Shaman Cataclysm Talent Preview

[Wolfie of Medivh]

I still don't understand spirit weapons, unless you think tanks are going to have problems keeping aggro and our dump every 6seconds isn't enough

I'm actually hopping it gets dropped since it is already moved away from the necessary talents

Being how squishy we are, one bad pull is enough. Spirit Weapons is a huge help, especially with tanking not going to be as easy as it is in Wrath.

[Sacredseraphim]

All i have to say is this:

Elemental Precision (3 ranks available) - Increases your chance to hit with Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 1/2/3% and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 33/66/100% of your spirit.

Finally a use for spirit on an elemental shaman. And its a big one.
/nut

[Balance]

Seems to me elemental shaman dps will be substantially higher in Cata (obviously, I mean compared to other classes closer to end game) than it is now.

[Falling]

You guys are such crybabies! What is all this whine I see about having a tight rotation? I got in the top 20 on (enh) dps yesterday on Marrowgar25hc, and I barely looked at any timers or bars. I even opened my chat at times... If you people really have problems with the ways of the enhancement shaman you should really just play your spec more, just keep doing your thing on the dummies till you have it in your fingers...

I find these new talents totally bullshit. We barely don't have anything new at all! The searing totem thingy is also really disappointing because all it does is buffing a totem, forcing us to move away from magma totem. I really don't like that change. They could at least have gone and buffed the searing totem so that it actually did more dps to a single target (no news on new skills yet tho, so it might come) then magma totem does without talents. And with this change to searing totem I pray to god that they have made it possible for us to decide which target the searing totem attacks. If we would do like we do today and redropping the totem over and over until it hits the target you want it to then.......

I am worried when I look at these talents. None of them are talking about any kind of new skill that we might get (intentionally I guess(hope)), and all the new things that we got are things that other classes got already, which is balancing it all up I guess. But there are still no fixes for our bad damage, and now we even get LESS aoe damage... (no magma). Honestly, I don't get what Blizzard are doing if these are the final talents for my spec.

What really irritates me about these talents are the fact that I will be sitting there with a LOT of free time that I can use to chat with people, or some other bullshit.
Not having to refresh Lightning Shield? It's a nice change that should have been there from the start!
No magma totem spam? Should have been there long ago, but this new talent will make it so that you can't really aoe and single target at the same time, isn't that kinda, uhm... bad? + you get more freetime that you used for the magma totem spamming.
Having to wait for 5 stacks of Searing Flames on the target before you can use Lava Lash? Why, god, why. Why are we getting all this free time that we already had enough of?

I really hope Blizzard is giving us all this free time because they have a new fancy skill they want us to use, so they make room for it. If not, the spec will be just even more faceroll then it is today >_< (They even promised us something that would force us to choose an ability over another so that it would be way easier to be good, or bad when it comes to how much damage you do...)

I really hope that Blizzard just says that these are the somewhat final talents at the moment because these were the talents that leaked earlier in the alpha, just to chill down the people, or something... and that they have something better stored for later.

anyway, this is the talent spec that I see as BiS so far for Cataclysm: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#hVhNVbZxIcoVueoucouct

[aikouka]

I find these new talents totally bullshit. We barely don't have anything new at all! The searing totem thingy is also really disappointing because all it does is buffing a totem, forcing us to move away from magma totem. I really don't like that change. They could at least have gone and buffed the searing totem so that it actually did more dps to a single target (no news on new skills yet tho, so it might come) then magma totem does without talents. And with this change to searing totem I pray to god that they have made it possible for us to decide which target the searing totem attacks. If we would do like we do today and redropping the totem over and over until it hits the target you want it to then.......

Unless I missed something, the only buff was the Searing Flames talent. The thing is, Searing Flames will really just end up being a mechanic that provides light DPS and is used to buff Lava Lash. If you have the first Searing Totem blast hit right after Lava Lash goes off, you have to consider that your initial hit will only execute through about 2/3 of it's DoT duration. Everything after that point will go through even less before it is removed by the next Lava Lash. This could change of course... I think we'd need to poke and prod the numbers a bit to see what works the best.

Essentially what I'm saying is that Searing Totem itself really isn't being buffed in what we'll see in our damage output. Sure, Searing Flames will do some bonus damage, but I wouldn't consider it game-changing. What we'll be using it for is the bonus damage to Lava Lash.

What really irritates me about these talents are the fact that I will be sitting there with a LOT of free time that I can use to chat with people, or some other bullshit.
Not having to refresh Lightning Shield? It's a nice change that should have been there from the start!
No magma totem spam? Should have been there long ago, but this new talent will make it so that you can't really aoe and single target at the same time, isn't that kinda, uhm... bad? + you get more freetime that you used for the magma totem spamming.
Having to wait for 5 stacks of Searing Flames on the target before you can use Lava Lash? Why, god, why. Why are we getting all this free time that we already had enough of

- You get almost 2 minutes each fight without Magma Totem spam from your FE, we are fairly used to this already.
- Lava Lash has a 10 second cooldown. Searing Flames can stack up to 5 times. Searing Totem attacks every 2 seconds. So, in about 10-11 seconds, we should have 5 stacks (consider that it is an actual fire ball that is fired, so it has travel time). In other words, we won't really be waiting on this!

[Kalutica]

Am I the only one that sees that elemental just lost 8% crit????

5% on the Call of Thunder and 3% from our totem of wrath.
Dunno about the 15 sec Cd on earthquake seems like the Pve usage will be none

I like the Lava burst cd reset tho and the pvp talents in resto

Looking at the overload talent does this mean it will become a passive learnable skill for all specs? would be sick for enhancement

[Foxhoundn]

yeah ffs replace the stat boosters for something actually interesting! 2 points to make GW insta? bullshit!

