Mental Quickness, I salute thee!Follow

I have just played my first session of WoW with the 2.3 patch. I like what I see. The extra spell damage through Mental Quickness (Base 150 for me at lvl 52) has significantly improved my damage output through Lightning Bolts, Shocks and Lightning shield (750+ damage for 305 mana).

After pulling with Lightning Bolt & Flame Shock, several mobs were at 25% health before I even started to melee. I am completely Enhancement specced, but it felt as if I was Elemental!. I also enjoyed my first 900+ Spell crit with LB!

The new Shamanistic Focus talent also reduces your mana consumption considerably.
...Just think if had been laying down Strength of Earth totem as well, that extra AP would have come in nicely.
Needless to say that Bloodfury (Orc Racial that increases AP) is never off cooldown now.
Nice one Blizzard!

I have to say, between the "free"/+ more MP water shield, and the new MQ, almost completely revamps Enh sham play!

Previously my ES (+ the SS hit setup) did about 1kish dmg with crits getting up into 1.3-1.4 ish. NOW, with MQ...I've crited up into 1.7k! I'm impressed, not to mention with the -60% cost on shocks, that a pretty good amount of dmg for a fraction of the cost previously, making this VERY cost effective dmg/MP wise.

Not to mention water shield! I always talked down on our shields generally (aside from earth)....because...well they deserved it :p But I might argue they finally hit the spot on water shield! With a 4 piece tidal fury set, and the totem that +MP to water shield, I'm now returning about 260ish MP per proc! Not to mention the "auto-proc" when it fades....I just gotta keep telling myself to NOT refresh the shield when I see its about to fade (wait til it DOES fade) :P

Shamanistic rage...I'm on the fense with. I respected to a 5/41/11 spec, since it was free...just to see how it faired in PvP. I "liked" it a few times, when I rogue did their little stun-lock game on me...I survived it and it gave me enough time to return fire and win. Not to mention I held up pretty good against a arm's war charge+MS onslaught Ok (I still died, but I "might" have had a chance if things happened a tad different...typically I would have been dead in 3-4 hits.)

The 2min CD is faster then the NS CD, so techincally you'll have SR up more often. And frankly I didn't even remember to see it as a Mid combat MP regen, but rather as a "OS" button when your taking a beating.

But, its the MQ that won my heart. I am being tempted by the "darkside" of the shaman's "force". The darkside being the "elusive" 21/40/0 spec (que scary music)....the suicide spec! I might guess that a SS+ a timed SF ES and a crit might even make a pure elem blush :-) Not to mention with SF and WS, we can now sustained SS and shock spamming DPS...pushing our already scary PvE DPS to truely HORRORISTIC perportions! *ponders*

21/40/0 is still proving elusive IMO. I have put together what I think would be a very viable 20/41/0 PvP Suicide Build. I'll try it tonight and let you know how it goes.

Edit: If MQ gave a percentage of melee crit as spell crit I could see the 21/40/0 potential, ED might finally be worth taking.

Without the spell crit I just can't see it.

Edited, Nov 16th 2007 9:02am by SunSoarer

It's amazing the difference one little talent can make to a tree. The new Mental Quickness is nice, I'll give you that, but it pales in comparison to Shamanistic Focus. That one talent brings the entire tree--the entire class, really, for this spec--together in a way it never has been before.

Stormstrike is actually useful for more than just a trigger for WF procs, and all three of my shocks are in operation at their highest rank now instead of being downranked. When SF procs, my shock spells cost little more than SS, so it's worth having the debuff up at all times as long as you're critting reliably so you can use the 20% nature damage increase with constant Earth Shocks.

Fight ends and your proc is still active? Pull the next mob with Flame Shock.

By spending mana on high-ranked shocks only when SF procs and with the SS debuff liberally applied, my mana efficiency and killing speed have gone through the roof. Even while shocking/SS'ing at every available opportunity, I am still spending less mana than if I just used auto-attack/WF and healed up afterwards. Hell, I haven't even thought about WF since 2.3. I let it happen, obviously, but I no longer feel like I'm just standing around waiting for it to proc.

Combined with Shamanstic Rage and my racial HoT (Draenei FTW), I am finally now the leveling machine that I have heard Enhancement Shaman were supposed to be. I can only imagine what'll happen once I get Water Shield.

Edited, Nov 19th 2007 10:42am by Gaudion