Updated Patchiness
The PTR released a new build last night (10083 for those of you keeping score at home) and there are a couple of interesting Shaman changes on the horizon.
First, however, this is pretty damn cool:
“Tome of Cold Weather Flying: New heirloom item. Players who have reached level 80 can now purchase this book for 1,000 gold from Hira Snowdawn, the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran. Similar to other heirloom items, this item can be mailed to other characters of the same realm, account and faction. The book is consumed when read training the character in Cold Weather Flying. Requires level 68.”
/approve
Onto the Shaman changes.
- Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).
- Wind Shock: Has been renamed Wind Shear and no longer shares a cooldown with Flame, Frost or Earth Shock.
- Maelstrom Weapon: Now also has a chance to reduce the cast time of Hex.
At first, I was moderately upset at the initial appearance of a nerf. No more interrupt?!
Then I remembered that Wind Shock (er…Shear) is an interrupt and realized this is a pretty nice little change. I no longer have to jack up my shot priority to get my interrupts in at the right moment in a fight. I can just keep on DPS’ing and, given how Wind Shock…Shear…is now on a separate cooldown, I can interrupt to my little heart’s content without breaking my rotation.
Still a minor bummer than our interrupts are reduced to one but, hey, we’ll make it work because Shamans are awesome.
The MW change is a “okay, cool” sort of a change. I use Hex rarely in an instance. More often than not, we have a Mage, a Lock, and/or a Druid to take care of any required CC.
So some quick little changes for you guys to chew on. I’ll keep you updated as the builds are released.
