My e-peen is huge!

Who wants to touch me?

Fire and Blood had a pretty good raid night on Wednesday. We had gotten fairly close on Dreamwalker HM last week, so we wanted to concentrate on that fight this week. Seeing that we'd spent a couple of hours on Saurfang last week, we had been planning on just killing him in Normal mode, so we made sure we had time to kill LK, since we ran out of time last week. But since Hellscream's Warcry had been buffed to 15% we decided to give HM Saurfang a try or two. We ended up 1 shotting him.

Dreamwalker took 3-4 goes but we got her down/up too. So we are now sitting 8/12 HM ICC. That's like #900 something US, but its tops by far on Quel'dorei, since the previous top guild folded.



No one seemed to want any of the drops, on Wednesday, so I ended up taking several pieces. Band of the Bone Colossus was a very small upgrade to the Seal of Many Mouths so I took it. Rotface dropped Dual-Bladed Pauldrons, which are best in slot. Since I dont have any of the 277 Tier pieces I thought I'd swap in the Tier gloves for the shoulders to keep my 4pc and use these, as no one else wanted to spend dkp on them. But those plans changed when Festergut dropped a Carapace of Forgotten Kings, which of course no one else wanted.  So yesterday I used Rawr and Enhsim to figure out which combination of gear would be the best.  Turns out that swapping the 264 gloves in along with the Carapace was going to be best. So the Pauldrons sit in my bank.  This goes back to set bonuses being just to damn good these days. Its just not worth it to use offset pieces.

Of course my luck continued last night, as Blood Princes finally dropped Keleseth's Seducer, so now I've got the matched set of 277 fist weapons, Yay! It will be awhile before we are farming LK hard mode for Axes, so I'm likely done with weapons for now.

Shaman Q&A

We know there are a lot of additional questions and we'll do our best to answer what we can. Keep in mind, this is merely a preview of things to come.

Q: Will Maelstrom Weapon include Lava Burst?
A: That’s the plan currently.

Q: How can Elemental Overload proc Lava Burst when Lava Burst already hits so hard in PvP?
A: We’re going to change almost every number in Cataclysm to adjust for everything from single ranks of spells to larger health pools to new combat ratings. With much higher health pools, hopefully burst damage will go back to being a tool and not the only way to win matches.

Q: What happens to the Lightning Overload talent?
A: It provides a bonus to Elemental Overload.

Q: Elemental doesn’t want to drop Searing Totem at range. We want to drop Magma Totem.
A: Searing Totem needs to do more single-target damage than Magma. That said, if we’re happy with the ability to occasionally place totems at range there is no reason it couldn’t apply to any totem. Imagine, “After using this spell, the next totem you drop will appear at the feet of your target.”

Q: Will Elemental have to spend talent points just to get the Spirit to hit conversion?
A: It will be bundled with another attractive talent, such as Elemental Precision.

Q: Will Unleash Weapon work with Frostbrand?
A: Yes. We just provided some examples.

Q: Is Healing Rain channeled?
A: No, it's not a channeled spell.

Q: Is Earthquake channeled?
A: Probably, but we’ll see.

Q: Will Unleashed Weapon consume your enchants?
A: No.

Q: Does the 10% spell power buff from Elemental scale with the shaman or the target’s spell power?
A: It will scale with the target the same as Demonic Pact and other buffs that bring the same benefit.

Q: Are you supporting two-handed weapons for Enhancement?
A: Once you start to get into the dual-wield talents, then Enhancement is a dual-wield tree.

Q: You didn’t address Enhancement survivability or mobility or X and Y!
A: This was just a preview and is not a comprehensive list of every change. Much more will be revealed in beta and much will change during beta.

Q: You didn’t answer the most important shaman question! What about Sentry Totem?
A: The Cataclysm is a time of great upheaval. Deathwing’s return to Azeroth tore a hole in the fabric of the universe that tragically resulted in the ultimate and irrevocable destruction of all Sentry Totems. Level designers are contemplating a shrine for the Sentry Totem near that of Uther the Lightbringer. We know shaman players will greet this news with grief, but as with all class changes we’ll have to get into beta before anything is final.

Enhancement in Cataclysm

Ok, so the preview brings up a lot of class changes only some of which impact Enhancement.

I'll go over them one by one.

Spells

Primal Strike (available at level 3): Primal Strike is a new weapon-based attack that every shaman will learn very early in the game. Our goal with this ability is to make leveling as Enhancement rather than as Elemental more viable, since many key Enhancement talents become available at fairly high levels

This is clarified further along in the thread by a blue. It will be replaced by Stormstrike. So move along, nothing to see here.

Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.

