• Item – Shaman T10 Restoration 2P Bonus – Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
• Item – Shaman T10 Restoration 4P Bonus – Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over until cancelled.
• Item – Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus – Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus – The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 15 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Enhancement 2P Bonus – When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Enhancement 4P Bonus – Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

Shaman
Enhancement

• Earth’s Grasp now also reduces the cooldown of Stoneclow and Earthbind Totem by 15/30%.

That’s pretty much it for now. I’m pretty excited to talk about these bonuses, but it’ll have to wait a few.

Edit: Since it’s only been an hour or two, I’m not going to right a new post about these changes. I’m just going to edit this one.

First off, let’s talk about Shamanistic Rage 2pc. It’s, dare I say it…awesome. It gives us a damage cooldown, something we presently don’t have (excluding wolves, ofc!) Moreover, it’s on a minute long cooldown, and it’s a cooldown we’re already going to be using every single minute. With the new fire nova making our dps even more mana-hogish, we’ll be using SR as much as we can.

For some quick napkin math, this set bonus equates to about 3% base damage increase over the course of the fight, assuming you use SR the second it’s available.  (15/60=1/4 uptime. 1/4X12=3%) Timing SR with things suck as Deconstructors Heart Phase will yield an even higher result, and timing SR with things like Yogg Brain Phase will ensure higher DPS when it matters most. Excited? Yes, yes I am.

As for the second set bonus…the jury is still out on it, but I’m quite excited. I figure that in 4pc t9, I’ll be sitting at at least 7k raid buffed. 1400 AP for 10 seconds is nothing to snear at. Even if it is a 15% chance to proc, it’s a 15% chance to proc on something that stacks to five every fiveish seconds. This means you should be proccing 1400 AP every 30ish seconds. (Note: This is very simple speculation. We sometimes go 10seconds without stacking mw5. 15% chance might mean it doesn’t proc for a minute or so. This bonus is very RNG, and people hate that. I’m just talking in a very specific case that is somewhat normal to give an idea of what it -might- be like.)

So, assuming it does proc every 30ish seconds because you magically convinced MW5 to behave and stack every 5 seconds, we’re looking at 20 seconds per minute of 1400 Attack Power. That’s around 470 static attack power assuming 7k attack power. And, that’s not at all! (If you order now we’ll send you…) On bloodlust + potion of speed, you’re going to stack MW much more quickly. -Any- form of haste buff is going to have you stacking MW slightly more quickly. The quicker you stack MW, the more chances you have at this buff. Personally, I’d like to see the chance upped to between 25-30%, but overall I do lovelovelove the idea of this set bonus. It just seems fun.

(Note: Don’t believe all these numbers, again. I was using assumed static numbers to prove a point- if this thing procs when your trinkets have both fired and stuff, it means even more ap. 7k attack power was chosen because it seemed a reasonable number for t10 but mileage will vary. See store for details.)

(OH! I edited this and forgot to talk about Earth’s Grasp. It’s an awesome change for pvp- 9 seconds off stoneclaw shield, 4.5 seconds off earthbind totem. Being able to use a 3rd Stone claw shield per minute is just amazing, imho. )

However, on things like Onyxia whelp phase, we don’t just suck. We blow. We blow like cocaine. Iirc this week’s Onyxia, I was sitting at a merry 6300-6500 DPS during phase 1, somewhere within the top 5 spots. Phase 2 hit, and while I ran around dropping my magma totem and throwing out some chain lightnings, I watched our rogue FoK himself to 10kish, and our mages and locks unleashe their targeted aoe of doom to put up some pretty nice numbers. I kept myself at around 6kdps…but dropped from 4ish to last on recount.

And then, our of the darkness, mmo-champon and the worldofwarcraft.com official patch notes updated with this rainbows-and-happiness filled patch note: Fire Nova now Causes the shaman’s active Fire totem to emit a wave of flames, inflicting 893 to 997 Fire damage to enemies within 10 yards of the totem. And I saw it. And it was good.

