Ok so yesterday I posted what the Devs were saying, but now they are officially up on the forums. Lets see what shamans have cooking for the patch and PTR
Shaman
- 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.
- All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
- Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
- 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%.
- 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.
- 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%.
- 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.
- 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.
- Enhancement
Lodur’s thoughts:
Oh my! We knew about the totem bars, and we knew an increase in health was comming. 7% increase will be very nice for our survivability in PvE as well as PvP
Nature’s swiftness – We already knew about but it’s nice to see it in print
Ancestral Healing – Great googly moogly thats awesome. I have to say reducing incomming damage by 10% that’s just amazing! And it scales ridiculously well with content. I mean Disc priests used to only get 3% from grace. This change has made me excited (I hope this one stays! think of this with chain heal!)
Cure Toxins: With us having Cleanse spirit this change is kindda meh for restoration Shamans, but really awesome for odd PvP specs.
Earth Shield: More of a PvP buff but still pretty slick.
Healing Way: This is very handy. The change to this talent will let you roll your Healing Wave around a bit and I’m certain more people will use it now as a result. Maybe not much more, but a bit.
Nature’s Guardian: Also more of a PvP fix, but I’ve seen some Shaman pick it up for progression fights, which isn’t a half bad idea. The change to it could see more use esepecially in hard mode fights with lots of raid wide damage.
Tidal Waves: A lot of Shaman I’ve been talking to haven’t taken a shinning to this one yet. Personally I think it’s a great thing. The extra crit will let you get Ancestral Healing out there and its a fast heal to begin with. I like this change.
Improved Water Shield: 30% change to be triggered by Chain Heal is nice. Not losing an orb is even better. There have been too many hectic fights where you forget or just can’t spare the GCD to toss Water Shield back up. This takes care of that and lets you keep it up a bit longer, which will help your overall mana regen.
Chain Heal: We new the increase in range as well as the lower number on the healing reduction, but seeing it there is a comfort for sure
I can’t wait to test these out!
*edit*
I forgot to mention the replenishment nerf.
Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).
Also at the same time MP5 gear will be getting… more MP5
I do <3 me some MP5
Who wants to do some hard modes? What do you guys think so far?
I’ll update this post as needed, but until then, Happy Healing,
So let me try to get my head around these changes.
– I get 25% more mp5 from all my gear.
– I had the cost of CH reduced by roughly 65%. (42% crit chance, 3-4 hops = at least 1 crit every CH on average. 535 mana returned per CH from iws, minus any cooldown)
– I had the benefit of CH increased by roughly 16%. (12k CH with 50% reduction per hop = 22.5k. 12k CH with 40% reduction per hop = 26.1k, assuming 4 hops)
– The range of hops on CH increased by … was it 8 yards before, or 6? I can’t recall. It’s increased, and that’s a very good thing, regardless of by how much. 😉
– All totems are now 1 GCD, not 4.
– Healing wave hits 25% harder every time it’s cast rather than 18% harder sometimes.
– LHW is now about a 72% crit chance (for me). It barely looses any casting speed since RT was wasted on it before (.8 second casts don’t matter with a 1 sec GCD), and it still casts in 1.2ish seconds.
– All of my crit heals reduce incoming damage from any source by 10%. This means I can keep every tank covered, easily, with 10% reduced damage, or cover one tank and about half the raid. This is absolutely incredible, and not to be overlooked.
Did I miss anything? I’m so excited I can barely see straight. I can’t imagine these changes will all go in as published, but even if we get 50% of them, I’ll be over the moon.
Go go shaman healing power!
-Z
I really don’t like the changed Tidal Waves yet. In theory, I like the Haste because when I am being pounded in PvP, I can mix some Riptides in to prevent interruption through it being instant cast and reducing the cast time on my next two spells. The +crit is going to be really nice when I’m not entirely being FF’d, but when I am, I worry about losing a minimal amount of survivability.
I guess I’ll just have to see how it plays out in practice, though.
.-= Beej´s last blog ..Why Does Every New MMO Have to be a WoW Killer? =-.
Yeah, in PvP I can see it being a slight disadvantage, but in PvE I think it’s a very valuable change.
If anything though, I would think the 10% damage reduction would be a huge benefit in PvP, which is nice.
-Z
PVE i don’t think it will be so bad, if we put on more haste gear over crit gear LHW will be faster to cast and we’ll retain ~same crit rate, on top of that more haste = faster casting CH and HW.
PVP it’s a bit meh since it helped a fair bit with 0.8 second LHW but again I guess if we grab haste rings / neck / trinkets it would make life easier
I guess my point is that a .8 LHW only helps on the first cast. You can’t chain them at .8 seconds, since the lowest possible GCD is 1. So getting a 65% crit LHW to 1 second should be far more powerful than a 40% crit LHW at .8 seconds, I would think. 🙂
But then again I’m not much of a hardcore PvPer, so I’ll leave that to the people that know the stuff.
As far as PvE, this is a lot of extra crit on LHW, even if you stack haste again (which you shouldn’t to a crazy degree anyway)
-Z
Odds are the Ancestral Healing (and identical Inspiration) change will be completely unnoticed for tanks. It will be good for other raid members without tons of armor however so its certainly a buff overall.
It all depends on when the 10% reduction is added, odds are it will be added AFTER the armor reduces the damage already (armor reduces damage by over 60% as is). So it’d be a 10% reduction of the remaining 40% hit, so only a 4% reduction in reality.
Tanks I know have told me that a 25% armor buff causes similar 3-4% reductions for them already.
Glad you guys got some nice buffs finally =)
Yes they finally fixed elemental so it scales with 25-man buffs!
oh wait…
I smell a Shaman alt coming 😀
.-= We Fly Spitfires´s last blog ..Improving Group Combat In MMORPGs =-.
Lets see. . .
Yes I can agree that the TW loss of haste to LHW is heartbreaking but think of this, that HW that is used rarely now is pumped up BIG TIME! It still has the TW Haste, the boost with AH, AA, NOT TO MENTION the INCREASE in healing output from your Healing Way. to me the loss of that haste is worth the very possible 1.2 sec HW.
From the looks of it it was Blizz’s goal to turn us from just raid healing to tank healing. Which IMHO is fantastic!
Well I am out
Lys
The replenishment change is not a nerf. It’s currently 0.25% mana per second for 15 seconds, for a total of (0.25*15) = 3.75% of your maximum mana over 15 seconds. The change is 1% per second for 5 seconds, or 5% maximum mana over 5 seconds. It hits much harder over a shorter period; that’s good all around.
Am I missing something there?
Jon B: Yeah, you did miss something. Quick note: Replenishment is being changed to 1% of your mana every five seconds, not every second. That’s a nerf of approximately 0.20% mana every second.
@Matticus Isn’t it a loss of .25% of total mana every 5 seconds? Assuming a 5 second period of regen:
Current:
.25% x 5 = 1.25% over 5 seconds
New:
1% x 1 = 1% over 5 seconds
So assuming a 25k mana pool we’ll be losing approximately 62.5 mp5 with this replen change. (Down to 250 from 312.5 … yes, replen is that big, talk about raid-critical)
Did I miss something? This is definitely a nerf to replen regeneration, but not a.2% mana per second nerf. I think you just mixed up your last statement. It’s a nerf TO .20% mana per second, not OF .20% mana per second. Right? Just making sure I’m not going to get blind-sided with not enough mp5.
-Z
@Zorash: Yup, you’re right. I got my to’s and of’s mixed up. There’s a reason why Matt doesn’t theorycraft! Either way, it’s a nerf for everyone across the board.