Here are a few examples of effects we're considering for this ability:

- Windfury Weapon – Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 50% weapon damage and increasing the shaman's Haste for the next five swings.
- Flametongue Weapon – Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the shaman's next Fire attack by 20%.

Seems to be a straight up dps boost. A much better version of Lava Lash really, actually its more like Stormstrike with a different effect. The description makes it sound like it can be used at range. Either way it looks cool as hell.

Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

How much this is of use to Enhancement depends on that possibly. If it alows you to cast while autoattacking then I can see using this to get off a lava burst, otherwise I'd only see it being used during movemenet phases in PvE. In PvP I see this being pretty big.

Abilities
We're making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes. Shaman will have Cleanse Spirit as a baseline ability, but it will only remove curses. Restoration shaman will have a talent that will improve Cleanse Spirit so that it also removes magic. Shaman will no longer be able to remove poison.

So we get remove curse and lose remove toxins. Not a huge deal especially in PvE

Cleansing Totem will be removed from the game, as we want dispels to be a decision for players, not something done mindlessly. To that end, all dispels will cost slightly more mana, and you will waste the spell if you cast it when there is nothing to remove. (Currently, the dispel is only cast when there is something to remove, which encourages spamming 'just in case.") We will balance PvE dispelling with this new model in mind.

This is a bit of a bummer. It was nice to have as a fire and forget ability when needed on some fights.

Totem of Wrath now will replace Flametongue Totem for all shaman, and dropping this totem will buff the group's spell power by 4%. Elemental shaman will have a talent that lets all Fire totems provide +10% spell power, allowing them to drop Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. The 4% and 10% buffs will be exclusive with each other and with the warlock's Demonic Pact, so you can't benefit from all of them at once. We're also considering letting Elemental drop Searing Totem at range.

No idea how spellpower will work for us come Catacylsm. Its possible we will be dropping this from time to time if no elemental is in the raid.

We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We're considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation.

Lava Lash is already near the bottom of our priority queue. To free up our GCD's a bigger help would be to either increase the duration of Magma Totem, or better yet, increase the single target damage of Searing Totem. Frankly I think we are already pretty dynamic. I dont know that anyone else has as many abilities they use in their standard rotation as we do.

Talents

Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not Intellect.

Enhancing Totems will be replaced with Focused Strikes, which will improve the damage of the new spell Primal Strike and Stormstrike.

With the Mastery system, we're also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, Improved Windfury Totem, Mental Dexterity, Call of Thunder, Tidal Mastery, Purification, Nature's Blessing, and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents

Its almost pointless to guess at these right now as we have no idea how Blizzard will adress our Int/Mana situation. With Hunters switching from Mana to Focus, Mail likely isn't going to have Int anymore. Mental Quickness and Mental Dexterity will need to be changed. I'd like to see AK moved to either Ele or Resto. Its really doesnt fit with Enhancement. Losing both Enhancing Totems and Imp WF I don't like. It really homogonizes the buffs each spec brings.

Mastery

Enhancement
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Nature Damage : This will provide a passive bonus to the Nature damage dealt by the Enhancement shaman.

Yeah. That looks about right.

Overall its way to early to make any snap judgements. So far the only thing I'm really excited by is Unleash Weapon.

Cataclysm Shaman Preview

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we'll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you'll get an early look at some of the changes in store for the shaman class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.

New Shaman Spells

Primal Strike (available at level 3): Primal Strike is a new weapon-based attack that every shaman will learn very early in the game. Our goal with this ability is to make leveling as Enhancement rather than as Elemental more viable, since many key Enhancement talents become available at fairly high levels.

Healing Wave (level 4): While the shaman already has an ability called Healing Wave, we're adding another spell to the class's direct-healing arsenal and giving it a familiar name. The current Healing Wave will be renamed Greater Healing Wave, and the intent is for the 'new" Healing Wave to be the shaman's go-to heal. Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave will be used on a more situational basis.

Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.

Here are a few examples of effects we're considering for this ability:

- Windfury Weapon – Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 50% weapon damage and increasing the shaman's Haste for the next five swings.
- Flametongue Weapon – Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the shaman's next Fire attack by 20%.
- Earthliving Weapon – Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman's next healing spell by 20%.

Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to adding new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.


Restoration shaman and other healing classes will need to pay attention to mana more than they've had to during Wrath of the Lich King. Spirit will be the Restoration shaman's primary mana-regeneration stat.


We're making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes. Shaman will have Cleanse Spirit as a baseline ability, but it will only remove curses. Restoration shaman will have a talent that will improve Cleanse Spirit so that it also removes magic. Shaman will no longer be able to remove poison.


Cleansing Totem will be removed from the game, as we want dispels to be a decision for players, not something done mindlessly. To that end, all dispels will cost slightly more mana, and you will waste the spell if you cast it when there is nothing to remove. (Currently, the dispel is only cast when there is something to remove, which encourages spamming 'just in case.") We will balance PvE dispelling with this new model in mind.


