Shaman and Enhancement Changes in 3.2
Friday, June 19, 2009 at 1:29AM | Stoneybaby In case you missed the ruckus, the Patch 3.2 notes were made public today. I'm not going to get into the whole Emblem thing (at least not in this post). What I am going to do is run down the general Shaman and Enhance-specific changes and what they mean to us.
A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.
Are you as excited about this as I am? I never liked the idea of portable totems and I'm glad the game designers strongly object to it; this sounds like a far better solution. I already know what my totems will be for PvE, and I can imagine creating a few different combinations for arenas depending on the situation. From a lore perspective it's kinda badass. With the raise of a hand and flick of a wrist the shaman plants four powerful totems to pulse with the energy of the earth, water, fire, and air. I think we need some SCHWOOOOOP sound effect with this.
All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
That's a nice little change. A free 5 yards is always good, especially with Frost Shock + Frozen Power in arenas.
Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
Wow. Free health. That helps in a lot of situations. Boss fights and especially hard-mode fights with lot of burst raid damage will help keep some of our bretheren with slower reaction times alive; Mimiron phase 3 comes to mind in particular. But mostly this change will increase the survivability in arenas.
Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
Another great PvP change for Shamans of all walks. Insta-GW is FTW. And you all know how much I love my insta-GW. By reading this I'm assuming two things: 1) it does not clear the snaring effect, 2) it will work on effects already on the Shaman. It would be mostly pointless, or at least far less exciting if this only worked on effects applied while in GW. So the way I read this if you have a slowing or snaring effect on you then you shift into GW you can run at base normal run speed. We'll see how this pans out.
Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman's attack power, down from 30%.
At first I was put off by this, but really it's just a mechanic change and will only require a minor adjustment in playstyle during raids. I am bothered by this on one account: I find it difficult to regen mana using SR during arenas. My time-on-target is frequently interrupted and I rarely get 100% mana back during an arena match. On the flip side in PvE I get more than my complete mana pool replenished within the first few seconds of SR. Because we will get less back per swing we should then be using it sooner in raids; I'll have to see what my breakoff point is for its use but with only a 1 minute cooldown there's no reason not to use it frequently. As for PvP, it'll be great for getting focus-fired. I won't feel like I'm sacrificing DPS late in the fight when SR is on cooldown because I blew it early while getting focused. Overall, I think this is going to be a great change.
Macros and scripts will no longer be able to target totems by name.
Everyone wave goodbye to Totem Stomping macros. /wave /bye. This is another great PvP change.
Fixed a bug where Frostbrand Weapon (Rank 9) was not scaling properly with a shaman's spell power.
Ya don't say? I didn't know this wasn't scaling properly. Does that mean we're getting too much out of FB right now, or not enough? The notes don't say. It's late and I can't research this right now. Either way it's a bug fix and probably not a major one so nothing to get excited over.
Let's recap shall we? In Patch 3.2 Enhancement Shamans will get:
- A single-cast, four-totem SCHWOOOOP planting buttons (or maybe THWAP!)
- An extra 5 yards on Shocks
- Base health increase
- Snare-be-gone in Ghost Wolf
- More use out of SR
- Freedom from totem-stomping
Six out of six are going to be a boon in PvP, and three of six being good for PvE (1, 3, 5). Aside from the other drama happening in 3.2, just looking at this from an Enhancement perspective I'm excited.
May all your hits be crits!
PvE, PvP, ghost wolf, mana regen, patch 3.2, raiding, totems 
Reader Comments (8)
Not really a Shaman change, but worthy of noting: Rogues are getting axes! This will most likely translate to more weapon choices for us in the next tier.
zomg... more rogues rolling for my axes +_+
let rogues with swords and daggers!!!!
:D
My question is this...
When mounts go to a 1.5 second cast (part of the mount revamp in 3.2) and you DON'T spec into insta-GW, why would we ever use it? In my Enhancement spec I have insta-GW, but didn't fell it was needed in my Resto spec. It is still nice to use, but looks like it will be worthless after the patch comes out because I can mount my Brewfest Kodo faster...
Re: Rogues getting Axes; if I ever get to beat 10 Man Yogg-Saron, and he drops Touch of Madness, any Rogue that rolls on it will be DESTROYED.
That aside, I'm really pleased with the changes that should be coming through for totems - I've always hated having to take a few GCDs to place or refresh totems. The Shamanistic Rage change could take a little while to get used to - probably won't want to be waiting till I'm almost dry before I use it now, I guess.
@ Aaron:
Ghost wolf is usable in combat, mounts are NOT, so the usefulness of GW is in BGs/PVP/Raids/Outdoor instances.
I personally dislike the talent, because I usually just pop feral spirit and spirit walk myself, while sicking my spirit wolves on the boss, but many shaman like insta cast GW and sink the two talent points into it.
Mounts are good for the start of an arena match, and for getting around between fights in raids. That's about it. Not to mention GW is much much slower than any mount.
Ghostcrawler stated their intentions on the GW snare effect:
Forum Poster: "My take on it is that if a Shaman were to get Hamstringed while in caster form, then switched to GW, the snares would cease to affect the shaman but would remain on the shaman. If the shaman were to shift out of GW before the duration of Hamstring has expired, then the effect would still be in place, and the shaman would still be snared in caster form."
GC: "That is correct. The idea is that if snared, you can still run away (if you're a caster) or chase someone down (if you're Enhancement), but the ability is still more about movement and not a self-dispel. "
Here's to hoping blizz dont ignore us now. there is still much to be fixed.
i'm hoping maybe they'll fix the crappy co-effs we get from fast weapons, making them viable for us. i dont see how its fair that rogues get a million daggers/swords/maces and fist weaps from the latest raids yet we are narrowed down to slow weapons, which are rare enough within ulduar/ToC, and rogues and possible dk's will still want to roll on them. give us a break please!
While I totally agree with your assessment that Rogues and DKs competing with us for weapons sucks, I disagree with wanting fast weapons being effective. As soon as fast weapons become desirable for Enhancement Shamans we'll get back to competing with casters for caster weapons. Then if we take caster weapons we need to start gearing, gemming, enchanting for caster stats and we effectively become Elemental-in-disguise.
I was always disgusted by Enhancement Shamans going for the Torch of Holy Fire back before 3.1. There was a way to max your dps using caster weapons and an Enhance rotation. I do not want to get back to that point. I'm happy with slow/slow. It is true Enhancement... we just need more choices.