Totem Talk: What will Patch 3.0 mean?

Well, this week we found out that we're going to get a taste of the new talents and skills for Wrath of the Lich King, which wasn't exactly a surprise, as we got a similar content patch before the launch of The Burning Crusade. However, as we've been getting quite a bit of mail asking what, exactly, it means for shamans when patch 3.0 goes live. While I always try to avoid Wrath spoilers, in this case I feel like we're not talking about expansion secrets: there are changes that will be affecting you in your day to day playing before you set foot in Northrend. So a brief overview out in the open seems warranted.

For starters, we know that the new skills and talents for each class will be implemented. What does that mean for your shaman? Well, as best as we can tell at this point, this will be your talent tree.At level 70 (since new levels and skills that require those levels will not be unlocked) you will be able to spend 61 points, placing the 51 point talents within reach. It means that the spell power changes are certain to be implemented, since many of the talents require that new mechanic. (This is of course subject to change, but there's been no sign that Blizzard's thinking differently about the change.) It means that totems will most likely be raid wide, that Windfury Totem and Wrath of Air Totem will change to the haste mechanic, that enhancement shamans will now gain 1 AP per point of strength, 1 AP per point of agility, and will be able to gain 1 AP per point of Intellect as well, changing their ideal itemization. (This may actually increase the attack power of some shaman tier gear.) And there will be entirely new abilities open to shamans of all three talent builds. (As pointed out in the comments, we'll also get Earthliving Weapon.)

Please keep in mind that there will be changes to these trees. There's already discussion of changes to Anticipation, Shamanistic Focus and Windfury Weapon in recent blue posts and any such changes are inherently going to be reflected in patch 3.0.

What it means for you as shaman players is a little harder to pin down. In the first place, it's very hard to know for sure that the talents and skills we're seeing in beta will make it to live: all shamans know that changes can be announced, rolled back, and re-introduced without warning. Elemental shamans in particular are going to have to watch the PTR and should if at all possible go on and test out how their damage looks with the new, lower spell coefficients and the new spell power system. I'd originally planned this week to be an in depth coverage of elemental shamans in the Wrath beta, in fact, but the server instability combined with bugs that keep various weapon imbues like Flametongue from being properly applied made it difficult to properly test the spec, since everything is predicated on abilities that don't work and time playing that isn't possible. I managed to gain another level questing as elemental, and would have to say that as a general rule the spec feels as potent, if not more powerful, as it did and that patch 3.0 won't bring any massive changes, but abilities like Thunderstorm feel extremely unfinished, and without the ability to apply the imbue to my weapon Lava Flows is impossible to judge.

Things you will absolutely not see in patch 3.0, although they may be at the trainers, include Hex and Lava Burst. Both spells are first learned at a higher level than the level 70 you will still be confined to when it launches: you won't have to worry about how to work the new damage spell into your rotation and won't have a new panic short-term CC ability to make use of. It's up to you as to whether or not that's a good or a bad thing, but it's not something you should count on.

Generally, it's safe to say that you're not going to be throwing out your tier gear immediately, if you have any. You may find yourself consolidating some gear that used to be exclusively elemental or restoration, especially with new restoration spells like Blessing of the Eternals and Ancestral Awakening making crit more important to resto and with the downranking changes also very likely to go live with the patch as well. How will it affect raiding? How will it affect PvP, instances heroic and regular? If I had to hazard a guess (and I do, it's what I'm here for), I'd say that elemental will be the least obviously affected, with a slight loss in spell hit and some dissentiion between keeping as close to current specs as possible and trying out deeper talents like Storm, Earth and Fire. But for the most part your gear isn't going to change unrecognizably, what you do in an instance, raid or PvP won't change much: a 40/0/21 build will still allow for Elemental Mastery/Nature's Swiftness. Still, such a build will not take advantage of Astral Shift, and at least a few elemental shamans have told me that it's a must have for PvP. (PvP is the one thing I haven't done much at all of in beta, it's just not been a priority compared to trying to level two characters.)

Enhancement will see more changes with the loss of our hit talent in the restoration tree but the chance to gain real synergy from spells thanks to Maelstrom Weapon and Elemental Devastation. This and the change to how gear adds attack power will be the only real changes to how Enhancement works in raids and instances, while Spectral Transformation continues the migration of Spirit Wolf from a travel form to an escape utility. Some enhancement shamans (the ones who prioritized AP leather) might feel a bit of a string to the new itemization, it's not as if gear with agility and AP is going to become bad all of a sudden, it's just that mail with agility, int and AP will look even better. My banked Beastmaw Pauldrons may actually get some use. While combat will have the potential to be more involved, it's not going to suddenly baffle you with a bewildering series of options, and if you're head to toe in epics you're probably not going to sweat the new AP calculations very much.

Restoration loses downranking (which, based on comments in this very column, half of you resto shamans use a lot and half of you don't) and gains new abilities that focus on crit heals and new procs, as well as Spirit Link, which in my experience to date is a really powerful and versatile utility that I have yet to learn how to use properly. Talents like Tidal Waves definitely seem to be hinting at a more crit-based approach to healing for restoration shamans, perhaps making Lesser Healing Wave more useful as a means to plug the hole downranking leaves behind. if you have elemental gear with lots of spell crit, you may want to slot some of that in and see if talents like Improved Water Shield and Improved Shields can help pick up some of the mana regeneration slack. (It's pretty easy to get Improved Shields and still go deep resto at 70.)

In the end, when patch 3.0 comes it will change how you play. But it won't cripple you, if what I've seen of the new skills and talents is any indication.

Next week hopefully we can get back to looking at elemental. Lava Burst: is it the center of an entirely new way to DPS as a caster shaman? Or is it mostly hype?