2008 PvP Logs, Week #4 : CRUSHED.

1705 to 1555 with a 13-20 record. /o\.

I'm wordless about how we feel frustrated last night. 1/3 of our loose where facing RMP. 1/3 versus Powerlevelling guild which outstuff us. 1/3 where due to RNG.


1/3 : RMP
Well we have faced about 30% RMP teams last night. We killed some of them but most has ripped us down. Actually, we managed in a lot a game to take down the mage but we had taken so much damage to do it that it was easy for them to finish us. Our main problem was Cromagnonman (our Paladin) being silenced/ks at key moments.


2/3 : Outstuff
Between the "old" PvPers which are currently full stuffed, the Powerlevelling guys with S3 weapons and the wagon of PvPvErs who have access to Hyjal/BT stuff, we simply feel "low" sometimes. I can't count how many times we put our focus at less than 5%. Almost all our loses. But there is still those 5 %. On the other hand, we have seen our Paladin completely destroyed in no time on some focus fire when we were thinking to win.


3/3 : RNG
When a Warrior crit you 5 times in a row one time you can cry. When it happens in almost every match you do in one night, you might consider to reroll a class with a "Oh Shit!" button. Something equal to IceBlock, Bubble, Vanish, Swiftmend/HoT/Travel form removing snares, Fear, Feign Death/Trap. Yeah, every class in this game but Shaman got this magic button which able you to do a partial reset of any 1vs1 situation. All I can do is pop out my shield and Shamanistic rage that will be dispelled in no time. But when I pop out my shield, I am gimping by an huge number my DPS and that results in the Focus target not being killed, and you know how reliant an enhancement shaman is in a long match with a base 5700 mana pool. No purge, no Stormstrike, no totem, I am a rogue without any cooldown bringing nothing on the table in this case.


Conclusions ?
Due to our off-team, our gameplay, our composition, we have to win very, very fast. As said yesterday, this morning I had enough point to pop my S2 Mace, I will put Executionner on it tonight or tomorrow. To continue on itemization, I will put asap the Nethercobra Leg Armor patch on my S3 Pants and trying to upgrade my +6 strenght gem to +8 ones. BT gems are unavailable right now on our server (Sargeras-EU), but as there is two guilds facing Illidan now, I hope that in a near future we will have access to those. I am wondering about doing a minor respec also, still discussing with Freakhill.

2008 PvP Logs, Week #3 : 1700 rating, Upgrading Weapons, Finally some PvE ?

Well, sorry but this update will be short.

I have been those 5 last days at a movie festival so my eyes are kinda destroyed now. And I have still have to work on those Excel sheets. /sigh.

Well, last tuesday we have been able to be 1k7 rated which is something really encouraging for us. It still not an e-sport proof © rating but we almost sure of what we are capable of. Tonight we have to confirm that we are able to "survive" in the 1700-1800 bracket but I'm pretty confident about this.


Need More Weapons
I have read a very interesting article from Asirae today, confirming what I have read on EJ concerning weapons buffs. I will do and publish my own tests this week, with longuer testing sessions I think.

Personal message to Asirae : Let anonymous comment on your blog, it's a pain to have to logon on Wordpress >.<.

Tomorrow I will have enough points to pick-up my S2 mace and I will try to put the Executioner enchant on it within the week. I do not think we will be able to pass the 1850 gap if we do not improve our DPS and this upgrade is a huge one for it. I will put my Fool's Bane in OH going for the first time with 2.6 - 2.6. I will probably put an Adamantite Chain on my Runic Hammer and put it out versus spam-disarming teams.

Gain-Loss on MH (Merciless Gladiator's Pummeler vs Fool's Bane) :
♥ 10 DPS, 34 top-end damage, 27 Stamina, 10 Hit
♠ 5 Critical Strike rating

Gain-Loss on OH (Fool's Bane vs Runic Hammer)
♥ 4 DPS, 35 top-end damage, 24 Critical Strike
♠ 16 Stamina, 20 Attack Power


Companions
Freakhill has "finished" his Cenarion Expedition reputation, so now he has the nice Glyph of Ferocity patch on his head and has crafted the Nightseye Panther this morning at 2:00 AM. Yeah, he plays the "who-will-sap-the-first" game. If we stay in this bracket, he will indeed have his second S3 piece in two week, he is thinking about taking the pants considering he already has the chest the the S1 gloves.

Cromagnonman is enjoying some retribution spec during is spare time, with me providing him some Windfury totem. He will respec tonight but I'm quite happy to have a Paladin who knows all specifies of his class, as we see and will more and more War-Druid-Retri those days. Ming has posted something about it.


Guild : Karazhan in the next month ?
My happy guild will soon be able to run their first 10 men content aka Karazhan. Some have still to ding 70 and some have to do their access but I'm pretty confident that we will be able to do our first pull by the end of February. I will spec either Resto or Elemental if we have enough physical dps. I'm going to dig on Draezele website for the Resto itemization for sure. Just want to see new things.

I'm really happy that Elellion will be back soon on the PvE Scene. With two raids per week at most and beginning at the end of the BC Experience, I do not think we will be able to kill any major 25-man Boss of this game. But, progress together in another environment than the PvP one could be a really good experience for all of us. Especially when you try to do it withouth any type of Bossmod or spoils. A good way to develop skillshop in PvE imo.


ALT : Victime is levelling.
Having all I could farm on my Shaman, I can at least level my Druid. I am now 61 3/4 and I hope to be 70 by the end of February, playing one or two nights per week. I decided to go Boomkin this morning after seeing that it would be too hard to count on instance-pugging to level quickly. Yesterday afternoon, I lost almost three hours in a pug with people afking or playing so bad that my baby panda cried. I'll stick on farming quests and instancing only with friends.

Btw, I have to post something about how bad is having Blacksmithing and Leatherworking now, particularly if you don't have access to high-end raiding.

Holy Fake 2.4 Patch Note.

Well I have read this fake patch note this morning, and I can't stop to tell myself that I would dream to see this live. So, instead of telling you about how incredible we were last evening on our 10-3 run- a Hunter-Druid-Priest group very well played is the cause of our real defeat - I will tell you about this fake patch.

You can check also Jasi analysis on Ming blog.


// WARNING THIS IS FAKE //

So here is the complete fake-patch-note commented.

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.4.0

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com...patchnotes.html
The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

The Sunwell Isle The Aldor and the Scryers have made their way to the Sunwell and finally put their petty squabbles aside to form the Shattered Sun Offensive against the demonic forces of Kil'jaeden and the corrupt Blood Elves led by Kael'thas Sunstrider.
Shattered Sun Offensive representatives can be found in Shattrath recruiting Horde and Alliance alike for the battle for the Sunwell Plateau and the Magister's Terrace.

Nothing fancy. We already knew that.

General
- Silence and Interrupt effects are now subject to diminishing returns.

