New PTR PatchFollow

I noticed three "big" changes.

#1. Riptide is being put on PTR. Ripetide (Rank 4... assuming level 80) Instant Cast. 6s Cooldown. 18% Base mana. Heals a friendly target for 764 to 826 and another 795 over 15s. Your next Chain Heal cast on that primary target within 15s will consume the healing over time effect and increase the amount of the Chain Heal by 25%. Basically this is what had been told to us by the dev's. We'll see if it sucks or not.

#2. Earthliving HoT Change. This one is a biggie IMHO. Blessing of the Eternals 2/2 is Increase the Critical Effect chance of your spells by 4%, and increase the chance to apply the earthliving heal over time effect by 80% when they are at or under 35% total health. Earthliving already has a 20% chance... meaning we're at 100%! Not only is it a guaranteed hot for low health people PROC'd from our heals... but that also means it won't just be flying around on people with 100% health overhealing (except for the random 20% procs anyways... but who cares now).

#3. Flame Shock Range Increase. Lava Flows 3/3. Increase the range of your Flame Shock by 15 yards (5 yards each point) and increase the critical strike damage bonus of your lava burst by 24% (8% each point). This means RANGE-WISE, lava burst-flame shock-lightning bolt rotation is at least possible. Damage-wise, I don't know... but at least it has theoretical possibilities now.

That's all I've noticed at the moment. I didn't see any changes to enhancement. :X I may have missed them though. MMO-Champsions has the new trees up from PTR for those interested.

Even if it only ate the buff and not the HoT this still isn't a primarily PvP-oriented spell. You're not going to be casting Chain Heal on the tanks very often, and neither are you going to take the time to search for a low-health target in the raid, blow 18% of your base mana and a GCD to slap a HoT on a target that you're about to Chain Heal the ever-lovin' !@#$ out of anyways.

The ELW change is positive. Good stuff there. Nice to see they are still actively trying to give Elemental Shaman a spell rotation too, though no one knows if they'll ever succeed at it.

Edited, Sep 20th 2008 9:03pm by Gaudion