• Exewut

Aggro problems should be a thing of the past, unless things in the warrior/druid trees change dramatically. Druids are receiving quite a huge aggro boost (and dps boost) when compared with current numbers.
Unless of course this means that they'll be introducing special tanking only leather (without dps stats), but this would go against every kind of gear homogenization they've done this far.

 

Greven_

It seems that the talent calculator link is broken... as of Friday 13th - makes sense, doesn't it?

 

Waagaa

Excuse me if I'm horribly wrong, but don't we assume BoK when ranking loot, thus making the weight of Int 1.1 instead of 1?

 

Rhaegal

Yes and no. The Axe bonus will almost definitely only affect the weapon that the axe is equipped on, because it's a passive buff like rogue fist +crit% spec. The fist and mace bonuses, on the other hand, sound suspiciously like personal buffs, not weapon buffs. Again, taking rogues as an example, sword spec procs give you an extra hit with your MH regardless of what kind of weapon that is, which is why MH Fist/OH Sword is a reasonable combination for them. It wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't weapon specific, but it'll be extremely easy to test by just going out and buying a 1h axe for your main hand and a 1h mace for your OH. Hit something until the mace spec procs and see if both weapon speeds change. We'll know extremely quickly if mace proc affects both weapons, and it'd be a fairly safe assumption that if the mace proc does, fist proc does as well.

And no, you're not horribly wrong, Waagaa. Kings will be increasing our DPS through three stats now, instead of just two! I'm interested to see if all hunter/shaman gear gets rolled into one, or if there's enough shaman-specific gear to make it so we have enough strength for Kings to end up a better buff than Might, given the option. I wouldn't complain.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

ChaguraED

I just wanted to ask this: Right now the Weapon specialization talent looks pretty busy. Is there any risk that they will split the three of them out into separate talents to fall inline with Warrior and Rogue talents?

 

Pintofbrew

Unlikely. Being a Hybrid you must compact what a pure class would have spread over two or two-and-a-bit trees into one. This is often why pure classes go all "qq, why do we have +3%hit while shamans have +9%" ad infinitum. A Hybrid with no talents is much worse than a pure with no talents, so to bring them up to speed, those talents have to really work their stuff.

 

Rhaegal

It's possible, but I hope not. Our tree is already very very bottom-heavy, and the new talents (with the exception of Imp SR in a PvE build) only add to that. Yes, there's room on that tier to split them apart and make them 3 different talents. If they do, I sincerely hope they drop to, say, 2-3 points each instead of one big 5-point talent. It's going to be difficult enough to branch out into other trees for useful stuff as it is, I would hate to see us all forced to end up 70+ points into enhance just because we happened to have an axe and a mace drop instead of two axes. For rogues and arms warriors, those talents work separated out because they fit nicely into the trees, and either (a) you're using one big 2h weapon and don't need two different specs at a time, or (b) you're a rogue and have the flexibility in your build to accommodate the extra points. That wouldn't really be the case for us, though I'll have to play with them when we can get another graphical talent calculator up, and before it gets zotted.

I'm really excited about the new talents. I'm also very much looking forward to shaman parties in Org where not only are all of us Ghost Wolves, but we all summon a bunch of spirit wolves at the same time and run around like idiots.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

ChaguraED

First run of Lava Burst is looking to have a 2sec cast time, 8 sec cool down.
Will 'consume flameshock' mean that the caster will wipe out Our flameshock DPS?

edit: perhaps our T7 has footpads on the shoulders to properly support our Ele brother.

 

Rhaegal

That's sort of an odd cooldown for Lava Burst. You'd think it would be 6 or 12 seconds, to accommodate either strictly FS spam from the enh shaman or a FS/ES rotation. There's going to have to be some interesting theorycrafting going on to determine whether it's better for rDPS if the elemental shaman consumes the Flame Shock DoT every time their LB CD is up and FS is on the target, or if it will be better for them to use a 10- or 12-second rotation, consuming it just before it would be reapplied. (10-second being in the case of the extremely likely-looking elemental subspec.)

[e] I'm actually starting to think that the ideal DPS rotation for an elemental shaman would be something like a 9.5 sec (unhasted) rotation, of CL/3LiB/LaB. With latency, it would probably end up being closer to 10 seconds, but is enough shorter that a 10-second FS/ES rotation probably wouldn't end up lapping it. Obviously holding off on shocking to Stormstrike now and then will screw this up, but it sounds good in theory. Of course, this belongs more in that thread...

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

• gunsmithx

I wonder how well syncing with an elemental shaman is really going to work for lava burst. You have to take into account times when your just not going have a shock up at the right moment(due to movment, cooldowns, etc....).

 

Rhaegal

I actually don't think it will be that bad. At the risk of double posting the same sentiment in both threads, at worst we will miss out on a tick of Flame Shock now and then. If we get out of sync and the Lava Burst is coming way too early, we'd just have to Flame Shock twice in a row to restart the FS/ES rotation. The result will always be a boost in rDPS, even if it means a very minor DPS loss for us.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

docseuzz

so does this mean that with Weapon Specialization, weapon twisting will be the new totem twisting?

MH slow heavy axe, OH fast fist until proc, swap to fast mace until proc, swap to axe OH until time to change back to fist?