OUCH. The first big one. Little definition (® Wowwiki) : Diminishing returns means that certain spells and abilities are less effective against player characters if they are used frequently within a short period of time. The table to the right contains a list of abilities that are affected by DR, and under what circumstances. So the fourth time my paladin will eat a interrupt (pummel, kick, earth shock) in a 15 second window, this interrupt will have no effect at all ? In this definition, does Silence and Interrupt will share the same DR ?

- The Sunwell Plateau is a 25-player, level 70 raid instance located on Sunwell Isle. Players will be able to face the demon lord Kil'jaedon himself.
- The Magister's Terrace is a 5-player, level 70 dungeon located on Sunwell Isle. Players will be able to finish the fight with Kael'thas and his corrupt Blood Elves.

Nothing new.

- The Backpack has been redesigned. It will now start as a 10 slot bag, but it will gain 2 slots every 10 levels. New characters will be given an additional 6 slot bag. Existing characters below level 30 may have items moved to their mailbox that no longer fit in their Backpack. Players affected by this should also find a 6 slot bag in their mailbox.

Nice little tuning to bag management. But we all do already have this , level 1 toon with all 16 bags.

- Abilities and items with aura effects will no longer reach as far vertically as they do horizontally.

So we will not be able to put our totem above the bridge and battle on the ground. I think it is faire even if it was one of the unique way to not see our totem destroyed by a wand/moonfile rk1/priest hit. Oh dear, I would like to see our totems buffed by a % of our life.

- Several new emotes have been added to the game. Players that wish to make use of these emotes should use the "/emotelist" command.
- Random-stat items that provide bonus healing will now properly provide approximately 1/3 bonus spell damage.
- The troll Berserking racial no longer requires mana, energy or rage to use.
- The gnome Escape Artist racial cooldown has been increased to 2 min, from 1 min 45 sec, but now provides a 5 sec immunity to movement impairing effects.

Rebuffing an ability they almost destroyed (I know, Freakhill is a gnome rogue) could be definitaly a good move. Currently Escape Artist is a joke compared to Perception, Stoneform or WOTF. Basically, this way gnome will have kind of a second. By the way, I wait for Gift of the Naaru to be buffed too. Why not beginning by correctly attribute us our spell power from AP on it ?

- The human Perception racial cooldown has been reduced to 2 min, from 3 min, but the duration has been reduced to 12 sec, from 20 sec.
- The human Diplomacy racial now also increases healing received by 3%.

The Perception seems to be a really nice buff for human for me if correctly used. As for the healing received talent. What the point in that ? Well I know it is fake, but what the point ?


PvP
- Additional bonus honor is now rewarded on a Battleground Holiday.
- Picking up and dropping the Flag in a Battleground now has a distinct visual and auditory effect.
- Warriors will now be able to use Commanding Shout and Battle Shout for free for a few seconds after being resurrected by a Spirit Guide in a Battleground.
- The points awarded from capturing the flag in Eye of the Storm has been increased.

Nothing fancy, the next one is...

- During a period of excessive arena queue times the matching system will loosen its requirements, effectively reducing queue times, but resulting in less effective matching.

Could be a solution to not have to wait almost 2 hours to do ten 2vs2 battle.

Druids
- Bash now deals 50% of normal melee damage.
- Cyclone now has a 15 sec cooldown.
- Celestial Focus: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Cyclone by 5/10/15 sec.

Oh. This would be a massive nerf to all 8/11/42 druids compositions, ungiving them the option heal (thanks instant) and completely anhilate a Paladin or a Shaman during long period of time (Cyclone/Charge/Repeat). Druids who are already playing the fun gunwrathing spec 24/0/37 will see their number increase.

- Frenzied Regeneration: The amount of health restored now scales slightly with bonus healing effects.
- Swipe now generates additional threat.
- Soothe Animal is now instant cast, down from a 1.5 sec cast time.
- Control of Nature: This talent now also affects Hibernate.
- Force of Nature: Treants now heal the Druid for a portion of their damage dealt to enemy targets.

Some buff to Boomkins. But I don't think it will be sufficient to see those guys shining in arena in a large way.

- Predatory Strikes: This talent now increases melee attack power by 15/30/45% of your Intellect.
- Shredding Attacks: This talent now also gives the critical strikes from your Claw, Shred, Mangle and Maul abilties a 50/100% of reducing the effectiveness of the next direct healing spell on your target by 20%.
- Savage Fury: This talent now also causes your Rake ability to reduce the target's movement speed by 25/50% for the duration of the bleed effect.

Bonus to DPS, Snare and Lil'MS effect, nice move. Feral does need some love and this buff would be beneficial for them, we could even see some matrix replacing Warriors by Feral Druids with those changes.

- Swiftmend: The cooldown has been increased to 18 sec, from 15 sec.

A little nerf to Switmend, won't change the meta but will probably make Druids less OP.

- Improved Tranquility: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Tranquility by 1/2 min.
- Remove Curse is now castable in Tree of Life Form.


Hunters
- Hunter aspects no longer cost mana to cast and can now be switched while silenced.

This buff will provide a whole range of new things to do as an Hunter. Hawk/Monkey if focused and so. But...

- Aspect of the Beast will now also affect the Hunter's nearby party members.
- Aspect of the Hawk now increases ranged attack power by 10%.
- Kill Command: The damage bonus of Kill Command (Rank 1) has been slightly increased.
- Feed Pet: This ability can now be used while in combat.
- Viper Sting now scales slightly with ranged attack power and the cooldown has been reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec, but the duration has been increased to 12 sec, from 8 sec.
- Serpent Sting mana cost reduced.
- Volley now deals 50% weapon damage every 2 sec for 8 sec.
- Concussive Shot now deals 50% weapon damage and the duration of the slow effect has been increased to 5 sec, from 4 sec.
- Efficiency: This talent now also affects Volley.

Hey what about all those MM buffs ? Already one of the top class of the ladder, it's Survival tree which desperatly needs a buff.

- Aimed Shot now instantly applies 5 charges to the target and any direct healing spells that land on the target will expend 1 charge, lowering the healing penalty effect by 10%.

Coud be a nice mechanic. Does HoT should applies ? As it is not the core ability of the class, it is not something people will cry about. Not like the Warriors one.

- Trueshot Aura: This ability has been redesigned to increase the chance to hit with melee attacks, ranged attacks and spells of party members by 3%.
- Silencing Shot now also acts as an interrupt effect, but the cooldown has been increased to 24 sec, from 20 sec.
- Deterrence now also reduces the chance you will be hit by ranged attacks by 25%.
- Entrapment: The snare effect now lasts 5 sec, up from 4 sec and is no longer subject to diminishing returns, but the talent has been moved deeper into the Survival tree.

Not enough for survival my friend, not enough. If this goes live, I can see the bus of Survival complaing about MMs OPness.


Mages
- Ritual of Refreshment will now complete faster when activated by 2 additional players.
- Counterspell: The duration has been reduced to 6 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.
- Ice Lance now has a 6 sec cooldown.

People will cry.

