In response to that post, I have to say: I don't think the negative effect on shaman is really whats concerning us.

I'm pretty convinced that Blizzard hates melee. I don't know what about melee was so OP...

"The slam inclusion was an error" in HER post. She is still investigating whether or not it is intended for Slam to proc windfury.

And here I expected melee haste to get nerfed, not windfury. Might still be coming though.

Needs emphasys, else more threads will spawn and drive Malan crazy.

Neth posted again. Slam is not intended to proc Windfury. 2h no longer viable for warriors?

I'd really hate to see what melee DPS would have looked like at TBC launch if this had gone in as they had planned. Without the glancing blow changes it would have been an even bigger disaster than it already was.

2H is still viable because of blood frenzy. However, blood frenzy will probably now only bridge the raid contribution gap between DW fury and 33/28, instead of making 33/28 the clearly superior spec.

This change is pretty obnoxious. The way they implement these huge changes is just ridiculous. Why would you hotfix something like this during U.S. raid times? Why would you not put it on the PTR first, get some opinions (which are going to be all bad) before putting it live. I like the cover-up excuse of them saying this was an intended change at the beginning of BC and now all of a sudden figured out how to fix it. Bullshit asshole.

I really want to think they had a good reason for this other than looking at some random WWS' of guilds and listening to some pvp crybabies. WF isn't even that huge of an issue in pvp, why do people complain about it?

Whatever though, this time I doubt it will be reverted despite even more crying about it than when it was supposed to be implemented in Naxx since both factions now have it. The only thing to really look forward to anymore in this game is trying to max my DPS in raids and it just sucks having a random hotfix out of the blue for no reason being put into effect just to have myself nerfed. Oh well.

/endrant

As a raid leader, this is a very troublesome change. And not just the change itself, but the method in which it was delivered. A nerf that is (seemingly - correct me if I'm wrong) this significant should be tested.

And if Rogue damage "needed to be reigned in," (I disagree, but that's another issue) then they should nerf Rogues, not Shaman. =/

Funny how blizzard avoided mentioning this change at blizzcon, yet all they did was talk of good positive things. Chances are they'd of been booed off the R&D and other panels since this will affect overall raid damage. (I imagine sharaz is even worse not until 2.2)

Maybe the of the mages/locks complaining about how out of hand melee dps is getting in raids? This is a perfect chance for them to reverse the change, and make elemental shamans better, so the buffs they bring can match an enh shaman for melee.

If you remember, a few months before the expansion release, they tried removing windfury from all yellow damage attacks. This lasted less than a week on the test realms when they realized that it would make it completely impossible for horde to raid, since it greatly lowered the threat cap that was already lower than what alliance had due to blessing of salvation.

Around 2 weeks later they announced that horde would get paladins and alliance would get shaman. It took the attempted windfury nerf for Blizzard to realize how good Salvation was and how much the horde relied on windfury. So now they're getting back to this nerf that they wanted to do 8 months ago, except they made sure heroic strike can still windfury. This change really has been 8 months in the works.

By the way, I don't think putting this change in with the initial release would have changed anything, because all raid bosses were untuned then. They would have just tuned them to a different health total.