Note that improved SS wont get affected by gear. Its the same kind of setup as retri palas Judgement of the Wise. Its base mana, so its a fixed amount no matter if youre naked or wearing t8 gear.

Ah i see now, i misread the base mana.

PvP shamans will also have 7 second stormstrike.

This is what I'm most concerned about. If anyone can log on the PTR and double check the SS cooldown it would be helpful. As I read it the debuff was lowered by 2 seconds. The UR change is pretty disappointing as we heard it would be a crit increase, not agi. The expertise suggestion would be amazing.

And not a million miles away from 49.185 expertise rating in terms of item budgets. I'd like to suggest we petition for UR to get 2/4/6 Expertise rather than 1/2/3% Agi. Or if they think thats too high a budget 1/3/5 Expertise (40.987 item budget).

This would plug the gap with us being the only expertise needing class that cannot get it from talents, and give significantly more options for gemming & enchanting, without changing the item budget thus leading to more diverse choices something Blizzard suggests they want to see.

Does indeed suggest they are synchronising the two, ie: the debuff on target and the CD before next use. Imp. SS no longer giving 1 sec per talent pt off the CD means SS every 10 seconds not every 8 (a nerf) It only lasting 10 seconds not 12 is another nerf. They might counter buff it with a new icon though

The fact that they have radically changed mana regen elsewhere to make it so that mana using classes have to take mana into consideration, suggests that whilst we are fine at present with mana regen levels, we might not be on 3.1. So the 2 "extra" points from Imp. SS might not be extra after all.

From the wiki Frostbrand is 9PPM which is a 39% proc rate on a 2.6 speed mainhand. My issue with the talent, and one that I plan on posting whenever the official forums allow me to log in, is that 15 yards is too arbitrary a distance considering the default UI has no method for determining distance from target. Other effects that have a minimum range like that are greyed out when the target is too close but since this is an ancillary effect that wouldn't be the case. An easy solution to this would be to just change the root effect to only work if the target is outside of melee range. I would also prefer if this was available no matter which weapon was imbued with Frostbrand but I'll wait for more testing of how much damage it outputs with the 20% boost before I start worrying about that aspect.

As for the change to Improved Stormstrike, I like the concept (and I should since it was something that Malan and I have been pushing for since the Beta), but I think they need to deal with Shamanistic Rage as well to complete the concept. Remove the mana regen component from SR and give it a Stun Removal on initial use (no immunity) along with a 10% damage boost while active. Then it is a defensive talent for PvP and an offensive talent for PvE keeping it's prominent place in our armamentarium.

Then if they can give our wolves the new ghoul treatment (increase duration to 1 minute with a 2 minute cooldown that starts the moment they are killed/despawn - so if they are instantly killed you get them back sooner) I think I would be pretty content with the changes. Although I would still like to see some sort of personal buff added to Improved Windfury Totem but that is about it.

[e] Beaten to the reduced CD on SS.


Unless 3.1 changes our mana usage, I can only see Imp. SS as a PVP buff and two more points to spend for PVE.

I'm happy they give us something to UR, and happy about the additional talent points we're able to spend.

I personally would like to see Lava Lash just have a 100% chance to crit every time its used and remove the bonus it gains from you having Flametongue imbued on a weapon (if it's too OP which I would suspect so). This way in PvP with terrible crit rates and high resilience, Flurry/UR will actually be up whenever they are needed when in melee range and we can LL, since atm even getting the proc is difficult on high resilience.

The Imp SS change indeed I like as well Rounced, they needed to add something reactive to it and this fixes the PvP mana issues, for the most part it seems.

Actually...

I realized last night that I have been raiding for the better part of 2 months without Elemental Focus or Shamanistic Focus. I had basically shed the points to pick up Ghost Wolf (I can't play without it anymore) at some point and just never realized I hadn't filled in those talents.

Even without those 2 mana reduction talents I spam the shit out of magma totem in raids. I did 10man Sarth3 attempts last night and only had 1 replenishment in the raid and pretty mediocre JoW time (one paladin tanking adds, one healing so they didn't keep JoW up the entire time). Still was able to keep at least 90% magma totem uptime, and generally I drop it far more often than 3 times per minute just to make sure that it's not interrupting my cycle.

