more wotlk leaks

[Solwolf]

Could be fake, of course. They're on gameriot, I believe.

For shaman, the notes indicate a new shock mechanic (shock charges),
as well as a new shock - mind shock.

Elemental should get a boost through a synergy with balance druids.
Druids will get a talent which increases nature/arcane dmg on a target
by up to 10%. Arcane mages, then, will get a 30% boost from druid +
warlock synergies, assuming they stack.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time poring over the leaked skills/
talents, but (much like TBC ones) they look imba. And then there's
the perennial "where am I supposed to fit these new skills/talents on
my hotbars" problem, too.

[iapetes]

Everything on http://wotlk.wikidot.com/start

is pretty much 100% real, however, as they note, that shock stuff
could easily be a boss thing. Currently shamans have no new talents or
spells on Alpha. I have 2 different friends on Alpha now that FaF has
started, 1 with a priest, war, hunter, and shaman, the other with a
paladin and druid.

If you're interested in the druid stuff at all, a few interesting
facts that aren't clear from the leaked notes: Starfall, as well as
living bomb, are buffs. So you can cast starfall, and then start
casting hurricane and use both at once. Or you can just run around
while starfire indiscriminately hits everything in range haha.
Berserk, yes, works like beastial wrath, and the cat and bear versions
currently have seperate cooldowns, so you can use one and then the
other. Obviously that might change. Also, I just found this funny, but
deathcoil for deathknights has no cooldown currently.

[iapetes]

Oh yeah, and it's not clear from the wording at all, but talents like
"Converts 2/4/6/8/10% of your bonus healing into bonus spell damage.
In addition, your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 20/40/60/80/100%
chance of applying the Nature's Fury debuff on the target. The
Nature's Fury debuff increases Nature and Arcane damage done to the
target by 2%. Lasts 10 sec. Stacks up to 3 times." basically makes it
so if you had 1000 spell damage and healing, with that talent you
would have 1100 spell damage and 900 healing

[JC McCormick]

It's been speculated that the Time stuff is all Bronze Dragonflight abilities.  :(

[Binkenstein]

Copy/paste from a forum, with comments by me!

Shaman Things:

* Earthliving Rank 1 Heals the target for $o1 over $d. <-- maybe?
* Mental Dexterity Rank 3 Increases your Attack Power by $s1% of
your Intellect.
* Elemental Shields Rank 3 Increases the damage done by your
Lightning Shield orbs by $s1%, increases the amount of mana gained
from your Mana Shield orbs by $s2% and increases the amount of healing
done by your Earth Shield orbs by $s2%.
* Improved Fire Nova Totem Stuns the target for $d.
* Potent Jolt Increases the caster's attack speed by $s2% and the
Physical damage it deals by $s1% for $d. <-- ?
* Earthliving Weapon Rank 1 Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen
life. Increases healing done by $51940$s2 and each heal has a 20%
chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additional
$51940s1 over $51940d. Lasts 30 minutes.
* Spirit Link Rank 1 You link the friendly target with two nearby
targets, causing 50% of the damage taken to be distributed to the
linked targets. After 2200 damage, the link will sever.
* Tidal Waves Rank 3 Increases the critical effect chance of your
Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave spells by $s1%, and your Healing
Wave and Lesser Healing Wave spells gain an additional $s2% of your
bonus healing effects.
* Ancestral Awakening Rank 3 When you critically heal with your
Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave, you summon an Ancestral spirit to
aid you, instantly healing the lowest health friendly target within 40
yards for $s1% of the amount healed.
* Improved Earth Shield Rank 1 Increases the amount of charges for
your Earth Shield by $s1, and increasing the healing done by your
Earth Shield by $s2%.
* Blessing of the Eternals Rank 2 Increases the critical effect
chance of your spells by $s1%, and increases the bonus healing from
your Earthliving weapon by $s2%.
* Feral Spirit Summons $s1 Spirit Wolves under the command of the
Shaman, lasting $d.
* Weapon Specialization Rank 5 "Axe - Increases the critical
strike damage bonus by $s1%. Mace - Has a $s2% chance to increase your
melee haste by 10% for 15 sec. Fist - Attacks from your fist weapons
have a $s3% chance to reduce the armor of your target by 20% for 6
sec." I think this is for Enhancement
* Static Shock Rank 3 You have a $s1% chance to hit your target
with a Lightning Shield Orb charge when you do damage, and increases
your spell damage by $s2% when you have Lightning Shield active.
* Improved Stormstrike Rank 2 Increases the amount of Stormstrike
charges by $s2, and reduces the cooldown by $s1 sec.
* Improved Shamanistic Rage Rank 1 While under the effect of
Shamanistic Rage, you have a $s1% chance also cause you to be immune
to all stun, snare and movement impairing effects.
* Thunder Rank 1 You call down a bolt of lightning, energizing you
and damaging nearby enemies within $a1 yards. Restores $s2% mana to
you and deals $s1 Nature damage to all nearby enemies, knocking them
back $s3 yards. Elemental AoE!
* Storm, Earth and Fire Rank 5 Your Frost Shock has a $s1% chance
to root the target in frozen ice for 2 sec., your Earth Shock's range
is increased by $s2 yards and the periodic damage done by your Flame
Shock is increased by $s3%. This so better be an enhancement talent
* Skin of Earth Thorns sprout from the friendly target causing $s1
Nature damage to attackers when hit. Lasts $d. Not sure if this is
shaman or not
* Iron Might Increases the caster's damage it deals by $s1% for
$d. Again, not sure
* Lava Flow Rank 3 Increases the amount of spell damage gained
while having Flametongue Weapon equipped by $s1%, and increases the
damage done by your Flame Shock and Lava Burst by $s2%. Flametongue is
useful!!!
* Astral Shift Rank 2 When you are critically hit twice in a row,
you have a $s1% chance to shift into the Astra Plane, causing you to
be immune to all physical damage for 3 sec. This effect has a 30
second cooldown.
* Summon Air Elemental Summons an Air Elemental to accompany the
caster until dismissed.
* Elemental Oath Rank 2 Increases your chance to hit with all
spells by $s1% while Elemental Mastery or Elemental Focus is
active. :doh: just when I thought the talents were going to be all
good (unless there's a massive drop in hit availability)

