Class Preview : Cataclysm

Hey guys got a new post for you all today and it doesn't disappoint, its a preview of some the the new changes coming to shaman. I will be posting the changes in full, but will highlight the Enhancement changes.

New Shaman Spells

Primal Strike (available at level 3): Primal Strike is a new weapon-based attack that every shaman will learn very early in the game. Our goal with this ability is to make leveling as Enhancement rather than as Elemental more viable, since many key Enhancement talents become available at fairly high levels.

Healing Wave (level 4): While the shaman already has an ability called Healing Wave, we're adding another spell to the class's direct-healing arsenal and giving it a familiar name. The current Healing Wave will be renamed Greater Healing Wave, and the intent is for the 'new" Healing Wave to be the shaman's go-to heal. Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave will be used on a more situational basis.

Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.

Here are a few examples of effects we're considering for this ability:

* Windfury Weapon – Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 50% weapon damage and increasing the shaman's Haste for the next five swings.
* Flametongue Weapon – Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the shaman's next Fire attack by 20%.
* Earthliving Weapon – Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman's next healing spell by 20%.


Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85): When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it’s necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to adding new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

* Restoration shaman and other healing classes will need to pay attention to mana more than they've had to during Wrath of the Lich King. Spirit will be the Restoration shaman's primary mana-regeneration stat.
* We're making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes. Shaman will have Cleanse Spirit as a baseline ability, but it will only remove curses. Restoration shaman will have a talent that will improve Cleanse Spirit so that it also removes magic. Shaman will no longer be able to remove poison.
* Cleansing Totem will be removed from the game, as we want dispels to be a decision for players, not something done mindlessly. To that end, all dispels will cost slightly more mana, and you will waste the spell if you cast it when there is nothing to remove. (Currently, the dispel is only cast when there is something to remove, which encourages spamming 'just in case.") We will balance PvE dispelling with this new model in mind.
* Totem of Wrath now will replace Flametongue Totem for all shaman, and dropping this totem will buff the group's spell power by 4%. Elemental shaman will have a talent that lets all Fire totems provide +10% spell power, allowing them to drop Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. The 4% and 10% buffs will be exclusive with each other and with the warlock's Demonic Pact, so you can't benefit from all of them at once. We're also considering letting Elemental drop Searing Totem at range.
* We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We're considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation.



New Talents and Talent Changes

* Elemental Reach will be simplified so shaman have a more consistent spell range.
* We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE.
* Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept -- and so did players -- so we are trying to bring it back.
* Elemental will have a deep talent that allows Spirit (which will appear on the gear they share with Restoration shaman) to boost their Hit rating.
* Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not Intellect.
* Enhancing Totems will be replaced with Focused Strikes, which will improve the damage of the new spell Primal Strike and Stormstrike.
* With the Mastery system, we're also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, Improved Windfury Totem, Mental Dexterity, Call of Thunder, Tidal Mastery, Purification, Nature's Blessing, and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents.



Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Elemental

* Spell damage
* Spell Crit
* Elemental Overload


Elemental Overload: Your direct-damage spells have a chance to proc a less powerful 'bonus" version of the spell. This will work much like the current Lightning Overload talent, but would also apply to Lava Burst.

Enhancement

* Melee damage
* Melee Haste
* Nature Damage


Nature Damage: This will provide a passive bonus to the Nature damage dealt by the Enhancement shaman.

Restoration

* Healing
* Meditation
* Deep Healing


Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target's health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points.

In my overlook of the changes I have to say that im excited from whats to come, and im looking forward to these changes. Keep in mind all these changes are not final and are subject to change or removal, but from what I can see if we play our cards right we'll be in for one heck of a ride.

Enhancement Buff.

Heads up Enhancement Shammys we have a Buff incoming.

Upcoming Enhancement buff

 We agree with some of the recent discussion about Enhancement dps. We are going to hotfix a change to the Flurry talent to increase it from 25% to 30% attack speed with 5 ranks.

We also agree that Enhancement may have survivability problems and understand that players don't necessarily feel they can afford the bonus Stamina from the Toughness talent, at least in PvE. We don't have an immediate change to deploy here, but it's something we'd like to fix and a candidate for future patches. 

Video Post

Now I know the new posts have been few and far between but I hope this one helps, now its not a shaman post but its a funny video I happen to run into during my random rummaging on youtube hope you like it. Enjoy.

Btw this is not my video, I take no credit for the creation of this video.

Majin Update: Black Bruise

So our Thursday night raid came around, and there we were face to face with "Festergut" the ugly abomination himself. We charged in with full force and downed the beasty swiftly and forcefully, as we sat there as loot was called and handed out I sat unaware of what the ugly one held in his possession. Moments later to my shock I found my Raid leader Post in raid chat "Black Bruise, Bid", My eyes lit up and scrambled to post my bid, and before I knew it, I come to hear over vent "Last Call, 3, 2, 1, Grats Majin" suddenly I was hit with in game tells of "Grats Majin" "Awesome" ect....

