Ulduar Podcast

An interesting podcast featuring Ciderhelm and Lore regarding Ulduar on the whole and the hard-mode progression.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f189/51723-ulduar-hard-modes.html

Select Patch Notes

Shaman

• A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.
• All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
• Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
• Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
• Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
• Talents
  • Enhancement
    • Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.
  • Restoration
    • Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.
    • Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
    • Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
    • Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman’s Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
    • Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman’s health.
    • Nature’s Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30 second internal cooldown, and increases the shaman’s maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
    • Nature’s Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
    • Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
    • Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Priest

• Prayer of Healing: The percentage of spell power this spell gains in healing (per target) has been reduced from 80.7% to 52.6%.
• Talents
  • Discipline
    • Penance: Cooldown increased to 12 seconds, up from 10 seconds.
  • Holy
    • Inspiration: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.

Paladin

• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
• Charger: Can now be learned at level 40.
• Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
• Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
• Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker’s maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
• Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target’s armor.
• Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
• Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal over time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.
• Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.
• Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.
• Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage.
• Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%.
• Warhorse: Can now be learned at level 20.
• Talents
  • Holy
    • Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.
    • Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
    • Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.
  • Protection
    • Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin’s health to 10/20/30% of maximum.
  • Retribution
    • Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant.
    • Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4 second cooldown.
    • Seal of Command: Redesigned. This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage.
    • Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.

There wasn’t much as far as druid healing was concerned, just a few small Feral Cat nerfs.

~Q

Playing army ftl

Sorry I haven’t posted the next guide! I had drill this past weekend and actually had to do stuff! How absurd, I know. Anyway, look for a Razorscale and XT guides coming within the next day or so. I’ll also be going over XT hard mode. Best.

~Q

A Quick Note

Most of the posts here will be guides centered around the 25man encounters. They can very easily be adapted for use with the 10man encounters. Just halve the amount of healers required for each task and that should pretty easily translate to a 10man running 3 healers. If you’re only running 2 healers in your 10man, huzzah! Dividing up tasks is even easier then. I’ll address Razorscale in my next post. Should be fairly brief, there isn’t a terrible amount of information for healers/ranged in that encounter. All the best.

~Q

Ignis the Furnace Master

Welcome to Ulduar! So you’ve beaten Flame Leviathan and you’re now looking ahead to the courtyard. Congratulations.

Welcome to what used to be the most annoying trash in Lich King. The two molten giants are raid wipers, even after the nerf.  Split them far apart (usually take the left where it stands and the right back to the steps down to Razorscale). They have a pyroblast and an earthquake that does significant damage and is a 4sec silence. HoTs and shields on the tanks will be really helpful for those times. Stack the raid and burn one down quickly, but ensure only a few people get hit by the 2nd earthquake. If the whole raid gets hit by both, it’ll likely kill many.

Next pulls are 2 fire revenants. They come as a pair and both have a flame tornado called “Superheated Winds”. Its a tornado that’ll follow raid members for 5-10sec and if it hits you, tosses you in the air and ticks for about 3k a hit every second.  Quite simply, if you get cornered you’re probably going to die so keep your bearings.

Last packs are 2 golems a la Searing Gorge. They have a charge so melee range is ftw and a flame breath that only the tanks should eat and on the whole aren’t very problematic. On to the boss!

From a healing perspective, there are a few things you need to be aware of. I’ll outline the fight on the whole first then get to specifics. The fight centers on 3 main abilities: scorch, flame jets and constructs.

The scorch is basically a frontal breath attack that will literally scorch the ground in front of the boss. It will stay lit for about 20-30sec.

Flame jets is an AoE ability on a 2-3sec cast that tosses the whole raid in the air for about 5-9k fire damage with a DoT component when you land (damage varies from the 10 to 25man version). This ability WILL INTERUPT SPELLCASTING. It is also important to note that if interupted, you will be locked out of that school for 6-8seconds depending on talents and classes.

Lastly, the constructs are adds the boss will summon every 30-45sec (again, depending on 10 or 25man version) that will need to be tanked and then kited into the scorch on the ground. Once on the scorched ground, the add will get a stacking debuff, when it reaches 10 stacks the construct becomes MOLTEN and will DROP AGGRO. Often the OT will taunt too early and the add will run to a healer and cause problems (when molten, it has a fire aura similar to the immolation effect of an infernal). The last thing to mention about the adds is how to remove them. Once molten, they need to be dragged to the pools to the North or South, hitting the water will make a molten construct brittle and a single 5k hit will shatter them. Healers beware, an OT who is too close to the shatter will take 10-15k physical damage when it explodes.