So, here is the initial breakdown on Fire Nova:

It replaces Fire Nova as a spell. Your Fire Nova totem is extinct as of 3.3, and unlike the dinosaurs, this extinction is widely seen as a good idea. It deals similar damage to what Fire Nova Totem does now, and crits for double damage with Elemental Fury. At the moment, it does proc flame stacks for Reign of the Dead/Unliving, the BiS caster trinket. However it does not proc Elemental Devastation. It is emitted from your current fire totem, not from you.You can talent the totem to do 20% more damage and have a 6 second cooldown, and can glyph it down to 3. It costs 967 mana on the PTR right now.

As you can see, it comes out of the totem.

Now, to talk about this ability and how it impacts game play! I’m breaking this into three sections: AOE, Single Target, and PVP. First off:

A. WE CAN AOE. OMG.

This is demonstrated in these next two screenshots of an Onyxia 10 I did while writing this post:

DPS I did immediately following her first liftoff, during the two waves of whelps.

This is mislabeled as Postsarth. This is post-Ony- my first time ever seeing anything other than melee as my number one damaging ability.

My dps is pretty low, but that was mainly due to the tank turning Onyxia at the start of p3 and getting me cleaved. If I had been alive to use Fire Elemental, Ghost Wolves, and Bloodlust, I’d have ended the fight with 7k+ easily. For aoe, Fire nova was priority over everything. Magma totem was second, and moved up to first if the tank moved anywhere even close to out of range of the totem. After that, MW5Chain Lightning+regular priority system took over. I think it worked out fairly well.

One of the real pros of Fire nova for enhancement is that we’re already reliant on magma totem for single target/aoe damage, and we have to be in melee range of the mobs to do damage anyway. This means that we’re moving with the mobs anyway, and thus we don’t lose anymore dps than we already would. For Elemental, Fire Nova becomes more of an issue, as they do have to move and redrop totems to use Fire Nova and Thunderstorm. In my opinion, this is a good thing- Fire Nova Totem was an iconic shaman ability. TOTEMS are an iconic shaman ability. Fire Nova coming out of the totem is a good thing; mechanically, a targeted aoe of blandness would be better. However, not homogenizing our aoe into bland circle of doom and making it totem based was a good class design idea.

Beyond that, I like the fact that this totem makes shaman think. It’s not fire and forget. It makes the shaman go “Whelps AOE is pretty excellent- would it be better for my personal dps to move and throw down some aoe?” The answer is pretty definitely yes. (Besides, that lock using rain fire/mage with blizzard have 8 second channels anyway- your aoe takes 2 gcds to complete. You have 5 seconds of movement time to catch up. ) OR, it makes you think “I know rubble on Kolgaron is always tanked here, maybe I should drop my totems here as we run in, and then proceed to fire nova liberally whenever rubble is down for the rest of the fight.” All in all, a good change for both specs, imho.

This takes place on a more minor scale with Enhancement. Fire elemental totem is a huge dps increase for us, and should be used liberally. However, more than ever, we now will need to be cognizant of where we lay our Fire Elemental totem. I ran away from a fire wall and dropped him on the opposite side of Sartharion last night. While he moved and aoed adds+sarth, my fire nova ability was trapped to the totem on the wrong side of Sarth. It stayed consistent single target damage, but it didn’t help my aoe a bit.

B. Fire Nova-A boost to single target dps!?

Much like my good friend Magma Totem, Fire Nova (as far as I can tell) provides a boost to single target dps. To show this, here is a screenshot of a 10 minute long damage test done on a SWC Level 83 dummy, done during non-peak hours to make sure no debuffs were present on target. Failam is spellhit capped, 1892 spellpower, 24.33%spellcrit before totems/unleashed rage. I dropped magma rather than flametongue, because I’m really bad at ever remembering there was a time when I didn’t just drop magma totem. It’s also worth noting that I am/was specced into Improved Fire Nova, which makes Fire nova do 20% more damage and shortens the CD to six seconds.

As a comparison, here is my lava lash damage.

