i read it all.... the most important thing i got was you can drop 4 totems at once and they are removing totem stomp macros. thats kinda depressing considering that thats the fix. making totems easier to drop all at once.

Combat Questions
can i get an answer as to what an enhancement shaman is supposed to do while stunned?

what as enhancement am i supposed to do for aoe. i mean its drop magma and sit. they did say that they might merge magma and fire nova. How would this work. Dpes the magma pulses every second and then every 5 seconds it has a large nova?

Purge only removes two magic debuffs, and that makes it worthless for removing hots or buffs because the sheer amount of them. Is purge being largly ineffective against people that have hots and shields working as intended?

Appearence
Is the quad totem going to have a new totem model drop or just you drop 4 at once?

Will most patch fixes still be icon changes :P

also i guess we are the opposite of pallys i mean they are good we arnt :|

Edit i guess i was supposed to save a slot before i thought of what to say -.- was fourth

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Q u o t e:


I do try, as do we all. A big thanks also to Ghostcrawler and the rest of the development team for taking the time to work on this. I'll still be keeping an eye on things here and doing what I can to answer more as I can as well, but this should hopefully help. Keep in mind as always that changes depend on time and testing, but we're working on it as we go. Our main goal was to keep you up to date on what we're thinking and where we're going with things.

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This is really refreshing, honestly. Is there any chance we'll get more communication and insight like this? I've hated the "black box development" where stuff comes out of nowhere and no one has any idea if problems are even being looked at.

I don't expect a multi-page discussion from the devs every day, but an update every few weeks would be nice.

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Q u o t e:
In PvP, we want to make sure we end the use of “totem stomping macros” where a pet class essentially programs their pet to automatically kill any totem they see. It’s perfectly acceptable for pets to kill totems, but the player should at least have to make a decision and spend some of their attention to do so.

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Why not change totems so they can only be dispelled, purged etc instead of destroyed by anything with a physical attack?

Offensive totems can still be physically destroyable, defensive/buff totems shoud be immune to physical attack just as any spell is immune to physical attacks. With certain exceptions, me being hit by a sword doesn't dispel any of my buffs. I take damage yes but my buffs are still there.

Alternatively, treat them like inner fire/bone shield/shaman shields. Get rid of the health and give them x number of charges. Once the charges are gone they vanish. This would keep a player or pet (or a pat) from one or two shotting them while still leaving them to be viably destroyed by classes that don't have a purge or dispel.

As an aside, Recall Totem should move the totems to you. 5 minute buff + recall totem = yummy. :)

Thank You!

I'd like the issue of elemental loot to be addressed a little more thoroughly than they went into there, particularly that almost all the mail loot with SP on it also has MP5. I understand where it was mentioned that they know that resto will want regen and dmg casters won't.... but then there's hardly any SP mail without MP5.

They mention they haven't worked out yet how to sort out thsi issue.

Have they forgotten Sunwell and the ability to take a piece of loot that drops and hand it in to an NPC with a token to convert it into a different non-set epic? It seems they have.

If I could take half the MP5 resto gear I currently have (and I'm almost fully resto-ulduar geared, even though I'm an ele shaman. I still do dmg in my old T7.5 and Naxx gear mainly) and hand it in with a runed orb or such to turn it into loot that has haste or crit instead of MP5, that would be easy, ideal and not difficul to implement at all.

Why have they simply ignored or forgotten this option?

EDIT:: Thanks for this by the way. I actually do appreciate this Q&A, it's useful and informative.

... just gotta ask about the uluar loot thingy.

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Q u o t e:


Why not change totems so they can only be dispelled, purged etc instead of destroyed by anything with a physical attack?

Offensive totems can still be physically destroyable, defensive/buff totems shoud be immune to physical attack just as any spell is immune to physical attacks. With certain exceptions, me being hit by a sword doesn't dispel any of my buffs. I take damage yes but my buffs are still there.

Alternatively, treat them like inner fire/bone shield/shaman shields. Get rid of the health and give them x number of charges. Once the charges are gone they vanish. This would keep a player or pet (or a pat) from one or two shotting them while still leaving them to be viably destroyed by classes that don't have a purge or dispel.

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But likewise, a Purge-happy shaman isn't going to get rid of that totem sitting behind a pillar.

I like totems being different. Let's keep them that way, but let's make them work well that way.

