3.0 Shaman boxing review

[Kicksome]

Well - I've had a solid day to play my 5 shamans so I thought I'd share my thoughts with everyone regarding the 3.0 changes.

First of all - my spec is 4 ele dps and 1 resto shaman. I just have the resto spam chain heal. I've been playing LOTS of AV and doing some raids today. Here are my thoughts..

First the bad news
1) We lost about 15-20% dps. Thankfully, new talents like flametounge weapon and Totem of wrath partially make up for it. Which leaves us with about a loss of 7-10% dps net.
2) No more instant crit chain lighting without some SERIOUS sacrifices - which don't make a lot of sense.
3) We lost a lot of hit for pve.
4) Many other classes have had their damage seriously increased
5) You'll find you're getting AOE stunned a LOT more in BGs
6) In raids, with full raid buffs (Hyjal), I was doing 10% less dps. Consider raid buffs are raid wide vs. party you'd think that this would make my raid damage higher - but it's not.
7) In AV I used to die MAYBE 1 time a game. Now it's closer to 5.
8) Since buffs are raid wide, you lose your advantage when you face large groups. Before I could take on 10 people or more. Now it's much harder since they have a few more buffs on them - just by luck e.g. battle shout, commanding shout, bloodlust(ugh!), fort etc...
9) Thunderstorm doesn't work on pallies who are bubbled or rogues who are under cloak of shadows.

Now the good news.
1) Thunderstorm is really sweet. It's almost as good as instant crit CL. It's very satisfing to see people blown off towers. It's also great to get melee off you (e.g. ret pallies). You blast them with 4 TS and it hurts - they don't know quite what to do. It's a REALLY fun talent.
1a) Did I mention TS is awesome when mages frost nova you and start AOEing? Very fun watching the mage take flight and some serious damage.
2) Mana totems stack now. Great to throw 5 down and get some quick mana back
3) you don't need to be in the same party to share buffs - very nice in case you get stuck outside your party
4) Raids are a lot easier - I was able to bring 5 of my shaman to Hyjal and we downed 2 bosses very easily. Having every shaman totem raid wide is a really nice bonus.
5) Instant ghost wolf is a must have IMHO. It's GREAT - and comes in very handy to get out of a bad situation quickly or to avoid annoying rogues. I didn't think it would be useful - but it really is. It's saved my butt several times today in AV. Awesome talent - well worth giving up 2% crit
6) I have almost no mana issues with my dps shaman in raids fighting bosses. It's MUCH better than it was. And I don't have the talent to regen mana while casting in the skill tree.
7) Raids aren't quite as boring since you can mix it up with thunderstorm a bit. I just tell the tanks I need to use it to get mana back. It does scatter the mobs so they probably don't like to see it a lot.
8) The improved fire nova totem is really nice. Nice to have a quicker timer on it and the snare has been useful for me once or twice. I can't wait till they add the stun back in there - it'll be incredible to have that stun.
9) It's nice to not have to spend money on mana oil, or carry it around, now that we have flametounge weapon
10) A lot of bag space was freed up.

So, hopefully we can get our DPS boosted by about 20-30% - that will put us closer to where we were pre-3.0. At this point, it FEELS like I'm about 30% under where I was before 3.0 in PVP. In PVE it's only about 10%. It really feels like I'm going around with 4 shaman vs. 5 as far as damage goes in PVE.

-Kick

[Glord]

Wait... Mana Totems stack now, but healing totems don't? Is that correct?

[Negativ1337]

I think:

Healing totems stacked already, mana totems do now too.

[Glord]

Yeah, they did stack, but I am not sure that Healing Stream Totems still stack.
Hm.. given my current mana probs I should drop another Mana Totem or two...

[Schwarz]

I downloaded recount last night and I am seeing a dps increase since the patch. When I used to run my heroics the damage meter for the whole instance would be ~1100 dps. From a couple runs last night it looked like I was sitting around ~1300 dps. This increase could be from using chain lighting more. Who knows. One thing that makes me angry is mobs that I used to take down with a lightning bolt/chain lightning opening combo don't seem to be dieing like they used too.