Fire Nova and Lava Lash are a good single target comparison, as they’re both abilities with a six second cooldown, and would both be prioritized after your MW5/ES_SS/SS/ES in your rotation for single target. As we can see from these screenshots, even though I actually did less Fire Novas (54) over the course of the fight, it actually did MORE damage than Lava Lash, which I cast more (56). Moreover, let’s look at the raw data:

Fire Nova hit for between 1800-2k. It crit for between 3800-4200, as it makes use of Elemental Fury. It uses my spellcrit chance, so it crit around 25% of the time. It added 4.6% to my damage- a hefty amount for an ability that is totally new and fits into GCD gaps nicely. And, it did 131,186 damage over 10 minutes. 131186/600seconds=219DPS. This is unbuffed, with no flametongue totem or anything. While it’s possible to model the changes in dps that adding another 10-15% crit, 13% spell damage, 280 Spellpower from tow, spellpower from might, etc, I’m not that good at math. However, I’m fairly comfortable saying that in a raid setting, we’ll see Fire Nova contributing 400-500 single target dps, provided full raid buffs/debuffs.

Lava Lash: Hits for between 900 and 1200. Crits for between 2200-2500. It crits much more than fire nova (37% according to my recount) because it takes from my melee crit rather than spell crit. Even though it is less damage, it can proc flametongue, a mw charge, and a static shock charge. It’s still a useful spell, but it does not frontload the damage that fire nova does. It contributed 3.6% of my damage over this fight, but I can’t guess at how it impacted my dps by proccing abilities. 88,367/600 is 147dps, which would also be ramped up by raid debuffs.

My own personal feelings are that we’ll be using a priority system of MW5LB, ES_SS, SS, ES, Fire Nova, Lava Lash, Refresh Totems/Shields. When Magma Totem drops off, the system would be MW5, ES_SS, SS, ES, Lava Lash, Refresh Totem, Fire Nova, Refresh Shield. At least, this is my personal opinion and conjecture. (I’m using one test as my example, but I have been using this rotation for the past 2 days and am finding it pretty awesome.) The sim will eventually tell the whole story, but these are how I feel for now.

C. The ugly: PVP nerf.

The new Improved Fire Nova is an excellent talent. 20% fire nova damage, 6 second cd, yes plz. (In fact, I think it’ll be mandatory and provide a greater dps increase than 3/3 imp. shields.) That said, the new talent takes the place of an old and beloved talent- a talent that allows your fire nova to stun anyone hit by it for 2 seconds. It is an elemental shaman’s only stun, and one of two for Enhancement: (The other is on a 3minute cooldown and requires you using your wolves to do, which is a drawback on it’s own.)

To be honest, I’m pretty baffled by this change. Fire Nova stun, to me, was perfectly balanced- due to the 4 second wait for it to go off, it require great execution and finesse to pull the stun off, and was rewarding when it happened. I’m fairly certain part of the removal of the stun has to do with the removal of the 4 second wait, but I do believe it is overkill. In my opinion, the best case scenario would be to lose the rather cruddy glyph of fire nova (which shortens the cooldown to 3seconds-your mana will be dead), and replace it with one that increases the cooldown by 14 seconds and allows fire nova to stun. 14 seconds is to make it 20  to compensate for the fact that it is now a clickable ability, rather than one we have to wait to go off and hope the opposing player is still there.

I’m never an advocate for insulting Blizzard. Personally, I feel I’m rather good at taking nerfs/buffs in stride, knowing that the main goal of the company is overall game balance, and I think sayings like “OMG BLIZZ HATES SHAMAN” or “Itz bcuz opclasses lyk rouges cant have counters” are stupid. All of this said, I am more baffled and a mite annoyed by this nerf than I have been at most nerfs in the past, mainly due to the fact that I don’t understand the rationale behind it at all. If that is ever posted, I might have to reconsider my opinion, but for the moment I’m pretty confused and let down.

However, despite ending on a downer, I have to say this: I love Fire Nova. Sososomuch. If Fire Nova were a guy, I’d elope to Vegas with it. Hopefully maybe get in the tabloids. That’d be rad.

And now, myself and Failam bid you ado. G’night!

To that end, I figured it’d be a pretty rad idea to put together an informal guild of Shaman on the PTR, so that we have a place to discuss new changes, flex our epeen aoe damage, and generally make fools of ourselves. It’s going to be named <Best Shaman on Server>, because I have a huge ego and I thought it’d be funny.