A minor annoyance of the fight is the slag pot. Periodically, Ignis will grab a raid member and throw them in the pot dealing about 2-5k damage a second or so for 10seconds, then they’ll get thrown out and recieve a haste buff for 10seconds. Simply having the targeted member call it out is an easy way to deal with it. A single healer can easily keep up the person in the pot (NOTE: You can heal yourself if you get thrown in)

The positioning on this fight can vary, but I would recommend using the 4 points method with the raid in the middle. This is often the method we use in Eventide, and shown well through our (Ciderhelm’s) video.

As a healer, don’t get interupted by flame jets and make sure your OT knows when to taunt the molten mobs. 2 MT healers, 2 raid healers and 1 OT healer should be suffecient for the fight. Best of luck and enjoy.

~Q

Shaman Q&A

This week we’re starting our class Q&A series with Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and the development team. We’ll be taking a look at each class and answering some of the top questions brought forward by their communities. First up, we take a look at the most asked questions from the shaman class and find out more about the design philosophy behind the class, the expectations for the class, and what may lie in store for it in the future.

Shaman Q&A with Ghostcrawler and the World of Warcraft Development Team

Community Team: We’d like to start things off by asking a question that players often ask in regard to the very purpose of each class. In this case, we’re looking specifically at the shaman, which has seen a variety of changes since the start of World of Warcraft and perhaps doesn’t fit into the original description quite the way they used to.

Q. Where do shamans fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward?

A. The shaman class has a pretty dynamic history. In classic World of Warcraft there was a period where everyone viewed shamans as overpowered. I remember one of my earliest experiences in the Barrens trying to group with a shaman to do a group quest. But he just told me was an overpowered shaman (Frost Shock!) and didn’t need the help.

In vanilla World of Warcraft, shamans at the end-game were healers. Period. By The Burning Crusade, we decided that all three of their trees should have viable roles in the end-game. We also decided that hybrid classes (those that can fill more than one role, such as damage and healing) should do less damage than the classes that could only fill the damage role. This philosophy generally worked, in some cases too well, because Sunwell raids were infamous for stacking lots of shamans.

In Lich King, a primary goal for raiding was to give players far more flexibility in which classes they brought and try to de-emphasize “raid stacking” as much as possible. This meant we needed to share the unique, mandatory buffs among more classes and specs so that, for example, a raid wasn’t gimped if they happened to lack a +spellpower or +crit buff. However, we didn’t want say shamans to no longer be attractive for raiding so we brought up their damage a lot. It might still not be as high as rogues or warlocks, but it’s close, and if you have the right gear and really know how to play, you can even beat those classes on some bosses. No raid worth its salt would turn down an Enhancement, Elemental or Restoration shaman for fear of bringing down the raid.

In PvP, especially Arenas, shamans have never really been a powerhouse class and we view this as a problem. Shamans have always had a place in the 5 vs. 5 bracket, where their buffs are most meaningful spread out among multiple characters. Elemental has sometimes had a niche as the “kill the wounded guy” spec. Currently, however, much of the PvP community is very focused on the 2 vs. 2 bracket, where teams that pack a lot of abilities into a single class tend to dominate. This is something we need to improve for the shaman class.

Shamans have three really distinct roles. Enhancement is melee DPS. Elemental is ranged DPS. Restoration is healing. Once upon a time there was a potential tanking role for shamans as well, but we have pretty much phased that out.

Q. What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes?

A. Totems, totems, totems!

Okay, that’s the obvious answer, but it goes deeper than that. The weapon enchants are an unusual part of the shaman class, as are mechanics like the shield spells (Earth Shield, Lightning Shield) and Frost Shock. Shaman buffs and utility spells are quite powerful, including the infamous Heroism / Bloodlust, but also their self-rez ability, Reincarnation. As envisioned from the start, shamans were also the “offensive” hybrid. Things have inevitably blurred a bit since then, but they are still a counterpart and complement to paladins – paladins have cleanse, shamans have purge; paladins will let an ally move freely to escape or catch an opponent, shamans will snare an enemy to let their ally escape or catch him or her; paladins will make sure their allies’ casts aren’t interrupted, shamans will interrupt enemy casts; and so forth.

