WotLK Shaman Changes

Quite honestly, It’s hard to get excited about the most recent round of shaman changes to hit the WotLK beta. We’ve basically got a few balance issues fixed and that’s it. That said I do find these changes a bit annoying from the restoration side.

I mean, let’s take a brief look at the resto tree. We get tital force, which is pretty lack luster in my book. It basically is amounting to a 3 critical heals, no big deal. I suppose you can’t be too hard on tidal force, considering it’s a tier 3 talent. But then on top of that they cut Nature’s blessing in half?! I really don’t care for Blizzard’s explanation there either. I mean c’mon, it’s a tier 8 talent. If you’re going to go that deep into the restoration tree there should be some legitimate benefits to the last few talents.

While I’m not exactly angry with the totem mastery removal it does take away from a variety of potential hybrid specs. For most specs it’s pretty much a staple, the 20 yard totem range just doesn’t cut it. So giving this to all shamans certainly works as a nice buff for all elemental and enhancement shamans.

Guess I shouldn’t gripe too much since I play elemental.

• Flametongue Weapon: Now has a passive spell damage.
• Nature’s Blessing no longer increases spell damage from Intellect, and the effect has been reduced to 5/10/15% from 10/20/30%. This is in result of the new spell power system. Players should notice little to no change in the power of the spell relevant to healing spells.
• New Talent: Tidal Force- Increases the critical effect chance of your Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave and Chain Heal by 60%. Each critical heal reduces the chance by 20% and lasts 20 seconds.
• Stoneclaw Totem: Health of the Stoneclaw totem is increased by 5% of the Shaman’s total health.
• The range of all “friendly totems” has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.
• Totemic Mastery talent removed and replaced with “Tidal Force”.