It is going to be informal, which means:

• -Posting Meters is cool, provided you have a reason for doing it. “Hey, look at this 7500 dps on Sarth is cool; I think it has something to do with Fire Nova” would be sort of what I’m looking for.
• -As far as I can tell, we have some pretty inane and pointless conversations on the shaman forums. I start a quarter of them. That’s fine too- we can’t talk Shaman 24/7…it’ll get boring.
• -Alts are cool. Because being able to play a destro lock at 80 with reign of the dead when you’ve not been able to convince yourself to level out of the Barrens is a fun time.
• -Bashing on Blizzard is not cool when taken in an extreme. “I don’t understand/hate that they removed Fire Nova Stun” is fine. “OMG FIRE NOVA STUN NERF IS PROOF THAT BLIZZARD HATES THIS CLASS” is stupid, and I will demote you to a rank of “not being able to talk in guild” for a length in time.
  -Open Door Policy. If your guild wants to make a concerted effort at Icecrown Citadel, definitely drop guild to do it with them. If your guild decides to stop due to lack of interest and you want to come back in, that’s perfectly fine too…provided you weren’t an annoying twat to begin with.
  -Any spec is fine. I focus on PVE Enhance myself, but PVP Enhance, PVE/PVP Elemental, PVE/PVP Restos are all cool.

If anyone is interested, I’ll be on my Premade Draenei (Yes, we’re doing it ally side) Shaman Failam, on Broxrigar- the PVE server. I’m working on getting charter signatures now, and hope to have it up and running within the next few days.

Hope to see/talk to you all in game form soon.

1. Cleansing Totem: No longer pulses instantly when dropped.

I will probably do a post about this change in particular later. There is no way this is not a nerf in both PVE and PVP, but I’ll be frank and say I will not tolerate whining comments about this change. When I do a post about it specifically, this might change, but for now comments like “omg blizzard is so unfair” will get deleted without a second thought.

2.  Earthen Power: No longer causes Earthbind to pulse a persistent snare immunity aura. It does still remove snares from allies as an instant pulse, but there is no lingering immunity. Earthen Power now also brings Earth Shock’s melee attack speed reduction up to -15%/-20% (with 1 or 2 points in it, respectively).

For those of us who spec into pvp for Faction champions, this may in fact be a PVE nerf. For those of us who don’t spec into PVP for faction champions, it won’t. However, this is a slight pvp nerf. It may be warranted- it still removes snares on pulse/drop, it just doesn’t allow us to hand of freedom our entire 5s team for 5 seconds at a time.

3. Bug Fixes:

• Grounding Totem will now properly protect against the Death Grip spell.
• Lava Burst can no longer deal critical damage to targets who are immune to critical strikes (due to, e.g. Roar of Sacrifice, Blessed Resilience).
• Lightning Shield: This spell will no longer set off some trinkets when it is cast.
• Stoneclaw Totem’s pulses will no longer break stealth on nearby hostile units.
• Thunderstorm and Shamanistic Rage can no longer be used while Frozen, Cycloned, Sapped, or Incapacitated.

Grounding Totem vs. DG was a big issue when 3.2 hit because Grounding Totem recognized the taunt and the pull as two seperate effects, and grounded the taunt. Lava burst change makes sense. Lightning Shield change is fun- nerf to anyone who was trying really hard to spam their lightning shield to get mana back from trinkets!

The last two need a little more time: A) Stoneclaw totem’s aoe taunt has no damage component, nor does it debuff. There is no reason as to why it SHOULD break rogues out of vanish. Bug Fix. For the second, both of these abilities say “this spell is useable while stunned.” Cyclone isn’t a stun. Frozen isn’t a stun. Sapped/Incapacitated both break on damage and are not stuns. Once again, emphasis on the Bug Fix. If you’d like to see these changes actually implemented, post on the suggestion forums, but don’t call these nerfs. They were not working as intended.

4. The Awesomeness that is Flame Shock.

Flameshock received quite a few changes this patch. First off, it is no longer consumed by Lava Burst. Not too amazing for us, but Smellementals will love it. Second, the duration has been increased to 18 seconds- which might be awesome for us. And third, glyph of Flame Shock now allows Flame Shock dots to be critical strikes.