Don’t underestimate the gear either. Shamans are only one of two mail-using classes in the game, and the only non-plate wearer that can use shields. Shaman shields provide a lot of defense and stats for the Restoration and Elemental shaman.

One of the other unusual things about the class is their degree of hybridization. An Elemental shaman can easily throw out heals if a group needs a little extra help. A druid, by contrast, would need to shift forms first, possibly giving up other abilities to do so.

Community Team: There is a unique quality to shaman due to their use of totems as a means of protection, healing, and even as an offensive tool. At the same time, there is a strategic element to being able to place the right totems to do the best job and even more important to place them in the optimum possible spot.

For some players, totems’ lack of mobility and range limitations seem to be more of a liability than an element of strategy, and some shamans in PvP encounters often choose not to place any totems at all.

Q. Are there plans to look at totems in general, the way they are managed, their uses, and their benefits in the future?

A. Absolutely. One of the features we have been working on is a way for shamans to drop all four totems at once (on one global cooldown). This will hopefully make the totems more attractive while soloing and will let the shaman in a group environment quickly get his or her totems down again if the group has to move or they get destroyed. We’d like to get this feature in soon, but we want to make sure the user-interface works well and feels integrated to the rest of the game, so we can’t yet announce a date. And of course, this is still in the planning stage, and so subject to change.

In PvP, we want to make sure we end the use of “totem stomping macros” where a pet class essentially programs their pet to automatically kill any totem they see. It’s perfectly acceptable for pets to kill totems, but the player should at least have to make a decision and spend some of their attention to do so.

We want to look at the range of the buff totems and make sure you don’t regularly get out of range on say large boss fights.

Finally, as a small quality-of-life improvement, we are going to let low-level shamans trade in the four elemental totems that clutter their bags for a single totem they can equip in their totem slot. Since the four “clutter”; totems can’t be destroyed or sold, currently there is no way to get rid of them. This change will essentially give shamans their four bag slots back.

Q. And, what are the possible impacts of considering changes to a system like this?

A. Sometimes you will see the community suggest ideas that basically write totems out of the game. That’s not what we want. A shaman player should care about totems and use them often.
Obviously being able to drop four totems on one global cooldown is a pretty decent buff to the class as a whole, which will require some balance attention.

We have talked a few times about improving the health of individual totems, but if we did, we don’t want to do it by much. One of our Restoration shamans said he still wanted to be able to whack down enemy totems with his healing mace at the end of the day. The balance for totems being able to cause damage or other effects while the shaman also does is the fact that they can’t move and are relatively fragile.

One longer-term change we are considering is removing the buff totems (replacing them with normal spells) and making all of the totems do something more active, like the current damage or healing totems. We’ve even discussed letting shamans carry a totem on their back (the tauren do it already) but that may be too far out there.

Community Team: To continue down the path of totem questions, there are many different types of totems available, and at times the amount seems to be overwhelming. In some cases, there seem to be some totems that don’t have a clear, obvious use to players, such as the Sentry Totem.

Q. Is there any plan to look at the way totems are being used and either update little-used totems or consolidate totems that don’t seem to be of a particularly great strategic value individually?

A. There are still some totems that just aren’t cutting it anymore, and we want to continue to consolidate those so that shamans don’t have any totems that they just never, ever use. Sentry Totem is a possible candidate for the chopping block. It’s hard to really carve off unique niches for Magma Totem and Fire Nova Totem, so those may get merged. Stoneskin is not a terribly exciting totem, so maybe there is a way to just tack that benefit onto another Earth totem. Finally, we are exploring the possibility of the elementals coming out of any Fire or Earth totem respectively rather than to have to drop a new totem just for their temporary benefit.

We combined or cut some totems for Lich King, and you should expect another round of that at some point in the future. As always, we’re unsure of how many of these changes we will get in for the 3.2 patch. We’re trying to keep the list of class changes down compared to 3.1, where some players felt whiplash from so many frequent and sometimes substantial changes to their class.

Q. In addition, many valued enhancement totem relics are only available via random drops, which has been voiced as something that we’ve wanted to avoid in the past. Are there any plans to change this?

