In the works

I have an Enhance Shaman WotLK gear file in the works that lists everything accessible to players from badges, PvP, instances of all levels, heroic instances, raids and heroic (25 man) raids and it ranks them all by EP values. I plan on using this to see just when I should be upgrading my BT-level gear.

The other thing that I use to compare gear is Pawn, and I'm working on a guide to use that tool this weekend as well. I should have posts for both this weekend.

No Caster Weapons

Saw a blue post this morning, here's the highlight: "If you are saving up badges or arena points or whatever for your enhancement shammy, I would definitely NOT go out and get two fast caster weapons."

Here's the full post:

We view Enhancement as a melee class that should be wearing melee gear. However, one of the interesting things about the shaman is throwing out some spells with that melee too.

Our view of things is that some smart theorycrafters started wondering if using two fast caster weapons with two flametongue enchants would end up being the right way to go. The way the discussion sort of ended up was "maybe, but it might be close" but a lot of the community took that as a mandate. Or maybe they were just shocked by the supposition because it felt wrong for a melee class. We agree it feels wrong, so we're doing some tweaks to make it even less likely to be the most optimal set up. If you are saving up badges or arena points or whatever for your enhancement shammy, I would definitely NOT go out and get two fast caster weapons.

Flametongue or Windfury? Ele or Enhance?

I've been reading the Elitist Jerks forums all morning about the up-coming changes to Enhancement. From the looks of it we are going to become true hybrid classes, benefiting equally from spell power and attack power. Should we be using Flametongue or Windfury? Should we be gearing with melee or caster gear? It looks like it's all a jumble right now.

I'm wading through the forums and through the new simulator to try and make sense of it all. As soon as I can come to some conclusions I'll post my findings here.

In the meantime if you want to review the thread yourself here is the link to Elitist Jerks Enhance Shaman WotLK.

Shaman Tree Reworked

Greetings from Beijing! I'm here researching my new gold farming operation. I'm not sure about the name, either Stoneybaby Farms or Dirty Shaman Gold.

Just kidding. DON'T BUY GOLD!

Anyway, the shaman tree got completely reworked so I'll have to update all of my specs and rethink all of my Shaman 3.0 strategy.

More to come when I return to the states (Wednesday night)

Feral Spirit Implemented in Beta

Last week the Feral Spirit talent was implemented in Beta along with all of the wolves abilities. It is clear that this talent is going to be a must-have for Enhancement in both PvE & PvP situations. The summoned wolves will not be the dumb stumps that are the Boomkin's Treants. Instead they will be controllable via pet bar. Below is the rundown of the wolves talents.

• Feral Spirit (Tier 11): now implemented, including pet skills for summon wolves:
  • Bash: Your Spirit Wolves stun the target for 2 sec. (45 sec cooldown)
  • Twin Howl: Your Spirit Wolves howl, forcing all enemies to attack them for 6 sec. (15 sec cooldown)
  • Spirit Walk: Removes all movement impairing effects and increases the movement speed of you and your Spirit Wolves by 60% for 15 sec. (25 yd range, 32 sec cooldown)
  • Spirit Hunt: Your Spirit Wolves' attacks heal them and you for 5 sec. (10 sec cooldown)

A stun, a taunt, a snare-removal, and a heal. This is brilliant and I love every bit of it. I am going to revisit my earlier post about WotLK specs and be sure I'm including Feral Spirit in every one. I can not wait to get these bad boys up and running!

Gold Goal for Wrath

With the expansion fast approaching I'm wondering how much gold am I going to need going into it? Professions to level, gear to make, mounts to buy... all of it is going to be expensive. Especially considering that I have 3 level 70s, each with different professions. That means 3 toons to level, 6 mounts to buy (assuming new ground and air mounts), and 6 professions to level. It's going to get expensive for me.

I have not yet looked into the discussions surrounding how much gold is going to be needed so I'm just setting my own goal. I'm shooting for 9k gold, or 3k per toon. I'm sitting comfortably at 5.5k right now as I try to always keep my gold reserves up around the 4-5k mark. I have my work cut out for me, but I do have a few things going in my favor.