- Spellsteal: It is no longer possible to remove a Shaman's Ghost Wolf buff with this spell.
- Arcane Power: The spell damage bonus has been reduced to 20%, from 30%, but the mana cost penalty has been removed and it now also increases your chance to crit with spells by 5% for the duration.

I don't understand the point in this move. Could a mage explain me if this will change something in their gameplay ?

- Improved Blink has been replaced by Arcane Efficiency, a talent that reduces the mana cost of Blink, Counterspell and Spellsteal by 25/50%.
- Slow: The mana cost has been reduced by approximately 24% and the duration reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec.

If the goal is to provide tools for Arcane Fanboi to do PvP, it is a failure. It is not in anyway something that will make Arcane mage to be in part of Ice or even Fire mages.

- Master of Elements: This talent now also reduces Fire and Frost damage taken by 2/4/6%.
- Dragon's Breath: The disorient effect will no longer break on damage over time effects.
- Icy Veins: The cooldown has been increased to 5 min, from 3 min and no longer increases your chance to Freeze targets, but now gives your damage spells a 30% chance of applying a chill effect, reducing the target's movement speed by 50% for 5 sec.

Ok, so now Fire mage will be able to chill you with a Fireblast. Freaky ! But give more viability to 3x/2x Fire builts.

- Frozen Core: This talent now increases the mana cost of your Fire spells by 2/4/6%, but reduces the mana cost of your Frost spells by 2/4/6%.
- Ice Floes: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Icy Veins.
- Arctic Winds: This talent no longer increases all Frost damage done, but now increase the critical strike chance of your Frost spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Empowered Frostbolt has been renamed to Empowered Frost and no longer increase the critical strike chance of Frostbolt, but now also increases the amount of bonus spell damage that effects your Icelance spell by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Buffering the shatter-combo mechanism to give Frost mage more burst ? Is it necessary ?


Paladins
- Holy Shock: The cooldown has been reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec and the amount of damage and healing done has been slightly increased.
- Avenger's Shield: The cast time has been reduced to 0.5 sec, down from 1 sec.
- Crusade: This talent now increases your spell damage and healing by 25/50% of your Strength.
- Sanctity Aura now increases all damage done by party members by 4%, but the Holy spell damage bonus has been removed.
- Improved Sanctity Aura has been removed.
- Sanctified Reach (New Retribution Talent): Increases the range of your Judgement and Hammer of Justice spells by 25/50% and the range of your Hammer of Wrath and Repentance spells by 10/20%.

Buffs to Ret and Prot to give them more viability in raid mainly. Well, Coriel will speak much better than me on this one.


Priests
- Feedback mana cost reduced and cooldown reduced to 2 min, from 3 min.
- Chastise: The cooldown has been increased to 1 min, from 30 sec.

Necessary, this ability is a little too much OP.

- Fear Ward is now considered a Discipline spell instead of a Holy spell.
- Improved Fade: This talent now also causes your Fade spell to increase your chance to dodge by 5/10% for the duration.
- The effects of your Mana Burn and Fade spells now scale slightly with Shadow spell damage. - Mana Burn now has a 6 sec cooldown.
- Focused Power: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of Mana Burn by 0.5/1 sec.
- Silent Resolve: The threat reduction of this talent once again affects Shadow spells.
- Force of Will: The spell critical chance bonus now affects all spells.
- Pain Suppression now provides the target with immunity to dispell effects.
- Shadow Affinity: This talent has been changed to reduce the threat generated by your Shadow spells by 4/7/10% and reduce the chance your Shadow spells will be resisted by 2/4/6%. - Shadow Focus has been replaced in the talent tree by Focused Mind.
- Silence: The duration has been reduced to 4 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.

Jasi has done a great analysis, check his point. But the Fade change, the Mana burn CD and the Pain Suppression change seems really smart for me.


Rogues
- Rogues can now generate combo points on up to 3 targets at any one time.

This one is simply brilliant and I think rogue have been dreaming about it since the release. How about transforming combo points as a new debuff, non dispellable ? It would result in both new offensive and defensives strategy.

- Cloak of Shadows: The cooldown has been increased to 2 min, from 1 min.
- Your Sap and Distract abilities no longer require targets to be out of combat.
- Sap now has a 15 sec cooldown.

Too much OP to be done. Rogue/Rogue teams in 2c2 will dominate.

- Blade Twisting: This talent now affects all abilities that generate combo points.
- Preparation once again resets the cooldowns of all your Rogue abilities.
- Premeditation and Preparation talents have swapped locations.

I'm mitigated about this one. Could a rogue comment about it ? How it would create new specs ?

- Cheat Death will now properly reduce damage taken by 90%.


Shaman \o/
- Lightning Shield mana cost reduced and now grants Nature spell damage for each remaining charge.

Solution for PvE Elementals ? Need much more precision on that but the idea could be interesting on fight where mana is not a problem.

- Water Shield now has a small mana cost and now grants mana every 5 sec for each remaining charge.

Fair I think. Water Shield with

- The spell damage coefficient of Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells has been slightly reduced.

Well. Please. No. It was done before with the effect we knew. But wait... Does the Lightning Shield change has a link with it ?

- Ghost Wolf now frees the Shaman from movement impairing effects when cast, renders the Shaman immune to polymorph effects and can no longer be dispelled.

Do you want me to cry ? Is it exactly the kind of thing (with totem enhancement) that I desperately need as an enhancement shaman.

- Windfury Weapon now only grants 1 extra attack and the bonus attack power granted has been reduced by approximately 19%, but the chance to proc has been increased. Overall shamans should see more consistent dps.
- Windfury Totem: The attack power bonus has been reduced by approximately 46%, but the chance to proc has been slightly increased. Overall the totem should see a slight decrease in effectiveness.

It totally kills my weekly two-shooting cure of 61-Green in Alterac with my big bad Hammer of the Naaru, but everything which could provide more DPS in overall is to be taken. I wonder how it could effect Shamans itemisation at all. Will do some theorycrafting about it later. For raids, totem-twisting addicts who use rank1 will saw an increase of their DPS in groups I think as we really doesn't care about the AP bonus provided.

- The bonus that Frostbrand Weapon and Flametongue Weapon receive from bonus spell damage effects has been slightly increased.

Slightly will not be enough Obiwan. But should be interessant to theorycraft if my DPS would be increased by putting this on my off-hand on high armor targets (druids, paladins).

- Frostbrand Weapon: The movement slowing effect has been increased to 40%, from 25%.

Did I said druids ?

- Bloodlust/Heroism: The duration has been reduced to 30 sec, from 40 sec and the cooldown reduced to 5 min, from 10 min.

Too good to be truth. This would be an huge increase of any raid DPS.

- Elemental Weapons: This talent now increases the damage caused by Rockbiter Weapon by 10/20/30% and the attack power bonus of Windfury Weapon by 15/30/45%.

Need more theorycrafting to speak about it.

- Stormstrike now grants a 30% spell damage bonus for the next 2 Frost, Fire or Nature spells cast by the Shaman.

