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[yacobod]

Uhmm, are shaman suppose die in two hits froms hunter in WSG at 11-19 bracket? First hit 60 percent gone, I go heal with his pet and second shot, always dead before first heal. Think I pass on pvp with this character and I thought my priest got ganked alot at least she had a shield.

ummmmmm

u guys are giving pretty bad advice in regards to the 11-19 bracket

the lvl 19 bracket is always heavily twinked, rogues and hunters dominate that bracket, if you arent heavily twinked u might as well not even q up, u are going to get pwnd pretty much unless u come twinked

lvl to 29 and try bgs again with the shaman, i had a lvl 29 bracket shaman twink and did pretty well with it, and i hear shaman are good at lvl 39 as well

 

[yacobod]

Enhancement was always a joke. It just got a lot of attention because it relied on the insanely lucky burst damage. 30/0/21 was always the best PvP build and 40/0/21 is the best now. 0/11/50 is definitely a viable alternative.

its funny how many shaman you see dwing daggers nowadays lol

 

[speedpop]

So patch notes for PTR 2.1.0 are out. People claiming fake, some claiming real.. I'm not going to bother downloading the PTR to check it out but it seems legit.

Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=93.0 & the General WoW forum.

Elemental Shaman cop a nerf

 

[Diatribe1974]

For me...I'm pretty much this in WoW:

Everything is PVE Server (Thunderhorn) unless otherwise noted

70th lvl Warrior (Raid Warrior Prot)
70th lvl Hunter
62nd lvl Shaman
61st lvl Rogue
60th lvl Warlock (PVP Server, Ysondre)
60th lvl Priest
51st lvl Druid
43rd lvl Warlock
39th lvl Warrior (New Warrior DPS/PVP)

Bunch of other toons, mostly sub-30's, or long since deleted (deleted a 50th lvl Druid and 45th lvl Warlock, back when they both sucked (i.e. pre-1.7 patches or before))

D.

 

[nataku]

So patch notes for PTR 2.1.0 are out. People claiming fake, some claiming real.. I'm not going to bother downloading the PTR to check it out but it seems legit.

Source: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=93.0 & the General WoW forum.

Elemental Shaman cop a nerf

They're real.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=94203802&sid=1

Hunter changes:

A new "Avoidance" ability can now be taught to hunter pets. This effect reduces the damage they take from area of effect spells and abilities.
A new "Cobra Reflexes" ability can now be taught to hunter pets. This effect increases attack speed but reduces damage.
"Arcane Shot": Casting lower ranks of "Arcane Shot" than your maximum rank will now reduce the bonus you receive from attack power.
"Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack": Wand damage will again correctly daze players with this effect active.
"Clever Traps" now affects "Snake Trap".
"Entrapment" (Survival): Effect duration reduced to 4 seconds and is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
"Entrapment": The tooltip has been corrected to indicate it works on "Snake Trap".
"Expose Weakness": The chance for this talent to trigger has increased to 33/66/100% chance at 1/2/3 talent points.
"Ferocious Inspiration": This ability will now trigger "Kill Command" correctly.
"Flare" cooldown increased to 20 seconds, and duration reduced to 20 seconds.
"Frenzy": This talent can now trigger from "Kill Command".
"Frost Trap": This trap no longer breaks stealth from its slowing effect.
"Go for the Throat" no longer causes additional threat.
"Hunter's Mark": This ability now becomes stronger each time the target is struck by a ranged attack.
"Improved Hunter's Mark": Adjusted the tooltip to indicate this talent only grants melee attack power equal to the base ranged attack power on the "Hunter's Mark".
"Kill Command" has been removed from the global cooldown. The shout animation has been removed.
"Readiness": Now resets the cooldown on "Misdirection".
"Revive Pet": The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate the pet returns with a percentage of its base health. It will not get an increased percentage of the bonus health it receives from a percentage of its master's stamina.
"Scatter Shot": This ability will now trigger "Kill Command" when it critically strikes.
"Survival Instincts" now also increase attack power by 2/4%.
The quest creature, Death Ravager, is no longer able to be tamed.
The Razorfang Ravager can now be tamed.
Hunter "Mend Pet"/"Improved Mend" Pet Changes:

Replaced the current "Mend Pet" channel spell with an instant cast heal over time.
No combat reset, resets global cooldown
The mana cost has been reduced and the heal value increased.
Duration on Heal Over Time increased to 15 seconds in 3 second increments.
Changed the graphic to better represent the Heal Over Time effect on the pet.
The "Mend Pet" heal over time buff is now able to be dispelled.
Bonus healing gear will no longer effect "Mend Pet".
Added a 10% and 20% reduction to the mana cost of "Mend Pet" in "Improved Mend Pet" talent (Beast Mastery).

