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Warlords of Draenor - Shaman Tier 17 Armor Sets
The latest alpha build added the Mythic version of the Shaman Tier 17 Armor set.

Warlords of Draenor changes things up slightly by using one set of art for Raid Finder, one set of art for Normal and Heroic, and one set of art for Mythic difficulty. You can find the Raid Finder armor sets in our Raid Finder armor sets preview.





Warlords of Draenor - Active Mana Regeneration
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As you may have noticed, the most recent update to the patch notes included the removal of the Active Mana Regeneration, and I'd like to take a moment to explain that a bit.

First, I'd like to dispel some misconceptions about what Active Mana Regeneration was. Due to the similar name, and how it had its own section in the patch notes, some people were under the impression that it was as significant a feature as Active Mitigation was for tanks; that was not the case. It was quite minor in its impact. We found, based on internal testing, that in order to make it impactful, we'd have to make it much, *much* stronger. As it was, most forms of it were only worth using when you had mismanaged your Mana and were trying to recover. Based on its low and unintuitive usage, we decided to remove it.

Now, a fair question to ask is, “Why not just tune it stronger, so it *is* worth using?” We considered that heavily. There is probably a design where most of your Mana regeneration comes from active sources, and all healers spend a significant portion of their time and ability usage actively regenerating their Mana. However, that is a gigantic change to healer gameplay, for all healers. Many existing healers would not enjoy that style of gameplay, and we're not even sure that it'd be better gameplay for a new player anyway. Overall, we think that, while that option does seem like it could potentially function, it would not be good for the game.

So where does that leave healers for Mana management? Rest assured, healers will still have significant control over their Mana. The primary method for doing that is through spell selection. We've tuned healers such that they have a mixture of high efficiency and high throughput heals. If you maximize efficiency, you’ll actually be spending less than you regenerate (as of about blue dungeon gear), so your Mana bar will actually be going up. The way you’ll spend that Mana is through high throughput heals, which will let you burn more mana for more throughput. As your gear improves, you'll get more and more Spirit, so that your Mana refills faster while casting efficient heals. And that additional Mana will translate into more and more of your spell casts being high throughput ones, as you get better gear. The key, as it relates to Active Mana Regeneration, is that if you find yourself at 30% Mana, and the boss is still at 50% health, you do have something to do to catch up: lean more on your efficient heals, until you catch up. You'll never end up in a situation where you run OOM and are unable to cast anything. Also important to note, all healers have some way to deal minor damage with no Mana cost now, so that they have something to do when there is no healing needed, if you're the type of player that feels compelled to always be casting something.

Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Recent Bloody Coins Battlegrounds Hotfix
Thanks for all the feedback on this change. We agree that the chance to earn a Bloody Coin from the Fire-Watcher’s Oath buff felt too low, especially with all the competition for killing blows in Battlegrounds. We’ve just pushed a hotfix that will increase the chance of earning a Bloody Coin from a killing blow while Fire-Watcher’s Oath is active to 100%. Enjoy! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlords of Draenor Ability Pruning
One of our primary goals for ability pruning is to clean out things you rarely use, but still want to have keybound. Scare Beast, Hibernate, etc are perfect examples of those sorts of abilities. They're rarely (if ever) used in PvE, and only really usable in extremely niche cases in PvP. But you still want it sitting on your action bar, and filling out one of your keybinds, for those rare occasions in which you actually do want to use it.

It's important to remember that the point of ability pruning isn't to just get rid of spells for the sake of getting rid of spells. We want to free up action bar and keybind space. If we remove something that's kind of cool, but you wouldn't have bound (or maybe not even on your action bar), then all we've really done is removed something that's kind of cool. There is some value in clearing up extraneous stuff in the spellbook, but we don't want to remove anything fun to achieve that. Eagle Eye doesn't take up keybind or even action bar space for the vast majority of players, but it's still fun to use, even if you're just clicking on the icon in your spellbook to cast it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Classes
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
what's the plans with death strike for frost/unholy? Or blood strike
Death Strike remains for all. Blood Strike is gone for all. (Celestalon)

Death Strike is a wast of resources for Frost/Unholy. Even in solo play. VR =/= DS
No, it's not, especially with baseline Dark Succor. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Kinda noticed the new RFK Blind Hunter Bat Model. Will Hunters be able to tame it? x:
Yes! (Muffinus)

Mage (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Does the +5% of Enhanced Pyrotechnics get improved by Critical Mass?
Yes. (Celestalon)
Can I assume the same for the +15% from Improved Pyroblast?
Yep. (Celestalon)

