MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Upcoming Shaman Changes

2008-09-11 19:52:49

Elemental

- Elemental Fury and Call of Thunder are switching places. Call of Thunder will be a 1-point talent, and Elemental Fury will be a 5-point talent. For Elemental Shaman this won't mean much, for Enhancement it means they can have easier access to 100% spell crit damage.
- Lightning Mastery will now reduce that cast time of Lava Burst by 0.5 sec with 5 points. (Down to 1.5)
- Lava Bursts base damage numbers have been significantly increased.

Enhancement

- Mental Quickness and Unleashed Rage have swapped places.
- Spectral Transformation renamed "Earthen Power". It causes your Earthbind Totem totem to have a 50/100% dispel all snare effects when it pulses.
- Weapon Mastery: Now a 3-point talent (4/7/10%)
- Stormstrike - New animation, also now increases all Fire, Frost and Nature damage done by the Shaman instead of just Nature.
- New Talent (Tier-8) - Lava Lash: You charge your off-hand weapon with lava, instantly dealing 75% off-hand Weapon damage. Damage is increased by 25% if your off-hand weapon is enchanted with Flametongue. 3 second cooldown. 4% base mana cost. (Also note: Lava Lash does Fire damage, also procs Maelstrom Weapon)
- Maelstrom Weapon: Can now be used for Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave.
- Feral Spirit - Many bugs with Spirit Wolves fixed, also increased the damage done by the Spirit Wolves

Restoration

- Ancestral Awakening improved to 10/20/30%

[ Post edited by Koraa ]

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 19:59:57

Re: Upcoming Shaman Changes

Q u o t e:
You realize in the first part of your Elemental section, you say Call of Thunder will be a 1-pt talent, and then underneath it, you say 5 pts in Call of Thunder will reduce Lava Burst cast time by 0.5 seconds. Might want to fix that typo before the crazies get in here.

Also -- why is there no mention about the Thunderstorm knockback change? The current build contradicts what you posted about Thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago, and among all the TS threads since yesterday's push, not one mention of this being an oversight or a legitimate change has been made.

Oops, I meant Lightning Mastery reducing the cast time.

Regarding Thunderstorm, I did note that the knock "up" effect was being toned down. Was causing too many issues in the game. It still does a knockback effect.

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 22:39:50

Re: Upcoming Shaman Changes

Q u o t e:
Koraa, previously Thunderstorm knocked players about 15 yards in the air and 20 yards back, sort of like this:

I are SEE.

Changed to 20 yards. It was actually longer than 6, more like 12.

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 23:21:40

Re: Upcoming Shaman Changes

Q u o t e:
Koraa, something I was meaning to ask about is our threat reduction. With enhancement seeing significant improvements through non-physical damage, isn't it about time Spirit Weapons applied to all damage?

We've done a lot of work to make tanks generate a ton more threat than you're used to on live. We're confident that there will be a big of enough threshold between the tank and the DPSers. If we find Shaman pulling aggro, we'll definitely do something about that.

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 23:44:04

Re: Upcoming Shaman Changes

Oops, I was wrong. We changed Lava Burst down to 1.5 with talents, not to 2.5 -> 2.

Class Designer

Koraa