5 to 10% of our DPS in raid now is from Shocks. How could this increase this percentage in raid, I don't know. In PvP, it would give us the ability to do a controlable burst on a target. But again, in PvP, our mana pool is much too low to rely on it on a long fight, even with Shamanistic Focus. Definitely good to take.

- Healing Grace: This talent now also reduces the chance your Restoration spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.
- Focused Mind: This talent now also gives your spell criticals a 33/66/100% chance of reducing the cast time of your next healing spell by 0.5 sec.
- Earthshield now has a 20 second cooldown, but the mana cost has been reduced by approximately 50%.

Just make Earth Shield undispelable like Pain Suppression then ? 30% is really not enough.
Nothing on totem at all, if even the fake patch-noters forgot them...


Warlocks
- Drain Mana now scales slightly with Shadow spell damage, but the base amount of mana drained has been reduced.
- Drain Life and Drain Mana now share a 5 sec cooldown.
- Ritual of Souls and Ritual of Summoning will now complete faster when activated by 2 additional players.
- Incinerate: The cast time has been increased to 3 sec, from 2.5 sec.
- Spell Lock (Felhunter): The duration has been reduced to 4 seconds (rank 1) and 5 seconds (rank 2), and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.
- Soul Siphon: This talent once again affects Drain Mana.
- Amplify Curse now also increases the effects of your next Curse of Weakness by 30% and Curse of Tongues by 10%.
- Master Conjuror: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of your Spellstone by 30/60 sec. - Aftermath: This talent now also gives Incinerate an additional 3/6/9/12/15% chance of dazing the target.
- Bane: This talent now also reduces the cast time of Incinerate, but no longer reduces the cast time of Soulfire.
- Improved Firebolt has been renamed Demonic Destruction and merged with the effects of Improved Lash of Pain.
- Improved Deathcoil (New Destruction Talent): Increases the duration of the Horror effect of your Deathcoil spell by 0.5/1 sec.
- Conflagurate: The cooldown has been reduced to 6 sec, from 10 sec.

Nerf to the SL spec. Up for the Destruction specs. Drain Life/Mana on CD. Way to go !

Warriors
- Rend now generates additional threat.
- Spell Reflect: The rage cost has been reduced to 20, from 25, but now has a 8 sec cooldown.
- Mortal Strike now instantly applies 5 charges to the target and any direct healing spells that land on the target will expend 1 charge, lowering the healing penalty effect by 10%.
- Sweeping Strikes: The rage cost has been reduced to 25, from 30.
- Weapon Mastery: This talent now reduces the chance your attacks will be parried, instead of dodged. - Blood Craze has been reduced to 2 ranks for 2/4% total health healed.
- Rampage now also increases your chance to resist movement impairing effects by 10% and an additional 2% for each stack.
- Concussive Blow now also deals 50% weapon damage.
- Devastate now strikes with both weapons while dual wielding.

Wow, wow, wow. This nerf on MS will make baby panda cry in Warriors teams. It should even destroyed some setups coupled with the druid nerf. Also, the buff to devastate will give Prot Wars a way to farm more easily.

Pets
- At maximum loyalty Hunter pets will no longer lose happiness from being idle.
- Pets will now receive a percentage of their master's resilience and an additional percentage of their master's stamina.
- Warlock and Hunter pets will no longer be automatically dismissed when you summon a mount. Instead pets will be dismissed when you take off with a flying mount and return when you land or dismount.

Pet receiving resilience and stamina is fair I think. Even if their masters classes are OP right now.


Items
- The drop rates of many darkmoon cards have been increased.
- Black Bow of the Betrayer: The triggered effect will no longer break crowd control effects.


Professions
- Special fishing only items can now be acquired by fishing in high level zones.
- Several new cooking recipes are now available at cooking trainers.
- Profession daily quests are now available at Master profession trainers.

Nothing on Blacksmithing, Leatherworking. Hopefully, this is a fake \o/.

User Interface
- The combat log functionality has been extended, including highlighted feedback and an extensive history. See the "UI & Macros" forum for further details.
- Players can now view a list of ingame emotes by entering the following into chat "/emotelist".


World Environment
- Several flight paths have been adjusted to be shorter, faster flights.
- The level requirement to enter Outlands has been removed.

Bug Fixes
- Abilties with charges will no longer prevent a player from overwriting the buff when it is below the maximum number of charges and is of lesser or equal strength.
- Fixed a bug in which Cheat Death was reducing damage taken more than intended.
- Fixed a bug in which the Royal Tanzanite and Irid Fire Opal gems were not properly granting spell damage.
- Players that use mods should no longer have diffculty using Battlemasters or Flightmasters.
- Fixed an issue with abilities that reset the cooldown of other abilities.
- Fixed an issue with macros sometimes incorrectly reporting the error that an ability is not yet ready.


See you soon for a real post this time.

We done it !

We reach the 1k7 rating cap tonight !
On our side we beat War-Druid-Lock 3 times straight, confirming that we were able to deal with those teams. I'll posta little more about this tomorrow, I'm going to bed now. But wow, what a night !

2008 PvP Logs, Week #2 : Designing a RMP Counter, Hemo-Shadowstep Rogue specs, Battlemaster trinket utility

Not a really what we could call a good week. We only managed to play one night between 11PM and 3AM last Wednesday, after that our Paladin partner Cromagnonman got an important irl problem. As a consequence, he wasn't able to play the rest of the week (until now actually) and we wasn't able to test the adjustments to our strategies we made after this night.


W-L : 13-11, 1614 rating.
We basically lost to all the RMP which were powerlevelling, which cause us to have only 20 or 19 points defeats. We won basically versus all the other ones, including War/Druid/Locks or War/Double healers. The fact that we weren't able to manage those Rogue/Mage/Priest teams has really annoyed us not to say more. So we worked on our plan. This is War.


Collateral consequences
We have read about all what google (and my favourite blogs) can tell you about RMP, their strengths, their weaknesses. So we, as a team, declare war to those teams.

Freakhill has respecced Poisonstep aka 20/0/41.
Assassination: Apply better poisons on our focus and be able to insta explose armor at the exact moment we want to kill our focus.
Subtlety: Lolstep in order to not be kited anymore by anyone. In the race to have the open sap 5/5 Master of Deception, Heightened Sense, coupled with some specific stealth detection gear. Hemo. Prepa. Premed.

For sure he has lost all the tools of his HARP specs, but we feel that it's better for the specific counter we want to create.

Now i'll make an effort to summarize how we plan to counter RMP, thanks to all we have read.

→ Countering the Crowd Control
Stay together in order to make them waste their cc (force nova on a blind/sap/sheep)
Having our Paladin with either Blessing of Sacrifice or the stealth detection buff witch dot as soon as possible. Having him dispel Sheep and Nova as fast as possible. It's all about Cromagnonman skills there. Trinket only for blind or Fear is tremor isn't up. Me trinketing Fear save the two others as I will instant-pulse my tremor totem asap.

