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Scattered Shots: Autocast bugs and other animal handling issues in 3.0.2

 

Welcome to Scattered Shots, where Daniel Whitcomb loves his Hunter Judgement, but wishes he got the cool looking shoulders too.

 

So between 3.0.2, the Scourge Invasion, and Hallow’s End, my Hunter’s seen a lot of play as I’ve been going after the title and the undead armor and playing with all the new changes on a live server and all, and in that time, I’ve had some chance to see how stuff works out when it’s thrown into the crucible of live server playing. Most of my observations have ended up focusing around pets, which is probably to be expected. After all, they’ve changed quite a bit. Here’s what’s I’ve learned from 3.0.2 in the last few weeks about managing your pet:

Avoiding the Autocast Bugout

So this is a problem I know some of you have told me you’ve been having: You think you have a skill on autocast, say, Heart of the Phoenix, and it doesn’t trigger when it should. Or, you take a skill off autocast, and it triggers anyway, and when you check, it’s back on autocast.

This is a bug that seems to pop up pretty frequently ever since the talent change, on the Beta, on PTRs, and now live servers. No-one’s quite hammered down how the bug happens that I’ve been able to find out. It may happen when you log out, when you enter a dungeon, or even when your pet automatically attacks a monster. Luckily, there’s a few ways to deal with this.

The first is to put the ability on your main cast bar. The abilities in those 4 slots generally keep the state their in and will autocast (or not autocast) properly. Of course, the problem with this is that with the new pet talents and family skills, chances are you have more than 4 abilities to keep track of, which brings us to our next option.

The next option is to use /petautocastoff and /petautocaston in macros to make sure your abilities are working right. You can just create a straight up macro that you can press periodically to reset your preferred cast and autocast abilities, or you can weave them into another useful macro. Here’s a very simple example:

/cast Hunter’s Mark
/petattack
/petautocastoff Cower

This is a simple attack macro that marks your target, sends your pet in to attack, and makes sure that Cower is off auto attack. This is very useful when soloing for sure. Of course, even with these two options, this is still a very annoying little bug, and hopefully Blizzard will squash it soon.

Pet Aggro and Tanking

In Pet Tanking news, I have good news and bad news: The good news is that a Tenacity Pet can do some pretty serious tanking. The bad news is that the aggro of some families is still very dicey, and you’ll have to work extra hard to keep from pulling aggro off of them. Whether this changes at 80, I can’t say for sure, but for now, given a normal growl and damage rotation, I find myself having to throttle my DPS to make sure my pet Boar can keep the attention of the stuff we’re fighting.

Of course, it is, once again, possible to use a few handy macros and a bit of planning to get around that. Misdirection’s cooldown is up pretty swiftly nowadays, which gives you a good excuse to use it. Creating a specialized Misdirection Macro focus on your pet can do wonders for letting your pet keep the monster’s attention. Here’s an example:

/target (your pet’s name)
/cast Misdirection
/targetlasttarget

This will quickly target your pet, give it Misdirection, then switch back to your original target so you can start unloading the threat immediately. Of course, you can streamline the process quite a bit more. Here’s a more involved macro from WoWWiki:

#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [target=focus,help][help][target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection

If you have a focused target, this macro will automatically cast on your focus. If you don’t, it will cast on your pet. If you don’t use your focus for keeping track of enemies, setting your focus on the tank can be helpful in keeping Misdirection flowing in the right direction.

In the good news section, there’s still a whole lot of tanking going on. If you grab a Tenacity pet with a family ability more suited for gaining aggro, such as a Gorilla or a Worm, and/or if you keep Misdirection going, you can tank stuff pretty well. My Boar has personally tanked the Headless Horseman 6 times in a row while back by a Holy Paladin, and solo, I’ve managed to solo level 66-68 elites with a bit of mend pet. Just unload with the Intimidation and Bestial Wrath up front and keep that Misdirection going, and your pet should be able to grab a large enough chunk of aggro that you can stay comfortably behind her.

