Upcoming Patch 3.1 – Shaman changes
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If you keep up with the forums, you’ll see that Blizzard has posted some of the changes that will be implemented in patch 3.1 (release date unknown). For those of you who don’t, I’ve copied the Shaman changes here, with my comments.
Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.
- I don’t really get what Eyonix means by saying that the distinction between LB and CL is not currently clear. I mean, what’s to get confused about? One hits multiple targets, the other one doesn’t. It’s not rocket science, people. Adding an extra target doesn’t make it more different. I don’t really like this change because the odds against facing multiple mobs increase along with the number of mobs. That means you’ll need to hit two targets more often than you’ll need to hit three, and so on. There’s no way, even with four jumps, that shamans can compete with other AOE damage classes — even at its fastest it takes too long to cast and it costs over 1/4 of your base mana (again, without buffs, etc.). I’d rather they keep it the way it is.
Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
- Currently this talent improves the periodic damage from Flame Shock by 20/40/60% so, although Eyonix’s comment doesn’t say how much the base damage will be improved, I’m going to assume it’ll be by the same amount as the periodic damage. At level 80, Flame Shock’s initial burst damage is 500 (without buffs or other enhancements), which means that will change to at least 800!
Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.
Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.
- These talents are too far into the Enhancement tree for me to have them specced, but I can’t see any shamans being upset with reduced casting threat or added crit and three extra talent points.
Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
- This change surprises the heck out of me but I gotta say I love it! Still, it leaves me with quandary. When there are two shamans in a group, one will drop Mana Spring and the other will drop Healing Stream as their standard water totems. If you have no need for disease/poison cleansing, the only other water totem is Fire Resistance and sometimes that’s just not necessary when fighting mobs that use physical, frost, arcane, etc. damage. So the big question is: Will the new mana/healing totem stack? I doubt it. Now if only they’d replace Sentry Totem with something more useful…
We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.
- I’m not much into PvP, as most of you know, and Eyonix’s comment is quite vague, but it would be great to see some improvements here. I hope it means getting a way to avoid stuns. I might even play PvP if I felt I had at least half a decent shot at winning a one-on-one match.
Of course, there will be people wishing for changes that aren’t listed. For example, there’s nothing here except the totem streamlining that helps Resto shaman. But at least we’re not getting badly nerfed. All in all, I like these changes for shamans, so I say bring on the patch!
You made mention of Streamlining Totems and I can say that did not happen that i can tell but i’m so noob who knows. but i still have separate totems for each so did i noob out or did they pass on the Streamlining
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
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