Now, the number crunching at Elitist Jerks is not totally finished, and we can’t be positive, so everything I say is conjecture, but it looks like we will be adding Flame Shock into the Enhancement Damage Priority system. I’m not sure how minor a dps increase this will be (it will be minor- don’t expect to be doing 1k more damage because of this)but, 200 more dps is 200 more dps! Additionally, one of the cool aspects of this is that it makes our priority system a little bit more dynamic- for something that hasn’t changed since 3.0, this is welcome.

Flame shock looks like it will be added into the rotation whenever you would Earth Shock after the Flame Shock debuff has run out. This is important, as Flame Shock will only do competitive dps if allowed to tick fully. So, you Flame Shock to get it up, and then fill in the next (3, normally, unless you get -a lot- of MW5 stacks) shocks with Earth Shock, and then once FS has fallen off you THEN add in a new Fire Dot.

To help make this easier on you, there are two addons you can configure to help you- Shock and Awe and Power Auras.

For Shock and Awe, you have to use the /saa config command to bring up the configuration interface. From there, go to your priority list section and edit in Flame Shock.

I added it in right after MW5 Lightning Bolt and before anything else so that it takes the place of my ES_SS when Flame Shock debuff isn't on the target.

From there, it becomes up to you as to where you add it in. In my opinion, you should add it in right before Earth Shock, as then it will show up on your priority frame whenever Earth Shock would and the Flame Shock debuff is not on the target. This means that, if you’re using the ES_SS second priority “rotation,” you’d put Flame shock prior to ES_SS. If you’re using the cookie cutter MW5->SS->ES priority list, you’d add it in after SS and before ES.

And then, once shocks are off CD, this is what it should look like when FS debuff runs out.

SAA isn’t the only addon that can help you- and, if you’re one of the many that feels SAA is a bit “cheaty” (I’ve heard it quite a bit), there are other ways to monitor your FS. My personal favorite is Power Auras Classic.

The fireball is there to tell me Flame Shock is not on my target.

As the caption said, that little fireball is there to tell me that Flame Shock is not on my target. It does nothing else- especially not telling me where I am in priority to cast it. It just lets me know that FS is not there. How do you set one of these badboys up? It’s easy!

It looks scary, but it isn't.

To bring up the Power auras Classic screen, just type /powa. After that, click “new.” The right screen will show up. (Note- both these screens show up in the screen’s center- you can manually pull them apart, though!)

Now, to set up this debuff, first choose the image texture. As you can see, I dragged it to Texture 13, a nice fireball picture to remind me to cast my fire spell. You can then go to the little color box and choose a color- I thought orange made sense for Flame Shock. You can also choose “random color” if you want to spice it up. (You can also choose later to just make the Flame Shock icon show up. I tend to not like how that looks, though. ) Size is pretty self explanatory, x axis allows you to move the aura left and right, and y axis lets you move it up and down.

Now, head down to “activation by.” First, you want to use the pulldown bar to bring it to “debuff,” as that is what FS is. Second, you want to write in the name! After that, go to “Show when not active.” This makes it so that the aura shows up when Flame Shock is NOT on the target. If you don’t click this, you’ll have a fireball on your screen for the length of the debuff. Next, check only if in combat/ only if in raid- this will keep it from showing up while soloing and while pvping and stuffs! (If you run a lot of heroics, you might want to choose to not check only if in raid. And, remember- only use FS on fights that will last longer than 18 seconds.)

Finally, check Enemy Target. This will make sure that it’s only checking people you’re hitting for FS- otherwise, this will show up when you’re getting flame shocked by enemy smellementals.

5. Totem of the Quaking Earth now is a 400 AP proc, not 200.

This was needed to bring QE in line with DK/ret relics. This does NOT automatically guarantee that QE is better than Electrifying Wind. QE does not have a 100% uptime, as Lava Lash is late in the priority system and so isn’t used every cooldown, while LB is the core of our dps. This means EW has a 80%ish uptime, and QE has a 95%. This also means that EW is better: A) if your haste EP is over 2.1 and B) if the fight is not an aoe fight where you’ll be using Chain Lightning. For most other purposes, use QE. But own both!

1. Earthen Power: No longer causes Earthbind to pulse a persistent snare immunity aura. It does still remove snares from allies as an instant pulse, but there is no lingering immunity. Earthen Power now also brings Earth Shock’s melee attack speed reduction up to -15%/-20% (with 1 or 2 points in it, respectively).

