* All totems are now considered on the "Physical" school, and no longer magical spells.
* Ancestral Knowledge (Enhancement): Now increases your Intellect by 2/4/6%, instead of increasing your total Mana by 2/4/6/8/10%.
* Call of Flame (Elemental): Now also increases the damage of your Lava Burst spell by 2/4/6%.
* Call of Thunder (Elemental) now also increases the critical strike chance of your Thunder spell.
* Concussion (Elemental) now increases the damage of your Thunder and Lava Burst spells.
* Convection (Elemental) is now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Now lowers the mana cost of Thunder and Lava Burst.
* Earth's Grasp (Elemental) is now a tier-1 talent, up from tier-2.
* Elemental Detestation (Elemental) is now a tier-2 talent, up from tier-4.
* Elemental Focus (Restoration): Now also can proc off Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave, and can be used on all healing spells.
* Elemental Fury (Elemental) now requires Elemental Focus as a pre-requisite
* Elemental Precision (Elemental): Chance to hit reduced to 1/2/3% from 2/4/6%, but threat reduction increased to 10/20/30% up from 4/7/10%.
* Enhancing (Enhancement) Totems is now a Tier 1 talent, up from Tier-2.
* Flametongue Totem is now a flat spell damage totem. All ranks have been modified.
* Frostbrand's snare effect has been increased to 50%, up from 25%.
* Ghost Wolf's mana cost is now 13% base.
* Grace of Air Totem has been removed. (Agility has been rolled over into Strength of Earth Totem)
* Improved Fire Totems (Elemental) is now (again) Improved Fire Nova Totem. It now has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets for 2 sec.
* Improved Lightning Shield (Enhancement) is now Elemental Shields, and is in Tier-1.
* New ranks have been added of Water Shield, starting at level 20. (Level 20, 27, 34, 41, 48, 55, 62, 69)
* New Spell: Earthliving Weapon - Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by x and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additionaly over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
* New Talent: Cleanse Spirit (Restoration) - Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect.
* New Talent: Elemental Shields (Enhancement): Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 5/10/15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.
* New Talent: Mental Dexterity (Enhancement) - Increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your Intellect.
* Rockbiter ranks 5 through 9 have been removed. Windfury Weapon is intended to replace Rockbiter at level 30.
* Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
* Shield Specialization (Enhancement) - Now a 2-point talent, and increases the chance to block with attacks by 10/20%, and increases the amount blocked by 5/10%.
* Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
* Storm Reach (Elemental): Now also increases the radius of your Thunder spell by 10/20%.
* Strength of Earth Totem now also increases agility.
* Tranquil Air Totem has been removed. (Threat is being addressed by modifications to the base threat of players and/or "baked" into tanking abilities.)
* Unleashed Rage is now raid wide.
* Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified.
* Windwall Totem has been removed.
* Wrath of Air is now a flat 10% spell haste totem.
I mourn the loss of weapon specialization as seen in the old alpha build. On the other hand, spectral transformation, fuck yeah! Also, maelstrom weapon seems like a really interesting talent of dubious use, same with static shock. Assuming I'm using lightning shield, blowing the mana on chain lightnings could get kind of pricey. Lightning bolts are fairly cheap, but that is still extra mana usage I didn't have before, now sans water shield. And considering, "Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% (24% talented) melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified. " for a base 50% melee haste counting flurry and the rampant haste gear (or so I hear), I imagine I can rack up those free lightning bolts really fast. Also, if the instant cast spells reset the swing timer, that instantly relegates msw to kind of crappy.
In short, new enhancement is crazy. Crazy awesome. But may suffer from mana issues. This may be counteracted with the new emphasis on int, and from what I saw there was int on all the mail dps gear, so who knows, it might work out fine in the end. If it's sustainable with SR and wisdom, and with salv killeed wis should be easy to come by in most raids (my raids anyway), enh should be totally god damn awesome. The biggest problem with it now is that it is too fucking good. My ideal build is 8 ele/61 enh and I still come up 2 points shy of being able to max out ancestral knowledge. I guess my best option is to "raid spec" the 2 out of spectral transformation into ancestral knowledge for the extra ap (assuming raid instances are almost all indoors).
Fuck though, I am pleased as hell with the beta tree. I thought the alpha tree was nice but this is... well really quite amazing. Spectral transformation addresses my biggest pvp gripe handilly, and the rest of the tree is going to A) dish out retard strong dps and make the class a little more interactive than drop totems, spam ss and alternat fs/es. The additoon of keeping an eye on lightning shield charges and waiting for msw to build up to 5 charges, plus 8 second ss (7 with pvp gear) will make playing a shaman a fair bit more active.