Kill command off global cooldown without the shout animation is awesome. It's honestly far more than I expected, especially so soon. The new mend pet is exactly what I wanted, too. New Hunter's mark should be interesting as well... I need to get on the PTR and mess with it a bit.

EDIT: Man, this patch is huge. The notes alone take up a page and a half in that thread I linked to.

 

[johnsmith]

Ugh. They nerfed shadow priests. Shadow weaving only increases damage by 10% instead of 15%. In raids this is a warlock nerf too. And they doubled the cool down on shadow word death. We only had 2 nukes in the first place, and both were already on cool downs.

Go to hell blizzard. At least we weren't nerfed the worst.




On the plus side, as a draenei priest, my symbol of hope, already the 2nd best racial after fear ward, got buffed. 1k mana to the party was already rocking. It didn't need a boost, but I'll be happy to take it.

And the ugly ass frozen shadoweavve vest is now a robe. That makes me happy.

 

[firex]

great, they basically nerfed ardent defender despite increasing the % of hp you have for it to be active. really, I count like... 3 buffs and the rest are nerfs for paladins.

 

[Diatribe1974]

Can someone post the entire changes? I'm at work right now and it's filtering the crap outta everything right now.

D.

 

[trh]

While flying or swimming the 'X' key will now make you move down.

The hell does that mean? The 'X' key? That's bound to my mount atm!

Can someone post the entire changes? I'm at work right now and it's filtering the crap outta everything right now.

D.

Any particular part you're interested in? The patch notes are huge.

 

[speedpop]

I know this seems to happen all the time when patch notes are out, and buffs and nerfs are done.. but the Shaman community just does not seem to be very happy. General board is, as always a cluster**** of shit, but every other class seems to be against what Blizzard have done to the Shaman class.

I think it might have been the last straw.. Shamans are already the least played class on all servers judging from the census, but maybe Blizz might've gone a bit too far in promising a look at mana efficiency for Elemental Shaman and then going completely against that.

 

[Diatribe1974]

While flying or swimming the 'X' key will now make you move down.

The hell does that mean? The 'X' key? That's bound to my mount atm!


Any particular part you're interested in? The patch notes are huge.

nevermind. I finally got it to load.

D.

 

[Hero]

Oh man, great patch for my rogue.

* "Sap" now automatically gains the full benefit of "Improved Sap".

This is great, as I can spec combat and not have to waste 7 talent points to not be such a huge liability in heroics.

Improved Sap = "Dirty Tricks": Increases the range of your "Sap" and "Blind" abilities by 2/4 yards and reduces the energy cost of your "Sap" and "Blind" abilities by 25/50%.

Although when I go back to a PVP spec I will be sure to get this. 9 yard saps? 14 yard blinds? Yes please.

* Rogue poisons no longer have charges.

Man, this is just gravy. I always thought having a duration on poison in addition to charges was stupid. Gonna save me a lot of money. Tonight I probably went through 4 charges of Deadly Poison in 45 minutes.


As for other classes, man, the nerf-bat sure hits hard.

Mage:

* "Ice Block": This ability no longer makes mages immune to "Weakened Soul" from "Power Word: Shield". However, using this ability now causes "Hypothermia", making the mage unable to cast "Ice Block" again for 30 sec.

Thank goodness for this change. In arena ice mages are probably one of the most overpowered classes, especially in 2v2. By far the most annoying fight I have ever had was against 2 ice mages. There was nothing me or my teammate could do. I wish the debuff was a minute long, but maybe the 30 seconds will suffice.

Hunter:

* "Flare" cooldown increased to 20 seconds, and duration reduced to 20 seconds.

Poor Shidoshi.

Paladin:

everything listed

Paladins are QQing so bad on their forums.

Shaman:

* "Windfury Weapon": Mixing two different ranks of "Windfury Weapon" while dual-wielding will no longer increase the number of "Windfury Weapon" procs.