I can’t pretend this is anything but a nerf to Enhancement pvp. I’m also not sure I can pretend this change is anything but needed. The way it works on live, every time Earthbind totem pulses it provides a (5?) second buff that makes everyone in your party immune to snaring. Given that Earth bind pulses as soon as it is dropped, and is on a short 15 second cooldown, this means your party is immune to snares 1/3 of the time. If you’re good at dropping totems out of LoS, or your opponent is bad at totem stopping, you can keep that immunity to snares to your entire party up for a long while. This change removes the 5 second immunity after pulse, but still removes snares on pulse. It’s a reasonably balanced change, provided you’re good at hiding your totems. Also, Ghostcrawler brought up a good point: “We think Earthen Power and the Ghost Wolf change were trying to solve the same problem. Together they felt like overkill to us, and we thought the Ghost Wolf change was more interesting so we kept that one. Your mileage may vary and I would be surprised if many shaman agreed since they were the target of the nerf.” (Source.)

2.

• Flame Shock: The duration of all ranks has been increased by 6 seconds.
• Lava Burst: This ability no longer ever consumes a Flame Shock debuff off of the target.

• Glyph of Flame Shock: Redesigned. This glyph now makes Flame Shock periodic damage able to be critical strikes.

To explain how this changes things: The current Flame Shock glyph makes flame shock not be consumed by Lava Burst, and increases it’s duration by 6 seconds (allowing more time for lightning bolt/cl between flameshock renews.) This glyph is considered mandatory for elemental dps. These changes are awesome for elemental dps, as it A) Allows anyone with 2Pc elemental t8 to use a different glyph, such as 10% more lava burst damage, in their glyph slot, or B) allows anyone in any other tier set to use their flame shock glyph and get a higher dps increase than pre-patch.

But anyway, less about Smellemental, and more about a real spec: The first buff we get from this is a minor buff to our dps on any fight that requires us being out of melee range for any length of time. (Think burning bile on Northrend Beasts, for example.) With stormstrike doomed to fall off, we can throw up a flameshock on the baddie boss, and then enjoy two free instant crit lava bursts+elemental devastation while we wait to run back in. It’s not amazing, and very situational, but it’s nice.

The last fun thing about this change is what it might due to Enhancement’s rotation, as we might end up dropping glyph of windfury for glyph of flame shock. The numbers are still being crunched, but Elitist Jerks is hinting at the return of Flame shock to the enhancement rotation-especially with 4pc t9. Bacially, we’d use a 1:2 rotation- throw Flame Shock up first, six second laters ES, six second laters ES again, and then back to Flame shock. This is a pretty awesome idea, as it adds a new dynamic to a system that hasn’t changed since 3.0. (We also need to see if Flame Shock tick crits proc Elemental Devastation. It would be amazing.) I’m also wondering what effect this will have on speccing into reverberation- 1 second off shocks won’t matter since you’ll want to wait for the FS dot to tick all 18 seconds anyway.

3. Cleansing Totem: It’s overpowered. Long-term we need some kind of overhaul to the dispel system so that you can free allies who get debuffed or CC’d but you aren’t constantly losing important class abilities because of cheap, fast and sometimes pulsing dispels.

I’m being vague because we haven’t announced any 3.2.2 or 3.3 changes yet. Those won’t be the overhaul I described, but we hope to do something.-Ghostcrawler.

I’ll preface this by saying: I’d hate to see Cleansing Totem nerfed, especially on fights like Maexxna/Faerlina, where it excels. Even never stepping foot in the arena, I’d hate a nerf to my beloved cleansing totem. That said, much like Earthen Power, a nerf might be needed. Cleansing Totem is a spammable, fire-and-forget totem that takes the thought out of removing diseases/poisons. It also servers to render a Death Knight terribly impotent, which might be something us as shaman players don’t mind, but is severely in our favor.

That said, I’m not even positive we’ll see a nerf. Ghostcrawler called the totem overpowered, but rather than saying straight up that it would be nerfed he suggested an entire overhaul of the dispel system. Do I doubt Cleansing Totem will be as powerful as it’s current incarnation? Yes, I do- but Blizzard hasn’t said anything permanent yet, and allowing ourselves to become overly concerned with what might be is stupid.