Shaman changes in Wrath beta build 8982

Shamans see some changes in today's Beta build. Nothing world-shaking, a few small buffs and a small nerf and a change that I honestly can't tell which category to place it in.

• Stoneclaw Totem also protects your other totems, causing them to absorb damage.

Well, this certainly isn't a bad change. It does mean that wand macros will be changed to target the Stoneclaw totem first, I suppose, giving your other totems a few seconds more of life. (Since Stoneclaw has a decent amount of health, it will actually take a couple of hits to die.) Not a magnificent buff, but not bad either.

• Riptide sees its base healing increased on each rank.

Each rank of this spell will now heal for more, giving it more oomph as an HoT spell. Again, nothing bad to say about that, right?

• Mana Spring Totem now restores mana every 2 seconds instead of five seconds.

Seems like a change between patches here. I'm pretty sure mana spring works along these same lines on live (mana every 2 seconds) but I could be wrong, I don't stare at my mana spring's return all that often. MMO Champion indicates that Mana Spring was returning 90 mana every 5 seconds, which would make this a slight nerf between beta builds.

• Storm, Earth and Fire now reduces Chain Lightning's cooldown by up to 2.5 seconds instead of increasing the effect of spell power on lightning spells.

Okay, I guess. Not sure why they changed this.

Overall, the changes are minor, with no real outright nerfs and a couple of small buffs to speak of.