.

Enhancement
  • Heroism's "Exhausted" debuff now also affects Time Warp (Mage)
  • Static Shock now procs from Primal Strike, Stormstrike, or Lava Lash (Old - All melee attacks and abilities). Chance to proc increased from 2/4/6% to 15/30/45%.
  • Totemic Reach *New* - Increases the radius of your totems' effects by 15/30%.

Restoration
  • Totemic Focus is now a 2-Ranks talent, down from 3-Ranks. Now also increases the duration of your totems by 20/40%.
  • Cleansing Waters *New* - When your Cleanse Spirit successfully removes a harmful effect, you also heal the target for [ 1093 to 1164 ]/[ 2187 to 2330 ].
1 minute hex is awesome.
Smart searing is nice.
Looks like Fire Nova is definitely not in or rotation anymore.
Ancestral Knowledge isnt as painful to take.
Heroism?  ITS CALLED BLOODLUST FFS!
Two talent points to increase the totems radius? Just increase it already We dont have the points to spend. If we skip improved shields we can take it. Or at least combine it with Totemic vigor.

Monday, August 2, 2010

At least it isnt just me.

So I've really noticed a pretty huge difference on parses say between a Saurfang and a Professor Putricide, or Blood Princes.  My dps on those fights is pretty bad.  Now I've never claimed to be a great player. Quite frankly I consider myself barely adequate. I do my research and know how to gear and spec, and what type of a priority to use, but I'm old, I grew up playing pac-man, not halo. I don't have the fast twitch reflexes of a spider monkey hopped up on red-bull, like a lot of players.  So seeing this post from GC makes me feel a bit better.

Enhancement

Enhance does fine on stationary fights like Saurfang and Festergut, but drops behind on heavy movement fights, and unfortunately the fight that counts the most has a lot of movement.


But that's not a totem problem. That's because so much of Enhancement's dps is tied up in getting procs on quick attacks. If a warrior has to move, it may not hurt them as much because their abilities are on longer cooldowns anyway and they can even store up on the rage. For energy classes it's even better because they can just unload when they do get back in range. But Enhancement just lost out on those procs, and they aren't coming back.


We're okay with some specs doing better on some fights than others, but we think Enhancement suffers a little too much when they have to move (and they aren't the only ones - Balance druids and even Elementals are in a similar bucket). We're trying to address this in Cataclysm without removing what it is that players like about Enhance.


But again, this doesn't have a lot to do with totems. They might have to drop their totems again, but that dps loss is arguably neglibile compared to the loss of not being able to deal damage for short times.

He goes on to talk about buffs.

Why does a DK not have to choose between horn of winter and desecration?

Because that is pretty much all the DK gets.


The shaman on the other hand gets to choose among Strength of Earth Totem, Windfury Totem, Wrath of Air Totem, Flametongue Totem, Tremor Totem, Healing Stream Totem, resistance Totems and Earthbind Totem, which doesn't even count Bloodlust / Heroism, and things like Unleashed Rage or Elemental Oath. If your buff was as competitive as theirs and you had so much versatility, we fear we'd see raids with many, many shaman in them. As it is, there's still a good chance for 3 shaman in a 25-player raid, while the DKs might get 2 slots if they're lucky.


You should get a slot because you are a good player, not because your buff rules. (Source)


Shamans are Mandatory


Throughout the history of WoW, the problem has typically been that shaman (and paladin to be fair) bring too much utility and are therefore considered too mandatory. They started out in vanilla as buff classes -- the guys you bring who don't really do much themselves but bring buffs and debuffs that make every other class perform better. You couldn't for example just stack your raid with rogues and mages because their performance would be low without the shaman and paladins -- and before LK you had to bring enough to stick one in every group.


Now, we decided to change that design because we didn't think it felt very satisfying to be the buff bot spec who got brought along as if the player were some kind of scroll or flask to improve the "real players" performance. On the other hand, we knew it would be really brutal to the shaman and paladin to just rip away all of their utility and give them the typical 2 or so raid buffs that most other classes or spec get.


But we've definitely eroded it a little, and I'm not going to apologize much for that because we want to give players flexibility -- and flexibility means you can do a raid, especially a 10-player one, without a shaman or paladin. Nobody should be mandatory, except for a tank and a few healers. Nobody should be left out either, but the specs who got left out in LK did so because of low dps -- Arms, Frost mage and Subtlety rogue. Shaman did fine.


Believe me, I have thought long and hard about scrapping the entire buff / debuff system because players focus on it too much. But I know that if we did that, players would then focus too much on damage per second and healing per second of the best players out there. We also think it would be unfortunate to lose that sense of being so much more powerful in a group than you are solo.