A. The “relics” (the items that fill the ranged weapon slot) are always tricky to hand out, since they can only be used by one class, and are often attractive to only one spec. We have typically put them on badge vendors, and that might be the way to go with them in the future. On the other hand, several “best in slot” items for every character are subject to the inherent randomness of boss loot drops. Typically these upgrades are attractive but not so mandatory that you can’t do your job without them.

Community Team: Shamans currently have the lowest base health of any class, and this often leads to concern over their survivability.

Q. Is there any reason that they start this way or is there any future change in store to address this disparity between their base health and that of other classes?

A. This is one of those weird legacies that has been in the game forever. Nobody currently working on classes can remember why that decision was initially made, so we plan to revert it for 3.2.

Community Team: Looking into the Player vs. Environment (PvE) aspect of the game, there are various concerns that are brought up. One recurring concern among all shamans, whether they are Elemental, Enhancement, or Restoration, is in regard to itemization. For some, they are looking for better two-handed weapons. For others, they are looking for that better one-handed axe. Others wonder at the choices that are made in relation to the stats or gem bonuses that are placed on items. An example brought up regularly is concerning Armor Penetration being prevalent in Ulduar despite it not being the most desirable stat for shamans who choose to play as Enhancement. In addition, many shamans express concerns that the options for upgrades are more limited for them than other classes.

Q. When itemizing for the shaman class, what are the aspects that are looked at, and are there plans to make additional improvements to the way itemization is done for the class or for specific talent specs?

A. One of the problems we have with dropping one-handed weapons is the overlap. If we drop axes, rogues can’t use them. If we drop swords, shamans can’t use them. If we drop fists, death knights can’t use them. We are looking at changing one of these restrictions in 3.2, though it likely won’t be for shamans to use swords.

It is our basic assumption that Enhancement shamans dual-wield and Restoration and Elemental shamans go for a one-handed weapon and shield. While we don’t prohibit players from playing with other types of gear, they may not find their damage or healing output to be as high. At this point in time, we aren’t trying to support a two-handed DPS build. That would require a pretty extensive reworking of the tree, and we also want to make sure some class besides rogues are using one-handed weapons.
We got a lot of questions on specific itemization, especially in the new Ulduar tier. The designers do feel like we’ve let the value of various stats get too far apart for the classes as a whole. When some characters want armor penetration and some don’t yet they are supposed to share basically the same gear, it makes the randomness of loot drops even more frustrating. We just need to get Enhancement to where they feel like armor penetration is as valuable as other melee stats.

We’re also in the process of taking a hard look at all the stats in the game. Something that gets brought up in our meetings a lot is that haste and crit are relatively straight forward stats and most players have a reasonable intuition about what boosting those stats will do. When you start to throw something like armor penetration into the mix, it’s hard to estimate exactly what that will do for your character. We’re not sure armor penetration is a rousing success as an interesting stat (though it can be quite good for some characters).

Q. What is the expectation for how shamans choose the gear they use?

A. Players sometimes have the expectation that everything that drops that they can use should be an upgrade for them. This isn’t strictly speaking the developer view though. We want gear to be a little bit of a puzzle where you have to analyze if that piece is really an upgrade or not and how it fits with your other stats. Remember also that much of the normal versions of Ulduar is itemized at the same level as Kel’Thuzad and Malygos.

There are some pieces that are just inferior to what they should be and we are getting those updated over time. As I mentioned above, we also want to improve the situations where some stats are so superior for your spec compared to other stats that pieces with the latter on them are just perceived as junk.

While we have a lot of bosses in Ulduar, those bosses also drop an awful lot of loot. Having loot drop that is attractive to more than one spec is paramount in making the bosses feel rewarding enough. Otherwise boss loot tables are just too large and your chance of getting what you want is low. (The huge loot table works for Emalon who is easy to reach, but not Algalon.) We have to avoid the situation where say the Elemental shaman only wants one set of shoulders in the whole instance and those shoulders are unattractive to everyone else in the raid. This is why we often say that we need to fix these problems on the class side, not the item side.

This is a situation where the distinction among the shaman specs can hurt them a little. Restoration and Elemental shamans both basically want caster gear, but the healer wants regen and the nuker has no use for it. This means if there is mana regen on mail, it is pretty much only useful for a Restoration shaman. (Healing plate presents the same problem for paladins.) We don’t have a great solution for this problem yet other than just dropping three kinds of mail.