My Pet has Skills

As I mentioned earlier, there is one more problem that 3.0.2 has bought to the world of Hunter pets: the overflow of skills. Just with a simple ferocity build at 70, you might have skills like Call of the Wild and Heart of the Phoenix that you’d like to be able to trigger at will. Unfortunately, by the time you fit Growl, Cower, Bite, Claw, or Slap, and your pet’s family skill on the pet bar, you have no room.

Luckily, there is a solution, if you have some extra room for another macro. Then you can just write a simple two-line macro:

#showtooltip
/cast Call of the Wild

Voila. You now have access to the skill even if you don’t have room for it on the pet bar. You can do this with any other pet skill as well, of course.

Other Random Observations

·         Always remember to switch out of Aspect of the Viper. Gaining mana is now a much more involved process since Aspect of the Viper lowers your DPS. Of course, if you need artificially throttle your DPS a bit, such as if you’re overtaking your pet on threat, it gives you a good excuse to switch out of Viper. Just make sure you switch back into Hawk before the boss.

·         Pet tanking is still not quite imba, except maybe for Gorillas. Level 70 elites will definitely still bruise your pet something fierce, even if you are chain casting Mend Pet. But with skills like Blood of the Rhino, a good healer should be able to keep a Tenacity pet up against your basic elite.

·         Disengaging yourself off the side of a cliff is actually pretty hilarious in hindsight, but not something you want to make a habit of, probably.

 

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Blizzard to punish military players again?

The release of TBC was a frustrating experience to service men and women overseas. The following happened to hundreds of WoW players who happen to be serving their country outside the US:

 

1.- A friend or family member would go to a local retail store in the US and purchase a TBC box and then email the upgrade code to the person overseas.

 

2.- The player overseas would enter the code and celebrate wildly as his/her account was confirmed as being upgraded to TBC.

 

3.- The player would log in thinking that, sure a large patch would have to be downloaded, but that soon after they’d be playing in Outland.

 

4.- Disappointment and frustration would set in as no patch would download, only a message saying that you can’t log in to WoW because your account is flagged for TBC but TBC is not installed in your PC.

At that point, the account became unplayable until one could get a hold of the TBC CD’s, which in some cases took weeks.

 

Please don’t do this again Blizzard. I understand that Blizzard doesn’t want to make a full electronic upgrade (meaning the ability to PURCHASE the code online) available immediately because that would cut deeply into the sales of traditional retailers. I can understand that Blizzard wants to keep those traditional retailers happy to get their continued help in getting shelf space for Blizzard games.

 

All I ask is that if one has already purchased a key through a traditional box retailer that we get the option to DOWNLOAD the WotlK install. Sorry for the caps, but I want to explain to Blizzard that I’m not asking for the option to PURCHASE and DOWNLOAD WotlK online on day one. I don’t think they’d ever go for that. I just want the option to be able to DOWNLOAD it after having already purchased a box with the upgrade code.

 

That’s the way it currently works for accounts with both classic WoW and TBC. On the account management page there is a link to download the game version that you are subscribed to. PLEASE! Make the WotlK download available this way from day one. Traditional box retailers will still get the sale of the WotlK box. All I want is to have a family member in the US email the code to me so I can then download the expansion.

 

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Wintergrasp (long)

Let me preface this by stating that I know Wintergrasp is far from done, however I feel that some feedback earlier in the development cycle might help.

 

Siege Weaponry:

 

1. I find that it makes little sense to offer the only anti-aircraft unit at the same rank that the aircraft themselves are offered. A good pilot can destroy any non-vehicular enemy with impunity (though slowly), and droves of them will be able to massacre an entire battlefield.

 

2. The siege engine turret is far too weak because it takes damage from aoe, even if it isn’t being ‘targeted’. Even one hunter can tear it down and turn the siege engine into a useless pile of slag incredibly quickly.

 

3. Passengers in/on vehicles seem to take siege weapon damage. I’m hoping this is unintended because, well… you’re basically an even bigger target in one of those, and certainly slower than if you use your regular mount.

 

4. Vehicles need to despawn if/when the zone ‘resets’.

 

5. If its possible, aircraft would become a lot easier to shoot down with other aircraft if their cannon attacks detonated on a target in the line of fire, even if it was before max range. Also, max speed on fighters should be increased slightly, as should the refire rate and projectile speed of the cannon.

