Leviathon

I'd imagine that when those patch notes were done they only had the elemental tree in and added in the enhance and resto trees afterwards. But at least its nice seeing Blizzard actually putting some effort into the patch notes with the WotLK Alpha as during TBC they never did patch notes once.

 

Toastradamus

Ah, good point, I forgot about patch note lag. I guess I should also clarify that I don't think elemental won't see changes (it is early alpha, after all), just that I was thinking enhancement and restoration weren't even ready for alpha testing and there would be some dramatic changes in store for them in the next patch or two. But you are probably right and for the most part they'll just tweak what's there for a while before deciding if things look good or need serious revamping.

Regarding the dramatically increased mana cost of our abilities: from what I've seen it looks like something really funky is going on with all of the shaman spells. Our mana costs seem to be going up way more than other classes' for comparable spells, and our effects are going up less. Here are a couple of examples:

Lightning Bolt:
TBC: 300 mana, 603 avg dmg, 2.01 dpm
WOTLK: 685 mana, 863 avg dmg, 1.26 dpm

Frostbolt:
TBC: 345 mana, 655 avg dmg, 1.89 dpm
WOTLK: 505 mana, 830 avg dmg, 1.64 dpm


Lesser Healing Wave:
TBC: 440 mana, 1112 avg heal, 2.52 hpm
WOTLK: 965 mana, 1720 avg heal, 1.78 hpm

Flash Heal:
TBC: 470 mana, 1190 avg heal, 2.53 hpm
WOTLK: 775 mana, 2220 avg heal, 2.86 hpm

---
One important thing to note about the heals: there is a known change going on with healing where the amount of available healing power gain from gear is going to drop considerably but the base healing of spells is being increased to compensate. Probably something to do with curbing downranking and/or preventing +healing scaling from getting out of hand, I dunno, ask a healer. Just don't read too much into the fact that Frostbolt damage is going up 26% while Flash Heal healing is going up 86%.
---

Some possible explanations:

1. My quick checks did not include talents (sorry, I just noticed the relative power loss compared to other classes while typing this post, up to now I thought everyone was losing efficiency pretty evenly), which might make the disparities less dramatic
2. My idea of "comparable spells" sucks and I should have chosen other spells to compare?
3. Blizzard is trying to encourage elemental shamans to weave in fire spells by making lightning spells inefficient, and trying to discourage LHW casting because with the new talents it will be too strong in arenas (or insert your own made up Blizzard motivations for here, I am just typing the first things that I pulled out of my ass that seemed like they might fit the meager data at hand)
4. Shamans are being balanced around lacking longevity
5. Something is going to make shamans stupidly good at regenning mana and our spells are being made inefficient to compensate

 

PSGarak

Healing on gear is being removed entirely in favor of a unified "spellpower" stat shared with damage classes. Healing coefficients are being adjusted to compensate, this may or may not be related to the base values changing.

Warlocks are getting higher mana cost increases than mages, and shamans are getting even higher mana cost increases than that. Warlocks, it makes sense because we're getting Meditation built into fel armor, and the increased lifetap may be intended to rein in our overscaled damage. Shamans, my guess is that since you have a lot of longevity/regen gained since TBC came out, it's now being compensated for. Something's brewing underfoot with regards to mana, spirit, longevity, potions, etc, but I don't think we've quite seen what all of it is. Certainly not enough at this point to figure out why Shamans are getting hit harder than anyone elses with spell costs. I'm still wondering if you're going to get a meditation talent.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Tornhoof

I did a few tests with my weo2 and with the current weapons available it choses hand of deceiver/s4 axe while assuming that one axe will raise the crit dmg by 25% and each mace/fist weapon equipped will raise the swingcount for the haste/armorpen proc.
Personally I don't think we will hit the hit cap at all, since the hit cap should not change with wotlk, meaning it should stay at 28%, I just don't think they will increase hit rating on items that much.
Also I think we can assume that our dual wield talent will be melee +hit only.
The synergy effects between ele shaman and enh are increased further by additional stormstrike charges and lava burst.

It would be interesting to know if lightning shield procs elemental devastation. i would be suprised if it did, since we might be looking into some perpetual crit machine then, if spell crit gains as much from +crit as melee crit does (e.g. running around with 40% spellcrit/melee crit buffed).

In any case, the fist/mace weapon specializations will make proper enh theorycrafting even more complicated.

http://code.google.com/p/wowequipoptimizer/

 

Tornhoof

If you also consider that Shadowpriest group mana reg was badly nerfed to buff discipline priests apparently, shamans might indeed move to a "cross healing, add fighting, non-spam" job.

http://code.google.com/p/wowequipoptimizer/

 

Roywyn

You'll get a good amount of spell hit(/crit) from gear that boosts orb charges and FT hits.

Speaking of crit - wowwiki says "The damage caused is considered direct damage, though it cannot crit.".
True/false? Molten Armour can crit, Thorns/Ret Aura cannot, so both could be true.

Also, the "few seconds cooldown" of Lightning Shield may or may not apply to those LS hits.
How long is this cooldown?
In the example of "250 DPS from LS", that means 1 proc every 3s (and you have to do ~16 attacks in 3 seconds).
With a guessed 3s cooldown, and if it applies to this use of LS as well, it reduces LS to one proc every 6s, or ~125 DPS.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Gehenna

Are you assuming that the offhand ax will increase all your crit damage by 25%, because if so, that is a horrible thing to assume.

It's fairly clear that axes will be the main hand weapon of choice. The offhands are where the theorycraft will be thrown.