For now, in Cataclysm, we are just sharing even more of the buffs and debuffs across a wide gamut, especially very powerful ones like Bloodlust and Battle Rez, and chilling out the impact of some of the more potent ones, say Sunder and Curse of Elements, while also cutting back on the sheer number of buffs brought by say the Ret paladin and Balance druid.


I am much more interested in discussions about say shaman dps totems and healing totems than I am about buff totems, because we believe the latter have much less to do with either your getting to raid or your raid being successful.

Still doesn't make me hate Time Warp any less.

They brought mastery back in the beta.
Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

•Elemental - Grants a 20% chance for Elemental Overload to occur. Elemental Overload causes a Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or Lava Burst spell you cast to trigger a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes 60% of normal damage and no threat. Chance to trigger increased further by mastery rating.
•Enhancement - Increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.
•Restoration - Increases the potency of your direct healing spells by up to 20%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Healing increased further by mastery rating.

The change from nature to elemental is pretty big. With Lava Burst now on Maelstrom Weapon, and the change to Lava Lash our Fire Damage is going to be close to equal to our nature damage I'm guessing.

GC talks totems

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

Totems
We're fine with totem health given how easy totems are to replace. We also think it's fine to have to (sometimes) choose between a buff totem and a non-buff totem given how many different things a shaman can do.


However, we are going to increase buff totem range (and possibly other totem range) and we have figured out a way to make Searing Totem attack your target, instead of a random and probably inappropriate target. (Source)

Yay! with the number of high movement fights in ICC I find myself out of range of my totems alot.  And since searing will be out normal fire totem, having it be 'smart' is pretty huge as well.

Friday, July 23, 2010

More updates.

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Elemental
•Shamanism is now a primary skill.
•Elemental Mastery no longer shares a cooldown with Nature's Swiftness and now also increases your Fire, Frost, and Nature damage by 15% for the duration of the spell.

Enhancement
•Shamanistic Rage reduces the mana cost of your skills, totems, and offensive spells by 90 for 15 sec.
•Ancestral Swiftness is back as a Tier 2 talent

As I edited my previous post to indicate, Ancestal swiftness is not being eliminated. Woot!

I'm a bit confused by the SR change. I'm hoping this is in addition to the normal mana regen rather than as replacement. But if so then its pretty useless, well at least in PvE, as the regen more than fills my bar.  I can see the being helpful in PvP though.  But to tell you the truth I'm kinda of tired of the developers shoving to many things into SR. First it was just used for regaining mana, then it added Damage Reduction, Then there is the T10 set bonus  of 12% additional damage, now its mana cost reduction.  Its gotten pretty cluttered in there.

Guild updates. 
Fire and Blood is still sitting at 11/12 HM in ICC. Heroic Sindragosa is giving us issues. Mainly with healers. We seem to need 8 of them in order to do the fight, and it seems like we cant ever get that many on when we get to her. So we end up having to kill her on normal which means no chance to work on Heroic LK.

We spent last night working on Heroic Halion.  We need a lot more work. We got to the point were we were getting to P2 but our positioning was bad, and we'd end up getting cleaved as soon as we ported down.

We have gone back and cleared some old content we never got to before.  I'd missed the time we went back for Algalon, so I picked up Astral Walker a couple of months ago. That title is a lot rarer than Kingslayer on QD, so I decided to wear that.  We also FINALLY got Heroic Anub down. Eight months late, but he's down. And FnB is the only guild on server with that kill. I guess no one else is sadistic enough to make their raiders  go back there. That fight nearly broke us back in the day. It probably cost us 10 people quitting or transferring.

Oh and our 10 man team got Heroic LK. I don't have time for 10 mans along with 25's so grats to them. Hopefully we'll get him on 25 soon.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

New Beta Build

There is a new beta build out there and I'm not to pleased.

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)



Elemental
•Elemental Devastation is now an Enhancement talent.
•Ancestral Knowledge is now an Elemental talent.
•Improved Lava Lash is now a 2 Ranks talent (Down from 3). Increases the damage of your Lava Lash ability by 15/30%, and by an additional 10/20% for each of your applications of Searing Flames on the target, consuming those applications in the process.
Enhancement
•Improved Shields is now a Tier 1 talent. Down from Tier 2.
•Ancestral Swiftness is gone.
•Frozen Power *New* - 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, 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
•Earth Shield is now trained at level 10. (Down from 50)

Lets start at the beginning.
Elemental Devastation and Ancestral Knowledge swapping trees makes a ton of sense, on the surface at least. AK is of very little use to Enhancement, and was only a filler talents. Elemental Devastation on the other hand was something we all took, and I doubt many Elementals took.

