Here’s a simplified scenario: You and 15 friends are bored on a Thursday night. Too many for a 10 man, too few for a 25 man. You guys form a raid and set the difficulty to “Flex”. The raid now scales dependent on how many people you have in your raid. Let’s say you and your friends want to continue this raid on Saturday but only 12 of you make it. The raid then scales down to as if 12 people are there. This lockout is separate from LFR, and 10/25 Normal/Heroic.

This technology of scaling based on players has been toyed with recently as you may have noticed that some of the world mobs and rares scale with the amount of players that are in combat with it. Blizzard has put that into the raid scenario.

Overall, I have to say it’s a great concept.

There has been some question why LFR will still happen with this new Flex raid system in place, or why not replace all raiding modes with this? I have to agree with some of these questions.

In an ideal world, any guild with 10-25 people should be able to raid with any amount of raiders that they have. My experience with 10 man guilds in the past couple of years has been you generally have 10-12 people on your active raiding roster. This gives a little leeway if someone is going to be away, but then you have to account for those 2 other players may not be in the best gear for the content that you’ll be doing. If the Flex raiding system applied to all raids that means all 12 of those raiders could be in raids. On the flip side with a 25 man raid, if there’s only 22 people on, then there’s no worry about having to pug those last few spots.

That being said, their intention with Flex raid isn’t really for guilds. It’s more intended for friends that might be in different guilds or on different servers. Imagine getting a few small groups of friends together and doing an 18 man raid. That’s really appealing to me.

One other thing that I <i>hope</i> comes along with this – an improved local pug scene. Because this is on a separate lockout than Normal/Heroic, there’d be no harm in anyone running a pug Flex-difficulty raid group. It also uses LFR’s loot system, so each individual is awarded loot (or not), rather than hoping your item drops and hoping you win it.
We’ll see how this pans out when it’s launched in 5.4 but count me in as someone who is really looking forward to this feature. I’m also looking forward to the other unannounced features that they’ll be putting into 5.4!

In other news, I’ve changed the layout of the blog. Just felt like the right thing to do for now.

As I said above, I am currently not raiding right now. I’m a social member of who are currently 5/13 Heroic and I’ve done a couple alt runs with them. I sort of missing raiding, but I certainly do not miss the time requirement. I’ve debated finding a new guild to raid with full time, but with summer coming up my schedule probably wouldn’t be compatible with most guilds maybe I’ll find a guild at some point.

Dailies were introduced back in Burning Crusade in the 2.1 patch with three different factions: The Sha’tari Skyguard, Ogri’la, and the Netherwing. Each of these dailies were optional. They didn’t provide any major reward to help advance your character. Netherwing required that you have the the 280% flying speed training before you could access it, your end reward was the Netherwing Drakes. The Skyguard battled the Skettis in Terrorkar forest. Your only tangible reward were a cloak, trinket, a pet, and mounts (and this was before you had them in a menu – you had them in your bags!). Ogri’la provided nothing, really. There were some items that you could get if you farmed for them but more than likely your character would have out-geared their usefulness.

Those three factions required that you do dailies to earn your reputation with them. They didn’t have tabards, nor did they have dungeons associated with them. There was a variety of different ways that reputation was earned in Burning Crusade. Honor Hold/Thrallmar was earned by doing the Hellfire Citadel dungeons. Lower City was through the dungeons in Terrokar. The Sha’Tar was earned through the Tempest Keep instances. The Consortium was done through Mana Tombs, turning in Obsidian Warbeads or Zaxxis Insignias. The Mag’har/Kurenai was through grinding mobs and turning in Obsidian Warbeads. The Keepers of Time was through running the two Caverns of Times dungeons.

None of them had any dailies associated with them. Rather, you were able to grind dungeons or mobs for repeatable turn ins. This is the go at your own pace method of leveling.

As we moved into Wrath, and as applied to Cataclysm. Rep grinds were done through tabards. Dailies were still available for most of the factions but instead you could put on your tabard and grind dungeons till your eyes bled. This method worked the best, in my opinion. Let’s say I logged on on a Saturday afternoon, I threw on my Wyrmrest Accord tabard and did some dungeons. After a few hours I could’ve gone from halfway in Friendly to just hitting Honored. This worked nicely. I took a nice chunk out of the reputation grind in a few hours and I was able to do it on my free time.

Mists of Pandaria, once again changed the paradigm for the worst. AS you hit level 90 you’re given four major factions: The Golden Lotus, The Klaxxi, The August Celestials, The Shado-Pan. There are other, more casual and optional factions: The Tillers, The Anglers, The Lorewalkers, and Order of the Cloud Serpent.

The problem with all of these factions (minus the Lorewalkers) is that they require you to do dailies. I can understand dailies for the latter factions listed above. They don’t provide any meaningful gain to your character, but they provide fun, interesting vanity rewards so they can be done more leisurely.

The other factions though have gear rewards, they provide a meaningful gain to your player. The rewards though are obviously gated behind reputation. The only way to get your reputation was through dailies.

My issue with treating dailies as content like this is that (to me and I’m sure others feel this way) you feel like you have to log on every day to do your dailies. Yes, you can log on and do the dailies at your leisure, but doing the dailies for all the factions you want may consume all the play time you had set aside for the evening. If you miss a day you’re one day further behind on getting your rep up. The old model worked fantastically. Blizzard felt that chain-running dungeons wasn’t really compelling to a reputation grind. I don’t see how dailies are any better. They’re just as repetitive as running dungeons but at the end of the day, you can chain run dungeons on your own time. Dailies make you log in every day and spend 15-30 minutes for one faction.

I personally had a burn out from doing all these dailies. Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, August Celestials, Shado Pan (the last two don’t even open until you’ve done the Golden Lotus rep grind!), The Tillers, and the Anglers were my focus. Everyday I logged in and did their dailies. When I first hit 90, my initial impression was “There’s a lot to do!”. When I realized that “a lot to do” was really “a lot of dailies” I dwindled the dailies that I actually did. On the flip side though as I saw the gear that I could potentially earn, it made me feel guilty for not doing those dailies as I was missing out on potential gear upgrades.

