WotLK info from the WWI Follow

This stuff looks sweet!

I'm going to go ahead and say that this has the potential to be a very bad thing. With this change, there is going to be little or no reason to ever bring more than 1 or 2 Shaman tops, even in a 25-man raid, and possibly even exclude DPS Shaman entirely. Why bother to bring an Enhancement or Elemental Shaman at all when your second or third Chain Heal-spamming Resto can lay the DPS totems?

At least we can Hex now.


Interesting, I suppose? I would hope they're doing this with all current enchants. It would be nice to have Earthliving weapon and Mana Oil on my weapon at the same time.

I never thought of the benefit to this, now I see how amazing it will be! I cant wait!

wander if this means wf could be purged from us now which is not so good.

As far as totems being raid wide this is great, most 25 mans only have 3-4 shaman anyway, totems still have 20-30 range on them.

Tranquil air will still find a use in fights where the casters have enough room between them and the tank, and now all melee can make use of strength of earth grace of air (as long as these are being rolled into one nice earth totem) and wind fury, as well as a nice healing stream totem for the entire melee group .

totem of wrath is going to be a big buff to the entire caster group now specially when spreading out is not required, wrath of air and mana spring being raid wide will be a big buff, I see no reason in why people will not want to bring plenty of shaman to there raids still bloodlust is still an amazing buff and for enhancement shaman UR is still a powerful buff.

I think this new change to shaman will make healing stream totem really shine now as it is very cheap way to give everyone a nice little tick heal even from enhancement shaman.

lets say you bring 1 shaman per group 2 enhancement shaman providing healing spring can be very helpful, on top of wf agl/str wrath and even stone skin to buff a little more. then bringing 2 resto shaman for chain heals one to drop mana spring one for healing spring and whatever other totem they want to drop for the casters letting maybe str/agl for hunters maybe tranquil air if there is enough room between the casters and tank. let elemental shaman take care of wrath and totem of wrath to increase the casters dmg and healing all sounds fine to me.

I think any guild that just thinks well now shaman can buff the entire raid we need less is just a dumb guild, sure 3 restos could get out all the needed buffs but elemental and enhancement bring stuff to a raid as well Unleash rage and imp totems and elemental with there totem of wrath is going to be very much worth it now that it affects everyone in range, not to mention less casters fighting over me.

now they just need to make shadow priests and there battery ability a raid wide affect =P

Well, they can't though. As pathetic as it is, Totem of Wrath is still an Elemental-only talent, and most likely Wrath of Air will not be 'condensed' into the melee totems too. I personally see this as a HUGE buff to Shaman desirability, it means everyone in the raid can get a strong buff from every totem instead of choosing from a subset. With two Shamans, its entirely possible to have everyone get every useful totem buff. Tranquil Air is clearly on the way out, but since Paladins came to the Horde it's been crap anyway.

I still see room in a 25man raid for three Shamans;

• Melee DPS Melee totems/Unleashed Rage
• Caster DPS Totem of Wrath/Wrath of Air
• Resto Cross-raid healing (Shamans still the best with Ancestral Awakening)

The only gripe is that none of these roles are essential, but then looking at the new content it seems Blizzard want to move away from the ludicrous group precision you need in Heroics to actually get anything done ie; no Mage/Hunter and you literally cant do it at the appropriate gear level. I would really like WoW to end up a slightly more forgiving experience at that mid-range gear level, the jump from Normal to Heroic is really disheartening for many people.

Edited, Jun 30th 2008 10:10pm by Sinstralis

Edited, Jul 1st 2008 10:37am by Sinstralis

It said it'll be a buff, which will most likely be 20% chance on hit to proc another attack with extra attack power.
So it doesn't matter whether you're using stones, poison, or shapeshifted.
Hell this means shammy's will get a dps boost in ghost wolf form.

... Which is pretty much my point. ToW scales inversely to the point of obsoletion at current post-70 content; I can only imagine how it's going to be at 80 and beyond. It's nice, sure, but it's hardly reason to being an Elemental Shaman along when Restos can provide everything but the ToW. And as far as DPS Shaman go in general, as it is they get in on their buffs. Yes, their DPS has the potential to be nice, but there are several other classes that can and should outpace them easily if they're equally geared and skilled.

Our buffs make or break us in PvE. Blizzard needs to be very careful with how they rebalance us.


I agree wholeheartedly. Difficulty is nice, but when it gets to the point that it's completely debilitating without having one or two particular classes along--and as we're all aware, TBC heroics were organized almost entirely around CC and/or whether or not you had a Pally tank--then everybody loses. Parties end up waiting around for possibly hours for something specific to pop, and anything that isn't what they need is passed up. "Sorry, we need CC," is the DPS Shaman's LFG mantra. And the only way to make up for it is with overgeared tanks and healers, which isn't fair and shouldn't be required.

