Posts with tag purge

When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs.

Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for shaman. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over.

Shaman gain no brand new glyphs but recycle some of the boring glyphs into cool cosmetic minors.

Glyphs that are changing into new majors:

• Shocking becomes Capacitor Totem
• Elemental Mastery becomes Chaining
• Windfury Weapon becomes Cleansing Waters
• Water Breathing becomes Healing Storm
• Earthliving Weapon becomes Purge
• Lava Burst becomes Spirit Walk
• Stormstrike becomes Spiritwalker's Grace
• Lightning Bolt becomes Telluric Currents
• Stoneclaw Totem becomes Totemic Vigor
• Chain Heal becomes Unstable Earth
• Flametongue Weapon becomes Wind Shear

Glyphs that are changing into new minors:

• Earth Shield becomes Deluge
• Renewed Life becomes Far Sight
• Lightning Shield becomes the Lakestrider
• the Arctic Wolf becomes the Spectral Wolf
• Water Walking becomes Totemic Encirclement

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Do your likes include bladed weapons, the elements, and fights with little to no movement or target switching? So does Josh Myers, new kid on the block and now host of Totem Talk: Enhancement!

Back when Ulduar was relevant content, there was a very mean boss named General Vezax. General Vezax constantly cast an ability called Searing Flames, and the only way to prevent him from casting Searing Flames was to interrupt it with abilities that locked out his fire school for long periods of time -- Counterspell, Pummel, Mind Freeze. Back in those days of yore, when brains had tentacles and Wind Shear didn't exist, we had to drop Earth Shock from our rotation entirely. Our sole interrupt was also tied to our main DPS shock, and we had to sacrifice damage to avoid screwing up the Kick rotation of classes with better interrupts.

Thankfully, patch 3.2 saw the introduction of Wind Shear into the enhancement shaman's arsenal. No longer were we the DPS class that screwed up interrupt rotations. On fights for which we were the sole interrupter, we no longer had to hold off on DPSing in order to interrupt an important ability. This change would have been totally awesome for PvE ... had Wrath of the Lich King possessed any heroics in which not interrupting an ability would cause a wipe. As it was, a handful of encounters in the rest of the expansion had any relevant interrupting -- Lord Jaraxxus, Faction Champions, Twin Valk'yrs, and Lady Deathwhisper were the only four out of the last 17 raid bosses who actually had interruptible spells.

Thankfully, we're not in Wrath of the Lich King anymore. Cataclysm has come, and the shattering of Azeroth has brought an entirely new style of gameplay into PvE content. It's no longer any DPS player's job to care simply about DPS; interruptible spells from the lowliest of trash mobs can wipe you if you're not careful. Healer mana matters, so avoiding damage is the norm. Luckily for us, enhancement shaman have some of the best utility in the game for making sure your group doesn't wipe.

I've been out of the office more than I've been in this week due to moving into a new place, so I haven't had a chance to gush about this yet: Holy crap, they actually made Inner Fire unable to be dispelled. Moreover, it has a 30 minute duration! That's just beautiful, even if it still has the Charges mechanic.

Inner Fire is pretty great, and it does its job well. Usually. The big issue with the spell was that it had so many hooks and drawbacks. Short duration, limited charges, and able to be dispelled. That's about two hooks too many. I don't mind keeping the Charges around because the spell supplies a massive amount of armor (for a cloth class.) I'm okay with making a Priest be careful about keeping it up at all times in PvP. In PvE, the 10 minute duration is just a nuisance and in PvP some random melee will burn away the charges in less than its full duration anyway. It was just an annoyance all around and a very unnecessary hook.

Inner Fire probably should have been unable to be dispelled right from the point they did it for Mages and Warlocks, but better late than never. That Enhancement Shaman will just need to swing his weapons a little longer to get rid of your Inner Fire, instead of just spam Purge to shut you down. To me, this is a good thing. To the Shaman... perhaps not so good.

In case you were wondering, there will be premade characters for the 2.4.3 PTR before all is said and done, according to Hortus. There's no word for sure on why they're needed, what gear they'll have, or when they'll come along, but they'll be here. You'll need an account that had Burning Crusade activated before these PTRs went live, and when the time comes, you'll be able to sandbox it up with a fresh new premade while you help test the patch.

This phase, says Hortus, is also not intended for testing Season 4 gear, since it was already tested on a previous PTR. Besides, with 4 days left until Season 4 goes live, the 2.4.3 patch won't be on live servers until Season 4 is well underway. That said, it looks like most (but not all) of the Season 4 gear is still on the PTR right now, so if you want to go check it out, you can fly up to Area 52 on the PTR and check out Big Zokk Torquewrench's wares. Of course, you can also expect us to give you all the Season 4 news you need in the next few days here at WoW Insider as well, including gear guides.

Also, Mages and Warlocks are reporting that their self-buff armor spells are now no longer dispellable on the PTR servers. That's a nice chunk of mana you won't have to waste recasting after a stray Purge in PvP. We'll be watching the PTRs for more undocumented changes, oddities, and happenings, so be sure to keep it here for the rest of the testing cycle for all the news and analysis you'll need when the patch goes live.