Earlier today, the up-close-and-personal Enhancement shammies got some boosts, and Elemental improvements were promised for patch 2.3 as well. And here they are! Eyonix delivers:

• Being a level 70 elemental shaman myself, I'm particularly excited as currently I feel the class is in good shape, but in need of a few minor tweaks. I'd say the one I'm most pleased with (especially after seeing the results of change on an internal build) concerns lightning overload. When 2.3 launches it will have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to occur, though the additional spell will cause half damage, still ending up being a noticeable increase to overall dps
• Also, the additional spell will cause no threat whatsoever.
• [Regarding] the mana spring totem. Previously it restored 12 mana every two seconds at maximum rank, for your entire party. As of patch 2.3 it will restore your groups mana by 20 every 2 seconds.
  This equates to 50mana/5 for each member of your party without the talent points in restorative totems.
• The second change impacts water shield. This spell will no longer cost any mana to cast (which also means the five-[second] rule will not be affected) and the mana granted per globe has been substantially increased. Additionally, the spells duration has been shortened to one minute and at the end of its duration it now grants mana for any remaining globes.
• Elemental Focus will now reduce the mana cost of the next two damage spells by 40%. Now before theorycrafting begins, this is actually a buff except in cases where your chance to land a critical strike with spells was extremely high.
• Frostshock will no longer be subject to diminishing returns which I'm sure players will find useful, especially in pvp.
• Lastly, we are making a change that will cause a reduction in dps, however, the elemental shamans overall dps will still be improving with the change that we're making to lightning overload. We're reducing the casting time of Lightning Bolt to 2.5 seconds (from 3 seconds), and chain lightning to 2.0 (from 2.5 seconds), causing benefit from spell damage to be reduced appropriately. The mana cost for these two spells are being lowered as well.
  The lightning mastery talent's cast time will now be reduced by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds. So, casting time for the spells ends up being the same as before. (All of the above from this Eyonix post)
• We're increasing the additional mana granted by water shield for both the Tidefury Raiment and the Totem of the Thunderhead. (Eyonix)

Now that is what I call a lot of changes. Well, my LB-loving friends, are you happy with this stuff? Not all of these changes are Elemental-specific, of course; the mana spring totem change, for instance, helps everyone, Shaman or not. How do you think these changes will interact to help or hurt Elemental shamans?

In other Shaman news, Eyonix has said basically "no cc 4 u", at least until Wrath:

• If we give shaman a cc abillity it won't be until Wrath of the Lich King.

Tags: 2.3, blue, buff, ele, elemental, forums, patch-2.3, shaman, shamans, shammy

Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Forums