5.2 Changes for Shaman

Hello everyone and welcome to a new patch! For those of you who were wondering, enhancement hasn't changed a whole lot with the implementation of 5.2. There have been several tweaks made to both our spec and the class overall though, so we're going to take a dive into those changes in this post. Now, if you're looking for a complete list of patch notes complete with spell links/tooltips, I suggest heading on over to Wowhead.

Spells
Chain Lightning will now deal the same damage to subsequent targets as it does to the first.
- Stronger AoE for elemental shamans and better cleaves for enhancement? I'll take it!

Lava Beam's damage now increases with jumps. Each jump increases the damage by 10%.
- Lava Beam is Chain Lightning for elemental shaman in their Ascendance form. Stronger AoE for them? I approve.

Shamanistic Rage is now available to Elemental Shamans as well as Enhancement Shamans.
- Giving another survivability tool to our elemental brothers and sisters is a good thing. I know when I was specced elemental on my second shaman, I was always looking for this cooldown! Glad to see both DPS specs with this ability now.

Flame Shock's duration has been increased by 25%.
- In 5.1 we needed to use Glyph of Flame Shock in order to extend FS's duration by 25% at the cost of some initial damage. With this glyph being reworked (see Glyphs below) Blizz has decided to make the extended duration a permanent thing. An excellent change, in my opinion.

Lava Burst base damage has been reduced by 33% but now always deals a critical strike. When cast on targets affected by Flame Shock, it now deals 50% more damage.
- Another tweak aimed at our elemental brothers and sisters. It's nice to see Lava Burst always crit now, and perhaps the increase in damage will help bring their over all damage up a bit. Not completely sure on the math on that one though, so be sure to check on the theorycrafting work done by Binkenstein and friends over on Totem Spot.

When summoned, the Stone Bulwark Totem has health equal to 10% of the casting Shaman's health.
- This was mainly a PvP buff to make it so that players couldn't simply 1-shot our shielding totem.


Talents
The talent Nature's Guardian now preserves the player's health percentage when its maximum health boosting effect expires.
- This talent increases your health pool. Originally when this was implemented, if you were at say, 97% health when the buff expired, your health percentage would drop. Now when the buff from this talent expires, your health will remain at the example health of 97%.

Stone Bulwark Totem now absorbs 25% more damage.
- More absorbs mean less damage taken! This is a decent little buff from both PvE and PvP perspectives.

The talent Totemic Restoration now has an additional effect. Any totems that have been destroyed or replaced behave as if the totem had been active for at least 1 second.
- You got me. I'm assuming that this is an adjustment or fix for some sort of unintended behavior from replacing totems too quickly (fat fingering something and instantly replacing it with another totem of another school perhaps, not resetting the original totem as intended?), but as to what that is specifically, I'm unsure.

Elemental Mastery now has a 90-second cooldown (was 2 minutes).
- This change actually makes Elemental Mastery attractive to enhancement in certain situations. By lowering the cooldown to 90 seconds, we can line up every other EM usage with Ascendance, creating some delicious burst situations.

Ancestral Swiftness now increases spell haste by 5% and melee haste by 10% (was 5%/5%).
- This buff makes Ancestral Swiftness viable for use in more static situations. The theorycrafters are still working on the numbers, but this may be the talent of choice for this tier with certain t15 trinkets + the legendary meta gem. More on this later in the 5.2 enhancement Need To Know guide.

Conductivity no longer requires that the target be within the area of effect of Healing Rain.
- To my understanding this means that if you heal someone outside of the Healing Rain, those IN the Healing Rain gain the healing effect. Say for example, you're taking on Feng in Mogu'shan Vaults. Ranged are stacked up in the middle, you place Healing Rain on the ranged. You directly heal the tank, which is over on the side with the boss. Those within your rain get 30% of the direct heal you just landed on the tank. This adjustment was made to make this talent a bit more appealing and slightly less situation bound.

Conductivity now shares 30% (was 20%) of the healing received from Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, or Healing Surge
- A buff to help make this particular talent choice a bit more appealing.

Ancestral Guidance now copies 60% (was 40%) of the amount healed.
- While this buff to the healing portion of AG can be applied towards elemental and enhancement shaman, this is mainly geared towards restoration to make this talent choice more appealing to them. For the most part, us elementals and enhancers don't tend to heal while we pop AG, unless we're soloing and near death.