[Falling]

Yes, we already got FE, but that's for 2minutes, and fights lasts way longer then that so...

Well, my point was that this talent makes Searing Totem better then Magma Totem since it buffs Lava Lash, and Magma Totem don't. I should have said buffing Searing Totems priority or something to make my post less confusing. But really, the talent does force us to use Searing instead of Magma, aka a buff to the totem, and the damage from the dot makes the totem do more damage in a way.

I still wonder tho, does the Searing Flames stacks, stack? Like, does the numbers get bigger the higher the stacks? Ignite ish? Would be kinda cool. (but I guess not since the 5th stack would never be able to do a single tick of damage.)
I still think Blizzard is kinda fucking up here, it would be WAY better to have the damage of the DOT stack, and make Lava Lash NOT consume the charges, or consume the lowest hitting of the DOT stacks, or something.

When I talked about free time, I were only talking about 1sec here and 1 sec there, not huge breaks. And as it looks now we will have to wait like 1 second before we can use Lava Lash, which is a lot of time if you ask me at least when you look at how enhancement is now compared to other specs today, added the free time coming with cata. imo.

[Arcsecant]

Well so far the elemental PVE raiding spec looks to be something like http://www.wowtal.com/#k=9QAMGLxPVS7JK.9dw.shaman.

What I'm scratching my head over is where in the world the 3% crit debuff from totem of wrath went. I see that fire totems now increase SP by 10% but did blizzard take the crit debuff away from us? Was this mentioned before in a blue post or just something they might have forgotten to add in the talent preview?

[subanark]

There is no way this talent tree is close to done. Unrelenting storm and Elemental Mastery are early enough in the Elemental tree that restro shamans can pick it up and get a ridiculous mana regen buff (12% of int as mp5), combined with Convection for reduced shock cost, which makes Focused insight more appealing, Elemental Focus for a significantly cheaper heal when the shock does crit, 4/5 reverberation for shocks more often, the 100% crit damage boost talent, and 6% less damage taken as icing. You only need to sacrifice 2 restro talent points, 15% max mana, a small of extra mana regen from water shield, a bit of extra earth shield healing, a fixed amount of spellpower, and possibly a movement buff (assuming you spec into enh that far).

[Vasz]

I thought Maelstrom Weapon was ment to affect Lava Burst?

[Foxhoundn]

I thought Maelstrom Weapon was ment to affect Lava Burst?

I think they are still discussing it. It would be very nice for 100% Elemental Devastation damage. Im not sure if it would boost our dmg a lot and it is also one more button to check/push.

[Larancy]

These look the exact same as the ones that were posted awhile back which leaves me to believe these are highly outdated.

[Dekin]

http://war-tools.com/t68147.html

Just an idea someone put together as concept, yet i find way more compelling than these changes, which for us are rather few compared to what we saw 2 months ago. When i saw them then, i considered them early build talents. Now they are considered the most complete? Really? I'm just not feeling the big draw. It's kinda nice, bt something like the Imp feral spirit, shown in that link, would be way more compelling. In fact so many talents in there just seem much more fun and inline with what blizz told us than what they have shown us today.
Pls blizz, get on it.

[twelvedogs]

Well so far the elemental PVE raiding spec looks to be something like http://www.wowtal.com/#k=9QAMGLxPVS7JK.9dw.shaman.

What I'm scratching my head over is where in the world the 3% crit debuff from totem of wrath went. I see that fire totems now increase SP by 10% but did blizzard take the crit debuff away from us? Was this mentioned before in a blue post or just something they might have forgotten to add in the talent preview?

I think elemental get the crit added to whatever fire totem they have out, might be part of the mastery for ele.

[galimim]

Did I miss it or is there no talent that converts spirit to mana/5 during casting? If so how will we get mana with removal of mp/5 from items?

[gringo]

I hope Blizzard still sticks to the "getting rid of the boring talents" idea. From what I see, the trees just got a small overhaul, nothing really new and exciting, except for earthquake which looks awesome so far.

[Zarleck]

No Spirit Link in Resto
Resto still has the + dispel resist talent, which Blizzard wanted to remove
Totemic Vigor (bonus health for totems) in Enhancement
Shitloads of boring talents

Fuck yeah.
I refuse to believe that this is the final look... Please.

[Sarevokcz]

they already said that 2h for enhancement is never going to happen

and yet, they plan to make onehanders viable to Fury, so Warriors dont feel they "need" to go TG route... yea, you can see where their priorities are

so, after good night of sleep, i still find these pretty underwhelming, from ele PoV, i dont even friccking know where to spend tons of points, since the main grabber in enha (5% crit) is gone and FT buff is on third tier, basically wasting 10 points to get it, unless raids are outdoors and we can use GW AND mana will be so huge issue we would need the 15% more mana... yea, i dont see that happening. I have 14 points to waste, even after picking up every single elemental pve talent. oh well, probably take 3 points out of convection for elemental warding and totally waste 10 points in enha to get minimal SP buff for FT and reduced shock cost.

Lets hope for more new talents?

[Barky]

this is no way near the final ideas of shamans. I mean the beta isn't out yet, im 100% sure every shaman on the beta now if theyre not elemental is wanting to see more changes.

However, the new enhancement things look way more interesting. specially as im pretty sure Glyph of Lava Lash will change to do something like 'Lava Lash will not consume searing flames when used.' Plus, it means there's not as much totem wiggling and management, making us have a little bit of room for error, unlike now.

Also im pretty sure that Searing Flames and the Searing totem is being made to do more damage on single targets than magma.

Come on Blizz, throw us a bone, don't let enhancement get overlooked time and time again... (ghostwolf says hi)