First I'm going to start clearing out my bank and selling off all the mats I'm currently just hoarding. Those supplies are mostly enchanting and leathers mats at this point. I don't have a miner so I don't have an abundance of stones or ore to sell. All of those enchanting mats will be useless to me post-expansion and I expect the prices to plummet in the first few months of WotLK. The exception to this will likely be herbs of all levels as they will be needed by people trying to powerlevel Inscription. Selling off my mats should net me about 1k gold if I time it right to maximize the price.

The real money is going to come from turning badges into gems. I'm sitting on 418 badges: 223 on my druid, 137 on Stoney, and 58 on Nixhex my warlock. I am keeping some badges on stand-by for Finn once I upgrade his weapon I'll need some new gear to stay uncrittable. And Nix needs new PvE gear so I'm working on that stuff. But Stoney... Stoney is maxed out right now for our current level of progression; I don't need the badges. I think I could hit my gold goal in short order by selling rocks.

It's the Stoneybaby pre-WotLK Fire Sale!

WotLK Enhancement Specs

In my last post I looked at possible specs to take up when the new talent trees come out in advance of the expansion. Meaning, what do we do with ourselves at level 70? Now I'm going to look at some specs after reaching level 80.

11/60/0 - Raiding
This build would be a pure-raiding build as it sacrifices the quick getaway moves of Improved Ghost Wolf, doesn't have any of the defensive talents of Anticipation or Toughness, and skips Spectral Transformation. It does go deeper into the Elemental tree to bring more usefulness out of Lava Burst. Finally, it also taps into the passive dps of Static Shock+Improved Shields.

0/65/5 - PvP Defensive / PvE Solo
In this build I'm focusing on defensive abilities over offensive. While Anticipation can be a liability against Warriors, I put points into it as an added safety net against those filthy rogues. As for Maelstrom Weapon being worthwhile in PvP situations I'm undecided on it. It would require 5 critical strikes on 1 target, and each must occur within15 seconds of the last crit to keep the stacks going. It may have usefulness in certain situations where that extra damage from an insta-cast Lava Burst could put you over the top, but that remains to be seen. I will test both with and without Maelstrom when the time comes. This build would also serve well for soloing in PvE content because of the defensive talents.

8/63/0 - PvP Elemental Devastation
A more offensive build than the one listed above, it does not include Anticipation but still puts points into Earth's Grasp and Guardian Totems. This one dips down into Maelstrom Weapon and then put remaining points in Elemental Devastation. I can see this being a very effective build for PvP that will capitalize on the shaman's burst damage and make casting viable while ensnared.

Possible Specs at 70

Its safe to assume the new talent tress will get released before the expansion just as they did with the last expansion. With that in mind I've been tinkering around with some new Enhancement Shaman specs in the new trees with a level cap of 70.

One thing is for sure, we will never have to get back into the Resto tree again so we can tinker with Elemental Devastation builds.

6/55/0 - Raiding
This first spec takes in Improved Shields& Static Shock to get some additional passive DPS out of lightning shield. It then taps into Maelstrom Weapon and combines that with 1 point in Elemental Devastation. I wonder if this will be a bad compromise by trying to squeeze both Static Shock passive damage and insta-cast Lava Bursts--which I'm still not sure how that's going to pan out.

9/52/0 - Raiding
Slight variation on the one above but taking out the Improved Shields and Static Shock in place of more points in Elemental Devastation. Also puts 1 point in Call of Flame and 3 into Enhancing Totems. I will be testing both of these to see which turns out more damage both in raid and out.

0/56/5 - PvP
Remember how I said "we will never have to get back into the Resto tree again" earlier? I lied. In this PvP spec I put 5 points back into Totemic Focus. In PvP I spend a lot of time dropping totems, especially if a Warlock or Hunter has a totem-kill macro for its pet. I also put 2 points into Earth's Grasp for the increased radius on Earthbind totem.


Hopefully we get to test these out soon. Until then, keep the faith!

WotLK Changes 7/25 & 8/1

Continuing right along with the changes for Enhancement Shamans in WotLK using my Nobel-nominated SEESWARS system let's start with three massive and entirely horrible changes.

