Raid Rx: Is that DPS gear or healing gear?

Got an email this week from a reader. We'll call him G. I'm sure it's a question that many raid leaders or loot masters had to struggle with over the years.

[...] When cloth item A drops, our caster DPS and healers always /roll on it; the caster DPS doesn't seem to mind if it's MP5 or spirit. Let's take an example of the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner. Our warlock says spirit is good for him and he /rolls; our priest says it's healer gear [because] of the spirit [as] regeneration for him; and our mage of course wants this also.

The healer complains the caster DPS gets to roll not only on items like this but also on cloth stuff with +hit, effectually rolling on everything cloth in ICC. I can kinda see what he means. My question is what's an easy way to differentiate "healer" gear from caster "DPS" gear, or is it all rolled into one big pot now?

Thanks for any help you can give me, I am not the guild leader but I am the full time loot master, the guild leader has given it to me to decide, as he's never played any caster at all.

Well, G, I don't have a lot of DPS toons myself, but I'll do my best to explain it. The loot system I use is loot council for my raiding guild, and this is a situation we deal with in an ongoing basis as loot drops from bosses.

• Paladin loot is self-explanatory.


• MP5 is generally a healing stat.


• Crit and haste are beneficial for both roles.

As always, whom you ultimately decide to hand loot over to is going to depend on a number of factors such as:

• attendance


• performance


• gear needs


• level of content


• seniority in guild or raid group


• spec

And there are probably more things to consider than that. If we omit the above factors, though, there are a few guidelines we can use if we base our decisions purely on stats. So here we go!

If you're deciding gear on the fly, then use the following purely as a rule of thumb.

• Hit If it has hit rating, it's generally used for DPS players. They need that hit rating to hit mobs. Contrary to whatever you may hear in trade chat, you don't need hit gear to heal people. If a healer says to you he needs the hit in order to heal, get yourself a new healer right now.


• Spirit Usually, the healers will want to claim priority on it first. But I believe mages and warlocks have abilities that convert spirit into a desirable stat, such as Molten Armor and Fel Armor.


• MP5 If you see this on gear, option it to your healers first. I can see situations where extremely undergeared DPS would want it since it could possibly be an upgrade no matter what.


• Crit It's universal for both roles. It's not necessarily wrong for a healer to take a crack at it. It's an item that will benefit either.


• Haste Like crit, haste is also beneficial. Having more haste means you can do stuff way faster, the more haste rating you have. Who doesn't want to do things faster? DPS players want haste so they can fire off more spells. Healers want more haste so they unload heals more quickly.

WOW: Gear for paladins

This is fairly straightforward. Protection- and retribution-specced paladins want nothing to do with spell power. Holy paladins can't seem to get enough of it. Your gear will have varying amounts of MP5, haste and crit depending on the level of content you're doing. Since you don't have any competition, feel free to go nuts.

For stuff like trinkets and weapons, if mana isn't a problem for you, then you'll typically want to lean toward something with haste and crit over MP5. A perfect example would be Belt of the Lonely Noble.

Don't let me catch you going after spirit weapons (until Cataclysm, at least).

Gear for shaman

Unlike paladins, there are two shaman specs that both utilize spellpower. Elemental and restoration shamans want spellpower, but the wishes of the preferred secondary specs are going to vary. Follow the same outline as above. At higher levels when mana isn't an issue, it's not uncommon for a resto shaman to want mail gear with haste and crit rating. If you're the loot master, keep in mind that both will benefit from an item like a Split Shape Belt. There's no hit rating on it, so it doesn't scream "DPS," but there is a ton of haste and crit.

An item like the Mail of Crimson Coins is going to garner more interest from a resto shaman than anyone else.

WOW: Gear for druids

While spirit isn't entirely useless for balance druids, you may wish to pass it off to a resto druid first in case they need extra regeneration. While I admit I'm not as well versed with healing druids as I should be, from what I understand, they value haste more than crit. Get that global cooldown all the way down, right?

WoW: Gear for priests

Last but not least, this is the trickiest, as there is an abundance of cloth-wearing classes. There always seems to be some type of feud going on, especially when it comes to gear drops. Follow the same rules as outlined above.

Let's use the item that was mentioned in the original question. A belt like the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner will benefit a mage, a warlock or a priest. It does have spirit on it, and normally that would go straight to a healer. But don't forget that those DPS classes have talents which convert spirit into an offensive friendly stat.

Hope that helps with the gear resolution!

WoW Shaman Warning mod

WoW Shaman Warning mod

This mod will play a sound alert when you gain certain shaman buffs/special abilities. I made this because many times I don't even realize I have them due to fights or not reading the entire combat chat.

Will alert you when you gain: Windfury, Elemental Devastation, Flurry. And when you loose water shield.

Type '/sw' for options, you can turn on/off the warnings with:
/sw elemental (for elemental devastation)
/sw windfury (for windfury)
/sw flurry (for flurry)
/sw storm (for eye of the storm)
/sw water (for water shield debuff)

Will try to keep on adding warnings to the mod.

Patch notes for Shaman Warning
0.4
- Made some minor changes
- Updated TOC

0.3
- Updated TOC
- Updated ACE2 libraries.
- Added water shield warning.

0.2
- Cleaned up a little the code so some items wont proc accidentally.
- Updated ACE2 libraries.

WoW Rogue and Shaman Tier 9 sets

The Mighty Battle continues! Today we'll took at another pair of mail and leather sets, this time for the Rogue and Shaman Tier 9 sets from the Crusader's Coliseum. For the past three days, we've pitted suits of armor against each other in an all-out brawl determined by the armor design's faithfulness to its class, representation of its faction, and overall badassery. It's the first time we're seeing faction-based PvE Tier armor in the World of Warcraft, so we'll see who comes out on top.

While I've outlined my criteria for judging the armor sets, we've spiced things up with a reader poll to see which armor you guys like and from the results thus far it looks like the Horde have gained a good edge in the voting. Is it a result of faction-bias? Are the armor sets really that much better for the Horde? Hit the jump to find out!

Patch 3.1 Shaman Gear P4

One of the interesting things about new content is the transitional period as you clear the new bosses and start gearing up. Pictured alongside today's column is an illustration of that process, as Tier 7 blends into Tier 8 and Calamity's Grasp is paired with Vulmir.

Myself, I've mostly been screaming "Why won't you drop" again, as I so often do (I have terrible loot luck) at various healing rings, trinkets, necks, and shields. Having recently healed my first 25 man since I switched from resto to elemental in SSC, I've also found that I hate spirit with a passion.

Why there has been no effort to make spirit more useful for shamans as casters or healers, I can't tell you, because it's on every freaking thing. Yes, it helps on mana regeneration out of combat and if you can take five seconds in combat, but otherwise it's totally useless for shamans.

Doesn't increase spell power or crit or do anything, really, just sits there like a less effective version of MP5. (And at least at my current gear and comfort level for healing, I don't spend a lot of time standing around not casting healing spells unless I'm forced to by the dreaded OOM.) Every time I see a healing weapon with spirit on it I want to go back in time and stab myself. I don't know what that would accomplish, exactly, but that's how much I hate spirit. I'd really like to see a talent in either mid-level elemental or restoration (resto would be better, and if it was fairly low in the tier elemental could pick it up too) that made spirit actually useful for shamans, but I'm not holding my breath.This is why I almost always wait for a shield instead of picking up a spell offhand.

And now, on to our show, looking at the items that as of now we know about in Ulduar.
Shields

First off, I'm convinced there are a lot more shields to come. We're already seeing new weapons since the last time we discussed Ulduar gear, I'm sure new shields are coming too. For now, we have three contenders to discuss.

Pulsing Spellshield - Yes, the spellpower is too low. Way, way too low. I've read that on the PTR it has 73 spellpower and not 37, so if it drops, bank it for the future. Although to be honest, even with 73 spell power, it's really not a terribly compelling upgrade over the Voice of Reason from 25 man Naxx. (Then again, the VoR is a Kel'Thuzad drop, he drops iLevel 226 items and this shield is ilevel 219.) Once the stats are corrected, however, this shield will definitely be an upgrade from the Aegis of Damnation, which also drops in a 10 man instance and as such is more comparable. Until they fix that spellpower, however, this isn't worth getting unless you need the stam for a particular fight. This drops from XT - 002 in normal mode.

