Thread: *3.1 PTR Shaman Patch Notes (Updated 3/19/09)*

Latest Shaman 3.1 PTR Info:



Updated 3/19/09


General

* Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating.
* Haste Rating: shamans, paladins, druids, and death knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.
* Hysteria, Tricks of the Trade, Enrage, Wrecking Crew, Death Wish, Arcane Power, Owlkin Frenzy, Beast Within, and Avenging Wrath damage bonuses no longer stack together.
* Spirit: The amount of mana regeneration granted by this stat has been reduced by 40%.
* Taunts: All player or pet-generated taunts now have a shared diminish category.


Shaman

* Bloodlust/Heroism: Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes, but Sated and Exhausted now last 10 minutes.
* Flametongue Weapon: Bonus damage from spell power now based on weapon speed. Slower weapons will benefit more from spell power.
* Frostbrand Weapon: Damage increased by approximately 20%.
* Mana Spring Totem: This totem has been redesigned. It now provides the same mana benefit as Blessing of Wisdom to the entire party or raid, but is exclusive with that effect.
* Poison Cleansing Totem and Disease Cleansing Totem have been merged into Cleansing Totem. Cleansing Totem pulses every 3 seconds, down from 5.

* Talents:

o Enhancement
+ Earthen Power redesigned: Your Earthbind Totem has a 50/100% chance to also remove all snare effects and make you and nearby friendly targets immune to them for 5 seconds when it pulses.
+ Flurry: Now provides 5/10/15/20/25% haste instead of 10/15/20/25/30%.
+ New Talent: Frozen Power: Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Lash and Shock spells by 5/10% on targets afflicted by your Frostbrand Attack effect, and your Frost Shock has a 50/100% chance to root the target in Ice for 5 seconds when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.
+ Lava Lash now has a new icon.
+ Spirit Weapons: Now reduces all threat generated by 30%, not just physical attacks.
+ Stormstrike charges have been increased by 2, and cooldown reduced by 2 seconds.
+ Improved Stormstrike redesigned: When you Stormstrike, you have a 50/100% chance to immediately grant you 20% of your base mana.
+ Toughness: No longer increases your armor. Instead, this talent now increases your total stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%.
+ Unleashed Rage: Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Now also increases your total expertise by 3/6/9.

o Elemental
+ New Talent: Booming Echoes: Reduces the cooldown of your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 1/2 seconds, and increases the direct damage done by your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 10/20%.
+ Elemental Mastery redesigned: When activated, your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst spell becomes an instant cast spell. In addition, your Fire, Frost and Nature damage spells have a 15% increased critical strike chance for 15 seconds. Elemental Mastery now shares a cooldown with Nature’s Swiftness.
+ Elemental Reach: Now also increases the range of your Flame Shock spell by 5/10/15 yards.
+ Lava Flows: No longer increases the range of your Flame Shock spell, but now increases your casting speed by 10/20/30% when your Flame Shock spell is dispelled for 6 seconds.
+ Lightning Overload: Reduced to 3 points (7/14/20%), down from 5.
+ Storm, Earth and Fire: No longer increases the range of your Earth Shock or Wind Shock spells, but now also causes your Earthbind Totem to have a 33/66/100% chance to root all nearby enemies for 5 seconds when initially cast.
+ Thunderstorm can now be cast while stunned.

o Restoration
+ Ancestral Awakening: This talent now accounts for your ineffective healing, rather than effective.
+ Ancestral Healing and Healing Grace have swapped places in the Restoration talent tree.
+ Cleanse Spirit now has a new icon.
+ Mana Tide Totem: This spell no longer costs mana.
+ Restorative Totems: Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Increases the effect of your Mana Spring Totem by 7/12/20%, and increases the amount healed by your Healing Stream Totem by 15/30/45%.
+ Riptide: This spell has a new icon.
+ Tidal Force: Now has a new spell effect.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Earth Shield: Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.
* Glyph of Feral Spirit: Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
* Glyph of Hex: Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.
* Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.
* Glyph of Totem of Wrath: When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for 5 minutes.
* Glyph of Thunder -- Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 10 sec. (Up from 7 Sec)
* Glyph of Riptide -- Increases the duration of Riptide by 6 sec. (Up from 3 sec)