Weapon Specialization: Removed. (Axe - Increases the critical strike damage bonus by 5/10/15/20/25%. Mace - Has a 1/2/3/4/5% chance to increase your melee haste by 10% for 15 sec. Fist - Attacks from your fist weapons have a 1/2/3/4/5% chance to reduce the armor of your target by 20% for 6 sec.)
SEESWARS - 5
This was a great talent. I was thoroughly excited to see how this would play out in end game and with gearing selections. I was particularly excited by the Axes effect which would increase crit damage and scale with gear. But instead it's replaced with this half-assed piece of shit talent:

Maelstrom Weapon - When you critically hit with a melee weapon, you reduce the cast time of your next spell by 4/8/12/16/20%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 15 seconds. (5 Ranks)
SEESWARS - 4
I have to sink 5 talent points, then crit 5 times in order to get a free cast of a spell that I would otherwise never freakin use because... I'M MELEE SPEC!! Hi, news flash: Enhancement is the MELEE tree. When I first saw this change I had to read it twice and then double check they didn't suddenly move the Elemental tree over to the middle. But there it is as plain as day: a melee talent being replaced by a caster talent, not in the first two ranks but as the 46 point talent.

There is a decent discussion happening on the comments section of Wowhead for this talent with most posters excited to combine it with an Elemental Devastation build. In the comment thread runjah makes the most important point but is unfortunately buried as a reply towards the bottom of the page. His words that are the make-or-break for this talent: it resets the swing timer.

I'll say that again for the kids in the back row: IT RESETS THE SWING TIMER! That means working in a Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or the new Lava Burst will throw off your Windfury procs in the worst case scenario, in the best case you'll have to carefully time your insta-spells with your WF internal cooldown, your Stormstrikes, and your shocks.

Maybe I'm being bitter here because they took away Weapon Specialization which was such a cool talent. Maybe I'm being bitter because they are forcing the Elemental Devastation build on me (currently that build is garbage, but that may all change as you'll soon see). Or maybe I'm just being lazy and I don't want to have to time my shocks with my Stormstrikes with my WF with my Lava Bursts.

There are two rays of hope here. First one poster commented that Blizzard already changed the talent to work for every spell, though the tooltip does not yet reflect the change. And secondly, one commenter speculated they mean for it to NOT reset your swing timers. If that comes to pass then I will revise my rating. But for now I'm not happy about it.

Anyone out there with a beta key willing to test this one out extensively? Does it reset your swing timer? Does it throw off your WF procs? Would it be worth it to spend 5 points in this purely for DPS' sake?


Nature's Guidance is missing from the Restoration tree.
SEESWARS - 5
There is no mention of it in the WotLKWiki.info site but I stumbled across this little tidbit while mocking up a few builds. If I could give this a worse rating I would. 'Hello, welcome to Northrend, please turn all of your current gems for +Hit ones. Thank you and enjoy your stay.' What an absolutely horrid thing to do. It was one of the great things about an enhance shaman, we didn't have to stack Hit Rating like an idiot (i.e., rogue) because we got 3% from Nature's Guidance and 6% from Dual Wield Specialization. Not so anymore. We now have another 3% hit to make up after this loss.

The only bright side here I already alluded to above: this could make the Elemental Devastation build a viable one for Enhance Shamans. Regardless, we will be forced to sacrifice other stats for hit rating when we didn't have to do so before.


The range of all “friendly totems” has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.
SEESWARS - 1
I felt like injecting some good news. Yay 30 yard totems! As a result, Totemic Mastery was removed. With Nature's Guidance gone, Totemic Mastery implicit in all totems, and Totemic Focus a 1st tier talent, the Elemental Devastation Build is looking more viable.


Shamanistic Rage now gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 15% of your attack power. (Old version : mana regeneration equal to 30% of your attack power)
SEESWARS - 4
Only a slight nerf compared to the blasts above, but a nerf nonetheless. Why must you punish us Blizzard? And why must you constantly mess with Shammy Rage? At first it was 15% for 30 seconds, then 30% for 15 seconds. Then you added the reduced damage component. Next came Improved Shammy Rage. Which was subsequently taken away. And now the effectiveness of this ability is halved with one hand while the other hand serves up insta-spell casts.


