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.