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kaleeditySometimes science is more art than scienceRegistered Userregular
edited July 2008
If you can squeeze out 11 in elemental, you also get random cheaper heals/bolts on spell crits.
Also I wonder if those melee % haste buffs will multiply like other % buffs for a 61.2% haste.
WF totem + any dual wielding class = lolololo. If wf totem stacks with wf weapon, it'd seem like that'd be absurdly powerful. I somehow doubt shamans needed a ~10-15% melee damage buff. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't stack.
Enhancement shamans are going to be where it's at, though the best part is that resto and elemental look fucking great too. Spirit wolves will be up for 3/8 of the time if spammed, that just seems nuts.
* Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
Awesome
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2008
So, the beta notes for WotLK kinda put shaman in the spotlight for tons of buffs. Especially in regard to crit, hit, and haste rating applying to both melee and spells now (but I guess we already knew that). The totem folding over going on is also epic.
I also wonder how Stoneskin Totem will become valued now that it adds armor. Druid tank buff ahoy, right?
Man, shaman totems are retardedly good now. SoE+wf+new flametongue is godly.
Also, I'm calling it right now that elemental will supplant resto as the sub tree. As evidence, I point at the synergy between lavaburst and elemental devastattion. Lavaburst effectively means 100% uptime for elemental devastation, assuming you can manage to get 5 melee crits every 10 seconds.
Hurrrrr.
Hmm, I wonder. If you go elemental enough (which will force some cuts) to get 5/5 reverb, I bet you could swing the usual fs/es rotation then use lavaburst at the end to keep up into infinity without mucking up your shock rotation, as without it you end up having to recast fs sometimes. If that ends up being the best dps option, I don't even know where to begin cutting points in enh to get that deep ; ;.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2008
I just noticed the note about Water Shield being changed so its first rank is at level 20 and it progresses rather regularly from there on. That's sweet.
I just noticed the note about Water Shield being changed so its first rank is at level 20 and it progresses rather regularly from there on. That's sweet.
We'll (the enhance shaman) will have to remember it's ok to wear mail with int on it now.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited July 2008
I still think we're mostly being dicked with in terms of gear and stats. But anyway.
Maelstrom Weapon is kinda cool. Five crits within 15 seconds and you get an instant cast for basically any damage spell that isn't a shock. The Static whatever talent down in the tree, along with improved stormstrike, automatically registers in my head that lightning shield is going to be the one to use instead of water shield. So we'll just have to embrace our shammy rage a bit more than usual maybe.
So, the beta notes for WotLK kinda put shaman in the spotlight for tons of buffs. Especially in regard to crit, hit, and haste rating applying to both melee and spells now (but I guess we already knew that). The totem folding over going on is also epic.
I also wonder how Stoneskin Totem will become valued now that it adds armor. Druid tank buff ahoy, right?
Well, don't forget that they aren't just doing stuff for the expansion here, but closing the gap that exists at current levels. I'm sure stuff will get tuned a little bit down, and not just for shamans.
I still think we're mostly being dicked with in terms of gear and stats. But anyway.
Maelstrom Weapon is kinda cool. Five crits within 15 seconds and you get an instant cast for basically any damage spell that isn't a shock. The Static whatever talent down in the tree, along with improved stormstrike, automatically registers in my head that lightning shield is going to be the one to use instead of water shield. So we'll just have to embrace our shammy rage a bit more than usual maybe.
That one is interesting. Pop lava burst on your target (with Flame Shock on it) for a crit (with decent spell damage from AP), and then have 9 percent extra crit if you have that talent.
EDIT: But why do we still have a stupid shield block talent? Does anyone ever use that? Is it ever worth the points?
I still think we're mostly being dicked with in terms of gear and stats. But anyway.
Maelstrom Weapon is kinda cool. Five crits within 15 seconds and you get an instant cast for basically any damage spell that isn't a shock. The Static whatever talent down in the tree, along with improved stormstrike, automatically registers in my head that lightning shield is going to be the one to use instead of water shield. So we'll just have to embrace our shammy rage a bit more than usual maybe.
Unless they change the mechanics of how spells work, this is a useless talent. Currently any spell made instant cast by a talent or effect resets your swing timer. You can test it with the two piece T5 enhancement set to see!
