When Blizzard announced the Cataclysm expansion at Blizzcon ‘09, one of the things they also announced was the redesign of Hunters so that they use the Focus resource like their pets use instead of mana. This is a cool announcement especially because hunters have been complaining about their mana consumption and the mechanics of abilities like Aspect of the Viper to deal with this problem. The shift to focus will break their dependence on mana altogether and instead use something more reliable since Focus works something like the Energy resource that rogues and kitty druids use.
This switch to Focus come …read more

I used to think that Shamans had so many totems and not enough space on their action bars to put them all. Whether that was really the case or not, it’s always nice to get something new to help things out. CM Nethaera just announced something quite exciting to help shamans out with totem management and to give some more customization and functionality. Behold the Totem Bar feature coming in patch 3.2!
The new Totem bar is a shaman specific interface that allows the shaman easier access to his totems. It will located in the left hand side of the screen …read more

After reading all the complains and angry posts that you see in the forums, you might be asking yourself “what are the devs thinking?”. While a lot of points may be just complaints that don’t really have much backing, there are some that are real concerns. That’s why it’s a great idea that Blizzard actually spent some time to share what the devs are really thinking by putting up a new piece in the WoW Community Site, the Q&A.
The first Q&A is all about the Shaman class and based on what Blizzard implies, they intend to do the same thing …read more

Over the years it seems that the shaman class has been the subject of a lot of complains a few more times than other classes. I’ve seen complains concerning their totems, their damage, lack of AoE abilities and a lot of other things for both PvE and for PvP.
One of the latest complains I’ve been seeing was about the damage output of Elemental Shamans especially in Ulduar. Well it looks like Blizzard listened and according to Ghostcrawler, they agree that shaman dps is indeed a bit low. A buff to the Elemental talent Lightning Overload is going to be …read more

CM Eyonix has posted that they are changing Mana Spring Totem for Shamans and Blessing of Wisdom for Paladins. This is part of their effort to provide raid wide buffs just like other buffs for Wrath of the Lich King. Similar buffs do not stack and Blizzard is making use of this to further deal with the mana regen issue which they are nerfing in 3.1.
We are making a change to these spells so that their benefits are exclusive in patch 3.1.0. The buffs will be equivalent, but will no longer stack. Mana Spring will affect the entire raid instead …read more

Healers like myself have been cherishing the remaining time we have until the mana regen nerf is implemented since we are the ones most affected and targeted by the changes. The aim of the nerfs is to make mana conservation and management a big thing and not just rely on our regen to tide us over while we heal endlessly.
Ghostcrawler came up with more details about this nerf in a post in the official forums. Based on what he wrote, there’s some cause for celebration since the nerfs don’t seem to be as bad as we all thought. I won’t …read more

MMO Champion tells of a patch 3.09 that could be coming out this week. Since I haven’t tried checking the PTR or even if it’s up at all and the PTR forum is currently out for me, I can’t really check if this is really true. There isn’t even a patch 3.09 PTR notes so that makes the situation a bit worse. In any case, there’s something out there and it’s going to change a few things, even glyphs. Some of the change entries I’ve seen before as legit changes for the future so that might lend some credence to …read more

Yesterday, I wrote about the announcement for class changes that are coming for patch 3.1. Ghostcrawler mentioned that they were working on a few things and that they would announce said changes soon. Now when Blizzard uses the word “soon” it actually usually takes a while so I’m very surprised that some of the changes are announced already. this must be the fastest “soon” ever.
According to CM Eyonix, they’ll be announcing the class changes in a three part series. This first one happens to be for priests, rogues and shamans. The changes are listed below and are subject to change …read more

Just when Blizzard added the Death Knight hero class to address the tank shortage, it seems like a healer shortage is another problem that might have to be addressed. I say might because these are all observations from some people as the Wrath of the Lich King expansion approaches.
Dizeh of the Northrend-US server tells of having a healer shortage within their guild since they want to be something else. Cipher from the same server says that he has a hard time finding healers for instances. It seems that the culprit is a combination of different things.
One reason I …read more

I decided to try out playing a shaman after seeing some of the nice talents coming for the expansion, especially for the elemental tree. I figured that since I have so many horde characters in the server I play in, it’s a nice opportunity to try out the Alliance once again (I’ve had some failed attempts in trying out the Alliance in the past). I find that the combination of having a flexible character that can fulfill several roles if geared and specced properly and playing an interesting race as a Draenei would help in making the experience worth trying …read more