Shaman Talents Released!

[Treesh]

Hmm, I don't want to be too condesending here.  You have 2 characters listed on your profile.  Neither is 60.

I'm not sure your experiences really line up with the reality of level 60 battle grounds.  In particular, I'm sceptical of your assertions that 80% of BG's are pugs, druids are hard to find, and I can tell you that 1.5 seconds is not close to instant.
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He's got at least 2 level 60 characters that I know of and I don't even play on the same server he does. Just because they aren't listed in the sig, doesn't mean they aren't there. They used to be listed in his sig, but I don't know why the change. He may have retired them.

[oldmandennis]

He's got at least 2 level 60 characters that I know of
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Hmm, OK. How about "It does not appear that you currently play in level 60 battlegrounds regularly"?

[Rinnhart]

Net effect is that paladins have been officially labeled as still under review; though when we'll see any changes is anyone's guess.

[oldmandennis]

Net effect is that paladins have been officially labeled as still under review; though when we'll see any changes is anyone's guess.
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Where did you see this? Is it more official then the general "all classes are being reviewed all the time"?

[Rinnhart]

Where did you see this?  Is it more official then the general "all classes are being reviewed all the time"?
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There were some blue posts regarding paladins and additional changes, when they first began talking about the mage review, a while ago. There hasn't been any more news since then.

[Artega]

Hmm, OK.  How about "It does not appear that you currently play in level 60 battlegrounds regularly"?
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Who said I was using my characters?

I exchange accounts with friends fairly frequently to try out different classes at 60 without having to go through the pain of leveling all the way to 60 and gearing up on my own.

I enjoyed playing my friend's Shammy at 60, so I made one for myself on my current server.

I have two 60's on Bloodscalp that I have permanently retired. The server went carebear on me when AQ was announced.

Also, the characters in my sig haven't been updated in over a month :)

As far as 1.5s not being instant, it's close enough to me. Maybe it's because I'm not pampered by NS :)

[oldmandennis]

Yeah, the more I thought about that comment, the more dissatisfied I was with it. It didn't really add to the discussion much.

Like I said before, NS vs EM for general fighting, I pick NS, most people I know pick NS, but I can see the arguement the other way and woln't call you wrong for picking it. But that assumes you are going to mill around the middle of the field. For flag chasing or flag escorting, NS blows EM away. There are no ifs ands or buts. If the flag stops, the game is over anyways. If the flag is moving, 1.5 seconds is too long. And if you are playing WSG with the intent to win, flag chasing and flag escorting are 90% of the game.

I played 4 games of WSG last night. The alliance was a team 3 of them, and all of the teams had druids. The horde had no druids, but then we usually had 4 players, and just stood to the side so they could cap before the game ended.

And I checked the characters in your sig, the warrior is 53 and if the shaman is 60, he doesn't pvp much.

[MissileToad]

Hello again. NS is such a rough situation. The skill itself is incredibly good and complimentary to any build both PvE and PvP. For a shaman with a Resto "minor", it's quite limiting choices in a way. Nature's Swiftness is amazing to the point that Stormstrike and Elemental Mastery would have to be buffed to silly unbalanced levels for them to be considered for a 30 point Elem or Enhance shaman. Elemental Mastery is getting close, but it's one-dimensionality vs. NS's utility still shows there is little contest. Druids, and to a lesser extent Mages with PoM are in the same boat.

It's a hard thing... how do you go about fixing that? The options present no clear cut solution - the two 31 point talents of the other trees would need to be ridiculously buffed; make Nature's Swiftness a core ability; move NS lower in the talent tree; change the functionality of NS to heals-only... those are a few considerations albeit all but the last creating nasty imbalances. I don't know. There's an excellent discussion on the Elitist Jerks forums regarding this and similar things currently. As much as I'd love to pick up EM and blast some faces, many shamans (and more) are locked into partial talent specs due to indispensible 21 point skills.

[MongoJerry]

The shaman talent trees got another tweek today. Some particular items:

• Totemic Focus
  Old: 5 ranks of -2% totem cost (completely wasted talent points)
  New: 5 ranks of -5% totem cost (not so bad)
  <>
  
• Ancestral Healing
  Old: 5 ranks of increase target armor by 5% after heal crit.
  New: 3 ranks of increase target armor by 8% after a crit.
  <>
  
• Totemic Mastery
  Old: 1 point increase friendly totems 5 yards (good not great).
  New: 1 point increase friendly totems by 10 yards does not stack with 3 piece Earthfury. (This doubles the area of effect of most totems and shaman are no longer shackled into wearing Earthfury items)
  <>
  
• In elemental they swapped position of improved range and the enhancement critical melee strike talent.<>
  [st]These are the changes noticed by one of my guild's shaman. Anyone notice any other changes?

[Artega]

Yeah, the more I thought about that comment, the more dissatisfied I was with it.&nbsp; It didn't really add to the discussion much.

Like I said before, NS vs EM for general fighting, I pick NS, most people I know pick NS, but I can see the arguement the other way and woln't call you wrong for picking it.&nbsp; But that assumes you are going to mill around the middle of the field.&nbsp; For flag chasing or flag escorting, NS blows EM away.&nbsp; There are no ifs ands or buts.&nbsp; If the flag stops, the game is over anyways.&nbsp; If the flag is moving, 1.5 seconds is too long.&nbsp; And if you are playing WSG with the intent to win, flag chasing and flag escorting are 90% of the game.

I played 4 games of WSG last night.&nbsp; The alliance was a team 3 of them, and all of the teams had druids.&nbsp; The horde had no druids, but then we usually had 4 players, and just stood to the side so they could cap before the game ended.

And I checked the characters in your sig, the warrior is 53 and if the shaman is 60, he doesn't pvp much.
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Well, despite the fact that I do heal, I prefer to simply kill people rather than try to out-heal their damage. EM definitely helps with this; two (and sometimes even three) Earth Shock crits in a row is enough to bring down pretty much anything, and I've got solid melee capabilities in addition to this :)

NS is certainly more versatile, since it can be a heal or a nuke, but I'd still rather have EM in pretty much all cases.

Also, I'm more or less not playing WoW anymore as of almost a month ago (I do play occasionally, but more as a glorified Instant Messaging service than as a game), so those characters won't be increasing in level very much for a little while more; most of my Warrior experience comes from raising and doing things with my first 60 (and occasionally a few minutes with my friend's 60 when they're raiding) and from my friend's Shaman. Unfortunately, I find the 1-59 game a great deal more fun than the schiztophrenic (sp?) Lv.60 game Blizzard's got going right now :(

[oldmandennis]

The shaman talent trees got another tweek today.&nbsp; Some particular items:
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/shrug

I can't see any other changes during a quick once over. These changes do nothing to address my major concerns. The totemic mastery thing is nice though.