Shaman changes, blue posts.

[Boubouille]

Update : Yeah, no more update today, it was a small one anyway.
News might be updated in a few hours if I can have a bug fixed, or if I can convert the 15% of people using Internet Explorer 6 on this site to Firefox in the same time.

Elemental Shaman 2.3
You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake posts. In the end, you get an upgrade for all the elemental shamans who are still alive.

Elemental shaman were told that while we'd be nerfing the damage coefficients for lightning bolt and chain lightning bolt in patch 2.3, overall they'd notice a damage increase. We know most of your tests reveal a damage decrease, however. We've been running extensive tests of our own and have identified that there is approximately a 6% nerf to elemental dps (depending on gear of course). As a result, we're going to increase lightning bolt and chain lightning bolt's coefficient so that elemental shaman gain approximately 5 to 6% of their damage back if you assume roughly 1200 spell damage.

It should break down as follows

• If you have below 1100 spell damage you will see a slight buff to your dps
• If you are between 1100 and 1200 spell damage you should see neither a decrease or increase to your dps
• If you are over 1200 spell damage you will see a slight nerf to your dps.
  

This change should be hotfixed onto the PTR at some point soon, and we'll be watching the situation closely.

2vs2 is unfair
There already was a similar post a few days ago, but this one definitely confirms that they don't really plan to do anything to balance 2vs2 arenas.

I'm not saying you're wrong. There are a number of changes, adjustments, and tweaks that could be made to make warlocks less powerful in smaller scale PvP ... but by your logic alone we can say that the strength of warlocks is diminished as the scale of the PvP increases.

I'm not saying it's right that warlocks should be so powerful as a solo class simply because the balance is aimed somewhere else, but that's the way it is and it has been said that little to no balancing will be done for 1vs1 or 2vs2 scenarios. It was even announced recently that there was almost not going to be a 2vs2 arena due to balance concerns.

The bottom line is that warlocks are a powerful solo class - but I don't remember anyone claiming that they would be anything else and it is only natural that some of that powerful solo ability would transfer across to solo PvP, even if it was originally intended to be a PvE strength.

Other blue posts
Nothing really interesting today, end of the week and all.

PvP

• There is currently a bug causing leadership to be passed around for no discernible reason, it's being investigated and hopefully fixed in an upcoming patch. (Source)
  

Other

• Blizzard added a Brewfest Gallery to their site, you might want to check it if you never saw the dark iron invasion or things like that. (Source)
• No, no, no, and no, they're not creating classic realms. (Source)
• Hortus like punch and pie. (Source)
  

Wrath of the Lich King

• Northrend will be creepy. Well, at least the art will be. (Source)

[Eetabeetay]

who the hell still uses IE. Firefox is FTW.

[squall14716]

Thank fucking god they are finally sorta unnerfing elemental shaman.

[Kozikk]

I like how they say 1200 damage+, and you will still see a nerf. I personally am in 4/5 T5, with BT off-tier pieces, and I have around 1050 dmg. My friend is in 5/5 T6, and pretty much the best gear available, and she only has 1150dmg.... Basically, until we start seeing sunwell gear, no one can be over 1200 dmg. Thank you blizz, for giving use some hope out there. To shaman out there, my best suggestion is to stack crit, and to get a Lightning Capacitor. With a 800 dmg hit (1150-ish crit), it will be going off constantly with the change to LO, with almost the same damage as a LO. With these changes, we will end up seeing a nice buff to our raid dps.

[Xombo]

As a raiding ele sham O THANK GOD for this change *finally*. I heard of so many ele shams re-rolling/quitting all because blizz chose it suitable to nerf ele sham dps, but know that they have finally come back to their senses and realized that ele shams did *not* need a nerf, I think ele shams can be at peace-ish-kinda....for now.

The whole "more than +1200 dmg" where it becomes a nerf is, yes, very tough to reach currently in game, but come sunwell/wotlk, it may be a bit more reachable. I think that this will allow ele shams to be able to focus a bit more on spell crit instead of both spell dmg and spell crit.

I'm calling that top raiding elemental shamans will be gemming gear out with +spell crit slots instead of the o so sexy (right now) potent "(insert name, bt gem or rare), here" gems. This will however, cause a whoooole ton more of exicitingly fun ele sham aggro. And people think tanks hate our aggro right now? O just you wait hehe...

Thanks blizz for this buff, it's well appreciated and well needed :P.

[Zaby]

Basically, until we start seeing sunwell gear, no one can be over 1200 dmg.