 

6. The siege engine ram attack doesn’t do nearly enough as the only primary weapon. Siege damage should be much, much higher as it can only be done in proximity and not from 200 yards away well outside line of sight.

 

7. Catapult and Demolisher projectiles should be given some sort of priority loading so that people can discern where the shots are coming from. Currently at extreme range all you see is the impact site and

damage. A big reason why traditional siege weapons and artillery were so vulnerable is because its very easy to see where fire coming from, so they need to be defended.

 

8. The shredder should be able to destroy a person in 1v1, right now it does less dps than a level 65 hunter pet (and no that is not an exaggeration).

 

Terrain:

 

1. So far all the battles seem to be at the fortress as there is little point to actually taking any of the outside areas. This strongly devalues involvement by infantry, because the main courtyard in the fortress quickly devolves into a giant firestorm of instant-death. I’m assuming that the actual victory condition will be somewhat more involved than just blowing the door to the fortress in the end and that it will be necessary to dominate the center courtyard for a period of time to win.

 

2. Towers. There are two rear towers that have no point. Obviously the middle rear tower should always be the allegiance of the faction opposite the fortress, in order to provide some sort of a starting point. The two back rear ones are less useful, however, in their current implementation. My suggestion is to make them resource nodes (like AB where owning them generates resources over time). Then, add a repair system where players may purchase a squad of engineers from a vendor at either base in order to repair stuff. This provides a good balance to the dominance of the fortress, because in order to keep the walls up and siege factories online, the owners will have to trek outside of camp to two resource nodes closer to the enemy. This makes for much more dynamic, decentralized combat. In addition if they are mines that you must take inside, infantry suddenly has a very important role in the scenario.

 

3. The cannons on the towers are useless currently, they need to be moved out to the tip of the platforms in order to have a decent arc of fire. Also, I assume by the fact that they autoattack for 150 (with no animation) they will eventually have some sort of auto-defense capabilities so one person in greens can’t take out an entire tower’s defenses, right?

 

4. I can’t help but think the inside of the keep is wasted, is it possible to open the second door, maybe make it a bit more involved by providing several areas to capture to have to research? It would be very cool to have a section near the outside of the keep destroyable to reveal a secondary entrance for the attackers to invade from the inside as well, so as to provide another avenue of attack and further diminish the total domination of the siege machines.

 

5. Siege weapons can move through tiny passageways because they have the same footprint as your character (seemingly). I’m assuming this is a bug, but if its a tech limitation than the interior walls of the keep should be changed perhaps so they still provide protection.

 

Rewards:

 

I feel its important to discuss this because I think everyone knows that the reward structure basically dooms or secures wintergrasp’s future. The basic issue with the zone is that in the end, people will gravitate towards a more rewarding activity. Also, population imbalances (with active population on some servers being severely different) cause issues.

 

Ideally, this means that the reward structure should have:

 

A. A long term component to make people want to come back. It also has to interact with other parts of the game. This gives it staying power.

 

B. Rewards for BOTH sides (above HKs) that provide a very lucrative opportunity for even the undermanned side. This gives the zone popularity.

 

C. Additional rewards for interaction, such that AFKing is dumb, but contribution feels very rewarding.

 

Currently there is an honor/arena point reward for taking the fortress. This is good. It gives an impetus for the opposing team to want to take the fortress. Yes, though it may be an unpopular opinion, offering arena points is a good idea. It keeps more people interested in spending time in Wintergrasp. It doesn’t have to be a large amount at all, but it would be a great way to help people with lower point teams work towards older arena gear and also provide a way for you to get that 12 points you need towards a weapon now instead of next week.

 

OK, so we have a reward for taking the keep only. What does that lead to? Trading keeps for reward farming. This is bad. That means there has to be rewards given over time for keeping the fortress (haha punny). But, if there are only these two rewards, that leads to the dominant faction afking a lot near the fortress with roving death squads stamping out the opposition and farming endless rewards. Also bad.