 

Tornhoof

The wording indicates that it raises all your crit damage, since for rogues the wording explicitly states the weapon.
Same with haste or armorpen. You're correct though, that it is most likely for the specific weapon only.

http://code.google.com/p/wowequipoptimizer/

 

Phlis

Yes it's wrong, there are a few mistakes in there. I already had a dream talent tree up there for kicks which I turned into an alpha talent tree. I might fix it.

 

Ankh-Morpork

That talent calculator on War Tools is not complete (call of flame as an example)... and will be deletet anyway (-> War Tools :: News)

Here's the "full" one:
War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

 

vesicular

Hmm...Mental Dexterity + Mental Quickness = 30% of Int turned into +dmg. Not bad a bad little bonus.

 

Malan

Too bad Ancestral Knowledge is still pretty bad, according to those links. Intellect may be prevalent on mail itemization but its not there in enormous sums. A cursory glance at the best in slot mail and feral leather items with +Int on it for Sunwell, for example, would yield less than 200 Intellect. Considering it as 200 Int for ease of calculation, that's 200 AP yes, which makes Ancestral Knowledge worth 12 AP and 3.6 spell damage at the cost of 3 talent points.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Atren

Kinda curious, did you also update hit and crit rating values? I fear most about that as hunter mail also has lot of agility which becomes far weaker in WotLK. Overall unless we get specific gear then other classes gear fit us less after new expansion than now. Especially worrying detail is that we did not get conversion in SW gear with hunters.

Hunter --> Agi bad, AP bad, Int unknown, low hit rating.
Rogue --> Agi bad, AP bad.
Druid ---> Agi bad, Int unknown, low hit rating.

What we need -- Strength , Crit and hit ratings, unkown amount of int.
Who has that -- Feral Druid, rogues , hunter and feral druids.

Another detail is that hit and crit ratings seems to become most desired stats; neither feral druids or hunters need lots of hit.

 

Leviathon

One thing that Blizzard could do is just make shamans like druids and get AP from both agility and strength.

 

Malan

I'm not sure I agree with your assessments there. Agility and AP aren't "bad."

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Duilliath

I have the feeling he might've meant the exact opposite as you and I interpreted it at first.

Agility is the primary druid stat - there's nothing near as important. Similarly, Rogues do want Agi and AP, so...

 

Piestein

I believe this is yet another way to make enhancement shamans go for mail gear with Intellect on it. And as nobody really knows WotlK gear, nobody can possibly know if this won't be good or bad at the moment.

In my personal oppinion, Blizzard have lanced very good ideas about enhancement shamans. However, now they have to finish what they started, so they still have PLENTY of room to mess up or to improve things. Most of the changes seem really nice, but removing Totem Twist(our beloved "exploit") - I don't see that as positive . I hope that they balance this out by making the Weapon Speciality buff for all the raid, not just for self. I also think it's nice that they have the possibility of making different bosses prefer different weapons : to give ArP or Haste for the raid? Of course, that again depends on the question if those buffs will be raid-wide, party-wide or just self buffs.

Oh, and of course, I can't express the amount of extra heart beats caused by happiness when I saw the Improved SR, I can already imagine making a macro with it saying "Fear this, suckers!"- definately a needed thing.

 

Skreekins

The description of Static Shock changed in the June 12 build to the following:

Static Shock (Rank 3) - You have a $s1% chance to hit your target with a Lightning Shield Orb charge when you do damage, and increases your spell damage by $s2% when you have Lightning Shield active. (source: wotlk.wikidot.com)

We gained an increase to spell damage while lightning shield is active, but lost the additional charges. Assuming mana is not a limitation, this version is superior as long as we have the GCDs to refresh Lightning Shield more often. I haven't been able to find a screenshot of the updated tooltip, so I do not know the amount of the spell damage increase.

Just an FYI post, no new numbers to crunch (yet).

 

PSGarak

"You have a 6% chance to hit your target with a Lightning Shield Orb charge when you do damage, and increases your spell damage by 3% when you have Lightning Shield active." (rank 3)
Source: http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/views...?spellid=51527
From the http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php site.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Atren

I meant bad as in clearly inferior to Crit rating and Strength. Currently agility and crit rating are almost equal, after unified ratings crit rating will become clearly superior to agility. I did not mean that they will be useless, just not as useful as strength and crit rating.

 

spanko

Apparently we are getting our own version of Thorns:

Skin of Earth - Thorns sprout from the friendly target causing $s1 Nature damage to attackers when hit. Lasts $d.

Also on WotLK Information Wiki: Shaman there is a video showing several abilities being used including Spirit wolves. Its doesn't show much and it doesn't look like the shaman is in enhance gear, but the spirit wolf is doing absolutely crap damage, perhaps it scales with melee stats? Also it definitely gives a pet bar!

 

Leviathon

Weapon Specialization is being changed in a upcoming patch for the fist weapon bonus to instead be "When you crit with a fist weapon, reduces the cast time of your next spell by 20%. This effect can stack up to 5 times.".

Shamans: Upcoming Weapon Specialization Change

 

Lujaar

Non-instant spells converted to instants still reset your swing timer, but Wolfwood from the forum linked above had an interesting idea. Using an instant Magma Burst to force an Elemental Devastation proc might be worth resetting your swing timer.

 

Illundai

Hmm, not sure if it's going to reset swing timer even if it's instant, I'm going to guess they'll think of that though. That said, looks pretty obvious to me Enhancement talents aren't done yet. Those Spirit Wolves had no abilities on their pet bar.

 

PSGarak

Are there multiple wolf pets being controlled through a single pet bar? If so, that's rather unprecedented. And also gives hope that Treants can get a pet bar, since I assume the main reason they don't is because there's three of them.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png