This is a huge nerf. I'll admit that offranking WF was pretty ridiculous, since I've been able to one or two shot mobs my level or higher. I should probably grind out my shaman to 60 something before this patch gets implemented.

 

[MrPing1000]

I still cannot figure out why Blizzard decided to nerf flurry. All it does is hurt Fury warriors who are in a world of shit atm anyway.

 

[Razoric]

what are the big QQs this time. can't read through all the patch notes right now. anything significant or are people QQing over a %5 damage decrease or some BS.

 

[Jack Random]

Holy ****ing Pally nerf, batman.

Mana efficiency was our "thing," pretty much the only thing holy pallies brought to the group. With all of the buffs they gave protection, i really should consider a respec. Blizz really seems to be steering pallies in that direction (Lets not even bring up those poor retnoobs, they nerfed Vengeance AGAIN)

 

[border]

The nerfs to Insignia of the Alliance/Horde are pretty frustrating. Warriors need that trinket pretty badly to escape all manner of slowing effects that we get hammered it.....now it won't work for that. Intercept/Charge will not release us from slows and snares as we were promised they would, but they merely ignore the "slowing" effect for the duration of the charging movement. Instead the Insignia will now dispell polymorph, which is at best a one-shot trinket for very specific bosses, since I rarely if ever see warriors sheeped in PVP.

Warlocks also get their Insignia nerfed, losing the ability to dispell Polymorph and Charm. Instead we get to dispell Slows and Stuns. As if there's ever been an encounter where I said, "Man, I would have killed that guy if not for that slowing effect!" The stun release will at least be useful against paladins though.

 

[cubicle47b]

The holy paladin nerf is pretty absurd. They halved the effectiveness of the backbone of the holy tree, the talent that most of our talents and epic gear is based on. Illumination getting a 50% nerf means that *15* talent points were essentially nerfed. 5/5 Illumination, 1/1 Divine Favor, 3/3 Sanctified Light, 5/5 Holy Power, and 1/1 Divine Illumination. And our epic gear mostly focuses on spell crit instead of mp5.

Here's my mana regen on Moroes according to the combat log. Greater Blessing of Wisdom is 49-50 mp5 and I wear about 80 mp5 normally so that would regen about 5984 mana.

Illumination (Mana) 10,000 26 crits
Greater Blessing of Wisdom (Mana) 3,740 76 ticks

My mana regen on this fight just got cut by over 25% before pots. And it's not like I can just use the 5 second rule to get more regen because paladin gear has 0 spirit. Illumination was that for us.


They also nerfed the way spiritual attunement works with VE but that nerf was necessary.

 

[John_B]

I'm so excited about the love Blizzard is showing the rogues, I mean you can actually spec. pve and not have to upgrade sap to "not broken" anymore.

- Creatures will no longer "Cleave" targets that aren't in front of
them.

- Glancing Blows have significantly less of a chance to occur during a
player’s melee attacks when targets are near the player’s level.

...and we will do more dps and be less fragile as well. This patch is not real.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Why would Elemental Shamans get the nerf bat? The one last, DEFIANT ele shaman in my guild devours +MP5 and mana potions to keep up the DPS in Kara as is.

 

[johnsmith]

Rogues needed a buff. Right now there's zero reason to bring one to a raid.

 

[Meier]

So the rumored ones I posted were true, interesting. The Hunter changes are mostly good.. but what the hell is up with +healing not effecting mend pet now? That's just plain stupid. It's because of the guy who soloed Azuregos. It took him over 2 hours with +1200 in healing gear, so it's not like it was some hugely unbalancing thing most of the time. I just took that trinket that gives +213 bonus to healing when used and +50-something when equipped for my healing set too. At least we won't have to twiddle our thumbs and do nothing while we try and keep our pet alive now though.

Some nasty pvp changes for us (rogues already completely rape Hunters.. it isnt even pretty), but the PVE stuff looks really nice overall. Very curious about Hunter's Mark, should be interesting to see how it turns out. The fixing of Kill Command is HUGE!

 

[fallout]

I know this seems to happen all the time when patch notes are out, and buffs and nerfs are done.. but the Shaman community just does not seem to be very happy. General board is, as always a cluster**** of shit, but every other class seems to be against what Blizzard have done to the Shaman class.

I think it might have been the last straw.. Shamans are already the least played class on all servers judging from the census, but maybe Blizz might've gone a bit too far in promising a look at mana efficiency for Elemental Shaman and then going completely against that.

