Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for enhancement shaman
by Rich Maloy 
Mar 2nd 2010 at 11:30PM
No doubt you've read the big changes coming in Cataclysm. At this point there are a few confirmed points with the rest falling into the "confirmed they'll be changing" category. What do these changes mean for enhancement shamans? Read on.
Base stats
Stamina - more of it. Let's get the easy one out of the way first. Last night in arenas on my 5s team with a DK, warrior, pally, and resto druid I had the lowest health pool by a wide margin. No wonder shaman are the first target of many arena matches. Bringing all classes health levels closer together is a welcome change especially for us shamans who've historically been lower than other classes.
Agility - all agi all the time. We already get 1 point of attack power from every 1 point of agility right now, plus crit. Expect to see more agility on mail gear -- much, much more.
Intellect - gone from our gear, and what int we do get from base character level will give us less mana. We'll still be a mana-based class since our ele and resto brothers & sisters need it. But with int going away from our gear it's safe to say some of our talents will change as well.
Mental Dexterity which increases AP by 100% of Intellect will surely be replaced or revised. Also, it will be interesting to see what happens to Ancestral Knowledge which increases intellect and is a tier 1 talent. This is a core talent for resto builds and a filler for enhance so let's watch and see how Blizzard changes it to balance it between the two specs.
Combat stats
Attack Power - all AP on gear right now will be converted to agi, which will then be converted back to AP. Confused? Don't worry, it won't hurt a bit. Just hold tight and look for the agi gear.
Spell Power - will be converted to int on current gear, and will only exist on on caster weapons. Remember the dual-wielding Torch of Holy Fire fad that lasted about as long as a disconnected rogue in a void zone? I wonder if we'll see any more caster weapons on enhancement shamans?
The change to SP also means Mental Quickness changes. Unlike MD & AK above which may require bigger overhauls this talent could keep its core function of converting AP to SP, just give us more. Again, we'll have to wait and see how this plays out.
With the base stat changes, no int + changes to MD, MQ & AK means the Cataclysm enhance shamans catch da dumb. In game at least. Let's look at some more combat stats and see if we can get the smart again.
Haste - more. More haste. More stuff. More often. This stat will be on gear and sounds like it will continue to be a killer stat for us. Haste will enable us to "recover resources" faster, which I wonder if that means we'll regen mana through haste.
Hit & Crit - will both continue to be on gear. Plus the further along in end-game we go, the more we'll need of both because bosses will scale up in later tiers of content. Rakhman over at Flame Shock had a good take on how hit & crit may play out in Cataclysm's end game.
The downside for enhancement is that we need to look at hit from both a melee and a caster perspective. Right now we cap hit for casting, but additional hit definitely benefits us for our melee attacks. This is especially true with top level weapons where the huge DPS numbers on weapons means huge hits which means hit rating benefits us that much more. At least hit gems will be blue and we can get a few more socket bonuses.
ArP - will be gained through talents. What's an ArP, you ask? It's this thing that's great for hunters and some other people. It's going to magically transform into hit, crit, and haste.
Weapon skill - going away; learn a weapon and you're at max weapon skill level. I think this is a good thing for everyone, especially for our up-and-coming enhancement shamans. I remember getting a weapon in Karazhan and not having that particular skill leveled. I attacked and auto-attacked and attacked some more for hours until I got topped off. With a new expansion coming and faster leveling for alts with BoA gear, leveling weapon skills would be an unnecessarily onerous process.
New tools, new toys
Mastery is the ability to further customize your character's stats once you've dug down into your tree. Reforging is the ability to tweak your gear to trade off more of one stat at the sacrifice of another. Right now the example given is to convert one stat into 50% of another.
With Mastery, Reforging, and scaling hit & crit what does this mean? It means that while our toons get the dumb, we've got to get the smart. It means more ways to play enhance, more ways to adapt and adjust play styles, and for end-game raiders much much more complicated min/maxing. And more reasons to love the game, class, and spec.
I'm looking forward to the seemingly infinite customization. Are you?
May all your hits be crits!
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.Filed under: Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Austin Mar 2nd 2010 11:34PM
I think in Cata, the weapon enchants should be an aura. I'm getting sick of enchanting every melee DPS's weapons. Gets annoying.
Zanathos Mar 2nd 2010 11:46PM
As in, you only need to get a weapon enchant once and then it automatically applies to every new weapon you get? That'd never happen, it'd kill the enchanting profession
Austin Mar 2nd 2010 11:53PM
I'm sorry, not that kind of enchant...the ones shamans can put on other people's weapons, like flametounge weapon and the like. Gets annoying to do it for every single melee dps in a raid.
tom Mar 3rd 2010 12:02AM
Have you actually *played* an enhancement shaman?
