Totem mana cost is tricky to balance. Put it too low and you can spam them without fear and "twist" (windfury... ok here comes the AE... nature resist... back to windfury). Put them too high and when you are out soloing and constantly on the move and they're extremely inefficient. I'm happy for the longer duration, but I just know I'm going to be screaming at my monitor the first time a mob aggros me from a quarter mile off because my 3-minute totem was still there when it wandered by 2:55 after I dropped it.
Edit: added quote

Forgive my lack of knowledge on hunters or pallys but isn't this already posible for their auras? Sounds like doing something like this would make playing a shaman a hell of a lot more interesting and useful for raiding, wouldn't it? I can't really see this being game breaking.

Well, switching between Windfury and Nature Resistance in a 4-Warrior group is a little more drastic than switching between FR and a negligible amount of AC.

I guess my biggest question is what this means:

"Healing Way (3 point): Healing Wave spells cast on the target cause an effect that increases the effectiveness of any Healing Wave spell cast on that target by 6% for 15 seconds. This effect will stack of to three times. "

basicly does it only affect the spell "Healing Wave" or does it affect "Lesser Healing Wave" aswell? the word "any" can carry two different meanings in that sentance and it's a world of difference if I'm not missing something.

edit: I came here for the information but stayed for the goomba's :(

Pretty sure "any Healing Wave" means HW cast by any shaman -- not just yourself. It clearly does not apply to LHW. More reason to get used to using HW more heavily.

Still no reason to go high in elemental because you miss out on some awesome restoration talents in the process. :(

I'm probably doing some x/0/33 or more build for resto until my guild is set with raiding.

So far it looks like a decent review. Hardcore PVPers can go heavy elemental with some enhance and be solid damage dealers. Newer 60s getting gear from 5 mans can go heavy enhancement with some resto and be good damage and good secondary healers. Raiders seem to get two real options, heavy enhance with some resto or heavy resto with some enhance. Depending on what they pick they'll be even more useful than before in caster or melee groups. Certainly we'll have to wait to see how much mana tide is improved, but even without mana tide the resto tree has been buffed. The warriors in the guild were already drooling over improved wf totem, so I'm sure the enhance shamans will be much loved now.

While I dislike windfury weapon getting nerfed, I don't think it will affect enhancement much since most heavy melee people will just get the talent that improves it. The new Nature's Guidance talent that gives 3% to spell and melee hit seems to be a nice boon in the resto tree and makes an enhance/resto build look even better. I'm really looking forward to the test server now.

I like the changes a lot. I think Blizzard still hasn't addressed the totem issue in highly mobile fights. I guess I'll still be using 3 Eearth Fury for fights that require increased totem range.

I've always liked mana tide. Now that the subpar pre-requisites are no longer needed, I can finally get myself to spec back into it. It still depends on the number of shamans in the guild speccing into it though.

There's a lot of speculation about the actual numbers behind the buffs/nerfs. We'd probably have to wait till an official talent calculator and test server are available to realize the magnitude of totem mana cost reduction and duration. (which I'm assuming to be 2 minutes since they haven't increased the duration on the totems from AQ20) Same goes for the windfury attack power reduction. I think the reduction in base attack power could be around 10-20% since Elemental Weapon talent improves Windfury AP by 40%. So overall, Windfury will be the same or even slightly more powerful for anyone speccing into 3/3 Elemental Weapons.

I still think that the main issue with weapon buffs was not addressed. Flametongue, Frostbrand offer no scaling with gear. Some of the totems now scale with +damage/healing and I think a similar change should have been applied to them.


Healing focus is a nice incentive to use chain heal and healing wave more often. Healing way is probably the best PvE talent out of this review making +healing more valuable than it was before. This should be an added incentive to balance mana/5 and +healing rather than just stacking mana/5.

Elemental changes are quite good too. Eye of Storm, Elemental Warding, Convection, Improved Lightning bolt, Storm Reach. Definitely making it more viable in raids in some situations and great for PvP. Elemental Mastery remains a debatable talent. I don't think it offers the versatility of Nature's Swiftness in PvP or PvE even with the no mana cost change.

Maybe I'm reading the description wrong but I really don't understand the utility behind Elemental Devastation.

Overall, I think this review is great for certain talents and abilities. It will definitely increase shaman capabilities in both PvP and PvE but there are still some talents that only a few will spec in, except as filler talents.
For example: Shield Specialization, Earth's Grasp, Guardian Totems, Fire totem talents, Healing Grace and some abilities such as windwall, stoneskin, flametongue, frostbrand, healing stream totem still remain lack-luster.

It's basically throwing a bone to would-be ele/enh builds. You're beating on your opponent and shock him and crit and now your melee crit rate goes up, proccing flurry, etc.

(And then you realize that you need to heal yourself but you can't get a heal off because you have someone beating on you, and you die.)

