dwarf hunter

This switch to Focus come the expansion has me wondering about something though. With Hunters turning their back on the world of mana, what becomes of the mail attack power gear (at least the non-tier ones)? As you know hunters share their gear with enhancement shamans right now and while Hunters are losing their mana dependence, enhancement shamans aren’t. This is the reason why a lot of the mail attack power gear you see around have intellect on it. After all while enhancements shamans go all stabby with their daggers, they still need their mana to cast their totems, shocks and such stuff.

Right now it’s easy to see how the mail attack power gear can easily be interchangeable between hunters and enhancement shammies but this will no longer be the case come expansion. Unless Blizzard figures out a way to make Intellect useful for Focus using hunters then mail attack power itemization is going to be a lot harder because of the rift this change is going to cause.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

shaman totems

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 just like the warrior stances and the druid forms. The Totem bar consists of four slots where the shaman can put one totem of each kind and two other special buttons to the left and right of these four slots. The button to the right is called Call of the Earth, which is bascially the renamed version of Totemic Call, the ability that calls the dropped totems back and refunds a percent of the mana cost. To the left is a button called Call of Fire, which will be available at level 30 (same as Call of Earth) which is the feature mentioned in the Q&A where the shaman can drop all four totems at the same time in one global cooldown where the mana cost would still be as if you dropped all of them. This could be customized so that you can drop less than four if you wanted to. At later levels you get the abilities Call of Water and Call of Air, which is the same thing as Call of Fire. This gives the shaman three sets of totems that can be customized and dropped at the same time, one for a different scenario.

This feature should make things more interesting and convenient for all shamans out there!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

shaman totems

The first Q&A is all about the Shaman class and based on what Blizzard implies, they intend to do the same thing for all the other classes. It’s a great read especially if you play a Shaman as your main character. basically it shares what Ghostcrawler and the rest of the development team have in store for the shaman class for the future and even ideas they’re working to implement, a lot of them are still just ideas they’re playing around with. Below I want to highlight some of those ideas that they’re thinking of adding to the game somehow. Even if it doesn’t make the cut, at least it gives you a look into their heads to understand the direction of the class.

1. Being able to drop all 4 totems at once in one global cooldown

The dev team is looking to implement on a feature that will allow the shaman to drop the four totems one by one like shamans do right now can cost some valuable time in groups or even PvP and can be a major bummer while leveling. Dropping them at the same time could make using totems more attractive.

2. Totem turn in at low level

The totem that Shamans get at higher levels and place in their ranged slot acts as all four totems so the shaman no longer needs to carry around his totems in his bags. The dev team is looking to allow low level shamans to turn in their 4 totems for 1 generic totem like the ones they get at higher levels. This will allow the shamn to free up some bag space.

3. Consolidate totems

Back in the days of Vanilla WoW I thought that shamans had too many totem spells, some of which aren’t used too often. Looks like it’s something some other players and even the devs feel going into today’s game. Ghostcrawler mentioned that they’re going to evaluate the totems and cut out what they don’t need and merge others that need merging. This is similar to when Warlocks did away with Curse of Shadows and made Curse of Elements work for all spell schools.

4. Long term plan to redesign Totems

The long term plan of the dev team is to change all buff totems into spells and make all totems more active (like the healing and damage totems). I’m not sure what this means exactly but if I were to make a guess, maybe the the buff totems would become actual buff spells like the paladin Blessing of Wisdom or the Death Knight Horn of Winter. If this is what they have in mind then at least people won’t need to stay within the range of a totem to get their buffs since the buffs are stuck to the person. But wouldn’t this make them a lot like paladins in that sense?

5. Do something about “Shamans are like turrets”

One of main problems of shamans especially in PvP is their lack of mobility. Ghostcrawler mentioned something about casting shamans being like turrets where they remain stationary around their totems and just keep casting, turning to follow their target or to heal . They’re already looking into some ideas to fix this problem. The idea drop all totems at once would help solve this problem since the shaman can just move and drop the totems again.