[Solwolf]

the improvements always look good (although from what I've seen
elemental seems underwhelming) - but I wonder if we're forever caught
in a one-expansion-behind negative power loop.

I think, if i play my shaman in WotLK, I'll go enhance. After 2 or 3
years of mostly pew pew, maybe it's time to relearn the class again
and smash things. Warlock is lookin' good though...

[JC McCormick]

Lava Burst commentary:

Is that a sustained fire nuke I detect?  Oh, wait, no.  Eight second cooldown.  It is a controlled crit, though!  That lessens the need for crit gear to be successful, and it seems to put mana conservation directly into the hands of the player.  Less proc reliance is always a big plus.  2 sec cast, so definitely possible to use it while kiting.  Huge base damage.  Lava Burst isn't a spec-specific spell, too, so that puts a guaranteed crit into the hands of any shaman on an 8 second cooldown.  This will be formidable in pvp.

[iapetes]

I haven't had the chance to confirm that stuff, but wotlk.wikidot is
pretty reliable. I don't know if Hex is real or not. Before now no new
trainable spells were available on alpha, so I'll have to ask about
it. Overall I like the new talents though. They manage to accomplish
most of the stuff that I think we wanted to see.

-Ghost wolf summons and spirit link are just cool to have, and imp.
-SR gives enhancement that beast within effect everyone asked for.
-Intellect isn't a practically wasted stat for enh damage anymore.
-Lightning shield is at least useful for enh.
-Flameshock is actually good for something and elemental dpsing got a
bit of depth added to it with lava burst.
-Astral shift looks nice for pvp.
-Thunder is also nice looking. It's AoE damage is kinda like, whatever
who cares, but the whole "Melee gtfo" element to it is cool (handy
spell interrupt too, if used like warstomp), plus it provides some
mana regen.
-Hex, assuming it's real, is pretty much what I expected Hex would be
like if Blizz did implement it, barring the 'you can still move while
CC'd' concept blizz has been playing with lately. I'd like to know the
duration of the spell for pve, but we know it will last a max of 10
seconds in pvp.

I have a few complaints though
-Elemental oath. Maybe I don't fully understand how spell hit
functions, but that seems like it would be useless to anyone at the
hit cap.
-Totem of Wrath is still filling that 41 pt 'active' slot.
-No earthquake spell confirmed yet =(

[iapetes]

Oh, and here's a link from war-tools that I think is pretty accurate:
http://www.war-tools.com/t54343.html?b=6025c34s223005031050213353115231051z0

[iapetes]

As for:

"the improvements always look good (although from what I've seen
elemental seems underwhelming) - but I wonder if we're forever caught
in a one-expansion-behind negative power loop."

