Standby

No, I will not do any comment on the PTR class changes, even if today could definitely be called "Shaman's Day". I am just waiting on the real 2.4 patch, nothing else.

Concerning us, the team is sitting at 1728 rating, we really hope to see 1800 by the end of the week. We know we can, we just need another night to do it.

Official Patch 2.4 Update : Class Changes

Source : http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Druids

• Empowered Rejuvenation: This talent now properly affects the final heal from Lifebloom.
• Gift of Nature: This talent now properly affects the healing from Tranquility.
• Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
• Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.
• Lifebloom healing coefficient has been reduced.
• Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0.
• Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.
• Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
• Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% of your Attack Power while in Cat form.
• When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.
  

Hunter

• Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.
• Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.
• Hunter's Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter's Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter's Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.
• Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.
• The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.
• Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Mages

• Arcane Explosion: The damage cap for area of effect damage on this spell has been increased by approximately 50%.
• Arcane Fortitude now increases your armor by an amount equal to 100% of your Intellect, up from 50%.
• Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
• Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
• Frostbite: When a frost spell is reflected back at a Mage, it is now possible for the Mage to suffer from the Frostbite effect.
• Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
• Icy Veins no longer stacks with Bloodlust/Heroism.
• Improved FireWard has become Molten Shields.
• New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.
• Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slow.
• Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.

Paladins

• Avenger's Shield, Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
• Divine Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.
• Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.
• udgment of the Crusader: It is no longer possible to have icons for two different ranks of Judgment of the Crusader appear at the same time when judged by multiple Paladins.
• Judgment of Wisdom: Some abilities (such as Frostbolt) were not triggering the mana energize effect from this spell. This has now been fixed.
• Resistance Auras: It is no longer possible for two Paladins in the same party to make it appear that players have two of the same resistance aura active.
• Righteous Defense: This spell will now always be castable on friendly npcs.
• Seal of Blood: This ability will no longer cause spell pushback for the Paladin with this seal active.
• Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to Turn Evil. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.
  

Priests

• Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds.
• Fear Ward is now usable while in Shadow form.
• Focused Will now reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.
• Inner Focus: Chastise now benefits from Inner Focus. In addition, Starshards no longer consumes Inner Focus.
• Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% for 15 seconds.
• Power Word: Shield: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
• Prayer of Mending: This spell will now fade from players who leave or enter an instance, change continents, or exit the game.
• Reflective Shield: The reactive damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control affects which break on taking damage.
• Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.
• Silent Resolve:This talent now affects Surge of Light, Power Infusion, Inspiration, Spirit Tap, Blackout, Levitate, Shackle Undead, Touch of Weakness, Hex of Weakness, and Symbol of Hope.
• Touch of Weakness: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.It will also function properly even when the Priest with Touch of Weakness on is silenced or stunned.
• Vampiric Touch: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Rogues

• Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time.
• Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates and now has an animation.
• Improved Backstab is now called Puncturing Wounds.
• Puncturing Wounds increases your critical strike chance with Backstab by 10/20/30%, and the critical strike chance with your Mutilate ability by 5/10/15%.
• Improved Sprint: This ability will now always remove Entangling Roots.
• Sap mechanic changed from Incapacitate to Sap. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.
• Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.

Shaman

• Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
• Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
• Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
• Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
• Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
• Nature's Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.
• Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
• Stormstrike has a new icon.
• Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
• Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4.
• The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.

Warlocks

• Blood Pact now has a tooltip.
• Demonic Knowledge: This buff will no longer remain on enslaved demons when Enslave Demon is removed. It will now increase your spell damage by an amount equal to 4/8/12%, down from 5/10/15%.
• Demonic Sacrifice: Now works properly in sanctuary regions (such as Shattrath City and the Stair of Destiny).
• Nether Protection: The buff from this talent will no longer interrupt capturing PvP flags and bases.
• Pyroclasm: This talent now works correctly again with Rain of Fire.
• Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances if they meet the instance requirements.
• Shadow Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Warriors

• Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior.
• Stances: It is no longer possible to accidentally change into a stance you are already in via macros (resulting in a global cooldown and loss of rage).
• Whirlwind: Critical strikes with the off-hand weapon from this ability can now trigger Flurry and Rampage.
• Flurry will properly refresh if a crit occurs with 1 charge left.
• Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP.

Comments in my next post.

2008 PvP Logs, Week #6 : Rating record, 2.4 Hope

Hello all,

We touch 1748 Wednesday then drop to 1708 after two insane games we lost. We played about fifty games, blowed up some common-RMP, still loosing to the ones with very good execution. It's all about destroying, rampaging, locking the mage in the addition of all I have said in my previous post about them... And don't forget to use your trinket when you are about to be shatter-combo'ed !

The road to 1850
We are sure and confident about our strength. We have beaten some 1800+ teams (playing at 2:00 AM probably helps), we were never clearly out-skilled in the games we have lost. Our main losses were due to bad focus or strategy, never really on a guy screwing up the game like we have seen before. I clearly have to work on my Tremor totem positioning; it is way too easy for my priest/locks opponents to destroy it then fear me or my friends (or both). I need a better timing of my grounding totem: polymorph, cyclone, frostbolt just came to my mind as examples. I also have to re-do my focus macro because it is way too hard to be only dependant on mouseover to cs a target.

