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.