SR was definitely required during Sarth3:10, but in 25 man raids with a 2nd or 3rd replenishment spec I barely notice mana issues, just have to use SR once in awhile. Most fights I don't even need it though (which is why I never noticed I had dropped those 2 talents).

The new improved SS is going to make it even easier on my mana pool. If it weren't for the spell damage component of Mental Quickness I'd probably drop that too.

From what I see from the tooltip the frostbrand/frostshock parts of the talent are totally separate. It does not say that frostshock freezes the target only if frostbrand is on the MH. I do agree that it will most likely be hard to figure out the distance though. I wonder if a mod could be done for it though.

Right now Imp SS. imo is useless. In 25 mans I have 0 mana problems and I almost never even use SR. But we will need to see how Uld pans out. Maybe Blizzard's internal testing suggests mana problems for us in Uld. and that's why they gave it to us.

The new UR is underwhelming, and I would love if it were expertise instead of agil, for the same budget.

As for it, Blizz said:

That to me implies that the Imp SS. was rolled into the base SS as is, and not that the debuff was reduced.

Edit: oh yah, after Malan said it, I realized that also I stopped using Elemental Focus in my spec, probably about 1 month ago as I found it useless and have not had any mana issues.

I like this idea...a lot. Let's keep this going and get as many people as possible in on it. If you've already posted a suggestion on the PTR forums, please link it here so we can all give our two cents. Getting out from under the burden of capping Spell Hit and Expertise would be incredibly useful from a gearing-options standpoint. Those two stats cripple many of my upgrade options, or at the very least make them require multiple gemming changes for each new piece.

/edit Answer already given, note to self, don't keep your reply window open for 15 minutes at work.

I really like the idea of a expertise bonus from unleahsed rage.

I also liked it when it provided crit. I found that we scale really well with crit.

What I'm really disappointed in is the fact that they still havent put anything up to give our wolves some survivability at all. They die to anything way too quickly. I would love to see something like 70% less inc dmg, I don't know.

Also, why not put them at our side 100% of the time. Their dmg is still lackluster, they barely do 500dps with heroism up. And their talents could remain on about the same cooldown without making us too op. That would be a great 51 point talent. Right now its still very very lackluster i find.

I find the frostbrand idea a step in the right direction, With trinket and wolves you have 2 potential get out of jail free cards. Then you can catch up to them and burn them down real quick.. PVP is now a question of seconds, so whoever hits his special abilities faster and more intelligently wins

There is no way that's the PPM of Frostbrand. Where are you getting this data from?

Anyway, I can see why they put the limitation on Frozen Power at 15 yards. A 5s root on a 6s CD is way too good if you could use it at will. Hell, it might be too good as it is. I can see Elemental Shamans in a hybrid spec just to pick this up.

My guess is because of the giant whining that took place at the mere mention that we were getting Feral Spirit near the end of TBC. "We aren't a pet class!!!!" filled the official forums.

I don't know man, I think we really need to get into Ulduar and do some testing before we all say that imp SS is a waste. We all know mana regen has been nerfed, various mana returns are being changed. You never know we may actually need 2/2 improved SS. Ima run with 1/2 Imp SS on PTR and see how it goes.

They'd give up a ton of shit to get it though just for pvp - Frozen Power is in the same tier as UR according to MMO.

On the PTR Stormstrike has a cooldown of 10s.

Next 4 sources of nature damage is increased by 20% for 10s.

Yah, it's all listed on the MMO Champ front page.

@Levvaa - ugh, don't post it in the Shaman forum (noticed after I replied). The devs basically ignore the class forums now, they expect those to be "class X helping class X" rather than having actual discussion there.

Hmm looks like that MIGHT be viable would be interesting to sim.

You can spec for both Booming Echoes and Frozen Power for 3s on your 5s root. Being actually able to get off spells might be worth the loss. Or as a way to set up other casters.

mmo front page has conflicting reports, so I'm clarifying.