Tier 8 Set Bonus

* Shaman T8 Enhancement 2P Bonus -- Increases the damage done by Lava Lash and Stormstrike by 20%. (0 yd, cast: 0 seconds, val1: 20)
* Shaman T8 Enhancement 4P Bonus -- Increases the frequency of Maelstrom Weapon being triggered by your melee weapon attacks by 20%.
* Shaman T8 Restoration 2P Bonus -- Reduces the cooldown on Riptide by 1 sec.
* Shaman T8 Restoration 4P Bonus -- Reduces the cast time of Chain Heal by 0.2 sec.
* Shaman T8 Elemental 2P Bonus -- The periodic damage dealt by your Flame Shock can now be critical strikes.
* Shaman T8 Elemental 4P 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. (Still being worked on I think)


Tier 8 Relics

* Shaman T8 Enhancement Relic -- Increases weapon damage when you use Stormstrike by 155.
* Shaman T8 Restoration Relic -- Increases the base amount healed by your chain heal by 243.
* Shaman T8 Elemental Relic -- Increases the base damage of your Lavaburst by 215.



Ghostcrawler on Enhancement Weapon Imbues:

Here is a mini Enhancement enchant update. I know you guys have been itching for this for awhile. It just took the designers some time to sit down and discuss the issue, and then I had to catch up with the discussion after being out.

1) The extra AP for the Windfury Weapon Glyph is not intentional and I believe has been hotfixed.

2) Our goal is WF / FT on main hand / offhand.

3) Our goal is Enhancement generally favors slow weapons for main hand / offhand.

4) To satisfy 2 & 3, we are normalizing flametongue's damage to weapon speed. If you use a fast weapon now for FT, your damage will come down. If you use a slow weapon, your damage will come up. Please keep that in mind as you continue to gear up preparing for patch 3.1.

5) Our intention with these changes is not to nerf Enhancement damage overall. However, we are concerned that Enhancement PvE damage is quite high (compared to where other classes are in the 3.1 space) so it's possible that we will end up lowering your damage slightly. But the changes outlined above are not intended to do that.

6) Overall, we are really happy with the basic attack rotation of Enhancement. Shamans are pushing the buttons we want them to push and generally doing what we expect. PvP utility is still something we are looking at however.



Feel free to add anything else you have found about the newest patch.

*Edited to update and organize info.
Source: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patch...atchnotes.html

4) To satisfy 2 & 3, we are normalizing flametongue's damage to weapon speed. If you use a fast weapon now for FT, your damage will come down. If you use a slow weapon, your damage will come up. Please keep that in mind as you continue to gear up preparing for patch 3.1.

Currently with same gear in live servers and in PTR - Flametongue damage in OH is roughly cut by 50%. I have no idea whether this is bug or intended due to normalisation. Offhand used in testing is Angry Dread

I believe this change (Agility -> Expertise) was actually made today. No promises until you actually see it on the PTR.

Still 1/2/3% agility while writing this post.

Originally Posted by tears

Still 1/2/3% agility while writing this post.

Yes, that's because he means that it was made internally today (or so he believes). His remark on making it to the PTR means that they haven't pushed it out yet and it could be reverted or changed before that occurs.

Also, I find the comments from some of the non-Shamans in that thread amusing .

changes are not so bad but
"* Glyph of Totem of Wrath *new* -- When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for" this glpyh should be minor glyph maybe
glyph of shocking too

I don't think a 2/4/6 expertise talent will be necessary. 1/2/3 would almost be enough to cap expertise if you're using the Tier gear. That will make capping hit and expertise fairly easy so we can gem further in to the next priority.

If the stated intent of making the best option for Enhancement weapons is again slow/slow then it means setting aside my Hand of Nerub, which has certainly has a visually brutal appeal.

Originally Posted by Escatonic

I don't think a 2/4/6 expertise talent will be necessary. 1/2/3 would almost be enough to cap expertise if you're using the Tier gear. That will make capping hit and expertise fairly easy so we can gem further in to the next priority.

If the stated intent of making the best option for Enhancement weapons is again slow/slow then it means setting aside my Hand of Nerub, which has certainly has a visually brutal appeal.

Patch notes say its been changed to 3/6/9% already, whether this is actual % or flat out expertise it yet to be confirmed. 9 expertise seems an awful lot but it makes sense considering how we share gear with a class which needs none, probably other talents would take a nerf to counter balance though.

it is confirmed by GC it is 9 not 9%.

It is 3/6/9 expertise. Not sure where the % came from. It isn't in our tooltips at the moment.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/1544...oke-right.html

whats the expertise cap?

the new one according to EJ is 17 (or 140,2 rating)

PTR Also shows that Stormstrike has a 10s cooldown. Instead of 8s retail (talented ofc).

