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Warlords of Draenor: Changes to Weapon Imbues and Unleash Elements

As part of the most recent Alpha build, shaman weapon imbues (Windfury, Flametongue, Earthliving) have been removed. CM Lore got on the forums and explained exactly what was up, and here's his rundown of the changes.

Lore - Weapon Imbues Shaman
We didn't feel that Weapon Imbues were offering much in the way of gameplay. For many players, they felt like more of an annoyance ("why can't I Unleash... oh") than a buff. They're also prime targets for reducing action bar clutter. For those reasons, we decided to convert each spec's primary imbue(s) to passive effects.

However, while the effects of Windfury and Flametongue are a core part of the Enhancement rotation, Earthliving for Restoration and Flametongue for Elemental are little more than a raw numbers increase. Not really something that we need to clutter up the spellbook with. So, for Resto and Elemental, we decided to remove those effects entirely (and compensate for that when we start numbers tuning). For Enhancement, we merged Windfury and Flametongue into one passive (Enhanced Weapons) that gives the benefits of both effects.

Please be aware that the currently active Alpha build was taken in the middle of a pretty big wave of class changes (for everyone, not just Shaman). We'll be getting a full update to the patch notes out as soon as possible once we've completed that round of changes.


The new passive, Enhanced Weapons, acts as Lore detailed - it basically gives your attacks the chance to have the effects of Windfury or Flametongue without actually having Windfury or Flametongue on them. In addition to this change, Unleash Elements now becomes one of three spec and imbue specific Unleash abilities, Unleash Life for Restoration, Unleash Flame for Elemental and Unleash Elements for Enhancement. Each unleashes as the ability does on live with the proper imbue.