I foresee a huge nerf coming in some respects if a shaman buffs the entire raid. Healing Stream totems stack. lol.... So if you have 3 shamans with ~+2000 healing, each healing stream will tick for about 140 (probably a bit more) health per 2 seconds (so 420 health every 2 seconds to the entire raid.... so over 1000 health per 5 seconds to every raid member) PLUS chain heals. Moreover, healing stream totem is SUPER cheap to cast. lol

Hell, shamans wouldn't even need to cast chain heal almost with those totems up. You could just have shaman healers and they all lay down healing stream and you'd have over 2k health/5s to everyone in the raid. :X

There's no way the alpha talents/buffs/nerfs will all go into effect. It's fun to theorycraft, but I see a LOT of holes in the shaman stuff that they haven't thought about.

Hex seems pretty useful even if the player can move his/her toon. Hex that rogue who stunlocked you, drop earthbind. He cant sprint out of it. Ditto a warrior and intercept, mage and blink, a druid and shifting.... This has the potential to help greatly given that with eb and frost shawk we have two good snares. Plus it's now another interrupt on top of ES.

The number of in-combat abilities that have enormous cooldowns is quite small indeed, in fact most of them I'd place in a different category entirely to the rest of our 'cooldown abilities' They are usually associated with a dramatic effect that simply cant be placed on a 'normal' cooldown. Lay on Hands is a good example.


The Shaman Elementals, while I totally agree are on a ridiculous cooldown, are actually designed as PvE panic buttons par excellence. I have yet to find a way to pull aggro off my Earth Elemental, I've met T4 tanks who couldnt keep the mobs off him. That guy has saved more wipes than any of my other abilities, when the tank dies (in 5man ofc, Im not talking Illidan here) that Elemental can effectively tank a boss as long as he gets healed. And 'Mages' do not get a Water Elemental, 41pt Frost Mages do; if Elementals were a 41pt talent for Shamans, you'd see them without a cooldown too, I imagine. Don't compare baseline abilities to talented ones, it really is apples and oranges.


Just because some cooldowns are 1hr and some are 6sec doesnt mean a 'medium' cooldown lies precisely between them; the vast majority of abilities have a cooldown shorter than 1min, most of the others are 3mins or less, with a few class-definers like Divine Shield pushing 5min. Abilities above 5mins exist of course, but there are very few of them compared to more reasonable timings.

20mins is not 'medium' it's 'long', they are not designed for regular use. Hex quite clearly is. Can you imagine if the spell was resisted, you'd have to wait another 20mins to recast it? Not a chance. I'd predict a 'medium' CD of around 20-30secs, not spammable but useable several times in an Arena match. There isnt any evidence to support a huge, 10min+ cooldown except "Im pissed off about elementals".


You're half right. I can understand that you're reticent to trust Blizzard given the complete *********** they've made of most of the class design so far, but I think even they recognise that Shamans need to change or there wont be any left. Jaded yes, a lot of us are since we saw TBC's beta and thought "Oh well....maybe next expansion..." but not entirely warranted; I for one expect Shamans with good gear to be a force to contend with in WotLK, my only question is which mechanic will they settle on.

well i don't see why we should be able to purge poisons they are applied to a weapon not a spell in anyway, besides rogues can't purge it anyway, best way blizzard could deal with this would be to make wf a physical buff.

Remember, we are still in alpha. Of all the overpowered changes I've heard proposed, totems affecting entire raids is probably the one I would least expect to actually make it into the final product. This, like any other change, I am reserving final judgement on until we get some official word from Blizzard and at least see some patch notes in beta.

Oh. Didn't read that anywhere yet.
But if they really change the weapon enchants so that rockbiter doesn't increase damage and flametongue doesn't deal fire damage anymore that leaves only WF for melee shamans which is not bad since i'm not using anything else anyways 99% of the time but it takes away some versatility.

That totems will work for the whole raid (in the totem radius of 20/30 meters i guess) does sound a bit much but i guess they made this more for PvP like AV where you will be seperated from your group sooner or later and your buffs would help nobody but you.
It would also make sense to work for all people in totem range. Why should a totem work for one person and then not for the person standing right next to him/her.
Also wouldn't be too OP since stat buffs don't stack. Maybe only a few of them will work for everyone or they make 2 different versions like the druid or pala buffs (for single target or party).

WF as physical buff would solve the problem for us but giving it to a warrior or rogue in a 3v3 or 5v5 arena without a way to remove it could mess up the already low ballance. Other classes deal damage as tey are. We need WF to deal damage to come close to them.

...I just noticed that it doesn't say anything about windfury weapon enchant getting changed. Only WF...
So this could mean that it only changes the way windfury totem works so that rogues and druids benefit from the totem too. This would be the best sollution since it leaves us unchanged. Maybe they change the other weapon totems too so druid caster forms also benefit from the changed weapon enchants for healing and damage.