Blizzard was kind enough to add in Grand Commendations available at Revered which increased your reputation gain with that faction, across all of your characters by 100%. Okay, great that means there’s less dailies I have to do but it still means I have to log in every day to do them.

I can see where Blizzard is coming from though. If they kept things the way they were, people would chain dungeons and be done. You wouldn’t really get to know the factions that well, and I’ll admit they’ve done a great job with the story progression of the factions (though again, it seemed that as your reputation went up you simply had more dailies to do – Golden Lotus being the prime example). They could have easily done the dual progression system though. Let people chain dungeons but also offer story/lore based quests for the faction as your reputation went up. That way people would still have some vested interest in the faction and what they do but at the same time still let people earn their reputation on their own time and at a pace they preferred.

At the end of the day, I hope Blizzard is able to take the feedback that they’ve likely heard since Mists came out and re-think their design philosophy for dailies and reputation grinding. If a faction is meant for fun and doesn’t have any meaningful upgrades for a player, then I’m okay with having to do dailies because it’s solely for my own enjoyment. But if it’s meant as a way for the player to have some tangible power increase, then they need to make it a little less painful through the tabard dungeon system, or even the Burning Crusade model.

So I haven’t been terribly active on the blog, but that goes with the territory of not being active on WoW. That post is for another time!

The 5.2 PTR is up, and it seems to be introducing a number of more interesting changes than compared to 5.1. The biggest being that there will be a new raid instance. The full patch notes can be found here.

Shaman Changes

Here are some of the current changes for Shaman! As always, these may change at any time.

Elemental Mastery now has a 1 minute cooldown (was 2 minutes). – This is actually a pretty huge change. I assume they are making this change based off the fact that most Elemental Shaman are taking Echo of Elements in this tier as opposed to Ancestral Swiftness or Elemental Mastery. WoW Popular has a reference based on scraping the armory. As you can tell, it pretty much is Echo of Elements across the board. One huge implication with this change is it means that you can line it up more easily with Ascendance. Based on a 2 minute cooldown, and Ascendance of 3 minutes if you used Ascendance and EM right at the start of the fight, that means EM is up 1 minute prior to Ascendance which could mean an overall DPS loss. But now that you can use EM every minute, that fear is eliminated.

Shamanistic Rage is now available to Elemental Shamans as well as Enhancement Shamans. – This is a PvP change more than anything. I can understand the concerns with Elemental in PvP right now based on my limited experience. Though it is similar to Astral Shift, the big difference is that Shamanistic Rage is useable while stunned!

Conductivity no longer requires that the target be within the area of effect of Healing Rain. – This is another change that’s to encourage more to take this talent. Again, based on WoW Popular, a lot of people are taking Ancestral Guidance. The problem with Conductivity as it is, is that rarely will you have both your party and the enemy standing in your Healing Rain. Coupled with the fact that you have to cast Healing Rain, it makes the talent pretty tough to manage and make efficient.

Ancestral Swiftness now increases spell haste by 5% and melee haste by 10% (was 5%/5%). – No real bearing for Elemental Shaman. This is to make it more appealing to Enhancement Shaman.

Glyph of Purge now adds a 6 second cooldown to Purge. – PvP change. Let’s face it, being able to dispel 2 things in 1 cast on no cooldown is pretty overpowered.

Stone Bulwark Totem now absorbs 25% more damage. – Another buff to encourage Shaman to take this instead of Astral Shift. I can see myself taking this talent with the buff.

Unleashed Fury Flametongue now increases Lightning Bolt damage by 20% (was 30%), and Lava Burst damage by 10% (was 0%). – This is a huge change! Again, most Ele Shaman were taking Elemental Blast. With this change though, it makes Unleashed Fury an absolute beast when you line it up with the use of Ascendance. This is something I could see myself changing over to when it goes live.

Primal Earth Elemental and Primal Fire Elemental now deal 20% more damage. – Simple change to make the pets stronger. Again, encouraging Shaman to take this over Elemental Blast. Without putting any thought into it though, with the new changes to these two talents I would personally use Unleashed Fury.

Elemental Blast now has a chance to increase the caster’s Agility for Enhancement Shamans. – A nice buff to this for Enhancement Shaman. Though I don’t see why they would get a primary stat buff but Elemental don’t get Intellect, and Resto get Spirit. Considering that fact for an Elemental Shaman, the crit strike buff is a bit of a waste… I’d rather throw in another potential stat gain for Intellect. Of course, this could change between now and live.

Glyph of Flame has been redesigned. This glyph now causes the Shaman to Heal for 50% of the damage dealt by Flame Shock.
Flame Shock duration has been increased by 25%. – Throwing in these two changes together. So basically the glyph heals the Shaman now when it does damage, and the baseline duration of Flame Shock was increased. And though it’s not worded, I imagine that the initial 25% damage loss is gained back. This is something that I think was more for the PvP’ers (that is, if Flame Shock isn’t dispelled…). However, depending on the fight having a little self healing doesn’t hurt! This is actually a pretty nice glyph choice as it adds a little self-healing. I can imagine it holding up nicely on a fight where we have Flame Shock up on multiple targets.

So there’s some decent changes. I like that they noticed that some of our talent choices were a bit lopsided so they’re making them more even. Definitely require some thought now compared to before.

Other Changes

With the new patch is a new raid that focuses on the Thunder King – Lei Shen. The raid will have 13 bosses, and apparently a special heroic only boss (ala Sinestra). There will also be a set of dailies surrounding the new raid (yay….), and some scenarios!

One other cool change that they’re doing, for you altaholics, is they are updating the heirlooms to go to level 85! They also finally added in heirlooms for your off-hand/shield slot!

I’m glad that Blizzard is keeping to their promise this time on adding patches more quickly to the game. We’ll see what the actual content is like though when it launches. I imagine we won’t be seeing this until March.