Priest (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Glyph of shadow and glyph of stars, are they here to stay?
Yes. (Celestalon)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / WoD Talent Calculator)
Will MS generate emberbits for destruction? Fury for demo?
Nope. (Celestalon)

PvP
I'd be very surprised if they were more then a passing craze; heavily used to start, then trickling down to lightly utilized ;-)
We're attaching rewards to them (honor, strongboxes) and they're solo queue. I expect more people will do skirmish then rated. (holinka)

Solo queue is also working as well.
The whole point is a more casual approach to arena. Playing alone or with friends. (holinka)
So does solo queue only face other solo queue? Otherwise it's an automatic disadvantage versus pre-made
Skirmish Matchmaking will never be perfectly balanced. I suggest rated if that's what you want. (holinka)
feel like it would be more fun to play with all randoms than to face an OP comp on Skype. I suggest rated if you want to group up.
I think you're missing the intent of skirmishes. It isn't for serious competition, it's for fun. Fast queues are most important. (holinka)

why are player health pools still so high. saw tank at 100 with 272k. by end of exp numbers will be back to normal. fail squish?
Player health in particular was squished by less to allow us to get rid of resilience. All other numbers are much more readable (WatcherDev)

Reputation / Questing
I have noticed that rare spawns turn gold on normal after being defeated and no longer give good loot. Only kill once?
Those aren't really what I'd call "rare" spawns. They're events you encounter while exploring, with a one-time reward. (WatcherDev)

Dark Legacy Comics #444
DLC #444 has been released.

This article was originally published in forum thread: Shaman Tier 17 Armor Sets, Warlords - Active Mana Regeneration, Blue Posts, DLC #444 started by chaud View original post
Comments 22 Comments
  1. moveth's Avatar
    I really like this shaman set. A lot of my guildies don't, though. Thin the steam/fog/whatever looks awesome.
  1. Nymhi's Avatar
    That first shaman set will look badass on taurens or orcs!

    I really like it ^^
  1. Ceroluthor's Avatar
    personally I'm liking the look on the LFR set especially the shoulders, that who Black Hole deal going on is really kick ass, granted the black hole would be more for mages than a shaman lol but the tornado is really nice as well
  1. Wayne25uk's Avatar
    Wouldnt the black holes suck his face into oblivion technically?
  1. brt2pp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ceroluthor View Post
    personally I'm liking the look on the LFR set especially the shoulders, that who Black Hole deal going on is really kick ass, granted the black hole would be more for mages than a shaman lol but the tornado is really nice as well
    tornado one isn't lfr it's normal/heroic lfr will get another sets
  1. kouby's Avatar
    This is pathetic, since the removal of spell ranks the ONLY skill required for a healer is to manage his mana. If the only way to manage your mana is by spell selection, knowing how the mechanics of wow function, this leaves litteraly no skill required to play healer. Not only will it be boring as hell, but there wont be a difference between a good player and an excellent player anymore, because even someone who s brain dead can figure out what spell to use when.
    Blizzard is putting a nail in the coffin of the only role which requires some actual thought in its gameplay. Fuck you blizzard, casuals arent going to play your 20man heroics, you ve just killed off what little was left of raidinf
  1. Teebone's Avatar
    Yet another awful raid set. It really is looking like LFR people got the better end of the stick.
  1. SteveZombie's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Teebone View Post
    Yet another awful raid set. It really is looking like LFR people got the better end of the stick.
    http://media.mmo-champion.com/images...normaillfr.jpg

    Something tells me you're not being entirely serious.
  1. stgeorge78's Avatar
    Blizzard is starting to cave already by removing active mana - hopefully this means most of the other ridiculous changes can be reverted also. Good to see they are not going to be stubborn like Cata and let Live confirm their mistakes via 2 million+ subscriber losses.
  1. Stormykitten's Avatar
    Hm, I hope they step up looks a bit for the normal set at least, in tier 18. I don't think it's the right way to go to only offer good quality sets to such a low % of the wow population. The design difference is okay, but I think the -quality- difference is obvious too. Or maybe it's just WoW's engine making sets with less details on it just look that much worse, i dunno.