Thats not true.
I'm at 1133 spelldmg with 4/5 t6. Add the relict (85), the totem (101) and the tier6 2 piece bonus (45) and I end up at 1364 passive with 4 totems dropped. Not to mention on-use / on-crit trinkets or blood fury which also adds a nice amount of spelldmg.

[loopy]

who the hell still uses IE. Firefox is FTW.

You might want to read this first:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Suppor...efoxMyths.html

I do a bit of web design on the side and so use IE/Firefox/Opera and Safari on a regular basis to test my pages. I have no real operational bias towards any of them, they all do a very similar job with pretty much equal competence for the most part.

As far as I can tell it's just a question of personal preference really.

[Sniperkalle]

Stay on topic please.

on topic: omg shaman buff, for real? Oo
Wonder if they will change something for shamans making them able to go high rating in 3v3/2v2

[Shinkou]

Stay on topic please.

on topic: omg shaman buff, for real? Oo
Wonder if they will change something for shamans making them able to go high rating in 3v3/2v2

He was on topic. What I love about those myths is that they are using old vers. instead of the current ones. I don't really care how good IE6/7 were compared to Firefox 1.x, I'd like to see how the current up to date browsers compete against each other.

[Archdale]

You might want to read this first:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Suppor...efoxMyths.html

I do a bit of web design on the side and so use IE/Firefox/Opera and Safari on a regular basis to test my pages. I have no real operational bias towards any of them, they all do a very similar job with pretty much equal competence for the most part.

As far as I can tell it's just a question of personal preference really.

IE vs Firefox, has to do with how "built-in" IE is to Windows, leaving lots of security holes. While neither are W3.org compliant 100%, I hate colored scroll bars, which isn't in the HTML standard, just an IE thing. That webpage is the same as a fanboy for firefox, but against.

And woot shaman! I'm only at 810, but I don't raid, so PvP wise, I'm very happy, I'm aiming for 1k by the time I'm in full season 3 gear.

[galvin]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...3951&sid=1#175

Kalgan already posted about 2v2 balance, I would take the lead developer over some CM post. They'll fix it eventually or they'll have to pull 2v2s out. Its getting to the point where you see the same team makeups too often at the high brackets, making it less fun.

[namahanna]

I'd say use the www.Crashie.com lines.

<script>for(x in document.write){document.write(x);}</script>
This one does the trick for older versions: <input type crash>

[Wildhorn]

I like how they say 1200 damage+, and you will still see a nerf. I personally am in 4/5 T5, with BT off-tier pieces, and I have around 1050 dmg. My friend is in 5/5 T6, and pretty much the best gear available, and she only has 1150dmg.... Basically, until we start seeing sunwell gear, no one can be over 1200 dmg. Thank you blizz, for giving use some hope out there. To shaman out there, my best suggestion is to stack crit, and to get a Lightning Capacitor. With a 800 dmg hit (1150-ish crit), it will be going off constantly with the change to LO, with almost the same damage as a LO. With these changes, we will end up seeing a nice buff to our raid dps.

Link to your armory please?

Because if you are in T5 raid buffed, you should have over 1200 +dmg.

[Niilas]

I'm really pleased with this, we did indeed not need a nerf.
Or well at least not a big one:


Cause as many allready pointed out most bt/mh shamans will have above 1200 nature spell dmg buffed.

ITo shaman out there, my best suggestion is to stack crit, and to get a Lightning Capacitor. With a 800 dmg hit (1150-ish crit), it will be going off constantly with the change to LO, with almost the same damage as a LO.

Sorry to disapoint you but blizz is adding a internal CD on TLC so it can only proc the charge ever 2.5 sec so therefore this will be pure rubish for elemental shamans ??? ???

I think they did this because it was pretty overpowered for arcane mages, but then again it is/was pretty "overpowered" for us elemental shammies aswell a single trinket doing ladding liek 50-60 dps i quite alot :P

[Ordin]

Has anyone tested this? Are they saying the spell damage coefficient is nerfed just not as bad as it was before? So the lightning overload buff is enough to compensate for the spell damage nerf until you get to around 1100-1200 spell damage?

Our elemental shaman was saying that his lightning bolts are hitting for considerably less damage and he has 750 spell damage in his pvp gear.

Even if these changes work out to be a slight dps buff for raid dps it works out to be a significant nerf to pvp dps because individual bolts hit for less and burst damage potential went down.

[Niilas]

I haven't rly felt any difference, i would say my lb are hitting for more or less the same
both PvE, in bt, and PvP wise that is..
And I still have quite nice burst dmg, infact i would say it's been somewhat improved due to extra lightning overload porcs

And damm what a mana buff