Austin Mar 3rd 2010 12:06AM
@tom:
Not since vanilla, was this changed?
:P sorry if it was
Angus Mar 3rd 2010 1:36AM
"I'm getting sick of ..." and then you state something that was never done.
I've played a shaman since vanilla, I don't recall EVER buffing other folks' weapons except with windfury or flametongue totem (an no one used flametongue)
Way to fail.
Current weapon enchants are a passive 20% haste buff with windfury and our own versions which have never been shared.
Know Mar 3rd 2010 5:51AM
FPS Doug says "Boom! Head Shot!"
Kyoruan Mar 2nd 2010 11:43PM
I'm pretty sure we Enhancement Shamans do NOT get 2 AP for every 1 Agi. I'm looking at my paper doll and it says:
"Agility 1357 (76+1281)
Increases Attack Power by 1347
Increases Critical Hit chance by 19.21%
Increases Armor by 2714"
Our Agi to AP conversion follows a Rogues as apparent by my Agility stat. Now, I wish it converted over to 2 AP... but it will when Cataclysm comes rolling around :)
Kyoruan Mar 2nd 2010 11:46PM
I read my own reply and it seems confusing even to me (for some reason...). I was referring to the, "We already get 2 points of attack power from every 1 point of agility right now," part of your statement about Agility.
I was just clarifying that we do not get 2 AP for every 1 Agi as of right now.
dkhar Mar 3rd 2010 11:33AM
I understood your post just fine :) And agree, I don't ever see 2AP=1agi as it is currently, maybe the author is adding in the fact that most of our gear has int. and we currently get attack power from it with talents and just got a little confused /shrug
BigBadGooz Mar 2nd 2010 11:51PM
any word om how heroic presence will work now that hit is gone
taedirk Mar 2nd 2010 11:55PM
ReadingComprehension--. Hit's not going anywhere.
relmatos Mar 3rd 2010 7:07AM
racials will be changing. we might end up not having that racial anymore. dont think blizzard told us of the new racials yet
Rollo Mar 2nd 2010 11:52PM
If they scaled our spells to work with the very low spell power we will have, stacking additional spell power would be OP. So I assume our spells will scale with AP or some similar solution instead. Unintuitive is what it is.
It's like the names of the stats have lost their meaning. But hey, it's only numbers anyway.
taedirk Mar 3rd 2010 12:01AM
It's no different than the current model, except you won't see four stats (Str, Agi, Int, AP) all increase damage done by the same amount per point. Everything will roll together under Agility for Enhancement and Mental Quickness or its ilk will still be in place to boost the spellpower-based abilities that Enhancement shares with Ele and Resto.
alpha5099 Mar 3rd 2010 12:36AM
I don't think Weapon training will be a thing. My understand of what Blizzard posters said was that when you roll a new Shaman, they'll just know how to use every weapon a Shaman can use.
Angus Mar 3rd 2010 1:38AM
Incorrect.
Leveling a weapon will not be needed. You still have to find a trainer. They never said that was going away.
Gemini Mar 3rd 2010 2:12AM
Yes they did. They said, and I quote, "Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them."
Key phrase - "Classes will START with ALL the weapon skills"
JBluntz Mar 3rd 2010 12:46AM
I thought about the whole 'haste -> mana regen for enh' angle too, especially if our mana pool becomes proportionally smaller due to lack of int, but I hope they go a different way with this... In the extreme case, it could end up playing a lot like the energy mechanic. If I wanted to play a rogue, I'd have rolled one.
What if they flipped mental dexterity around (agi or ap -> int, on some scale)? It would no longer be any good for resto, but it would put our mana pool back in place and fix the whole SP scaling issue...
Edge Mar 3rd 2010 2:39AM
I guess haste would be a good way to regen mana for Enh because we have no spirit. I just don't see the same "hit buttons more often" problems that warriors or rogues see. For us, we hit buttons asap, nothing slows us down ( up to the GCD at least) until we run out of mana. And when we do, we hit SR, and start all over again. I think maybe a buff to our current mana regen capabilities might be enough.
Haven't thought it through much, but what if SR basically filled us to 75% and let other talents fill in that last 25%. So basically it would be every minute we would go through our entire mana bar. Dunno, sounds like pretty much what I do already, albeit at 50% mana usually.