Ice Layered Barrier - this is one of the nicest shield options for a resto shaman in Ulduar. It compares very favorably to the Voice of Reason, with a slightly different spread of stats favoring mana regen over crit and with a touch more haste. However, while it's a very nice shield with a iLevel of 226, at this point it is probably significantly harder to get than the VoR, since it drops from normal Hodir on hard mode. (Then again, we're already seeing reports of hard mode boss kills, so maybe I'm just being a grouch.)

Wisdom's Hold - And here we have the shield all elemental and restoration shamans are going to want. With a socket for flexibility and comparable to superior stats to VoR (less crit, a LOT more haste, and a whopping 1 SP more) I do think that it could be buffed somewhat for a 25 man hard mode drop. Frankly, the massive stamina over other stats concerns me. Yes, there's a lot of AoE damage in some Ulduar fights, but I still think this would be an excellent shield with 10 or 20 of that stamina converted to spell power or crit. Then again, it's an excellent shield now. I'm still of the opinion it could use a touch more spell power.

Rings

Remember my rant about spirit? Several of the rings in Ulduar are just loaded with the icky stuff. Still, there are non-spirit options that I'll discuss in more depth (and then I'll just list the other caster rings). My suggestion is to let the priests, mages, druids and I think warlocks fight over the spirit rings.

However, let's not forget that enhancement shamans exist. Since we just talked caster shields, we'll now switch gears and discuss the ring options for them first.

Band of Draconic Guile - 129 AP on a ring isn't bad at all. The haste scales with Maelstrom Weapon, allowing you more chances for an instant cast LB, so all in all I'd call it a solid choice for enhancement. However, I might still prefer the next ring over it, assuming I couldn't get both. This ring drops from Razorscale in normal mode.

Loop of the Agile - It's a higher iLevel than the Band, which means it's probably a hard mode drop from Iron Council. (iLevel 226) More AP, with crit rating instead of ArP (I know they buffed ArP for shamans but with magic damage coming in from Maelstrom I like a stat that can help with that too) and a gem socket.

Bladebearer's Signet - This zone drop from heroic Ulduar has one reason I'm even mentioning it, since it's a STR ring and thus poorly itemized for an enhancement shaman (we only get one AP from str now, so a str ring usually will have half the AP for a shaman that an agi/AP ring will) - that large amount of expertise. Even with the new Unleashed Rage granting expertise, it's not a very often seen stat on mail gear aside from enhancement tier sets, so if you're low keep this ring in mind. There's also Sif's Promise, but I'm already risking getting you killed by every warrior, DK and paladin in the universe as it is. When looking at expertise rings, please always consider if it's a strength or agi/AP ring, and if it's the former it's probably best to pass to strength loving classes just so you can make the argument that you should get priority on Vulmir.

Godbane's Signet - Now, this ring? This ring is exactly what you're looking for in an expertise ring. You will of course be fighting with rogues over it, not much you can do about that, but at least the strength classes won't try and poison your milkshake over it. This is a Yogg-Saron drop in 25 man.

Cindershard Ring - Heroic Ignis drops this ring, with good agi and AP and hit rating as well as ArP. Even with Maelstrom jacking up our magical damage, we do a lot of bashing and chopping, and armor does tend to hinder our efforts there.

Metallic Loop of the Sufferer - With haste for Maelstrom stacking, crit, Agi and AP this is a solid ring for enhancement. (To a degree, when a ring is really good, there's not much else to say after a while.) This ring drops from General Vezax in 25 man.

What about casters, you say? I say behold the Frozen Loop. Hit, haste and spell power for your demanding elemental shaman. You can loot this from the Cache of Winter after defeating Hodir in 25 man. The only other option for an elemental shaman (who, after all, doesn't want spirit or even MP5 on his or her rings, since mana regen isn't the main concern for them and they have no talents that make any offensive use of spirit) would be the Pyrelight Circle from 25 man Ignis.

If you're doing 10 man content exclusively, elemental shamans, you're probably going to have to eat some spirit (at least until more rings are discovered). If it makes you feel any better, 10 man resto shamans are in the same basic boat for now. The best healing ring for shamans in 10 man Ulduar is the Fire Orchid Signet, which drops from Freya 10 hard mode. With stats befitting an iLevel 226 item and a gem socket, elemental shamans might even want to suck up the MP5 because at least it's not spirit.

In 25 man content, resto shamans will have the Radiant Seal from heroic Iron Council and the Ring of the Faithful Servant from heroic Auriaya. (And if you're okay on MP5 the Pyrelight Circle's not bad at all for resto either.)

Okay, next week we may take a break from Ulduar (we've been discussing the gear here for weeks now and we're not even half done and there's more stuff we don't even know about yet, so it's not like it's going anywhere) and instead we'll shift gears to talk about Flametongue Weapon, Frozen Power, and Enhancement shamans since 3.1 came out. Unless we don't. I like to keep you guessing. There's also this alarming post and blue response to consider.

Shaman builds 3.1 9637 changesPTR

So, my fellow shamans, we come to yet another PTR build. What changes are in store for Shaman builds 3.1? Well, if you're elemental or resto... not much as yet. What's in store is two changes for enhancement shamans.

* Stormstrike now lasts 12 sec (Up from 10 sec), cooldown lowered to 8 sec (Down from 10 sec)

* Unleashed Rage now properly increases the expertise by 3/6/9 instead of the agility.

The Stormstrike changes are just plain buffs: more time to use the debuff properly and less time waiting for it to cool down. The only concern will be in fitting it properly into a rotation with Lava Lash, which has a six second cooldown. Frankly, it won't be that big a deal, it's still better to have access to it quicker.

The change to Unleashed Rage has me on the fence. On the one hand, expertise is not terribly common on physical DPS mail. You want to get roughly 26 expertise as fast as you can, and with this talent you'll be able to push dodges off of the attack table faster. (You'll not that with two pieces of valorous earthshatter you'll still be very short of that goal, leaving you to get your expertise from other sources like amulets, rings, trinkets,cloaks, etc etc or stepping down to leather.) So it fills a nice hole in enhancement itemization. On the other hand, I was really excited about 3% of my agility from the talent. So like I said, on the fence.

Edited to add: when comments are right, they're right. This is a much bigger change for the better than I made it sound in that paragraph. I was desperate enough for expertise to roll on a Ruthlessness tonight, so ultimately, I can't pretend it's not huge. Chalk this one up to me just plain underselling it.

All in all, not a huge PTR patch for Shaman builds 3.1. Certainly not like the previous PvP focused one, but not every build can have huge changes for every class.

Changes in the 3.1 live patch notes

Now that we have official patch notes for wow patch 3.1, I thought I'd take a look and see what changed between the last PTR notes and today. And the answer is: not much. Only eight new/changed lines, and nothing that I'd call major. But you may disagree, dear reader, and so I'll list everything I found right here.

[Hunter] Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only
[Shaman] Unleashed Rage: Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. No longer increases agility, but instead increases your total expertise by 3/6/9. [was 3/6/9%, though that was probably a typo] [Warlock] Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard
[Blacksmithing] Added a new recipe for the Titansteel Spellblade.

UI:
A new Equipment Manager feature has been added. This feature can be turned on from the Interface Options, and will enable managing up to ten separate sets of equipped items [note that they previously announced this feature would not make it for patch 3.1; I guess we'll have to wait and see]
New elite mob frames have been added for V-Key frames.

Enhancement Shaman PvP Set Bonus: The cooldown reduction of Stormstrike has been increased to 2 seconds, up from 1 second.

