New Riptide Animation

Not sure if I missed this change in a previous PTR build or not, but it looks like there was an undocumented change to the riptide animation. As you can see below it’s received a significant improvement. Note, this is build 9038, not 9056, which will buff the +healing of riptide.

Upcoming Shaman Changes

More pretty big changes for the shaman class this morning. On the elemental front we’re looking at some pretty nice buffs to riptide, which had been looking sub par. Now that riptide can proc tidal waves there should be no question about the rotational significance of the new spell.

Tidal Waves: You have a 100% chance after you cast Chain Heal to lower the cast time of your next Lesser Healing Wave or Healing WAve spell by 30%. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 10% of your bonus healing effects.

This change in addition to the increase on initial healing should make the spell an absolute must for restoration shamans.

Some interesting changes on the elemental / enhancement front as well. I like the theory on Blizzard’s reasoning for trying to buff fire for elemental, but it’s a delicate balancing act. Currently an elemental shaman really does nothing in PvE accept drop totems and cast lightning bolt. So adding some sort of situational spells and abilities would be a nice addition. If the devs can work the new lava burst ability into the rotation it would be a job well done.

A small victory for enhancement shamans, initially it was looking like Maelstrom weapon was going to be nerfed to the point it was worthless, but in a last minute change Blizzard have decided to set it aside for the moment. It will certainly make for some very interesting PvP and PvE moments if it makes it all the way through till expansion.

Tidal Waves — Riptide now also procs this effect.

Riptide — We’re going to increase the initial healing component.

Storm Reach — now called “Elemental Reach” and includes Lava Burst.

Improved Fire Nova Totem - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20%, and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire Nova Totem for 2 sec.

Thunderstorm — We will probably boost the mana return to 8% of total mana. That seems more in line with similar effects. We talked a lot about buffing its damage, but decided that may not be a good idea. With its short range, it isn’t a great rotational spell for a raiding Elemental shamans, and making you run up to hit a boss and run back is giving up a lot of cast time. Instead we’re going to try to keep the damage and knockback more situational (in PvP it will get used a lot) and make the mana return the big PvE raiding focus.

Maelstrom Weapon — We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it’s balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we’d have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we’re going to let this ride for now. It’s something to keep an eye on, but we aren’t going to change it yet.

Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt — And now for a few words on Elemental damage. One of the things we were trying to do to make Elemental dps more interesting was to have a Lava Burst + Flameshock variant. We also themed some new deep talents to support this play style. The problem is that lightning still seems to do more damage than fire, which in turn makes the new talents feel lame because they benefit fire and not lightning.


Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you’d partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells.

We talked a lot about just buffing Lava Burst and a deep fire-based talent or two. This will make Lava Burst too good on paper, but it might work out okay in the game itself. We’ll just have to see. We aren’t 100% sold on this course of action, so I’ll update when we decide for sure.

Once again, these decisions were the consensus of our design team, so please don’t give me the credit. In fact, if there are any changes you specifically don’t like — those I had nothing to do with

Shaman Resto Changes and Spirit Wolf Buff

The spirit wolf buff isn’t surprising, every other class with a pet will be scaling in WotLK, it only makes sense that shaman’s should as well. The recent changes to enhancement in combination with the buffed spirit wolves are really bringing the enhancement tree to a level it’s never been at.

All 3 shaman talent specs are just looking great. Blizzard has done a great job balancing each spec accordingly. The one somewhat unknown area for me…at least not 100% known is still restoration. In theory the spec looks fine, but it will be difficult to determine if it will be equally effective in both PvP and PvE situations until level 80.

Riptide and Restoration tree
Riptide probably isn’t going to be a crazy awesome raiding tool *unless* you’re in a fight with a lot of movement, in which case it does its job very well. It is situational, but we actually made a lot of the new spells situational because almost every class already had bread and butter abilities well before LK.

Now, I think it does shine in 5-player dungeons, PvP or in 10-player raids, depending on how many hot-based healers you have. The initial heal could probably be a bit larger. That is something we may change after some more testing.

I know Resto hasn’t gotten as much attention as other shaman specs in this forum, but honeslty we think it’s because you work pretty well. Players have gotten made when I’ve said that before, but particularly in raids, everyone knows what they’re going to get from a Resto (CH and Earth Shield) and I don’t think that is going away.

Spirit Wolves
We might have to lower the healing per damage if the damage goes up a lot with the AP changes. In other words, you might not see a buff to healing and damage.

Spirit Wolves scaling with Attack Power
I said Strength at one point, but they never did scale off of Strength. In fact they never scaled off of anything. They were the same no matter what your level or gear. We fixed that though, and they should scale very well (using AP, not Str). Let us know if that isn’t happening.

Then you’re going to love them next build.

WotLK Shaman Talent Changes - Build 8970

Mostly generic talent adjustments and fixes, certainly the most interesting change is the addition of the new restoration talent, riptide. Riptide - Heals a friendly target for 764 to 826 and another 477 over 15 sec sec. Your next Chain Heal cast on that primary target within 15 sec sec will consume the healing over time effect and increase the amount of the Chain Heal by 25%. 18% of base mana, 40 yd range, Instant Cast, 6 sec cooldown.

Not much PvP utility, but certainly a nice bonus for PvE shamans. Chain heal is already the primary healing spell for most shamans anyway, this just adds extra unneeded incentive to spam chain heal.

The big change, and one I’m most excited for is the new 5 minute timer on all totems. Pretty awesome change for shamans’ as a whole, I’m not sure how much this change will factor into arena play as totems are easy targets…but for PvE shamans this will make a huge improvement to overall mana efficiency in long duration fights.

A welcome and long overdue change…now all we need is a new ability called “High Powered Rotary Fan” - your totems now float on a cushion of air and are programmed to follow you around via GPS. =D

Elemental

• Lava Flows - Now increases the range of your Flame Shock by 5/10/15 yards instead of increasing the amount of bonus spell damage on your Flametongue Weapon by an additional 15/30/45%.
• Eye of the Storm - Now reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst and Hex spells by 23/46/70% instead of giving you a 23/46/70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage.
  

Enhancement

• Static Shock - Now increases the number of charges of your Lightning Shield by 2/4/6 up from 1/2/3.
• Elemental Weapons - Now increases the spell damage on your Flametongue Weapon by 10/20/30% and increases the bonus healing on your Earthliving Weapon by 10/20/30% instead of increasing the damage caused by your Flametongue Weapon and Frostbrand Weapon by 5/10/15%.
  

Restoration

• Healing Focus - Reduces the pushback suffered by 23/46/70% instead of giving you a 23/46/70% chance to avoid interruption.
• Blessing of the Eternals - Now increases the chance to apply the Earthliving heal over time effect on the target by 40/80% when they are at or under 35% total health instead of increasing the bonus healing from your Earthliving weapon by 5/10%.
  
• Earthliving Weapon - All ranks saw a healing increase, max rank now 70 up from 26.
  
• Spirit Link - Removed, replaced with Riptide.
  
• Riptide - Heals a friendly target for 764 to 826 and another 477 over 15 sec sec. Your next Chain Heal cast on that primary target within 15 sec sec will consume the healing over time effect and increase the amount of the Chain Heal by 25%. 18% of base mana, 40 yd range, Instant Cast, 6 sec cooldown
  

Totems

• All totems now last 5 min.