The new patch added a new animation for restoration shamans; mana tide got a pretty big swirling animation attached to it. This was all good until I tried to go to battlegrounds and arena with my current spec.
The most I got out of the totems after roughly 20 fights in the ~2050 rating bracket was 2 ticks, but mostly we just got one. It seems like the totem is the new prime target for arena teams.

If they insist on keeping this animation, it wouldn't be to much asking for a large health boost to it, or at least something.


SS of the totem animation:

This is an amazing new paradigm in game design. For future patches, maybe some rogue epics that constantly glow red and drip blood everywhere, even when stealthed.

Did you honestly ever get more than 2 ticks out of it in your really competitive matches? All my totems, mana tide especially but also think Windfury and Poison Cleansing, seem to get killed by whatever pets/hunters/priests. The Mana Tide sound is distinctive enough that most good teams either hear it, or they're already waiting for it because they know it's coming. I'm personally trying to convince my hunter to name his pet Mana Tide Totem.

To be frank,(and keep in mind my experience after the patch is rather limited as we've only had 15ish games since tuesday) the animation hasn't changed my game that much due to the fact that you can buy water to use. Unless you're against a priest/hunter/and lock(heavy mana drain), by the time you're outta mana, their offensive casters are close as well, and then you probably only have to deal with a warrior and possibly a hunter autoshotting. That really shouldn't be an issue for your paladin so that you can get 3 or 4 ticks of water. I dunno how often you run with a mage, but you'd be quite surprised at how easy it is to drop combat and switch regen gear and drink for 3 seconds unnoticed if you're not getting trained.

Mana tide is a totem I need, considering that my health:mana ratio is worse than my competition. It is also something unique a shaman brings to a team fight.

To answer your question, yes, I did get off at least 3 ticks in competitive arenas before this patch, mainly by keeping my totems up at all times, and also by putting it up in the heat of battle, replacing a mana spring with it. I'd be impressed if a team would manage to kill my totems faster than I can put them up, especially right before I pop the mana tide. An alternative tactic pre-patch would also be putting it behind a pillar or under the bridge. Both alternatives still work, but I generally lose a few ticks to that.

I'll play a few more arenas and gather some more intel, considering that we only met lower rating teams this week, and not the 2200-2400 rated teams we usually meet a few times during our sessions.

This animation puts my team approximately 6000-7000 mana behind what we usually were.
I think that is a pretty harsh result.

Wow, I hadn't actually seen what the new totem looks like. That's ridiculous.

Its actually very useful as a "stand here" guide in raids.

Yeah, it's no longer a buff - it pulses like tremor.

But referring to the OP: I've found that I can't really pop this too soon in a 5v5 arena match. In the late game, people will certainly walk over to it and trash it, but I think if you pop it early then your opponents will have things they would rather be doing. On the other hand, the healers do go through their first 24% mana in the first few seconds in the fight, so it's unlikely to be wasted.

I'd imagine its to lessen the need for mods to display when key cooldowns are used, but the new blessing of freedom goes the other direction.

Weird, I didn't even realise there was a new animation and I know I've killed several of them over the last week.

It's kind of hard to notice on areas with a light ground, I had trouble seeing the new effect on Nagrand and BEM, but it's obvious in RoL.

Not sure why they changed it to a pulse though, just means you have to detect the totem through the mana gain message instead of buff gains, not really a big hassle or deal.

This feels to me like a number of changes done that provide information to players without having to use mods.

Before a top team could have a mod alert that mana tide was down and simply click a pre prepared macro to target it and wand. Now siince it is more visually noticeable it is easier for a non addon user to see it and try and counter it. Just like the buff/debuff visual duration it makes addon use less important.

and at the same time they made blessing of freedom much harder to detect. I doubt they changed mana tide to be intentionally visible for PvP; they just made a bunch of new graphics for a bunch of skills and this one happened to have negative effects.

As a caster I concur, spell alert type addons make my priest cry in anguish. Why indeed is the enemy allowed to know what spell I'm casting without casting a "detect magic" type spell is beyond me. Is this sort of 'spell broadcast' standard for the MMO genre, is my post just a whinge?

Any decent player would kill my mana tide totem before the patch, you can't rely on it but you can still usualy get a few ticks of it.

They have highly visual animations on warriors shield wall & Retaliation aswell as rogues cloak of shadows and evasion. Its really not that much of a change to cry about.

I have only one thing to say about that.

Didn't they give us craftable Smoke Flares for that?

No silly, smoke flares are only for throwing when the raid is standing around and you know someone will see it and go "what the hell was that?"

I like this one better:
http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2...reflectuc2.jpg

Perhaps it wasn't a PvP nerf, perhaps it was a PvE buff so people could more readily get in range.

Initially it may be seen as a pvp nerf, but now that some people have mentioned it, if you don't get the actually "mana gain" buff, is it possible that mods like Spell Alert can't detect the buff anymore and therefore opponents won't be spammed "Shaman has gained MANA TIDE"?

For the warriors, the skill is at least more reactive now than it used to be.

Well, from bad to worse really. It went from detectable with mods to detectable for everyone, and is dispellable by anyone to.

what i am wondering about is, why did they change the mana tide/spell reflect to super shiny "cantmissitevenifplayingwitheyesclosed" but changed the BoF graphic to "canttellifitisBoForjustsomthingelse" from the small waves under the player that were perfect.