Glyph of Shield Wall: Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%. (was previously a 2-minute cooldown reduction) Judgement of Command: Fixed incorrect combat log tooltips. [This line was in the latest test notes, but not in the live notes. I doubt they un-fixed it, but I'm putting it here for completeness]

That's it! The one I'm most curious about is the Equipment Manager. Did someone forget to pull the line from the live patch notes, or did they fix their bugs faster than expected and manage to get the feature in for the patch? I guess we'll see when the realms come back up.

Patch 3.1 and Shamans - The PvP patch

So far, if you look at every PTR round up for shamans we've done here at WoW insider, you'll note that the changes are primarily aimed at PvP balance. There have been a few tweaks to resto aimed at mana regen (like Mana Spring going exclusive with Blessing of Wisdom) but in general, it's safe to say that 3.1 will be the shaman's PvP patch.

The most recent PTR build has a confusing bug fix to Totem of Wrath (Okay, so it's not changing to 30 yards, because it was 30 yards anyway and now it will be the 40 yards the tooltip reads) and a nice buff to Storm, Earth and Fire. Each new tank reduces the cooldown on Chain Lightning, meaning that at max rank the six second cooldown will be reduced by 2.5 seconds. Combined with Lightning Mastery, you will be able to cast a Chain Lightning every 3 seconds. While shorter cast times are always good for PvP, this change will affect PvE just as much by giving shamans more casts of chain lightning during AoE pulls. It doesn't really match true AoE, not even with the glyph on, but it's something to add to dropping Fire Nova or Magma Totem. And unlike those, it won't cost you Totem of Wrath to use. There was also this nice discussion of Totem Stomper macros, which I call a nice discussion because it's blatantly in favor of destroying them and scattering their virtual ashes across the wide and bitter plains.

So then, if we're patching shamans to be better in PvP, what then is the current status of the class therein? We know that the arena isn't actually setting many people's hearts afire lately, where do shamans fit into this decline? Well, actually, better than some folks... if you're resto, anyway.

Now, clearly resto isn't dominating arena healing. (And even if it was we wouldn't be able to tell from a sample this size, the top ten US Tournament teams does not enough data make, even a guy who failed statistics like me can see that) But it's alive there, and I'd assume it's in part due to the fun bag of tricks shaman healing now has. Going resto myself for Wintergrasp I've noted a few things.

• I am a terrible healer. Honestly, I'm astonishingly bad. It's amazing to me that I used to be able to main heal ZA and even healed the thing solo twice. Seriously, did I forget what healing is? (The answer to this would appear to be yes, yes I did.)


• Even as a terrible healer, I have pretty solid survivability in PvP. I'm no paladin, but with totems, Earth Shield, Nature's Swiftness, Riptide, Ancestral Awakening and Blessing of the Eternals I can keep myself (and even a couple of others) up for a while. Unless a Death Knight focuses on me. Even then I can stay up longer on the resto shaman than on my warrior, but I'm not doing anything productive aside from spamming heals on myself and hoping someone comes along and peels the DK off of me. Also, Strangulate and Mind Freeze make me unhappy. And then usually dead.


• Rogues still kind of drink my milkshake. They drink it all up.


• As a shaman I may have the single most potent arsenal for keeping a group of offense up. One WG match had me in a cluster with an ele shaman, ret paladin, rogue and mage. While a priest might have been able to match my AoE healing (or even exceed it) with ES and the crit-based proc talents plus Ancestral Healing (now that my crit rate's higher, AH is a really nice effect for a melee DPS in PvP I find) I can make one focal player much, much harder to kill while also healing the rest of the offense, so long as I'm kept relatively clear of things like the aforementioned DK or rogue.


• I'm not terribly fond of MS effects. Big surprise there. They're not as nasty as the raw damage some classes can deal, though. I got jumped by a well geared fury warrior and was half dead before I could even cast a single spell, and the rest of the way dead while ES was trying gamely to heal me.


• Did I mention that I'm a terrible healer? Well, perhaps what I should say is that I'm a terrible PvP healer, although I haven't really tested the PvE waters yet. I need to improve my use of Nature's Swiftness and Riptide, get more mobility and become more comfortable with healing with two guys trying to pull my face off and show it to me.


• 10 arena matches. 6 wins. Two wins came from the DPS focusing on me but not getting me dead before our Warrior/Pally combo killed their DPS. One memorable loss came from them killing me so fast I didn't even see it happen, that was a Hunter/DK/Pally setup. Ouch. I need more resil gear fast.

Fine, you might say, but that's the state of one spec in PvP now. (And your own rambling, biased point of view to boot, you might add.) You just said 3.1 was the PvP patch, so what's new there?

Well, we know that talents like Frozen Power (in the enhancement tree) and the change to Earthbind in Storm, Earth and Fire (in elemental) are aimed at giving shamans of these specs some measure of control in terms of rooting/snaring opponents. Toughness is also relatively low in enhancement (15 points in) and with Elemental Mastery now allowing instant casts, a PvP elemental shaman really can afford to go fairly deep in enhancement to pick up the stamina boost. (Yes, that spec is terrible. It exists merely to show you that the points are there, and I hope talented elemental shamans are already picking it apart, as I will gleefully steal your work and apply it to my own shaman as soon as the patch goes live.) The goal seems to be twofold, to increase shaman surviavability (and in this case glyphs are going to be very important) and to give them more tools to help shape the flow of a fight.

Booming Echoes combined with Reverberation will allow elemental shamans to get the cooldown on their flame and frost shocks down to 3 seconds, which isn't too shabby for PvP if you're trying to escape. While it won't grant the rooting effect of Frozen Power, it does give elemental a reliable way to work a Flame Shock/Lava Burst into a rotation while still having frost shock available at a much more reasonable amount of time.

It's unfortunate that Hex hasn't been enhanced yet during all of these changes. Frankly, as the weakest CC in PvP it could use a look, as it's the only disarm/silence style effect that is trinketable. It would be better served by being made into an actual shapeshift spell instead similar to polymorph in my opinion, or to have the ability to trinket out of it (especially since people affected by Hex can still move towards the caster as well) and let it be affected by things that reduce disarms and silences. Or make it a flat pacify effect like the Teromoth's in Terokkar use. While I enjoy Hex for instancing (when I get to use it in our brave new world of no CC pulls) it's been a great disappointment to me in PvP, it barely even slows the pain-train down when it's bearing in on me. The Glyph of Hex will at least help with the amount of damage I can deal while fleeing (I've Hexed, Frost Shocked as I ran, and broke my own Hex immediately, which may just prove how bad I am at PvP) but it's no real solution. And to be fair, Blizzard may not be interested in giving us a solution: they may well feel the Hex is doing exactly what they want it to do.

The move of poison and disease cleansing totem into one water based totem is a positive godsend against DK's and Rogues until they one shot it. Ah well. It's still nice to have only one totem to remove both effects. If you have the Stoneclaw glyph you may actually be dropping that totem instead of Tremor (especially if there's a hunter instead of a warlock in that DK - Pally - X comp) so it may actually live a bit longer. Especially if Blizzard figures out a way to get rid of those horrible, awful, no good totem stomper macros oh how I hate thee totem stomper macros.

In general, resto comes through this patch more or less unscathed and is already in decent shape in PvP, to the point where even a really poorly geared, clueless resto shaman like say myself can still contribute something, and talented players can even do well with it. Both elemental and enhancement are seeing options for survivability and peel/shedding worked in, and elemental may even see some nice burst damage with shorter cast times on shocks, chain lightning, and access to an instant cast ability from within their own tree, not to mention a potential root (which is sadly dependent on Earthbind totem, which means to get it you're sacrificing Tremor and the glyphed Stoneclaw's damage shield). Outside of seeing Hex get an overhaul and perhaps reworking Frozen Power to increase Stormstrike damage as well, I don't know what I'd add. Of course, we haven't really gotten to see these changes in action yet. Will they manage to get elemental and enhancement up to parity with restoration in arenas? Do we even care at this point?

Time will tell, my own personal opinion is no, resto will still be the most popular arena choice, and no, not many of us care anymore. Perhaps this patch will change that.