→ It's all about having the open Sap
Having Freakhill prepared to sap/blind combo the other rogue, letting us with a window of 14 seconds "alone" with the mage. Pressure them down to see them commit errors. If Freak is opened, it's almost finished.

→ Outlast the burst
Don't be shatter-comboed. Ever. Our paladin has to be brilliant dispelling all the frozen effect from us. Grounding totem must be used only on a Frostbolt (get it out at the very last moment) as Cromagnonman task will be to dispel sheep/nova. The massive shield, Earthbind totem, Poison Cleansing totem and Frost resistance totem : try to damage-kite the rogue, LOS the mage without LOS-ing your healer (quite an art), fake cast on holy tree (Gift of the Naaru \o/) to force silence - kick CD. Try to run away. And pray.

→ Prepare to unleash your burst
All targets have to be preventively purged of any buff they might have at the beginning of the fight. When a target could be focused, we will first have to stop him. Judgement of Justice, Frost Shock, Earthbind totem, Crippling Poison. We are able to stop a Druid, we are able to stop anything. Then Improved Explose armor, Wound Poison, purge the upcoming bubble and Pain Suppression (it can take time...) then burst him down in no time. Save a Grounding totem to prevent a polymorph of one of the DPS.


Personal contribution
Having farmed 27k honours points those last week, I'll have my Battlemaster's Determination trinket by tomorrow finally. I can't wait having this non-interruptible, non-limited (MS, Wound poison) heal. It could have saved our life so many times versus rogue/ice-mage focus when we were short.

[Randomicemage] Frostbolt *Crit* [You] 2700
[Randomrogue] Hit [You] 400
[You] Die.
[Cromagnonman] Heal [You] 5000

I can't tell the number of times it happened to us matchs that way, me don't surviving the insane cc/burst from them, with wound poison applied. As I had to loose some HP/Resilience to play the "KILL TEH DROOD" game on War/Druid/X teams - with pretty much success -, I am not that Shameliotank I used to be anymore. No more focus casting, no more 10% resistance on frost/fire/nature damages, no more resilience cap, no more 13kHP. I gained much more dps and way better totems at this price. So this trinket will be a welcomed addition.

This week, due to Cromagnonman problems and Freakhill exams, we will probably delay our match to next Tuesday night, so we will fight a load of the T5/T6 PvEBoi. It will be a good training. Waiting for this, I'll try to do some Heroics (I still miss 6 Primal Nether for my Dragonmaw), training (aka dueling front of IF) with my Shaman and, at least, leveling my Druid.

WTB PvP Epic Gems

With only 3 Alliance guilds in BT/Hyjal on my server, at Teron's level at best, we don't have many choices to find nice gems are even buying nice DPS gear.

So the epics ones are a worthwhile addition to your stuff.

Here is the list of the gems available :

[Bold Ornate Ruby] +20 Attack Power
[Runed Ornate Ruby] +12 Spell Damage
[Gleaming Ornate Dawnstone] +10 Spell Crit Rating
[Smooth Ornate Dawnstone] +10 Critical Strike Rating
[Potent Ornate Topaz] +6 Spell Damage, +5 Spell Crit Rating
[Inscribed Ornate Topaz] +10 Attack Power, +5 Critical Strike Rating

Those gems are fairly equivalent to BT ones, and when we talk about optimizing your gear you should do no compromises at all on farmable content. I have bought lately the [Bold Ornate Ruby] for 6885 honours points and put it on my chest.
I am saving now for the the Battlemaster trinket but I'll focus on obtaining the two others gems asap, beginning with the AP/Crit one.

By the way, I have read this comment today on Arenajunkies :

Enhancement's problem is IMO by far the toughest; it can be kited too easily, invalidating 100% of the shaman's DPS. Making SR undispellable won't fix that, so I don't consider it a fix. Some sort of root, teleport to the target, resistance to snares, something is needed if the spec will ever be anything more than a fun thing to do in BGs and not a guaranteed 1800 rating for all but a minuscule part of the population who are talented and dedicated enough to make it work.

I hope I will be in the "chosen ones" before the beginning of WOTLK. Some have done it, I personally don't think it is impossible even with the problems that our class knows. It will begin by dealing more efficiently with RMP, we have brainstormed a lot about finding a solution lately and read some great articles on it.

And, I decided to do same as Megan and provide you my email adress if you feel to ask me some questions or whatever but do not want to write a comment :

2008 PvP Logs : Week #1

So after our last "performance", we had a nice PvP Session last night. After having run the 5vs5 to stuff some of our friends to prepare for serious things later in the year, we jumped into our favorite wagon, 3vs3.

Looking up

11-5, leading us to a 1609 rating.

3 losses to the same RMP (Rogue-Mage-Priest, the "hype" combo of the moment) because of lack of controls on either the Mage or the Rogue. We are working trought it, we got some place to improve. The lack of gear of Freakhill (lol 35 resilience and blue/kara gear) is kinda annoying because the guy is gibbed so fast that our Paladin or me ain't have the time to do anything. Versus those very aggressive RMP teams, it could turn in their favor in just a shatter-combo. Fortunatly he definitely knows how to play and he is kinda impressive sometimes. Well, enough flowers.


Our PvP Learning-curve

We are pretty confident that we can enter in the 1700 bracket in the following weeks. We are more and more learning how to play together and it feels kinda nice elaborating strategies, playing nice game, creating our own matrix and simply... having fun.

We have to improve in different ways :

1. Our communication : we still have some room to improve. Like every other teams.
2. Our survivability : we talked about Freakhill (rogue) case. Even with my 350-400 resilience I can be burst down to zero in no time by a Mage or an Elemental Shaman.
3. Our CS rotation (welcome Holy Light / Greater Heal / Healing Wave / Healing Touch)
4. DPS in a good situation. To unleash our burst, we need to be on the focus. And that's a real art itself.

Concerning myself, I'm working on my dps output as fast as I can. Now I have the whole Gladiator stuff, so the minimum 11k HP / 350 resilience necessary not to be gibbed, end with the benediction of Cromagnonman, our paladin, I'm focusing into improving my DPS.


Template and stuff concerns

I decided to go 0/47/14, as I needed more DPS scaling and improved utilities for my totems. I have also to learn when to ghost wolf when it is necessary.

As I don't have access to PvE gears, I'm focusing on improving my DPS by obtaining the PvP Gems (I will write something about those) and obtaining new weapons : Dragonmaw and Merciless Gladiator's Pummeler.

I'm now collecting the Primal Fires (I'm 13 on 20 now) and Khorium bars (1 out of 3). Primal Earth and Eternium Bars does worth nothing so I don't really count them in this farm. With those I'll be able to craft the first evolution of the blacksmithing mace, then, some heroics later, I'll be able to craft Dragonmaw. Hope to have it by the end of this week or last week. For the S2 mace, if we say an average of 400 points per week, I'll have it in 3 weeks, so this January the 30th.