But the issue know is that instead of spending your valuable talent points on something useful in T1 so you can access T2, you are forced to waste 2 points on  either Convection or AK .

Improved Lava Lash is still Enhance,  Costing  1 less point is nice. Although I don't recall if its for the same  bonus as before.

Imp shields is still to costly. Same bonus as the old 3 point talents, with half the points available. Should either be reduced to 2 points or the effect needs to be boosted.

Frozen Power is a nice PvP talent. Nothing I've seen indicates we'd use frostbrand in PvE, and while having a root would be nice on some fights, the 15 yard range really limits its use in PvE.

But I can live with all those changes. The change I'm most disappointed in is the removal of Ancestral Swiftness. No 15% movement bonus, and no instant GW. BOOOO! 

I was looking forward to a lot of things in Cataclysm. Path of the Titans, Guild Talents, Masteries from Talents, getting a 21 point talent in an offspec, Ancestral Swiftness, Indoor Ghost Wolf. Well at least we still have that last one... for now.


ETA:  From Ghostcrawler
Ancestral Swiftness was not removed. Sorry for any confusion. It is still in the second tier of Enhancement, available to all.

Well that's a relief.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Developer Chat

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)


Q. Do you consider Primal Wisdom or Shamanistic Rage "required" so Enhancement shaman won't run out of mana? Is running out of mana intended to be a danger?


A. Yes, once high-level Enhancement shaman have all their abilities and are using them in sequence, Primal Wisdom will be required to sustain a rotation. We’d like to let shaman use Shamanistic Rage for survival or emergency situations, rather than assuming rotational use for mana.

Q. With the new implemented Lava Surge, will Chain Lightning become useful for multiple mobs only?

A. It always has had, and will continue to have, some niche use as a gap-filler against single targets when Lava Burst has around a second left on its cooldown. Lava Surge won’t always proc, but it’s likely to be more of a multi-target ability, yes.


Q. Will Spirit Link make a return after all? Ghostcrawler mentioned he'd like to bring it back, but no sighting of it yet.

A. Anything’s possible, but at this point it isn’t looking good for our beloved talent…. If we changed it to be an absorb or a different sort of mechanic, then it wouldn’t be the iconic Spirit Link that we all remember from Warcraft III. But that core damage-sharing mechanic poses major design and balance challenges (e.g. does a rogue really want to start taking damage suddenly because the shaman in his group decided to link him to the tank?).

Q. With Elemental Fury becoming a passive for Elemental shaman, will Enhancement be seeing more physical based damage?


A. Spells like Lava Burst and shocks will always be a big part of Enhancement’s damage, but yes, we’d like weapon attacks like Stormstrike and Lava Lash to be a larger part of Enhancement Shamans’ damage in Cataclysm. N.B.: Mental Quickness is getting a boost to help compensate for the loss of Elemental Fury.


Q. Are there any plans of making totems utility only (e.g. Earthbind, Grounding) and turning buff totems into auras or cast buffs?

A. Not at this time. We’re aware of the concerns regarding the use of buff totems among some shaman, but the positional aspect is something that we consider inherent to the nature of totems. By increasing totem durations, consolidating some buff totems, and introducing the multi-drop totem spells in Wrath of the Lich King, we’ve attempted to mitigate as much of the inconvenience as possible, while preserving the core gameplay of paying attention to where totems are being dropped.

Q. How does Deep Healing work? Will it heal severely less at high health that it is difficult to keep a target at a safe level of health?

A. No, view it as a perk that boosts your heals when that extra healing is most needed. It’s a class-specific bonus, so healing overall won’t be balanced around the expectation that Deep Healing applies.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

New Talent Calculator is up.


So they are solving our mana issues with Primal Wisdom, a new  4th Tier Talent.
Combing Improved Ghost Wolf with Ancestral Swiftness is a winner as well.

BUT the only way to get that talent is to Forego Improved Fire Nova.


Edited: Adding in the level 10 abilties.
Shaman - Enhancement

A totemic warrior who strikes foes with weapons imbued with elemental power.
•Dual Wield
•Mental Quickness
•Dual Wield Specialization
•Lava Lash


also for those who care the lesser trees.
Shaman - Elemental

A spellcaster who harnesses the destructive forces of nature and the elements.
•Eye of the Storm
•Thunderstorm
•Elemental Fury
Shaman - Restoration
A healer who calls upon ancestral spirits and the cleansing power of water to mend allies? wounds.
•Earth Shield
•Purification (+healing)
•Healing Focus
•Meditation

Monday, June 28, 2010

WF cooldown going away?