Next week, I've been healing heroics! (I'm actually tabbing out from a Violet Hold run to write this.) How's it going? You'll find out.

Shaman, go you to Northrend

Well, I finally decided to level my orc shaman, as only having my alliance shaman experience the fun of raiding and see all that mail that dropped like rain when I was on my warrior vanish like smoke. Nothing but plate the second I can't wear plate. Plus, my orc has bear heads on his shoulders, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Since it's my second shaman to 80 I decided to play with leveling strategies. I started the day as enhancement (working on my telekinesis as you can see) and then moved on to elemental after digging my old ZA gear out of the bank. My experience as elemental indicates that I need to suck a lot less at elemental. Somehow on every pull, I would end up with six or seven mobs crawling all over me giving me awful slobbering undead kisses. Or biting me. One of the two, I always get them confused. I'd like to thank Thunderstorm for its support.

My first tip to shamans newly leveling through Northrend is this: do both starting zones. Now that the big push of people getting to 80 has subsided, neither zone is especially packed with people. We've talked before about the loot available in those zones, which if you're like me and trying to test out multiple specs as you level or even just want to have a backup spellpower set in case you absolutely cannot find a healer for that Nexus run is very helpful.

If you do both zones, you will easily be level 73 to 74 by the time you're done. There's a lot of quests there. This means that you can skip Grizzly Hills and go to Dragonblight if you'd prefer (it's what I did on my Draenei, actually going back to Grizzly Hills afterwards) but on my orc I'm planning to go Borean - Howling Fjord - Grizzly Hills - Dragonblight because I'm a sucker for the group quests in Grizzly.

From here, if you do both starting zones and are done with Grizzly Hills and Dragonblight, it's very possible to be level 76/77, especially if you were rested for a good portion of that time. If not, Zul'Drak will get you the rest of the way and of course has an excellent series of quests for you including the successor to the Ring of Blood with rewards that can easily take you fom 75 until you start running instances at 80 to prepare for heroics/raiding. After finishing Zul'Drak you'll have your choice of Sholozar, Icecrown and Storm Peaks to explore. I suggest doing Sholozar first because it's good XP with all the various Kill 15 of X quests from Nesingwary, combined with the Avatar of Freya questlines and the Oracle/Frenzyheart quests. Whether you choose Icecrown or Storm Peaks next, you'll ding 80 before you finish: I'd suggest hitting Storm Peaks first to get a start on the Sons of Hodir rep grind, as you can't wear a tabard with those guys. Icecrown has several questlines (do the Ebon Blade and Argent Crusade ones as soon as you can to get the zone's phasing to open up flight points/quest and repair hubs for you) that will net you gold and reputation in order to pick up gear and head enchants from the Ebon Blade and Argent Crusade.

In my opinion leaving Storm Peaks and Icecrown for after Sholozar means that all that rep grinding you have to do anyway turns into more gold than it otherwise would, but you can run these three zones in whatever order you like and easily go from 77 to 80 before you're done with them.

I'll repeat our gear guides here for anyone looking for that information: we covered Borean and Howling Fjord and their instances here, Dragonblight and the AN instance here, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak and the two troll instances here, and wrapped up instance loot in two posts here and here. This actually leaves quest loot from Sholozar, Icecrown and Storm Peaks (some of which is actually very good for leveling/running your first 80 instances). We can't hope to cover all possible drops in those three zones, but here are some highlights.

In Icecrown, there are quite a few blue quest rewards to keep an eye out for (and one or two greens that are worth considering as well) - one green I will point out to enhancement shamans who took me to task this week (and rightly so) over not being excited about expertise on the new Unleashed Rage coming in 3.1, which I really should have been. It's the Crusader's Locket, a strange trinket available from the opening quests to get the Argent Dawn flight point into Icecrown to open up. Obviously, the 106 AP is nice, but the proc on it will reduce your chance to be dodged/parried by 7.6% or so when it is up. Now, nobody wants their expertise to be proc based. But when you consider the relative paucity of expertise on mail gear, this trinket becomes one you might want to hold on to until you can reduced dodges by the 6.5% you need. Also in the spirit of expertise, there's the leather Shoulderpads of Fleshwerks, which my draenei is still wearing in Naxx partially because nothing will drop, and partially for the expertise (in fact, I have more exp leather than those on).

The Basic Chemistry quest given by both Horde and Alliance DK quest givers offers three rings that shamans might be interested in. The Fate of Bloodbane quest, similarly accessible, offers a physical DPS cloak, a crit/spell power cloak, and an MP5/ppell power cloak. The Admiral Revealed (spoiler warning if you haven't gotten that far yet) offers several socketed necks for shamans to choose from, just ignore the tanking one. This caster shield is available by helping a Banshee get some Revenge. The quest The Last Line of Defense has a crit/spell power trinket, an MP/5 and spell power trinket, and a haste/AP trinket.

Caster mail is available through quests as well, as is a decent caster weapon. Enhancement can pick up a nice set of wrists or a solid helmet as well as a socketed ring.

In the Storm Peaks, shamans have a quest (Alliance and Horde flavors) that comes with a variety of ring flavors. While almost certainly intended for tanks this ring must be considered by any enhancement shaman desperate for expertise. (If you're really, really hurting, there's also this green mace.) Caster shamans can pick up a set of gloves and enhancement shamans a pair of pants as well.

Next week, we'll cover Sholozar Basin and discuss new abilities you gain as you level, from Lava Burst to Hex. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go beat up on some Gorlocs.

Patch 3.1 PTR Patch Notes update

The official patch notes have been updated for the Patch 3.1 PTR. You can see a complete list of changes after the break, or take a look at the fully updated notes.

This update is much more substantial than the one we posted a couple nights ago. Nonetheless, it has been added to our Patch 3.1 patch notes archive. Via the archive you can also view other iterations of the patch notes to see how things have changed.

As always, these notes should be considered incomplete (it's in bold because we can't say it enough). A number of things that are on the PTR are not reflected in the patch notes, and several things that will eventually be on the PTR aren't in the notes either (many of the class changes, for example).

General

• New high-resolution player textures for Northrend armor sets have been added. Players can enable this feature by setting Player Textures to High in the Effects Panel of the Video Options.


• Players can now return items purchased with an alternate currency back to the original vendor within 2 hours of the purchase time for the original cost of the item. Stackable items (such as Frozen Orbs and gems) and charged items that can be purchased with an alternate currency are not eligible.


• Confirmation boxes have been added to purchases over 150 gold.


• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

Death Knight

Blood

• Abomination's Might: This effect can now also be caused by Death Strike.
  
• Magic Suppression: Now has 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction.


• New talent: Improved Death Strike. Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20.


• Outbreak: Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 15/30/45% and Scourge Strike by 10/20/30%. Scourge Strike: Damage increased.

Druid

• Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.


• Maim: This ability is now considered a stun, and shares a diminish category with all other stuns. It no longer has a chance to break from the target taking damage. Duration lowered to 1 sec. per combo point.
  
• Heart of the Wild: Stamina bonus changed to 2/4/6/8/10%.
  
• Intensity: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Hunters

• Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to Hunter Autoshot.


• Call Stabled Pet: This new ability lets the hunter remotely access the stable. 30 min cooldown.


• Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses. This should make more pet families feel viable, while additional talents have been added to distinguish a pet's abilities based on its specializations.


• Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.


• Pets now inherit more spell hit from the hunter. Pets with magic attacks should not require a player to stack additional hit compared to pets with physical attacks.


• Viper Sting re-designed: Stings the target, draining 4% of mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster's maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on any one target.


• Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.

Hunter Pets

• Bullheaded now adds 20% damage reduction for 12 sec along with its current CC-removal effect.


• Cornered: The crit reduction when this ability is active has been increased.


• Feeding Frenzy increased to 8/16% damage up from 6/12%.


• Furious Howl (wolf special ability) now stacks with Battle Shout and Blessing of Might, however, it only affects the wolf and hunter. Its effect and cooldown have been doubled so that it provides the same benefit but isn't up 100% of the time.


