Lethal Shots

As many of you have figured out by now, I am really enjoying playing my Shaman now, almost as much as I enjoy my Hunter. And as a direct result, changes to the Shaman class now interest me a great deal, so I am going to cover them here also.

Classes: General

• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

This indirectly effects all classes, but i think I’m going to feel this especially hard as a Resto Shaman who is still trying to get geared up.

Shamans

• A customizable totem bar will now be available for shamans allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.

Huge! Even Huger than huge! This is a large step in streamlining the Shaman class to help it keep up with others. Tune in later, I have a lot to say about this change.

• All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
• Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
• Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.

More range, more health, more healing power. All three of these changes are solid buffs.

• Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.

Nothing special, just more of the across the board changes to travel forms and mounts.

• Talents
  • Enhancement
    • Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.
  • Restoration
    • Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.
    • Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
    • Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
    • Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman’s Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
    • Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman’s health.
    • Nature’s Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30-second internal cooldown and increases the shaman’s maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
    • Nature’s Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
    • Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
    • Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Honestly, all of these talent changes seem pretty solid to me. The shorter cooldown on Shamanistic Rage will take some adjustment, but I think it will offer greater flexibility. All of the Resto changes look great, and I especially like the change to Improved Water Shield.

Bug Fixes

• Shamans
  • Fixed a bug where Frostbrand Weapon (Rank 9) was not scaling properly with a shaman’s spell power.

As always, bug fixes rock.

The changes this patch for Shaman have me way more excited than wha tis planned for Hunters, I just hope Blizz comes through and doesn’t drop anything at the last minute. But enough of my opinions, what are yours?

Well, my Shaman hit the big ding last night. That’s right, level 80. Why, you may ask, is this of any significance? Because this marks the first time I have ever had 2 characters at the level cap.

And what did I do to celebrate?

Went and started a new alt so that the Heirloom shoulders I bought for my Shaman wouldn’t go to waste.

Also, now comes the task of gearing my Shaman to heal heroics, and eventually Naxx. I also have some other big news that occurred last night, but it deserves its own post, so more on that later.

Recently I’ve had a few in-game friends ask questions about gearing their Shaman. Granted my main is a Hunter, but with my big leveling push with my Shaman recently people assume that I know at least a little about them. Naturally, I try my best to help them out and answer their questions. One thing I have noticed is that everyone who has asked for advice plays a Hunter. And when I think about it, I know a lot of Hunters that have Shamans as alts.

So maybe, just maybe, the advice I have been giving will be useful to some other Hunters out there. Bear in mind that there are much more knowledgeable players than me when it comes to Shaman, and most of what I know applies to leveling. Anyway, on with the advice.

For those that don’t know, Shamans got a huge overhaul when 3.0 hit. Specifically the itemization for Enhancement Shamans. Pre-3.0 Enhancement Shaman stacked Strength, Agility, and Intellect. Think about it, how much gear have you seen that provides all three of these? Luckily Blizzard changed that.

At level 30, the talent Mental Dexterity becomes available. What this does is allow a Shaman to convert his Intelligence into Attack Power (Careful Aim anyone?).

Further down the tree you will find Mental Quickness, available at level 50. This talent converts up to 30% of your Attack Power into Spell Power, eliminating the need to stack Spell Power to buff up your shocks.

Now with these talents in mind, lets review what stats Shamans need to stack:

• Intellect – Enhancement Shamans may be a melee class, but they are also a caster which means they need mana. This will also give you Attack Power once talented for it.
• Agility – You are in melee and a good chunk of your DPS comes from White Damage. The Attack Power and Crit Agility provides are crucial.
• Attack Power -  Same reasoning for Agility applies here. This also provides Spell Power once talented for it.

Now what gear provides those three stats and is Mail (leather at earlier levels)?

That’s right, Hunter gear. As an Enhancement Shaman, you will want to look for the exact same gear a Hunter would wear. It really is that simple.

In a few previous posts I have mentioned my Shaman that I am slowly leveling. So far I have gotten him up to 70 (almost 71). It has largely been a solo effort, meaning he has been specced Enhancement from level 10. My long term goal has always been to take this guy Resto once he hit level cap. Well, last night I got my first taste of healing.

I was plugging around the Fjorde when i got a friend of mine whispered me asking if I wanted to join in on a Shadow Labs run. Since my Shaman is only 70 he would still get XP from it so I jumped on board. Ended up with a Warrior, a Hunter, two Paladins, and me. We had tanking covered, but none of us were specced as a healer. They asked me if I could heal, so I decided to give it a try. No re-spec. I just threw on the caster gear I had been collecting and dove in.

Now first off, healing on an Enhance Shaman is very simple. You have three heals, Earthliving Weapon, and totems. For totems I ran with the standard compliment of Mana Tide, Windfury, Flametounge, and Strength of earth (might be the wrong name on that one, I can’t remember what it is called for sure). I enchanted both my weapons with Earthliving, and then hammered out heals to keep people topped off.

And you know who died the most? Me. I was so focused on keeping other people topped off that I kept forgetting to heal myself. But, I would rather that I caused my own death than someone else’s.

Except for a few deaths, the run went real well. Everyone said I did a pretty good job healing, especially considering it was my first time and I wasn’t specced for it. And you know what?

I liked it.

Healing offered a completely different way of playing than I have ever done. Target mobs? Nope. As a DPS 90% of the time I assist the tank and fire away. Sure, there are the few times where I need to CC or to pull some fancy moves to save a healer, but not that often these days. As a healer things felt more dynamic. The tank was no longer my boss, telling me who to target and when. I controlled the flow of the group instead of being pulled along. It was great.

Now don’t misunderstand. I love being a Hunter and will more than likely always play one as my main. But seeing the game from a different perspective opens up a completely new way to play and have fun in WoW. One that I intend to take full advantage of.

The Good:

• Santyn hit 80 Sunday morning. No special event, just an unexpected ding while turning in a quest.
• Ran my first Northrend Heroic shortly after dinging. Drak’Theron Keep. Full clear, plus it was the daily.
• Managed to get both Santen (Shaman) and Santan (Death Knight) to 59 Monday night.

The Bad:

• Now that Santyn has hit 80, I have lost some of the motivation to play him. I blame burnout from focusing solely on him in the mad rush to 80. Hopefully this will not last long.
• Now that I am starting to play alts again (see The Good), I realize that I have no idea how to efficiently play a Shaman or Death Knight. If anyone knows of a good resource for either, please leave me a link in the comments.

The Ugly:

• Hunter Nerfs incoming. Ghostcrawler announced several changes today. Steady Shot nerf. Volley nerf. Pet nerf. Readiness nerf. Serpent’s Swiftness nerf. Kindred Spirits nerf. I know it is all in the name of balance, but I think they may have gone a little too far.