Huzzah! We got to be first this time! The full ‘preview’ for Shaman is available here.
Sexay New Abilities
Four spells in total have been revealed, one primarily enhancement, one resto, and two hybrid abilities that would/will be useful for all specs. As I am sure lifeingroup5 and Blueberrytotem will cover Healing Rain, I shall leave that to them!
Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.
Here are a few examples of effects we’re considering for this ability:
- Windfury Weapon – Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 50% weapon damage and increasing the shaman’s Haste for the next five swings.
- Flametongue Weapon – Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the shaman’s next Fire attack by 20%.
- Earthliving Weapon – Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman’s next healing spell by 20%.
While an Enhancement Shaman will benefit a lot from this spell due to dual-weilding, this will also be fun for Elemental Shamans. This implies that Flametongue Weapon will remain our go-to imbue for Cataclysm, and casting Unleash Weapon before perhaps our Flame Shock or Lava Burst will be a necessary part of our rotation. I’m not sure which spell it would be more effective for at this time.
Spiritwalker’s Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.
O nom. Nom nom nom indeed. Although I can see those of us who have difficulty with moving already getting our fingers a little tied. Healers are going to love this for those emergency times when you HAVE to be in the right place and the tank needs to NOT DIE at the same time. For myself, I understand why the cooldown is as it is, so I’m trying to imagine movement fights where this 10 additional seconds of DPS would be extra useful. More so for a fight with occasional repositioning rather than almost constant movement I think.
Changes to Existing Abilities
The changes to dispelling have been covered else where, but the long and the short of it is that all shaman will be able to ‘decurse’, we will lose cleansing totem, and Resto Shamans will need to talent for cleansing magic. No more diseases and poisons for us!
But this is the big news for Elemental Shamans in Cataclysm:
Totem of Wrath now will replace Flametongue Totem for all shaman, and dropping this totem will buff the group’s spell power by 4%. Elemental shaman will have a talent that lets all Fire totems provide +10% spell power, allowing them to drop Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. The 4% and 10% buffs will be exclusive with each other and with the warlock’s Demonic Pact, so you can’t benefit from all of them at once. We’re also considering letting Elemental drop Searing Totem at range.
Totemic Throw INCOMING people! Possibly.
Ahem. This is the sort of change that the Shaman community has been hankering after for a long time now, and it is a very welcome one. 10% spellpower will scale very nicely, and making it a passive of whichever DPS totem we chose to use is exactly what we wanted. I’m just worried I’ll be let down by the lack of Totemic Throw for Searing totem when it finally comes around.
How would that work anyways? A slightly clumsy ‘aoe’ type throw? Or do we get an animation of us throwing a searing totem AT our enemy and having it bounce off their head and land at their feet? That would be pretty awesome. BOING.
New Talents and Changes to Talents
- Elemental Reach will be simplified so shaman have a more consistent spell range.
- We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE.
- Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept — and so did players — so we are trying to bring it back.
- Elemental will have a deep talent that allows Spirit (which will appear on the gear they share with Restoration shaman) to boost their Hit rating.
- Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not Intellect.
- Enhancing Totems will be replaced with Focused Strikes, which will improve the damage of the new spell Primal Strike and Stormstrike
- With the Mastery system, we’re also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, Improved Windfury Totem, Mental Dexterity, Call of Thunder, Tidal Mastery, Purification, Nature’s Blessing, and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents.
This is more standard fare, and less ‘exciting’ than the changes to our fire totems. Elemental Reach being simplified can only be a good thing, the difference in range between some spells is down right annoying and pointless in PVE. Spirit as spell hit would have to be talented, as that is the only way to make the stat benefit a deep elemental spec differently to a deep resto spec.
Earthquake AOE sounds like it will be fun. One of the issues I’ve had with the Elemental Tree is that our ‘useful’ damage is limited to Fire and Lightning – it will be interesting to have ‘earth’ spells as part of our repertoire. ‘Targeted and Persistent’ implies to me that we will use a similar mechanic to Blizzard, rather than the turreted Fire Nova approach.
The change to Ancestral Knowledge is expected, considering the simplification of the stats.
Mastery: Lightning Overload is joined by Elemental Overload
Elemental Overload: Your direct-damage spells have a chance to proc a less powerful “bonus” version of the spell. This will work much like the current Lightning Overload talent, but would also apply to Lava Burst.
Well, seems a bit RNG. While it is cool to get a free ‘talent’, it feels a little underwhelming, that said the other two ‘Deep Tree’ talents are somewhat underwhelming also, apart from the resto bonus. The passive bonuses of each tree are as follows.
Elemental
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Elemental OverloadEnhancement
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Nature DamageRestoration
Healing
Meditation
Deep Healing
Looking at the lower teir passive bonuses, I wonder if we will see a resurgence of the Hybrid in a truer sense. Will an Elemental Shaman be balanced so that there is a real choice for the second spec, enabling you to pick Resto as your second tree in order to pick up improved healing, and thus improved mana regen via Meditation. The passive benefits of the Enhancement Tree will be useless for the Elemental Shaman, unless someone really pushes for a melee caster style tree.
A blue has since clarified that secondary trees will not receive any passive Mastery bonuses. You only get the bonus from your main tree.
In Conclusion
All this is, as they say, subject to change. Our Deep tree Mastery Bonuses seem a little lackluster at the moment, so we might see them changed, but I don’t think they were ever supposed to take the place of the new spells and abilities. Unleash Weapon, Earthquake and Fire Totem changes all add up for a tasty change to Elemental DPS, promising a little more variety and less compromise.
“We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE. ”
Sounds pretty good to me. I still want a throwable magma totem, though.
Well, throwable Searing Totem is a start. I can understand them not wanting to add the mechanic to all totems, as it could be clunky trying to place totems quickly, but it’s a good start!
[...] Preview is our preview, posted by Nethaera a little earlier today, and already commented upon by pewter (and doubtless soon many others!). I’m just gonna talk about my thoughts and feelings on [...]
I Lol’d at BOING. Well done.
Glad you approve
[...] Restoration and is very excited about Deep Healing (aren’t we all?). Another post to go to is this one by The ‘mental shaman for general Shaman changes with focus on Elemental as well as another post with Q&A. And of [...]