I still think we're mostly being dicked with in terms of gear and stats. But anyway.
Maelstrom Weapon is kinda cool. Five crits within 15 seconds and you get an instant cast for basically any damage spell that isn't a shock. The Static whatever talent down in the tree, along with improved stormstrike, automatically registers in my head that lightning shield is going to be the one to use instead of water shield. So we'll just have to embrace our shammy rage a bit more than usual maybe.
Unless they change the mechanics of how spells work, this is a useless talent. Currently any spell made instant cast by a talent or effect resets your swing timer. You can test it with the two piece T5 enhancement set to see!
Is the swing really much more important than, say, getting an instant cast lightning bolt that's going to get +20% damage because of your stormstrike?
More like an instant lava burst that is guaranteed to crit.
But I'm guessing the answer is yes.
And probably (if talented for it) giving you 9 percent crit for 15 seconds, on top of the 3kish lava burst? Yea. I think one swing timer reset (if you don't bother to time it to swings) is worth that.
Well, using current mechanics (which may or may not remain intact,) a single mainhand swing is worth far more than an instant lightning bolt could hope to be worth. Looking at a recent WWS, an average mainhand white swing is around 700 damage, and an average mainhand windfury is around 1k per swing. So whatever spell you used would have to be well over 700 damage just for the swing, and over ~1400 if you count average windfuries, not even counting crits, or the amount of mana it consumes.
You could probably jimmy the numbers a bit by abusing quartz, but a tiny amount of latency can mean lost whole swings if you try to time it too close, which seems to be kind of the opposite direction that blizzard is going with hunter shots.
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kaleeditySometimes science is more art than scienceRegistered Userregular
I still think we're mostly being dicked with in terms of gear and stats. But anyway.
Maelstrom Weapon is kinda cool. Five crits within 15 seconds and you get an instant cast for basically any damage spell that isn't a shock. The Static whatever talent down in the tree, along with improved stormstrike, automatically registers in my head that lightning shield is going to be the one to use instead of water shield. So we'll just have to embrace our shammy rage a bit more than usual maybe.
Unless they change the mechanics of how spells work, this is a useless talent. Currently any spell made instant cast by a talent or effect resets your swing timer. You can test it with the two piece T5 enhancement set to see!
Is the swing really much more important than, say, getting an instant cast lightning bolt that's going to get +20% damage because of your stormstrike?
Yes, actually. Especially if you're sharing stormstrike charges with some droods. Though, getting an elemental devastation proc from a lava burst sounds pretty good.
Currently maelstrom does reset your swing timer according to the beta forum. However, apparently the blood surge -> instant slam mechanic that warriors get doesn't affect the swing timer, so they'll probably fix this to be the same way.
But it's not a lightning bolt. It's Lava Burst, an instant (with the talent you need stacked up to 5) spell which crits 100 percent of the time while Flame Shock is on the target.
With another talent, any spell crit gives you 9 percent more crit (spell and melee) chance for 15 seconds.
Best case is that they fix it to not reset the swing timer. Worst case it may still work out to be more damage anyway, but I'm not expert on all that kind of crap.
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kaleeditySometimes science is more art than scienceRegistered Userregular
But it's not a lightning bolt. It's Lava Burst, an instant (with the talent you need stacked up to 5) spell which crits 100 percent of the time while Flame Shock is on the target.
With another talent, any spell crit gives you 9 percent more crit (spell and melee) chance for 15 seconds.
And it costs a flame shock tick, 655 mana, and ~1.5s or so of melee.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
But it's not a lightning bolt. It's Lava Burst, an instant (with the talent you need stacked up to 5) spell which crits 100 percent of the time while Flame Shock is on the target.
With another talent, any spell crit gives you 9 percent more crit (spell and melee) chance for 15 seconds.
And it costs a flame shock tick, 655 mana, and ~1.5s or so of melee.
Yes, and I still think it's worth it :P But who knows for sure, not me, that's for sure.
I wish they'd make it so only totems of the same school and non-totem spells had a mini-gcd when you drop a totem, that way you could drop four at once as long as they're all from different schools.
But it's not a lightning bolt. It's Lava Burst, an instant (with the talent you need stacked up to 5) spell which crits 100 percent of the time while Flame Shock is on the target.
With another talent, any spell crit gives you 9 percent more crit (spell and melee) chance for 15 seconds.
And it costs a flame shock tick, 655 mana, and ~1.5s or so of melee.
