Windfury

They sucked me back in.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 20:08:00 +0000

Seeing the trailers for the expansion filled me with nostalgia. So I went ahead and bought a game care and preordered the x-pac. Rolled up an Monk on Hyjal and created a level 90 Shaman. I'm only going to play casually. I don't have the time or desire to be a hardcore raider anymore. But playing casually with some old friends from my raiding days ? Yeah. I've got time for that. :) So after nearly 4 years. I'm back playing WoW.

Hard Modes

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:09:00 +0000

Heroic Halfus down to FnB last Thursday. We spent about 90 minutes or So Wednesday wiping to him, Thursday we got him on our 4th pull, so not to bad. Last night we started working on Heroic Chimaeron. Had a 2% wipe on our next to last pull of the night. So close. We will get him next week for sure. We missed server first Heroic boss by a day. One of the 10 man raids got Halfus the night before. I don't really like how there is no distinction between the two sizes anymore. Say what you want about the difficulty of the mechanics being equal, finding and organizing 25 people is 5 times as difficult as 10.

No 4.0.6 yet..

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:29:00 +0000

...according to mmo champion at least.

So work has implemented a new web blocking protocol, which stops pretty much all game related sites. I can still post to this blog, but most of the sites I pull info from are not available.

So this will just be a quick update post.

< Fire and Blood > downed Nefarian on 25 Sunday night. Now onto Hard Modes.
FnB passed our 3rd anniversary on the 21st of January. We've come a long way from 5 friends who played on an EU server and did a weekly Kara run. Now we are top guild on Quel'dorei, and ranked in the top 3-400 US. Yeah we are by no means world beaters, but for the relatively casual attitude we have, I'm very proud of how well we have done.

One hand giveth, the other taketh away.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:25:00 +0000

The latest PTR build had a lot of changes. The shaman changes are very interesting.

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

•Flametongue Weapon procs now deal roughly 20% less damage.
•The Windfury Weapon proc can now trigger 3 additional attacks, up from 2.

Elemental
•Lava Burst's damage has been increased by roughly 10%.

Restoration
•Earth Shield can no longer be dispelled.
•Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman's Spirit, exclusive of short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped. In addition, its effects are now raid-wide.

Glyphs
•Glyph of Hex now reduces the cooldown by 10 seconds, down from 15.

Intial testing was showing that even with the first change of making Flametongue scale from AGI rather than Spellpower that caster MH's were still simming as best in slot. Reducing the damage by 20% certainly should put that to rest. Increasing WF to give 3 attacks is supposed to make up for that nerf. I am wondering if this could bring dual WF back into the picture? We'll see what the testers come back with today.

Raid went well last night. We used the Quick DKP add-on for the first time to award loot. ( I ran it last week to award dkp ) It seemed to work pretty well. We got 5/6 in BWD and through the first two bosses in BoT. Tonight will be finishing off BoT and then on to ToW and working on Al'akir after killing conclave.

BWD trash dropped Maimgor's Bitewhich was a pretty nice upgrade for me. I also picked up normal Essence of the Cyclone

Turns out Shaman are getting some changes in the next patch.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:07:00 +0000

To the Ground!

So last week we got this message about planned shaman changes.

Shaman

Just a few additions of Glyph in spell tooltips to properly reflect their effects when you use them. Nothing new.

Then yesterday they break the incoming nerfs in a warlock thread.

That was just a nerf to cleansing waters. since Shaman are doing so awesome right now they figured they should take a whack at our utility. :/

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

•Chain Heal’s effectiveness has been increased by approximately 10%.
•Hex now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
•Purge now dispels a single effect instead of two.
•Tremor Totem has been redesigned. The totem is now usable under Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects, and pulses much more rapidly, but lasts 6 seconds and has a 1-minute cooldown.

Elemental Combat
•Earthquake damage has been increased by approximately 10%.

Enhancement
•Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).
•Purge no longer has its mana cost reduced by Mental Quickness.

Restoration
•Cleansing Waters no longer fires its heal effect twice when a shaman removes a Magic and a Curse debuff with a single cast.
•Deep Healing (Mastery) has been increased to 3% per point, up from 2.5%.
•Greater Healing Wave mana cost has been increased by 10%; healing done has been increased by 20%.
•Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman’s Spirit, exclusive to short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped.

Actually there are some buffs in there. No one cares about Elemental but i suppose the extra EQ damage is nice for them.

Better Chain Heal is good. Deep Healing was terrible, so a buff there is good. I'll take a better GHW, especially a instant mana free MW proc one.

The purge nerf is BS. Once again PvP hoses PvE. If you can make the Hex change PvP only why not the purge change?