Personally, I'm done complaining. You can make the class work in the way you want it to ... it just takes a lot of figuring out. Even then, it's still broken. For the majority of the people who play the shaman class, we just want some fixes. Making us a little more mana efficient (given that we have a base mana pool comparable to a hunter) would be a huge boost.

I dunno, I think it's a symptom of Blizzard and hybrid classes. Druid tanks have suffered through similar things. Actually, it's probably a problem with MMOs and hybrid classes.

EDIT: Oh, but speaking as a resto shaman ... heh, Earth Shield crits proccing Ancestral Healing buffs will be awesome.

 

[nataku]

So the rumored ones I posted were true, interesting. The Hunter changes are mostly good.. but what the hell is up with +healing not effecting mend pet now? That's just plain stupid. It's because of the guy who soloed Azuregos. It took him over 2 hours with +1200 in healing gear, so it's not like it was some hugely unbalancing thing most of the time. I just took that trinket that gives +213 bonus to healing when used and +50-something when equipped for my healing set too. At least we won't have to twiddle our thumbs and do nothing while we try and keep our pet alive now though.

Some nasty pvp changes for us (rogues already completely rape Hunters.. it isnt even pretty), but the PVE stuff looks really nice overall. Very curious about Hunter's Mark, should be interesting to see how it turns out. The fixing of Kill Command is HUGE!

I don't know if you checked out the official forums, but there was a screen of Hunter's Mark saying it will increase by 11 RAP every time a range attack strikes the target (not sure if missing counts), capping out at 440 RAP.

 

[firex]

These pally nerfs still don't make prot a viable spec for tanking heroics or raids. Prot's biggest problem is the gear, not the threat or talents... unless they go and replace all the int on Righteous with stamina and lower the spell damage a little to give it more defense, and buff pally base HP by about 1k, then they won't be able to compete with druids or warriors for tanking.

Prot pallies (hell, any pallies) have 0 problems getting enough threat. It's all about mitigation caused by shitty itemization. The Ardent Defender change is a nerf... they may have increased the range of HP it can proc under, but they decreased the damage reduction, which is just stupid because it defeats the whole purpose. Ardent Defender sucked before because 50% reduction at 20% HP didn't make enough difference (especially with how low pally HP is compared to warrior/druid) so they should've just left it at 50% and upped the %HP it procs at to 30%.

The only thing that got buffed this patch is Avenger's Shield. I wouldn't mind the illumination nerf except the only viable spec for a pally in heroics/raids is holy, and like cubicle said, it's the backbone of pally healing. They basically just nerfed the only real unique point of pally healing and I doubt they'll redo the plate gear to take care of it. Even if they don't, this just makes gearing up for pally healing as lame and identikit as every other healer...

 

[Ramirez]

Enhancement was always a joke.

I'm not one to argue these types of things, but my friend did the Warlord grind and had most of the BWL/AQ enhancement items with a Herald of Woe and he was pretty damn good. Now granted, if you didn't have that gear, then yea it was a joke, but gear makes alot of things not a joke

 

[fallout]

I'm not one to argue these types of things, but my friend did the Warlord grind and had most of the BWL/AQ enhancement items with a Herald of Woe and he was pretty damn good. Now granted, if you didn't have that gear, then yea it was a joke, but gear makes alot of things not a joke

Heh, well, I garauntee you that with access to that sort of gear, if he had respecced elemental, he'd be doing better. Enhancement was never the best PvP spec, but popular opinion tends to override fact. Not that I ever complained, because even with my shit gear, I could still get 2-3k chain lightning crits.

 

[yacobod]

I'm not one to argue these types of things, but my friend did the Warlord grind and had most of the BWL/AQ enhancement items with a Herald of Woe and he was pretty damn good. Now granted, if you didn't have that gear, then yea it was a joke, but gear makes alot of things not a joke

i agree that most enhancement shamans back in the day were a joke, typically running around in some pieces of r10 gear and a swinging a TUF, hoping for windfury crits, and none had their weapons chained btw, so they were always fodder for disarms

i dont know about skill, but i enjoyed that r13 shaman video with hand of rag, by unbreakable i think, granted it was just a crit highlight video, but it was fun at least, at least its a testament to when shaman were swinging 2h wpns, the only enh shaman i see now a days are dw

 

[Ripclawe]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

You can now interact with wanted posters while mounted.

you know... its about damn time.