Yes, and I still think it's worth it :P But who knows for sure, not me, that's for sure.
The spell crits for hell of a lot from what I've come to understand. The last flame shock tick is not going to equal anything near the amount of the crit Lava Burst, Mana is not an issue on a raiding enhanc shaman, and its likely casting lava burst instantly dosn't interupt the swing timer. There will be rare cases where you will actualy get anywhere near 1.5s swing timer.
Either way, I'm not 100% sold on that tallent yet. I wish it was any spell the shaman could cast, so that he can pop off a heal or something.
But it's not a lightning bolt. It's Lava Burst, an instant (with the talent you need stacked up to 5) spell which crits 100 percent of the time while Flame Shock is on the target.
With another talent, any spell crit gives you 9 percent more crit (spell and melee) chance for 15 seconds.
And it costs a flame shock tick, 655 mana, and ~1.5s or so of melee.
Yes, and I still think it's worth it :P But who knows for sure, not me, that's for sure.
The spell crits for hell of a lot from what I've come to understand. The last flame shock tick is not going to equal anything near the amount of the crit Lava Burst, Mana is not an issue on a raiding enhanc shaman, and its likely casting lava burst instantly dosn't interupt the swing timer. There will be rare cases where you will actualy get anywhere near 1.5s swing timer.
Either way, I'm not 100% sold on that tallent yet. I wish it was any spell the shaman could cast, so that he can pop off a heal or something.
Actually 1.5 swing time is fairly likely. According to my friend in alpha/now beta, haste gear is apparently common as dirt. Even ignoring how common it is, you can swing 53% melee haste raid buffed now (30% flurry, 20% wf, 3% imp ret aura) and with bare ass 157 haste rating and 2.5 speed weaons (which is what I use, durn badge fists) I was around 1.56 attack speed. Now granted the optimal 2.6 would be a little bit higher (not much) but 157 haste rating is also a fairly low number apparently.
Also, reports from the beta is that spells made instant from msw do reset the timer. There is a large outcry to fix it, and hopefully blizzard will.
And lastly, sure, raiding shamans now don't have mana issues. I suspect that will change when we're using lightning shield over watershield and chucking out a 600+ mana spell ever time we get 5 melee crits.
Probably has to do with you now sharing hunter gear. They've made a lot of changes like this.
Yeah. It's deffinitely a change for the best.
Lemme see here. My current in game ap is 1762. I have 246 str, so that dropping down to 1 ap/str means I lose 123 ap on that front. But my agi is 386 and my int is 158. So all things considered, that's a pretty substantial ap buff. 2100 ap {yes, please}.
Oh also, crit per agi has been nerfed to 1 crit per 30 agi I'd wager the end result is that by 80 we have roughly the same crit percentage as we do now.
Edit: So i just did some math, and compeltely, fully buffed, I'm at 3,757 after applying the changes to current buffs, in all probabbility breaking 5k ap in the rare event of disdain+stonebreakers+double mongoose+berzerker's call.
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http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?shaman
Also, patch notes!
* All totems are now considered on the "Physical" school, and no longer magical spells.
* Ancestral Knowledge (Enhancement): Now increases your Intellect by 2/4/6%, instead of increasing your total Mana by 2/4/6/8/10%.
* Call of Flame (Elemental): Now also increases the damage of your Lava Burst spell by 2/4/6%.
* Call of Thunder (Elemental) now also increases the critical strike chance of your Thunder spell.
* Concussion (Elemental) now increases the damage of your Thunder and Lava Burst spells.
* Convection (Elemental) is now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Now lowers the mana cost of Thunder and Lava Burst.
* Earth's Grasp (Elemental) is now a tier-1 talent, up from tier-2.
* Elemental Detestation (Elemental) is now a tier-2 talent, up from tier-4.
* Elemental Focus (Restoration): Now also can proc off Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave, and can be used on all healing spells.
* Elemental Fury (Elemental) now requires Elemental Focus as a pre-requisite
* Elemental Precision (Elemental): Chance to hit reduced to 1/2/3% from 2/4/6%, but threat reduction increased to 10/20/30% up from 4/7/10%.
* Enhancing (Enhancement) Totems is now a Tier 1 talent, up from Tier-2.
* Flametongue Totem is now a flat spell damage totem. All ranks have been modified.
* Frostbrand's snare effect has been increased to 50%, up from 25%.
* Ghost Wolf's mana cost is now 13% base.
