Ailis in Hunterland

So the Tier 9 set bonuses have been released for all the classes.  Some models/artwork are being datamined and discovered from the PTR, but I wanted to discuss the Shaman set bonuses briefly.

Out of the Argent Coliseum, there are 3 new iLevels of gear – 232, 245 and 258, depending on which level of the 5, 10 or 25 man raid instance you do.  Yes, complicated.  And homogenous.  Oxymoronic, yes?

All of that aside, here are our new set bonuses:

Shaman T9 Enhancement 2P Bonus - Adds an additional 3% chance to trigger your Static Shock talent.
Shaman T9 Enhancement 4P Bonus - Increases the damage done by your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells by 25%.
Shaman T9 Elemental 2P Bonus – Increases the duration of your Flame Shock spell by 9.0 sec.
Shaman T9 Elemental 4P Bonus – Increases the damage done by your Lava Burst spell by 20%.
Shaman T9 Restoration 2P Bonus – Increases the healing done by your Riptide spell by 20%.
Shaman T9 Restoration 4P Bonus – Increases the critical strike chance of your Chain Heal spell by 5%.

Before we discuss, here are the current Tier 8 bonuses:

Enhancement 2Piece Bonus – Increases the damage done by Lava Lash and Stormstrike by 20%.
Enhancement 4Piece Bonus – Increases the frequency of Maelstrom Weapon being triggered by your melee weapon attacks by 20%.
Restoration 2Piece Bonus – Reduces the cooldown on Riptide by 1 sec.
Restoration 4Piece Bonus – Reduces the cast time of Chain Heal by 0.2 sec.
Elemental 2Piece Bonus - The periodic damage dealt by your Flame Shock can now be critical strikes.
Elemental 4Piece Bonus – Your critical Strikes from Lightning Bolt cause the target to take nature damage equal to 8% of the Lightning Bolt’s damage over until cancelled sec.

As always, I invite Resto and Elemental Shamans to discuss the changes as I know very little about Elemental and am still in the noob/learning phase of Resto.

For the Enhancement, however.

Is anyone else a little disappointed by the set bonus?  Static Shock is a great talent to have.  That coupled with Improved Shields and you have a great extra boost to damage.  But upping the chance to 9%, while nice, doesn’t seem like the best reward after all the work that will go into getting said Tier pieces.  When you compare it to the current T8 2 Piece bonus, it falls a little flat.  I’ll take a flat 20% damage increase on my two most often used skills over an extra 3% chance to do extra damage.

The four piece bonus, while better than the two piece bonus, still falls a little short of the current four piece bonus.  For me, my Maelstrom Weapon stacks very quickly so I fire off Lightning Bolts every 10th swing or so (I haven’t counted), but, with the current four piece bonus, the stacks go faster, which means more overall damage from Lightning Bolt, which scales way more efficiently than Chain Lightning and has no cooldown.

Don’t get me wrong, I like flat damage percentage increases but, until they put the Shocks on separate cooldowns instead of one GCD, it isn’t a huge incentive to go for the Tier 9.

I want to know your thoughts on it, though.  It’s still early on the PTR so these may change while Blizz is still balancing, but initial impressions?

I just realized I covered Totem Changes and JC changes but not my very own class changes.

/headdesk

It’s been a long week…

So, for you, dear readers, at 3.30am, I have your Shammy changes complete with a bit of commentary.

Shamans

• A customizable totem bar will now be available for shamans 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.  - Now with pictures!
• All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.  - Being melee, this change really isn’t a huge deal, unless you use Frost Shock while out soloing or PvP’ing.  But Casters will like this one a lot.
• Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.  - All I have to say is, it’s about damn time.
• Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.  - Nice buff.  Maybe I’ll see my hps go up a little.
• 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.  - Mainly done in relation to the mount changes, this is still fantastic for leveling.  With the new heirloom shoulders, you should hit 16 in no time flat and then zoom around as a translucent puppy dog.
• Talents
  • Enhancement
    • 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%.  -  Not a huge deal here.  With the changes to Imp. SS and Mana Totem, I rarely run out of mana unless it’s a particularly long, drawn-out fight.  But it is nice to know I can pop it more often should I need it.
  • Restoration
    • Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.
    • Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.  - I’m all for combining things.  Can we just skip to the end where you give us the all-in-one totem?
    • Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
    • Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman’s Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
    • Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman’s health.
    • Nature’s Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30-second internal cooldown and increases the shaman’s maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
    • Nature’s Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
    • Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
    • Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

For the rest of the Resto changes, I would like to call upon the Resto shammies to comment on them.  Like?  Dislike?  Meh?

In reality, not a TON of changes and nothing earthshattering but some good buffs.  The totem interface is a lot of fun and definitely a welcomed (and long overdue) change.  Given these changes, I’m not seeing a need to reglyph or respec – life for Shamans will pretty much go on as normal.

Or will it…

So, Patch 3.2 has descended on the PTR and I finally found some time to take Ailis over there to check a few things out.  The new totem interface is pretty cool so I decided to take some pictures and tell you guys all about it.