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)


Dual Wield Talent

We're not quite ready to talk about it yet, but imagine that the DW talent is accesible to Enhance early enough to be useful but not to Elemental and Resto. We're also looking at making enchants unique, which would let us drop the WF internal cooldown low enough that fast weapons might be more attractive. (Source)


Seeing as we haven't used dual WF since TBC this would be great. I guess they need to keep a short cd in there so it doesn't proc itself.   More options is usually  a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Ghostcrawler on Enhancemnt preview.

Enhancing Totems will be changing to provide an additional shaman-only buff when the buff totems are down. Technically that implementation is tricky so we just haven't finished it yet. In general you are correct that there should not be "buff my buff" talents. There are a few exceptions where a buff is elevated from a minor bonus to a more serious bonus (Elemental's spell power for instance).


Mental Quickness is something Enhancement and Retribution need in order to be a mana-using spec without mana on gear. In general you won't see stat conversion talents, though warriors and DKs might keep their armor conversions. We'll see.

We may need additional mana restore mechanics than we have now for Enhancement, but that will take some more testing.

We're not sure what we'll do with Ancestral Swiftness. We made that talent before you could wolf indoors, so it may be less attractive now.

The Searing Totem mechanic is obviously something new and will take some iteration.

Someone mentioned Imp Windfury Totem. I think you're looking at an old talent tree.

Enhance is intended as a dual-wield tree. We aren't going to support a competitive 2H spec. We aren't going to prohibit it, but it won't be competitive.

There are going to be some hard choices in all the trees. It's not our design intent that you scoop up every single talent in your tree

I personal buff for dropping a totem... I like that  Indoor GW is nice. It would be a tough choice to me. 30% when in wolf form plus costs a GCD, or 15% all the time with Ancestral swiftness.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Cataclysm Talent Previews

Elemental Talent Tree




Tier 1 (Left to Right)



•Convection (5 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your shock, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst, and Wind Shear spells by 2/4/6/8/10%.

•Concussion (5 ranks available) - Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Thunderstorm, Lava Burst and shock spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.



Tier 2 (Left to Right)



•Call of Flame (3 ranks available) - Increases the damage done by your Fire Totems and Fire Nova by 5/10/15% and damage done by your Lava Burst spell by 2/4/6%.

•Elemental Warding (3 ranks available) - Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.

•Elemental Devastation (3 ranks available) - Your non-periodic offensive spell critical strikes will increase your chance to get a critical strike with melee attacks by 3/6/9% for 10 seconds.



Tier 3 (Left to Right)



•Reverberation (5 ranks available) - Reduces the cooldown of your shock spells and Wind Shear by 0.2/0.4/0.6/0.8/1 seconds.

•Elemental Focus (1 rank available) - After landing a non-periodic critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature damage spell, you enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next 2 damage or healing spells by 40%.

•Elemental Fury (5 ranks available) - Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Searing and Magma Totems and your Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 20/40/60/80/100%.



Tier 4 (Left to Right)



•Improved Fire Nova (2 ranks available) - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova by 10/20% and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.

•Eye of the Storm (3 ranks available) - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst and Hex spells by 23/46/70%.



Tier 5 (Left to Right)



•Elemental Reach (2 ranks available) - Increases the range of your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Fire Nova, and Lava Burst spells by 3/6 yards, increases the radius of your Thunderstorm spell by 10/20%, and increases the range of your Flame Shock by 7/15 yards.

•Elemental Mastery (1 rank available) - Requires 1 point in Elemental Focus - Instant - 3 min cooldown - When activated, your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst spell becomes an instant cast spell. In addition, you gain 15% spell haste for 15 seconds. Elemental Mastery shares a cooldown with Nature's Swiftness.

•Unrelenting Storm (3 ranks available) - Regenerate mana equal to 4/8/12% of your intellect every 5 seconds, even while casting.



Tier 6 (Left to Right)



•Elemental Precision (3 ranks available) - Increases your chance to hit with Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 1/2/3% and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 33/66/100% of your spirit.

•Lightning Mastery (5 ranks available) - Requires 5 points in Elemental Fury - Reduces the cast time of your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Lava Burst spells by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 seconds.



Tier 7 (Left to Right)



•Storm, Earth and Fire (3 ranks available) - Reduces the cooldown of our Chain Lighting spell by .75/1.5/2.5 seconds. In addition, your Earthbind Totem has a 33/66/100% chance to root targets for 5 seconds when cast, and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 20/40/60%.

