The launch of Patch 4.3 is imminent, meaning it is a good time to look at the changes that are coming for us. A few weeks back I already wrote about this subject and not many things have changed, I suggest you take a look here first.
Sources
In a Nutshell
- Raids and Groups:
- 5 man: 3 new 5 man Instances, End Time (video), Hour of Twilight, Well of Eternity
- raid: Baradin Hold, new boss Alizabal
- raid: Dragonsoul, last raid for catacylsm, leading up to Deathwing
- looking for raid tool with new difficulty level: „raid finder“
- Guild
- Guild Leader replacement
- Items
- Transmogrification (more details here)
- Void Storage for items, will strip enchants, gems to use
- Reforging relocated, ask a guard – in Stormwind reforging is between stockade and harbour
- Bag Search is now available
- Fangs of the Father, new Legendary (Rogue only)
- Epic gems drop in Dragon Soul now, but the drop rate is supposed to be very low, no compensation for other professions like in wotlk
- T13 not available via vendors, they are raid only (good luck 10 man raiders)
- Darkmoon Faire has been updated with many new features, 2 new mounts and some new companion pets
- World Event Pets are no longer bind on pickup
- Tyraels Charger, the mount from Annual Pass should become availbale
- Enchanting materials AH fee was drastically raised
- Vendor values of gems have been reduced
- Chaos Orbs are no longer Soulbound
- General
- Quest tuning for Northrend, 33% less xp required
- Classes
- All raid and party buffs which grant group members 10% increased attack power have been changed slightly. They continue to provide 10% increased ranged attack power, but now provide 20% increased melee attack power.
- Shamans
- 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.
- Talent Specializations
- 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.
- Shamanism now increases the spell power benefit to Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, and Chain Lightning by 36%, up from 32%.
- 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.
- Elemental
Enhancement Shaman Changes
Nothing has changed or been tweaked since my preview here.
The Mental Quickness changes lay Eye of Purity finally to rest (hah, it did not even drop once for us in 10 man :D) other than that there are little single target changes, maybe even a slight buff all together … while our AoE capabilities will become quite powerful.
The only change I really despise is the Wind Shear nerf. Not so much the Cooldown nerd, but that there is no compensation for it … the lockout period stays low and it becomes the worst interrupt of all classes. Blizzard Devs do not realize that no Enhancement Shaman has been using Reverbation Talents this Expansion and it makes you wonder how much out of touch with the class they really are.
Videos
General Look at 4.3
Transmogrification Menu, Void Storage, new Reforging menu, Shaman casting animations, new Lava Lash in action.
As it seems tomorrow morning (30/11) we will feel all this changes. I hope the increased AH fee for the enchant materials will raise there price. Are you still making money from them ?
@drako
Tons of money in fact. I am selling Infinite Dust atm for 400g a stack. Ofc they don’t sell a lot, but like once every other week you log on and have 5k more in your pockets.
So i reckon, based on the raised AH fees, your strategy might not work in the future (it’s true it worked in the past though)…Any suggestions you might have thought to share? 🙂
@bok
Well, I am sure it will work just as fine … I’d just not post as much at once maybe 10 stacks instead of 100 and make an alt where I mail all my surplus mats to … after 30 days they get returned automatically or you can log the alt and manually return stuff if it is needed. I am doing that with cross faction recipes/pets atm … buy 100 each, have 15 on ah and stor the rest on an accessible alt. The profit is enourmous … you pay like 20g for 100 pets or recipes and they sell for 130g each … or all for 13 000 gold.
This morning at 8 o’clock server time realms was up. I did End of Time and Well of Eternity. I was pretty amazed from the play stile of the Enhancement shaman. AOE dps is much easier to be done 🙂 I’ve just post 1K hypnotic dust on my realm. It seems the AH fee is still 1s. Maybe it is a bug and can be fixed later.
@drako
Yes, it is very nice. I am very content with the state of enhancement, my dps went up by 3-4k roughly, which is a bit better than expected. I did the LFR twice even, it seems pretty fun and enhancement rocks. Look at the log: LFR and Argaloth.
I am also relieved that the announced Enchanting mat change did not go live. No sell value/ah fee on shards, dusts, essences – sweet.
well u say thet Eye of Purity didn’t and as a 10m shaman to i see thet drop at less 10 times but in stead it never drop the Baleroc axes our the mace . . .