Unleashed Fury Flametongue now increases Lightning Bolt damage by 20% (was 30%), and Lava Burst damage by 10%.
- This tweak is a buff for elemental shaman to make this talent more appealing to them, and a minor nerf for us enhancement shaman, bringing it slightly more in line with the other two talent choices for this tier.

Primal Earth Elemental and Primal Fire Elemental now deal 20% more damage.
- The buff for the primal versions of our elementals (via the Primal Elementalist talent) is meant to make this talent more attractive for us DPS-type shaman.

Elemental Blast now has a chance to increase the caster's Agility for Enhancement Shamans.
- This change is a buff is intended to be a buff/addition geared towards enhancement shaman. The verdict is still out as to whether or not this change is enough to make this particular talent appealing (so far it looks like the other two talents pull a good bit ahead of this one), but it's a step in the direction of talent balance.


Glyphs
Glyph of Purge now adds a 6 second cooldown to Purge.
- A change geared towards PvP balance.

Glyph of Flame Shock has been redesigned. This glyph now causes the Shaman to heal for 50% of the damage dealt by Flame Shock.
- Originally this glyph extended the duration of FS by 25% at the cost of Flame Shocks' initial damage. The made the 25% extended duration baseline, and reworked this glyph so that FS will heal us for 50% of the damage it deals. Over all this is a fairly piddly heal, as Flame Shock doesn't tend to do a whole lot of damage single target. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you don't have anything better to put in a glyph spot for a certain fight, an extra little bit of healing is never a bad thing!


Elemental Specific
Elemental Focus now increases the Shaman's spell damage by 15% (was 10%).
Shamanism now increases the damage of Lightning Bolt by 70% (was 50%).
- Two buffs to help bring elemental's overall damage up a bit.


Enhancement Specific
Mental Quickness now lowers the cost of shocks by 90% (still lowers the cost of other “beneficial, instant, damaging and totem spells” by 75%).
- Not completely sure why this change happen, as we don't tend to have many mana issues at max level. There it is though, and I won't complain any. 

Edit: According to the 5.2 Class Review done by Blizz, this change was geared towards helping out enhancement shaman in PvP scenarios. Apparently with low melee uptime, enhancers were finding themselves OOM. I still won't complain any, as this change can likewise help in certain solo situations!

Spirit Walk now has a 1-minute cooldown (was 2 minutes).
- More mobility is never a bad thing, especially as a melee class. This change is super handy for those movement heavy fights.

As I said a bit ago, most of these changes are really more minor tweaks. A few are quality of life changes, some are simply balancing our talents so that we may choose talents based on either preference or situation, instead of simply choosing a particular talent because "it's always the best one." Naturally, changing certain talents in and out can change your playstyle to a certain degree, but more on that later. Go forth and enjoy the new content!

4.1 PTR Druid Changes

Here are the 4.1 patch notes for Druids that are currently up on PTR. While I'll list everything, I will only break down the general class changes that I understand the mechanics of and the Feral specific changes. While I've dabbled with being a Layzorturkey and a Shrubbery (Balance and Restoration respectively) in the past, those two areas are way out of my expertise range.

All of the "What this means:" sections will refer to Feral specifically, not necessarily the class as a whole.

4.1 PTR Shaman Changes

Here are the 4.1 PTR notes showing the changes happening for Shamans. Some of these we have been aware of for some time, others are slightly newer.

General

- Fire Nova has been redesigned and decoupled from shaman Fire totems. Instead, it now pulses the Fire Nova effect from each target that is afflicted by the shaman's own Flame Shock debuff. It now damages all enemies except the target hit by Flame Shock. The ability's cooldown has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 10.

What this means: You can have Flame Shock up on about 3 different targets at the same time. For the sake of explaining this, say you only have one mob that has Flame Shock cast on it. Flame Shock will do the DoT damage to its target, but if you "detonate" the Fire Nova off of that target, the Fire Nova will not effect that target. It will however hit every single target surrounding it. If you have two targets afflicted with Flame Shock and detonate Fire Nova, target A's Fire Nova will hit target B, and target B's Nova will hit target A. With three targets afflicted target A's Nova will hit both B and C, and so on and so forth.

