Sorry for the few days of downtime, I was spending all weekend moving into my new house Anyhow, here’s the goods!

Concerning totems survivability in PVP

Some WotLK patch notes listed on MMO Champion back on the 2nd

Spirit Wolves will have abilities - right now, they don’t hit very hard

Concerning a change to Lightning Bolt’s coefficient

Over a concern that Enhancement might be mana starved - this reply came to a post stating Static Shock was kicking off more often than it should, causing Lightning Shield to have to be applied more frequently than intended.

Concerning Paralysis not working:

Saw these linked over at MMO Champion today, they all pertain to Wrath of the Lich King

The NDA has been lifted, below are the current patch notes for WotLK

Shaman patch notes are listed below, Hit the link for a full set of notes

• All totems are now considered on the “Physical” school, and no longer magical spells.
• Ancestral Knowledge (Enhancement): Now increases your Intellect by 2/4/6%, instead of increasing your total Mana by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Call of Flame (Elemental): Now also increases the damage of your Lava Burst spell by 2/4/6%.
• Call of Thunder (Elemental) now also increases the critical strike chance of your Thunder spell.
• Concussion (Elemental) now increases the damage of your Thunder and Lava Burst spells.
• Convection (Elemental) is now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Now lowers the mana cost of Thunder and Lava Burst.
• Earth’s Grasp (Elemental) is now a tier-1 talent, up from tier-2.
• Elemental Detestation (Elemental) is now a tier-2 talent, up from tier-4.
• Elemental Focus (Restoration): Now also can proc off Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave, and can be used on all healing spells.
• Elemental Fury (Elemental) now requires Elemental Focus as a pre-requisite
• Elemental Precision (Elemental): Chance to hit reduced to 1/2/3% from 2/4/6%, but threat reduction increased to 10/20/30% up from 4/7/10%.
• Enhancing (Enhancement) Totems is now a Tier 1 talent, up from Tier-2.
• Flametongue Totem is now a flat spell damage totem. All ranks have been modified.
• Frostbrand’s snare effect has been increased to 50%, up from 25%.
• Ghost Wolf’s mana cost is now 13% base.
• Grace of Air Totem has been removed. (Agility has been rolled over into Strength of Earth Totem)
• Improved Fire Totems (Elemental) is now (again) Improved Fire Nova Totem. It now has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets for 2 sec.
• Improved Lightning Shield (Enhancement) is now Elemental Shields, and is in Tier-1.
• New ranks have been added of Water Shield, starting at level 20. (Level 20, 27, 34, 41, 48, 55, 62, 69)
• New Spell: Earthliving Weapon - Imbue the Shaman’s weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by x and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additionaly over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
• New Talent: Cleanse Spirit (Restoration) - Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect.
• New Talent: Elemental Shields (Enhancement): Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 5/10/15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.
• New Talent: Mental Dexterity (Enhancement) - Increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your Intellect.
• Rockbiter ranks 5 through 9 have been removed. Windfury Weapon is intended to replace Rockbiter at level 30.
• Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
• Shield Specialization (Enhancement) - Now a 2-point talent, and increases the chance to block with attacks by 10/20%, and increases the amount blocked by 5/10%.
• Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
• Storm Reach (Elemental): Now also increases the radius of your Thunder spell by 10/20%.
• Strength of Earth Totem now also increases agility.
• Tranquil Air Totem has been removed. (Threat is being addressed by modifications to the base threat of players and/or “baked” into tanking abilities.)
• Unleashed Rage is now raid wide.
• Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified.
• Windwall Totem has been removed.
• Wrath of Air is now a flat 10% spell haste totem.

Read the rest of this entry »

After the jump, you can see the full patch notes. Listed immediately below are those that are most relevant to Shamans - if you feel I have missed any summary items, please let me know!

General

• Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
• Parry Rating, Defense Rating, and Block Rating: Low-level players will now convert these ratings into their corresponding defensive stats at the same rate as level 34 players.
• Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.

Shaman

• Earth Elemental: This pet will now leash back to its totem when pulled beyond 50 yards away.
• Lightning Overload: This talent will no longer do excessive damage when used with Lightning Bolt Ranks 2-10.

Mages

• Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor, and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.

Warlocks

• Demon Skin, Demon Armor, and Fel Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.

Dungeons and Raids

• Sunwell Plateau
  • Kil?jaeden Encounter
    • Sinister Reflections are now interruptible.

Items

• Brutal Gladiator?s Pummeler has had its Stamina value increased to the appropriate value.

User Interface

• Target buff/debuff timers that appear when you cast a spell are now more visible.
• Added the following macro commands: /targetenemyplayer, /targetfriendplayer.
• Added key bindings for tab targeting players.
• Ctrl-Tab and other target nearest friend functions will no longer target you.
• Targeting using /target will prefer live targets over dead ones.
• You can no longer click the minimap to cast ground targeted spells.

Bug Fixes

• The mage spell, Counterspell now shows in the combat log.
• Talented abilities that cost a percentage of base mana will no longer display an incorrect mana cost when inspected by a player of a different class or level.
• Greater Elementals summoned by a shaman will now properly have a combat log entry.
• A message will now appear in the combat log if a debuff is removed by normal melee attacks.
• It is no longer possible to dispel Shattered Sun Pendant buffs.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have long been accused of having one of those interfaces that always draws the comments of “dude wtf. how the hell can you play with that much shit on the screen?!”. Well, my last interface wasn’t bad, but it was just too many addons to keep track of. And it was using 40-50MB of memory. Not good at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so maybe I have had a few too many Irish Car Bombs with my fiancee tonight, and yeah maybe my coordination is off just a tad. But come on. Desolace. Blizzard, what the hell were you thinking? I never leveled up through this zone with Dinak, but good lord. My little level 35 tentacle-shaman, Adoros (yes, his spec sucks right now, I was testing Anticipation!), is having a hell of a time dodging the clusterf*ck of mobs you decided to drop in the middle of the zone. Oh look I aggroed a scorpion while in Ghost Wolf form. Oh wait, now I’m dazed because he caught up to me from 15 yards away. OH shat! 3 buzzards inc! Dazed! Confused! OMGWTFISGOINGONHERE?! This zone is to WoW as New Jersey is to the USA. The armpit of the nation. Everyone wishes it would fall off the map. Seriously. This is probably the single most horrendous, worst thought out, ill quested, pathetic zone in the game. Please, fire the developer.