New title of "Justicar" is now available for Alliance players exalted with Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch factions

EH?

Two new graveyards have been added to Blade's Edge Mountains.

pooh, I like my 15 min ghost walk ;P

 

[Ashodin]

(Lets not even bring up those poor retnoobs, they nerfed Vengeance AGAIN)

Not that I care about the Illumination nerf (let's face it, it was way too good and we were being pigeonholed), the buffs to Prot talents (and a new one!) should make people realize that Pallies were meant to be OTs or MTs if possible, not main healers. We don't even have the amount of options real healers have in raids. (Druids, Priests)

And the Vengeance change is a buff if you have the crit chance. You can keep up the 15% quite easily, better than having just 8%.

Also, it's not working right (working as intended?) on the PTR - apparently it's doing up to 30% on there. Avenging Wrath just from crits? :lol

To all Holy Paladins - QQ more, nubs. You knew you weren't supposed to be doing as good as you were and if you rolled Pally just to heal, there's your problem right there.

 

[cubicle47b]

The illumination nerf hurts but it's not *that* bad if Blizzard fixes epic healing plate itemization so it's not all +spell crit and no mp5. The holy tree is still more viable for raiding than both protection and retribution.

QQ more, nubs.

You should definitely hang out on the official WoW forums more.

 

[Buggy Loop]

That patch just made BM hunters the definitive build for both PVE and PVP. Also made King Bangalash just another standard kitty. Mend pet, even though +heal gear doesnt affect it, at least now we can do something else while its healing, standing still while channeling isnt my forte.

Also something i just noticed, Hunter's mark changes also favor BM over MM, BM has a faster attack speed than MM, maxing Hunter's mark faster and thus, enjoying a 440AP for a longer duration.

 

[fallout]

The illumination nerf hurts but it's not *that* bad if Blizzard fixes epic healing plate itemization so it's not all +spell crit and no mp5. The holy tree is still more viable for raiding than both protection and retribution.

You've got to admit that Paladin mana efficiency on heals was a little insane. I guess that's offset by their comparably weak healing, but most of the time in this game, it's not about how much you can heal, but how little it costs.

 

[etiolate]

Warlocks also get their Insignia nerfed, losing the ability to dispell Polymorph and Charm. Instead we get to dispell Slows and Stuns. As if there's ever been an encounter where I said, "Man, I would have killed that guy if not for that slowing effect!" The stun release will at least be useful against paladins though.

Stun lock rogues? Pounce main shred opener from a feral druid? I'd rather escape that than charm, where I'm not taking damage while unable to do anything.

So they nerfed holy pallies, or put a big blow in the talent that they rely on, same with Elemental Shamans. Holy paladins were a bit annoying and now will need mana regen instead of crit. Why they nerfed Elem Shamans, I don't know. Shamans run out of viable builds at the end and this hurts one of hte more viable ones a lot. That talent was there to deal with the classes low mana pool.

They made lifebloom stack in way thats perhaps worthwhile, but they didn't fix feral hit box range or Swiftmend not gaining the healing bonus from Tree of Life aura.

Also, I was glad that epic flight form was just a pay and get sort of thing, and not a long painful quest like Locks/Paladins. Instead I get to pay the 5k gold AND do the long annoying quest. Artificial time extenders = sign of we know we have shitty game.

 

[firex]

Not that I care about the Illumination nerf (let's face it, it was way too good and we were being pigeonholed), the buffs to Prot talents (and a new one!) should make people realize that Pallies were meant to be OTs or MTs if possible, not main healers. We don't even have the amount of options real healers have in raids. (Druids, Priests)

And the Vengeance change is a buff if you have the crit chance. You can keep up the 15% quite easily, better than having just 8%.

Also, it's not working right (working as intended?) on the PTR - apparently it's doing up to 30% on there. Avenging Wrath just from crits? :lol

To all Holy Paladins - QQ more, nubs. You knew you weren't supposed to be doing as good as you were and if you rolled Pally just to heal, there's your problem right there.

Funny, I was under the impression that hybrids could spec and enhance one role to be really good at it at the expense of others, not be pigeonholed into shitty sub-roles. See, I'd like to go prot but they have to do a pretty big overhaul to the gear (and maybe talents) to make pallies capable tanks. All this patch did is nerf the one role pallies are any good at.