 

So this leads me to the next idea, which is that the rewards granted over time should be changed from holding the fortress to other parts. Ideally, this would be the various interior research parts of the keep and the two resource nodes. Thus even if a faction can rarely take the keep, they can at least capture nodes or invade the interior of the keep in order to gain some honor/ap. The way this should work is by providing a buff upon zoning in which is a reward ticker. Certain actions would lower the reward ticker and grant you the rewards faster, and the expiry of the reward buff would grant rewards based on the amount of nodes you hold. Thus, the afker would be getting a paltry amount every 15 minutes or what not, and the active participant could be getting 10 times that much.

 

Things like:

 

Being in a capture zone when it goes to your side = 3 min.

 

HKs in a capture zone that is on your side = 1 min.

 

HKs on foot = 30 sec.

 

HKs in a war machine = 10 sec.

 

etc.

 

Ranks:

As for the ranking system, the buff is fine, but what about a system with a little more permanence. A lot of people miss the idea of ranks from the old pvp system, even if the methodology was utterly frustrating. I would suggest a new reputation for either side called ‘Alliance Armed Forces’ or whatever and have each reputation tier provide a rank, title, bg privileges and wintergrasp privileges. The ranks can be different than the old pvp system so as not to diminish past accomplishments. The rep rewards could be throttled so that the effort required would be considerable to reach exalted.

 

By tying in old battlegrounds and adding perks (like a really, really good selection of temporary zoned weapons in AB, or purchasable zoned sprint pots or huge buffs in WSG) the entirety of non-arena pvp can be combined into a system that provides long-term rewards for those who participate and can give a breath of life to old battlegrounds which are stale from a lack of interactivity. Imagine being able to use a demolisher in AV or rent a jump pack for eots. These kinds of crazy interactive things are what battlegrounds need, not gear dominated points farming that people quit 3 weeks into an arena season. Arena is competitive, BGs and wintergrasp need to be pure fun.

 

Anyway these are just my thoughts on how to improve Wintergrasp and the BG system overall, hopefully some of them prove useful.

 

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Dalaran, City of Trickery!

Day 1, Morning. I just arrived in the mystical city of Dalaran. The mages around me wandering the streets and lamenting the presence of a Druid in their midst. So be it, but their stores are atleast open to all. I began to search for the needed stores to restock. An armor shop for a repair. The Alchemist for some new vials. Next on the list were the seeds and roots needed for my magical spells. Across the way is a shop named Abracadabra. That sounds about right. I approach the store and a trap door opens below my feet. I fell through Abracadabra and magically landed near a large pile of gold. The two shopkeepers were nearby but they chose to ignore me, infatuated with the gold. Right as I was about to stuff my own pockets, a mysterious voice appeared and whisked me to the other side of the gate. I had not asked for such help, but in a way I was grateful to the voice, as I had no other means out, doomed to die with the gold I had found.

 

Day 1, Afternoon. I decided to take a look around the sewers. A dark and rank tunnel underneath the glorious city. A spot that isn’t talked about very often. Suddenly, a rat sprang out from the wall. Startled, I jumped to the side, and fell into a pit. Cursing the Dalaran mages for not thinking of those without Blink, and giving us handrails, I began to call out to the mysterious voice from before. “Help me!” I said. But to no avail. I broke down and began to cry. If I used my own magic, it would be months before I could return to this city. As I sit there amongst the sludge pondering what to do, the environment around me warps and I am once again above ground in the mysterious city of Dalaran. And then, a new voice calls out to me. “Stop jumping into places you shouldn’t!” … He had a point. Perhaps it was enough exploration for today. Besides, I really needed a shower.

 

Day 2, Afternoon. After a short adventure, I realized I needed a bit of a shave. I headed off towards the barber shop. It seemed oddly empty for such a busy city. I looked around through the door, and proceeded to step inside. The floor gave way and I could see rocks around me racing past! I scrambled to find my magical cape but I feared it was too late! I flapped my arms instinctively, but paused for a second to question why it was so instinctive… Ah! I had transformed into an eloquent raven, saving myself the likely excrutiating pain that was almost sure to soon arrive. I flew up into the clouds, and swooped back into Dalaran. But not before laughing at the Horde Guards who could not seem to figure out what to do with me. I landed in front of the Barber Shop and the magics of Dalaran took hold of me once again, returning me to my Night Elf form. I took a step back and then ran forward, leaping over the entrance. I then greeted the Barber plesantly, and asked him for a shave, but this time, not quite so close.