Pros: More AoE! And it isn't tied to a totem. Great news for Elemental Shaman.

Cons: May prove to be slightly problematic to track in combat. Invest in a DoT Timer of sorts is my best advice.

- Magma Totem now lasts for 60 seconds, up from 21.
What this means: Magma Totem is less of a pain in the butt.

Pros: Less having to refresh it during AoE situations, more smashing 'n casting.

Cons: I have nothing.

- Stoneclaw Totem's area-of-effect threat pulse no longer affects critters.
What this means: You can no longer deflect angry squirrels/turkeys away from you with your totem.
Pros: No more aggroing cockroaches.

Cons: No more aggroing cockroaches.


Talent Specializations

Elemental Combat
- Earthquake is no longer a channeled spell. It now has a 2-second cast time, lasts for 10 seconds, and has a 10-second cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by 40% from its channeled version.
What this means: Elemental Shaman now hard cast Earthquake, and while this spell is shaking the ground, the Shaman can continue to cast other spells.

Pros: Allows the Shaman to cast an AoE on adds while continuing to cast at a boss if they so wish. No need to worry about Earthquake damage being reduced by channel pushbacks.

Cons: It does a bit less damage than the channeled version.


Enhancement
- Improved Fire Nova has been redesigned and replaced by a talent called Seasoned Winds. When an enemy spell cast is successfully prevented with Wind Shear, the shaman gains magical resistance (in an amount equal to what a protection totem/aura would grant, stacking with such buffs) to the spell school(s) of the interrupted spell (except for Holy spells), lasting 10 seconds.
What this means: The Improved Fire Nova talent is going bye-bye. In it's place in the talent tree we will be getting Seasoned Winds. When we manage to interrupt a cast with our Wind Shear, we get a beneficial resistance buff for 10 seconds. This resistance will stack with our glyphed Healing Stream Totem or a present resistance aura.
Pros: Makes for easier healing in PvE, since the Enhancement Shaman will be taking reduced damage from that particular school of magic (I'm sure this will be very handy in Firelands), and of course will make the Shaman slightly more difficult to take down in PvP.

Cons: None that I can see. What could be bad about more resistances?


Restoration
- Deep Healing now benefits all heals, not just direct heals.
What it means: All heals are now buffed through Deep Healing, provided you're not a noob and manage to not put points into this talent.
Pros: Shaman heals just got sexier.

Cons: Folks healed by a Shaman may get their faces melted off by sexy heals.

- Spirit Link Totem (new talent) reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3-minute cooldown.
What this means: Shamans get a new talent, which in turns gives them a new totem (much like how a talent point gives us Mana Tide). It essentially makes everyone with in 10 yards share damage.

Pros: Shamans have a defensive cooldown!

Cons: It's a totem. While it fits with our class theme, we will have to really pay attention to where we are positioned when using this totem. It also only has a 10 yard range. We must sacrifice our Wrath of Air totem (+5% spell haste) which will slightly reduce both healing and spell caster cast-times provided there isn't a Shadow Priest or Boomkin present to cover the buff.




Edit: New PTR 4.1 Notes
General

Grounding Totem cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds, up from 15.
What this means: Grounding Totem can now be used less often. This can be viewed as a nerf.

Pros: None for the casting Shaman. You now have a little less worry about Grounding Totem action from opposing Shaman in PvP though.

Cons: Less tossing out of this totem per minute to negate or reflect (if glyphed) incoming spells to yourself or team/raid mates.


Talent Specializations

Restoration
Earth Shield healing done by Restoration shaman has been reduced by 20%.
What this means: Earth Shield is receiving a nerf on the healing it does.

Pros: I'm assuming that this is a balance factor with the upcoming changes with Nature's Blessing.

Cons: While I'd love for Earth Shield to be OP and not lose 20% healing done, it is a necessary evil for the sake of output balance. *Grumbles*

Nature's Blessing has been improved to 6/12/18% bonus direct healing on Earth Shielded targets, up from 5/10/15%.

What this means: Nature's Blessing is being buffed. If you have an Earth Shield on a target, any direct healing you do to that target (ie any Healing Waves, Riptides, or whatever else it is that you Resto folks do these days...any ricochet Chain Heals, Healing Rain, or Ancestral Awakening will not count for this) will be increased by 6/12/18%, depending on how deep you talent into this option.

