Shaman changes, patch 4.0.6.
I really wish I had some fancy HTML in place to cover this for you guys like every other site seems to have, but I’m not too good at that stuff. Anyway, Zarhym just hit up the shaman forums with a few new interesting PTR changes (which I’m fairly certain aren’t even on the actual PTR builds.) Here they are:
# Chain Heal’s effectiveness has been increased by approximately 10%.
# Hex now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
# Purge now dispels a single effect instead of two.
# Tremor Totem has been redesigned. The totem is now usable under Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects, and pulses much more rapidly, but lasts 6 seconds and has a 1-minute cooldown.
# Talent Specializations
* Elemental Combat
o Earthquake damage has been increased by approximately 10%.
* Enhancement
o Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).
o Purge no longer has its mana cost reduced by Mental Quickness.
* Restoration
o Cleansing Waters no longer fires its heal effect twice when a shaman removes a Magic and a Curse debuff with a single cast.
o Deep Healing (Mastery) has been increased to 3% per point, up from 2.5%.
o Greater Healing Wave mana cost has been increased by 10%; healing done has been increased by 20%.
o Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman’s Spirit, exclusive to short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped.
Source.
The major talking points here:
PVP nerfs: The purge nerf was beyond needed. No, seriously. I don’t want anyone reading this to be blinded by the love of their class and pretend that this isn’t a good change for the game. Enhancement’s purge cost 820 mana at 85 and dispelled two debuffs. Dispel protection on nearly everything was removed from the game. The unfortunate side of this is that annoying filler things like rejuvenation will get in the way when you’re really trying to dispel innervate but in the end this was needed. The two seconds less on hex makes me cringe a small bit, but at the same time it’s a curse and not a magic effect like fear/polymorph/and such.The change to tremor is weird- it’s a fear break when we really need it, but we can no longer just keep it down as fear protection.
Caster mainhand nerfs: Currently, flametongue takes heavily from our spellpower. Really heavily. This is part of what makes a caster mainhand so good- beyond adding to all of our spell damage, double flametongue imbues with the caster sp make for some very hard hitting flametongue hits. However, changing FT to scale from spellpower could have some negative side effects (such as the coefficient on FT being bad enough that we lose damage overall). Or, it could be so good that we continue to use a spellpower weapon to boost the rest of our spell damage, as losing the ap from not having an agility weapon won’t contribute that much to our dps. Time will tell.
Overall, my first look at the changes is optimistic. The nerfs to enhance pvp were needed (though tremor has me scratching my head a bit), and the FT change has me hopeful but scared.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Naithin Nahilin. Naithin Nahilin said: RT @Elamqt: Patch 4.0.6 PTR Notes, new shaman changes. Coverage here http://shamanonramen.com/2011/01/shaman-changes-patch-4-0-6/ [...]
I agree with the “hopeful but scared” feeling about the FT changes… we knew it was coming though. As changes go to ensure we don’t use caster as MH, it’s not as bad as it could have been but obviously the maths will tell the story.
Tremor Totem changes though I welcome. I don’t PvP much mind you, but even in PvE, I’ve often dropped the totem just too late (I blame the lag, the lag blames me, the lag is probably right).
The main question though is why keep it as a totem then. If you can drop it when feared -which you can’t do with any other totem- why simply not make it an PBAoE spell. Given that it’s less likely to be used preventively anyway, removing the totem altogether may make sense.
The ft change could end up being a nerf if they don’t account for spellpower raid buffs. Most of our sp scales off our ap, so it shouldn’t be hard to make ft scale at similar rate. I’m afraid the may forget about How we get sp buffs from things like kings and the ele shammy totem and fish feasts. On the other hand, our healing utility just got a lot better as they buff resto, especially since the mana cost increase of ghw does nothing to us.