Shaman Patch Notes

So they noticed that Shaman were missing from the notes. So here’s a mix bag of nerfbats and some buffs.

Shaman

• Chain Heal’s effectiveness has been increased by approximately 10%.
• Hex now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Purge now dispels a single effect instead of two.
• Tremor Totem has been redesigned. The totem is now usable under Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects, and pulses much more rapidly, but lasts 6 seconds and has a 1-minute cooldown.
• Talent Specializations
  • Elemental Combat
    • Earthquake damage has been increased by approximately 10%.
  • Enhancement
    • Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).
    • Purge no longer has its mana cost reduced by Mental Quickness.
  • Restoration
    • Cleansing Waters no longer fires its heal effect twice when a shaman removes a Magic and a Curse debuff with a single cast.
    • Deep Healing (Mastery) has been increased to 3% per point, up from 2.5%.
    • Greater Healing Wave mana cost has been increased by 10%; healing done has been increased by 20%.
    • Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman’s Spirit, exclusive to short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped.

Source

So here’s my 2 cents. A lot of these are PvP-oriented nerfs, which as an exclusively PvE player, always makes me a bit crabby.

For Resto, the Chain Heal and Greater Healing Wave changes are good. Yes, GHW will cost more mana, but it will also be even bigger, which is a fair enough tradeoff, especially since Healing Surge was beating it out in HPM and HPS.

The Purge and Cleansing Waters changes will have little effect in PvE. Rarely did we get to dispel two magics at once, though it was nice for moments when your DPS were bad at switching off Arcanotron and getting his 8 stack buff off faster while crabbing on vent.

The Mana Tide Totem change is a pretty huge slash to a dynamic, that if we are honest with ourselves, we can’t be too surprised at seeing. The the total spirit buff for Shaman should be slightly more than it was, but taking away the added benefit from multiplying temporary spirit buffs, like from trinkets and Heartsong procs while greatly reduce how much mana we’ll get back from dropping the totem. Add in the fact that it will now buff based on the Shaman’s normal spirit, rather than the person whom Mana Tide is affecting, means that this will regen noticeably less spirit for Priests and Druids especially, as they tend to have more spirit. Priests and Druids did get some regeneration, and/or mana cost buffs to their spells, so maybe that will even out. Losing the synergy between Core of Ripeness and Mana Tide is huge, costing us over 17,000 mana per Mana Tide use. I have been in the process of looking at available trinkets in detail and had already done the math on the core. If I force myself to look at the bright side, Mana Tide not benefiting from temporary spirit buffs will give me less math to do. I’d rather keep the 17,000 mana.

Enjoy it while you can.

The Tremor Totem change is also likely to be a PvP nerf, and a big change to utility we are used to having.