So there ya go

1) my dps might have increased

2) my burst might have decreased

[Aethon]

Just an FYI, Mage's blastwave also has a pushback, so I'd try to kill all mages before they can get into your group.

And as far as damage goes, my server had a steady 2k ms lag yesterday. My group is 4 shamans and a druid. I'll be able to see if the balance really is a noticable increase for my shamans. Also, I only spec'd 1 into ToW, so hopefully, that one stays alive longer then the others :-P

[Aethon]

Just an FYI, Mage's blastwave also has a pushback, so I'd try to kill all mages before they can get into your group.

And as far as damage goes, my server had a steady 2k ms lag yesterday. My group is 4 shamans and a druid. I'll be able to see if the balance really is a noticable increase for my shamans. Also, I only spec'd 1 into ToW, so hopefully, that one stays alive longer then the others :-P

[Tidomann]

Before the patch i've been able to take on 4-8 people. Now.. Maybe it's because all the ace players are back playing again, and it's a vast gear differance, but I'M GETTING OWNED NOW... In some bgs, I tried casting purge on a priest 24 times, and non of his debuffs went away... he then decided to resist 4x EM CL.. It really made me sad.. I think that thunderstorm isn't that great... it's AMAZING for mages, and they're a since, but warriors bladewhirl ownes me in 6 seconds.. Paladins bubble and kill one of my chars easily... I think that before, the gear differance wasn't that bad, and I could play around it smartly.. But now.. Now I'm just getting compeltely owned.. Every minute and a half, the warrior would just run in and cast bladewhirl and I'd drop to 10% trying to chainheal myself back up... The gear grind just got a whole lot more painful :( Not to mention that my thunderstorm was getting resisted half the time.

[Ifalna]

I've noticed a pretty crazy pve buff honestly.

Having swapped one shaman for a boomkin, I can do nothing but spam LB, trinkets, thunder, no other spells or CD's, and hit 1500dps each with infinate mana. Literally infinate. Mana stream seems to be stacking, and Thunderstorm restoring 5% off each cd alongside my retarded crit rate and regen is just stupid.

I was not in amazing gear, decent, but not incredible, but after the patch Im at over 1k sp, and 40% crit without external buffs.

I am loving the patch.

[Kicksome]

You might notice a PvE buff in a non-raid situation. We lost something like 100 spell hit. That has a big effect on raid bosses.

[Teejayv]

thing i don't like the most so far.... every other class has killer stuff now that completely owns my 5 shamans in AV.. here are just a couple of examples

druids and that new hurricane thing they do,
paladins and just about everything new they do
hunters have some new thing too, i hav eno idea what it is...
and lastly... (but most importantly)

WARRIOR'S BLADESTORM I HATE IT - it just kills my shamans in 2-4 ticks

[Xzin]

The animation for bladestorm looks like what those guys at ZG, right inside the entrance do. And speaking from experience, those axe handlers will mow you down in about 3 - 4 seconds. Did Bliz go too far with its "lets give AoE damage abilities as level 80 talents" to basically every class?

[valkry]

Sigh, you may have lost +hit talents, but the resist chance of bosses went from 17% (of which you could only get back 16%) down to 9% (oh which you can get back 9%). Did you lose 8% chance to hit? Sounds about the same to me, if not better.

[Tidomann]

I'm glad to hear that i'm not the only one getting utterly destroyed by bladestorm....

[algol]

druids and that new hurricane thing they do,
Typhoon ('http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=50516')

3.0.2, hereafter the "AoE knockback for everyone!" patch.

[Kicksome]

Does anyone think that their lightning bolt spam is better after the patch - even with buffs? I know mine isn't. It hits for less - even with more spell power. It's pretty clear, and they've stated numerous times, they nerfed it. "Lightning Bolt always had a higher coefficient than similar bolt spells. This was because there weren't as much/any nature damage debuffs. Now that they exist, we're restoring Lightning Bolt to it's intended coefficient. "

So if lightning bolt does less damage, even with buffs, how are you doing more dps with a 5 shaman group?