Blizzard, we wait for your move
After the chaos on the class forums (the shaman board were the place to be last week-end) we received some indirect feedback from Blizzard.

Quote from Blizzard staff
Second, there is more to come in 2.4 including class changes. I can't say how much as of yet because, again, it's based on testing and what results we get out of it. The developers do have things they want to do. As we go along, we should see more additions to the notes. I still can't give you an idea of just how much though. If we are able to give a better projection on our plans, we will though. I know that it's been a question on many people's minds and has come up many times since the initial notes were released for the PTR.

According to Gangbank Armory, I'm the 3rd Enhancement Shaman in 3vs3 on my ladder (Cataclysme) with 1705, first for Alliance. Cataclysme is considered for French-speaking people as Cyclone for UK. It is just sad that I'm this high in this rating with just 1k7. It's showing clearly where Enhancement Shaman is in the food chain now. As this PTR will probably last at least 2-3 months, I can't wait to see the projects Blizzard have for Shamans.

By the way, I received interesting critics from Blogazeroth community about my design, the lack of graphics and *ouch* my English. I will try to make the most of those comments, beginning by enhancing (ahah) my template and correcting more carefully before I post.

Hey, who are you my dear readers?

It's been six months I'm posting here to talk about my experience as a Shaman. I was motivated by reading Phaelia, Megan or Ming with his Naruto schizophrenic attitude. Not finding anything really interesting (or updated) on Enhancement Shaman I decided to create my own diary.

My first idea was to do a heavy PvE theorycrafting blog, with lots of graphs, calculation and so. But life had more imagination than me. Due to personal concerns (I found a new job, have moved house two times in the last year and a girl entered in my life *emo*) it was hard to maintain 4 to 5 raids per week. Then I had to quit my raiding guild, get back in my first lovely guild and decided to have an in-depth look on the PvP side of the game.

Even if playing an Enhancement Shaman ain't the best situation for an ArenaFanBoi, I don't regret this move at all. PvP is the real school of this game : I simply didn't know how to play until the last 6 months and my heavy involvement in arenas and battlgrounds (remember, I was a Naxxramas attuned hardcore raider/theorycrafter pre-BC, 6 raids a week was usual for me).

Now, my little guild is ready for Karazhan (the first will be next Sunday) but our objective is far different as before. We want to farm the PvE content to acquire PvP items. No competition, no who-will-1st-kill-this-or-that, no extensive farming, no more than two raid sessions per week.

So, why are you still reading my blog?
What made you come the first time?
What type of contents do you want to see in the future?

P.S : If you want to find a blog with Enhancement PvE data, check Asirae blog. He updates often and provides really excellent personal data.

Dedication to your avatar : Serious Casual attitude

Yesterday I have farmed 4k honours points on my Shaman. I'm now 17/25k on the road for my Gladiator's Salvation. I have still to afford two PvP Epic Gems then the 75k for S4 preparation.

The thing is, I would like to have some time to reroll in order to better know the other class mechanisms. I would like to have 9 Level 70 from different classes. And play with them. I will definitely not try to get them all competitive, but I really find that you should have a minimal knowledge of each class to fully understand and enjoy the game, the patch impacts and so much more. And have fun. Megan is my hero on this side.

I have a level 70 Shaman, a level 62 druid, a level 57 warrior, a level 39 *twink* Warlock. I would like to level my druid to 70. I would like to have a 70 disc Priest. I would like to level a Paladin.

But I can't afford that time due to the fact that I want to be competitive with my Shaman, I want my teammates to be proud of me, I want to show them that they were right to put their confidence in me. Remember that I'm no more a very hardcore since more than one year and Naxxramas (best instance ever). I work full time as financial analyst, play typically 3 nights per week and some Sunday afternoon. Other than that, I just chill with my girlfriend or reading. It's between 20 and 30 hours dedicated to gaming per week. I am a big player for my girlfriend, a casual one for my ex-guildmates. I would say serious casual myself (expression stolen from EJ).

This serious casual attitude prevent from being an Alt-aholics given to the fact that I don't have the time to dedicate myself seriously for the moment to more than one avatar. When my Shaman will be completely itemizated, I will take time to move on my druid then other classes. My late comeback in Wow (70 last September) didn't work in my advantage on this level.

All this commitment to a class which is the less played in arena is kinda masochist isn't it ? I am not crazy. I strongly believe that in a soon future Blizzard will make something for us Enhancement in Arena. The little thing we desperately need to be as competitive as rogues or warriors in the arena competition.

Anyway, I'm going to respec 40/21, mainly loosing 6% of PA bonus in the exchange of Nature's Swiftness.

The Lolpatch 2.4

So.

Stormstrike has a new icon.

Are you kidding me ?

