3.0 Shaman boxing review

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

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

I think:

Healing totems stacked already, mana totems do now too.

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...

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.