Nearest to me, there is the nice up to Water Shield, which provides a 50MP5 plus its initial mana bonus. Well, I am definitely think that could help us as Enhancement to be able to sustain long pvp fights which is not really the case now, even by having Water Shield up the whole time.

Finally, I would like to thanks the people who visit my blog and subscribe to my RSS in 2007, hoping that I will provide you in 2008 with a lot more news and facts about being an Enhancement Shaman in Wow.

1700... 1700.

Well 1691 exactly. It where the biggest rating we achieved last week. People were laughing on TS, saying that we'll be able to go into the 1750 bracket this night on.

Just before a 11 loses streak taking us back to 1550.

Reason : War-Druid-[Insert Warlock/Priest/Shaman] or Rogue-Mage-Priest for a change.

It seems that this season, we will have those clone compositions all the way out. We have pretty good result versus RMP, but the other combo is dreadful for us. After having understood that the f*cking druid is the one to kill, we understood that we ain't have the dps to put a correct S2-S3 druid below 20%. Raddy was right.

So well, now that i'm full glad stuffed, I will focus the next month by changing trinket (Battlemaster), gems, enchant (I already begin on that point). I have spent my holiday working on Blacksmithing so I'm 375 since yesterday. Already crafted Thunder and working on Drakefist Hammer. Now I need some heroics sessions to upgrade to Deep Thunder and Dragonmaw.
Freak also have to work on his stuff as he his undergeared at the moment as he has lately saved his points for the S2 Maces.

And Happy new year for you all, hope you will have a great year and provide hapiness in your environment. Emo time is still so good. I don't like to talk about resolution, but my objective is to write each day something interesting on this blog. Now I can check my Joe's Goal ticket of "Update Blog" for today.

Really want my opinion ?

Well, Blizzard launched their what-your-feeling-about-your-class thing and everybody is ranti... giving their opinion since.

Draezele had given his own lately, which is quite interesting and I agree with him on most things.

But I strongly, strongly disagree with him on some point as an Enh. Shaman dedicated to PvP.

First of all, people LEARN TO USE A SHIELD. I'm fed up reading people complaining about their Enhancement Shaman in PvP environnement, telling people they would reroll Elem or something to wtfpwn are they were used to Pre-BC. Seeing this state of mind from such a good writer as Draezele makes me sick. Shaman PvPers do use Shield in certain conditions. Let's look a rant about it.

Pretty much summed up right here. Enhancement can be good but it isn't near
consistent enough to be a good spec for pvp. For everytime you steamroll an
undergeared shadow priest you will get torn apart twice by a rogue.

When you fight either rogue, warriors or hunter, do not use your shield is like "hey dude, i'm a little freekill which dreams of two-shotting you with 2H e-peen like I does on clothies unstuffed unbuffed at Alterac".

When I play my brother 31-30 rogue, I love Enhancement shaman because of that. All they will trying to do is to shot me as fast as possible. That finish globally in Evade/Disarm/ROLF.

After millions of battle versus my brother's rogue and the 12540125 mace warriors out there (and their 2.3 hunt rerolls) I have learned that people underestimate the power of armour mitigation. So yes I have specced Shield specialization AND Thougness and yes I have a lot of success versus the "common" rogues and warrior (I still have a lot of problems with those 2.3 hunters which seems to be our anti-class) using the good totems at the right time and kiting/using LOS as much as possible.

What I would love ? Having much more armour if talented. Having an 20% increase on the blocking talent instead of the 5% one. Yeah, that would be definitely faire.

On other points, I pretty much agree with Draezele and I do more for the same price.


Enhancement talents

Guardian Totems : Stoneskin and Windwall totem are jokes. I don't even feel to loose a GCD to pop Windwall versus one of those AP-Boosted Hunters. And about the Grounding totem Cooldown, that that this thing is destroyed by any single dot out there, could you have this also changed please ? Because I mean, eating a dot/moonfire/ all ten second isn't what I call a breaking ability.

Ghost Wolf : Instant with talents, all movement impairing debuffs cancelled. 'nuff said. This would be the perfect reply to all our current cc problems.

Toughness : Much more armor and +70 magical resist stackable with our totems in every slots. Because we need it, because we deserve it. Enh. Shamies need a real PvP mitigation talent, like rogue/hunt/war/[insert random class] This would be the one.

Shamanistic rage : I would just like the 65% anti dispell mechanism that priest have. We can't take out their buff, and any single debuffers could destroy ours.

*New Talent* Unleash rage : Well, our real problem in 3c3/5c5 is our lack our controllable burst. We rely on a WF Proc. Which never arrive when we want it to. What I want is a talent similar to Cold Blood or the other "ILLRAPEYOURFACE" talents that Rogue/Mage/Locks or even Elemental Shamans are. Moreover we have to gem/enchant Resi/HP if we want not to be gibbed in high ratings so we can't stack the crit/strength like warriors or rogue does.

(And I don't even want Elemental Devastation in enhancement talent as suggested, it is real trash. I mean, we do not have the stuff for bi-spec and how often did you seen a spell crit as enhancement ?)


Totems

Agree with Draezele on all. Really good idea from him on a dedicated Totem UI, Longer duration (Paladin got theirs, come on !), Increased range, Increased health, Reduced global cooldown and Considering totems as 'physical'. I would add some more :

• Destroy all the "pulsing" system. I can't count the number of time I was feared inside my Tremor totem range (to be clear, on it) and it pulsed when I was outside. Same for Earthbind. Why do we are the only wich have such a pathetic mechanism ?
• Sentry totem. /afk lol.
• Stoneskin and Windwall Totem, as I said before completely useless is today's environment.

And please, i'm sick of farming that oils to buff my team on each single match when warlocks just have to logon 2 minutes before to do the same. It's our single anti-dispell mechanism, isn't it ?

And could we have more efficient fire/earth pets ? Because apart from defending a flag or, I don't see the point on those things.

I don't speak about making us the next Warlocks, I just want to feel that I'm not a forgotten relent of Wow.
Concerning Shaman in general, our class is the like the druids of 2006. Not that beautiful. At Dreamhack and CDS, there wad NO SHAMAN AT ALL. Not a single one. Not even a murloc by the way.

• All those anti-dispell mechanism introduced with BC (Pain Suppression anyone ?) had broken our beloved dispelling abilities.
• The 2-shotted WF "mechanism" does work at... 1200 rating perhaps, with every single reroll running with 400 resilience (thanks you guys for the "welfare epics" rant on the the wowsphere those last weeks), so bursting ain't an option anymore.
• Our totem. Well. Buy the MH Raddy.

Well, enough QQ for today, I got a diner with my collegues, and a lot of Arena to do tomorrow. See you with more news/feelings/emo/rants as soon as possible.

Hacking concerns -> Call to Arms

Okay, you have subscribed my RSS waiting for Enh. shaman news, don't worry, I'm working on it. But you got at least three or four cases of hacking in my previous guilds and this is taking on my nerves. So when I have seen Gwaendar post, I feel fair to quote it here also.