Pros: More powerful direct heals for your Earth Shielded friend.

Cons: It only works for direct heals. Fairly certain that Earth Shield is receiving a nerf due to this talent buff.

Glyphs
Glyph of Grounding Totem now increases the cooldown of the ability by 35 seconds, down from 45 seconds.

What this means: This glyph allows you to not just misdirect a spell away from you (this totem "eats" a harmful spell that is hurled in your direction, for those of you who do not know) but reflects it at your opponent, at the cost of an extended CD.

Pros: Allows you to use this totem a bit more often, assuming that you make use of this glyph.

Cons: Your Lava Bursts may hit you in the face a little more often in PvP if you're going against a rival Shaman who sports this particular glyph.



 

This entry has been posted on both World of Saz and on Saz's alternative blog, Feral Spirit. You can find Feral Spirit on the Learn to Raid website. 

What the...

This here is the new druid Tree of Life form.

Uh...they took away the lovable grumpy tree form for this? Now, don't get me wrong...I don't have a whole lot of room to complain since I'm mainly feral, but I have gone resto from time to time. Gone are the days where I could grind instances for badges, angerly waddling around in circles, spamming my HoTs. No more epic ass-tentacle shaking dance, no more heart breaking /cry emote.

Blizz, what did you do to the life giving druids?!?! Whyyyyy!!!!

/sigh

Damn, I'm glad to be feral.

Patch 4.0.1

Ahhhh patch day. How I look forward to all of your changes, yet dread how much space you take up.

That's right, today is officially patch day. The new talents system goes live, as does reforging, the changing of stats (ArP -> Crit, Sp -> Int, etc), our spell books will look completely different, we can track multiple things now, and our new glyph system will come into play...along with a very nice list of other things that are being implemented.

While this is all incredibly exciting (really, I think as soon as I can I'm going to go pet farming on my hunter), I'm sitting here wondering about what I can strip from my laptop's memory in order to fit this rather hefty patch. Most of my images have been backed up, so I could easily dump most of that, but I doubt that alone won't come close to giving me the space this patch may require. So far I've pulled out Warcraft III and Warcraft: Frozen Throne (I was nearly finished with Frozen Throne >.<), and even that hasn't given me enough download room. Microsoft Office, I think you're next. Back to the days of relying on Notebook! Sigh. I wonder if there's anyone else who runs on horribly outdated machines (not by choice) that are having to scramble to try to find somewhere to put these epic new changes. Ah well, such is life!

In other news, I'm still online (obviously) and this has let me do a few things. For one, I've been tinkering a bit with Project Jenesee. I haven't been doing any writing in the past few days, but I have kind of worked out how I'd make Jenesee and her sister, Gypsy, look for the story. I'm not 100% on their gear yet, and that may change later on depending on the different gear/gear sets I come across, but I am rather sure on how they look facially in game at least. I've also managed to get Gypsim up to the massive level of 5 in my free time, so I'll have a rather useless armory link up for her in the Jenesee blog soonish! In hindsight I almost wish that I had rolled these two on a role playing server just for interaction with other characters, but Hyjal was just too convenient. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more work done on these two prior to having to finally go offline.

So yeah, babbling. I do it a lot.

Here are the current images of Jenesee and Gypsy. Think more of later on in the storyline, where the actual juicy and entertaining bits will finally come into play!

I really love both of these item sets. I may go for an old(er) school set of 'lock tier for Gypsy, but for now the current tier 10 works well for her I think. I'm sure the gear will change as the story progresses, but for now these are my "official" placeholders, I guess you could say.

Yes, they're gingers. Learn to love it! How can you have a warlock that isn't a ginger? (Ginger love!!!)



*Ahem* Anyways...yeeeah! Hopefully if all goes well, more on the Scepter quest line later on tonight! If not, well, just know that I will be a sad panda. A very, very sad panda. Those book pieces are reeeeally heavy, and by that I mean they take up too much space in my already limited inventory after all. That, and I'd love to see the end of this quest line, pronto ; )


Okay, enough almost pointless babble. Time to strip!
...by that I meant this laptop. Dirty people.