Community Team: Continuing to discuss the PvE element of the game for shamans, the introduction of Ulduar changed the strategies players had employed in the past to account for these larger-than-life encounters. Restoration shamans in particular have brought up a concern for their role as raid healer being diminished in light of their inability to effectively raid heal like they once did with the use of Chain Heal specifically. Many have taken to the role of main target heals and are concerned about their continued effectiveness in a raid environment.

Q. Where do we feel the role of the shaman is in raids now and where do we see that going in the future?

A. We want all three shaman specs to feel like they can contribute to raids, and to be honest, we think they’re in a pretty good spot certainly relative to some classes that have specs that are perceived as much more viable than other specs. Enhancement can do great melee damage. After the recent Lightning Overload change, we think Elemental can do competitive ranged damage. I know there is some concern about Restoration shamans losing their healing niche of area damage. We think that perception might exist in Ulduar just because recent talents, glyphs, and set bonuses have all propped up things like Lesser Healing Wave over Chain Heal. Chain Heal is still quite useful in some situations and with different gear in the next couple of tiers, we expect to see more shamans going back to it. We don’t want to see them return to just using Chain Heal as was the case in much of Burning Crusade. We do think Restoration shamans are at the risk of running out of mana perhaps more than any other healer right now, and in fact the seemingly unlimited mana in some healers is what leads to Chain Heal getting stomped on by other big heals. This is a problem we plan on addressing.

Q. Is the change in how shamans are used situational only as we move forward into the next encounters, or is this a shift in philosophy as to the role of the shaman in raids?

A. It isn’t a philosophy shift. We want Restoration shamans to be a strong group healer with the option of focusing on a single target with Lesser Healing Wave as needed. Restoration shamans have two distinct healing styles now that they can shift between, and we want to preserve that. We don’t want to return to the Sunwell era, where 95% of healing came from Chain Heal. It’s just a boring play style. (And yes, paladins, we hear you.) We suspect that with a new totem or set bonus that propped up Chain Heal a little more, you’d see it getting a lot more use. We’re cool with that. It’s fun when you upgrade your gear from tier to tier and it actually pushes you into a slightly different play style.

Elemental shamans have had a couple of opportunities to shine in Ulduar — blowing up constructs on Ignis is one example. We try to make sure the encounters are diverse enough that the same classes aren’t always in the spotlight on every encounter, but we also don’t want to constrain our encounter designers’ creativity too much. Elemental may suffer from so many fights in Ulduar requiring movement. Also, while we have given Elemental strong AoE in the form of the Magma Totem, some players feel like this comes at too high a cost to their buffs and mobility, so this is something we’ll look at.

We’re pretty happy with Enhancement shamans in raids, though we want to continue to analyze whether their DPS is where it should be and if their buffs are comparable to other classes that can bring the same benefit.

We do hope we’ve finally settled the issue of which weapon enchantments shamans should use with the now normalized Flametongue.

Community Team: Let’s shift gears a little and go into the realm of Player vs. Player. As we spoke of previously, survivability and mobility are a couple of shaman concerns that recur more strongly when in reference to PvP interactions. More specifically, shaman performance and visibility within the top-rated teams in the Arena is a much-discussed topic. Players have noticed difficulties both in being able to avoid stuns and roots as well being able to move effectively in the playing field without losing the benefit of their totems.

Q. Are there any other considerations in store for improving overall performance for shaman in PvP encounters (whether in Arena or in Battlegrounds)?

A. Mobility is a big problem. One of the designers described casting shamans the other day as “turrets,” which is very apt. You sit and spin and shoot (or heal). We need to get shamans some more mobility, and we have some ideas for how to do that without just giving everyone Blink. We want to see more shaman gladiators soon!

For Restoration shamans, we think their survivability is low, especially while stunned. Teams have learned to kill the shamans first, because if they don’t, the shaman healing output is good, especially in larger teams. In fact, shamans generally are more powerful on the larger teams because of the nature of their powerful buffs affecting more people. In general, we’d like to get the community back to being more focused on the larger Arena brackets, but we realize we have some work to do there first. Earth Shield is too easy to dispel. An idea we’d like to explore is just letting a single charge get dispelled at a time.

