Lethal Shots

Yes, apparently 3.2 is going live today. And about damn time at that. Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Mount changes FTW! I have several low level alts that will benefit from this greatly, and I can’t wait to get my level 72 Death Knight a flying mount to speed up his grind through Northrend.
• I can finally prospect all that Titanium Ore I have been collecting over the last month or so. Now I just hope that I can get a decent return on investment.
• I broke down and started doing some of the Argent Tournament dailies. I don’t fly all over Northrend, I have just been doing the one’s in Icecrown. I don’t do them every day, but I figure spending some time there will help me out in the new raid.
• Business has been booming lately. I have slowly been expanding into new markets and profits have went up accordingly.
• To be honest, my alts are screwed. Between farming up the Jeeves schematic and farming 5-mans for Conquest badges (so I can get geared up for the new raid ASAP) I will be spending a lot of time on my Hunter. Well, I’ll probably spend a fair amount of time farming badges on my Shaman also since I really want to get him geared up also. But the rest are going to be parked for a while.

Well, that’s all from me for now. Time to get through the daily grind at work.

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?

Patch 3.2 is on the PTR, which means it is probably a little over a month from going live. Hunters are getting a handful of changes this patch, though not near as many as we saw in 3.1. Luckily there are no huge nerfs, but at the same time not much to get excited about. Below are the portions of the patch notes that pertain to Hunters along with my two cents on them. The complete patch notes can be found here.

Classes: General

• All pets now receive 40% of their master’s resilience and 100% of their master’s spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.

This is huge! How long have Hunters been asking for this? Now our PvP oriented brethren will be able to hold their own better.

• 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).

The way I read this, replenishment is taking a 20% hit in mana returned. While this only directly affects those of us that roll Survival, it indirectly affects everyone. I’m hoping that mana doesn’t start to become even more of an issue in 10-mans.

• Silence, Strangulate, Silencing Shot, and Arcane Torrent: These abilities will also apply a 3-second interrupt effect against non-player controlled targets, making them more versatile against creatures immune to silencing effects.

So the Marksman among us get a spell interrupt for boss fights. I can only see this as a good thing.

Hunters

• Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.

Part of an across the board change for all travel forms. Will be great for new players and those leveling alts.

• Deterrence now has a new visual spell effect.

Meh, I really could care less.

• The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.

Ok, a lot of people are up in arms over this one. Here’s some advice: Get Over It. This does not make chain trapping impossible, it simply makes it slightly more difficult. Less breathing room, but still easy enough to do with practice.

• Traps now have separate 30-second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.

This is even HUGER!!!! I can finally CC again without gimping my DPS by not using Black Arrow. I can honestly see myself using traps a lot more once this goes into effect. And I can see the masochistic arena Hunters drooling over this one.

• Beast Mastery
  • Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.

Does anyone even take this talent? I mean maybe a PvP player, but I don’t know any Hunter that PvPs as a BM. Well, maybe those crazy guys that are out tanking with their pets take it, so yeah, they get a buff.

• Survival
  • Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.

A slight nerf to a PvP talent if anything at all. Nothing worth crying over.

• • Lock and Load: Now has a 22-second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.

We all knew that chain L&L procs were too good to last. At least it isn’t a full 30 second cooldown like last time, and maybe now they will up the proc rate slightly.

• Pets
  • Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the Hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.

Um, pretty much useless. No one uses a tenacity pet when they are in an instance. (Well, they shouldn’t be at the very least.) I don’t know, this might be another PvP thing, but I don’t see myself ever using it.

• Bug Fixes
  • All ranks of Sonic Blast now properly have an 80 Focus cost.
  • Black Arrow Ranks 5 and 6 training costs have been lowered significantly.
  • Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.
  • The tooltip for Improved Tracking has been slightly re-written to indicate that it only works on the hunter, and works on melee damage as well.
  • T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow.

Yay for bug fixes! Nothing too exciting though. Mostly just wording changes.

Most of the changes aren’t anything special. I am excited about the changes to pet resilience and the splitting up of trap cooldowns, and I’m not too happy about them adding a cooldown to L&L again. Of course everything is still on the PTR and subject to change, so I’m not going to get too worked up yet. But what about you. Anything in the notes that has you excited or upset?

Another week, another round of maintenance.

• Extended maintenance today. Last day of my vacation that won’t be spent driving and I can’t play until 2:00 pm local time, or later if they extend maintenance.
• Believe it or not, another patch is being pushed out today.
• The patch notes for today look very similar to the one’s from last week. Especially the talent reset part. Do we get another talent reset?
• My Shaman is getting awful close to 79. Hopefully he’ll be to 80 in another week.
• Noblegarden started and I haven’t even thought about participating. Follows the trend of me ignoring almost all in-game holidays this year.
• Boy I bet the down-time today is really eating at the masochists going for the Violet Proto-Drake.
• I’m going to try and go to Kara with some friends Sunday. People going range anywhere from 70 to 80. Should be a real quick, but insanely fun run.
• Should I take my Hunter or Shaman to Kara? Both would be OP for the place. I’d like the achievement on my Hunter, but the Shaman might be wanted for the healing.
• Honestly, even though I wanted to play this morning, I’m glad Blizz is actively trying to fix bugs instead of waiting to try and fix them all with one patch. I think the hot-fixes and mini-patches might be the better way to go.

Well, dryer just dinged at me, time to go fold clothes so they can be packed up. Catch back up with everyone Friday.

What’s on my mind?

• Extended maintenance today. Some people think 3.1 is dropping. I hope it doesn’t until next week though.
• I’m leaving for my vacation tomorrow. That means no raiding until next month, and things around the blog will be pretty quiet.
• Since I won’t be raiding while on vacation, I plan to spend my WoW time leveling alts and working on professions.
• I’m already falling behind on the 31DBBB challenge. Between being swamped at work trying to take care of everything so I can leave and packing and cleaning at home I just haven’t had much free time.
• I haven’t been raiding much lately, mostly because 10-man Naxx has nothing for me, so I have been bowing out to let other people go and get geared.
• I’m as pissed as everyone else that 10-man Ulduar is getting the shaft gear and emblem wise. Just because we don’t have as many people doesn’t mean we don’t deserve comparable gear.
• I’ve been playing with the DPS spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks. I think I’m starting to get the hang of using it.

Well, that’s my 2 cents. Now give me yours.