NO? Well, if you can at least send him or her my displeasure, that would be wonderful. thanks!

My best friend, Crops (among other *crops named characters) of Alleria mentioned to me today at work that he was leveling a new Enhancement Shaman. For PvP no less. Yes, I cringed. But, I also remembered all the nice things we are getting come Wrath, so it might not be too bad for him So I was thinking, maybe I should write a little post on a talent build order while leveling. This is only one recommendation, and there is bound to be somebody out there wanting to pick it apart. Hey, go for it!

I was trying to go for a build that would support the solo shaman until around level 61/62 when you will probably start grouping for some instances in Outlands. From then on it tries to incorporate some group enhancements as well.

Also, leveling as Enhancement is not the only way to level a shaman. However, it is generally touted as the fastest for leveling. Elemental leveling can be very fun, and leveling as Resto is great for the masochists out there! *grin*

Read the rest of this entry »

Aside from the obvious way of fighting the boss and running either a damage meter, or checking out a WWS report afterwards - there is another way to determine what your expected DPS should be against a boss. I have found the site, Max DPS, to be fairly accurate in determining what my dps output should be against a given boss, provided I bring my “A” game and perform my dps rotation properly. The combination of this site and WWS reports help show when I am slacking off, and possibly what I am doing wrong.

I have not evaluated this website closely with an Elemental build, but for my current enhancement setup, it’s proving to be a nice barometer of where I should be. I am still currently gearing up my enhancement set, and as such I still have a few lackluster pieces (like my green wrist slot, and the fact I have no melee trinkets whatsoever!). Even so, when my DPS rotation is on point, I am pulling DPS above and beyond what your average player will pull in the equivalent gear. For the curious, I am currently playing with a SS->ES->FS->SS rotation

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that we are in the second day of Blizzard’s Worldwide Invitational, and the fervor over the Diablo 3 announcement has simmered down a bit - here are some changes that have been mentioned for the Shaman class. Some of these are very very nice, and it sounds like Blizzard might actually be listening to the Shaman community (ala the totem changes in WotLK).

Crowd Control and Anti-Crowd Control
This has pretty much been the bane of the Shaman class, especially in PvP. We had no reliable crowd control, other than a snare (Frostshock, and to a lesser extent, Frostbrand Weapon). There has been a very loud outcry from the Shaman community for the last several years concerning this. Patch after patch, we Shaman never got the CC or anti-CC we were clamoring for. Now, with WotLK, we might just be getting there. How so?

Well first off, we are getting an actual CC ability, called Hex. This 1.5 second cast spell will turn the target into a frog. The affected target can move, but cannot attack or use spells. Much like the hex from the Shaman NPC characters. There is currently a 1 minute cooldown on this spell, but this may change. Also, damaging a hexed target does not break the effect. That means a target can be hexed and focus-fired down quickly.

Next up, and I don’t think this was talked about at the WWI, but has been data-mined from data files, is the Enhancement talent Improved Shamanistic Rage. This 2 point talent, branching sideways from Shamanistic Rage will give the Shaman a 50/100% chance to avoid all forms of Stun, Snare and Movement Impairing effects, while under the effect of Shamanistic Rage. Alpha talent tree here.

In the Elemental Tree, the new talent Storm, Earth and Fire gives a chance of minor crowd control. This talent gives the Shaman’s Frostshock spell a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to root the target in place for 2 seconds. Nothing super major, but it’s a nice addition. This talent it deep into the Elemental tree, but it also adds two other bonuses: Earth Shock’s range is increased by 1/2/3/4/5 yards and Flame Shock’s periodic damage is increased by 20/40/60/80/100%. Very nice indeed!

Weapon Enchantments
Blizzard has heard the Shaman’s cries for changes to the weapon enchantments. As you probably already know, we had four different enchantments, with only one - Windfury Weapon - being used in almost all situations. Blizzard has headed our calls and has taken action! Rockbiter Weapon is going away. In it’s place, we will be receiving Earthliving Weapon, which gives a +Healing bonus to the Shaman. Flametongue will give +Spell Damage and Frostbrand will more reliably snare targets. Windfury Totem will not be a weapon enchantment anymore. Instead it will be a buff, and can be used in bear form or with poison (for Druids and Rogues) amongst other things. This also seems to suggest that it will stack with our personal Windfury Weapon!

Totems
Blizzard is stating that they will be combining many totems together. For example, Strength of Earth and Grace of Air will be combined into one totem. But the biggie: Totems will now affect the entire raid. This can be seen as both a positive thing and a bad thing. On one hand, all raid members get some totem lovin’ while on the other hand, taking into account that they are combining some totems - why would you need more than one or two Shaman? Also, totems will not be spells anymore, but will be physical actions. This means you can drop totems when you are silenced, and they cannot be counterspelled!

As well as totems now affecting the entire raid, it seems Unleashed Rage will as well!

There are various other changes and talents that have been known about already, many of which you can view at the WotLK wiki.

So what do you think of the upcoming changes?