Elemental shamans used to have a niche of being able to blow up a wounded target on demand, but we have been trying to back off some of these really high burst moments. We do need to improve their mobility though, which includes not just the standard melee escapes, but also a way to not lose so much DPS when moving. Elemental is a caster and all casters are getting beat up a little too much by melee at the moment.

Players sometimes accuse Enhancement of being too much of a one-trick pony. It’s understandable that saying “I bring damage!” when so many classes have multiple forms of crowd-control and crowd-control breaks may not cut it these days. Players often request more anti-CC in the form of the Feral Spirits, but we don’t want to turn that ability into something that is saved only to be used as a PvP trinket. Again, mobility (both offensive and defensive) will help Enhancement. A lot of the spec’s damage come from procs and sustained effects, while PvP is more about front-loading damage at the right moment. We definitely can make some changes to give Enhancement more of that, but it requires a lot of changes to the talent tree and playstyle and not the kind of thing you can just hotfix in. On the other hand, Enhancement can offensively dispel, interrupt, and use Tremor and Cleansing Totems while still being a melee DPS. They do have a lot of utility — they just need a little help in order to bring it about. They no longer have mana problems in the longer matches.

One of the challenges of designing the shaman class is that we think it is one of the most challenging classes to play in PvP. (Players sometimes call this having a “high skill cap.”) The shaman has to think about defense and offense at the same time, while many classes can worry about one or the other. For example, a Holy paladin can concentrate on keeping his or her group alive while the Restoration shaman has to do that while also keeping totems up, offensively purging buffs from the enemy team, using Wind Shock to interrupt spell casts, etc. The challenge is making it not too difficult for the average player but also not too powerful for the guy who can master all of the shaman’s tools. (Warlocks and hunters have very similar challenges, by the way.)

Q. What considerations are being made for combating the use of totem-killing macros in PvP, and is this seen as a problem currently?

A. It is a problem. Totems are fragile by design, since they essentially can do their jobs while the shaman does other things. We’re fine with this except in the case of pets being able to target and kill totems via macro without any input from the player. We want the player to at least have to target the totem first before commanding the pet to attack. We have a technical change in 3.2 which will prevent macros from doing this while still giving macros the functionality that players currently enjoy elsewhere. Players have made many suggestions for how to accomplish this technically (a common one is to rename the totems), but the solution is a little more complicated than that. Whacking a totem with your weapon or wand is fine because you are making a choice and spending valuable combat time (similar to dispelling a buff or debuff). Using macros requires no player interaction, and is not working as intended. One totem that is just too easily destroyed is Mana Tide, for which we could see bumping up the survivability. Again, remember that while totems are fragile, they aren’t particularly expensive (especially if we get the change in to drop more than one at a time) and the shaman can do other things while the totems are doing theirs. We’re sympathetic to warlocks and hunters being the two classes most affected by the removal of totem stomping, and we do think their respective representation is low, but we don’t think the way to buff them in Arenas is by letting them be ultimate totem stompers. On the other hand, a reason to just not hotfix in more health to totems is that that change would primarily nerf warlocks and hunters, who need nerfing the least in Arena at the moment.

Healing Roles

So you want to play a healer. That’s great! Next step is to choose which class you’d like to play. Your options are varied and range from a Priest, to a Druid, Shaman and Paladin. This post will briefly outline the play-style of the 4 healing classes, it is in no means an in-depth breakdown of how to heal, more an overview of what to expect. Also, I’m not going to touch on the DPS specs that all 4 classes have.

Priest: The priest class has 2 healing based specs, Discipline and Holy.

A Disc healer is focused on damage prevention as opposed to health return. Very strong shielding talents coupled with excellent mana efficiency make the Disc priest a strong single target healer. They are usually best for MT (Main Tank) healing or healing a ranged tank due to the massive damage they can mitigate through shields and other talents.

A Holy priest is almost the exact opposite. With massive AoE healing capability, they are usually best served watching the raid overall when there is significant widespread damage. CoH (Circle of Healing) and renew are great ways to top up a raid after a lot of damage.

