Posts with tag patch-3.0.8-ptr

If you're paying attention to the saga of Warriors and patch 3.0.8 on the PTR, you saw the following exciting patch notes, which I will reproduce in their entirety from here.

• Warriors
  
  • Bloodthirst: Charges have been decreased to 3, but the effect has been raised to 1% per charge.
    
  • Fury: Bloodsurge: Now has a chance to trigger from any hit with Heroic Strike, Bloodthirst, or Whirlwind.
    
  • Fury:Titan's Grip: The hit chance penalty has been removed.
    
  • Taunt: Range increased to 30 yards.

While these are not a lot of changes, on the whole they seem fairly positive, yes? Well, what's not in the patch notes is of some concern to DPS warriors. Namely, the incoming nerfs to Deep Wounds and Sudden Death, two warrior talents in the arms tree. The Deep Wounds nerf is aimed at balancing fury warriors since their damage should be going up with the change to Bloodsurge and Titan's Grip. Since there hasn't been an announcement of how much Deep Wounds is going to be changed, all we know is that the DPS will decrease. The Sudden Death change, however, is at least simple enough, in that when a Sudden Death execute lights up, it will only use up to 30 rage.

The most recent patch notes for the PTR are among us. As promised, quite a few changes for shamans, especially elemental shamans, are included in this patch. First off, let's look at the specific changes to shamans.

Shaman

• Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat.
  
• Healing Way: Now only one application is required to reach full benefit. No longer stacks.
  
• Improved Water Shield: Lesser Healing Wave now has a reduced chance to trigger this talent.
  
• Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat.
  
• Mental Quickness and Static Shock have switched positions in the talent tree.
  
• Mental Quickness: Reduces the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power.
  
• Searing Totem (Rank 4) now does the proper damage for its rank.
  
• Tremor Totem's duration has been increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes.

The changes to Fire Nova and Magma Totem are aimed at shaman AoE issues: it seems the Blizzard designers are really set on shaman AoE coming from totems or Chain Lightning. While I'm still not sold on losing either Flametongue or Totem of Wrath just to do some AoE, hopefully the removal of threat on these totems will help.

The Imp WS change keeps you from using up a charge on a relatively low mana cost LHW, which I can see even if I won't be happy if I have no mana left and am using LHW because it's the only healing spell I have the mana for. The change to Healing Way is probably due to the fact that a lot of resto shamans don't bother to take it anymore since they have a more varied spell rotation with Riptide and Chain Heal still the standouts. I honestly don't know if this change will really accomplish much: it may encourage people to put a Healing Wave into the rotation just to keep the buff up, but if you're doing 90% of your healing with riptide and CH anyway, you may just not bother and keep not spending the talent points on it.