Enhancement Shaman Changes Patch 3.0.8
There's not much out there for us this patch, but I do like what I see. Here's a quick recap:
Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat.
Good stuff. We can drop these totems earlier to coincide with an AoE pull and not have to worry about it pulling its own threat off the tank.
Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat.
More damage here and no threat is awesome. I'll be interested to see how much more damage it does.
Mental Quickness: Reduced the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 23/46/70% of your agility.
This is AWESOME. Love it! 70% of my Agi goes into SP as opposed to 100% of Int. That's another 45 SP for Stoney immediately. This will also change the EP value of Int and the relative worth of Ancestral Knowledge. Looks like we'll be leaning to leather once again.
Thanks guys for the correction! Revised 12/15: This SUCKS! OK it's a nerf. Not that big of a nerf but a nerf nonetheless.
Edit (again) 12/15 - update from Ghostcrawler (Thanks Phil for the link)
Long story short, after reading your feedback and thinking about it some more, we no longer like this change and are going to revert it. We will likely swap the positions of Mental Quickness and Static Shock as some of you have suggested. Bottom line: Mental Quickness will still convert attack power to spell power.
Lava Lash - Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used.
Damn, I guess I missed out on Lava Lashing with a shield.
And then there are changes to Elemental Warding and Elemental Shields in the Elemental tree (go figure!) that will have PvP implications.
Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat.
Good stuff. We can drop these totems earlier to coincide with an AoE pull and not have to worry about it pulling its own threat off the tank.
Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat.
More damage here and no threat is awesome. I'll be interested to see how much more damage it does.
This is AWESOME. Love it! 70% of my Agi goes into SP as opposed to 100% of Int. That's another 45 SP for Stoney immediately. This will also change the EP value of Int and the relative worth of Ancestral Knowledge. Looks like we'll be leaning to leather once again.
Thanks guys for the correction! Revised 12/15: This SUCKS! OK it's a nerf. Not that big of a nerf but a nerf nonetheless.
Edit (again) 12/15 - update from Ghostcrawler (Thanks Phil for the link)
Long story short, after reading your feedback and thinking about it some more, we no longer like this change and are going to revert it. We will likely swap the positions of Mental Quickness and Static Shock as some of you have suggested. Bottom line: Mental Quickness will still convert attack power to spell power.
Lava Lash - Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used.
Damn, I guess I missed out on Lava Lashing with a shield.
And then there are changes to Elemental Warding and Elemental Shields in the Elemental tree (go figure!) that will have PvP implications.
- Elemental Shields: This talent has been removed. It has now been merged with Elemental Warding.
- Elemental Warding: Now reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%. Changed from only reducing Nature, Fire and Frost by 4/7/10%.
- Elemental Shields was reducing flat physical damage, not a percentage. Now properly reduced by a percentage.
Labels: patch, PvE, PvP, talent points
posted by Rich @ 1:06 PM
9 Comments:
At December 14, 2008 12:38 PM ,
Diriom said...
"Lava Lash - Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used."
I read over the notes about this, I wonder if they realized that they left out 1 handed maces?
At December 15, 2008 2:08 AM ,
Talance said...
"This is AWESOME. Love it! 70% of my Agi goes into SP as opposed to 100% of Int. That's another 45 SP for Stoney immediately. This will also change the EP value of Int and the relative worth of Ancestral Knowledge. Looks like we'll be leaning to leather once again."
Am I not understanding what you're saying here? Mental Quickness currently gives the 2/4/6%, but it also gives 30% of AP as SP, and with 3.0.8, it'll give 70% of agi in SP instead. For me, at 2521 AP (+756 SP), this is a bit of a nerf, as I only have 535 agi (+375 SP with 3.0.8). I'm not extremely worried about it, but it's there nonetheless.
At December 15, 2008 6:28 AM ,
Rakhman said...
Looks like they buffed Mental Quickness from the old one (Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast Shaman spells by 6% and increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your attack power.) So this is an awesome buff!
At December 15, 2008 10:10 AM ,
Phil said...
Like Talance, I'm also a little confused about how the Mental Quickness change is a buff. I'm assuming that I can calculate my 3.0.8 SP by subtracting the current MQ bonus from my total SP, giving me my 'Base SP,' and then adding the new MQ bonus.
Right now my SP is 803, and my AP is 2426. My formula looks like this:
NewSP = (CurrentSP - AP * 0.3) + AGI * 0.7
NewSP = (806 - 2426 * 0.3) + 523 * 0.7
NewSP = (806 - 727.8) + 523 * 0.7
NewSP = 78.2 + 523 * 0.7
NewSP = 78.2 + 523 * 0.7
NewSP = 78.2 + 366.1
NewSP = 444.3
At December 15, 2008 10:27 AM ,
Phil said...
I imagine Blizzard is trying to either:
-buff us by making AGI a better attribute to stack than AP
-nerf our SP more and make us give up on the caster gear
I think this because, for the past week, no matter what change I've made to my gear, the simulator keeps giving me really high EP values for caster attributes such as INT, SP, and MP5. My SP is too high, too viable. Increases to my casting stats give the biggest bang per point, and IMO that's not how it should be with an Enhance spec.
Then again, I do have 16 points in the Elemental tree... and I was thinking of putting a few more in. That could explain the simulator results, will have to explore that.
At December 15, 2008 10:57 AM ,
Rich said...
Thank you guys for the correction. In my original post I was thinking the previous MQ was 100% of your Int = SP, so this would have been an increase. That's what I get for posting at work without checking Wowhead to double-check the talent.
For Stoney it's about a 37% decrease in SP, unbuffed. Thanks Phil for the calculation.
"I think this because, for the past week, no matter what change I've made to my gear, the simulator keeps giving me really high EP values for caster attributes such as INT, SP, and MP5"
-- Good point. In fact the first time I ran EnhSim and got EP values around 5 for Int and MP5 I immediately turned off the "calculate mana" portion. The only times I have mana issues are when we are chain pulling AoE mobs and I'm dropping Fire Novas and Magmas like crazy. Otherwise on bosses I'm usually solid on mana.
At December 15, 2008 11:28 AM ,
Phil said...
Phew.
At December 23, 2008 1:13 PM ,
Chris said...
This is a very large nerf to enhancement. If you look on recount or SW stats you can see that spells are a larger part of our damage then before, partly because of maelstrom and lava lash. The change will cut that now larger spell damage portion of our damage in HALF! All this while buffing the elemental shammys. maybe enhancement is gone as a spec and a half and half with ele with even more caster gear on is an option now.
At December 23, 2008 1:29 PM ,
Rich said...
Chris, according to Ghostcrawler's post on 12/11 the change to MQ is being repealed. The patch notes do not reflect that change but if you click the link from Phil above you can see the MMO-Champ blue tracker following that thread. Yup would have been a nerf, but thankfully its a nerf that did not come to pass.
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