Then again I guess blizzard only wants Druids to be able to do anything different with their talent specs, seeing as they can't figure out how to make paladins and shamans better.

 

[unifin]

Why the hell would hunters get ANOTHER buff? IMO, they're overpowered as it is.

Minor shaman fixes (2-min healing stream is kinda nice), but crappy overall. FT+WF look promising as a downranking semi-replacement, but i'm still pissed.

I miss the good ol' days of shaman burst damage...

 

[cubicle47b]

You've got to admit that Paladin mana efficiency on heals was a little insane. I guess that's offset by their comparably weak healing, but most of the time in this game, it's not about how much you can heal, but how little it costs.

Well, here's the thing. Flash of Light's efficiency wasn't really hurt. If I spam top rank flash of light for 5 minutes I have lost about 35 mp5 with this change. The damage this does to holy light on the other hard is a lot greater. If I spam rank 8 holy lights (580 mana) I lose about 130 mp5 which is about 1/3 of my regen. And it makes crit rating which now plagues our epic healing gear much worse than if they'd just put mp5 on it.

With my current gear level and changes to raid healing (I have to put weaker healers in terms of talent on some assignments because it much better suits their class - priests and druids heal canceling on tank burst damage as they have spirit based regen and can hit >400 mp5 if they're outside the 5 second rule) I probably will adjust fairly well. I'll just get ****ed if I take actual paladin healing gear from here on out instead of taking shaman gear with mp5 or worse, cloth (ugh). And I can't take some of the tougher healing assignments that I can right now. Single healing heavy tank damage or recovering from heavy AoE damage just becomes a much harder problem. Heroics are going to suck worse than they already do.

I think they should have nerfed spiritual attunement and how it works with holy paladins / shadow priests, left illumination alone, and buffed priest, druid, and shaman healing. I think it would be nice if healers were generally happy with their talents, builds, and healing in general. But Blizzard decided to nerf and now *all healers* are that much worse off. I pick up a lot of healing slack right now because I can and I just won't be able to spare the mana in the future (picking up slack as opposed to covering my own healing requires using those 580 mana rank 8 holy lights a lot more).

edit: I think the hardest part about paladin healing after 2.1 is going to be making those really important decisions like should I use flash of light here? Or maybe I should use flash of light? Then again, what about flash of light? Hmmm, think I'll just go with flash of light. shift+left click. Topping healing meters was never this boring or mindless. Kind of like mages topping the damage meters.

 

[Ramirez]

To all Holy Paladins - QQ more, nubs. You knew you weren't supposed to be doing as good as you were and if you rolled Pally just to heal, there's your problem right there.

Hmm...:lol

 

[Ashodin]

Hmm...:lol

Make no mistake - the giant prevalence of Holy Paladins caused Blizzard to nerf them - they want more Prot pallies in the game.

 

[BeEatNU]

Why the hell would hunters get ANOTHER buff? IMO, they're overpowered as it is.

Minor shaman fixes (2-min healing stream is kinda nice), but crappy overall. FT+WF look promising as a downranking semi-replacement, but i'm still pissed.

I miss the good ol' days of shaman burst damage...

:lol :lol

us hunters aren't over powered

 

[Ramirez]

I was more or less laughing at your healing comment, since before BC, that's all a pally was good for, and I'd still tank a warrior for tanking honestly, only good thing I ever saw from prot pallies was their great AOE tanking and the talent that reduced the dmg they took by 50% when they dropped below 20% or w/e.

 

[Razoric]

It's small but I do hate how they took away +healing to the Hunter's mend pet ability. Blizzard really loves killing creativity in WoW.

 

[etiolate]

Funny, I was under the impression that hybrids could spec and enhance one role to be really good at it at the expense of others, not be pigeonholed into shitty sub-roles. See, I'd like to go prot but they have to do a pretty big overhaul to the gear (and maybe talents) to make pallies capable tanks. All this patch did is nerf the one role pallies are any good at.

Then again I guess blizzard only wants Druids to be able to do anything different with their talent specs, seeing as they can't figure out how to make paladins and shamans better.

Funny, I was under the impression that hybrids could spec and enhance one role to be really good at it at the expense of others, not be pigeonholed into shitty sub-roles. See, I'd like to go prot but they have to do a pretty big overhaul to the gear (and maybe talents) to make pallies capable tanks. All this patch did is nerf the one role pallies are any good at.