•Elemental Oath (2 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Elemental Mastery - While Clearcasting from Elemental Focus is active, you deal 5/10% more spell damage. In addition, party and raid members within 100 yards receive a 3/5% bonus to their critical strike chance.

•Wrathful Totems [PH] (1 rank available) - Causes your Fire totems to increase the spell power of your party and raid memebers within 100 yards by 10%.



Tier 8 (Left to Right)



•Booming Echoes (2 ranks available) - Reduces the cooldown of your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 1/2 seconds, and increases the direct damage done by your Flame Shock and Frost spells by an additional 10/20%.

•Acute Overload (3 ranks available) - Increases the damage dealt by your Elemental Overload spells by 7/14/20%.



Tier 9 (Left to Right)



•Astral Shift (3 ranks available) - When stunned, feared or silenced you shift into the Astral Plane, reducing all damage taken by 10/20/30% for the duration of the stun, fear or silence effect.

•Earthquake (1 rank available) - 20149 Mana - 35 yd range - 1.5 sec cast - 15 sec cooldown - You cause the earth at the target location to tremble and break, dealing 267 Physical damage every 1 second to enemies within a 10-yard radius, with a 40% chance of knocking down affected targets. Lasts 10 seconds.

•Lava Flows (3 ranks available) - Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst spells 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 seconds.



Tier 10 (Left to Right)



•Shamanism (5 ranks available) - Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells gain an additional 4/8/12/16/20% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 5/10/15/20/25% of your bonus damage effects.

•Lava Surge (3 ranks available) - Gives your Flame Shock periodic damage ticks a 10/20/30% chance to reset the cooldown of your Lava Burst spell.



Tier 11



•Thunderstorm (1 rank available) - Instant - 45 sec cooldown - You call down a bolt of lightning, energizing you and damaging nearby enemies within 11 yards. Restores 8% mana to you and deals 1794 to 2038 Nature damage to all nearby enemies, knocking them back 20 yards. This spell is usable while stunned.





Enhancement Talent Tree



Tier 1 (Left to Right)



•Focused Strikes (5 ranks available) - Increases the damage dealt by your Primal Strike and Stormstrike abilities by 8/16/24/32/40%.

•Ancestral Knowledge (5 ranks available) - Increases your maximum mana by 3/6/9/12/15%.



Tier 2 (Left to Right)



•Improved Shields (3 ranks available) - Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Water Shield orbs by 5%, and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.

•Enhancing Totems (3 ranks available) - Increases the effect of your Strength of Earth and Flametongue Totems by 5/10/15%.

•Improved Ghost Wolf (2 ranks available) - Reduces the cast time of your Ghost Wolf spell by 1/2 seconds.



Tier 3 (Left to Right)



•Elemental Weapons (3 ranks available) - Increases the damage caused by your Windfury Weapon effect by 13/27/40%, the spell damage on your Flametongue Weapon by 10/20/30%, and the bonus healing on your Earthliving Weapon by 10/20/30%.

•Shamanistic Focus (1 rank available) - Reduces the mana cost of your shock spells by 45%.

•Toughness (5 ranks available) - Increases your stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%, and reduces the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 6/12/18/24/30%.



Tier 4 (Left to Right)



•Anticipation (3 ranks available) - Increases your chance to dodge by an additional 1/2/3%, and reduces the duration of all Disarm effects used against you by 16/25/50%. This does not stack with other Disarm duration-reducing effects.

•Flurry (5 ranks available) - Increases your attack speed by 6/12/18/24/30% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike.

•Ancestral Swiftness (3 ranks available) - Increases movement speed by 5/10/15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.



Tier 5 (Left to Right)



•Dual Wield (1 rank available) - Allows one-hand and off-hand weapons to be equipped in the off-hand.

•Searing Flames (5 ranks available) - Causes the Searing Bolts from your Searing Totem to have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to set their targets aflame, dealing damage equal to the Searing Bolt's impact damage over 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.



Tier 6 (Left to Right)



•Dual Wield Specialization (3 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Dual Wield - Increases your chance to hit while dual wielding by an additional 2/4/6%.

•Spirit Weapons (1 rank available) - Gives a chance to parry enemy melee attacks and reduces all threat generated by 30%.

•Frozen Power (2 ranks available) - Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Lash and shock spells by 5% on targets afflicted by your Frostbrand Attack effect, and your Frost Shock has a 50/100% chance to root the target in ice for 5 seconds when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.



