shaman-beta
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Ghostcrawler weighs in on shaman feedback
The beta has been under way now for some time, as have the feedback posts on the official forums. Shaman have had a few major changes to their repertoire, as well as a few more minor ones, but the general feeling from reading the posts made in the forums is that these changes don't go far enough. Shaman, it appears, don't feel like they're getting what they need to be viable, let alone competitive, and the unique nature of a lot of their abilities seems to continue to be as much a hindrance as it is a help. But arriving like the white knight in medieval-styled dramas, just as the situation feels dire and unsalvageable, is Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. The shaman feedback post has finally had the equivalent of a Blizzard seal of approval, in the form of a blue post from the bluest of blues. So what did the big GC address in his post, and what still remains outstanding for beta shaman? One big complaint that many shaman brought up was glyphs. I recently tweeted fellow WoW Insider writer Joe Perez about this very matter, namely, that shaman glyphs were a mess. They felt either very lackluster or very penalty-heavy. A few patches ago, before the recent changes, I was playing my shaman with two empty glyph slots, because none of the glyphs felt worth using. This is a Bad Thing. A recent patch went some way to repairing this, but with it, a host of new problems appeared, some of which GC addresses after the break.
Totem Talk: The highs and lows of Ascendance for DPS shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Once a lonely tauren shaman in a bad Scarlet Crusade-themed transmog set, Josh Myers is now a female dwarf shaman with pigtails who raids using all three specs on a regular basis. He kept the same transmog set, though. Elamism didn't hit level 87 on the beta this week. It wasn't for lack of trying, but something more akin to lack of time. Despite grabbing two heroic No'kaleds from our first heroic Madness kill two weeks ago, I still had guild raiding to do this week (I ended up picking up a heroic Rathrak for my elemental spec, so I can't complain too much), and I had to make preparations for my trip to Michigan next week. Coupled with the fact that I had to dedicate a night to testing my arcane mage as well, I wasn't able to dedicate enough alone time with my shaman to hit level 87. Thankfully, other people have had the opportunity to play more than I did (special thanks to Ashunera, who graciously allowed me to use this Ascendance video here). It's thanks to Ashunera that we've gotten our first taste of Ascendance, the new class ability coming to shaman in Mists of Pandaria. Spoiler alert: It's totally and completely awesome.