Last night, I finally got my Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest. When I was in Apotheosis, I was still Resto so I wasn’t eligible to be considered to receive it (nor would I have been anywhere near the top of the list, but that’s another discussion). After I left Apotheosis, I joined a new guild and Dragon Soul was the current content. This meant that I would have to find a group to go back to Firelands to get me my Embers, then help me get the Cinders and finally siphon the Essences. My raid group was gracious enough to go back and do the content, sometimes we tried hard modes (which most hadn’t done before) but did it mostly on normal mode. When I got about halfway done my cinders, one of my fellow raiders was leading a Firelands run through OpenRaid. This was well past the point of raiding fatigue had set in from doing Dragon Soul so our actual raid didn’t get to do Firelands at all. So I joined up with my raidmates OpenRaid raids and he had the Cinders and eventually Siphons reserved for me.

When I looked at the numbers and how long it would take me to get the staff, it put me at this week. I would’ve been a week sooner, but the raidmate who ran the run was on vacation and finding a FL run through OpenRaid where the siphons weren’t on reserve was impossible.

Last night we cleared Dragon Soul in just under 2 hours, took about a 20 minute break and headed over to Firelands. I needed 26 essences, which meant about 3-4 bosses on heroic. If we did this all on normal, I probably wouldn’t have finished. After some wipes to heroic Beth’tilac, we managed to get her down and I got 7 siphons, we got heroic Rhyolith and I got 8 siphons. Alysrazor was a test in patience due to some guildmates not really having done it before and, I’m not blaming them, not really wanting to be there. After a few wipes we ended up doing her on regular and I got 3 siphons. This meant that for the next 3 bosses I needed only 7 siphons. Thankfully heroic Shannox provided and I was done! So we did regular Baleroc and heroic Majordomo and onto Rag.

The caveat of this fight when someone has 250 essences is that they get a debuff that causes them to do an AoE around them occasionally. My mind being in cruise control and just wanting to get it over with, accidentally screwed this up when we had to stack when Ragnaros sent out the seeds – I blew up the raid! After a couple more wipes due to some lack of organization we got him down! We called everyone out to make sure they kept me alive, one Druid managed to keep me up and I got my Heart but died on the way out of the Lava. Oh well, I got the quest item. After that, I went to Org and turned in the quest and got the staff as you can see above.

I want to give thanks to my guildmates for helping me out: Azados, Abelin, Nazurom, Cacnerbat, Miykia, Crmsonfox, Taelic, and Skitmo.

So today is the day before Mists of Pandaria launches and I’m pretty excited. Overall, I felt Cata was a pretty poor expansion. Things just didn’t have the same feel that Vanilla, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King had. Mists looks like it could bring back that magical feel. I’m going to be up playing at 3AM tonight and going as long as I can.

Stances

When I first read that stance penalties were gone, I had mixed feeling. Initially, I thought the already complicated toolkit of the protection warrior was going to be even more complex when you considered the amount of stance dancing that was theoretically possible. Ultimately, I think Blizzard got it right. While you can swap to Berserking and Battle Stance at will, you won’t generate any vengeance unless you’re in defensive stance, and abilities like Taunt, Shield Slam, and Revenge won’t be available in any stance but defensive. I see this being interesting for off tanking. Will you start to see Prot Warriors swap to Battle Stance and keep the Colossus Smash debuff up as well as the Sunder debuff? Time will tell.

Rage Generation

This one I’m psyched about. I’m a button spammer. I always want to be doing something. If I see SS light up I’m pounding it till the GCD is up, and then as quickly as it comes, I’m off to the next thing in my list of priorities. Up until patch 5.0.4, rage was generated through taking hits, blocking hits, or melee attacks. Rage is then spent through all your special attacks. Devastate, Revenge, Thunder Clap, Shock Wave, Shield Slam and all the rest. The system worked very well while you were actively tanking. Off tanking was a nightmare. If I didn’t have threat on a mob, I had very little in the way of incoming rage. As such I wasn’t able to do much of anything. Towards the end of the expansion, as the CTC went out the window and parry/dodge became more attractive, rage starvation became a very possible scenario. Should four consecutive attacks be either dodged or parried, I could be looking at an empty rage bar for a little while. In the new system, taking damage through an unmitigated hit or blocking doesn’t generate any rage. Neither do melee attacks. Core abilities like Shield Slam and Revenge now generate rate instead of costing it. Heroic strike still costs rage, but I have a feeling it is going to be very sparingly used until late into tier 15, as it costs an ungodly 60 rage. So now that my 2 favorite abilities are generating rage, what am I going to do with all that extra resource?

Active Mitigation

Shield Block and Shield Barrier are the two new active damage cooldowns that Warriors possess. Block mitigates physical damage, while barrier mitigates magical damage. I have to say, considering spell reflect didn’t work on most bosses, it’s about fucking time Warriors got some active magical mitigation. Shield Block is much improved as well, depending on how you look at it. Instead of increasing your chance to block, it blocks every melee attack against you for 6 seconds. These blocks can also be critical blocks. The best part is that both Shield Block and Shield Barrier are on a 1.5 second CD. How effective these are going to be has yet to be seen, but healers beware. I’m taking the first Hour of Twilight against heroic Ultraxion with nothing but Shield Barrier up. They both have a base rage cost of 20, using up to 60 for larger attacks that do more damage. Even at 60 rage, it shouldn’t take long to build back up to a full bar. Unless….

Hit/Exp

Missing now hurts even more than watching my Ret Pally eat a melee from Hagara after my first 2 attacks were dodged or missed. With active mitigation, special abilities that generate the rage which you need to spend on the abilities to keep you alive simply cannot miss. This means 7.5% hit and 7.5% expertise. Since the Cataclysm launch, Vengeance had (supposedly) taken care of being under Hit/Exp cap by allowing our DPS to scale. Overall, expect tanks to account for a lot less of the overall damage in your 5 and 10 mans, and a little more in a 25 man. Prot Warriors: be prepared to be the lowest DPS tank when 5.0.4 drops. It’s also worth noting that it seems a tank that isn’t hit capped is going to be a squishy one.

