3.2 Shaman Changes and MORE...

Hola blog lovers!

I know I am super behind on all of the new, juicy action that is happening in WoW's upcoming patch, 3.2. However, there has to be other losers people like me that don't know what is going on right?

....no?

In either event, here is a break down of some of the upcoming changes (pve) to the Shaman class and my thoughts on them. When I say some, I do mean the important ones....you know, Restoration, Elemental, and the general ones. I am a total noob on enhancement, so I don't embarrass myself comment on those.

• Blizzard is actually decided to implement its own totem bar instead of having a 3rd party addon do it for them. This totem bar will allow you to press one button and BAM...all four of your totems are down in one global cooldown. You can save up to three different combinations with this new totem bar and they are named, Call of Air, Call of Fire, and Call of Water. This is definitely going to get some taking used to, but my god, its what the Shaman community has been asking for YEARS!
  
  
• Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes. Nothing else I can say about this other then OMGNERF. Maybe now I can survive long enough to get away from assholes rogues stun locking me to death...even with my earth shield up and spamming war stomp / lhw.
  


• All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards. I know a few Shamans that were hanging on to their s5 gloves for this sole purpose. Again, a nice change that Shaman have been asking for, especially sexy for Elemental specs
  


• Ghost Wolf can now be learned at level 16. Hooray for little / wannabe Shamans everywhere! yay!



• Nature’s Swiftness cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes. Nothing major, but it is nice. For spike dmg, this is really going to help out....i.e. Mimiron.
  


• Healing Way has been reworked. It used to provide a chance of increasing healing wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now increases the effectiveness of the shaman’s HW by 8/16/25%. Damn, this is going to make me get a talent change. 25% more off the bat isn't something trivial, that is alot. It is going to be interesting to see how much this is actually going to change healing as a Shaman. It might change it alot or the change might be minimum, either way I am going to mess around with it.
  


• Tidal Waves no longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It will now provide an additional 25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave and still make our HW cast time 30% faster. In addition your HW gains 20% and LHW gains 10% of your bonus healing effects. Very very interesting and sexy. Blizzard definitely wants us to use our HW more. Combined with the new HW talent, this can only help us. That extra crit is also going to do help us with proc'ing Ancestral Healing....which by the way is changing too.
  


• Ancestral Healing's buff now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor. Probably the biggest and most beneficial change, we will have to find out. The increase armor was nice, especially for druids, but now it is going to reduce dmg by 10%....thats REDONKEYOUS people! This will make new encounters alot easier and make old encounters even more easy. Can you imagine critting with chain heal? Redonkeyous people, redonkeyous...
  


• Chain Heal's jump distance has been increased to 10 yards. Also, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%. Dang! Now I can really bind all of my keys to chain heal instead of just half. In all serious though, this change is proof that Shaman are falling behind other healers in regards to raid spots. Blizzard just gave our "niche" healing spell 10% more healing per jump. I'll take it!
  


• Improved Water Shield talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent. I dont know about this one. I been reading up on it, but I will do my own testing when it goes live. It could be amazing if the 30% trigger chance is every jump...but that would seem too overpowered. Then again, with the replenishment nerf (1% of maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of .25% per second), maybe it will help fill that gap.....we shall see
  

Other changes that intrigue me

Tier loot changes

First off, all tier loot is changing. Instead of dropping your glove token, or your head token, everything is going to be generic now. You can use your generic token to purchase whatever piece of loot you would like.

I don't troll the forums anymore, but I would put money on it that there is a bunch of QQ'n and AHMGAD L2P idiots out there. They are probably saying that Blizzard is making the game too casual and now people don't have to run the same instance OVER and OVER and OVER again for one piece of tier loot like they had to...blah blah blah

Tell them to stop using their own tears to stoke their epeen and listen. Do you really like running the same raid instance over and over until you are burned out on the game and it is no longer fun? Of course you don't, that is why this change is good for all of us.

Period. Nough said. Wipe those tears fat boy, moving on.

Mount level restrictions

Oh yes, this change has got everyone that has played the game for over the past 2 years and beyond all nerd raged out. Seriously, people are very vocal about this change....its hilarious.

Before I get into it, here are the changes...

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)
60% land mount speed
Requires level 20
Cost: 4 gold
Mount cost: 1 gold
Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)
100% land mount speed
Requires level 40
Cost: 50 gold
Mount cost: 10 gold
Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

Expert Riding (Skill 225)
150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
Requires level 60
Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply: Honor Hold [Alliance]; Thrallmar [Horde])
Mount Cost: 50 gold
Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

Artisan Riding (Skill 300)
280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
Requires level 70
Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts apply)
Mount Cost: 100 gold

Movement Speed Training By Class

Druid
Travel Form: Requires level 16
Flight Form: Requires level 60 (150% flight speed)
Swift Flight Form: Requires level 70
Hunter
Aspect of the Cheetah: Requires level 16
Shaman
Ghost Wolf: Requires level 16
Paladin
Warhorse: Requires level 20
Charger: Requires level 40
Warlock
Felsteed: Requires level 20
Dreadsteed: Requires level 40

Not going to lie, from a player that has been playing since 2004...roughly patch 1.3 or so. It was a huge WTF crazy factor. Thought to myself....

ZOMGFISHSTICKS, Blizzard is making this game so easy! I remember back in the day when...

After going on in my mind for the next minute about how "hard" the game used to be, I started laughing at myself. If you had the same ZOMGFISHSTICKS reaction to this change, answer these questions.

1. Does getting a mount quicker and moving faster make the game any easier?

2. Does this really effect any of YOUR max level toons?

3. If Blizzard is making this game easy, when was the game hard?

1. No, it does not make the game any easier. It makes leveling faster, yes, but that is no reason to get upset. I mean, instead of looking at the back on your toon running, you are looking at the back of you toon on a mount. Nothing changes content wise.

2. Nada....it has no effect on anyone max level characters...again...no content has been changed.

3. The only part of the game that is/was hard is content....not time invested into the game.

Also think about the position Blizzard is in as a business. The level cap is already 80 and within the next year or so I bet it will be 90. That is pretty crazy for a new person picking up the game for the first time. Blizzard had to make a way to make leveling faster and more efficent to gain new players. Besides that, how many of us want to try out another class, but never did because it would take too long to level? I am sure its ALOT. Believe me when I tell you that Blizzard isn't making leveling faster because they are a bunch of carebears. They are doing it to make more CASH MONEY.

So overall...the people that are pissed off about this are people that are mad that they had to spend more time traveling. GET OVER IT. No one cared when your grandpa said he had to walk to school, up hill, both ways, in the snow, back in his day. It is just as annoying now when you are saying it.

So again I say, wipe those QQ tears tubby. No one cares how much time you spent traveling during your leveling days and you are as annoying as old people talking about how no one had TVs or the internet back in their day.

This article is getting pretty long, so I will end it on that note. I write again this week about the other changes 3.2 and my thoughts on them.

I know you are dying to know what is on my mind lol.....come to think about it....I am too =P

I'm WTFout