Chain Lightning; Patch 3.3

I know what you are all thinking: How is the new totem models for Dwarves, Trolls and Orcs not the headline for this post? Thanks to MMO-Champion as always for the screenshots.

A bit over a week ago there was a conversation floating around the Damage Dealing forums regarding Chain Lightning. Due to the 3.2 change to Shamanism (that allowed it to now recieve the Spell Power benefits that previously only went to Lightning Bolt), Chain Lightning was made considerably more powerful even in single target situations. Binkenstein over at Elitist Jerks, who does a lot of theorycrafting and is generally seen as one of the major authorities in such issues, claimed that integrating CL into a single target rotation was now viable and the DPS increase was forseeably worth the additional mana. Liax, a well known figure amongst eles on the official forums presented this finding on the DD forum in this thread, questioning if this was intended or if it was an attempt at making CL a more competitive form of AoE that produced this as an unforeseen result. Ghostcrawler responded quickly but didn't seem to confront the issue comprehensively, basically claiming CL is not intended to be a single target spell but if it works for you then go for it. You can read the succinct version through MMO-Champ's Blue Tracker here, just including the two posts mentioned.

Now, I honestly haven't done the numbers to the level I am sure Bink has, but generally conclusions coming out of Bink and EJ's shaman forums are pretty reliable. I still use 4 set tier 8 so the effect will be a little less in my case, but what these results show and what GC was trying to express (at least how I am reading it) is that using CL sparingly is going to be a good thing, and a smart player will use CL to complete a rotation more smoothly in situations where due to moving or not a 'neat' amount of haste rating may not give you time to get a full LB cast off. Whether you choose to subscribe to the CL spamming every chance it is available is up to you, I haven't tested it to be able to verify Bink's claims. If any of you come to a conclusion feel free to post a comment and let us know.

The other news recently is the excitement building over patch 3.3, the release of Icecrown and what will probably be the last major patch of this expansion. It seems like it is going so fast, doesn't it? The PTRs are already in full swing and a few rounds of patch notes have already been released. Unsurprisingly, due to the large changes in 3.2.2 we are not getting a huge overhaul, but the primary change announced is interesting:

Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.

Those of us willing to spec for it in the elemental tree will also get:

Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.

I am unsure of what this means for us. At the moment, I am only seeing it being useful in PvP or for enhancement specs. It still means we are limited to running in and out when wanting to AoE, but until the patch goes live it is tough to know the extent of its use.

-Puut

PvPing?

A more informal post is the order of the day. Firstly, I have been doing some 2v2's with a random Destro Lock who was bored in trade and recently parted with his last partner, a Shadow Priest. Judging by his full deadly gear and PvP trinkets/rings etc. he obviously was more into arenas waaay more than myself who, as you may know, have only really done 2v2s with my PvE Boomkin housemate. Anyway, he said as it was just for some skirmishes it would be fine for me to roll in my PvE gear and adding a ring/trinkets/cloak etc. for some survivability. Surprisingly we did very well in our first couple of non-rated matches, so much so that he invited me to join his team and see how we fared against rated. The team rank was in the mid-high 1400's along with his personal ranking whereas mine and my team ("The Vulvarian Riders", don't ask...) was in the low 1100's. We played mostly 1400-1550 ranked teams and fared pretty well on the day, ending at 20-13 for our ranked (with him DCing for 2 of those losses) and 8-3 for skirmishes. The dynamic of the Destro and Ele is pretty interesting, their buffs complement each other extremely well. Most of the time the opposition assumed I was resto and would try to burn my teammate down faster than I could heal. This generally backfired though, as we would counter with an all-out nukefest with Heroism and trinkets popped and would usually take down one of them well, well before they could take down a 900+ resil lock. I would then heal us up and we could clean up the 2v1.

The other noticeable thing was the far greater ability to fare against the dreaded rogues. As he has his fears and I have hex we could peel apart as soon as a rogue appeared and CC the lil' bastards to give each other time to recover. We would then both open up on the now vulnerable target and down him before he could think; even with a dedicated healer they usually would not survive more than 10-15 seconds with our heroism and cooldowns popped. Nice to be able to extract some revenge finally.

And to conclude on a note about healers; we did come across a few good ones unlike the scrubby ones I had met during my 800-1100 rating endeavours. A cool counter to a skilled healer that we learnt rather quickly off the bat was that in a 2v2 they simply cannot keep both them and their buddy up at the same time against a dual-caster assault. With my earth/wind shocks and my partner's silences we could throw enough patches in their healing to make it a nightmare with our bursts.

I am not sure if this partnership will keep going as I really do not take my PvPing seriously enough for much higher rankings, but I would definitely recommend that budding arena players amongst the readership give this combination some consideration. It is a little more off-the-wall than a lot of people are used to but it keeps that nice duo-caster dynamic with some cool abilities that make it viable.

-Puut

Edit: Hit Rating 'How to' guide is in the works, expect it to be up in the next couple of days. May want to invite your caster friends as it is pretty general and applicable to any of us looking for some additional sources of hit.

Upcoming Shaman Q&A

The latest talk around the official forums is about the upcoming Question and Answer session the developers will be having regarding each class. Obviously there is a feeling of discontent amongst the entire shaman community as all three specs are having difficulties at the moment.

The interesting ting to see will be the responses by the developers. Some are already fearing the dreaded 'working as intended' or 'known issue, working on it' responses that we have seen from blue posts in the past. Hopefully in this session they will have the common sense to at least elaborate to a greater extent and calm the concerns of the community some.

Posts are already going up discussing what questions should/will be asked so I am putting my opinions up as to what the most important questions are for us. A couple of these points are general for all shaman specs I will admit off the bat:

Scaling: This is an issue that has plagued elemental shaman since the Burning Crusade. The inability to scale up well as we move into deeper content is worrying. We are the only caster class without benefit to our spell damage from base stats such as intellect or spirit; the easiest method of scaling there is. With the latest improvements to Moonkin Druids giving them significant benefit from spirit, elemental shams are now scratching their heads wondering when we are going to get a bone thrown our way. Seems we are becoming the forgotten casters, and it is not a fun spot to be in.

Totem Viability: When WoW was in its early days, shamans were a necessity as the benefits that their totems bought to a raid group was unmatched. This presence has lessened consistently as the game has evolved until this latest expansion where, in order to make raid makeups more flexible, they have made almost every totem's benefits replaceable by another classes buffs. In essence this is a good idea, because the developers want this game to not restrict the player's experience based on their class. However, being the buffing class we are we have gotten a raw deal here as we now have non-unique buffs that are bulky and awkward to use in that totems have limited range and have to constantly be recast. I would imagine this will be the hot topic of discussion amongst all specs.

PvP: PvP is generally not a topic of discussion for me as I am far more into my raiding than anything else, but I do hit the BGs every now and again and am in a 'just for kicks' 2's team with my Boomkin housemate (we stay in PvE gear/spec and see how many we can win blowing heroism and spamming like hell!). I know like every other elemental shaman how incredibly vulnerable we are, especially to the likes of rogues/feral druids. We are easily stunnable and have literally NO way of getting out of CC apart from our trinkets. I do not have any huge issue with it, but I know serious PvPers are demanding changes to even the playing field a little.

These are the three biggest I can think of off the top of my head, but here is where I am turning it over to you. I have received emails from readers in increasing amounts (which I really appreciate, I might add!) but I am asking you guys to leave comments and let me know what you think about this whole Q&A deal. What questions do you have? Do you have any suggestions? Do you foresee us getting any changes? Hit the comments at the bottom of the post and let me and the other readers know.

- Puut