The PTRs just came back up about an hour ago from a new build being applied; some people were able to get on earlier, but any information they found is liable to be buggy. Here's what's been found since the realms came back online for real:

• Shaman:
• Flametongue weapon puts a 50% healing reduction on the target for 5 seconds, refreshing with every hit.
• Toughness: each point in the talent now reduces the duration of movement-impairing effects by 10%, in addition to the previous effect of increasing armor. This means 50% reduced duration at 5/5.
• Shamanistic Rage changed; now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% [was 15%] of your AP. Lasts 15 s [was 30 s].
• Global cooldown on dropping totems reduced from 1.5 s to 1 s.
• [Warlock] Life Tap (rank 3) converts 20% of your maximum health to 20% of your maximum mana. Still terrible, and not very much of a change from the 15% it was at before.

• Alchemy:
• There are some new epic gems: spell haste and stam, spell haste and spell damage, resilience and stam, and plain spell haste.
• New alchemist stones. They all increase the effect that healing and mana potions have on the wearer by 40% (does not stack) in addition to the following effects:
  
• Assassin's: +54 crit rating
• Guardian's: +54 defense rating
• Sorcerer's: +54 spell hit rating
• Redeemer's: +119 healing, +40 damage
• New cloak enchant: Stoneweave (+12 def rating)

See World of Raids and MMO-Champion for screenshots of the gems and all the rest of the changes. Let me know if you see anything else that has changed and I'll add it to the post. It's nice to see Shamans finally getting something good; these seem to be some solid buffs for PvP. As to the life tap thing, I really just have to shake my head at this point.

Tags: life-tap, life-tap-nerf, patch-2.4, patches, ptr, shaman, warlock

Filed under: Shaman, Warlock, Patches