• Gorillas now have a new family ability, Pummel, which works like the warrior ability and has a single rank.


• Grace of the Mantis and Roar of Sacrifice are now also available to Cunning pets.


• New Talent: Shark Attack: This new two-rank talent is available to Ferocity pets. It increases pet damage.


• New Talent: Silverback: This new two-rank talent is available to Tenacity pets. It heals the pet when Growl is used.


• New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. It increases the stamina and attack power inherited from the hunter.


• Roar of Recovery cooldown decreased to 3 min, down from 6 min.


• Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.

Mage

• Mage Armor: Now grants 50% of mana regeneration while casting.
  
• Arcane Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.


• Pyromaniac: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Paladin

• Improved Concentration Aura: The resistance to silence and interrupt granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Concentration Aura.
  


• Improved Devotion Aura: The additional healing granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Devotion Aura.


• Divine Protection: Cooldown reduced to 3 min.


• Sanctified Retribution: The bonus to damage done granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Retribution Aura.

Priest

• Meditation and Improved Power: Word shield have changed locations with each other.


• Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting


• Renewed Hope: This talent also now allows you to proc the Renewed Hope buff on all party/raid members every time you cast Power Word: Shield, reducing damage taken by 3%. Lasts 20 sec.
  


• Psychic Horror: Has been redesigned and is now a 1-pt talent. You terrify the target, causing them to tremble in horror for 3 sec. and drop all weapons (disarm effect: including bows) for 10 sec. 1 minute cooldown. Instant cast. The horror effect can be dispelled, but the disarm cannot.


• Improved Spirit Tap: Now grants 17/33% of mana regeneration while casting.


• Spirit Tap: Now grants 83% of mana regeneration while casting.

Rogue

• Shiv: This ability can no longer generate a critical strike, and the poisons it applies cannot be critical strikes either.

Shaman

Enhancement

• Unleashed Rage: Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Each point now also increases your total Expertise by 3/6/9%.

Warlock

• Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.


• Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.

Warrior

• Charge: Duration of stun effect now lasts 1.5 sec. This effect no longer has diminishing returns.
• Last Stand: Cooldown reduced to 3 min.
  

User Interface

• Spell Effect Level setting has been split into Particle Density and Projected Textures. Previously, Spell Effect Level controlled both of these features.


• Added new Video Mode Ultra (should only be used on the highest-end systems).

Items

• Hearthstone: Cooldown has been reduced to 30 min. down from 60 min.

Glyphs


Death Knight

• Glyph of Blood Boil: Now only applies a snare to diseased targets.


• Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon: Increases the duration of Dancing Rune Weapon by 10 sec.


• Glyph of Death Coil: Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power.


• Glyph of Disease: Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.


• Glyph of Howling Blast: Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.


• Glyph of Hungering Cold: Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power.


• Glyph of Plague Strike: Bonus lowered to 20%.


• Glyph of Unholy Blight: Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.

Druid

• Glyph of Berserk: Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec


• Monsoon Glyph: Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.


• Glyph of Nourish: Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.


• Glyph of Savage Roar: Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.


• Glyph of Wild Growth: Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets.


• Glyph of Shred: Now increases remaining duration on Rip by 2 sec. each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 sec.

Hunter

• Glyph of Chimera Shot: Reduces the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 sec.


• Glyph of Explosive Shot: Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.


• Glyph of Explosive Trap: The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.


• Glyph of Kill Shot: Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.


• Glyph of Raptor Strike: For 3 sec. after using Raptor Strike, you take 20% less damage.


• Glyph of Scatter Shot: Increases the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards.

Mage

• Glyph of Arcane Barrage: Reduces the mana cost of Arcane Barrage by 20%.


• Glyph of Deep Freeze: Increases the range of Deep Freeze by 10 yards.


• Glyph of Ice Barrier: Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your Ice Barrier by 30%.


• Glyph of Living Bomb: The periodic damage from your Living Bomb can now be critical strikes.


• Glyph of Mirror Image: Your Mirror Images gain the Winter's Chill talent, granting their Frostbolt spell a 100% chance to apply the Winter's Chill effect, which increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 1% for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Paladin

• Glyph of Beacon of Light: Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.


• Glyph of Divine Plea: While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.


• Glyph of Divine Storm: Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it causes.


• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous: Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.


• Glyph of Hand of Salvation: When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.


• Glyph of Holy Shock: Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec.


• Glyph of Shield of Righteousness: Reduces the mana cost of Shield of Righteousness by 80%.

Priest

• Glyph of Dispersion: Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 sec.


• Glyph of Fade: Now reduces cooldown by 9 sec.


• Glyph of Guardian Spirit: If you Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.


• Glyph of Holy Light: Can no longer crit and has had its range updated.


• Glyph of Hymn of Hope: Your Hymn of hope provides 2 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.


• Glyph of Mind Sear: Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.


• Glyph of Pain Suppression: Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.


• Glyph of Penance: Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.

Rogue

• Glyph of Backstab: Now increases remaining duration on Rupture by 2 sec. each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 sec.


• Glyph of Cloak of Shadows: While Cloak of Shadows is active, you take 40% less physical damage.


• Glyph of Fan of Knives: Increases the damage done by Fan of Knives by 20%.


• Glyph of Hunger for Blood: Increases the bonus damage from Hunger For Blood by 3%.


• Glyph of Killing Spree: Reduces the cooldown on Killing Spree by 45 sec.


• Glyph of Mutilate: Reduces the cost of Mutilate by 5 energy.


• Glyph of Shadow Dance: Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 4 sec.


• Glyph of Sprint: No longer reduces the duration.


• Glyph of Tricks of the Trade: Your Tricks of the Trade grants an additional 10% bonus damage to your target.

Shaman

• Glyph of Earth Shield: Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.


• Glyph of Feral Spirit: Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.


• Glyph of Hex: Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.


• Glyph of Riptide: Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 sec.


• Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.


• Glyph of Thunder: Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 sec.


• Glyph of Totem of Wrath: When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for 5 min.

Warlock

• Glyph of Chaos Bolt: Reduces the cooldown on Chaos Bolt by 2 sec.


• Glyph of Demonic Circle: Reduces the cooldown on Demonic Circle by 4 sec.


• Glyph of Haunt: The bonus damage granted by your Haunt spell is increased by an additional 3%.


• Glyph of Life Tap: When you use Life Tap, you gain 20% of your spirit as spell power for 20 sec.


• Glyph of Metamorphosis: Increases the duration of your Metamorphosis by 6 sec.


• Glyph of Shadowflame: Your Shadowflame also applies a 70% movement speed slow on its victims.


• Glyph of Soul Link: Increases the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link by an additional 5%.

Warrior

• Glyph of Bladestorm: Reduces the cooldown on Bladestorm by 15 sec.


• Glyph of Enraged Regeneration: Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.


• Glyph of Last Stand: Now reduces the cooldown of Last Stand by 90 sec.


• Glyph of Shield Wall: Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.


• Glyph of Shockwave: Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.


• Glyph of Spell Reflection: Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.


• Glyph of Vigilance: Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target's threat to you.

Bug Fixes

• Leaving a group while in an instance will now port you to the nearest graveyard rather than your Hearthstone location.


• Mace of Unending Life is correctly a 2H weapon.

Death Knight

• Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.

Hunter

• Savage Rend (raptor special ability): Fixed a tooltip error to correctly note this ability boosts damage rather than attack power.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Shaman Glyph

So in the cold light of day we have yet more changes than the PTR notes indicated for our beloved shamans. Both glyphs and general changes need to be discussed, and so I drag my exhausted hinder forth to dig through the vast and sprawling PTR hoopla to determine what is up for the totem dropping set. What's good, what's bad, what's head scratchingly confusing? We talked about shaman class changes in the PTR notes early this morning, so we'll start there, because it's short.

Fire Nova Totem's mana cost has been reduced. Everything else was covered in the original patch notes, so... yeah. Fire Noval Totem costs less. It's still a fire totem, so elemental shamans will have to decide between it and Totem of Wrath. But at least the decision to drop one and lose the benefits of Totem of Wrath will cost you less mana.