Call of <insert element here>

First off, when you log in after you’re done patching, go visit your Shaman Trainer.  He/She will teach you the three “calls” that are your totem calls.  These new calls are found in your spellbook in the Elemental section.

Update: When Patch 3.2 was released, the Calls are named Call of the Ancestors, Call of the Elements, and Call of the Spirits.  Bartender’s Alpha build (found on WowAce.com works with this interface).

Using the default Blizzard toolbars, you will see a small toolbar containing four slots for each of the four elements and their related totems (called the Totem Bar), another button for the different Calls (first button) and the recall button at the end.  Each of these are flyout menus (opening upward) which saves a lot of space for those of you who don’t already use Autobar or any other totem management addon.

Forgive my janky PTR UI.

In order to set up your Totem Bar, it’s a simple two-step process.  First, select which Call (Fire, Water or Air) you want to set up.  Then click on the arrow above each totem element and select the totem you wish in that category.

When you are done, one click on Call of Fire/Water/Air will lay all four of your selected totems at once.  Call of Earth will recall all of them at once.

I tried to catch it in time, but if you tell, all four totems are on the same global cooldown (GCD) and, with my unit names turned on, you can see all four totem names appearing at once.

All in all, the new interface is pretty sweet.  As a veteran user of Autobar, I’m already used to the flyout totem menus and the partitioning into the four separate elements.  But the same GCD is definitely better as I can just click once and begin DPS/Healing.  By having 3 options for totem sets, you can set up different combinations depending on raid makeup and your spec at the time.  For instance, I have a dps set for with a Death Knight in the group, without one, and a resto set.

You can set individual totems if you need to do a quick swap or are in a fight where a specific totem is needed.  And, given the relative ease at which you can set up the Totem Bar, you can make an entire set for one specific fight then change it back afterwards.

Enjoy!

Jewelcrafting, Dragon’s Eyes and Epics, Oh My!

Just wanted to say a quick word about the Jewelcrafting changes incoming.  I took Ailis over to the PTR and spent quite a bit of time running around Azeroth figuring out where everything was sold and how to attain it all.  Here’s what I found out about the new Epic Gems incoming when the patch drops.

Right now, on the PTR, you can get Epic Gems in one of four ways:

• Emblems of Heroism (20 for the primary colors – 10 for the combination colors)
• 10,000 Honor Points
• Alchemy Transmutes
• Prospecting Titanium Ore

Seeing is how Emblems of Heroism are going to be unattainable after the Patch unless you downgrade your Emblems of Conquest to Emblems of Valor to Emblems of Heroism, I recommend grinding as many Heroics and 10-mans as you can until the Patch drops (and keep grinding them afterwards for Emblems of Conquest but that’s a different matter).  If you PvP and want to use your honor on the gems, hitting the honor cap will net you 7 Epic gems with 5K honor leftover.

If you are an alchemist, start stocking up on all rare quality gems and eternals, as those are the ingredients (in various combos) for all the transmutes.  As my DK copied over before I switched her to alchemy on the live servers, I do not know if there’s a CD on the transmutes.  Update: Yes, the same 20 hour CD for transmutes applies to the new gem transmutes.  Sorry, guys.

As far as Titanium Ore is concerned, I prospected 2.5 stacks and received 2 Epics, 1 Rare, 8 Common, and 9 Titanium Dust.  I was fairly pleased with the haul with the exception of the Comon quality gems.  Seeing is how Titanium nodes are rare spawns, I don’t think you should get Common gems from the prospects.  Just my opinion on the matter since you get those gems from Saronite and Cobalt already and really are mainly prospecting the Titanium for dust and Epic gems.  If they’re going to allow for Common gems to come from Titanium, I would like an increase in spawns for the nodes.

Update: Tested again with 22 stacks and received 19 Epics, 20 Rare, 114 Common and 55 Titanium Dust.  So, it would seem you will get the highest spawns of Common gems followed by a fairly even split of Rare and Epic gems.

The Epic gem designs are sold by Timothy Jones, the gentleman who gives you the daily.  There are 8 pages of designs, each costing 4 JC tokens apiece, so start saving if you haven’t already.  To help combat the sheer quantity of JC tokens you need, he also offers a repeatable (not daily) quest of 10 Titanium Dust turn-ins.  For every 10 dust, you get 1 token.  Needless to say, stock up on Titanium Ore if you can.

Finally Dragon’s Eyes have, indeed, been buffed (by about 7 points or so each) and their prismatic quality removed.  As of right now on the PTR, I did not receive any tokens to make up for the loss of my socket bonuses and my gems were still in my gear, so I don’t know what Blizzard is, in fact, intending on that.  The Dragon’s Eye designs have been moved to their respective color category in your tradeskill book, once again reducing the Prismatic section to the tears.

So, a few awesome changes incoming.  It’ll be really interesting to watch how the economy reacts to the new influx of gem cuts and who will actually be purchasing them.