WotLK Beta!

Beta is out!! And no, I did not get a key, but I'm still hoping for one to arrive... eventually. There were some updates and changes since my last few posts so I'm going to cover what's changed since then for Enhancement Shamans.

Ghost Wolf's mana cost is now 13% base
Ouch. This is a nerf. Right now it only costs 100 mana to shift into ghost wolf. Maybe the druids were QQing about Shaman's neat little shapeshift ability on the cheap?

Rockbiter ranks 5 through 9 have been removed.
Duh. No one used this before, might as well kill it.

Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
Haha! Sweet! Ghost wolf across the top of the water.

Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
This is a very cool item, and I'm sure will be useful in raiding situations. That means though that if only 1 Shaman in the raid it may make sense to drop Stoneskin instead of Strength of Earth.

Tranquil Air Totem has been removed.
The changes to threat and threat reduction is a complete change from the current game mechanic. I am going to have to research more of this before reaching any conclusions. But for now all I can say is that it scares me. Not losing Tranquil Air Totem (aka ghetto-Salv) but rather that an aggro-whoring spec like enhance may have to find new ways to cope with threat management. More on this as I learn more about it.

Unleashed Rage is now raid wide.
Hawt. More love for the Enhancers.

Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem.
Now Windfury Crits will truly be a shaman-only effect. Call me selfish but this is cool that we become special like that. In fact I wonder if we can have WF effect on our weapons and drop a WF totem... hmm... somehow I doubt it but it's worth investigating to be sure.

Windwall Totem has been removed.
Heh. Ah well. As Matthew Rossi said, it was really only useful in AV anyway.

Thanks go to Matthew Rossi at WoW Insider for a nice, neat, concise post about all the Beta Patch changes for Shamans