Ya know, I'm not trying to say that that's a totally unwarranted
concern, because it is a possibility that Shamans will still suck at
80 or whatever. But not everyone gets the same level of awesomeness
out of the expansions. And it's not like shamans started behind in
pvp. At 60 they were pretty damn good for pvp, especially elemental.
Blizzard used the last expansion to focus on bringing Shamans up to
par in PvE, and ended up neglecting PvP too much. But they did succeed
at making shamans not suck in PvE. With this expansion however, since
raiding balance is in a pretty good place now (as opposed to the
complete suckitude of hybrids and some dps classes pre-tBC that had to
be fixed), Blizzard can, and seems to be, really work on PvP balance
some more and not devote so much of the new stuff to radically
changing PvE balance.

Plus, it's not like everyone gets super awesome crap. Really, the
biggest buffs to specs for pvp have been to the ones that really suck,
like feral and shadow. OTOH, the stuff that, say, warriors got is
cool, but doesn't appear to shake up balance in the same sort of ways.
And the mage stuff is just plain underwhelming.

[iapetes]

I just have to go for the quadruple post here, it occurred to me just
now that elemental devastation may be worth taking because not only is
it more accessible now, but there's this little gem of a change: "Hit
Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee
attacks and spells." Meaning Enhancement Shamans will theoretically
have nearly as much spell crit as melee crit.

[Nert]

Neat, they finally changed Improved Lightning Shield to Elemental
Shields :D

Iapetes, the Elemental Oath talent is, strangely enough, a pvp focused
talent. In conjunction with Elemental Mastery, it would allow a Shaman
to pierce a Cloak of Shadows, or more easily get through the higher
spell resistances of Warlocks (and now Arcane Mages). Unless there a
lot of high spell resistance mobs/gimmicks in Lich King raiding, it
will probably not be picked up for PvE. Although, maybe it'll be
different after the nerf to spell hit rating from talents...

[iapetes]

I didn't even notice that one. War-pirate is back up again though,
with the Shaman stuff there, and it looks like the war-tools one is in
fact accurate. http://war-tools.darlinganime.com/index.php?i=shaman

Between the shields talent and imp earth shield, the whole "improves
healing done by earthshield by @%" thing seems almost overdone, like
now I want them to replace imp earth shield <.<

[Binkenstein]

Thunder looks a little gimmiky from a PvE perspective, and Storm Earth
and Fire is going to be downright useless for PvE

Hopefully these get changed, along with the lava blast cooldown. I
don't want to keep playing the spam LB and use CD abilities when up
game forever.

On Jun 15, 4:38 am, iapetes <iape...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I didn't even notice that one. War-pirate is back up again though,
> with the Shaman stuff there, and it looks like the war-tools one is in

> fact accurate.http://war-tools.darlinganime.com/index.php?i=shaman

[Nert]

Easy fix for Improved Earth Shield: 50/100% to not be dispelled. If
that's seen as being too powerful, you could easily make it like
Improved Arcane Missles, where the spell receives a pretty large
benefit in exchange for a minor nerf. This would be highly desirable
in PVP, of course, and would put less pressure on PvE Shamans to pick
it up. Which would be nice, because the Restoration tree (like some
others) is still pretty bloated : /

Oh btw Iapetes, the character I'm working on now to deal with my alt-
itis is a Protection Paladin. Tanking 5 mans so far has been a blast,
and I've already set aside a decent amount of gear to get ready to
tank some of the easier raids. It's a shame that Seal of Vengeance is
only really helpful on bosses that don't move at all, because it
initially seemed like a fun way to hold aggro : /

> > now I want them to replace imp earth shield <.<- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[JC McCormick]

I really don't see the reason to remove the 8sec cd on Lavabolt/Lava Burst.  The thing is, it can guarantee a crit - if you remove the cooldown, you might lose that too.

[Solwolf]

wow, the top of the elemental tree is really loaded. I don't see how
anyone could justify NOT getting the standard restoration talents that
synergize with elemental, using 20 points (e.g., +hit, +crit), leaving
an elementalist with 51pts to spend in the tree, and 51 points alone.

I do like the lava burst/flameshock mechanic - gives us a reason to
not LB spam all raid, but has the drawback of increased mana usage and
decreased range to the target.