No More Block Capping

This one is going to hurt once I log in. Right now my warrior sees about 24% each of Parry and Dodge, and about 58% of Block. Once 5.0.4 drops, I suspect I will have close to a 25% chance to Block, and will need to sacrifice significant amount of Dodge/Parry in order to hit my Hit/Exp caps. The days of CTC capping are done. Especially with the 2 roll attack system, where the first roll checks Dodge/Parry/Miss and second checks Block and Crit Block. Warriors and Paladins are going to be taking unmitigated hits once again. It’s going to happen, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Inform your healers about it in advance so they don’t get their panties in a bunch. You know how healers are.

Vengeance

The cap is gone. No more 10% health max as AP. My first thought is….great! Then I look into it a little more. Vengeance is now a rolling buff that only counts the last 20 seconds worth of damage I take. This seems to bring the RNG problem back. Should I have a combined 45% dodge/parry, it’s very easy to imagine a scenario where a boss with a 2 second swing timer only hits me 3 times in 20 seconds, with me Blocking one. Low Vengeance = low DPS. Low DPS = low threat. Additionally, since abilities like Shield Barrier scale based on how much AP I have, I’m actually being penalized for having a lucky Dodge/Parry streak right before a big chunk of magic damage goes out. I’m not sure HOW much it will affect absorbs, but it’s definitely something I need to be aware of in the opening weeks. I don’t like the idea that the amount of magic mitigation I have is directly proportionate to the amount of melee damage I’ve been taking leading up to the cast. Thanks to @Vosskah and his friend @Rhidach on Twitter for pointing out to me that vengeance is now calculated PRE-mitigation, meaning Block/Dodge/Parry/Miss won’t penalize me in terms of Vengeance. I am now very excited about Vengeance. Parry on!

Thunder Clap is amazing!

Along with the Glyph that adds a Lightning effect to it, Thunder Clap has received a serious buff. Increased damage, as well as the Demo Shout debuff are a nice start. Bake Rend into that? Yes please. Keeping Rend and Demo Shout up on a target was always a chore for me. I know they were necessary evils, but given the….enthusiasm…of my DPS players, I can’t open with Rend or Demo unless I want a corpse beside me, so they need to be worked into my rotation further down the line, when I’m probably more focused on other things and have a good threat lead.

AOE tanking

As a talent at level 60 tier, I get to choose between Shockwave, Dragon Roar, and Blade Storm. Shockwave has been the Prot Warrior’s bread and butter for a long time. It’s a short cool down frontal cone stun that looks awesome, and with the ThunderStruck talent stacked to 3, hit pretty hard. That being said….Blade Storm is my favorite ability in the game, and Dragon Roar hits like a fucking truck on beta. Coupling a Bladestorm with Glyphed Recklessness could be the greatest thing in the history of WoW if you’re a Prot Warrior. That being said….I dare someone to try and pull a mob off me after a Heroic Leap and Dragon Roar opener. Again, as with the launch of Cataclysm, I find myself pining for a 3rd or possibly even 4th spec so that I can test/explore.

Vigilance

This one made me sad at first. Vigilance used to be a damage reduction for the target. Then they took that away. At least I got to have vengeance stack with it. And it lasted 30 minutes…pretty freaking sweet. All of that is now gone. I get no Vengeance anymore. It only lasts 12 seconds. It transfers damage taken from the target to me like the Paladin’s Hand of Sacrifice. I DO get infinite taunts for that 12 measly seconds, but since the ability is on a two minute cool down, I wonder how often I’ll even use it for that. I’m trying to imaging add control on heroic Spine of Deathwing right now with no Vigilance. *Shudder*

All in all I’m very excited about these changes, and a little bit nervous to step into DS the week the patch drops.

So this is a brief overview of how Elemental Shaman are changing.

Totems, Buffs and Cooldowns

Firstly, buff totems are gone! This means you won’t be laying Searing Totem, Stoneskin Totem, Healing Stream Totem and Wrath of Air when you pull. Instead, most of those buff totems have turned into aura buffs provided by the Shaman.

Your spellpower buff (previously from laying a Fire Totem or Flametongue Totem) is called Burning Wrath, and increases spellpower of you and nearby party/raid members by 10%.
Elemental Oath, as a replacement for Wrath of Air, now gives 5% haste rather than 5% crit.
We also have a new aura called Grace of Air which some of you may remember from way back in the day. This buff grants an increase in mastery.

Though some totems have been removed, there are a couple that you will get right away:
Stormlash Totem is a DPS cooldown totem, though as a caster you won’t see too huge of a benefit, it certainly benefits fast attacking melee classes like Rogues or Enhancement Shaman. This is learned at level 78.
Capacitor Totem. is a PvP defensive cooldown. 5 seconds (3 seconds, glyphed) after laying it down it explodes and stuns all enemies within 8 yards for 5 seconds. This is learned at level 63.

You can also pick up a couple new totems depending how your talent choices:

Stone Bulwark Totem which is basically a glyphed Stoneclaw Totem. This totem is available in the level 15 tier of talents.
Windwalk Totem is a nice defensive/mobility cooldown totem that grants your raid immunity to movement impairing effects for 6 seconds. This totem is available in the level 30 tier of talents.
Healing Tide Totem is basically a souped up version of Healing Stream Totem in that it heals for more and heals the five most injured people rather than the single most injured person. This totem is available in the level 75 tier of talents.

Here are the totems that are staying: Searing Totem, Earthbind Totem, Healing Stream Totem, Magma Totem, Grounding Totem, Tremor Totem, Earth Elemental Totem, and Fire Elemental Totem. Some of these may have changed slightly though. The biggest examples being that Healing Stream Totem won’t be put down all the time. Instead it’s a 30 second cooldown totem that heals the most injured raid member for 15 seconds. The other big one being Fire Elemental on a 5 minute cooldown, but only up for 1 minute. There’s a glyph for it that I’ll mention later.

