Malan

Which is the exact same model as Thrall's Dire Wolves from Hyjal. So yes.
Dire Wolf - NPC - World of Warcraft

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Okoto

Thanks for the screen shot Malan.

I'm a bit disappointed they are using the Grimtotem Spirit Wolf model, it would have been nice to see some new unit designs, or even adopt the new wolves from Northrend.

 

Malan

Other than the huge fangs they don't look all that different. Looks to me like they're using the same base model for the body shapes.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• Smithist

Same model as the current wolves without the glowing. The Northrend wolves are definitely a little leaner and wiry looking, mangy may be appropriate. Whether or not this makes them a better choice is of course opinion, but their build does make them look a little more menacing.

 

ziff

<Rant>

This is something that has always bugged me about our totems. I can deal with the fact that they are stationary. I can deal with the fact that I have to burn 2+ GCDs to lay down totem buffs. Heck, I'm even OK with totems being group only (although making them raid-wide is a very nice change). But it's about time they make our all of our totem's health scale with our health. Having our totems being able to be removed with any direct damage is silly. Heck, Blizzard even realized how broken that was when they added mobs that dropped totems. Now much health does the totems in ZA, or SSC, or heck even SP have? A heck of alot more than 5 health! Nothing I like better than seeing a toon using a wand macro to take our my totems with one shot.

</Rant>

Anyhoo, nice to see this buff. At least they are thinking about scaling health for some of our totems. Can anyone on the beta tell me if they are giving our fire elemental and earth elemental a pet bar?

 

Rouncer

No pet bar for Earth/Fire Elemental, could change since our polish pass is coming soon but I doubt that change is on the agenda.

Alt mage - Rounce

 

Gurth999

After reading some comments from Malan and Hothgor on the beta forums regarding enhance builds, I started wondering about reverberation. I started working on rotations and I'm finding it really hard to create a decent window for a Maelstrom Weapon LvB without it. The problem is creating a large enough window for a LvB (while MW is 5 stacked), and keeping them at 8-12 second margins without stepping on the SS cooldown.

Using this build I came up with this:
Anyone have any thoughts on this or see any problems with my rotation? I'm trying to make sure LvB gets off in 10 second intervals to keep elemental devastation up. But I've tried to leave a bit of room around LvB so you can wait if MW isn't stacked yet or if you want to let FS get another tick in but its not easy if you want to work in earth shocks and keep storm strike on track. I'd love to see an alternative, especially if someone can come up with something using less than 5/5 reverberation as I'm not entirely making the most of it.

 

Bellante

Well, exactly, I didn't check the actual current stoneclaw out, but it's just a damn shame that they don't implement something like this for all totems, it shouldn't be a spec, it shouldn't be a glyph, it should be a basis for the class in any spec.

Also, the mobility of totems has been discussed to death and nothing has ever been done about it from blizzard, I hope and pray that we'll see something useful in this regard in the beta/wotlk.

Meh, off-topic general whine again, I apologize for that. Please continue

 

Paladia

Malan,
if you please, there is a concern I would like to see addressed on the beta forums.

There is a bit of a flaw with the two changes Blizzard has made to enhancement.

It is quite clear that they want enhancement Shamans to be a viable caster/melee hybrids. As int gives AP, Stormstrike increases the damage on Earth Shock, attack power gives spell damage etc.

For that to truly work, both the caster damage and the melee damage must scale equally well, especially as Earth Shock is basically the second instant attack. The problem before was that the spell portion didn't scale very well, as you didn't get any spell hit or crit. With the change to hit and crit rating, the hits will work out as they should. But as Koraa himself stated, the idea is to have Hunters and enhancement Shamans share the same gear, which means that the gear will mostly be filled with Agility (as the talent Mental Dexterity indicates, otherwise it would be useless).

What this in turn means is that while the spell damage and spell hit will scale with melee gear, as intended, spell crit will still be left behind, which is a scaling problem for a melee/caster hybrid. To fix this, they could simply have Mental Dexterity, Mental Quickness or some other higher tier talent also make Agi give spell crit (at an appropriate rate).

It is a bit unfortunate to begin with that you have spec 6 talent points just in order for the majority of your abilites to scale at all, as most other classes has that built into their mechanics. It becomes even more unfortunate when those 6 points does not allow the abilities to fully scale.

I apologize if I wasn't clear enough. What I ment was a windfury-like effect to spells, such as windfury weapon and earthliving weapon has.

 

Tana Umaga

What about...

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem (applies to spell: Stoneclaw Totem) Reduces Stoneclaw's health by 5%. Redirect any damage caused to any of your totems to Stoneclaw Totem.

 

lizard

after having been banned for a week for not using capitalization (lol), i have some minor contributions:

1. we're getting more and more offtopic. i'm quite ok with it but in my opinoin, important theorycraft and testing contributions (such as the static shield testing) should be gathered and refined in the original post or somewhere else.

2. malan is very right with his petition to change windfury mechanics. the current state of windfury is a mess to say the least. about a year ago, i wrote a proposal post on the german forums consisting mainly of three things: change mental quickness to also give spell damage from attack power (i did not dare to propose 10% per talent point at that time), make shamanistic rage a CC immunity spell like beast within and last but not least: make windfury mainhand only and remove the internal CD. while the mental quickness buff was implemented some months later (not implying that they actually followed my advice as no blizzard employee reads the german class forums. ever.), SR was changed to give 30% mitigation and windfury is still waiting for the fix.