Tier 7 (Left to Right)



•Unleashed Rage (3 ranks available) - Increases your expertise by 3/6/9, and increases all party and raid members' attack power by 5/7/10% while within 100 yards of the shaman.

•Stormstrike (1 rank available) - 1874 Mana - Melee Range - Instant cast - 8 sec cooldown - Requires Melee Weapon - Instantly attack with both weapons, dealing 132 to 133% weapon damage. In addition, the shaman's Nature damage dealt to the target is increased by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds.

•Totemic Vigor (3 ranks available) - Increases the health of your totems by 3/7/10% or your maximum health.



Tier 8 (Left to Right)



•Static Shock (3 ranks available) - When you deal damage with melee attacks and abilities while having Lightning Shield active, you have a 2/4/6% chance to deal damage equal to a Lightning Shield orb without consuming a charge.

•Lava Lash (1 rank available) - Requires 1 point in Dual Wield - 937 Mana - Melee Range - Instant cast - 10 sec cooldown - Requires Melee Weapon - You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 150% off-hand weapon damage. Damage is increased by 40% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue.

•Improved Stormstrike (2 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Stormstrike - When you Stormstrike, you have a 50/100% chance to immediately gain 35% of your base mana.



Tier 9 (Left to Right)



•Mental Quickness (3 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast shaman spells by 2/4/6%, and increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power.

•Shamanistic Rage (1 rank available) - Instant - 1 min cooldown - Reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 15% of your attack power. This spell is usable while stunned. Lasts 15 seconds.



Tier 10 (Left to Right)



•Improved Lava Lash (3 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Lava Lash - Increases the damage of your Lava Lash ability by 10/20/30%, and by an additional 7/14/20% for each of your applications of Searing Flames on the target, consuming those applications in the process.

•Maelstrom Weapon (5 ranks available) - When you deal damage with a melee weapon, you have a chance (higher than rank 1/2/3/4) to reduce the cast time of your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Hex, or any healing spell by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 30 seconds.



Tier 11



•Feral Spirit (1 rank available) - 2698 Mana - Instant cast - 3 min cooldown - Summons two Spirit Wolves under the command of the Shaman, lasting 45 seconds.





Restoration Talent Tree



Tier 1 (Left to Right)



•Improved Healing Wave (5 ranks available) - Reduces the casting time of your Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave spells by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 seconds.

•Totemic Focus (5 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your totems by 5/10/15/20/25%.



Tier 2 (Left to Right)



•Improved Reincarnation (2 ranks available) - Reduces the cooldown of your Reincarnation spell by 7/15 minutes and increases the amount of health and mana recovered when reincarnating by an additional 10/20%.

•Healing Grace (3 ranks available) - Reduces the threat generated by your healing spells by 5/10/15% and reduces the chance your helpful spells and damage-over-time effects will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.

•Tidal Focus (5 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your healing spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.



Tier 3 (Left to Right)



•Improved Water Shield (3 ranks available) - You have a 33/66/100% chance to instantly gain mana as if you consumed a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave or Riptide spells, a 20/40/60% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Lesser Healing Wave spell, and a 10/20/30% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Chain Heal spell.

•Healing Focus (3 ranks available) - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting any shaman healing spells by 23/46/70%.

•Tidal Force (1 rank available) - Instant - 3 min cooldown - Increases the critical effect chance of your healing spells by 60%. Each critical heal reduces the chance by 20%. Lasts 20 seconds.

•Ancestral Healing (3 ranks available) - Reduces your target's physical damage taken by 3/7/10% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from one of your healing spells.



Tier 4 (Left to Right)



•Restorative Totems (3 ranks available) - Increases the effect of your Mana Spring Totem by 7/12/20%, and increases the amount healed by your Healing Stream Totem by 15/30/45%.

•Focused Insight (5 ranks available) - After casting any shock spell, your next heal's mana cost is reduced by 15/30/45/60/75% of the cost of the shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 5/10/15/20/25%.



Tier 5 (Left to Right)



•Healing Way (3 ranks available) - Increases the amount healed by your Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave spells by 8/16/25%.

•Nature's Swiftness (1 rank available) - Instant - 2 min cooldown - When activated, your next Nature spell with a base casting time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell. Nature's Swiftness shares a cooldown with Elemental Mastery.

•Focused Mind (3 ranks available) - Reduces the duration of any Silence or Interrupt effects used against the shaman by 10/20/30%. This effect does not stack with other similar effects.



Tier 6 (Left to Right)



•Ancestral Resolve (2 ranks available) - Reduces damage taken while casting spells by 5/10%.