Totem of Wrath now will replace Flametongue Totem for all shaman, and dropping this totem will buff the group's spell power by 4%. Elemental shaman will have a talent that lets all Fire totems provide +10% spell power, allowing them to drop Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. The 4% and 10% buffs will be exclusive with each other and with the warlock's Demonic Pact, so you can't benefit from all of them at once. We're also considering letting Elemental drop Searing Totem at range.


We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We're considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation.

New Talents and Talent Changes


Elemental Reach will be simplified so shaman have a more consistent spell range.


We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE.


Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept -- and so did players -- so we are trying to bring it back.


Elemental will have a deep talent that allows Spirit (which will appear on the gear they share with Restoration shaman) to boost their Hit rating.


Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not Intellect.


Enhancing Totems will be replaced with Focused Strikes, which will improve the damage of the new spell Primal Strike and Stormstrike.


With the Mastery system, we're also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, Improved Windfury Totem, Mental Dexterity, Call of Thunder, Tidal Mastery, Purification, Nature's Blessing, and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Elemental
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Elemental Overload

Enhancement
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Nature Damage

Restoration
Healing
Meditation
Deep Healing

Elemental Overload: Your direct-damage spells have a chance to proc a less powerful 'bonus" version of the spell. This will work much like the current Lightning Overload talent, but would also apply to Lava Burst.

Nature Damage: This will provide a passive bonus to the Nature damage dealt by the Enhancement shaman.

Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target's health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points.

We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

Thoughts to come

Yay Buffs!

Ghostcrawler: Upcoming Enhancement buff
We agree with some of the recent discussion about Enhancement dps. We are going to hotfix a change to the Flurry talent to increase it from 25% to 30% attack speed with 5 ranks.

We also agree that Enhancement may have survivability problems and understand that players don't necessarily feel they can afford the bonus Stamina from the Toughness talent, at least in PvE. We don't have an immediate change to deploy here, but it's something we'd like to fix and a candidate for future patches.

Sweet they are giving us our 5% back!
This will help a bit.

Incoming Cataclysm changes.

Beginning Wednesday, April 7 we will begin releasing class previews containing an overview of some of the changes currently being planned for each of the 10 World of Warcraft classes. The type of information you can expect from these posts are a list of the new spells from 80-85, the new passive mastery bonuses for all talent trees, a brief outline of some of the talent changes we're currently planning, and in some cases new low level spells for select classes.

These changes will by no means be comprehensive, and are subject to change between now and the launch of the expansion. It's also important to understand that some classes are currently further along in the development process than others, and as a result the amount of information will vary from class to class. Please do not let this frustrate you should your class be amongst those which are on the "lighter" side of things, as all classes will receive the same level of design attention before the expansion is released. Additionally we'll be providing more information for all classes, especially as we move into the beta phase.

Below is the schedule for each class:


• Shaman - April 7
• Priest - April 7
• Warlock - April 7


• Warrior - April 8
• Death Knight - April 8
• Rogue - April 8


• Hunter - April 9
• Druid - April 9
• Mage - April 9


• Paladin - April 16*

These posts are being coordinated internationally so they'll be posted at different times throughout the day and night on the given dates to give players around the world the ability to see posts made at a convenient time. This thread will be updated with links directly to each class preview as they're posted.

Sounds like they are also changing dispell mechanics.

As previously mentioned, we are providing three dispel capabilities to all healing classes as follows:


•Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
•Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
•Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
•Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

There is some trade-off that is being made in making these changes and we wanted to expand on this further.


•Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
•All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.•Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
•Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
•Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
•Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
•When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.

Hey great for resto, but it sucks for the rest of us. Hopefully all we lose is cleansing totem / cleanse. To me it doesnt sound like purge is being changed.

Who wants to take bets that another class gets a Bloodlust like ability?

Down goes Arthas! Down goes Arthas!

< Fire and Blood > downed Arthas last night for the first time. I wasn't there. I was at a book signing. I have pretty mixed feelings on this. I'm extremely happy that my guild got past this hump. It did take the 10% buff for us to do it, as we spent the last four plus weeks wiping on him. But even with the buff its nice to have him down finally.

However, I'm sad that I missed it. Its there first big kill I havent been there for. Kael, Archimonde, Kil'jaeden, Maly, Yogg. I was there for them all. Ilidan, I sat myself for to give another player some time, but I was online and listening on vent when we downed him. This one I wasnt even home. It took only two tries, so they had a lot of time left, and went to Uldaur and killed Algalon for a guild first as well. Well Heroic Anub is still up. Maybe I need to miss more. :/