 

Day 3, Evening. I thought it would be a good night for a run. The past few days had been quite stressful, and the cool air rushing past would be quite relaxing. The Dalaran Mages had decided to trust me enough to use a bit of my shapeshifting magic. I gave way to the instincts of the cheetah inside me, and off I ran through the streets. Peddlers on the side offered me fruit and flowers, but none of that interested me. All I needed was the night wind and the stone walkways under my paws. I turn to the right and race down the street. The Horde Guards looked very unhappy today. I wonder if they’ve had other ravens come and visit. I rush past and take another right. As I do so, I hear a voice behind me calling out the one word to make my stop in my tracks. Fish. I spin around, tucking my tail some to keep my balance. I am now at the feet of the merchant, looking up at him with my tail wagging. Mmmmm, fish. He seems to understand why I’m there, and motions towards the nearby fountain. I look inside and see dozens of small fish towards the bottom. I turn around and look at him again, and he nods. I raise my paw to strike, and suddenly I’m pushed into the fountain! But it’s not a fountain! It’s a hole in the ground, another mage trick! I try and leap out. I try and climb out. Nothing! Accursed mages! Damn them and their ‘mystical’ city! I’m done with this place! I begin to chant my Druidic spell and then am surrounded by the pleasant aroma of the wilderness, and the tall trees of my only true home, Moonglade. Now, if only there was actually a place to put my things here, then I’d never leave.

 

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Beta - Most Common Questions  

The intention of this thread is to create a FAQ, or possibly a cache of knowledge from the more experienced Wrath Beta testers to help out the new folks who are arriving. If you spend any time at all in the general chat for Borrean Tundra or Howling Fjord, then you will know that several topics come up again and again. Hopefully this thread will help answer some of these common questions.

 

I will update this thread as I see peoples responses and as I continue to play the beta myself.

 

Q: How do I get to Northrend?

A: There are 2 ways per faction of getting to Northrend for the first time.

 

Alliance: There is a new dock area inside Stormwind. The ferry from Stormwind will take you to Borrean Tundra. There is also a new boat which departs from Menethil Harbor. This boat will take you to Howling Fjord.

 

Horde: There is a new Zeppelin Tower that is in front of Undercity. This will take you to Howling Fjord. There is also a new Zeppelin that leaves from Org. It will take you to Borrean Tundra.

 

 

Q: How do I get to Dalaran?

 

A: There are several ways to Dalaran.

 

1) The “Official” way is a quest titled The Magical Kingdom of Dalaran which is obtainable at level 74. This quest will get you attuned to use the teleport crystal which is located in Crystalsong Woods.

 

2) Mages can get a self-teleport spell at level 71 by doing a quest in Dragon Blight. The name of this quest is called Attunement to Dalaran. Again - this is a Mage Only self-teleport.

 

3) Group Teleport - Level 74 mages can train the group portal and transport other players to Dalaran.

 

Q: How do I get to Coldera and the Nexus?

 

A: There is a short quest line from the Kirin Tor Mages at Amber Ledge. The quest line involves saving the captured mages. The final step of the quest is called Rescuing Evanor. Once you’ve completed this quest line, you will have the flight path which takes you to Coldera Island.

 

 

Q: How do I train a certain profession to 475?

 

A: Currently, many of the Grand Master trainers for different professions are only available inside Dalaran. This will likely change in an upcoming patch. If you cannot find the Grand Master trainer in one of the starting towns, then your best bet is to get to Dalaran to train. Also, please note that profession recipes are still a work-in-progress. More and more recipes have been added with each patch.

 

 

Q: How do I get to Lake Wintergrasp to PVP?

 

A: The only way in to Wintergrasp at this point is by flying mount. This requires that a player reach level 77 so that they can use their flying mount in Northrend.

 

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Getting a moth pet as a low-level Hordie

 

As you’ll know if you read my post about Petopia being updated, I’m extremely excited about being able to tame moths now. However, my hunter is Horde-side and merely level 18 (well, the one I’m playing recently anyway), and the only trainable moths pre-Outland are on Azuremyst Isle. Combine that with the fact that the boat crews are back in the game, and it becomes very tricky to get such a pet at a low level. But not impossible - here’s how I did it.