Without the need to summon 4 totems at once Call of the Elements, Call of Ancestors and Call of Spirits have been removed. There is also a slight interface change as well. Instead of each totem cluttering up your spell book, each totem element has a button/icon that when you click shows you the various totems under it. Example, clicking the Fire Totem will show you Searing Totem, Magma Totem and Fire Elemental Totem. You can put the specific totem on your bars for your hotkeying needs. Totemic Recall will still be around in case you do need to pull your totems.

Along with totems being on cooldowns, mostly, here are some other cooldowns that you can pick up depending how you spec.

Astral Shift is a defensive cooldown that is available in the level 15 tier of talents. It reduces damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds. Finally, Elemental Shaman can have a decent defensive cooldown. I highly recommend this one.
Call of Elements is a totem that allows you to reset the cooldown of totems that have a base cooldown of less than three minutes. Unfortunately for Elemental Shaman, most of our useful totems are on a 5 minute cooldown. This is available in the level 45 tier of talents.
Totemic Projection is a short cooldown that lets you move your current deployed totems to a new location. This is great for moving your Searing or Fire Elemental Totems around if they’re out of range/leashed from the target. This is also in the level 45 tier of talents.
Ancestral Guidance – This is an amazing cooldown that, every 2 minutes will do 40% of your damage as healing to the 3 most injured nearby party/raid members. This is in the level 75 tier of talents.

Gear

All classes “Ranged Slot” has been removed. When you log in on Tuesday, the relic you have equipped will be a grey item in your inventory for you to vendor.

Helm Enchants are removed from the game. I’m glad they did this, because it meant a forced grind for a specific rep to get the head enchant that your class needed.

Expertise converts into spell hit for casters. A quick glance at Wowhead shows that there’s no gear with Expertise on it, so you shouldn’t have to worry about getting this at all. I think it’s mostly for the benefit of Enh Shaman. However for races that have an expertise racial it means they don’t have to use as much hit / spirit(for hybrids) on their gear.

As a result of the ranged slot being removed from all classes, the hit cap has been lowered to 15%. Make sure that you reforge that extra spirit/hit off.

In terms of stat priority, nothing changes. Once you are at the hit cap, Mastery and Haste are the way to go.

The Spell Penetration stat has been removed from PvP gear but replaced with a new stat called PvP Power which will increase the healing/damage done to player units.

To go along with this, resistance stats are gone from your character sheet. I guess Blizzard thought this wasn’t interesting. I guess I’m the only one who found it mildly interesting that you would require a slightly different gear setup for a boss? Without resistances, there’s no need for spell penetration.

Rotation

Both the single- and multi-target rotations remain the same, more or less. There is only one small change to Lava Burst which I’ll talk about below.

The single target rotation/priority:

1. Keep Flame Shock’s DoT up
2. Cast Lava Burst when it’s up, always giving it priority
3. Spam Lightning Bolt
4. Use Earth Shock when you full or close-to-full stacks of Lightning Shield (and make sure that the cooldown doesn’t interfere with the Flameshock DoT expiring).

For multi-target (4+ targets):

1. Pre-cast Earthquake if you are able to
2. Throw down Magma Totem, if you have Totemic Projection, you don’t have to move yourself just use it to put the Magma Totem in the appropriate spot
3. Spam Chain Lightning
4. If you get a full stack of Lightning Shield, use Earth Shock
5. When you’re down to like 2 targets, switch back to the single target rotation

A couple of things of note though:
Lightning Shield was re-worked slightly, though functions the same. It lasts for 1 hour and only has 1 charge. The charge is not depleted when you are attacked. Because the number of initial charges has been reduced by 2, to reach a full Fulmination charge you only need 7 charges of Lightning Shield.
Lava Surge is also re-worked so that it provides the same benefit as the Tier 12 4 piece set bonus. So pay extra attention to when Lava Surge procs because your Lava Burst will be instant cast.

At level 60 you will have to choose between Elemental Mastery, Ancestral Swiftness and Echo of Elements. These three talents will affect your DPS in some way. I’d recommend taking Elemental Mastery for the on-demand burst. Echo of Elements would provide more consistent DPS over time though. If you take either Elemental Mastery or Ancestral Swiftness make sure to use those cooldowns when appropriate. As a result of Elemental Mastery being open to all three specs, and not wanting to sway us to take Elemental Mastery, Feedback is no longer in game.

Because we won’t have access to the level 90 talents, be aware that your choice there can impact your rotation if you take either Elemental Blast or Unleashed Fury. But that’s for another time, when we’re all 90.

Glyphs

Glyphs have undergone a change as well. Prime Glyphs have been “removed”. You will only have Major and Minor glyphs now, some former Prime Glyphs are now Major Glyphs.