Then again I guess blizzard only wants Druids to be able to do anything different with their talent specs, seeing as they can't figure out how to make paladins and shamans better.

Hybrids are pigeonholed because speccing as a hybrid weakens the overall effectiveness of everything you do. So you 'try' to specialize in one role, but Blizzard is so worried about hybrids being too powerful, despite all of them having mana issues, that they seriously gimp it so that even specializing only makes you moderate at best at that specific role.

And I thought Blizzard had done well with Elemental Shamans, as their dps was good and totem buffs were useful pvp and pve. But they just nerfed one of the talents they most rely on. Enhancement is still something that completely dies off past the 40 bracket. Resto has some nice things, but again Shaman mana pool is low.

Paladins, to me, were the most viable hybrids as I still see Pally healers and Pally tanks at 70, when the other hybrids are really narrowed down to one role in the end. I don't know if the nerf will result in removal of holy pally healers from groups, because the other choices besides priest still aren't all that hot.

Druids scale poorly and have tokenism sort of forms to signify different specs, but in the end they just start to fall off due to lack of scaling and every form lacking utility. I'm surprised by the amount of Moonkin druids on my server at 70,but thats just a testament to the nature of my server, but the reality of their lack of crowd control and AOE and doing anything besides DPS makes them a secondary or third choice. They can heal, but once they leave Moonkin and it's mana cost reduction to heal and dps, you get the oomkin situation. Feral Druids are probably most viable because they can off tank/dps/throw up a tranq or battle rez and shift back. They can't keep doign this because a feral Druid has maybe 5k mana and shifting isn't cheap, but they offer an off tank who can do one or two things in an emergency. As for Resto, I'll say this: I am the only Resto Druid on my server. That says a lot. Also, no restos I talk to use the 41 point resto talent for 70 dungeons. So the end 'top' healing talent for druids becomes useless at 70 and only reappears as a raid buff. The reason is Tree's speed reduction and lack of utility. Regrowth doesn't heal enough to deal with how hard things hit in endgame and Resto druids might be the squishiest healers in game once yuo consider a priests bubble and inner fire buff. And as said, no crowd control for druids past cyclone. Roots only works outside and as such is useless in 98% of dungeons.

Blizz just needs to stop worrying about Hybrids being too powerful, because the mana issues already hold them back enough that they don't need to throw in added restraints. The game is too formulatic as it is. Improve across the baord and throw some variety into the game.

 

[fallout]

Well, here's the thing. Flash of Light's efficiency wasn't really hurt. If I spam top rank flash of light for 5 minutes I have lost about 35 mp5 with this change. The damage this does to holy light on the other hard is a lot greater. If I spam rank 8 holy lights (580 mana) I lose about 130 mp5 which is about 1/3 of my regen. And it makes crit rating which now plagues our epic healing gear much worse than if they'd just put mp5 on it.

With my current gear level and changes to raid healing (I have to put weaker healers in terms of talent on some assignments because it much better suits their class - priests and druids heal canceling on tank burst damage as they have spirit based regen and can hit >400 mp5 if they're outside the 5 second rule) I probably will adjust fairly well. I'll just get ****ed if I take actual paladin healing gear from here on out instead of taking shaman gear with mp5 or worse, cloth (ugh). And I can't take some of the tougher healing assignments that I can right now. Single healing heavy tank damage or recovering from heavy AoE damage just becomes a much harder problem. Heroics are going to suck worse than they already do.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. As for the cloth, welcome to the club. The mail gear is there, but you're not going to always see it drop, unfortunately. And druid loot always has weird shit like agility and strength on it. Never understood that.

I think they should have nerfed spiritual attunement and how it works with holy paladins / shadow priests, left illumination alone, and buffed priest, druid, and shaman healing. I think it would be nice if healers were generally happy with their talents, builds, and healing in general.

That would have been nice.

edit: I think the hardest part about paladin healing after 2.1 is going to be making those really important decisions like should I use flash of light here? Or maybe I should use flash of light? Then again, what about flash of light? Hmmm, think I'll just go with flash of light. shift+left click. Topping healing meters was never this boring or mindless. Kind of like mages topping the damage meters.

Pfft. That's raiding in general. I get to choose between chain heal and greater healing wave. Nature's swiftness usually comes into play near the end of the fight.

