Beta Build 12644

Now, I know this is slightly late, but bear with me- I’ve spent the better part of the past 3 days in bed with my left leg in an epicly massive splint of doom. Anyways, Friday saw a new beta build (which I’m still not in! /cry) deployed, and with it came somewhat underwhelming changes to Enhancement. (Not that this is a terrible thing- we know Blizzard has said that they feel Shaman are slightly more finished than other classes at the moment; it’s simply our turn to feel the lack of shiny new things this beta build.)

1.Shamanistic Rage now causes your skills, totems, and offensive spells to consume no mana for 15 sec.

This is technically a buff from the old (as in, previous beta build) incarnation of Shamwall, where your skills, totems, and offensive spells cost 10% mana for 15 seconds. Now they cost 0%mana. This is all well and good and stuff, but I truly feel it runs counter to the design philosophy Blizzard has for SR- where they want it to be less something we use on Cooldown for mana and more a damage reduction CD. I’d much rather see skills and offensive spells removed from Shamanistic Rage and make it “Shamanistic Rage now causes your totems and defensive spells to consume no mana for 15 seconds.” We know that Cataclysm will see healers with mana issues and dps needing to take responsibility for their lives- having a button that reduces incoming damage but prompts you to keep attacking within that damage reduction in order to gain the benefit of no-cost spells and keep your mana pool high seems much less effective than an ability that reduces incoming damage and allows you to heal yourself afterward without worrying about killing your mana pool- which will be an issue for Enhancement in Cata.

This is not me saying that the new SR is useless, by any stretch of the imagination. Primal Wisdom is at it’s core an RNG talent, and having a button in place to give you 15 seconds of attacking and allowing your mana pool to refill will be helpful any time you run into a dry spell of PW procs. I just personally would rather see it fully made into a total defensive cooldown than the hybrid it is today and will be in Cataclysm.

2. Enhancement – Increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.

Earlier in the year when Masteries were revealed, there was a bit of an uproar by the Enhancement community when Survival Hunters’ mastery turned out to be Elemental damage while Enhancement got left with “Nature” damage- seeing as Searing Totem, Lava Burst, Flametongue, Unleash Flame and Flame Shock are all on the menu for Enhance in Cata-not to mention the frost spells for pvp- we were naturally a little worried that SV hunters got what we perceived as our mastery. (For the record, Elemental damage does make sense as a SV mastery!) The rationale that was posted was that Blizzard wanted all 30 masteries to be unique- unfortunately for Enhancement, the uniqueness of our mastery meant less damage than we wanted.

Thankfully (and seriously, thank you Blizzard!), our concerns were heard and addressed, and while we do lose out on having a unique mastery, this beta build announced that we will have our mastery bonus effect all our non melee/windfury attacks, and not just the nature one. This is a great change, and while I personally would have preferred a more interesting mastery a la Blood DK’s or Fury Warrior’s, beggars can’t be choosers and I will be happy as a claim with our mastery as is.

On a slight aside, I’d like to apologize for posting this late, but I happened to (we think, doctor will confirm tomorrow) tore a muscle in my knee at work on Wednesday, and I’ve spent the past 3 days being emo and lethargic. On the plus side Sashafears, my undead warlock, went from being level 1 Thursday afternoon to level 40 tonight…which just goes to show you exactly how much time I spend on this game when I don’t have the outside influences of work, gym, family, relationships, etc. keeping me from sitting in an armchair with my laptop on my lap.

Tags: Cataclysm, Enhance, Shaman