•Purification (5 ranks available) - Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 2/4/6/8/10%.



Tier 7 (Left to Right)



•Nature's Guardian (5 ranks available) - Whenever a damaging attack brings you below 30% health, your maximum health is increased by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds, and your threat level towards the attacker is reduced. 30-second cooldown.

•Mana Tide Totem (1 rank available) - Requires 3 points in Restorative Totems - Instant - 5 min cooldown - Summons a Mana Tide Totem with 10% of the caster's health at the feet of the caster for 12 seconds that restores 6% of total mana every 3 seconds to group members within 30 yards.

•Improved Cleanse Spirit (1 rank available) - Requires 5 points in Purification - Empowers your Cleanse Spirit spell to also remove a magic effect from a friendly target.



Tier 8 (Left to Right)



•Blessing of the Eternals (2 ranks available) - Increases the critical effect chance of your spells by 2/4%, and increases the chance to apply the Earthliving heal-over-time effect on the target by 40/80% when they are at or under 35% total health.

•Improved Chain Heal (2 ranks available) - Increases the amount healed by your Chain Heal spell by 10/20%.

•Nature's Blessing (3 ranks available) - Increases your healing by an amount equal to 5/10/15% of your intellect.



Tier 9 (Left to Right)



•Ancestral Awakening (3 ranks available) - When you critically heal with a single-target direct heal, you summon an ancestral spirit to aid you, instantly healing the party or raid target with the lowest health within 40 yards for 10/20/30% of the amount healed.

•Earth Shield (1 rank available) - 8635 Mana - 40 yd range - Instant cast - Protects the target with an earthen shield, reducing casting or channeling time lost when damaged by 30% and causing attacks to heal the shielded target for 1609. This effect can only occur once every few seconds. 6 charges. Lasts 10 minutes. Earth Shield can only be placed on one target at a time and only one Elemental Shield can be active on a target at a time.

•Improved Earth Shield (2 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Earth Shield - Increases the amount of charges for your Earth Shield by 1/2, and increases the healing done by your Earth Shield by 5/10%.



Tier 10



•Tidal Waves (5 ranks available) - When you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to lower the cast time of your Healing Wave spell by 30% and increase the critical effect chance of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 25%, until two such spells have been cast. In addition, your Greater Healing Wave gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus healing effects and your Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave gain an additional 2/4/6/8/10% of your bonus healing effects.



Tier 11



•Riptide (1 rank available) - 6590 Mana - 40 yd range - Instant cast - 6 sec cooldown - Heals a friendly target for 2397 and another 3780 over 15 seconds. Your next Chain Heal cast on that primary target within 15 (yards, seconds?) will consume the heal-over-time effect and increase the amount of the Chain Heal by 25%.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Can you feel the cold hand of death upon your heart?

So, That was a bit of a surprise. We'd taken a look at hard mode Sindragosa a few times, but mostly to just get an idea of how to handle the frost tomb, placement and the like. Last night was out first full night of working on her. I figured we'd spend a couple hours wiping before swapping to normal and downing her and the LK. It took us a couple of goes to get the spacing down on tombs but after that we made it to Phase 3. Then we had a 5% wipe.  We had this! It took about 3 hours, but we had some really good goes including one wipe at 100k.  Finally everything came together, no one panicked and down she went. FnB is sitting at 11/12 ICC Heroic.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Good News Everyone!



Professor Putricide Heroic is dead!


This makes Fire and Blood 10/12 ICC heroic, and officially first on QD. We had been unofficailly first since Perdition folded, but this was our first actual realm first kill.  Sure its months behind the hardcores, but I'm happy all the same.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Mastery Bonuses

Shaman


Elemental

Spell Damage % 0.157 51 8.01 Increases the damage done by your spells by a percentage.

Spell Crit % 0.157 51 8.01 Increases your spell critical strike chance by a percentage.

Elemental Overload % 0.5 51 25.5 Grants a percentage chance for Elemental Overload to occur. Elemental Overload causes a Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or Lava Burst spell you cast to trigger a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes half damage and no threat.



Enhancement


Physical Damage % 0.157   51   8.01%      Increases all physical damage you deal by a percentage.


Melee Haste         % 0.157    51   8.01%      Grants a percentage of melee haste.


Nature Damage    % 0.393   51   20.04 %   Increases all nature damage done by a percentage.



Restoration

Healing % 0.157 51 8.01 Increases all your healing spells by a percentage.

Meditation 0.981 51 50.03 Grants a percentage of your out of combat mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat.