Here’s the list of Major Glyphs that an Elemental Shaman may use:
Glyph of Capacitor Totem – Reduces the charge up time of Capacitor totem to 3 secs. This is a PvP glyph.
Glyph of Chain Lightning – Your Chain Lightning spell now strikes 2 additional targets, but deals 10% less initial damage. This is the one that is already on live. This will have situational use in PvE.
Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem – Reduces the cooldown and duration of your Fire Elemental Totem by 40%. This brings the cooldown to 3 minutes, but he is only up for 36 seconds. This will be an optional glyph for PvE.
Glyph of Flame Shock – Increases the duration of your Flame Shock by 25%, but reduces the initial damage dealt by 25%. Similar to what we already have, but reduces the initial damage as a trade off. This will be a mandatory PvE glyph.
Glyph of Frost Shock – Increases the duration of Frost Shock by 2 seconds. This is another PvP glyph.
Glyph of Ghost Wolf – While in Ghost Wolf form, you are less hindered by effects that would reduce movement speed. PvP glyph.
Glyph of Grounding Totem – Instead of absorbing a spell, your Grounding Totem reflects the next harmful spell back at its caster, but the cooldown of your Grounding Totem is increased by 35 sec. Already exists in live, PvP glyph.
Glyph of Hex – Reduces the cooldown of Hex by 10 seconds. PvP glyph.
Glyph of Purge – Purge dispels 1 additional Magic effect. PvP glyph.
Glyph of Spiriwalker’s Grace – Increases the duration of your Spiritwalker’s Grace by 5 sec. This probably won’t get any use out of an Elemental Shaman considering our mobility with Lava Surge causing Lava Burst to be instant cast.
Glyph of Telluric Currents – Causes your Lightning Bolt to restore 2% of your mana when it strikes an enemy. This is the Resto talent but in a glyph. Elemental Shaman won’t have a need for this.
Glyph of Thunder – Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 10 sec. This already exists. While I did use it in the old system, I would rarely ever use this with the new glyph system. It has its uses, but I can’t see them being more beneficial versus other potential glyphs you could be using.
Glyph of Totemic Recall – Causes your Totemic Recall ability to return the full mana cost of any recalled totems. Buffed from the previous version, mostly because your totems are going to be cooldowns and not something that you’re laying down at all times. This is a throw away glyph, not worth taking ever.
Glyph of Totemic Vigor – Increases the health of your totems by 5% of your maximum health. I see this as a worthless glyph, it’s not worth the benefit of using compared to the other options available.
Glyph of Unleashed Lightning – Your Lightning Bolt takes 5% longer to cast, but may be cast while moving. A slight nerf to our overall damage, but allowed mobility makes up for it. This is an optional glyph for PvE depending on the mobility required in the encounter. Very useful for PvP though as you generally want to be able to move around at all times.
Glyph of Unstable Earth – Causes your Earthquake spell to also reduce the movement speed of affected targets by 40% for 3 sec. PvP glyph. This should be baseline in the ability for God’s sake.
Glyph of Wind Shear – Increases the school lockout duration of Wind Shear by 1 sec, but also increases the cooldown by 3 sec. PvP glyph.

A lot of the glyph options are more for PvP, which is fine. Though, Blizzard said they wanted to make your glyph choices to have an impact… and that we’d have to make a few different choices. If you’re into PvP, yes you do. However for PvE it’s pretty cut and dry for choosing two of your glyphs: Glyph of Flame Shock and Glyph of Unleashed Lightning will be required glyphs. The latter may be swapped out on more stationary fights, I have no experience in MoP raid encounters so I’m not sure how much mobility they require. The third one can go to either Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem or Glyph of Chain Lightning. The Chain Lightning Glyph would obviously benefit on a boss with a lot of adds. The re-vamped Fire Elemental Glyph could have it’s uses. Using current content as an example – Spine of Deathwing. Having the Fire Elemental up during a Burning Tendon would be pretty beneficial.

As before, Minor Glyphs are cosmetic and can be chosen at your preference. Though I like the Glyph of the Lakestrider – you get water walking when you go into Ghost Wolf. If you miss the warm fuzzy feeling of having all 4 totems down at once, there’s a glyph called Glyph of Totemic Encirclement which will lay dummy totems.

Conclusion?

At the end of the day we don’t have too much changing for us, aside from totems. That will probably take the most getting used to by most Shaman, just remember to keep Searing Totem down then use your other cooldown totems as needed.

The rotation doesn’t change much and if you had the Tier 12 4 piece bonus you should be familiar with the delicious instant cast Lava Bursts. Your glyph choices won’t have any huge, meaningful impact on your play either as you should be accustomed to them already.

Are these changes good? Sure. I’ve been playing a Shaman since I started back in Vanilla and the class has never undergone any major, drastic changes that requires a complete re-understanding of how the class plays with abilities and mechanics. Warlocks, for example, have had a lot of go-arounds with how they play over the years. While some change would be nice, I’ve always felt that Shaman gameplay was fairly easy to understand.

This is what you will see when you log in after 5.0 launches

As you can see each tier talent revolves around a certain theme. So, let’s break them down!

Tier 1 – Level 15

The first tier of talents that you get are based on defensive or survivability cooldowns.

Nature’s Guardian< – Whenever a damaging attack brings you below 30% health, your maximum health is increased by 25% for 10 sec, and your threat level towards the attacker is reduced. This effect cannot occur more often than once every 30 sec.
Stone Bulwark Totem – Summons an Earth Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 30 sec that grants the caster a shield absorbing 393 damage, and up to an additional 131 every 5 sec thereafter.
Astral Shift – Seek haven by shifting partially into the elemental planes, reducing damage taken by 40% for 6 sec.

Nature's Guardian is exactly like the Restoration talent that currently exists, Stone Bulwark Totem is basically glyphed Stoneclaw Totem, and Astral Shift is an on-demand damage reduction cooldown.

One thing you’ll notice as we keep going through these talents is a lot of them are preferential. Some may sway in favor of a PvP’er vs. a PvE’er but in general the choices are entirely up to you. For example in this tier, Nature’s Guardian is to me a PvP talent more so than a PvE talent but either of those options can fit that niche. My personal choice for this tier would have to go to Astral Shift. Having an on-demand defensive cooldown is exactly what we needed.

Tier 2 – Level 30

The second tier of talents is about rooting or, freedom from roots!

Frozen Power – Your Frost Shock now also roots the target in ice for 5 sec.
Earthgrab Totem – Summons an Earth Totem with 100 health at the feet of the caster for 20 sec. The totem pulses every 2 sec, causing roots to ensnare the legs of all enemies within 10 yards for 5 sec, preventing movement. Enemies that have already been rooted once by the totem will instead have their movement speed reduced by 50%. Replaces Earthbind Totem.
Windwalk Totem – Summons an Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 6 sec, granting raid members within 40 yards immunity to movement-impairing effects.

The first two are slight alterations on existing talents. Frozen Power currently exists in the Enhancement Tree but it more revolved around using Frostbrand Weapon, and had a range requirement on the root; the target had to be 15 yards away. Now you just use Frost Shock and the target is rooted.

Earthgrab Totem will completely replace Earthbind Totem. The way that the talent is completely implemented with Earth’s Grasp really has no change. Once a target has been rooted by the totem it won’t be rooted again just slowed by 50%.