1.      Get yourself to Auberdine (Darkshore). If you’re like me, this means running from Orgrimmar, but at least I got to pick up some flight paths along the way.

2.      Swim out to the very end of Auberdine’s dock, where the boat to Azuremyst docks. Position yourself right under the tip of the dock, and then drown (as close to the surface as you can).

3.      Run your ghost out on the dock, stand at the end of it, and wait for the boat to show up. Do not resurrect yet.

4.      When the boat arrives, run onto it (still in ghost form), quickly climb the back stairs, and carefully walk out onto the rope that stretches towards the front of the ship (see screenshot above). Now resurrect. You will be in combat, but nobody will run up to the rope to attack you. Now just don’t move until the boat gets to Azuremyst.

5.      When you get to Azuremyst you should be able to jump straight into the water, thereby avoiding combat. Now would be a good time to turn on your Track Humanoids if you’re interested in finding a Blood Elf Bandit for the coveted mask. Make your way east towards Ammen Vale, where new Draenei start, being careful to avoid Azure Watch.

6.      Unfortunately, you’re going to have to die some more. There are high-level guards in the pass into Ammen Vale; I couldn’t think of any way to get through besides corpse-running. But it only took two deaths, so I wasn’t too bothered.

7.      Just past the guards, you should find what you came for: Vale Moths. They’re level 1, so you should have absolutely no trouble training one, and then you can simply hearth out. Enjoy your awesome new pet!

Three deaths in all (probably more if you’re on a PvP server); not too bad, considering. The family skill for moths is Serenity Dust. I was initially worried about putting it on auto-cast, but it looks like the pet AI is smart enough to not use it until the moth is down by enough health that the HoT is actually useful. With Dust once a minute, I may never cast Mend Pet again in the course of normal questing.

 

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WoW TCG hosts World Champs in Paris this weekend

 

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game World Championships have started up this weekend in Paris, France — there’s some excellent coverage on the official site about all of the CCG gaming going on over there. They’ve got everything from a roundup of the swag bag to play-by-play on the featured matches and some good commentary on what kinds of decks players are bringing to the tables. All told, the players are fighting for a prize pool of $250,000 — some serious cash for playing cards.

They’re in the middle of Day 2 right now, so there’s lots more tournament coverage to come from Paris. If you’re a fan of the TCG, this weekend’s your chance to check out what some of the top players are up to as they battle for the big prize.

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Troll Regeneration

(can’t find a more suitable forum to post this in. >.<)

 

Hello.

 

Troll Regeneration currently works by increasing your health regeneration by a %.

 

The issue I have with it, is that in it’s current form it greatly benefits certain classes a lot more than others.

 

Classes that stack +spirit for example see a lot more of a return than classes that have NO spirit (rogues for example?).

 

My suggestion is that Troll regeneration be changed to flat x% of your life per second. That way it benefits everyone equally, and scales well with your level.

 

- Xidius

 

 

 

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Lowered 60-70 exp a permanent change

Leveling was fast and fun until I hit 66. Now I hit Nagrand and it’s miserable. I might just have to skip the zone. You might want to consider dropping the Nessingwary Quests down to 20 or 15 kills. :/

 

In fact, after the whole Death Knight starting area, the rest of the old game feels completely lackluster and non-epic. I haven’t done any of the new Northrend content but I hope every zone feels as epic as the DK starting area, where you’re actually waging a campaign from one end of the zone to the other.

 

Maybe it’s just Nagrand getting me down. I remember enjoying it in the BC beta, so I’m not sure why it feels so soul crunching now.

 

PS: The lack of weapon upgrades and the overabundance of now-useless caster plate throughout the BC quests desperately needs to be addressed.

 

 

 

 

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Look! Up in the sky! It’s Shaman changes!

 

Tipster VyseV1 hit us up with a mail pointing to Ghostcrawler’s latest post on the beta shaman forums, and it’s chock full of shaman changes. Some of them aren’t really changes at all, but rather things that didn’t change, interestingly enough. As an example, Ghost says:

“Maelstrom Weapon — We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it’s balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we’d have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we’re going to let this ride for now. It’s something to keep an eye on, but we aren’t going to change it yet. ”

For the complete post in case you can’t get to the forums, hurtle across the dark void with me now! Hurtle!

