Thursday
Aug272009
Cataclysmic Shamanism
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 11:00PM | Stoneybaby
First of all, can you believe I spelled cataclysmic right on the first try? I was duly impressed. Now I'll have to be sure to misspell something else lest I get too full of myself.
Among all the amazing stuff that came out of BlizzCon—though I must admit I spent most of my surfing time looking at WoW.com's costume pics because theirs seem to focus on the sexy female outfits....
Ahem. Yes the news at Blizzcon. I pulled out three very interesting snippets for the future of us Enhancement Shamans in the far-off Cataclysm
Flameshock has a much more thought out analysis on some of these proposed changes, check it out.
For now, it's all speculation at this point and we've got at least a year of Wrath left before we have to worry about this. But let me ask you this, are you rerolling Dwarf Shaman?
Among all the amazing stuff that came out of BlizzCon—though I must admit I spent most of my surfing time looking at WoW.com's costume pics because theirs seem to focus on the sexy female outfits....
Ahem. Yes the news at Blizzcon. I pulled out three very interesting snippets for the future of us Enhancement Shamans in the far-off Cataclysm
- Enhancement Shamans do not use INT anymore and will be given talents to not need it just like Retribution Paladins.
- Enhancement Shamans having to run in and out of melee ranges to redrop totem and sacrifice DPS is a legitimate problem, they don't want enhancement to have to run out like that.
- Shamans (Elemental) looks like "turrets" in PvP for the moment, the idea is to make totems funnier in the future ("put a totem down and something cool happens") but not a lot of details for the moment.
File this under simplification. No more Int, it will be baked into talents and won't be on gear. Looks like we'll still compete with Hunters for gear, which is to be expected. But it also looks like we'll also be competing with Rogues for leather. Hey anything I can do to stymie a Rogue is fine by me!
At first glance I read that as the redropping of totems was their concern, but it looks like they are more concerned with the whole Run-In, Run-Out, Run Around Like An Idiot nonsense the melee are accustomed to doing on every other boss. Is that how you read this statement? What do you think?
I imagine that making "Shamans (Elemental)" totems more fun would included making "Shamans (Enhancement)" more fun, too.
Flameshock has a much more thought out analysis on some of these proposed changes, check it out.
For now, it's all speculation at this point and we've got at least a year of Wrath left before we have to worry about this. But let me ask you this, are you rerolling Dwarf Shaman?
Reader Comments (11)
I must say dwarf shaman is such a great idea, and makes so much sense I dont know why it took so long.
I also dont think anything else was spelled wrong :(
Wheres my fee for using my name?
What do you mean it doesn't work like that?
I'm actually looking at a Goblin Shaman for Cataclysm. I am worried though because our top Elemental Shaman just rerolled Warrior and retired his Shaman. He said "I may do less DPS, but I'm having much more fun." That worried me.
I didn't get a chance to question him, but do you have any idea what might have turned him off so to Elemental?
@cataclysmic pls open trade :P
@honors I would guess because ranged is boring as hell and melee is funner than a party with Hugh Heffner's eight girlfiends. That would be my guess. I mean one can only speculate as to the level of fun such a party would entail but one would imagine it would be to a high degree.
@Honors I would agree with stoney... elemental is pretty dry. Blizzard's description of a 'turret' pretty much sums it up. Also, just discovered your site yesterday when doing research on tanking as a Pally (just leveling one now) and I must say thank you. Lots of good stuff.
@Stoney I think they were implying that they noticed enhancers running out of melee range to drop totems for caster benefit, and that they saw that as a problem... not the fact that melee have to run-in, run-out, run-in again.
Stay away from my leather or I will cut you
@Phil
Thanks. I've got another guide going up soon that I think you'll really enjoy. It's basically Paladin Tanking 101.
I already love some rogue leather. A lot of hunter mail comes with armor pen, and I just want distance from that. Not a theorycrafting decision, I just dont like that stat and avoid it as much as I can.
Leather gear without hit or expertise right now is just sexy. Lots of agi and/or AP. Sometimes it compensates the lack of intellect.
I'm also a little bit concerned about the usefulness of Rogue Leather for us come cataclysm, particularly when we look at the lack of expertise on off-set pieces for us this expansion. If they continue the trend of not itemizing expertise on our off-set pieces, we might be seeing Leather alternatives as even more useful. :/
[...] know that stoney has already written a summay of Cataclysmic changes, I’m not trying to steal his thunder. As he has stated I am just here to put my spin [...]
[...] know that stoney has already written a summary of Cataclysmic changes, I’m not trying to steal his thunder. As he has stated I am just here to put my spin [...]