* Grace of Air Totem has been removed. (Agility has been rolled over into Strength of Earth Totem)
* Improved Fire Totems (Elemental) is now (again) Improved Fire Nova Totem. It now has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets for 2 sec.
* Improved Lightning Shield (Enhancement) is now Elemental Shields, and is in Tier-1.
* New ranks have been added of Water Shield, starting at level 20. (Level 20, 27, 34, 41, 48, 55, 62, 69)
* New Spell: Earthliving Weapon - Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by x and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additionaly over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
* New Talent: Cleanse Spirit (Restoration) - Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect.
* New Talent: Elemental Shields (Enhancement): Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 5/10/15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.
* New Talent: Mental Dexterity (Enhancement) - Increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your Intellect.
* Rockbiter ranks 5 through 9 have been removed. Windfury Weapon is intended to replace Rockbiter at level 30.
* Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
* Shield Specialization (Enhancement) - Now a 2-point talent, and increases the chance to block with attacks by 10/20%, and increases the amount blocked by 5/10%.
* Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
* Storm Reach (Elemental): Now also increases the radius of your Thunder spell by 10/20%.
* Strength of Earth Totem now also increases agility.
* Tranquil Air Totem has been removed. (Threat is being addressed by modifications to the base threat of players and/or "baked" into tanking abilities.)
* Unleashed Rage is now raid wide.
* Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified.
* Windwall Totem has been removed.
* Wrath of Air is now a flat 10% spell haste totem.
I mourn the loss of weapon specialization as seen in the old alpha build. On the other hand, spectral transformation, fuck yeah! Also, maelstrom weapon seems like a really interesting talent of dubious use, same with static shock. Assuming I'm using lightning shield, blowing the mana on chain lightnings could get kind of pricey. Lightning bolts are fairly cheap, but that is still extra mana usage I didn't have before, now sans water shield. And considering, "Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% (24% talented) melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified. " for a base 50% melee haste counting flurry and the rampant haste gear (or so I hear), I imagine I can rack up those free lightning bolts really fast. Also, if the instant cast spells reset the swing timer, that instantly relegates msw to kind of crappy.
In short, new enhancement is crazy. Crazy awesome. But may suffer from mana issues. This may be counteracted with the new emphasis on int, and from what I saw there was int on all the mail dps gear, so who knows, it might work out fine in the end. If it's sustainable with SR and wisdom, and with salv killeed wis should be easy to come by in most raids (my raids anyway), enh should be totally god damn awesome. The biggest problem with it now is that it is too fucking good. My ideal build is 8 ele/61 enh and I still come up 2 points shy of being able to max out ancestral knowledge. I guess my best option is to "raid spec" the 2 out of spectral transformation into ancestral knowledge for the extra ap (assuming raid instances are almost all indoors).
Fuck though, I am pleased as hell with the beta tree. I thought the alpha tree was nice but this is... well really quite amazing. Spectral transformation addresses my biggest pvp gripe handilly, and the rest of the tree is going to A) dish out retard strong dps and
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Also I wonder if those melee % haste buffs will multiply like other % buffs for a 61.2% haste.
WF totem + any dual wielding class = lolololo. If wf totem stacks with wf weapon, it'd seem like that'd be absurdly powerful. I somehow doubt shamans needed a ~10-15% melee damage buff. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't stack.
Enhancement shamans are going to be where it's at, though the best part is that resto and elemental look fucking great too. Spirit wolves will be up for 3/8 of the time if spammed, that just seems nuts.
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Awesome
I also wonder how Stoneskin Totem will become valued now that it adds armor. Druid tank buff ahoy, right?
Also, I'm calling it right now that elemental will supplant resto as the sub tree. As evidence, I point at the synergy between lavaburst and elemental devastattion. Lavaburst effectively means 100% uptime for elemental devastation, assuming you can manage to get 5 melee crits every 10 seconds.
Hurrrrr.
Hmm, I wonder. If you go elemental enough (which will force some cuts) to get 5/5 reverb, I bet you could swing the usual fs/es rotation then use lavaburst at the end to keep up into infinity without mucking up your shock rotation, as without it you end up having to recast fs sometimes. If that ends up being the best dps option, I don't even know where to begin cutting points in enh to get that deep ; ;.
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We'll (the enhance shaman) will have to remember it's ok to wear mail with int on it now.
Maelstrom Weapon is kinda cool. Five crits within 15 seconds and you get an instant cast for basically any damage spell that isn't a shock. The Static whatever talent down in the tree, along with improved stormstrike, automatically registers in my head that lightning shield is going to be the one to use instead of water shield. So we'll just have to embrace our shammy rage a bit more than usual maybe.