Paladin: The Paladin has one healing spec, Holy. Blessed with the single biggest healing in the game (Holy Light) coupled with the ability to have that land on a 2nd target (Beacon of Light) make Paladins extraordinary tank healers. Limited to 1 instant heal (especially as Holy Shock is on a CD), a Paladin will suffer if forced to be on the run the whole time, Flash of Light will be near 1sec cast for a well geared healer and still hits very hard given the high crit chance of the talented spell. That’s not to say that a Paladin can’t beacon the MT and raid heal with flashes as they can, but generally, with such strong single target healing, a Paladin will usually be a tank healer in raid.

Shaman: Shaman also have one healing spec, Restoration. The shaman healing niche is interesting. They have strong AoE healing through Chain Heal, but it is limited by range. If people are too spread, the spell won’t jump, thereby dramatically decreasing its effectiveness. The class also brings strong group buffs in the form of totems, some which contribute to healing as well. As a shaman, you’re a very versatile healer and can be called on to heal tanks, to raid to everything in between. Keep up your Earthshield and your totems down and Chain Heal away!

Druid: Druids, like Shaman and Paladins have one healing tree (entertaining pun to those who’ve played resto druids), Restoration. A Druid healer is defined by the HoTs (Heals Over Time) the class brings to the table. While this can make them extremely effective raid healers, a good resto shaman or holy priest can significantly hinder a druid’s ability to heal the raid as their heals are direct and often will cut off the HoT as the latter will take time to heal. That being said, a druid can make an extremely effective single target healing by rolling all available HoTs and keeping a nourish cast active. Tanks will rarely drop in health at all due to the constant healing. As a druid, be prepared to vary your healing based on the raid make-up. If you need to raid heal, HoT away. If you have a few resto shaman and a holy priest, gogo tank healing.

Again, this is a quick overview of the healing classes and what to expect. All the best.

~Q

Current UI

Small preview of my shaman UI. I haven’t bothered rebuilding a custom one since Lich King was released and have been relying more or less on the default UI for most things.

The mods you can see active are as follows:

Grid

YATA (my totem mod)

Class timers

simpleMinimap

Eavesdrop

omen

fubar (with plugins such as itemrack, goldfu, highscorefu, durabilityfu etc)

arcHUD

And last but not least, my unit frames are agUnitFrames. I have my focus active for example purposes.

The mods you can’t see, but I also rely on include the following:

Quartz (cast bar)

click2cast

DBM and Bigwigs for raid encounters

recount

powerauras

I’ll update this as my UI expands and grows and I finally get around to building a sexy one.

~Q

Shamans, as described by Blizzard

Blizzard’s description of the shaman class:

“Shaman are the spiritual leaders of their tribes and clans. They are masters of the elements, using spells and totems that heal or enhance their allies in battle while unleashing the fury of the elements upon their foes. Shamans can wear medium armor, and even wield massive two-handed weapons in combat. They are a versatile class that can wade into battle, restoring their allies while hurling elemental bolts of lightning at their enemies.

The old phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” is an excellent way to describe the Shaman; they are the only real “hybrid” class in World of Warcraft. While they do not excel at any one aspect of their repertoire, they function passing well when performing most tasks called upon by a party. Need a support healer? Looking for a secondary tank? After another damage-dealer? Have an empty slot that needs someone to support the group in general? The Shaman can provide. They have a number of utility spells as well that help make life easier for any party.”

Druids, as described by Blizzard

Blizzard’s description of the druid class:

“Druids are the keepers of the world and masters of nature with a diverse array of abilities. They are powerful healers, capable of curing poisons and raising fallen comrades in the thick of battle. Druids also command nature’s wrath, calling down ranged blasts of energy, summoning swarms of insects, or entangling their foes in the earth. But druids are also masters of the wild, able to shapeshift into a great bear, cat, or even sea lion, gaining their powers in combat or travel. Druids are a diverse class with a variety of playstyles, capable of filling any role.

The Druid gives players several play style options. A Druid in normal form is a caster that can fight with spells or weapons. In Bear form the Druid becomes a Warrior with Rage. While in Cat form the Druid becomes a Rogue with Energy and stealth. The Druid can also transform into two other special animal forms. With its ability to heal itself and fellow characters, the Druid can also take on the role of a Priest. A Druid is not as versatile in its abilities as a Priest is, lacking the spells Power Word: Shield, but is otherwise a very capable healer.”