Feral Spirit now lasts 45 seconds instead of 30 seconds.
SEESWARS - 3
I don't even have the heart to get into how incredibly mediocre this 51 point talent will be. I've read rumors of the wolves getting stun or some other ability. If that happens then maybe... but until then this is a bit fat MEH. For me it comes down to the question of the usage of the talent point. Just because it's there doesn't mean we need to use it. Are these wolves going to be the Shaman version of treants, or will they have some additional usage like a Shadowfiend or the ever annoying Water Elemental?

WotLK Changes 7/17

What follows are the additional changes to the Enhancement Shaman talents/spells/abilities that Blizzard made on 7/17/08. I'm a bit behind on my posts and there's a lot here, so dig in. I covered a number of changes in a previous post so I will continue with the changes I did not get to that day. I will rate everything with my own patent-pending SEESWARS... i.e., a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst.

All totems are now considered on the "Physical" school, and no longer magical spells.
SEESWARS - 1
Very cool. This means silencing effect no long prevent dropping totems. Such a major change that I can't believe I didn't post it before.

Ancestral Knowledge: Now increases your Intellect by 2/4/6%, instead of increasing your total Mana by 2/4/6/8/10%.
SEESWARS - 2
Another cool change when you consider the new talent Mental Dexterity which increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your total Intellect (3rd tier, 3 points). Combine these two talents for free AP and for making mail gear actually desirable.

Enhancing Totems is now a Tier 1 talent, up from Tier-2.
SEESWARS - 3
Meh. Depends if I have any talent points left over, which by all accounts so far its not looking like I'll have points to spare to put in here.

Frostbrand's snare effect has been increased to 50%, up from 25%.
SEESWARS - 3
This could be interesting if in a PvP or arena situation a team wanted to sacrifice the shaman's dps for the slowing effect. It is not considered a magical debuff so it can not be dispelled. However, the loss of damage due to not having WF would be significant. I would not sacrifice Windfury for this.

Improved Shamanistic Rage: Removed. (While under the effect of Shamanistic Rage, you have a 50/100% chance also cause you to be immune to all stun, snare and movement impairing effects.)
SEESWARS - 4
Bad bad bad. What was a fantastic (and one of the few) PvP bones thrown to Enhance gets taken away. The ONLY reason I did not give it a 5 was because it is replaced by this:

Spectral Transformation - You have a 50/100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you transform into a Ghost Wolf, and your Spirit Wolves to have a 50/100% chance to be immune to all stun, snare and movement impairing effects when summoned.
SEESWARS - 1
OK, that's better. Granted I would like to have both :D but then it would be constant QQ from the filthy cheating rogues that Enhance Shamans are OP. Can't upset the Blizzards favored ones now can we? ... But I digress, this talent is cool because it clearly states it is an impairment clearing effect, whereas Improved Shammy Rage was only preventative medicine. I'll take the points in this, hands down. Of course this also serves to explain why Ghost Wolf went from being 100 mana to 13% of base mana; if you're going to turn us into druids then you might as well give us some of the benefits, too. Right?

Ok that covers things... for now. More to come shortly as we look into some really shitty changes in the next post.

WTH WotLK and the SEESWARS

I feel like I'm entering the confessional... (anyone that grew up Catholic knows what I'm talking about) "Forgive me readers it has been three weeks since my last post." Three weeks and a lot has changed on the Shaman tree for WotLK. Some good, some bad.

To deal with the changes and their impact on the Enhance Shamans out there, starting with this post I am implementing the Stoneybaby Exclusive Enhance Shaman WotLK Applicable Rating System. Heretofore known as SEESWARS. Every change will be met with my precisely calibrated (though often times just flat out guessing) rating on its effect on the effectiveness of Enhancement Shamans.

1 - Windfury Crit TO DE FACE! We love you Blizzard!! (best thing evar)
2 - Cool, thanks for throwing us a bone Blizzy
3 - meh/TBD (impact will be mediocre, irrelevant, or remains to be seen)
4 - Sux but we'll slug through
5 - WTH WotLK?! Blizzy hates Enhance but you already knew that (nerf bat)

With the SEESWARS scale laid out I'll dive into the changes on the next post.

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

WotLK Shaman Info Part 3

In this part I will cover the non-talent point spells for Enhancement Shamans. The complete and updated information can always be found here: http://wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Shaman. That is the alpha leak site and it includes the spells and talents I do not cover because I see little to no value for the Enhancement spec.