There’s a reasonable amount of text here, so instead of posting it all and responding at the bottom, we’ll discuss each paragraph individually. Italics are GC’s post.

Tidal Waves — Riptide now also procs this effect.

Good. Any buff to Riptide is a good thing.

Riptide — We’re going to increase the initial healing component.

See my comment on Tidal Waves.

Storm Reach — now called “Elemental Reach” and includes Lava Burst.

I’m glad to see Lava Burst get a range increase, hopefully this will mean Elemental Shamans will be able to work it into their rotations more easily.

Improved Fire Nova Totem - Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20%, and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire Nova Totem for 2 sec.

This totem goes back and forth a lot between the movement impairment and a stun effect. I guess the stun will be good for PvP and on trash. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever put points in this talent. That might just indicate why I’m not a very good Elemental Shaman though.

Thunderstorm — We will probably boost the mana return to 8% of total mana. That seems more in line with similar effects. We talked a lot about buffing its damage, but decided that may not be a good idea. With its short range, it isn’t a great rotational spell for a raiding Elemental shamans, and making you run up to hit a boss and run back is giving up a lot of cast time. Instead we’re going to try to keep the damage and knockback more situational (in PvP it will get used a lot) and make the mana return the big PvE raiding focus.

8% is better than 5%. Not much else to say about that, they seem determined that the 51 point Elemental talent be situational. It will clearly be used in PvP and PvE for the reasons Ghost indicates, but I also expect to see builds that omit it entirely at least until we’re clear on how much mana regen Elemental will need at higher levels. Can’t really complain about a buff, even if it’s not the buff you wanted.

Maelstrom Weapon — We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it’s balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we’d have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we’re going to let this ride for now. It’s something to keep an eye on, but we aren’t going to change it yet.

The cynic in me translates this to “We’re going to nerf this as soon as we get enough data to confirm our suspicion that it procs too much” and I really, really hope I’m wrong. Then again, I can’t disagree with the premise that it procs too much more than I do. Really, to me this is like someone saying “We’re concerned that fried chicken you’re eating is too delicious.”

Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt — And now for a few words on Elemental damage. One of the things we were trying to do to make Elemental dps more interesting was to have a Lava Burst + Flameshock variant. We also themed some new deep talents to support this play style. The problem is that lightning still seems to do more damage than fire, which in turn makes the new talents feel lame because they benefit fire and not lightning.

Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you’d partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells.

We talked a lot about just buffing Lava Burst and a deep fire-based talent or two. This will make Lava Burst too good on paper, but it might work out okay in the game itself. We’ll just have to see. We aren’t 100% sold on this course of action, so I’ll update when we decide for sure.

Once again, these decisions were the consensus of our design team, so please don’t give me the credit. In fact, if there are any changes you specifically don’t like — those I had nothing to do with.
Okay, this is actually the meat of the post, and it’s again about changes they didn’t make, and changes they may make. Now, I don’t have access to the data Blizzard does, which is several builds ahead of what’s on the beta, and so I can either accept or reject their contention that LB spells are ‘too good’ right now but either way I’m doing so based entirely on what other people are saying. I don’t have the numbers. So I’ll leave it to Elemental Shamans who are out there testing to decide if LB is too good based on CoE or not. I know losing access to Enhancement Shamans’ Stormstrike didn’t do them any favors.

I do have to say that I’m glad they decided that nerfing level 70 Elementals with the promise of buffs to come at level 75 would be a bad idea. Brutal doesn’t really cover how bad it would be to spend a month with your damage decreased and then have to level once Wrath actually came out with that same decrease. Raiding Elementals would feel it, but the ones who would really suffer are those in lesser gear who would find themselves dying a lot more often.

I hope they find a way to buff Lava Burst that they find acceptable and not terribly unbalanced. Perhaps it should add a debuff that increases the damage fire spells do on the target? At any rate, shamans got a few nice changes and dodged some pretty enormous bullets here.

 

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