Originally Posted by Submarauder

PTR Also shows that Stormstrike has a 10s cooldown. Instead of 8s retail (talented ofc).

intended 10seconds

Originally Posted by Submarauder

PTR Also shows that Stormstrike has a 10s cooldown. Instead of 8s retail (talented ofc).

SS is bugged on PTR right now. They meant to combine the old Imp. SS with the original, giving Stormstrike a 8 sec cooldown to place 4 charges that will last 10 sec (down from 12 sec). This will prob be fixed in the next update, along with the expertise to UR change.

Another interesting bug in PTR that is causing alot of commotion is that players can no longer trinket out of HEX, and druid's cannot shapeshift out of it. Some say it is a glitch and will be fixed soon, but others argue that while cosmetically Hex appears to be a polymorph, in function is acts just like a pacify/silence....that is prevents melee/casters from any attacks or spells. It has gone from being the least useful to most useful CC in arena, but I predict this was just an oversight by the programmers. The major problem being how it functions differently when used in PVE vs PVP, and having no real "movement imparing effect".

Just tried PTR, finally after quite a long queue, and first thing i tried was new AA.

It works great It's passive 'increases bonus healing on crit by ~100%' now, and i love it. But also i have a feeling that it's casted way faster than before. Usually it took one GCD, now sometimes it instantly follows a spell, sometimes with a bit of lag (but ptr is lagged generaly so i blame it on this). If they indeed fixed it to be instant, or almost instant, then AA became awesome talent (i thought it was very good before, but now its simply awesome).

Originally Posted by Instant

Just tried PTR, finally after quite a long queue, and first thing i tried was new AA.

It works great It's passive 'increases bonus healing on crit by ~100%' now, and i love it. But also i have a feeling that it's casted way faster than before. Usually it took one GCD, now sometimes it instantly follows a spell, sometimes with a bit of lag (but ptr is lagged generaly so i blame it on this). If they indeed fixed it to be instant, or almost instant, then AA became awesome talent (i thought it was very good before, but now its simply awesome).

Congrats on getting in, I'm still waiting on my character copy.....


Good to hear AA is working smoothly now, seems like with what few Resto changes there were that Blizz is content with this spec for right now. I'm still curious to see how Frozen power is like, as well as how the shock cooldowns are gonna work for Elemental who spec Booming echoes. Also, are spirit wolves still glitched, ie not following you and spirit walk/taunt not working? And have you had some fun with untrinketable Hex in pvp? Can't wait for them to fix the server problems and process my toon so I can play XD

Originally Posted by Gunwolf

Congrats on getting in, I'm still waiting on my character copy.....


Good to hear AA is working smoothly now, seems like with what few Resto changes there were that Blizz is content with this spec for right now. I'm still curious to see how Frozen power is like, as well as how the shock cooldowns are gonna work for Elemental who spec Booming echoes. Also, are spirit wolves still glitched, ie not following you and spirit walk/taunt not working? And have you had some fun with untrinketable Hex in pvp? Can't wait for them to fix the server problems and process my toon so I can play XD

Yeah, AA working like this is EXCELLENT news, and it again opens up new possibilites with single target healing. Cause Healing Wave with Healing Way on target crits for 14k, and additional 4.5k from AA immiedietly after.

Cooldowns on shocks are like i said in other thread. If you cast Frost or Flame Shock, you trigger 4 sec CD for ALL shocks. If you cast Earth Shock you trigger 6 sec CD on ALL shocks.

Frozen power works great. Small frost nova like root around mobs feet. And of course you do it with any weapon enchant on you.

Wolf spirit walk works as it should

Couldnt check hex, cause noone around had pvp trinket :P But if it indeed is intended then we got one of best CC in game and promised utility for enh and ele

Originally Posted by wrrook

the new one according to EJ is 17 (or 140,2 rating)

Could you please link the source of this information? Cause it would be nice to not have to gem for expertise at all.

Originally Posted by Thyrandel

Could you please link the source of this information? Cause it would be nice to not have to gem for expertise at all.

26 (Old Expertise cap) - 9 (Expertise from UR talent) = 17 Expertise (New cap post 3.1)


Orc's dw axes will prob not have to gem at all, but other races might need only one or two gem slots as compared to before. This is good news for me as I can rotate out alot of gems and my expertise ring.

Just to be clear, the 3/6/9 Expertise from UR talent is given in Expertise, not a % as written in the patch notes. 9% of total expertise is almost as useleess as 3% agility. I must say I was pretty surprised when I first saw the change, I was expecting 2/4/6 Expertise....or even 1/2/3 Expertise in the traditional Shaman shafting we get after a bunch of buffs.

Thanks Blizzard