My first two posts can be found here: Part 1 & Part 2

Totems are in the physical school now.
That means silence effects do not prevent dropping totems. This is very cool for PvE and PvP. Thanks Blizz for this one.

Many totem's effects are being combined (e.g. Grace of Air and Strength of Earth into a single totem).
Combine that with...
Totems will now effect all nearby raid members instead of being confined to party members.
This is really something. Fewer totems to choose from, totems that do more things and effect more people. In a raid with two or three shamans we can cover the most beneficial totems to buff then entire raid. Very cool.

Windfury Totem: The effect is no longer a weapon enchant. It now provides a buff giving the same effect, the end result being that it now stacks with poisons, sharpening stones and also works for druid feral forms.
This slightly conflicts with another post on the wolkwiki site:
Windfury Totem: Removed. The effect is no longer a weapon enchant. It is now a party buff giving the same effect, the end result being that it now stacks with poisons, sharpening stones and also works for druid feral forms.
I'm not sure how to read this. "No longer a weapon enchant" scared me at first thinking that I would have to drop a damn totem each time I wanted WF for myself, and that would suck. Horribly. But the second post clears the matter up a bit, it will be a castable buff. A Paladin or druid aura comes to mind as what this may be like. That it can be used in feral form is cool. That we can use sharpening stones or weight stones is also cool. This is all very good news for not only Enhance Shamans, but all Shamans and all raids in which they participate.

Hex: Transforms the enemy into a random critter, reducing the target's movement speed by 75%. While moving, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells. Only one target can be hexed at a time. Only works on Humanoids and Beasts. 100 mana. 1 mintue cooldown.
CC for SHAMANS! It just keeps getting better here. What's interesting about this is that the hexed target still has control of its actions, it can still move about, but not attack or cast. From the video it seems the spell does not restore health as a Mage's Polymorph does. Also, it does not state that damage breaks the CC. So even if an NPC wanders into the Paladin's Consecrate or the Warrior's Thunder Clap it will continue to be CC'd.

Summon Air Elemental: Summons an Air Elemental to accompany the caster until dismissed.
This is listed as an Elemental spell but is not a talent-spec choice; it's available at the trainer apparently. Wowhead shows it is a 3 second spell but that's all the information they have. Does this mean if you are enhance you can summon an Air Ele and wolves? I'm anxious to learn more.

Skin of Earth: Thorns sprout from the friendly target causing $s1 Nature damage to attackers when hit. Lasts $d.
Thorns! cool. The good stuff just keeps on coming.

Heroism/Bloodlust will affect all raid members nearby in the same way as totem changes.
Forget Drums of Battle, multiple shamans in a raid means chain-heroisms!

I know everyone gets cool stuff with expansions and 10 new levels, but of my three level 70's (warlock, druid, shaman) I'm the most excited for Stoney's changes.

WotLK Shaman Info Part 2

Has it been nearly a month since my first post on WotLK for enhancement Shamans? I need to spend less time gaming and more time blogging apparently. If you want to read the first post it can be found here.

Improved Stormstrike - Increases the amount of Stormstrike of charges by 2 and reduces the cooldown by 2 seconds (with 2 points in it). Requires 30 points in Enhancement; requires 1 point in Stormstrike.
This will be interesting. On the surface this looks awesome. It looks like the synergy of Enhancement with Elemental in one raid/party will continue, and that we'll have time to use up our own SS bonus during our Flame/Earth shock rotation instead of them being immediately eaten by those Ele hogs! No doubt the extra 2 charges will be well worth the point investment for the raiding Enhancer. But Stormstrike every 8 seconds, is it going to be a good thing? Will we have to start timing our Stormstrikes with our WF procs? Just a guess, but I'm going to say, no. WF runs independent of the GCD, meaning by having an extra SS attack you are only delaying a possible WF by a split second and not 1.5 secs. My guess is this will be among the best 2 points spent in the tree. We'll see how it pans out.

