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%