Luckily, we have quite a few glyphs to discuss as well. Let's talk about those.

Glyph of Thunderstorm (new) - Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 sec. Glyph of Feral Spirit (new) - Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power. Glyph of Riptide (new) - Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 sec.

Glyph of Earth Shield (new) - Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.

Glyph of Totem of Wrath (new) - When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for .

Glyph of Hex (new) - Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem (new) - Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems. These are some interesting glyphs. The Feral Spirit change buffs an already good talent that you should be popping every time it's cooldown is up. I'm mildly excited by the Riptide change... it's not world shaking, but having a glyph for that spell makes me happy. I'd like to know if these were major or minor glyphs, I expect major.

The Thunderstorm cooldown reduction glyph will see applications for both Pvp and PvE, especially when mana is an issue. 20% more healing from ES is a purely good thing, I can't see a down side there. Glyph of Hex is nice, but really not all that necessary, and Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem could be excellent, as four time the general base absorption of around 1600 health could be pretty impressive. (I've also heard that the base on Stoneclaw's absorb is 1088, but either way, over 4k damage absorbed when Stoneclaw is down? That's not shabby.) Frankly, the one change I'm underwhelmed by is Hex. Making it take longer to break on damage isn't an issue for PvP, the fact that it's so easily escaped and doesn't even prevent player control of their character the way sheep does is. It'll be nice for PvE but with all these other glyphs would you take this one?

It would really help to know if it was major or minor, honestly.

In general, without knowing if these are major or minor glyphs (I'm assuming major for now) I'm relatively pleased with the changes all told. Nothing earth-shattering but some nice buffs to damage and healing, and the Stoneclaw Totem glyph has the potential to be really useful in situations where you're going to take a lot of burst damage.

Elemental Shamans to see DPS increase in 3.0.8

According to Ghostcrawler, between wow patch 3.0.3 and wow 3.0.8 elemental shamans should see 'a total of about 20%' more DPS, depending on gear. Since they announced their 3.0.4 talent changes for the spec, they've made more changes which are currently live on the PTR for 3.0.8, and they estimate that each round of changes should increase DPS by about 10-12%, combining for the 20% estimate.

Since these changes haven't gone live yet, your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not they'll all combine to meet or even exceed GC's predictions. My shaman's elemental gear is solidly in that category of gear he states 'won't see quite such a lift' so as soon as I manage to get on the PTR and test it, I still won't be in the gear needed to really verify this.

Now all we need is to either fix mail itemization for elemental or let our friendly caster shaman get leather items drama free, and elemental will be in a good place.

President Bush dodges a Shaman attack

No matter what your political persuasion is, we can all find the above animation funny. President Bush had a shoe thrown at him last week, and this week we've seen the incident take on a World of Warcraft spin.

The person throwing the shoe is playing an Elemental Shaman. He or she really needs to clean up their UI: as you can see in the above picture, it's not very good. Way too many buttons spaced out at odd intervals.

While we were originally under the impression that the shoe throwing incident took place in Iraq, it appears via the mini-map that it actually took place in Thousand Needles. Perhaps if the President ate some Tracker Snacks he'd have avoided the incident all together, as "Ghostrunner" (aka "Greg Highway") say the buff will include reporter tracking in patch 3.0.8.

And just to be completely bipartisan, after the break is a screenshot of President Elect Obama's WoW screen after he earned the "President of the United States" achievement.

Thanks to wowinsider sent this in!

World of Warcraft WoW PTR 3.0.8 Patch notes

While the PTR isn't up and active yet, we're very likely to see it within the next couple of days given the information that Ghostcrawler has been handing out lately, or even later today. The full patch notes have seemingly already leaked, so we have them for you here as well. It seems that we're getting wow patch 3.0.8 , not 3.0.4 like we've all been saying. Not a big deal in the end, but interesting nonetheless.

Reading through these notes, keep in mind that they're probably not complete and we'll see updates to them when the PTR itself goes live. The test realm always has quite a few undocumented changes as well to keep an eye out for. Again, when we know more, we'll let you know.

Edit: Updated to reflect the official patch notes.

General

• Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.


• Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items with extra armor, or any other items with any armor). Bonus armor beyond the base armor of an item will no longer be multiplied by any talents or by the bonuses of Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or Frost Presence.
  
• Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You're not seeing things.


• Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.


• A new mailbox is now available at the Crows Tavern in the Dalaran Sewers.


• We have added over 60 new graveyards to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
  
• The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed.

Achievements

• The Loremaster of Kalimdor Achievement has had its quest amount reduced.


• The Winds of the North has had its requirements changed. This achievement is now earned by getting Exalted with the Alliance Vanguard or Horde Expedition.

PvP in WoW 3.0.8

Arenas

• All rage and runic power are set to 0 when an Arena begins and the preparation period is over.

Battlegrounds

• Lake Wintergrasp
  
  
  
  
  • Wintergrasp Commendations can now also be purchased for the low low price of 9 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor. Players can visit their respective Wintergrasp vendors and put those Marks of Honor to use!
    
  • Elementals should now always despawn when the battle begins.
    
  • Wintergrasp now extends further south so that more revenants can be reached.
    
  • There are now three ranks in Wintergrasp: Recruit, Corporal, and First Lieutenant.
    
  • Players will be eligible for participation rewards after two honorable kills.
    
  • Players will receive increased honor with increased rank.
    
  • Players will receive additional Marks of Honor at Corporal or higher rank.
    
  • Players will receive corporal rank at 5 honorable kills instead of two.


• Strand of the Ancients
  
  
  
  
  • Antipersonnel Turrets will now gain vehicle immunities, use falloff damage, and damage increased to 4000 + 200 per level to compensate for falloff.
    
  • Seaforium charges have been moved closer to the graveyards on the 2nd tier.

Death Knights

• All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
  
• Anti-Magic Shell: The cooldown has been lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
  
• Blood Aura now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
  
• Blood Presence now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.


• Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence.


• Bone Shield: The mitigation has been reduced from 40% to 20%.
  
• Corpse Explosion: Damage increased substantially, added 5 sec. cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.


• Dark Command: Range increased to 30 yards.
  
• Death Knights have access to unique death-knight only facial textures and skin tones. These can be selected at the character creation screen.
  
• Death Pact now grants 40% instead of 20% healing.


• Frost Presence: The bonus armor has been increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%.
  
• Heart Strike no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets.
  
• Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
  
• Icebound Fortitude now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but can go higher).
  
• Night of the Dead now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
  
• Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
  
• Pestilence no longer has a 10 seconds cooldown.
  
• Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:
  
  
  
  
  • Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.
    
  
  
  • Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.
    


• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
  


• Rune Strike: Damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
  


• Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.


• Unholy Blight had had its cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.


• Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being cast.


• Vampiric Blood: In addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
  


• Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded

Druids

• Feral Attack Power: All weapons now have the potential to grant feral attack power based on their dps (as compared to the best superior-quality weapons available at level 60). Players will see their existing feral weapons grant roughly the same attack power as they did before (+/- 2 or so), but many new weapons will be options for the feral druid. Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them. All druids will see the amount of feral attack power granted by an item in the item tooltip, if it grants any, but other players will not see that information.


• Remove Curse and Abolish Poison can now be used in Moonkin form.
  
• Genesis: Now works with Tranquility and Hurricane.
  
• Growl: Range increased to 30 yards.
  
• King of the Jungle - The Bear effect is now physical, and thus cannot be dispelled.


• Nature's Grace - Now also effects Revive.


• Primal Tenacity: Now reduces the cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form by 17/33/50% in addition to its previous effects.


• Protector of the Pack: No longer changes value based on party size.
  
• Savage Roar: The buff now persists outside of Cat Form but only provides its benefits while in Cat Form.
  
• Starfall will now be cancelled by any shapeshifting.
  
• Survival of the Fittest: This talent now grants 22/44/66% bonus armor in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form in addition to all of its previous effects.