2b. i really despise the fact that flametongue does not have a damage on hit component any more. if the blizz guys are so keen on making us a "real" hybrid, why not making WF/FT the standard setup? it would surely enrich the enhancement shaman play style and the introduction of hit/crit rating changes and mental dexterity seems the perfect opportunity to do so. The only thing that must be taken into account is threat generation (which is not really a big point).

3. of course, the WotLK pvp metagame is far from finished and balanced BUT even at this point i would strongly support the following changes:
- maelstrom procs from dealt as well as received crits should not be concidered a bug. i would even propose to extend the maelstrom effect to healing spells (if it is not already).
- many people have already proposed a "glyph of mortal stormstrike". i do not think this is a good idea as it would only add to the enhancement shaman's role as first focus/lockdown target in arena. i would much rather finally see some more anti-CC/mobility enhancing glyphs, such as "glyph of stunning lightning shield procs" or "glyph of undead ghost wolf".

4. along with improved stormstrike and concussion, maelstrom weapon makes it almost impossible to construct a realistic and operational spell rotation. i would really like to hear some more coherent thoughts on the (dis)advantages of a more dynamic playstyle.

[e]l2grammar

 

Hothgor

I'm pretty sure they are Thrall's Spirit Wolves. Seeing how the DWM changes took place AFTER MH was unlocked :P

 

Paladia

They are the same model as the level 3 Mulgore quest, "Rite of Vision", which has been in the game since the WoW beta.

The model is then again used in the quest A Spirit Guide in Hellfire Peninsula.

 

Dragonhoof

I don't really understand the stir about the missing perfect rotation. Honestly, I am sick of the way it is now, there is one basic rotation every shaman uses and that's it. No skill or brain involved, no way to differentiate yourself from others, only the hope for some RNG luck to see some difference in your dps.

Imagine all cooldowns and abilities would match perfectly in WotLK, what's the point in playing then? Pressing one button for the cast sequence macro, no thanks.

As it is at the moment, some classes just got too plain simple and boring to play in raids, like enhancement shamans or even worse, destruction warlocks, that only spam shadowbolts. Blizzard noticed that and tries to bring back some variation again. Different people = different playstyle, and actually a reason I rolled a hybrid.

There are still rules of the thumb for your personal "perfect rotation". Like someone else once said, any given second use the ability that gives you the most damage in return for maximum dps. (Like, use LvB when flameshock is ticking and 5 stacks Maelstrom are up instead of SS.)
Sure, there is more stuff to consider now, is Elemental Devastation still up, is a Flameshock ticking, how many stacks of Maelstroms are up, when are my abilities off cooldown, etc.. But isn't that interesting, finally you have to actually think while playing and come up with the best solution. Sounds like a challenge for me, instead of pushing the same buttons over and over again.

 

Patrik

I got one question I would like to ask those of you, who are in beta: Does it make any difference in final damage output when I cast Lava Burst for example right after I cast Flame Shock or when I cast LvB just before the final tick of FS dot? If it is hypotheticly (all cooldown cycles aside) beneficial to wait with LvB cast just before the FS dot on target expires. Thanks in advance.

 

Stopokingme

Waiting with you LvB would mean you'd be gaining no maelstrom charges while you're waiting, combined with the fact that the lava burst will plain do more damage then the individual ticks you'd get added up it seems to me that you'd just want to nuke it immediately if the dot is up instead of waiting.

 

Patrik

Sure, I just wanted to know a bit more about its mechanics. What you're reffering to I've ment with mine (perhaps to simplified) 'all cooldown cycles aside', my bad.

 

Malan

No there's nothing special about LvB damage depending on when you use it.


And lets take the ridiculous talk about "skill" in pressing buttons elsewhere ok? Its a tired argument that doesn't belong here.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Toots Hepcat

You don't want to time SR with haste pots, drum etc. The SR proc chance is based on current weapon speed, so by increasing your current weapon speed you're adding more tries but decreasing the chance by the same amount. What's more, you're not increasing the tries from WF or SS. This means you have a lower chance, but tries haven't increased by a commensurate amount. Thus, your returns have gone down a tiny bit.

You SHOULD, however, be timing SR with you 2 minute AP trinkets. I have mine macroed to Bloodlust Brooch and get back a full mana bar within 10s.

 

Pitbuller

But you also should time haste potions with two minute trinkets to get max dps gain.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

LazyJoe

The wording of this spell is quite ambiguous. It says lava burst "consumes" the flame shock. So the dot clearly disappear, but what about the damage ? Is the dot damage just lost, or is it added to the lavaburst's damage ?

Reading Malan improves my english

 

Malan

The debuff is consumed - it ceases to exist when you use LvB, so any potential damage that was left on the DoT is lost.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Toots Hepcat

True, and I actually do try to wait haste pots/BL/the Troll racial for while my SR/trinket are up.

But I don't do it for additional SR gains. Haste is, strictly speaking, bad for SR...but not as much as that trinket is good for it.

 

Malan

SR seems to be dramatically different on the Beta right now. I'm able to pull a single mob (around 9k health) and fill my mana bar from empty to 6k before the mob dies. On live, I have trouble fully raid buffed against an elite mob sometimes getting a full mana bar back. I think they've boosted the PPM effect.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Psykhe

IMO the actual HP of totems is not even really the problem, it is the ease of targeting them with macros.

If you would actually have to click on the totem you want to destroy during the hectic of PvP and then wand/send pet/attack it it would be just fine. Because that would require a good deal more focus than just spamming your anti-totem-macro. Focus which might lead to you missing other things, like the shaman suddenly being next to you and your HP dropping fast.

Make totems no viable target in macros and I would be perfectly fine with them having 5 health. Because someone who keeps killing totems will then spend more time and energy doing that than the shaman dropping them, so it is still a win situation.