Windwalk Totem is the opposite of a root/snare – it grants immunity to them! The fact that it’s raid wide is pretty awesome.

All three of these talents are more focused for PvP. It’s possible that some of these will provide a benefit to PvE in certain situations though. I’m not sure which one I would personally take – but I would lean towards Earthgrab Totem or Windwalk Totem.

Tier 3 – Level 45

The third tier is all totem related.

Call of the Elements – When activated, immediately finishes the cooldown of all totems with a base cooldown shorter than 3 minutes.

Totemic Restoration – When a totem is replaced or destroyed before its duration expires naturally, its cooldown is reduced in proportion to the lost duration, up to a maximum of 50% of the full cooldown.

Totemic Projection – Relocates your active totems to the specified location

I’m not sure which one I would take there. There aren’t many “useful” totems that have a cooldown of less than 3 minutes as an Elemental Shaman that you would be concerned about (i.e. Stormlash Totem or Fire Elemental Totem). Totemic Restoration or Totemic Project would probably be the best options. Totemic Restoration definitely is great in a PvP environment, as would Totemic Projection. But in most PvE situations if the raid has to move a lot and you leash a totem like the Fire Elemental, than Totemic Projection is probably a better choice.

Tier 4 – Level 60

Here we have some DPS related talents, much more exciting than the previous tiers!

Elemental Mastery – Call upon Elemental forces, empowering you with 30% haste for the next 20 seconds. (2 minute cooldown)

Ancestral Swiftness – Your next nature spell with a base cast time of less than 10 secs. becomes an instant cast (1 minute cooldown). Passive: Increases your spell and melee haste by 5%.

Echo of Elements – When one of your spells causes direct damage or healing, you have a chance to gain Echo of Elements, duplicating the spell’s effect.

Alright, so these are all pretty cool talents and each one provides something a little different and could be a tough choice. Elemental Mastery is like it is currently, except on a 2 minute cooldown. It also doesn’t get the cooldown reduces when we deal damage with Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning. That’s fine, 2 minutes is a good cooldown time.

Ancestral Swiftness is basically Nature’s Swiftness but also a passive +5% haste increase. I look at this one more for healers though I wouldn’t take it as resto. The 5% passive haste is great, and having an “Oh shit” button that gives you an instant cast is always great as a healer. But Elemental Mastery still would be better for most situations.

Echo of Elements is an interesting talent. It’s basically the proc from Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest. So you would think that this would be a good talent to take. I’d give it a shot, however the downside is that let’s say you’re entering a burn phase – you can’t rely on this to proc as necessary. It has a very short internal cooldown so it can proc a fair amount if you get lucky.

The good thing about the new talent system is that you’re able to change the individual talents on the fly (outside of combat, of course). This means that if you want to change a talent, you can just change that one, you don’t have to re-pick each of the talents that you previously had chosen.

If you find that you need to burn harder on a certain phase for a boss you may opt to take Elemental Mastery. But if you’re good with putting out more consistent damage throughout a fight, then Echo of Elements can be used instead.

Tier 5 – Level 75

Tier 5 gives Elemental Shaman some healing utility. The talents you have a choice of at level 75 are all healing related.

Healing Tide Totem – Summons a Water Totem with 10% of the caster’s health at the feet of the caster for (11 sec) sec. The Healing Tide Totem pulses every 2 sec, healing the 5 most injured party or raid members within 40 yards for 4932 (+ 48.4% of SpellPower). (3 minute cooldown)

Ancestral Guidance – When you deal direct damage or healing for the next 10 sec, 40% of that amount is copied as healing to up to 3 nearby injured party or raid members. (2 minute cooldown)

Conductivity – When you cast Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, or Healing Surge on a target located within your Healing Rain, allies within the Healing Rain share healing equal to 20% of the initial healing done.

If your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Earth Shock, or Stormstrike damages an enemy standing in your Healing Rain, allies within the Healing Rain share healing equal to 50% of the initial damage done.

Immediately, I’d cut out conductivity. Typically you wouldn’t be putting down Healing Rain enough to make this a worthwhile talent. While there are occasions that I do put down a Healing Rain I don’t do it enough to cover the potential of the other talents.

Healing Tide Totem is basically a mini-Tranquility for Shaman. It sounds good on paper and a viable choice, as an Elemental Shaman, your better choice would be Ancestral Guidance. Every 2 minutes you’re able to use it, and when you use it, 40% of the damage dealt by your spells will heal 3 nearby injured party or raid members. That’s a great cooldown to use if there is going to be raid wide damage going out, it doesn’t interrupt your DPS at all as you simply pop the cooldown and continue DPSing as normal. Though Healing Tide Totem will basically do the same thing, the damage of raw damage that you’re able to put out over the 10 seconds will generally be greater than what Healing Tide Totem will heal for.

Tier 6 – Level 90

Here are more DPS related cooldowns. These are all interesting options.

Unleashed Fury – Your elemental weapon imbues are empowered, granting additional effects when triggered with Unleash Weapon: Flametongue Weapon – Increases the enemy target’s damage taken from your Lightning Bolt by 30% for 10 sec. (Note: it affects the other weapon imbues but Elemental only uses Flametongue)

Primal Elementalist – Your Earth and Fire Elemental Totems draw forth powerful primal elementals directly from the elemental planes. These servitors are 50% more powerful than regular elementals, act as pets directly under your control, and gain additional abilities.

Elemental Blast – Harness and direct the raw power of the elements towards an enemy target, dealing 4372 to 5079 (+ 211.2% of SpellPower) Elemental damage and increasing the caster’s Critical Strike, Haste, or Mastery by 3500 for 8 sec. (12 second cooldown)

Tough choice here, for sure.

The Unleashed Fury talent is great because it gives you more damage from our main spell – Lightning Bolt and it means we get to throw Unleash Weapon into our rotation for once. This means we change our rotation slightly to include Unleash Weapon off of every cooldown rather than, well, never using it! A very viable option. It used to include Lava Burst, which would’ve been great with the changed Lava Surge, but it now is only for Lightning Bolt.