Ok enough of the roleplay "lol", So Thursday came and went and I was fortunate to receive my vary own "Black Bruise". As you can see from the image above this weapon is kind of lacking in stats, but what makes this weapon so special is not its stats but the proc in which it provides its wielder. the rate of this proc is fairly generous, and from early tests on target dummies I've seen a 100-200 dps boost from it selfbuffed, I have not yet had a chance to test this bad boy out on a raid boss, since Thursday happens to be our last raid day of the week, but I will keep you updated come Tuesday.  

Enhance Yourself : "Relic Slot" Totems

Enhance Yourself : "Relic Slot" Totems

Hey guys I'm back and I have a fresh "Enhance Yourself" post for you all today and the focus is on the "Relic Slot", an item slot we share with Druids (Idols), Paladins (Librams), and Death Knights (Sigils) alike. As a shaman I've always liked the idea that we hybrids have had that extra slot in which to receive that extra boost, whether it be to Dps or Healing, it has always been something to call our own.

In this post I'm going to review the two new DPS totems released with patch 3.3.

 

Lets start out with Totem of the Avalanche, as you can see in the image above if you were to compare the two, most would think to grab it without a second guess. By looking at it the bonus to attack power (146 x 3 = 438) is nice from doing nothing more then Stormstrike, I consider this totem a nice upgrade for those doing heroics to entry level ICC raiding, but if end game is your game consider option two.

And here we have "Bizuri's Totem of Shattered Ice" Blizzards elemental shaman totem if you will, well most would think that at first glance and again are right to do so. But in recent months haste has started to become a key if not the key stat for enhancement shamans in end game raiding because of the benefits it can bring to the table such as faster weapon swings, which equal more white damage, faster maelstrom proc times, shorting GCD time, and much more, but thats for another post /smile for now lets continue with the totem at hand. As you can see the totem grants the player 44 haste per tick stacked to 5 for 30secs (44 x 5 = 220) and the nice thing about it is the proc doesn't occur from "Flame Shocks" initial damage but from its "Periodic Damage" meaning this totem is very low maintenance in an already high maintenance priority line or rotation if you will. With "Flame Shock" by the numbers providing higher dps to enhancement this totem seems to fit the Enhancement bill nicely, and is my choice for end game totem.

Patch 3.3.3

Patch 3.3.3: A Call to Arms

So Patch notes and PTR information has started to stream out little by little, and shaman among other classes are noticing changes, well I'm here to break down all of that we know about these changes so far. Now the patch is not 100% completed yet and I'll continue to keep you all up to date as time goes on, but as far as we know these are the enhancement shaman changes as of today.

Shaman

• Flame Shock: The damage-over-time component of this ability can now produce critical strikes and is affected by spell haste 

Enhancement

• Unleashed Rage: This ability is now always on as a passive aura.  

  

Glyphs

• Glyph of Flame Shock - Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Flame Shock periodic damage by 60%.  

Some good changes as we can see so far, flame shock capable of producing critical strikes without the aid of a glyph and is also affected by spell haste to boot is a nice addition. Unleashed Rage now a passive aura instead of having to crit for it to proc is another positive. As far as the new glyph I'm not 100% sold on it yet, I will have to go over the numbers and get back to you all on that, as I said before I'll continue to keep you all up to date.

Enhance Yourself : Battered Hilt.

 

Hey yall, its been awhile since my last post, ive been busy with stuff IRL but im back and got a fresh post for you all.

Now you all may have noticed in trade chat people advertising to sell an item called a Battered Hilt and have wondered what it does and why it happens to sell for so much? Well the answers is a few things, the item opens up a quest chain in which leads to a good amount of gold and upon completion of Quest : A Victory for the Sunreavers (H) / Quest : A Victory for the Silver Covenant (A) will lead to a Epic sword of item level 251. Now you may ask yourself  "A Sword? why would an enhancement shaman like me want that?" well I'm gonna tell you why, blizzard added a special part to this quest allowing players not able to wield swords, to have there own special weapon as well.

Now there are 3 options to choose from but were only gonna review the one that matters to us enhancement shamans, the Cudgel of Furious Justice, at first glance this weapon lacks the look of a weapon your willing to wield, but what it lacks in looks it makes up for in power and stats, with its high dps and slow speed its ideal for enhancement also something to notice is the the haste that is present on this weapon, which is something rare in these days of Icecrown raiding, most weapons you will find either have hit or armor penetration, so haste is a welcome sight. In all this item is something to look for if your building your way to join a top guild, if you can afford to get your hands on one I suggest it, if not try your luck at running heroic Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, or Hall of Reflection. Good Luck and Happy Hunting.     