I'm of two minds on Tremor totem. 6 second duration is horrible especially on a 1 minute CD. Make fears castable only once a minute then it will be ok. However being able to use it while cc'd is nice for the times when you don't realize that the aoe fear is coming or miss time dropping it. Still the CD should be 30 seconds max.

The change I'm most happy about it the Flametounge change. As long as they get the numbers right and its not hitting for any less. I mean my damage is mediocre enough the way it is right now. But I don't want to be running dual flame tongue with a caster MH. Firstly because I don't want to be taking caster weapons from casters, but secondly it just feels so wrong, despite what Elam says. :p

One Month In, AKA: the pain of crafting.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:29:00 +0000

So Cata has been out a month. Patch 4.06 is on the PTR. There have been waves and waves of hot fixes.
What do you people think of the expansion so far?

I'm fairly happy with it. The biggest issue for me right now is what a pain in the ass it is to level Leatherworking. Its crazy expensive, material intensive.

The material breakdown is Savage Leather Scraps < Savage Leather < Heavy Savage Leather, with it taking 5 of the smaller to make the larger. Heavy cannot be skinned from anything so it take 5 mobs skinned to get one. The last pattern that uses regularr savage turns green at 490, so your last 35 points all take Heavy.

A few mobs outside of instances will occasionally drop 2, but most skins give a single Savage. So on average lets say it take 5 creatures skinned to get one, From 500-525 it take a minimum of 8 Heavy Savage to make anything orange, at 510 its 10. Plus any patterns that will skill you up from 510-525 cost 10 Heavy Savage as well. The current price for HSL on the AH is 200g. so that's 2000g for a nominally useful pvp pattern. Each piece takes 10 HSL and 10 volatile to craft. So that's about 2400g to craft. plus they stay orange for only 5 points. Amoritazing the cost of the patterns over those 5 points and that's about 3k per items which will give you 2 skill ups, so 1.5k per point. You can possible sell them for a few hundred gold if lucky, so make that 1400g per point x15 or 21k to go from 510-525.

Lets compare that to Alchemy which I maxxed out on my lv 78 warlock. You can get to 500 making potions and elixirs which take 2 herbs and a vial. Herbs cost about 10g ea, or if you have an herbalist each node, which doesn't need to be killed, yields on average 3 herbs with volatile life thrown in to boot. Now above 500 you will need to make flasks, which take 30 herbs and life so that's 300 g per flask, but as opposed to the LW items flasks you can sell for a profit! At 505 you can start learning transmutes, Where you can take 3 green gems plus 3 herbs, and make another useful item, a blue gem! granted at current prices, this might be a slight loss of 50g or so, but still better than 1400. lets say you go from 505 to 525 on transmutes. At a net cost of 50g per point that gasp! 1000g! 20k less than LW, and unlike leather workers alchemists are always in demand for flasks and potions, and they have transmutes which will always turn a profit as well.

Jewelcrafting is somewhere in between. I haven't maxed it out on my DK yet, but there is not really a reason to. The 525 patterns are not as good as rep items in most cases. 500 is all you need to make your JC chimaera's eyes. The only road block on JC is doing the dailies to get the patterns/eyes. That and the high cost of the common gems used for the dailies. But ore is plentiful and not that expensive.

I haven't tried Blacksmithing, Engineering, or Tailoring , in cata yet, so I don't know where they rank. Enchanting was somewhere in below LW as skill ups were only costing me around 400g ea with the scrolls selling for about 25g ea and a net cost of 375 per point.

Cataclysm thoughts.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:50:00 +0000

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.

Epic Head

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:08:00 +0000

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.

Beta Changes.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:11:00 +0000

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.

Really GC?

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:53:00 +0000

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.

Enhancement DPS

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:42:00 +0000

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.

Where did my DPS go?

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:50:00 +0000

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.

Are you ready for 4.01?

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:31:00 +0000

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

ST-0

SS-0

FS-0

SR (2pc T10)

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.

Level 85 ratings

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:22:00 +0000

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.

Lions? We don't need no stinking Lions!

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:11:00 +0000

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

I can't wait to get one.

now with extra mana savings

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:15:00 +0000

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.

Ow! That hurts!

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:35:00 +0000

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.

Well now this takes a bit of the sting out.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:12:00 +0000

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.

Glyphs!

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:42:00 +0000

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.

New Beta build

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:07:00 +0000

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.

Ghost Cralwer has been busy

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:27:00 +0000

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.

Lots of new stuff.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:46:00 +0000

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.

More changes.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:39:00 +0000

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.

At least it isnt just me.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:21:00 +0000

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.

More updates.

noreply@blogger.com (Race) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:06:00 +0000

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.