Yes, that's exactly what I was referring to. :)
Good for shamans that go all out on damage in PvP, I guess. Negligible PvE utility. Another talent that's limited to very few shamans.

I'd rather have a decent talent that only a few people will use (probably hardcore cp farmers) than have something like improved magma totem. I know I periodically go spec a pure damage build and have a fun week or two lighting people up before I go back to something more raid oriented. This looks like a fun talent for running around the plaguelands in those bloodlust weeks.

I'm really not entirely sure about that talent. Wouldn't something along the lines of a "Healing Scorch" be preferable, that stacks to 3 times and increases the effect of all healing spells on the target by 3/6/10% when it procs?

I am really glad I rerolled Horde now. Shamans whupped my ass in PvP as it was. If I had to face Ele/Enh shamans post-1.11, I think I'd make a macro for Entangling Roots --> Turn 180 degrees --> Travel Form --> AutoRun.

That certainly would be handly talent, but possibly unbalancing. Healing Way is basicaly like Blessing of Light for a Pally. So with that talent, a Shaman has a totem for every Pally blessing except for Kings, but there is Windfury so this helps make the two classes unique.

Did I misinterpret the official post? I'm pretty sure weapon mastery will take 5 points to receive the 10 % damage increase, otherwise, omg.

I think this review is pretty stellar. Other than windfury, every single change is a straight up buff to an existing talent or ability. You cant ask for much more than that. I mean if I read correctly wouldnt a 0/30/21 shaman get a straight up 13.3% increase to dps damage, assuming the windfury talent, at the minimum, equals out the nerf. Also, with the imp totem talents doesnt a 0/30/21 shaman look really attractive for maintank or rogue groups now?

As far as PVE viability and the Paladin vs. Shaman argument, we are really going to need to wait and see how the game mechanics work with +spell and the various totems. Not saying shaman will compete on the buffing front with Paladin blessings, but it'll still be interesting to see how much healing a healing totem will push out with talents and +500 healing (and how much aggro it might generate). Not to mention, will the hand grenade totem get +damage as a instant or as a 5 second cast spell, that could be huge?

The only concern I have is it wasnt entirely clear to me whether or not shamans keep clearcasting and tidal mastery.

Weapon Mastery is clearly a 5pt talent, 2% per point. Still, +10% weapon damage is very nice. It's hard to complain too much about that.

Any talent not mentioned is retained -- that surely includes Tidal Mastery (which is now no longer a prereq to NS) and Elemental Focus.

And yes, I'm very curious to see how our totems will scale with +dam/heal. Fire Nova is an AoE, so I wouldn't expect much there. Searing Totem might genuinely be useful fire-and-forget zero-aggro DPS in a lot of PvE situations, though. Also, if +heal affects healing stream (which it should -- I remember they initially described the priest PW:S modifier as being dam/heal when they really meant "either," including +heal) then that might actually be handy. I have close to +700 healing, for example -- that could scale really well.

I'm quite sure Weapon Mastery is 5/5.

As for, +damage/healing affecting totems, I think they will be affected in the same way as DoTs and HoTs.
If that's the case, with +500 healing, an untalented healing stream totem would heal for 30.667 every 2 second (a 45% increase) Better than nothing, IMO. Also, healing stream totem generates no threat.

The ENGLISH wow (edit) site has the talent calculator up:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...2/talents.html

I'm surprised people haven't mentioned the 8 point talent in the elemental tree, for just 8 points we 10% damage mitigation on frost, fire, and nature spells, which means our survivability increases. Since I will most likely be spending more than 30 points in resto, this spell dmg mitigation can somewhat replace parry. I was thinking of a 8/11/32 ratio build... but kinda having a problem deciding where to distribute the points in the resto tree. Even with 32 points in resto i just can't see it worthwhile to put 5 useless points for mana tide...

Blah, giving up Tidal Focus in order to get Mana Tide is dumb. What other 31pt talent requires a suboptimal 5 point investment as a prereq? That's always been a major problem with the Resto tree. You can't do the neat **/**/31 builds that other classes get because if you put in 31 points and get Mana Tide you're skipping the best talents in the tree. So you end up at 36 or so Resto, and that severely limits your options elsewhere.

yup, it appears that you still need the restorative totem 5 POINT talent to go to mana tide....

and I thought I wouldve gotten it for free!!

but any of you see it worthwhile to spend 8 points for the new nature's warding talent?

Alright, three PvE builds I'm looking at:

8/13/30, no Mana Tide
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...02300510053150

0/20/31, Mana Tide and no Tidal Mastery :(
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...02300510503151

0/13/38, heavy Resto
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...02302510553151

Making Restorative Totems a pre-requisite was a big dampener.
I'll probably be going http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...20350510550151 for PvE and http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...20300500050100 when I get tired of raiding.

Edit: I skipped all the totem improvement talents in the enhancement tree and Healing Way assuming some other shamans in my guild will spec into it. If not, I'd go with http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...22350510553151