Windfury-Totem
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Shaman changes in patch 3.0.3
The elders spoke of a day when great, sweeping changes would come to us Shamans. A day when our command of the elements would become unsurpassed and we would harness power like never seen on Azeroth (kind of like Retadins). Today, my friends, is not that day. In fact, today may well be any other day for Shamans because Patch 3.0.3 is about as underwhelming as it gets with regards to changes to the class.Let's see... we have a Lava Burst damage increase, which means jack to us because we only train for the spell at Level 75. Speaking of which, Storm Reach was renamed to Elemental Reach because it now affects... Lava Burst. Also in the Elemental tree, Improved Fire Nova totem was reworked to increase the damage done by Fire Nova Totem by 20% instead of a quicker detonation and now stuns opponents caught in the blast for 2 seconds instead of ensnaring them.
Oh, the cleverness of me!
I'm not in the beta. I'm kind of uncomfortable with the notion of spoiling myself completely, and I'm a terrible leveler. I have the lurking feeling that leveling my main to 80 before Wrath actually went live would wreck a leveling pace that might otherwise have been driven by exploration and discovery. I want Wrath to be a fantastic new experience that will recapture the sense of wonder I felt leveling my first toon in a strange new world. Also I never got a key, but the other reasons are more important and influential.Yeah, even I don't believe me.While I'm certain I'll never make a Death Knight my main, I'm sure I'll enjoy leveling one. I'm sure I'm not going to enjoy trying to level one alongside 50,000 other people and their cousins and their friends and their friends' dogs and their friends' dogs' fleas leveling a Death Knight. So it's occurred to me that, OK as I am with the notion of waiting a few months to get started on my bouncing baby bundle of risen-corpsified merriment, I can capitalize on the coming rush of Death Knights in a completely different fashion simply by exercising a little foresight. All Death Knights are melee, right? None of them can really heal, right? People are already noticing un peu problem in the beta in this vein, right? And I can't level an alt worth beans, right right? Right. What's the one buff that makes all melee salivate, provided by an excellent healing class, during a time in which healers will never have to worry about finding a group or a tank?Bingo. I'm getting a resto Shaman to 58 and parking him in Eastern Plaguelands to twiddle his thumbs in anticipation of the descent of the Death Knight legion come Wrath's release. See you there!
Itemization and the plight of the bear tank in Wrath of the Lich King
One of the biggest concepts coming with Wrath of the Lich King is gear consolidation. Stat are being folded into each other and classes are being changed even on very basic levels so that fewer gear types can work for more classes and specs. Feral Druids have seen this happen as well, with talents such as Survival of the Fittest and Heart of the Wild tweaked so that they can get more benefits from Rogue gear. Unfortunately, this hasn't worked out that well for bear tanks.
Wrath Beta patch notes: Shaman
With the Wrath of the Lich King beta upon us, we now have a plethora of new information about where shamans are going in the expansion, and one thing is clear: totems are changing. And for some folks, those changes may be seen as pretty bad. If you're a DPS warrior, you're not going to like the change to Windfury Totem."Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified."The up side for shamans is that our own Windfury Weapon ability seems to be unaffected, according to MMO-Champion. In fact, there's no reason that the two efffects couldn't co-exist, meaning that an enhancement shaman could get the benefit of Strength of Earth (with its new strength and agility benefits), Windfury Totem (with the flat melee haste) and Windfury Weapon allowing for the damage of two extra attacks with increased attack power. We can talk more about the changes inside, shall we?
Select group buffs going raid wide in Wrath
Between the Shaman portion of the Class Panel and the Q&A session at WWI08, raiders have some great news (in my opinion). If you're a reader of Hybrid Theory, a few weeks back I discussed the possibility (and necessity) of certain group buffs becoming raid buffs. The devs have confirmed that yes, many of these things are becoming raid buffs.The examples given were Totems and Unleashed Rage from Shaman, and Battle Shout for Warriors. This will greatly lower the need to stack Shaman so every single party of your raid has totems, but there's still the Bloodlust/Heroism issue. Taking 4-6 Shaman for Heroism is the single largest buff to your DPS that you can supply, so we'll see what happens. Either way, this is fantastic news, and something that has been sorely needed. Figuring out class balance for a raid can be fun, but not when your determining factor over who gets cut is "who won't fit in the Windfury group?"
Hybrid Theory: Performance Assessment
Last week we discussed the fact that raw DPS is not a good indicator of the strength of a hybrid. The quality of a hybrid, or a person that plays a hybrid, will not easily be seen by looking at traditional damage and/or healing meters the same way you would for 'pure' classes.Before I go on, I'd like to reiterate my disclaimer on this topic: Just because your class or spec is not expected to top damage meters, that does not mean you should become complacent about your DPS or Healing effectivenessity(use it, love it) in a raid. You should always strive to be a better player and find ways to improve yourself. If you think you've hit the ceiling of what you can accomplish, work harder to break through it.
Hybrid Theory: Magisters' Terrace, stomping all over your comfort zone
We've been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. I have been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. Lucky you, we're going to talk about it some more!Magisters' Terrace is the brand new 5-man that came with Patch 2.4, so it comes across as much harder than it actually is. It is hard, sure, but not the soul-rending pain we're all feeling right now. All new dungeons require a period of adjustment. I remember when Dire Maul first came out, way back in the day. Everyone thought it was utterly horrifying.During this period of adjustment, you're going to run into groups being far more strict about group composition. Once the community has become accustomed to the difficulty level of Magisters' Terrace, things will ease up. Currently, a lot of damage specced hybrids are having a rough time finding a group consistently due to one pretty large factor: A lack of crowd control. There are a lot of things you can(and should) do to make up for that, and knowing those things will do a lot to contribute to speeding up the adjustment period.