 

◊ Malan

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

Rhaegal

I highly doubt it. Switching weapons will suffer from the same problem as switching relics: it'll reset your swing timer. The DPS lost by resetting your swing timer all the time would probably trump any potential gain from abusing the procs, especially combined with the fact that you're unlikely to be swapping between equally-good weapons. Switching to an inferior weapon just to get a proc out of it so you can switch back to the more powerful one doesn't sound very effective. Plus, if it turns out that the procs are weapon specific, that wouldn't work at all.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

docseuzz

IMHO - Imp SR is good for PvP90%/ PvE 10% - maybe instead change it so that melee haste and movement rate is increased by 5/10% while under the duration of SR. Helps both PVE and PVP.

 

◊ Malan

The very idea of adding anything else at this point to SR is just silly. Its become the "I don't know where to put this" ability. If it was still 30 seconds long I probably wouldn't object, but when they cut the duration of it in half in order to add the damage reduction component, the ability took a big hit. Now it has to be perfectly timed for PvE to get the full use out of it, and in PvP you have to make a choice of mana vs defending yourself.

They never should have tied the defensive abilities to a talent originally designed around mana returns. Now its come back to bite us in the ass as they continue to dump more shit on it.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

Rhaegal

There's nothing wrong with having a primarily PvP-oriented talent. Most trees for most classes have at least one. Personally, I'm glad it's there, but I'm glad I don't have to dump 2 more points that deep into the tree for a strictly PvE spec. Shamanistic Rage is useful as it is for PvE, it really doesn't need to be any better, especially with all the other excellent talents that late in the tree.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

◊ Malan

Except that this particular ability wasn't PvP in nature to begin with, and has become the PvP 'tack on' talent.

I'm not saying that SR needs something else to "improve it", I'm saying they need to move all that other shit to some other ability (like a new one) so that SR isn't affected by it.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

berg

Some very interesting new rules we all have to play with.

However there are some important questions to answer.

How do spell and melee crit talents work with the new crit rules?
-Will Agi give us spell crit?
-Will int give us melee crit?

The new merged crit has changed Elemental devastation into one of the best talents available to us.

Some interesting analysis will need to be done on some of the Elemental crit talents as they no longer seem foolish.


My one concern is how the fist spec will work. From a distance that ability seems like it would provide an amazing amount of raid utility but at the same time would greatly favor fast weapons. I would hope they do not make the shaman equip low dps gear in order to be effective. If they changed it to be ppm instead of 5% that would be really great. Then Shaman could look at Axe main hand, claw offhand. We will have to see how that all unfolds.

Only time will tell on the wolves. Hopefully it is not a mess.

Also looking forward, the only new ability (from 70-80) is the new elemental spell. So we are still looking at a fairly incomplete picture. Hopefully when the resto and Enhance trees are released the new abilities in those trees will also be released to us.

 

Rhaegal

No. There has been no indication that they will. The wording that Blizzard has been using has been very clear about the change being about hit rating and crit rating. Agi and Int contributions to melee and spell crit have always been calculated separately, and there's no reason to believe that in WotLK, these attributes' contributions will be converted into rating and then applied to crit.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

PsyBomb

Ancestral Knowledge seeps to be a crucial 3/3 in all builds now. resto and Elemental for fairly obvious reasons, and Enhancement for Mental Dexterity. Please do not forget that any new gear coming out will undoubtedly have at least some Int on it now that the talent exists.

Also, I'm going to go ahead and weigh in on the comment that Twisting will be dead. This has been explicitly stated in the past, and even if whatever change they plan to make doesn't come in Patch 3.0, it WILL come within Lich King. With that taken out, Enhance gains a TON of open mana and GCDs, meaning the Static Shock talent becomes a very good investment.

For my build, I'm going to assume that Grace of Air is better for group DPS overall than Windfury Totem. Given the new Poison goodies over on the Rogue side of things, this seems like a decent assumption. The build is STRICTLY for PvE, and lacks a few rather important PvP boosters (Imp GW and Toughness being the big ones). Also going on the assumption that the Feral Spirit summon is at least as good as Treants, and will thus be worth grabbing.

War Tools :: Talent tree WotLK - Test

Things change a lot for PvP, since the Resto tree no longer offers anything decent. By dumping 8 of those now-free points into Elemental and dropping a couple of the less impressive totem talents in Enhance, I come out with this:

War Tools :: Talent tree WotLK - Test

Since crit rating is going to be unified between melee and spell, Elemental Devastation becomes a very good investment to up your burst. Looks like it could work, but then again, I'm a Resto guy

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

• gunsmithx

if we start using lighting shield I wonder if it might be worth it to put 1 point into elemental focus since our spell crit will be fairly nice to help our with mana usage. How long does the buff last?

 

◊ Malan

You have no idea what 6% Intellect means when Intellect is 1:1 with AP, do you?

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

PSGarak

Crucial is a harsh overstatement. Intellect is a pretty bad stat, and 6% is a pretty small increase. PvP non-enhancement builds that want Improved Ghost Wolf will probably take 2/3, but I don't expect resto or elemental builds to use it. There's plenty better places to spend the points in the other two trees that compliment each other, like Clearcasting on heals and lightning crit.

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