Deep Healing % 0.393 51 20.04 Increases the potency of your heal over time spells by up to a percentage
So with a 51 point Enhance build we are looking at 8% Physical damage, 8% Melee Haste, and 20% Nature Damage.  I'm still hoping for that last bonus to be changed to elemental rather than nature damage.
Looking at the most recent Saurfang parse about 19% of MY (not including totems) damage is Fire and 19% is Nature.  If you include totems then the % Fire damage goes up even more.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Shadowmourne






So we got one last night. Server first for Gohst. Yeah I know he spelled it wrong. Anyway big grats to him anyway. I'm very happy for him. I think it meant more to him than it would have to any of the other candidates we could have given it to.

We also got Hard Mode Lady Deathwhisper down. Its a difficult fight, but not to difficult. Just a lot of running around avoid the exploding ghosts.  Just requires people to not screw up.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Cataclysm leaks

Lots of screen shots.
Profession updates
Talent Calculator


The big ones are the enchanting updates lots of new possibilities, especially in weapon enchants

•Enchant Weapon - Landslide - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase attack power by 120 for 10 sec when striking in melee. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52776. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 6, Item #52719 x 4, Item #52721 x 2, Item #52722 x 4


•Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase spell power by 40 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52774. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 12, Item #52721 x 2, Item #52722 x 4

•Enchant Weapon - Windwalk - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase dodge rating by 60 for 10 sec when striking in melee. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52775. / Reagents: Item #52719 x 6, Item #52721 x 2, Item #52722 x 4

•Enchant Weapon - Heartsong - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase haste rating by 350 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52761. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 2, Item #52719 x 3, Item #52721

•Enchant Weapon - Hurricane - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase haste rating by 350 for 15 sec when casting spells or striking in melee. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52760. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 7, Item #52721

•Enchant Weapon - Elemental Slayer - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes disrupt elementals when struck, dealing Arcane damage and silencing them for 5 sec. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52755. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 5, Item #52719

•Enchant Weapon - Avalanche - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes deal Nature damage to an enemy struck in melee. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52748. / Reagents: Item #52719 x 4

•Enchant Weapon - Mending - Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes heal you when striking an enemy. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52747. / Reagents: Item #52555, Item #52719
 
Landslide seems to be the default melee enchant.  But I can see that others might be as good or better in some situations. Hurricane/Heartsong for instance if haste continues to be a high value stat for us. Avalanche could be great for us depending on how Mastery works.  Mending  could be a boon to PvP
 
Boots are getting a lot of different options as well
 
•Enchant Boots - Assassin's Step - Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and Agility by 25. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52781. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 3, Item #52719 x 9, Item #52722


•Enchant Boots - Lavawalker - Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and mastery rating by 35. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52782. / Reagents: Item #52719 x 10, Item #52722

•Enchant Boots - Mastery - Permanently enchant boots to increase mastery rating by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52771. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 10, Item #52719 x 3

•Enchant Boots - Precision - Permanently enchant boots to increase hit rating by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52769. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 8, Item #52719 x 4

•Enchant Boots - Major Agility - Permanently enchant boots to increase Agility by 35. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52757. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 4, Item #52719 x 2

•Enchant Boots - Haste - Permanently enchant boots to increase haste rating by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52750. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 2, Item #52719

•Enchant Boots - Earthen Vitality - Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and Stamina by 30. Requires a level 300 or higher item. Creates Item #52743. / Reagents: Item #52555 x 2
 
The have added more options to the speed boost than just Stamina.
 
The most revealing thing to me is the talent changes. Its obviously subject to major changes, as several abilities they said they were eliminating are still there, but here it is for your perusal
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#,,11927
 
New Enhancement talents:
 
Focused Strikes : Tier1 : 5/5 increases Stormstrike damage by 40%.
 
Ancestral Swiftness : Tier4 : 3/3 increases movement speed by 15%  does not stack.
 
Searing Flames : Tier6 : 5/5 causes bolts from your searing totem to have a 100% chance to set the target aflame  dealing damage equal to the impact damage over 15s. Stacks up to 5 times.
 
Totemic Vigor : Tier7 : 3/3 increase the health of your totems by 10% of your maximum health.
 
Improved Lava Lash : Tier10 : 3/3 Increases lava lash damage by 30%, and by an additional 20% per ea of your stacks of searing flames, consuming those applications.
 
I like the Searing totem changes. Extra SS damage is nice, and Lava Lash suddenly got a lot more interesting.  Totemic vigor is purely PvP, but ancestral swiftness is interesting. 15% vs 8% for the boot enchant. I'm guessing this will be worth spending the points on.