And I thought Blizzard had done well with Elemental Shamans, as their dps was good and totem buffs were useful pvp and pve. But they just nerfed one of the talents they most rely on. Enhancement is still something that completely dies off past the 40 bracket. Resto has some nice things, but again Shaman mana pool is low.

Just a comment on that ... Enhancement DPS is really nice. Unfortunately, there's no way of reducing your threat, or even controlling it, really. So, it's not just a mana efficiency issue, it's a problem that Blizzard would actually have to deal with on a considerably deep level, which they're clearly just not prepared to do (hence, the quick fix ... solve aggro problems by reducing the amount of DPS the class can do!). And that's just for one class.

I think one of the best examples is the druid nerf. Try to make them viable tanks, but then 2 things happen. Because of the way the aggro is generated, they out-tank warriors. That's bad. Secondly, it made them godly in PvP. Again, rather bad. So, rather than look into the problem and working out some aggro generating alternatives, Blizzard just nerfs the shit out of them and sweeps the problem under the rug.

 

[firex]

but that's basically just what I said. The thing is pallies suck as tanks, really. They do a great job of holding aggro, but they just don't have the survivability bear druids or warriors have.

so right now, blizzard's got 3 talent trees for pallies, but only one of them is any good at a group role - holy. and they're nerfing it, while every prot buff comes with a prot nerf. ret sucks at anything but soloing, and it's very very easy to solo with a holy build (especially holy shockadin) or even with a prot build, so that tree's pretty redundant. plus Blizz already said it'll be nerfed in the future once they figure out how to make it less burst-based and more sustainable.

a prot pally can tank regular instances ok, but so can... well, anybody. it's when you get to raids and heroics that prot pallies really stink. Eventually they'll buff prot, but until then I'm pretty much forced into holy shockadin spec and I guess I'll have to go do regular instances as a healer, maybe heal heroics, and pvp.

 

[BeEatNU]

It's small but I do hate how they took away +healing to the Hunter's mend pet ability. Blizzard really loves killing creativity in WoW.

What you talking bout willis!

 

[etiolate]

I think one of the best examples is the druid nerf. Try to make them viable tanks, but then 2 things happen. Because of the way the aggro is generated, they out-tank warriors. That's bad. Secondly, it made them godly in PvP. Again, rather bad. So, rather than look into the problem and working out some aggro generating alternatives, Blizzard just nerfs the shit out of them and sweeps the problem under the rug.

And the druid nerf was shortsighted because Warriors hadn't gotten their gear yet and Druids got some actual weapons of use early on in BC. Now MS/Arms warriors tear me up more than Bear Druids ever did. It's just weird, because Blizzard designed all the armor and weapons that are making Arms Warriors powerful now at 70, but then doesn't remember they exist when people get worried about Druids and overnerfs a class and oomphs another class in typical yo-yo fashion. Then warriors get their epic weapons, suddenly scale up greatly and people start crying OP. This was foreseeable by about everyone except those involved with fixing it. The devs just make me think of the boss from Dilbert.

And whoever said they should buff all healing, I agree. Not because I heal, but because I want to be healed. The priest top tier talents are lame and Tree of Life is too gimped. A mage can hit me for 6k in seconds. Combine that with any focus fire from others and no healer will keep up.

 

[trh]

The silly thing about the Pally nerf is that their item sets rely on that talent that they just nerfed, there's just not enough mp5 to keep them in the game, and there's a buttload of spell crit. Everyone's geared for just that talent but suddenly Blizzard decide they should go mp5 instead of spell crit, when the gear was clearly meant for crit rating!? It's like every 70 holy Pala just got reset to pre-Kara.

Don't really get how Blizzard is thinking, or even if they thought about what this'd do. Just seems like a mess to me...

 

[Azwethinkweiz]

What you talking bout willis!

There was some hunter with +1200 healing gear that solo'd kazzak.

 

[ToyMachine228]

Yeah the Illumination nerf is...Odd. I'm not going to cry about it but I've been in a lot of raids since TBC came out and Paladins are just as an important part of healing in raids as ever and free crit heals is a huge part of that. And yeah gear with spell crit on it is now only half as good as it was. And since there are pieces of Tier 4, and 5 and whatnot with just plus healing and spell crit on them, no mana per five...The nerf really throws Tier 4 pieces like that into the trash.

 

[BeEatNU]

There was some hunter with +1200 healing gear that solo'd kazzak.

I wonder if there is a video of it.....

edit: only thing i could find is a pally....