6. Try to remove one weapon restriction in Patch 3.2

There’s a feeling that shamans are way to restricted in their weapon choices, making it hard to find upgrades. This is especially true for Enhancement shamans who are pretty much stuck with just daggers since using a two-handed weapon isn’t that viable given the way the talents are setup. Ghostcrawler gave a hint though that it probably won’t be swords. My feeling is swords would have been perfect but probably not very shaman-ish so I’m thinking fist weapons would do the trick!

Go ahead and read the whole piece though since there are a lot more things that Ghostcrawler and the dev team that I left out of this piece on purpose. You can see it here.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

lightning overload tooltip

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 buffed and the cool thing si that they don’t need to wait for the next patch to get it since it will be hotfixed within the next few days.

This upcoming buff involves increasing the proc rate of Lightning Overload from 7 / 13 / 20% to 11 / 22 / 33%. This means that the half damage, no threat Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning Elemental shammies get for free from this talent will happen with more regularity and according to Ghostcrawler this should result in roughly a 5% increase in total dps for a raid buffed level 80 shaman. Ghostcrawler also mentions that when the hotfix does come out the tooltip of Lightning Overload will still display the old numbers and will only be updated in a future patch.

This is a pretty spiffy buff they are getting and I sure hope it does the job of making Elemental shaman dps more acceptable.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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 of just the shaman’s party. We felt that both paladins and shamans brought too many unique buffs to a group. Additionally, we have been trying to tone down mana regeneration in large groups, and were concerned raids would feel the need to stack paladins or especially shaman to have enough Mana Spring totems. We have also been trying to get more benefits out of the party and into the raid, and Mana Spring previously was still a party only buff. With this change, if there is only one paladin, he or she can bring Blessing of Kings while the shaman offers Mana Spring. If there are two paladins and the second offers Blessing of Wisdom, then the shaman can offer healing or cleansing with their water totem instead. source

So with this change, Blizzard killed two birds with one stone by making Mana Spring Totem a raid wide buff but also nerfed mana regen by making it not stack with Blessing of Wisdom. This announcement seems bitter-sweet since it comes at a cost. My understanding is that holy paladins who spec into imp BoW will make it better than mana spring totem so this will further reduce it’s effective ness since it won’t stack on those people who have the imp version of BoW. In a way it allows flexibility between the buffs that both classes provide but overall it just doesn’t come out right.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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 go into detail with what he says but if you want to see the details then you can go ahead and read his post. The long and short of what he wrote is this:

Mana regen while not casting will be reduced by 40%

Mana regen while casting remains unchanged.

Talents that provide mana regen while casting (spirit tap, arcane meditation etc) will be increased by 67%

Paladins will have their Divine Plea healing penalty reduced to -50% and spiritual attunement mana gains decreased for non tanks.

It’s still sad for us healers to see our regen get nerfed but as you can see from the details, it’s not as bad as we thought. Sure we won’t be able to take much advantage of those big regen ticks when we’re not casting but at least the regen while casting still remains the same. In fights where we’re constantly casting our heals, this nerf won’t make a difference.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Druid

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
* Poison Spit now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.

Mage

* Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)
* Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.
* Arcane Flows now reduces the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility by 15/30%.
* Presence of Mind: The cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, (down from 3.)
* Slow (Arcane): now increases cast time by 30%, down from 60%.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Arcane Missiles — Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%. (Old – Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards.)
* Glyph of Mana Gem — Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 40%. (Up from 10%)
* Glyph of Arcane Blast — Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%. (Down from 5%)

Paladin

* The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
* Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
* Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Holy Light — Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)
* Glyph of Seal of Righteousness — Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old – Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)

Priest

* Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.