Mental Dexterity - Increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your Intellect. 11 point talent.
Stoney's current intelly: 247. Even if your Int didn't change one bit over the next 10 levels and the subsequent gearing that's 247 free AP. And we know the Int will go up and be prevalent among the mail gear. This will be the easiest 3 points to spend at that level. As an aside, it seems to me that Blizzard is doing this to make rogue/leather gear less appetizing in comparison to hunter/mail gear. They are trying to keep Shamans in mail in my opinion. What it means to me is more gear options as both leather and mail will bring different benefits, oh and a much larger gear comparison spreadsheet.

Elemental Shields - Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 5/10/15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.
In a pure PvE spec this will couple nicely with Static Shock, the 41 point talent where your Lightning Orbs have a chance to proc when you strike, as opposed to when you get struck. I've already been toying with PvE versus PvP specs for Stoney and I will be including both this talent and Static Shock for PvE/Raiding.

Other changes to the enhancement tree include:
Enhancing Totems was moved up to the first tier.
Improved Lightning Shield was removed.
Shield Specialization changed to a 2 point talent
Ancentral Knowledge changed to a 3 point talent.

That covers the Enhance tree for WotLK as it stands now. Next post: the spell changes unrelated to the talent points.

I did opt-in for the beta. I want to get Stoney in there and start poking around as soon as possible. Hope to see you in there!

WotLK Shaman Info Part 1

Oh boy, the moment I've been waiting for since the first WotLK leaks hit the street... the shaman talents, spell, and abilities are out. They hit the streets a few days ago, but I've been too busy to do a complete post. Here is the first list with more to come soon.

The master list is here:
http://wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Shaman

The talent tree is here:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=h

(note: links updated 7/12/08)

Let's look at this from an enhance perspective, starting from the bottom and working our way up.

Feral Spirit - Summons two spirit wolves under the command of the shaman, lasting 30 seconds. 2 minute cooldown. 51 point talent in Enhancement tree.
This talent and go either way. It could be one of those super awesomely annoying pets in pvp & arenas like the frost mage's elemental, or it could be the half-joke that is the Moonkin's treant. From what I saw on the video it didn't look like the wolves were all that effective, so they might end up being less Water Elemental and more Treant. Regardless, I will be spending points in this to find out.

Weapon Specialization - Axe - Increases the critical strike damage bonus by 25%. Mace - Has a 5% chance to increase your melee haste by 10% for 15 sec. Fist - Attacks from your fist weapons have a 5% chance to reduce the armor of your target by 20% for 6 sec. (Numbers reflect 5/5 points in the talent.) Requires 45 points in Enhancement talents.
For us theorycrafters this talent will be very interesting for us test and calculate. In fact, I can see how this is going to complicate weapon and gear choices. Personally I refuse to use maces as they are the hallmark weapons of no-skill rogues, but the haste increase makes me salivate. I heart haste. I could start into a long-winded breakdown of these stats but I think I'll hold that until we see what the weapon itemization is like in the next expansion. Until then, no matter how you cut it, this is very nice dps boost.

Improved Shamanistic Rage - While under the effect of Shamanistic Rage, you have a 50/100% chance also cause you to be immune to all stun, snare and movement impairing effects. Requires 40 points in Enhancement Talents. Requires 1 point in Shamanistic Rage.
Very cool. I'm assuming this will not clear current effects but will prevent more. It's only 15 seconds of love, but for my 3v3 burst-damage team that'll rock. Drop some wolves, kick in Imp Sham Rage, and go to town unmolested. I expect that I'll be using Sham Rage every time it comes up, not just when I'm being focused. And I don't think I need to mention how incredibly awesome this will be against rogues. No more chain stunning for you, jerk.


Static Shock - You have a 2/4/6% chance to hit your target with a Lightning Shield Orb charge when you do damage, and increases your spell damage by 1/2/3% when you have Lightning Shield active.
I'm not so excited about this one. I see they are trying to make Lightning Shield more useful. But realistically I don't expect to use this talent. As it stands now in PvP I get beat on enough that LS procs quickly, and then I usually put up water shield after that bc I know I'll need the mana late in the fight. In PvE that 6% could mean a proc per minute (very rough guess) which is only an additional 380 Nature Damage at level 80. And as for increasing my spell damage the 3% is negligible. I don't see myself investing points in this unless I wanted to create a purely PvE spec and had 3 extra talent points. But for a 41 point talent this is pretty weak.

That is all for this morning. More to come in this weekend.