Enhance YourSelf : Professions

Hey all, Im back and I got a fresh post for you all today.
Today's topic is gonna be all about the Professions! Yup Professions something no max level player should ever be without. Now during your time in major city's you may notice in trade chat a lot of your fellow players posting "LFW" macros displaying there professions and services, this is just one way in which professions can make your time in wow easier. By doing so these players are providing a service in exchange for gold, which is then used for various other things, for the common raider that would be enchants, gems, regents, flask, pots, and BoE (Bind on Equip)Gear, all vital items in which to increase there rolls in raid. But professions are not just there to make you money, they are also there to provide you with above average enchants and buffs to help you reach that next level, Im going to go over them in this
post today.

Tier 10 Shoulder Video.

Hey guys Majin here, just thought Id give you guys a small update about the tier 10 set. Now I understand this videos around the web already, and I understand its a little late, but just in case you haven't seen it, here it is.

At first glance the shaman tier 10 shoulders looks pretty run of the mill, its only after you obtain these bad boys that you will notice something out of the ordinary about these things.
Shovel tusks! yes Shovel tusks, the strange deer like mobs who roam the fields of howling fjord are now springing from your very sides.

I mean who wouldn't love to have shovel tusks burst forth from there shoulders right?
In my opinion I love these things, the animation is decent and the fact that they are in fact jumping from your vary shoulders is just all around fun to show off. They arent vary common as far as appearing, but most things in the game are rare anyways right?

Like it or not here it is, enjoy. =)

Addon Spotlight.

My first Addon Spotlight happens to be of an addon no enhancement shaman should be without, "Shock and Awe". The creator of this is a well known and well respected player in the shaman community a Draenei shaman "Levva", full credit must go to him for this great addon.

I'll explain some the key aspects of this addon in today's post.


In this post I'm going to going to go over some basic features and settings of the addon.
this addon brings a lot of beneficial utility's to a raiding shaman, for example "Timers Bars", Priority setup, and Shield awareness. All aspects needed to maintain your dps at it's maximum.




In this screen shot the "Priority Box" and Cool down Timers/Bars" are in Display. Lets start with the "Priority Box".

As you can see in the screen shot the addon displays your next priority attack based on your list of attacks you provided in setup. It will also display wind shear if your threat begins to reach the tanks.
Underneath that box you will notice 5 small boxes, these boxes are to indicate how many stacks of "Maelstrom Weapon" you possess at that moment in combat, once they reach 5 it will indicate, that you have full maelstrom.



Now on to the Cool down Bars, these bar here to show you how long in which your attacks have left on there cool down's, how many charges of lightning shield and Maelstrom weapon you possess, and how long in which your attacks have left on the target. A great mechanic in order to keep your cool downs in check and help keep your dps at it's maximum as well.


Another great feature in this addon is the ability to keep your "Shields" and "Weapon Enhancements" in check via sounds warnings and screen indicators. You can setup these options in the addons page. The sounds range from a wide variety of options from Submarines to Rubber ducky's, again allowing you to keep your dps at its maximum.

My over all opinion on this addon is that its something no shaman should be without, it covers everything you need to keep track of while in combat to help maximize your full potential.

Rating : 9/10

Download link : "Shock and Awe"

Tier 10

I thought I'd start my first post off with a look at the new tier 10 gear. I know its a little late as far as previews are concerned, but better late then never I always say.

Shaman – Enhancement

• 2 piece bonus - When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 second.
  

• 4 piece bonus - Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 second.

Overall the Style and look of the set is awesome, at first look you would not think shaman but I guess the Kilt is a giveaway lol. The stats in all are nice, a good amount of Agi and Int and is nice to see but the lack of haste is a bit of a downer, to have maybe seen some socket bonuses with haste or maybe some yellow sockets would have given me a bit more excitement towards the set, the shoulder animation more then makes up for it I guess. Ice Crown looks to have a lot of good gear coming our way. The only concerned trying to Balance your Hit, Exp, and Haste keeping both hit and exp at the cap and still keeping your haste high will be a challenge. The Attack Power rout is always a possibility to keep your Dps high but Haste should be the number one stat overall it will produce higher sustained damage. All and all the set is great looking and stat wise is above par, and should be something to behold in full on any shaman no matter the race.

Welcome.

Welcome to the new "I Windfury" blog site, I started this site because I wanted a site for enhancement shamans to call there own, we have all seen the site for a variety of classes the one stop sites for everything and anything DK or Rogue. So I'm taking it upon myself to make one for all you enhancement shamans out there that want that direct connect info on your class.
I will be giving my opinionated views of Patch notes, Talent builds, Rotations, Glyphs, Gear, Gems and Enchants. Keeping you up to date on everything in the world of enhancement shamans. So enjoy the site and stay tuned for future updates.

Majin.