We are making some upcoming changes to the Elemental shaman tree. Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.
1) Unrelenting Storm – reduced from 5 points to 3 points. Bonus is 4/8/12% of your Intellect returned as mana.
2) Elemental Warding – now reduces all damage (not just Nature, Fire and Frost) taken by 2/4/6%
3) Elemental Shields – this talent has been removed, since its effects were combined with Elemental Warding.
4) Storm, Earth and Fire – reduced from 5 points to 3 points, but keeps around the same net benefit. In addition to current effects, also increases Wind Shock range. The damage bonus to Flame Shock has increased to 60% at 3 ranks. Storm, Earth and Fire has been moved up the tree as well.
5) Shamanism – this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.
These changes will be available in the next minor content patch, and are in addition to the AE changes mentioned previously.
·Nimh on November 26 2008 13:45:00·1 Comment· 147 Reads
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There is definitely a lot of AE (area effect damage) going on in World of Warcraft dungeon runs at the moment. We’re not too worried about it for now – on the contrary it’s nice to see so many people doing the level-up dungeons on the way to level 80. If we find that AE tank + AE damage strategy (with no sheeping, sapping or other crowd control) is the only way people are running heroics and raids, then we’ll probably make some changes, but for now we’re content to just see what happens.
Having said all that, we feel like a few groups are being left out of the AE fun, which makes them of less utility in the 5-player dungeons. We aren’t able to provide a lot of details yet, but here are some upcoming changes we’re making.
Shaman – we are removing the threat component from Fire Nova Totem and Magma Totem and increasing the damage from Magma Totem. This should provide the Elemental shamans in particular with some formidable AE.
Rogue – we are removing the cooldown from Fan of Knives and adjusting the damage calculation slightly to make daggers more useful for this ability.
Druid – we are adding Swipe (Cat) as a baseline ability.
As is the case with most multi-target abilities, these three should be something you want to use when faced with groups, but never against single targets. Fan of Knives and Swipe, for example, don’t grant combo points so they should never be a core part of the rotation against single targets (like most bosses).
These changes will be available in the next minor content update, so keep an eye out for the next PTR push.
·Nimh on November 25 2008 06:15:18·3 Comments· 119 Reads
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As we have mentioned, we are discussing some exciting changes to how soul shards might work. This is not an announcement of an overhaul to that system, but it will make shard use slightly less painful.
When a warlock casts Ritual of Summoning, instead of creating a portal, they will summon a new creation similar to a dungeon meeting stone. It will cost one shard to create this item. Then, anyone in the warlock’s party or raid can use the “meeting stone” to summon other members of the group. For example, once the warlock summons the stone, then party members B and C could summon D without the warlock’s direct involvement, and most importantly without requiring additional shards.
You will be able to bring the rest of a 25-person raid quickly (since you can summon folks simultaneously), for the cost of a single shard, and with less clicking on the part of the lock.
The “meeting stone” will last 5 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown. It will not be usable in areas where summoning is currently restricted, such as battlegrounds or in combat. Creating the stone still requires 2 people in addition to the warlock. Summoning actual party members only requires 2 people.
This change will be in for the next patch, which will occur before the 3.1 Ulduar content patch.
·Nimh on November 24 2008 13:21:31·1 Comment· 113 Reads
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Kil'jaeden Video
Nihm has uploaded the Kil Jaeden Video. Tricky in his finest hour imo. Nice Job Nihm!!! What a good kill! Link to the video can be found here.
Kil'jaeden got the sunwell kicked out of him tonight by the MayContainNuts Raid Team. Great Job everyone. 2 Weeks of very hard raiding where we learnt a huge amount and saw some great dedication by everyone involved. Really great effort by everyone. Despite the nerf, we put together a really great run there. Now we can continue it through til WotLK and beyond!!!
PS. Now we just have to kill it again when Chal stops slacking. Oo also Mad who tanked us to 6% but wasnt there on the kill night.
Another of the lolwell bosses bites the dust. Its been a bit of a blast this week killing these guys. Blue Space Cow was missing, but we just come back and do it next week.
Got Kil Jaeden to 89% too. He loves my holy nova!
Twins got defeated tonight during our Sunwell killing spree. Not an easy fight by a long stretch, but they succumbed to the nutty onslaught.
Would have been impossible before the patch without the healing changes but now doable without 2343 shaman. Good job everyone there.
After the nerf the bosses are coming thick and fast. At least we're getting to see all of this stuff. For me this was one of the most enjoyable fights to date. Everyone did very well to pick up on the tactics. Good job all.
Twins awaits...
Brutallus got one shotted tonight first raid after 3.0.2. We had the basic tactics down ok, it was just the raw smash power of the boss that was so hard before the patch. Well hes been nerfed to hell and the raid got buffed to hell and he went down first pull. 1 min left on the enrage timer.
On one hand not nice to see him so nerfed but on the other hand lots of people will get to see the content after him.
We downed Kel Thuzad tonight with 40 nutters. Great to see the old place before it ports to Northrend and everyone there I think enjoyed it a lot. Just experiencing the fights will help us in wotlk, and I suspect it will help most of us a lot more than we imagine.
Nice work evreryone that came along. Oh and Chal cant dance!!