    Also, active ways to regen mana is a lot more fun than selecting mana-efficient heals/spirit regen. Maybe it's just me though.
  1. Thelxi's Avatar
    They really are sticking with that engorged shoulder theme for shamans aren't they.
  1. mmocd50fce6b50's Avatar
    and we're not even sure that it'd be better gameplay for a new player anyway.
    That is again one major reason that slowly kills the game....
  1. Sensa's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Netskill View Post
    That is again one major reason that slowly kills the game....
    yep…I remember the good old days when you needed to manage your mana as a healer…it added a real dynamic to the play and thought process…without basically never having to worry about running out of mana they have essentially turned all healers into Cata Arcane Mages…can't get much more dumbed down than that.
  1. chiosu's Avatar
    Blizzard, don’t you dare remove Eye of Kilrogg for warlocks. This is one of my favorite spells in the game, and I will share one of my greatest memories of it.

    In the long-gone early days of The Burning Crusade, back when Karazhan was very difficult for the casual players, my guild was fighting our way through the raid. I don’t even think we were halfway through it, I don’t remember where exactly we were in the raid but the chess event wasn’t completed yet. We were stuck on a boss (Curator maybe? That dude took us forever when he was actually hard) and the guild had given up for the week - reset loomed in a couple of days. Anyways there was this glitch that allowed you to skip a bunch of bosses and go straight to Prince. I tried to convince some guildies to come with me and make our way to at least do chess event. No one wanted to, they didn’t think it was possible to even get to the room where chess event was (considering we had to beat some bosses to get there). My brother, also in the guild, wanted to try it so we figured we would at least try and 2-man it.

    I wish I remembered more of how exactly we got there, but I know we did the glitch to get to Prince. We backtracked from there, along the top of the tower, and had to face some serious trash to get to the chess event. I – being a warlock – soulstoned my brother who was a druid, the only class at the time with a battle rez, because I knew we were going to die at some point. There were a TON of those horror-flayer things, I have no idea what they’re called, in our path. I summoned my trusty Eye of Kilrogg and proceeded into the trash-filled room below. Somehow (I don’t think the spell does this anymore) the Eye aggroed all of these dudes, and I had to be careful not to let them hit me because that would cause the spell to end. I kited these guys as far as I could, as long as the duration of the spell would let me, and it ended up being a considerable distance. When the spell ran out we had a very slim window to sneak by the trash. We had speed potions with us and went as far as we possibly could. The trash was running back to their normal areas and had aggroed onto us so we sprinted as far as we could and into the corner of the basement room before we died. My brother soulstoned and shifted into cat form and stealthed across the room, managing to sneak past the mobs in the room. He rezzed me and with one more round of Eye of Kilrogg, I managed to clear a DIRECT PATH to chess event. It was miraculous, but we made it. It took us a few tries to figure out chess event as at that point: we hadn’t even done it with our 10-man group so we didn’t even know what was going on. But we figured it out after a few tries and the chest of loot appeared.

    Best part of the story? An epic ring upgrade dropped for me and an upgrade for my brother dropped. We BOTH got loot. The guild was kind of pissed at us, I mean they weren’t going to attempt it anyway, but whatever. And yeah we glitched our way to get there, but again, whatever. So, Blizzard, you think Eye of Kilrogg might just be some ‘cool’ spell sitting on our action bars – but to me, it’s more than that. It’s associated with one of my most epic memories of the game where it played a very instrumental role. So think about that while considering this ability pruning. That is all, good day.
  1. mmocbd24f84edd's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chiosu View Post
    Blizzard, don’t you dare remove Eye of Kilrogg for warlocks. This is one of my favorite spells in the game, and I will share one of my greatest memories of it.

    In the long-gone early days of The Burning Crusade, back when Karazhan was very difficult for the casual players, my guild was fighting our way through the raid. I don’t even think we were halfway through it, I don’t remember where exactly we were in the raid but the chess event wasn’t completed yet. We were stuck on a boss (Curator maybe? That dude took us forever when he was actually hard) and the guild had given up for the week - reset loomed in a couple of days. Anyways there was this glitch that allowed you to skip a bunch of bosses and go straight to Prince. I tried to convince some guildies to come with me and make our way to at least do chess event. No one wanted to, they didn’t think it was possible to even get to the room where chess event was (considering we had to beat some bosses to get there). My brother, also in the guild, wanted to try it so we figured we would at least try and 2-man it.

