• Binkenstein

WoW -> Test Realm Patch Notes

* Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.

Elemental Combat

* Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.

Glyph of Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Glyph of Fire Nova. This glyph now reduces the cooldown of Fire Nova by 3 seconds.

Discuss!

 

Dasteyy

I would probably call it more of an Enhancement buff (for bosses even).
For trash sure it is a good solid buff, not that it matters much but hey :-)

On a serious note, looking forward to see the aoe dmg you can do with magma totem + glyphed and talented fire nova :-)

 

tufy

This Fire Nova change is... interesting, to say the least. Blizzard wants to push more interactivity with totem use and we're seeing another form of totem-turns-spell effect here. What's even more interesting is Magma Totem + Fire Nova together - combined with Chain Lightning, this may well boost our AoE damage considerably. The downside is nasty, of course - I now need two more talents for improved fire nova.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Deathwing

I wouldn't be surprised if they remove magma totem. It's the only way this change makes any sense. Otherwise, in AE situations, you're still sitting in melee range dropping your magma totem every 20s.

 

gremag

I see most PvE elemental shaman (including myself) drawing from Convection in order to supply the talent points. One thing I like about this ability is having an instant other than flame shock to potentially use on the run. Two questions:

1. To what extent will this ability require that we drop a fire totem near a single target boss?
2. If the answer to #1 is "very often", will it be superior to get runspeed+sta on boots rather than hit/crit or is that already the case?

 

Jeeru

If the mana costs remain the same it will be interesting to see how well this serves us as elemental. It might become very situational depending on whether or not you're the one dropping ToW or magma. Obviously if you are dropping magma this will become very expensive to maintain.

It does seem that just like with the magma totem buff this will serve enhancement much more than elemental.

I'm okay with becoming a melee caster, but as with many fire and forget AoE abilities number-wise it will probably be a DPS increase regardless of what fire totem you are dropping, I just think that the mana cost will attempt to keep it in line.

 

Darian_TruBlade

It should be noted that glyphed and talents, Fire Nova has a 3 second cooldown. Similarly, taking both Booming Echoes and Reverberation pushes Flame Shock's cooldown to 3 seconds. We therefore have, for the first time, the potential for a full fire DPS rotation between the two that doesn't involve waiting seconds for cooldowns to finish. Fractional seconds maybe, but we're almost there! Still totally worthless against anything that isn't immune to Nature damage, but we can dream.

More practically, the ability does seem a little unwieldy. It continues the paradigm Thunderstorm and Magma totem started for Shaman AoE, requiring that we run into the thick of it. That isn't necessarily bad, but the further Blizzard takes this angle on our AoE DPS the more frustrating our lack of methods for diving into the fray will become. Additionally, it's not a very mobile option. If the tank has to move the AoE pack, we either lose the option of Fire Nova or spend an extra GCD (and some running time) to put the totem in place again.

The most pertinent question on my mind is, "Does the threat from Fire Nova get attributed to the totem?" This seems likely, and will give us perhaps the most threat-safe AoE of any caster.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Gangplank

hrmph. 20% radius increase? so 12yd range?

 

Lucitron

Current version is that we ignore Fire Nova Totem and use Magma Totem. 3.2 we will still drop Magma Totem, but every now and then we can push our Fire Nova button as well. Obviously, the change to Fire Nova Totem is not intended to replace Magma Totem, or to be a ranged AoE. By all appearance, the intent is just to make a seldom used totem useful.

At 7:45, offices are empty. Some could get bored, but I stay calm, I know how to adapt. While waiting for them I have time to take a coffee.

 

CaptnIgnit

My main concerns/questions are as follows:

1. Movement intense fights (Freya+3E, Worms/Icehowl, etc) would make dropping the totem in range of the boss a huge pain. So is fire nova meant to be a new part of our core rotation or situational?

2. We still have the outstanding issue of magma vs ToW sacrificing our own dps for buffs. How will fire nova affect this choice?

3. The big one, will using it in our rotation provide a viable increase in dps?

 

mireu

New Elemental reach will increase Fire Nova by 6 yards. So basically, it'll affect 16yards radius.

 

Levva

Since Fire Nova is activated from ANY fire totem, if you drop ToW you can now do AoE damage from your ToW totem. So this might move the balance in favour of ToW I'd guess. As you can now buff the raid AND do some AoE damage.

Indeed for largely static fights where you can drop ToW in range of boss, you can just add FN to your priorities/rotation and do some extra damage for a full 5 minutes without having to refresh the totem and still get the benefit of the buff to the raid.

Author of ShockAndAwe Enhancement Shaman max dps addon
Author of Rawr.Enhance an automated gear checking program that can generate config files for EnhSim.
Please use the EnhSim by Tukez, Sylvand & others to simulate what gear, priorities etc are the best dps.
FAQ: Hit cap 342 Draenei, 368 Horde, Expertise rating cap 140 with 3/3 Unleashed Rage. Cap those before worrying about other stats.