Prime Elementalist changes the way that your Greater Fire and Earth Elementals work. Before you get excited – they are still tied to a totem.

The Earth Elemental makes a bit more tanky and gives you some damage reduction:
Harden Skin – The caster’s skin hardens into pure granite, reducing all damage taken by 40% for 10 sec.
Pulverize – Smashes an enemy with a rocky fist, dealing 150% of the damage of a normal attack, and stunning the target for 4 sec.
Reinforce – Surrounds the elemental’s creator with an earthen shield, reducing all damage taken by 20%, and increasing healing done by 10%, while the channel continues.

So really all you get out of it is Reinforce, which gives you another damage reduction but gives you 10% increased healing. Note that it’s a channeled spell so it doesn’t do anything while it does that. It has a 10 second cooldown. So obviously, the Earth Elemental doesn’t really do much for an Elemental Shaman.

The Fire Elemental is tailored more towards an Elemental Shaman. It gets 2 new abilities:
Empower – Empowers the elemental’s creator with fiery energy, increasing all damage dealt by 5%, and healing done by 10%, while the channel continues.
Immolate – Burns an enemy, then inflicts additional Fire damage every 3 sec. for 21 sec.

Empower is like Reinforce from the Earth Elemental except it doesn’t give a damage reduction but increases all damage dealt by 5%. Immolate is just another damaging ability that it can do.

So basically while the Fire Elemental is up you can get a 5% damage increase while it channels that spell. Unfortunately, there’s no cast time indicated on Wowhead and I’m not level 90 on the beta so I can’t tell you how long it channels for; if it’s for the whole 10 seconds and it just keeps channeling to you the entire time it’s up.

So Prime Elementalist looks like a pretty appealing talent overall as it increases the damage done by the Fire Elemental and/or you!

Lastly, Elemental Blast. This is another DPS cooldown that has a 2 second cast time. It does damage but it has the added affect of increasing your Crit, Haste or Mastery for 8 seconds. The RNG aspect of it increasing your Crit kind of sways one from picking this, but having an increase to Haste or Mastery is never, ever a bad thing.

If you’ve read my blog, you know that I am not for mathing things out, so each of these options are hugely viable.

Personally, I will be taking Unleashed Weapon. A 30% increase to Lighting Bolt damage for 10 seconds on an ability that has a 15 second cooldown is just too appealing to me. I could see myself taking either of those talents though at some point.

Conclusions

The good thing about the new talent tree is that, aside from 1 or 2 talent tiers for any class is that they’re largely up to you and how you prefer to play. They’re mostly for utility which means that it’s your personal preference. If you want more of a passive ability than a cooldown, than you can go that route.

Of course, as I’ve shown above for Elemental Shaman there are two talent tiers (60 and 90) where your DPS can be affected depending how you choose and take advantage of those talent choices.

The standard digital release is $39.99, and the digital deluxe edition is $59.99.

For those of you that prefer a physical copy, here is the information on that. Some extra things that you get from the collector’s edition: The Art of Mists of Pandaria, Mists of Pandaria mousepad, Behind the Scenes DVD and Blu-Ray Two-Disc Set, and lastly Collector’s Edition Soundtrack.

Anyone else planning to take a couple days off work?

Patch Notes:

General

Account-wide Achievements, pets, and mounts

• In Patch 5.0.4 and beyond, the majority of your character’s Achievements, pets, and mounts will be shared with your other characters. Please read: Bringing Achievements to the Account Level, by Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street

World Event: Attack on Theramore Isle

• Warchief Garrosh, obsessed with assuring the Horde’s supremacy over Kalimdor, launches an all-out attack against Jaina’s island home of Theramore. Though valiant Alliance defenders rush to repel the sudden onslaught, they’ll soon find themselves unprepared for the terrible scope of Garrosh’s true plans…
• In the Public Test Realm, we will be testing this event at specified intervals. Keep an eye on our PTR Feedback forum for more details as they become available.

AOE Looting

• Area of effect looting comes to World of Warcraft with this patch. After killing a group of enemies in close proximity, when you loot one of their corpses, the loot window will include items from all of the nearby corpses for which you have loot rights.

BattleTag support in World of Warcraft

• Players who have enabled their BattleTag will now be able to:
  See BattleTag friends in your friends list.
  Add and remove BattleTag friends.
  Send BattleTag invites to other players via right-click.

Classes: General

• All classes have been updated with a new talent system, improved abilities, and spells (accessible throughout levels 1-85). Your character’s talents have been reset.
• Many old talents have been converted to specialization abilities.
  Druids now have access to a fourth class specialization: Guardian.
  New spells are now learned automatically. Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature.
  All characters now take 30% less damage from other players.

Currency Conversion

Coming soon.

Items

• Spell Penetration has been replaced by PvP Power on existing items.

Head enchants removed

• Enchants that modify the gear in your head slot have been removed from the game. This includes older head enchants of every type.

Relics, ranged, and thrown items

• The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot.
  Ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerful.
  Ranged weapons no longer have a minimum range.

Professions

• The glyph system has been updated. Many class glyphs have been added, altered, or moved to different glyph types.
  Prime glyphs have been removed.

User Interface

• There is a new user interface for your mounts and pets.
  Character creation screens have been updated.
  Buffs have been consolidated in the UI.
  New roll results frame added. This new feature can be accessed by clicking the word “[Loot]” in chat, or by typing “/loot”.
  The PvE queue frames have been unified. You can now queue for dungeons, raids, and other queue-able content in one handy place.
  Vendors now offer item filtering.
  Spellbooks have been updated to reflect changes to core abilities, and now include a brief overview of specializations.
  The Dungeon Journal has been expanded with information on all pre-Cataclysm encounters.
  A new help system has been added to many frames. You can toggle this on and off by clicking the “i” button in the upper left corner of the frame.

There’s really nothing new in this build that we already didn’t know via the Mists of Pandaria beta, but now that the PTR is up that means there’s certainly a light at the end of the tunnel.