Disquette - If your test includes a 24% glance rate, and doesn't include spell crits or spell resists, your sim probably shows flametongue performing better than it would in actual play. Against a raid boss an enh shaman can expect spells to resist a lot more often than they crit.

I think we can conclude that slow/slow WF/WF is still best in epic gear, as you said. I'd be interested to see how slow/fast WF/FT performs against slow/slow-but-crappy WF/WF though. For example, WF/FT Decapitator/Emerald Ripper vs WF/WF Decapitator/Boggspine Knuckles.

Is the version of the sim you used publicly available?



Also, about the AP => spell damage conversion, a shaman with 2200 AP could expect to gain 284 damage on each shock. It seems like that, combined with increased mana efficiency from Shamanistic Focus, would make a 16/45/0 build worth re-evaluating. Thoughts anyone?

Unfortunately no. I tested that out a while ago when I got my darkmoon fairy card. I was hoping that I could offhand FT and use it to proc ED to boost my crits, but it didn't work. I can understand blizzards reasoning for this, though. A fast offhand with FT and haste effects could give almost a permanent 9% crit bonus.

I'm hoping since they're releasing a new 25 man raid dungeon before xpac2 comes out, we'll see these changes sooner and not later.

19/42/0 is a good spec already. I have no clue where I'm going to pull the points for mental quickness from and still get elemental devastation. I'm liking these changes more and more, it's been a long time since I had a hard decision about where to use talent points. Kudos to blizzard.

PS. Hedin, I just started to use wf3sec and I'm never looking back. You're my hero.

We can expect better itemized gear I think, this is a statement from a dev at the itemization panel.

Hmm, that is interesting though. At least there is an alternative to WF in the offhand. Even though we lose out on a little dps, it might outweigh the effort in getting the arena mainhand as our only viable upgrade from runic hammer till A'lar or hyjal.

These changes surprised me a lot, showing that Blizzard is at least understanding our core issues and seeing through the drama and stupidity of their forums. I thought these changes were rather intelligent. Im still waiting to wake up from this dream of shaman lovin :P

What are people's thoughts on spell crit now for raiding? I've been playing around with a sort of a 24/37 suicide spec, i guess, for shits and giggles in pvp and i quite like the extra damage potential, despite the mana issues (i refuse to pot in pvp!). With the new changes i'm seeing spell crit being potentially more useful as people might (unless i'm severely undervaluing Nature's Guidance) switch to 18/43 builds or some variant.

Obviously we're gonna lack a little by choosing Shamanistic Rage over Elemental Fury in terms of valuing spell crit and thus shock DPS. Or will we? If our shocks are consistently cheaper by a large amount, and a lot bigger, will we even need SR to keep our mana up if we're still chugging mana pots? If not, then 21/40 might be the way to go, and dare i say it but perhaps a little MP5 wouldn't go amiss.

At the same time though i know all too well that a lot of my shocks do get resisted. I'll admit ignorance on spell resist mechanics and whatnot, but if we're gonna be seeing a lot of resists on our shocks (it feels as though every other shock i cast on Aran is a resist) then this might be in vain.

Shaman scaling in multiple directions is always the way I thought it just should have been. (AQ Stormcaller set will back me up on this) It lets use such a varied amount of itemization that we can tailor our DPS to come form multiple sources and eventually equal out to a similiar value with some quick gear swaps or a slight change in skills used. All in all, it makes us just feel more 'hybridy' when we can get meaningful contributions from basically all stats.


fake edit: they should make spell damage scale all of the weapon enchants in some way to encourage use across the board (and maybe make rockbiter into an armor penetration enchant for hits from that hand since they can do it ala that new enchant)

Nah, my test didn't include the debuffs on the mob which would make flametongue look better. I considered it, but as Lujaar pointed out, I already have it performing higher than it should due to resists. Also, I assumed a 23% dmg reduction due to armor, which is probably on the high side, so I'm undervaluing the melee aspects (probably) a little already.

I'm pretty sure testing at this point would show that wf/wf slow/slow is still the way to go.

I really do like the changes though, and hope they're put in the game sooner than later.

Madness of the Betrayer proc if I'm remembering rightly.

edit: nope, just the red skull thing

wow, great changes for enchancement, attack power = spell damage is exactly what was needed. Searing totem and healing stream will actually be useful, and shocks scaling with AP, flametounge might actually be useful aswell. Trainable 2 handers could open the door for some intresting caster/healing 2 handers aswell.

Going for the elemental / enhance build will be much more viable aswell, although i would like a subtlty for all damage in low resto much like druids get.

I hope the rest of the class gets similar treatment (% of your spell damage added to totem of wrath, healing to mana spring)

The new -60% mana to shocks after a melee crit talent seems odd to me..

At present it's not needed for pve (except maybe on kaz'rogal :p), and it's sorta nice for pvp, but still, most of my mana goes to purge spam and totems there.

So what exactly is the point of it? Perhaps I'm being optimistic but could it perhaps be the first step in changing itemization for enhancement shamans? Removing the need for int/mp5 on gear as a precursor to giving us mail gear with fully melee dps oriented stats and no wasted points on int/mp5?

I'm probably being too hopeful though ><

The [Ogre Mauler's Badge]. The /use makes you all red as well. Not that its a particulary good trinket but yeah.