In Game Changes

I feel like jabbering about some of the upcoming in game changes that are about to happen. Now keep in mind while you read my rambling that I am not a huge number person. Never have been, never will be...numbers and I just aren't huge pals. We associate out of necessity, but we don't get along too well. If you're the type of person to run Sims and that always does the number crunching in order to get the most out of your character, that's cool. I've always been more of the type that goes with my gut on how my set up is performing, and which direction I should go in order to improve my DPS (or on the occasion heals and tanking too).



Now, today Totem Talk put up this post on the upcoming changes that will be effecting Enhancement Shaman. There's not a ton of huuuge ones, save for the changes to Searing Totem and Lava Lash, but the one that's slightly bothered me was the fact that we're going to be stacking Agility. Now, anyone who's known me for any amount of time, and has looked at my gear, has known that I've been an Agi stacker for most of this expansion. Yes, even though for the longest time AP, AP/Haste, or pure Haste were the fads. I loved my Agi. I even had a few Haste gems in there just to be able to keep up, but most of my red sockets had my beloved Agility in there somewhere. A month or so ago I finally started to play around on Rawr. I knew that I was over the melee crit cap once I had a proc or two pop (unbuffed), so I started to tinker with the idea of going more of an AP and heavy Haste route. This had Sim'd out pretty decently, and showed a rather decent increase in potential DPS numbers. Convinced that this would help improve my in game DPS (I was looking for a few new pretty numbers, since raiding has become something on the far back burner due to computer issues, and I was feeling adventurous), I spent the money to get AP/Haste and Haste gems. Honestly, I wasn't floored by the results any, and almost feels as if though I've had a DPS decrease, instead of the apparent increase I was supposed to have. Now I find out that we'll be stacking Agility once again thanks to Attack Powers more or less demise in the gemming world, and I'm kind of sad that I had diverted from what I've always preferred. Oh well I suppose. At least I have Armor Pen being converted into Crit to look forward to!! Yes, I'm verrrrry excited about this. I can finally stop being so damn picky about gear!

RIP Magma Totem, hello to Searing being useful, and new talent trees!!! (Indoor Ghost Wolf, I approve.)



Also on the note of change, I'm looking forward to and yet a bit saddened to see ArP going away for my Druid. Armor Penetration was such a delicious stat as a Feral cat. She's currently ArP capped with her trinket proccing, so despite her not being geared to the teeth, she pulls some rather nice numbers. Thankfully she only has 5 gems that will need switching once this next patch goes live, but it will still be a bit of a sad day.

Upside of this incoming patch though for cats is Skull Bash. An instant interrupt that doesn't require combo points like Maim?!?! Thank you Blizz!!! While this has some nice practical uses in PvE, I can see this being incredibly useful in PvP. I'm really hoping that I have some luck with my computer issues soon, because I really can't wait to be able to hit the battlegrounds and Skull Bash some fools in.

The cat feral druids don't seem to have a whole lot of change coming up in this next patch, save for easier talent trees (sooo much easier than the mess we had before, trying to sort which were cat talents, which were bear, which were useful to both, etc). The only change that I may find strange at first is the fact that Savage Roar is apparently not so much of a priority. This will be a rather hard, yet somewhat welcome, habit to break. Honestly, I've been playing a little Rogue lately, and I keep wanting to use Savage Roar. Yes, it really is that much of an obsessive habit. I really like how that even though they're dumbing down talent trees a bit, the Feral Cat will still be the king of juggling bleed timers and energy. I think my biggest love of cat DPS comes from its complexity, and from the fact that if you can master this complexity, you do very well as a cat. If you don't, you often find yourself going Resto or Boomkin.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with kitty DPS, here's a handy chart.

It's really not all THAT hard ;  )


As far as other class changes are concerned, I've really only peaked at a few changes. The new Shadow/Disco changes for Priests look kinda fun. Learning how to use Hunter focus may be something I save for a really rainy day (though come on bigger stables! I want an army of Hunter pets!!!). Warlock changes are...interesting. I'm not sure if I'm sold on the new Demonology set up, so I might end up going back to Affliction. I may end up tinkering with my Warlock once I get the Shaman and Druid settled.


So yes, a lot is changing, yet just enough is staying the same to help make at least a few things seem recognizable. It should be fun to have such a large change...or it may just end up being a huge pain in the behind. Guess we'll find out soon enough!