• Swipe: Swipe (Cat) has now been added at level 71, dealing 260% weapon damage, costs 50 energy with no cooldown. All talents affecting the Bear Form version affect the Cat Form one as well.
  
  


• Wild Growth now has a 6 second cooldown.

Hunters

• All Hunter abilities pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer on the global cooldown.


• Aspect of the Wild - This aspect is now raid-wide.
  
• Call of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only the Hunter and their own pet.
  
• Deterrence: Design changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to "deflect" spells coming from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking. Lasts 5 sec. 60 sec. cooldown.


• Improved Tracking(Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.


• Kill Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.


• Kindred Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.


• The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid Venom (Scorpid) has been lowered.


• Readiness: No longer resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.
  
• Steady Shot: Now gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.
  
• Serpent's Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.
  
• Unleashed Fury: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.


• Viper Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
  


• Volley: The damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack power scaling).

Mages

• Arcane Blast: This ability has been significantly changed. Arcane Blast now increases the damage of the next Arcane spell by 15%. However, using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge itself. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the damage of Arcane spells is increased by 15% and the mana cost of Arcane Blast is increased by 200%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast.
  
• Arcane Flows: Now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by 1m/2m.
  
• Elemental Precision: Renamed to Precision and now works on all spells.
  
• Evocation: Cooldown reduced to 4 min.


• Improved Blizzard: The snaring effect has been reduced to 20/40/50%.


• Slow Fall is now castable on others.
  
• Torment the Weak: Now works with Arcane Blast and does bonus damage against targets afflicted with any type of slow (such as the combat slow from Thunder Clap).
  

Paladins

• Avenging Wrath: Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection, and Avenging Wrath cannot be used within 30 seconds of each other anymore. Forbearance removed from Avenging Wrath.


• Divine Protection: The penalty has been removed.


• Divine Shield: The penalty has been changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% in place of an attack speed penalty.


• Hand of Reckoning(NEW): Available on trainers at level 16. It's a 30 yard range taunt that causes Holy damage.


• Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.
  
• Judgement of Wisdom: Now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.
  
• Sacred Duty: Interaction with Divine Shield and Divine Protection removed, but stamina bonus increased.
  

Priests

• Abolish Disease and Cure Disease can now be cast while in Shadowform.
  
• Holy: Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown.


• Levitate is now castable on others.
  
• Mana Burn: Now burns a percentage of maximum mana.
  
• Shadow
  
  
  
  
  • Shadowform: You can now shift into Shadowform while mounted or sitting.
  
  
  • Vampiric Embrace- Mana cost of this spell has been removed.
    

Rogues

• Fan of Knives: The cooldown has been removed. In addition, now deals 150% of weapon damage when used while daggers are equipped.
  
• Feint: Rank 8 now reduces the damage taken from area of effect attacks by 50% for 6 seconds in addition to its existing effects.

Shaman

• Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat.
  
• Healing Way: Now only one application is required to reach full benefit. No longer stacks.


• Improved Water Shield: Lesser Healing Wave now has a reduced chance to trigger this talent.


• Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat.


• Mental Quickness: Reduced the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 23/46/70% of your agility.


• Searing Totem (Rank 4) now does the proper damage for its rank.


• Tremor Totem's duration has been increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes.
  
• Elemental
  


• Elemental Shields: This talent has been removed. It has now been merged with Elemental Warding.


• Elemental Warding: Now reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%. Changed from only reducing Nature, Fire and Frost by 4/7/10%.


• New Talent: Shamanism-Your Lightning Bolt spell gains an additional 2/4/6/8/10% and your Lava Burst gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus damage effects.


• Storm, Earth and Fire: This talent has been moved up in the tree, and it's talent points have been reduced to 3 down from 5. Wind Shock is also included in the range increase (with Earth Shock). The damage bonus to Flame Shock has been increased, up from 10/20/30/40/50 to 20/40/60.


• Unrelenting Storm: point cost reduced to 3, down from 5. Now does 4/8/12%

Warlocks

• Drain Mana: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.


• Emberstorm: Now works with Conflagrate.
  
• Ritual of Summoning: Will now create a summoning portal object which can be re-used for multiple summons for 5 minutes.

Warriors

• Bloodthirst: Charges have been decreased to 3, but the effect has been raised to 1% per charge.


• Bloodsurge: Now has a chance to trigger from any hit with Heroic Strike, Bloodthirst, or Whirlwind.
  
• Titan's Grip: The hit chance penalty has been removed.
  
• Taunt: Range increased to 30 yards.

Professions

• Alchemy
  
  
  
  
  • All flasks no longer require an alchemy lab to create.
  
  
• Blacksmithing
  


• Reduced the spell power on the Titansteel Guardian to bring it in line with its item level.
  
• Increased the material requirements to make high level frost resistance gear created with blacksmithing.
  


• Engineering
  
  
  
  
  • Engineers may now be able to properly engineer Centrifuge Constructs.


• Inscription
  
  
  
  
  • Glyph of Death Strike has also been reduced by 50% to 1% healing per 5 Runic Power.
  
  
  • Glyph of Deterrence: Now -10 seconds instead of -20.
    
  
  
  • Glyph of Holy Light now affects friendly targets in a larger radius.
    
  
  
  • Glyph of Horn of Winter now increases the duration by 60 sec.
    


• Leatherworking
  
  
  
  
  • Iceborne Belt pattern skill up range has been increased to the correct range.
    


• Mining
  
  
  
  
  • Weakened Giants and Iron Rune Sentinels can now be correctly mined.
    


• Skinning
  


• Increased the critical strike rating granted by ranks 5 and 6 of Master of Anatomy.
  
• Carrion Fleshstrippers are now skinnable.

Quests

• The quest, "Scare the Guano Out of Them!" now only requires 10 Darkclaw Guano, down from 15. Also, only the character that scared the bat, or their party, may now loot the guano.
  
• Shoveltusk Meat obtained during the quest, "Shoveltusk Soup Again?" is now correctly flagged as a quest item with no sell price.


• During the quest, "Scalped!", you can no longer use Ahunae's Knife to scalp kills that you aren't tapped to.


• The path followed by the Har'koa's Kitten during the quest, "I Sense a Disturbance" has been improved.
  
• Westguard Sergeants, Winterhoof Braves, and Ethereal Frostworgs should no longer attempt to attack their opposite faction counterparts unless the character controlling them is first attacked.


• Westguard Sergeant and Winterhoof Brave demoralizing shouts will now only affect the Winterskorn vrykul and worgs at Skorn.
  
• Various fixes to the Queen Angerboda event during the quest, "The Slumbering King".
  
• The daily quest, "Shoot 'Em Up" now only requires 15 Jotunheim Proto-Drakes to be shot down, down from 20. As well, the harpoon now only costs 5 energy to shoot, down from 10.

Dungeons and Raids

• The Obsidian Sanctum: Players will now be affected by Twilight Residue when they leave the Twilight Realm. Twilight Residue grants immunity to Fire and Shadow damage for a few seconds.

User Interface

• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Items

• Amberglow Signet now correctly grants Hit Rating.


• Deadly Gladiator's Staff has had the Agility and Critical strike rating restored to ratios consistent with other instances of the Gladiator's Staff.


• Gifts and Pledges of Adoration for the capital cities are now soulbound.
  
• The Flag of Ownership now has only a 60s cooldown to match the 60s duration of the flag.


• The following crafted weapons have had their stats adjusted to properly reflect their intended power:
  
  
  
  • Corroded Saronite Edge, Corroded Saronite Woundbringer, Cudgel of Saronite Justice, Furious Saronite Beaststick, Saronite Spellblade, Saronite Shiv, Savage Cobalt Slicer, Notched Cobalt War Axe, Sturdy Cobalt Quickblade, Cobalt Tenderizer


• Living Lashers can now properly be skinned with Herbalism.
  
• Players can now open clams while riding a vehicle, sitting, mounted, stealthed, and invisible.


• Reduced the stats on the Savage Cobalt Slicer to match the weapon's level.
  
