New WotLK Shaman Changes

More changes were announced today for the shaman class. The changes to restoration / elemental were pretty bland, but I really like where blizzard is taking the class as far as enhancement goes. More and more we’re s

eeing talents that really allow for a wide variety of viable hybrid builds.

From what I’ve read and seen on the WotLK beta, enhancement shamans have been pretty much dead last in overall damage output. Enhancement is getting some pretty solid improvements with this patch though, both in utility and DPS. This change should hopefully bring enhancement shamans up to par with the other DPS classes.

Earthen Power Changes – Huge PvP Buff

Perhaps the most interesting of these changes is the new “earthen power” talent, which causes your earth bind totem to have a 50%/100% chance to dispel all snare effects when it pulses. This is a huge change and it should have a massive change for shamans in PvP. For most of TBC enhancement shamans have been on the verge of really being a great class for PvP…but their lack of utility and no MS debuff has kept them out of traditional arena teams.

While they probably won’t get a mortal strike buff before WOTLK, I think this change to earthbind will really improve the total viability of the class for 2s and 3s. I’m very excited to see how this group of enhancement shaman changes synergizes with the other new class changes.

Elemental

• Elemental Fury and Call of Thunder are switching places. Call of Thunder will be a 1-point talent, and Elemental Fury will be a 5-point talent. For Elemental Shaman this won’t mean much, for Enhancement it means they can have easier access to 100% spell crit damage.
• Lightning Mastery will now reduce that cast time of Lava Burst by 0.5 sec with 5 points. (Down to 1.5)
• Lava Bursts base damage numbers have been significantly increased.

Enhancement

• Mental Quickness and Unleashed Rage have swapped places.
• Spectral Transformation renamed “Earthen Power”. It causes your Earthbind Totem totem to have a 50/100% dispel all snare effects when it pulses.
• Weapon Mastery: Now a 3-point talent (4/7/10%)
• Stormstrike – New animation, also now increases all Fire, Frost and Nature damage done by the Shaman instead of just Nature.
• New Talent (Tier-8) – Lava Lash: You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 75% off-hand Weapon damage. Damage is increased by 25% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue. 3 second cooldown. 4% base mana cost. (Also note: Lava Lash does Fire damage, also procs Maelstrom Weapon)
• Maelstrom Weapon: Can now be used for Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave.
• Feral Spirit – Many bugs with Spirit Wolves fixed, also increased the damage done by the Spirit Wolves

Restoration

Ancestral Awakening improved to 10/20/30%

WotLK Spellpower Change

As many of you know I’ve been watching these WotLK changes come pouring in for weeks now, however one change did happen to slip through my radar, and it’s a pretty big one. As some of you may have read, +healing and +damage will be merged into a single stat called “spellpower” when patch 3.0 is released. The spellpower on your current weapon will be determined by the following formula.

Spellpower = +Healing * 0.532

The .532 value for this formula was derived using an average of the top 10 +healing items in the game. Fellow WoW blogger Phaelia from resto4life.com included this table in his recent post on the druid implications of these spell power changes.

As you can see, the spellpower changes will completely revamp the way healing and damage are calculated. In order to compensate for the spellpower changes healing coefficients will be adjusted to make up for the difference. You shouldn’t notice any reduction in your effective healing.

However, it’s happy days for caster DPS! Currently it does not look like blizzard has any plans to change damage coefficients for +damage spells…meaning all casters should receive a 60% damage increase.

Though don’t get to excited, I would expect the inflated damage values to level out by the time everyone hits level 80. This change should make healer hybrid’s lives much easier as all your gear will be centered around a single stat.

Mage Talent Builds

If you’re looking for the best mage talent builds then you’ve come to the right place. This mage spec guide will be continually updated to reflect the current best arcane, fire, frost and hybrid builds for pvp, pve, leveling and more! With that said, let’s get to the good stuff!

PvP Mage Specs
When we consider mage pvp builds their are a variety of factors we must consider. The first, and most important is the purpose of the build. We basically have two types of pvp builds, those builds for arena, and those builds not for arena.

For the purpose of arena we are really looking at 2 types of mage talent builds. Mage builds that focus on burst or mage builds that focus on longevity. In essence, frost vs. arcane.

• 20/0/51 – frost, high survivability, high mana longevity
• 58/13/0 – arcane, high burst, moderate survivabilty
• 55/16/0 – arcane, variation on stanard arcane burst build, very similar to 58/13/0

If you’re looking for additional information on pvp and arena, head over here, mage pvp specs guide.

The following pvp specs are great for battlegrounds and world PvP, though I don’t consider them optimal for arena. That said, if you have the right type of team they could work.

• 0/56/15 – fire, high burst, moderate longevity, great for battlegrounds

PvE Mage Specs
The one thing I really love about raiding as a mage is the wide variety of potential specs you can choose to raid with. There are many great mage talent builds out there for PvE. They all offer a slightly different experience and play style, but each is viable in it’s own regard.

• 18/0/53 – frost
• 0/18/53 – frost
• 30/0/41 – frost / arcane hybrid build
• 0/51/20 – frostfire
• 18/53/0 – fireball
• 57/3/11 – arcane

Mage Leveling Build
For leveling purposes I like to keep it pretty simple…let’s just say we’re going to have a few points in frost. The following build is your ideal leveling build, you’ll have great AoE spells for pulling huge packs, mana longevity, and survivabilty. It’s the perfect build for long grinding and questing sessions.

• 0/0/71 – full frost

Additionally, if you’re looking for a kick ass guide to help you power through your levels check out this, level 1-70 in 6 days 5 hours. I’ve personally used this guide myself and let me tell you, it’s got an awesome in-game mod that guides you the whole way!