Rogue

* Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
* Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
* Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
* Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Shaman

Glyphs

* Glyph of Windfury Weapon — Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)

Warlock

* Curse of Tongues: Now increases the casting time of all spells by 25% (Rank 1) and 30% (Rank 2), down from 50% and 60%.

Dungeons and Raids

The Obsidian Sanctum

Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.

User Interface

* The “GM wishes to speak with you” alert/button, at the top of the screen, has been changed so that addons do not obscure it.
* A clickable chat message has been added that duplicates the GM alert/button.
* When a GM wishes to speak with you the Help Request minibar button will glow.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum .

Bug Fixes

* Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.
* Fixed a software mouse cursor bug that was causing the mouse curser to disappear from view when over certain UI elements.
* Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.

taken from MMO Champion

If these changes are true then that means that we generally have a good mix of nerfs and buffs coming. Unfortunately the nerfs and buss aren’t spread out across the classes. But I guess hat’s ok since it’s not about the number of nerfs and buffs you get but about what Blizz thinks has to be changed. The winner here is hands down the Paladin since they didn’t get any nerfs at all and the buffs they got are pretty awesome if you’re playing a Ret pally. I guess everyone else will just have to wait for patch 3.1 to get their awesome buffs.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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 as per Eyonix’s note.

PRIEST

# Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
# Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
# Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
# Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
# Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
# Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
# We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

ROGUE

# Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.
# Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.
# Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.
# Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.
# Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
# Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.

SHAMAN

# 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.
# Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
# 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%.
# Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
# We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.

source

Originally, I thought that most of the changes will be for PvP but after seeing the changes so far, it seems like there are a lot of cool changes that aren’t just for PvP. The discipline priest talent power word: barrier looks like a very fun spell to use and the buffing of some of their AoE heals will definitely benefit raiders. There are also some changes that could be taken the wrong way by some players like the change to chain lightning for shamans and the change to hunger for blood for rogues but I think they’re seen as buffs by most people. After seeing nature of the changes in this first edition of announcements, I feel quite optimistic for the classes that I play whose changes will still be announced.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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 can think of is the one mentioned above, players wanting to be something else. With the introduction of the Death Knight class and the cool stuff that many of the dps classes are getting, it seems like a lot of players want to try them out. Right now in fact, some of my very own friends who play tanks as doing some last minute leveling before the expansion comes out and the popular choices are mage and warlock but there are some rogues and hunters as well. Only a few of my friends who have dps or tanks as their mains are leveling healers.

Another reason I can think of the removal of downranking and its effect on healer efficiency. A lot of healers have relied on downranking to be more efficient and stay effective in longer fights. With its removal, the fear of going OOM and possibly causing wipes because of it has scared away a lot of players. Not being able to heal properly makes a job that some already find boring annoying as well.

Personally, I liked my relatively short stint healing as a holy paladin so much that I’ve decided to level a druid and try healing as a Tree in the expansion. It was part of my backup plan to have another healing class in case holy paladins weren’t going to be great in the expansion. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having two healer toons if both turn out to be great. So if there will indeed be a healer shortage, my friends can count on me if they need one.

What do you think? Do you see a healer shortage looming in your server?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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 out.

As I was leveling up in the lowbie zone, I eventually noticed something that really bugs me. I really don’t like seeing errors in spelling and grammar whenever I read something. I tolerate “1337 speak” because it is what it is. But generally, I hate seeing wrong grammar and spelling especially when it’s made by Blizzard themselves.

Shaman totems always have the name of whose totem it belongs to. The model of ’s totem is fine for most cases except for when the player’s name ends with an S like my draenei shaman. In that case, basic English grammar tells us that only an apostrophe is necessary. I know it takes extra work to program some sort of If,Then command into the code for totems to distinguish between players with and without S as the last letter of their name but I really think it’s something that should be done.

Right now I’m actually thinking of recreating my character so I can rename her so I won’t need to see that annoying grammatical error all the way until the level cap.

Post from: WOW Obsessed