    I wish I remembered more of how exactly we got there, but I know we did the glitch to get to Prince. We backtracked from there, along the top of the tower, and had to face some serious trash to get to the chess event. I – being a warlock – soulstoned my brother who was a druid, the only class at the time with a battle rez, because I knew we were going to die at some point. There were a TON of those horror-flayer things, I have no idea what they’re called, in our path. I summoned my trusty Eye of Kilrogg and proceeded into the trash-filled room below. Somehow (I don’t think the spell does this anymore) the Eye aggroed all of these dudes, and I had to be careful not to let them hit me because that would cause the spell to end. I kited these guys as far as I could, as long as the duration of the spell would let me, and it ended up being a considerable distance. When the spell ran out we had a very slim window to sneak by the trash. We had speed potions with us and went as far as we possibly could. The trash was running back to their normal areas and had aggroed onto us so we sprinted as far as we could and into the corner of the basement room before we died. My brother soulstoned and shifted into cat form and stealthed across the room, managing to sneak past the mobs in the room. He rezzed me and with one more round of Eye of Kilrogg, I managed to clear a DIRECT PATH to chess event. It was miraculous, but we made it. It took us a few tries to figure out chess event as at that point: we hadn’t even done it with our 10-man group so we didn’t even know what was going on. But we figured it out after a few tries and the chest of loot appeared.

    Best part of the story? An epic ring upgrade dropped for me and an upgrade for my brother dropped. We BOTH got loot. The guild was kind of pissed at us, I mean they weren’t going to attempt it anyway, but whatever. And yeah we glitched our way to get there, but again, whatever. So, Blizzard, you think Eye of Kilrogg might just be some ‘cool’ spell sitting on our action bars – but to me, it’s more than that. It’s associated with one of my most epic memories of the game where it played a very instrumental role. So think about that while considering this ability pruning. That is all, good day.
    I actually use Eye of Kilrogg in almost every raid. It just became so much more useful during MoP. It moves very fast and if you use the glyph you can use it to quickly set up your demonic portal before a boss pull, without having to run across the room and back again. It has a well deserved spot on my actionbar. In combination with that glyph: Very good skill. They should rather cut curse of elements and make it a passive effect to our spells. That one is button- (and keybind-)bloat by definition.
  1. Shockeye's Avatar
    The blue post says "As your gear improves, you'll get more and more Spirit". But Blizz have said that they do not consider Spirit on gear as an essential healer stat, and with secondary stats being random, that gear chase for effective performance will be very difficult given the even greater dependency on RNG for successful role fulfillment.

    Has there been any change to how secondary stats are generated or assigned to gear? I haven't kept up there so perhaps my concern is moot?
  1. Binko's Avatar
    It's really an insult to player's intelligence to claim that you can now "manage" your mana by spell selection. This is not managing mana. This is being constrained by a steady-state mana regeneration that we now have no control over.

    In the end it's Blizzard's choice to simplify WoW for whatever reason. Probably they hope to appeal to younger gamers who are used to simpler games. Maybe they are planning a console version. Maybe it will simplify development and save money. Maybe they are giving primary focus to simple well-balanced PVP. Whatever.

    But stop lying to us. Stop dumbing the game down and then telling us "look we are making things smarter". Stop with all the propaganda. Just admit you've decided to make WoW simpler.
  1. Vermicious's Avatar
    So... humans can now be Shamans?

    /sarcasm

    I wish they'd show armor sets on relevant races... rather than always on humans.
  1. Peacemoon's Avatar
    It's important to remember that the point of ability pruning isn't to just get rid of spells for the sake of getting rid of spells. We want to free up action bar and keybind space.
    So gutting Guardian/Feral of Cat/Bear abilities is freeing up action bar space? I think the developers forgot that a Druid's action bar completely changes when they shapeshift. I.e. I think we can handle more than 2 abilities in our off spec form.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Binko View Post
    It's really an insult to player's intelligence to claim that you can now "manage" your mana by spell selection. This is not managing mana. This is being constrained by a steady-state mana regeneration that we now have no control over.

    In the end it's Blizzard's choice to simplify WoW for whatever reason. Probably they hope to appeal to younger gamers who are used to simpler games. Maybe they are planning a console version. Maybe it will simplify development and save money. Maybe they are giving primary focus to simple well-balanced PVP. Whatever.

    But stop lying to us. Stop dumbing the game down and then telling us "look we are making things smarter". Stop with all the propaganda. Just admit you've decided to make WoW simpler.
    Healing has always been about mana management. Mana management has always been about not blowing your mana on a huge/inefficient spell when a smaller one is all that is required.
  1. Cows For Life's Avatar
    However, that is a gigantic change to healer gameplay, for all healers. Many existing healers would not enjoy that style of gameplay, and we're not even sure that it'd be better gameplay for a new player anyway.
    Heh. Did they say that to themselves the last half dozen times they completely upheaved healing gameplay and mechanics?

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