• Some low-level rogue pvp gloves were accidentally omitted from the patch 3.0.3 update. This has been rectified.
  
• Some neglected creatures in Icecrown have found the contents of their pockets.
  
• Totem of Hex now correctly grants 165 spell power to Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt, up from 85.
  
• The white Polar Bear mount is now the proper (larger) size.

World Environment

• Incapacitating Shout now has an 8 second duration.


• Conquered Soul of the Blighcallers are no longer AE immune.


• Corrected a raid emote in Violet Hold to display the proper creature name.


• Corrected a redundant aura tooltip for Locust Swarm in Naxxramas.


• Several creatures in the Construct Quarter of Naxxramas did not have Heroic values for hit points and damage.
  
• Storm Peaks, Grom'arsh Crash Site - Peon Gakra is now an innkeeper and the zeppelin hull, an inn.

Bug Fixes

• Death Knight: Corpse Explosion: Fixed a bug where how much Runic Power the Death Knight had was affecting the damage done, and also increased the damage substantially.


• Druid: Savage Fury - Mangle (Bear) damage was being increased by a higher percentage than intended. This has been fixed, and in result Mangle (Bear) should see roughly a 16% damage reduction. Also fixed a bug with Savage Fury where the Rake bleed effect was not being increased.


• Fixed a bug with a Wild Mustard plant that was under the ground in Dalaran.


• Paladin: Repentance: Avenger's Shield no longer breaks Repentance, but unfortunately, Seal of Vengeance and Corruption damage will break it again. This will be corrected in a future patch.


• Paladin: Shield of Righteousness now properly shares a cooldown for both ranks.
  
• Priest: Mind Flay - Fixed a bug with targeting where you would not deal damage if not facing the target while channeling.
  
• Shaman: Elemental Shields was reducing flat physical damage, not a percentage. Now properly reduced by a percentage.
  
• Shaman: Lava Lash - Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used.


• Shaman: Fixed a bug where Thunderstorm (Elemental) was knocking back 15 yards, instead of 20. It should now roughly knockback the correct length of 20 yards.


• The Wintergrasp Aura should now properly update in all instances, transferring the buff when the zone control changes.

Elemental Shaman changes in patch 3.0.4

Ghostcrawler, in a post to the Damage Dealing forums, outlined upcoming changes to Elemental Shamans in wow patch 3.0.4. It's a pretty substantial talent overhaul for the tree, aimed at streamlining and improving scaling at higher levels of gear. (And boy, is that a good thing.) Unlike the recent post changing how totems work as AoE, this is a much more drastic set of changes all told. In case you can't get it to load at work or what have you, the complete text of the post will be after the jump with commentary by me.

We are making some upcoming changes to the Elemental shaman tree. Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.

1) Unrelenting Storm – reduced from 5 points to 3 points. Bonus is 4/8/12% of your Intellect returned as mana.

Can't complain here: three points gets you more than five used to, up from 10%.

2) Elemental Warding – now reduces all damage (not just Nature, Fire and Frost) taken by 2/4/6%

3) Elemental Shields – this talent has been removed, since its effects were combined with Elemental Warding.

This is a buff. While 3 points used to get you 10% damage reduction from those three schools, it now gives you 6% against everything, be it holy, physical or what have you. While I expect some shamans will miss that 4% damage reduction from, say, fire AoE splash damage, not many will complain about getting some more reduction against daggers. Folding Elemental Shields into Elemental Warding means we save three points, even if you're not thrilled with the reduction in how much damage it reduces.

4) Storm, Earth and Fire – reduced from 5 points to 3 points, but keeps around the same net benefit. In addition to current effects, also increases Wind Shock range. The damage bonus to Flame Shock has increased to 60% at 3 ranks. Storm, Earth and Fire has been moved up the tree as well.

Entirely positive. A buff and nothing but a buff.

5) Shamanism – this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.

Once they finalize the numbers we'll know if this is a large buff or a small buff, but it's definitely a buff.

These changes will be available in the next minor content wow 3.0.4, and are in addition to the AE changes mentioned previously.

I'm still not entirely thrilled with having to lose Totem of Wrath in order to do any significant AoE, but these changes are almost indisputably nothing but buffs to the spec. I'm a little surprised to be honest. Here's looking forward to wow patch 3.0.4 and what it brings to elemental shamans.

Wrath of the Lich King Class Changes Roundup

I will bring you some of the still-current WoW Classes information for your first steps into Northrend. You've probably had a chance to get a handle on your class since most of the changes were pushed through in patch 3.0.2, but you have an extra ten levels ahead of you, an extra ten talent points, and a whole bunch of new skills and abilities you're going to need to learn. Don't know what to expect? We're here for you. If you do know what to expect? Well, I guess you can keep reading if you want. We'll let it slide just this once.

• Death Knight - Being the new class on the block, there's certainly been a lot to talk about in the recent months. Daniel Whitcomb points you toward much of it, including leveling builds, in-depth looks at their core abilities and mechanics, as well as some sage advice from Allison Robert.


• Druid - Speaking of Allison Robert, she'll be your guide today if you're looking for more on the Druid class. Talent builds, a glimpse at raid healing as Restoration, the rise of the Moonkin and much more can be found within.
  
• Hunter - Yeah, yeah. You're probably just going to go off and tame a Core Hound or something if you haven't already, but there's so much more that's new to the class! Michael Grey is manning the show here, pointing you towards things such as BigRedKitty's previews of the many new pets and pet abilities in Wrath of the Lich King, as well as other new skills. Oh, did you hear a Hunter pet tanked Gruul? It's true.


• Mage - The only thing that really, truly matters when it comes to the Mage class is that you can now polymorph things into Penguins. I suppose there are some other things coming around (like Mirror Image and Arcane Barrage) so you may want to take a look at Eliah Hecht's guide.


• Paladin - The Wrath of the Lich King beta was a wild ride for Paladins as the class rubberbanded in and out of being overpowered or underpowered. Many aspects of the class were changed completely from what they used to be, so if you haven't seen it in action yet, Zach Yonzon will point you in the right direction.


• Priest - Clearly the best class in the game. Clearly. This statement is not at all tainted by the fact that my main is a Priest. Alright, maybe it is, but that doesn't much matter. Priests have had a few major changes such as the removal of racial abilities and the addition of a few of them to our baseline repertoire, and there's also been controversy over the usefulness of talents such as Dispersion and Divine Providence. Interested? Matt Low will take good care of you.


• Rogue - Resident ninja master Chase Christian offers up some leveling tips, insight into new abilities, and dabbles in some of the other changes like scaling poisons. I'm not sure what else there is to say here. I mean, they're rogues. Pointy end of the sword (or dagger) goes into the other guy, right? That's pretty straightforward. Wait, what do you mean Rogues can use maces? Those aren't point at all. That doesn't even make sense.


• Shaman - The grizzly bear in human form, Matthew Rossi, will be your spirit guide. Whether you're Enhancement, Elemental, or Restoration, nothing you can do will ever be as epic as the Shaman who took out an entire raid group solo. With a single spell. There's some other stuff in there, but really, it all pales in comparison.


• Warlock - Zach Yonzon gets tired of all of that Light crap and jumps from Paladin to Warlock, rounding up all you need to know. Did you know DoTs can crit now (sort of)? Did you know the Infernal can be used indoors now? Do you know how Haunt works? If you answered yes to all of those questions, you win a great big bowl of nothing. If you answered no to any of those questions, there's probably some other stuff you don't know. Click the link! Go! Hurry!


• Warrior - Matthew Rossi is back, drooling all over the WoW Insider team as he rants and raves about the sheer awesome that is Titan's Grip. There's plenty of other new things on top of that as well, such as a revamp of the Protection tree, a close look at a few new abilities, and more.

That's all, folks! We hope you find these guides useful, and we can't wait to see you in Northrend! I guess we can't see you if we're not on the same realm, but we'll be there in spirit. The next person that steals the tap on a quest mob from you? Yeah, pretend we're that guy. We hurt you because we love you.

WowInsider