 

mireu

True. But I think if you have a demo lock in the raid with dp spec, you can drop fire ele / magma as well maximizing your dps potential.

 

Chitzu

I wouldn't call the totem useless, it might be usefull in some situations as mentioned above, althought there's not many situations where it would be of use, what i can see thought is that it will make it possible for us to keep the ToW up at the same time as we can do some AoE damage, in that case the other spell casters will still benefit from it.

on the other hand from my understanding and point of view, this is a nerf to Elemental shamans in PVE, the small chance we had to drop a wtfleavemealone totem is going to be gone with that patch, we'll no longer have the possibility to force a Paladin for example to bubble if we've droped earthbind to force them to use Hand of freedom, with the last changes to Thunderstorm as well this is going to make a huge difference in arena.

But in a whole i guess it's a +/- situation, atleast we didn't got hit by a PVE nerf cause of arena this time, which is a possitive thing, kind of looking forward to if there's going to be any other changes beside from this, i'm pretty sure that some things is going to be changed, there's a few things that i would suspect being changed, but hey.. time will tell i guess.

 

tufy

Current live version of Fire Nova Totem has exactly one use and one use only - pvp stun. Beyond that, Magma does more damage per second, costs less, lasts longer and has no cooldown. This new Fire Nova spell, however, will buff shaman's greatest pve weakness - AoE damage. Sure it's a slight pvp nerf, but don't forget that it's the first build on the PTR, more changes are certain to come.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Powhatan

Would it be safe to assume that you'll be able to get this effect out of every totem under the fire category? Such as fire elemental totem or even a resist totem that might get dropped when several shaman are in a raid.

 

Xiar

It's an interesting change, I'm hoping it doesn't consume the totem.

Magma totem has it's uses for sure, adding a little oomph to it with fire nova will definately be a nice dps increase for aoe.

Now adding the stun effect to it without a glyph would be an even nicer change...

At least they are showing they can get a little more creative with totems. If it's a slow rework of totems that they are moving toward, so far it's been pretty effective; with the new totem bar and now this, for instance.

 

Yawka

It doesn't consume it. If it did that would be absolutely terrible for us to use another GCD on ToW.

I like that they added this affect. Now we have a chance against Mages/Locks on AoE damage in boss encounters.

 

kienluen

i remember a blue post a while back that they wanted to do something fun with our totems.
if they plan to do more stuff like the nova-spell i definitely will look forward to more "fun"-totem mechanics.

the nova spell could be situationally useful, although i don't think it's worth to spend points in that talent for a situationally used spell.

anyway, we get something for almost nothing so there's no reason to complain imho.^^

 

Polyx

not to change the topic from the "interesting" change to fire nova totem, but I noticed something else in the patch notes under enchanting.

Enchant Weapon - Black Magic now cause your harmful spells to sometimes increase haste rating by 250.

is this better than 63 spellpower?

now obviously depending on it's proc rate/internal CD/length of buff.
Is it safe to assume the internal CD will be 45sec?
Also, how long does it last?

i'm not on the PTR(should be tomorrow). Just wanted to know if anyone had tried it yet and thoughts on it.

/cues Santana's Black Magic Woman

 

Fenix500

The current ICD is 45 seconds. The current proc lasts for 15 seconds, and I think it's feasible for a haste proc to last for somewhere around the same time. I'm hoping some people can hop on the PTR and get some more definite information on the enchant - I'd definitely enjoy the ability to enchant something different than SP.

 

cyloria

I went to the Ptr and tried out the new nova totem. From what I experienced i am thinking it will be most helpful for an AOE
also another thing I thought of is it will help us with our low mobility. By putting down TOW by the boss and when we have to move use the Spell at which time the 1.5 second Global cool down won't be a problem. The spell is instant with a 1.5 second GCD so no channeling nor cast time.

With my gear the totem did about 4,000 damage with a crit and around 1800 reg hit...so single target with a 1.5 second GCD its not too great,but with a few mobs the damage stacks up fast. Of course adding it to Magma was a huge increase, but that's really not feasible for most of us except on trash or in 5 mans.

 

Grymoire

I am not sure if there is a set value yet, nor the % proc rate, but if the value of haste and proc rate is high, may be it will be a good alternative to the 63sp enchant we all been using.

 

Carda

Greetings,
After doing some minor testing on the PTR i'm under the impression that the Black Magic enchant is able to be triggered every ~35 seconds and is up for 10 seconds.
Tried casting LB only for about 15 minutes and the time between 2 procs averaged at about 37-38 seconds.None of it was < 36 sec and it was like 90% exactly between 37 and 38 sec.

 

Grymoire

Did you notice how much haste it gives also?