I'm curious to see how itemization affects elemental/resto - if the
gear is interchangible, what kind of pressure will there be to get
elementalists to respec resto on a moment's notice.

[Solwolf]

Oh, I should add, too, that enhancement shaman can spec to get +2 SS
charges, which will directly increase elemental shaman damage on raid
bosses. 4 SS charges per stormstrike and no other nature dmg users
means a pretty good portion of elemental LB's will get the SS debuff
damage increase, assuming there's 1 elemental per raid.

On Jun 15, 12:34 pm, "JC McCormick" <esmev...@gmail.com> wrote:

[JC McCormick]

Iapetes, I think you exposed Darlinganime to the theoretical lurking blues ;)  Site's down as of today.

[iapetes]

"Thunder looks a little gimmiky from a PvE perspective, and Storm
Earth

and Fire is going to be downright useless for PvE. Hopefully these get

changed, along with the lava blast cooldown. I don't want to keep
playing the spam LB and use CD abilities when up game forever."

If lava blast had no cooldown, then you'd just spam whichever spell
does more damage. As it is now, you actually might switch it up some.
S,E+F might be useful, if flameshock becomes a regular part of your
rotation. But I do think lava burst might need a bit of a rework, like
doing more damage on a flameshocked target instead of a guaranteed
crit. As it is now, it seems like it will become a much less useful
spell when you get a ton of spell crit.

[iapetes]

"Oh, I should add, too, that enhancement shaman can spec to get +2 SS
charges, which will directly increase elemental shaman damage on raid
bosses. 4 SS charges per stormstrike and no other nature dmg users
means a pretty good portion of elemental LB's will get the SS debuff
damage increase, assuming there's 1 elemental per raid. "

Those will be getting used by lightning shield too though.

[Solwolf]

One would hope enhancement shaman would not use lightning shield in
raids for that exact reason, just like hunters with Windserpent pets
or any other class (other than Balance druids) which have a low damage
nature attack.

I'd much rather see a 2000 base-dmg lightning bolt or 1000 base-dmg
Lightning Overload LB get the +20% dmg than a 700dmg lightning shield
orb. I should mention that after 2-3 years of elemental, if I level
my shaman in WotLK at all (which is honestly seriously in doubt), I'm
going enhance this time around. I know I wouldn't want my LS orbs
stealing debuffs from elementals.

I really do love my shaman, too. I identify with him in game... but
man, after the dps-on-trash, heal-on-bosses crap of Vanilla WoW; then
dps-except-when-we-REALLY-need-healers, but even then you can't
possibly be a top notch DPSer anyway, plus you are completely left
behind in PvP of TBC; I'm wondering if maybe I should abandon ship and
level my warlock in WotLK. Not in a FotM kind of way, but in the "if
I really want to be a #1-on-the-meters class, play a pure dps'er" sort
of way.

[iapetes]

Yeah I know, I actually almost think that stormstrike should be
changed to personal damage for that reason. I mean, elemental will get
their 'curse of elements' from moonkins, basically. I'd hate to see
Enhancement shamans not use that new 'feature' because of ele shamans.
But whatever.

[JC McCormick]

I really, really am a fan of Lava Burst just as it is.

Completely not liking Static Shock though.  I'm curious as to why it didn't branch out to include water shield charges.  Personally I think that spending water shield charges on offensive attacks would be more useful in anything but pvp.

But I guess it could just be a pvp talent.

[iapetes]

It's more dps. 'Nuff said pretty much :P

[JC McCormick]

I don't suppose a highly geared enhancement shaman would have many mana issues to worry about which would require water shield to compensate for.  30% of AP while raid buffed must be huge.  Getting extra DPS from lightning shield makes a bit more sense in that context, I guess.

[Binkenstein]

Came up with a small tweak that could fix the elemental talents.
Storm Earth and Fire - 1/2/3/4/5% extra chance to proc LO on bolt
casts. 20/40/60/80/100% chance to add a flame shock dot to the target
Thunder - Returns mana to you, but hits current target instead, be it
friendly or hostile.

[Richard A. Millard]

Hi Guys!

WHATS GOING ON IN HERE?

[Korgalla]

I would like lava blast more if perhaps Storm Earth and Fire increased
the range of Flame Shock to 32 yards at least. Then it would be a
viable addition to the rotation without making me stand 15 yards
closer than everyone else.