I seriously hope they will do some update on the PTR. Really.
Here is he complete PTR changes for Shaman :

Shaman

• Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
• Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
• Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
• Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
• Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
• Stormstrike has a new icon.
• Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
• The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometime detonate without doing any damage.

You can read it all here : http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=4163.0

P.S : I was way too emo when I publish this note. I strongly believe that Blizzard has some plans for us. Anyway, I will perhaps take the reputation PvP gear and have some test with resto/elemental in Arena.

Leaked Shaman 2.4 Notes

All forums are burning this morning with this leaked 2.4 class changes list provided by Boubouille on MMO Champion.

For Shamans :

• Lightning Bolt: Spell coefficient reduced by $
• Lightning Overload can no longer proc on instant cast spells. (aka NS+CL won't proc it)
• Lightning Overload can no longer critically hit.
• Tremor Totem and Poison Cleansing Totem now pulse every 3 seconds, down from 5.
• Earth Shield mana cost reduced by 50%
• Earth Shield now has 6 charges, down from 10.
• Healing Grace: Now also reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%
• Shaman Gladiator 4-set bonus now reduces pushback by 30%, down from 70%.

So well, if this is true, it is the most, well, Elemental Shamans are messed up. There was debate on the blogosphere about how OP were Elemental Shamans with PI (Power Infusion: Spell damage and healing done increased by 20%.) in 5vs5 Arena. Specially after Inactive release some CLC videos where he has taken insane burst.

Having played Ele only during my Leveling, I don't know how much this nerf will impact for them in arena. But it's definitely a sad day for them.

Btw, the Earth Shield Change is really nice and with the Healing Grace modification, the output will be that it would be less mana efficient for dispeller (~250 mana) to put it off compared for the Shaman to re-put it on (450 mana).

For Enhancement, the Healing Grace talent will helps Shamanistic Rage not to be dispelled as soon as the BIG RED FACE pop up on your already big character (The Common Hey Scrub Dispell Me incentive) but it's nothing really interessant at all. It will just take perhaps one more pure to dispell a 41pt not-so-great talent on a 2mn cooldown. Cool. Shamanistic Rage at this current step is not worth 41pts. The fact is at the opposite of rogues/wars/mages/alltheother we do not have a lot of choices in the other talents trees to do a mix up as Shama first tiers are weak. This make me think that my old 0/40/21 specs could be the only exception.

The only really "nice" thing of this leaked patchnote is that the Tremor Totem/Poison pulsing reduced to 3 seconds. Because I am fed of being feared out of my Tremor Totem range. And it happens almost everytime I face a 'Lock.

2008 PvP Logs, Week #5 : Still RMP issues, Gladiator Salvation, Healing macro.

We're still navigating between 1600 and 1700, losing basically to most RMP but improving our gameplay : we last longer and even win some rare times. Our stuff goes the same way, Freak bought his Vengeful gladiator leggings (up from a blue one) which is a great upgrade for him. He is now 207 resilience, nothing extraordinary but he will probably not explode as easy as before on the first switch from the opposite team now. Next upgrade for both of us is the Vengeful Helm which we will probably obtain the first week of March.

RMP : A never ending story
Well, we played better. Even versus power-levelling teams (about 10% of the teams we meet in 70+ games). We actually win a really nice game, perfectly LOSing both the manaburner priest and the mage, killing the rogue this way, during the blind of the priest. We know the basis of this match-up :

• Everybody has to play very near his teammates. We put icons on our head in order not to be tempted to go too far from the rest of the team.
• Sustaining the heavy damage. It's all about LOSing and healing.
• Never. Ever. Tunnel Vision. If just one of us have Tunnel vision, the game is just ended. We lost two games because Cromagnonman exposing himself to a silence at a critical situation or me not LOSing at the right time.

So I'm farming now the Gladiator Salvation.

Gladiator's Salvation
Binds when picked up
Mace Main Hand
Speed 1.60
22 - 111 Damage(41.5 damage per second)
+18 Intellect
+28
Stamina
Durability 105 / 105
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves
resilience rating by 18.
Equip: Increases healing done by up to 375 and
damage done by up to 125 for all magical spells and effects.

Huh ? Why farming an healing mace for an Enhancement Shaman ?

Simply to outperform RMP when we have to burst-heal the focus target. If the focus don't explode, it's gg for us. For that and better Totem I have respeced 44/17 (And probably 42/19 at 2.4 for the dispell resistance -> Healing Grace: Now also reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30% ) . With the Improved Concentration Aura I have 92% antipushback and about 400 spell power with my AP. With this mace enchanted with +81 healing and my Totem of the Plain (Increases healing done by Lesser Healing Wave by up to 79), I will have +930 healing power on my Lesser Healing Wave which is perfect in those emergencies. I'll then use the following macro binded on my "4" button.

#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/cast Lesser Healing Wave
/equipslot16 Gladiator's Salvation
/equipslot18 Totem of the Plains

12k farmed on 25k for the moment, I'll do the last 13k this weekend I think. It's definitely take more effort than with any other class to be the minimum competitive as an Enhancement.