Breana (of Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick) has posted a frightening retelling of what happened when one of her guildmates got his account hacked. Basically, the whole guild had to watch while their friend’s account as well as their guild bank got stripped bare for several hours, powerless.

When a GM finally reacted (2 hours wait time on a Friday night. Come on, hire more people, anyway), he basically simply said there was nothing to do until the player could get in touch with Account Administration… during business hours only.

This post joins Kirk’s CALL TO ARMS on this issue!

Blizzard is hereby requested to put a solution in place which will:
Lock any characters out of the game when a password change is effected until the password change gets confirmed back through the account holder’s e-mail.

Expand the Account / Password retrieval so that upon activation, the character is frozen until a re-activation is effected through a link sent out by e-mail to the account holder’s address, or any similar method.

Blizzard, please err on the side of caution. You know the success of WoW will make your customer particularly juicy targets.
If you aren’t able to post your voice on the US forums, please blog about it and / or (if you have no blog) contact WoWAccountAdmin@Blizzard.com to make your voice heard.

This Call to Arms has, to my knowledge, already been followed by:

• Kestrel
• Skindancer of Altosis
• Gillir of Stormrage’sDreamings
• And Kinless has a similar story to share

Cheers everyone ! It's Season 3 !

This last month I was mute for a single reason : during my leisure time I was doing straight gaming, learning and optimizing myself to be prepared for this new season. I was also working on the "creation" of my RP-PvP-PvE guild, I'll do another update on this one.

So it's an important date for me, Freakhill and Cromagnonman. After preparing ourselves to high-end PvP at end of season 2, there is the most anticipated Season 3 we were waiting for.

Our 3vs3 objective of this first season is simple : breaking the 1850 points cap with a team based on an Enhancement Shaman on Cataclysme battlegroup (the best French one).

Since the last few weeks, I've changed a lot of thing in my gameplay and adquire hell a lot of automatisms. As said on various other blogs, Pvping is a never-ending learning of your own class and your enemies capacities.

So what I finally plan to do with my PvP points.

Currently :

• ~60k Honours points : Unfortunatly not capped as I've bought the Talisman of the Alliance two weeks ago as it was one of the only resilience item I was planning to have on my Shameliotank ­©.
  So S3 Girdle, S3 Sabatons, S1 Spaulders and S1 Shield,
• ~3800 Arena points : S3 Gloves (The 5 Yards bonus is just gamebreaking with my current specs) and S3 Pants. My 40 Stam/12 Agi Epic enchant wait for its owner. Saving the rest of the points.
• 18 Heroic Badges : Waiting to collect 60 of them for Dory's Embrace. So not for tonight.

About my new specs, I'm now 18/43/0. I'll do also a specific post about this, but I really don't think that you've seen a Shaman spec as mine on your realm. Shameliotank ­© for the win.

Tonight will be Armageddon on the realms, between the Area 52 ganking issues and the 2k+ teams which will be mixed with the 1.5k ones. So I decide that tonight, we will just watch a TV show then going to bed early with some books. I will continue my honour farm to complete my stuff on Thursday and we will probably do our games next Tuesday, so that the 2k+ teams will be at 2k+. We're not crazy at all.

Otherwise I'm now an accomplished Leatherworker, with 375/375. Thanks Patch 2.3 and Drums of Panics available at Honored Shattrah Reputation.

Arena Set Comparison : Is Armor Penetration worth it ?

Okay, you're saving your points for your arena points, wondering on which of those joys you will spend them.

Well the first nice change on S3 in the addition of hit rating, it will be easier to cap the 5% chance withouth sacrifying some gems. To remind yourselve, your chance to miss an equal level charcater is 5%, that means you need 5*15.8= 79 Hit rating at least when you're PvPing. As a haman, you could take those from talents but, hey, why use talents when you have those free stats on your stuff. My calculation is based for shaman handling 2H weapons. For those who stick on dual-wielding for PvP, you have 5% miss base + 19% miss penality.

Moreover, you should wondering yourselve about what the hell is Armor Penetration. Well Armor penetration is for PA what Resilience is for Stamina : An additional way to improve your DPS. I like examples other formulas, students (well, I was a teacher earlier in my life) tends to understand much more quickly if you have something concrete for them.
So, let's take the example of an Arena match versus a 2345 team. You would doom their healer first, no ? Let's say it is a priest you have just purged, so no Inner Fire now. Let's say the guy have 3k armor and blessed resilience proc.
So, his armor mitigation with 3k is 3000/(3000+10557.5)=22.13% (link for the math explanation).

Let's say you have a total of 400 armor penetration on your stuff. Then this priest mitigation would be 2600/(2600+10557.5)=19.76% which means a 3.04% increase of damage on this priest, even if he is resilience-capped. It's like a free Sunder Armor on your stuff.

So I see you complaining : "Wtf morons, 3% is shit". Hey, people we are talking about team PvPing isn't it ? Ming have done some calculation about it :

Season 3 is expected to have 900 in armor penetration, off a quick premed CS
into improved expose armor, I am now ignoring 4535 armor from a warrior, that is
a 26.6% DPS increase on a 11000 armor target, throw in an executioner enchant
proccing it would be a 33.2% DPS increase. Against softer targets it will be
even more."

Okay, I don't see how you could have 900 armor penetration currently as a rogue, but it's the idea. Teaming with a Rogue in 2vs2 and 3vs3. Armor penetration comes to be the solution when any single toon met in an arena have 350+ Resilience. For me, this means, more AP, less crit if I go this way. In order to do your own comparison, I've found this little spreadsheet by googling.

So now, here is comparison of S1, S2 and S3 gear for Enhancement Shamans, the Earthshaker one :

Linked Helm :

	Armor	Strength	Stamina	Critical strike	Resilience	Hit	Armor pen.	Gems (4 Res)	Cost 2.3
Season 1	703	34	51	26	30	-	-	Red, Meta,	14500 Honor
Season 2	775	37	60	28	33	-	-	Red, Meta,	1630
Season 3	830	34	67	33	33	12	84	Red, Meta,	1875

Linked Spaulders :

	Armor	Strength	Stamina	Critical strike	Resilience	Hit	Armor pen.	Gems (3 Res)	Cost 2.3
Season 1	649	19	42	22	21	-	-	Red, Yellow	10500 Honor
Season 2	715	22	48	24	21	-	-	Red, Yellow	1304
Season 3	766	25	52	27	21	-	-	Red, Yellow	1500

Linked Armor :

	Armor	Strength	Stamina	Critical strike	Resilience	Hit	Armor pen.	Gems (4 CC)	Cost 2.3
Season 1	866	29	51	28	26	-	-	2* Red, Yellow	14500 Honor
Season 2	954	31	57	30	27	-	-	2* Red, Yellow	1630
Season 3	1022	27	64	30	31	12	84	2* Red, Yellow	1875

Linked Leggings :

	Armor	Strength	Stamina	Critical strike	Resilience	Hit	Armor pen.	Intel	Cost 2.3
Season 1	758	30	54	36	28	-	-	25	14500 Honor
Season 2	835	34	60	40	31	-	-	29	1630
Season 3	894	38	67	36	31	12	84	33	1875

Linked Gauntlets :

	Armor	Strength	Stamina	Critical strike	Resilience	Hit	Armor pen.	Bonus	Cost 2.3
Season 1	541	25	40	27	21	-	-	+8% LS	9000 Honor
Season 2	596	29	45	29	22	-	-	+8% LS	978
Season 3	639	33	51	32	22	-	-	+5 yds Shocks	1125

As you know (as you're a fan of my blog, don't you ?), I'll go first on the Linked Leggings, which are an huge upgrade for me. Then I decided to go in this order on the S3 Armor, S3 Helm, S3 gloves and at final S3 Spaulders.

