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- General
- Unleashed Rage: The melee attack power bonus from this raid buff has been increased to 10/20%, up from 5/10%. The ranged attack power bonus remains 5/10%.
- Shaman
- Flametongue Weapon no longer increases spell damage. It now increases all non-physical damage done by the wielder by 5%.
- Lightning Bolt has a new spell effect.
- Wind Shear’s base cooldown has been adjusted to 15 seconds, up from 6 seconds.
- Elemental
- Call of Flame no longer causes Fire Nova to extend the duration of Flame Shock.
- Earthquake damage has been increased by roughly 75%.
- Elemental Fury now removes the cooldown from Chain Lightning.
- Reverberation now reduces the cooldown of Wind Shear by 5/10 seconds, up from 0.5/1 second.
- Enhancement
- Improved Lava Lash now causes Lava Lash to spread a Flame Shock debuff from the target to up to 4 nearby targets. This excludes crowd-controlled targets and those who already have a Flame Shock debuff from the shaman.
- Improved Lava Lash no longer increases base Lava Lash damage by 15/30%. This increase has been rolled into the base Lava Lash skill.
- Mental Quickness has been redesigned. Instead of granting the shaman spell power, Mental Quickness now causes Enhancement shaman spells to behave as though the shaman has spell power equal to 55% of attack power. Enhancement shaman spells no longer benefit from spell power from other sources.
- Maelstrom Weapon can now also proc from fully absorbed melee attacks.
- Restoration
- Ancestral Healing now also causes the shaman's heals to increase the target's maximum health by 5/10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of the target's maximum health, for 15 seconds. This effect does not stack if multiple Restoration shaman are present, and does not apply to heals from procs.
- Riptide's periodic healing coefficient has been increased by 50%. The initial direct heal is unchanged.
- Races
- The orc racial Blood Fury now increases spell power rather than only spell damage.
What do you guys think about these changes?
As an Enhancement Shaman, I welcome the attempt to make AOE easier to maintain. Enhancement Shaman AOE takes way too long to ramp up as it currently is, plus, if one of your Flame Shock targets die, you lose a lot of DPS. Hopefully, this change will enable us to put Flame Shock on our primary target and just hit Lava Lash to spread it around.
The new Lightning Bolt effect looks pretty cool, if a little chaotic (doesn't exactly look like a bolt of lightning anymore, more like a lightning strike).
Overall, I feel Shaman got buffed this time around. I'm still not sure how the change to spell power on Enhancement Shaman will play out. From what I gathered, Enhancement Shaman won't benefit from spell power anymore, which means we'll lose some raid buffs. We get 20% attack power to the ranged classes' 10%, though, so perhaps it works out.
