Some 3.1 shaman observations

[heyaz]

So i finally made the jump and moved all my shaman to the PTR, talented and glyphed, and set up my macros. They're forocious. I'm working ion a quick PVP video to show off some fo the great new stuff we got.

- Instant cast nukes are back and they're amazing. I love being able to blow up stupid 51 pt arms warriors right when they charge and hit their CD
- Speaking of one trick ponies, I don't know if it got buffed or what but every warrior pvp'ing on the PTR is 51 pt arms. With my shaman at 19.5k hp and 750 resil, they wipe all 4 even if I just sit there and spam heals. gg
- Earthbind totem with talent has a massive radius. Set up a earthbind totem round robin to get 4 aoe roots that affect unlimited targets with no DR. if someone tries to mount and run from you - frost shock, drop totem, nuke.
- Stoneclaw totem gives you a great damage shield without requiring you to keep it up. Drop then, get your shield, switch earth totems.
- I don't have enough data, but I'm getting a lot of really small LVB crits - like 6k - but not always. I seem to never hit much lower than 7k on live.
- Every warlock is now destruction and with nether protection 80% damage reduction with soul link, good luck. Hex and just spam different schools of spells. That is if they don't instagib your main with a incinerate + 11k conflagrate
- Tremor totems are still garbage - just trinket out of fear
- Mana spring totem = blessing of wisdom for the raid. No stacking
- Healing stream totem still stacks but still sucks
- Flame shock hits like a truck and you can do it every 4 seconds. With your magmas up you can kill melee that spins around you with just your flame shocks
- DK anti magic barrier has a limit - half their HP. You'll break right through it with your burst. If they're not in frost presence, they're dead.

Totem rotation I'm playing with now:

Fire: ToW, Magmax3
Earth: round robin with earthbind, 2 tremors and a stoneskin (why not?)
Water: 2x cleansing totems (which tick every 3 seconds for both poison and diseases), mana spring, and fire resist to piss of all the fire warlocks (they're all destro/fire specced now)
Air: Still 4x grounding


Working on short video. I'll keep you guys posted.

[heyaz]

Yeah, arms warriors are a mess. i can't wait to deal with this gimmick in the arena. Can't heal through it, can't stoneclaw totem, can't do anything with 19.5k hp and 750 resil. It's pretty much just a group wipe unless you have some serious aoe heals. And the cooldown is about 45 seconds now so expect to see it every time you encounter a warrior.

Is it just me or does this game become more and more gimmicky in pvp every patch?

[Stealthy]

Did Arms warriors get a new 51 point talent, or are you talking about Bladestorm? Warriors can't move while Bladestorm is active so backup / strafe out of range and heal up. If they break out of it to keep attacking then TS them out of melee range, drop nova's to catch them when they wade back in.

Cheers,
S.

[X-Ifist]

You can move whit bladestorm is up, the reasone "evryone" is arms is that they changed Titans grip back to 15% reduce hit.

So whitout PvE gear fury sucks for pvp.

And destro deserved the buff GO DESTRO

[Eloxy]

cant wait for the vid m8! =)

[Ellay]

Bladestorm was 1000x worse before they fixed some of the components on it. Spread out and blow them up, they can't do anything else while spinning so they are a freebie.

[Ellay]

drop the Mana Spring for another Cleansing, add a Frost Resist totem to the Fire's instead of a magma, I prefer searing over magma because it kills grounding totems. If you want to aoe though I can see Magma being useful but this is your standard dropping sequence and those only last 20 seconds and consume MASSIVE mana.

[Leon]

Watch shaman get powerful again, watch them get nerfed again, ad infinium (like everyone else)

[Toned]

My earthbind round robin has a fire nova rotation as well... Root + Stun = LOL. I'm thinking about making my other 3 shamans engineering so I can instant lava burst 1 dude, and then lb tap > GLG x4 > Earth shock antoher.

[Multibocks]

That would make the most sense, business wise anyways.

[heyaz]

I try to run away from the bladestorm but the 2-3 slaves following usually get gibbed and I end up with just my main left. With the lesser geared warriors I can sometimes heal through it, but not if they have gear. There's a gladiator warrior with about 26k hp unbuffed and has been running around WSG on the PTR the whole time I've been filming, and it's pretty much gg every time.