With my honors points, I'll go first for the Vindicator's Band of Triumph and the PvP Belt. Wondering if I will use some points on The Arena Season 1 spaulder now, which is the best value for price item. Moreover, I won't have a 2k rating anytime soon.

P.S : You're a raid leader ? Go apply at IBM :<

The 130% Shaman

I've played about 15 hours on the PTR for the moment. I can't do more because I'm saving points for the release of 2.3.

I've done Zul'Aman with my former guild, this instance seems terribly exciting. I had loved Zul'Gurub in his time, Zul'Aman goes on the same way.

Concerning the Enhancement Shaman buffs, it's becoming really interesting. After reading Moliu summary, I decided to give you my one.

Spirit Weapons
Now this talent give no less than 30% passive threat reduction instead of 15 % before and it applies on all physical damages (i.e. Stormstrike and Windfury porc. but not shocks) It's definitely one the most considerable fact of this patch for Pve Enhancements Shamies. Be ready to see some of them seeing a boost on their DPS meters from now on.

Shamanistic Focus
Considering a correct critical strike rate and the 5 seconds of cooldown on shocks, that's simply means an almost permanent 60% reduction on shocks cost in PvE. That's fantastic in terms of shocks rotations. In PvP, that's means that you will be able to use most often the max rank of Earth Shock

Frost Shock
Frost shock is no longer subject to diminishing returns. The FS Rank 1 kiting is back baby ! It will definitely will be a benefit in Arena situation

Shamanistic Rage
Okay, now we got 30% reduction on all damage taken and extra mana regeneration 25% percent of the time we are alive. Though it could be dispelled, in 2vs2 situation when there is often no dispellers in the opposite teams, it could be a way to survive to a deep dps focus (with a nice shield also, don't be fool). I mean, perhaps I will be able to melt warriors face now... Hum. Or not.

Mental Quickness
For the moment I'm at 1128 Ap unbuff in my PvP stuff, the 30% buffs means free 338.4 Spell power. Earth Shock taking 42.86% of SP, considering the base value of this spell, it means that without any stuff bonus on SP, I will have ES between 803 and 837 damage. With SS debuff, between 963.6 and 1004.4 non crits. Yes, this is a major buff both in PvE and PvP. And my lovely Lightning Shield would take also a huge buff with those considering it is taking 100% of SP (33.33% per bolt).

Mana Spring Totem
A flat 66,6% increase of the effect. If there is no Hunters/Rogue, this will be a serious added value in long arena games, not to speak about the considerable buff in PvE.

Water Shield
For PvErs, this is actually a nerf considering the numbers of boss event in which those globes were "freely" consumed (Hydross just as an exemple). But for PvPers, this is a considerable up... That means that if you're not focused or hit, you have a 50 mp5 second regeneration (suggesting that each globe gives ~200 mana). It's simply insane.

Reduced Chain Lightning Bolt Casting time
Well call it nerf or whatever for Elemental Shaman (because of the coefficient change for LB from ~85% to 71%, and CL from 71% to 57%), for us Enhancement it is a buff. First we didn't have any spell damage prior to the 2.3, so let the ele QQ more about the coefficient. Second, CL will not just be used as a way to leave rogue/mage/wars in combat mode as with 2 second cast, it really can be pulled at a right moment to finish an escaper.

Grounding Totem
Well this is the counter-part of all those bonus given. It's actually a big nerf that Grounding totem would die on whatever spell which lands, making us much less vulnerable versus Warlocks and Mages.

And the [Yipi !] bonus.

Reduced the faction required to obtain Drums of Battle and Drums of Panic.

COT2 won't see me for a looooooooong moment.

Some news about Totem Twisting

Finally, we got some "official" information about the use of totem twisting (thanks Wowblues).

Who wants answers? Okay, here's the situation. It's not an
exploit, and no sorry, it's not really considered creative use of game mechanics
either, based on what that term usually is intended to imply. You're free to
take advantage of "totem twisting", but be aware -- we do plan to address it at
some point in the future.

Traduction : Feel free to use it, to abuse it until at least Wrath of the Lich King :>.

And for the one wondering wtf I'm talking about, here is an auto-quote from a previous post on Totem twisting definition :

To those who don't know, Totem twisting technique is all about buffing your DPS
both with Windfury and Air Totem. How is it possible ? Let's look more closely
to our Windfury totem : it's not a permanent buff but a 9 second one fixed on
your group weapons. So now do you understand what I mean ? Clever use of game
mechanics ftw. Put WF 1 sec, switch it off then put Grace of Air 8 seconds,
repeat. You could also spam a totem twisting macro like this one : /castsequence
reset=8/combat/alt Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem.

And, just a detail not to be OOM in the middle of the fight : use Rank 1 of the Windfury totem. What people want is the extra attack, the AP is only bonus.

Engineering & Arena

Well, now that I'm 365 Leatherworking with my 57 Warrior already 311 Skinning, I'm considering switching my "farming" skill.

At the current moment, I'm considering seriously either Blacksmiting or Engineering.

• Nigh Invulnerability Belt
• Goblin Rocket Launcher
• Rocket Boots XTreme
• Net-o-matic
• Gnomish Deathray

Well aside from the nice gadgets (Turbo-Charged Flying Machine could be one), Engineering bring to Shaman brings unique advantages : crowd control (grenades, Net-o-matic), resistance to burst dps (Nigh Invulnerability Belt), escape way (Rocket Boots XTreme). Critics may said that a lot of Engineers tools aren't available in Arenas and you'd spec to Enchanting/Jewelcrafting in order to have more stats. I definitely don't agree to those.

For me, up to a certain subjective ratio, possibilities > pure stats. Between +40 Sta and the possibility to zerg out of a situation, I would take the second.

I love PvP, all forms of PvP and in world pvp or battlgrounds those goodies are reals joys <3.

On the other side, as Freakhill told me, is that worth the 5000 golds to farm ? This time could be invested in Battleground, resulting in perhaps more dedicated PvP items.

P.S : At least with the Net-O-matic, I'll be able to CC myself :>.