Well, don't forget that they aren't just doing stuff for the expansion here, but closing the gap that exists at current levels. I'm sure stuff will get tuned a little bit down, and not just for shamans.
That one is interesting. Pop lava burst on your target (with Flame Shock on it) for a crit (with decent spell damage from AP), and then have 9 percent extra crit if you have that talent.
EDIT: But why do we still have a stupid shield block talent? Does anyone ever use that? Is it ever worth the points?
Enhancement Shaman+Titan Grip Warrior=OP.
Ghost Wolf's mana cost is now 13% base.
Really? That's a little over 1300 mana in my current gear. This one is going to hurt Resto in arena. Bad.
Edit - That is, remove all your gear, and see what your total mana is. 13% of that is the ghost wolf cost. :P
Edit Edit - And take pics when your gear is off because I know you rolled a draenei female. :winky:
Unless they change the mechanics of how spells work, this is a useless talent. Currently any spell made instant cast by a talent or effect resets your swing timer. You can test it with the two piece T5 enhancement set to see!
What can I say, I play a shaman and a druid. I have excess amounts of hope, still.
Is the swing really much more important than, say, getting an instant cast lightning bolt that's going to get +20% damage because of your stormstrike?
But I'm guessing the answer is yes.
And probably (if talented for it) giving you 9 percent crit for 15 seconds, on top of the 3kish lava burst? Yea. I think one swing timer reset (if you don't bother to time it to swings) is worth that.
You could probably jimmy the numbers a bit by abusing quartz, but a tiny amount of latency can mean lost whole swings if you try to time it too close, which seems to be kind of the opposite direction that blizzard is going with hunter shots.
Yes, actually. Especially if you're sharing stormstrike charges with some droods. Though, getting an elemental devastation proc from a lava burst sounds pretty good.
Currently maelstrom does reset your swing timer according to the beta forum. However, apparently the blood surge -> instant slam mechanic that warriors get doesn't affect the swing timer, so they'll probably fix this to be the same way.
With another talent, any spell crit gives you 9 percent more crit (spell and melee) chance for 15 seconds.
Best case is that they fix it to not reset the swing timer. Worst case it may still work out to be more damage anyway, but I'm not expert on all that kind of crap.
And it costs a flame shock tick, 655 mana, and ~1.5s or so of melee.
Yes, and I still think it's worth it :P But who knows for sure, not me, that's for sure.
Either way, I'm not 100% sold on that tallent yet. I wish it was any spell the shaman could cast, so that he can pop off a heal or something.
Actually 1.5 swing time is fairly likely. According to my friend in alpha/now beta, haste gear is apparently common as dirt. Even ignoring how common it is, you can swing 53% melee haste raid buffed now (30% flurry, 20% wf, 3% imp ret aura) and with bare ass 157 haste rating and 2.5 speed weaons (which is what I use, durn badge fists) I was around 1.56 attack speed. Now granted the optimal 2.6 would be a little bit higher (not much) but 157 haste rating is also a fairly low number apparently.
Also, reports from the beta is that spells made instant from msw do reset the timer. There is a large outcry to fix it, and hopefully blizzard will.
And lastly, sure, raiding shamans now don't have mana issues. I suspect that will change when we're using lightning shield over watershield and chucking out a 600+ mana spell ever time we get 5 melee crits.
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Good news! Shamans be getting 1 ap per agility now!
Bad news! Shamans be getting 1 ap per stength now!
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Our stat needs are spread too thin.
Not really, you don't need strength at all anymore and it won't be on the gear.
Yeah. It's deffinitely a change for the best.
Lemme see here. My current in game ap is 1762. I have 246 str, so that dropping down to 1 ap/str means I lose 123 ap on that front. But my agi is 386 and my int is 158. So all things considered, that's a pretty substantial ap buff. 2100 ap {yes, please}.
Oh also, crit per agi has been nerfed to 1 crit per 30 agi I'd wager the end result is that by 80 we have roughly the same crit percentage as we do now.
Edit: So i just did some math, and compeltely, fully buffed, I'm at 3,757 after applying the changes to current buffs, in all probabbility breaking 5k ap in the rare event of disdain+stonebreakers+double mongoose+berzerker's call.
LoL: failboattootoot
It will only be 1 AP, same as agility except agility gives you crit.