P.S. The lock I raided with in Hyjal didn't have the improved curse of elements (I don't know what the difference is TBH). One he trained it and used it on bosses my lighting bolts were hitting for the old amount plus 100 to 300 more with full raid buffs. The problem is, locks hardly ever use that spell on trash, only boss fights assuming they don't die.

[Multibocks]

Except for Tstorm, I don't like this patch one bit. Mages can almost single handedly wreck my group if I don't see them coming up, paladins are a pain in the ass (JUST 1!). I run MgT normal everyday to get my faction up and I know the instance like the back of my hand. Before patch I could run through all trash up to Selin Fireweaver and have no one die. After patch I almost always have one person eat it, I'm still trying to figure out why. As for nerfing the coefficient on LB, well that pisses me off. Basically you need a druid/warlock/dk with your shaman to feel good about your dps. I'm trying to roll with the punches here, so I leveled a paladin for tanking(hopefully no more lame deaths on trash) and I leveled a druid team so I might throw one in with the shamans.

All in all, when doing my dailies for Shattered Sun Offensive I used to feel powerful running around beating up alliance and laughing when they would run away. Now not so much. =(

[bodefeld]

Surprisingly, I find things easier since 3.0.

Firstly, the increased spellpower (ToW and flametongue weapon) pretty much compenates the nerfed coefficient. I know it won't scale as good but the status quo is fine for me.

Secondly, mages AE-ing and melees can be thundered away on round robin (while four searings are up for them in addition). Quite fun and effective.

Thirdly (most important), the healing stream totem's output seems to have doubled. They tick 110ish without extra spellpower from trinkets. That's a 275 heal per second -- completely passive. Since I tend to get bombed a lot, my healing done ranges in the 70% of the max done in AV. It's roughly a fifth of the damage I usually deal. I find that very useful.

[Ellay]

Everyone is doing silly damage, Elemental is actually one of the weakest damage dealers ( our burst is still the same and hp is the same so we drop targets quickly )

A lot of these issues are going to tone down. Elemental is need of a DPS buff while other classes are getting toned down drastically. I wouldn't worry too much on what is going on right now and don't get frustrated at dying so much, these are the times when you learn to play your class to it's fullest potential, so when the nerfs to others and the buffs to us are applied you will be that much better.

at 80 with the Stamina boosts that everyone gets, Ele sits around 20k+ hp, the abilities will no longer be gimmicky, and we can still drop targets because of our sweet burst potential :)

[Rowdysattva]

My shaman are not to 70 yet and i am leveling druids so i haven't pvped with them yet. RAF runs out soon.

What stops us from thunderstorming away the warrior using bladestorm?

[suprafro]

Sigh, you may have lost +hit talents, but the resist chance of bosses went from 17% (of which you could only get back 16%) down to 9% (oh which you can get back 9%). Did you lose 8% chance to hit? Sounds about the same to me, if not better.

Are you sure about this? Everything I have read says that miss for bosses (3 levels above you) remains unchanged at 16%, all they have done is removed the previously unavoidable 1% miss chance and now allow you to negate it with +hit

[Ellay]

What stops us from thunderstorming away the warrior using bladestorm? They are immune to pretty much everything while in Bladestorm mode.

[Rowdysattva]

Immune to knockback? Wow. Hardcore.

If that is the case then as a warrior prior to 80 when the health/healing/armor/stuff is readjusted i would be looking for boxers to blow my bladestorm on. It is a whirlwind every second for six seconds and so it hits four (or five?) targets, so you want to find a nice group all nestled together.

Ellay... what do you do at the moment for the bladestorming warriors? Just /clap?

Maybe use a spread out formation so they can't hit them all? In BS they can still move but they would have to move around and not hit everyone if the spread out was far enough.