I shoudl have enough footage now - it'll be all WSG (that's the only pvp that's happening on the PTR right now), nothing fancy - not really a highlights vid or anything but enough to demonstrate the new talents.

[Zappy]

Have you noticed any performance different on the PTRs? I copied my 5 shammys over there wanting to test a bunch of the new stuff and immediately noticed that almost everywhere in northrend I'm sitting at 60 FPS -- including Dalaran. On the live servers, I usually see 30-45 depending on where I am. And for whatever reason, Crystal song I usually only see around 25 FPS, whereas on the PTR I'm at a rock solid 60. For reference, there is usually nobody in Crystal Song or very few people on our live server, so I don't think the server traffic has anything to do with it.

I'm just curious if anyone else on PTR has noticed better frame rates as well?

I'm gonna have to check the WG timer and get into a battle there to check it out. At first, I thought you meant Warsong Gulch as you said WSG, and I couldn't get into any bgs on PTR as the queues never filled.

[Multibocks]

I would bet its population, but I imagine there are a ton of people trying to test out stuff right now.... so maybe we can hope its optimization?

[heyaz]

Have you noticed any performance different on the PTRs? I copied my 5 shammys over there wanting to test a bunch of the new stuff and immediately noticed that almost everywhere in northrend I'm sitting at 60 FPS -- including Dalaran. On the live servers, I usually see 30-45 depending on where I am. And for whatever reason, Crystal song I usually only see around 25 FPS, whereas on the PTR I'm at a rock solid 60. For reference, there is usually nobody in Crystal Song or very few people on our live server, so I don't think the server traffic has anything to do with it.

I'm just curious if anyone else on PTR has noticed better frame rates as well?

I'm gonna have to check the WG timer and get into a battle there to check it out. At first, I thought you meant Warsong Gulch as you said WSG, and I couldn't get into any bgs on PTR as the queues never filled.\

frame rate is good... lag is bad though. my slaves are always like 2 seconds behind

[Xinxo]

I've always noticed that on the PTR. Everything seems to work... better... Hard to describe, almost like the graphics are smoother.

[grettir]

What I really dont understand is why the hell did they buff the Warlock insanly like this!!

[grettir]

- DK anti magic barrier has a limit - half their HP. You'll break right through it with your burst. If they're not in frost presence, they're dead.



They changed this to 100% ...

Anyone still playing on the ptr that has some updates on the pvp status?

Personally I think all this CC, aoe, immunes and burst is messing up the pvp.. not many players are like wotlk compared to tbc

[heyaz]

Just tested on PTR tonight.... Lava Flows and Bloodlust stack... 60% spell haste is just ferocious, even if its only for 6 seconds. I was getting 0.88 sec cast on LVB and CL
And since people seem to love to dispell flame shock, you'll probably have lava flows up a lot :)

[Kicksome]

Man, I'm having some fun with my 5 shamans after the patch. I ran 3 AVs tonight and it reminded me of pre-wotlk shaman power!

1) The AOE root with earthbind is friggin AWESOME. It's nice with 1 shaman, but with 5 you can root people non stop. Works great to stop ANY melee from getting at you!!! This has got to be my favorite. I use it all the time now in BGs. People are going to HATE shaman because of this.

2) I can't WAIT to get the stoneclaw glyph. I wasn't able to get it tonight

3) 5x flame shocks is just brutal on people after the patch. lol. I was killing people in their flying mount with just 1 round of those.

4) Fire and Earth elementals are much better, they don't get killed in like 2 seconds.

5) Heroism moved to every 10 mins is a bit of a bummer, but not so bad.

6) TS while stunned is REALLY nice. since I have it on round robin, I don't have to worry that one of my guys is stunned, which causes me to spam it, you know it'll work.

7) I haven't even touched instant cast CL or LB.

8) Dual spec is really nice!!!

Also, the new WG items are nice, trinkets and chest are really solid. Basically, you get another 111 spell power in you medallion of the alliance/horde trinket. It's a great upgrade.

[Tizer]

wtb more updates like this! xD