Sweet, it is very good to hear that we are at least being discussed. We thank you for your time letting us know we are in fact being discussed :), thanks to the whole development team and anyone else who was involved with this little q and a

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Q u o t e:


We're working on a lot of updates right now in light of all the new things that will be coming with the next content patch. We also plan to work on continuing dialogue in the class forums as much as we can aside from these large Q&As. It's a lot of work, but we think it's worth it and we'll keep finding ways to keep everyone informed as much as possible.

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Great! I understand doing this for 10 classes at once that are all clamoring for attention is a huge work load, but it's greatly appreciated! :)

A) I'm very sad that nothing was said concerning Windfury at all.

B) From the context of the 1-handed weapon issue - it isn't just the TYPES of weapons that drop, it's the SPEED of those weapons. If you made faster weapons somehow attractive to Enhancement, a lot of the disparity spoken about goes away. Rogues gear for slow/fast weapons (or sometimes fast/fast), Death knights gear for slow/fast (and I think fast/fast was viable at one point as well). Meanwhile, shaman got pigeonholed - thanks to that normalizing of Flametongue that was mentioned - into using slow/slow.

Already in Ulduar there are 2 fast offhand choices for rogues at the ilvl 239 threshold (a dagger and a fist), y'know how many there are for shaman? Zero.

C) Fixing the base health is nice, but that's a paltry 500-1000 health to bring us in line with the rest of the classes. Our counterparts in the case of Enhancement are beating us by several times that amount.

More later, gotta go raid.

wow i'm impressed. if this is any indication of how well thought out the other class q&a will be i can't wait to read them. apparently blizzard does read the forums :P the information is greatly appreciated.

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Q u o t e:
One longer-term change we are considering is removing the buff totems (replacing them with normal spells) and making all of the totems do something more active, like the current damage or healing totems. We’ve even discussed letting shamans carry a totem on their back (the tauren do it already) but that may be too far out there.

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The thought of this really makes me happy :)

Thank you for posting this. I don't know if the rest of the community is going to get around to telling you this, but we really appreciate that you've shown that not only are you listening to the community, AND you're talking to us, but you've said (basically) that our concerns are valid, you're aware of them, and even better, you're going to fix it. I really look forward to seeing the implementation of some of this stuff, and again, thank you. We really appreciate it.

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Q u o t e:
Players sometimes accuse Enhancement of being too much of a one-trick pony. It’s understandable that saying “I bring damage!” when so many classes have multiple forms of crowd-control and crowd-control breaks may not cut it these days. Players often request more anti-CC in the form of the Feral Spirits, but we don’t want to turn that ability into something that is saved only to be used as a PvP trinket. Again, mobility (both offensive and defensive) will help Enhancement. A lot of the spec’s damage come from procs and sustained effects, while PvP is more about front-loading damage at the right moment. We definitely can make some changes to give Enhancement more of that, but it requires a lot of changes to the talent tree and playstyle and not the kind of thing you can just hotfix in. On the other hand, Enhancement can offensively dispel, interrupt, and use Tremor and Cleansing Totems while still being a melee DPS. They do have a lot of utility -- they just need a little help in order to bring it about. They no longer have mana problems in the longer matches.

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This is what I've been really looking for a while. Just to clarify, because a lot of people have probably already assumed this, but are the talent tree changes slated for 3.2? Sooner is always better, so don't be afraid to do this stuff in 3.2 :)

I won't be happy until all 51 point shaman talents are baselined, we wear plate, and have 8 spirit wolves!

Just kidding. It looks like a lot of thought went into these answers and you can see quite a few nods to the forum community if you read between the lines. I know it's hard for developers and Blizzardites to talk in forums because everything they say will be used against them at some point, so this was a refreshingly huge chunk of text.

I would like to know if there are any milestones in mind, and if so do they all begin with 3.2? For instance, are we talking:

3.2 - Some of this
3.2.1 - A little more
3.2.2 - A bit more
4.0 - Feelin' fine

Or is there a chance any of these changes may come in before 3.2? The shaman base HP, for instance, should be a small change and would greatly help us close out s6.

I know you guys can't put a firm timeline on anything, but as I saw quite a few short/med/long term comments in GC's text, I'd like to know...exactly how short is short? =D

That being asked, I can say that I love the HP change, drool for the four-pack of totems concept, yearn for help with or against cc, and am positively giddy at the idea of making buffing totems become normal buffs (even if they are delivered initially via totem!)...I talked in another thread about making totems buff for x minutes on pulse, and yet another thread about making them into normal buffs and using totems to amplify the buffs, so this sounds really appealing, whatever the decision may be!

Could you possibly specify about Mobility?


I've always loved Elemental, but I find Enhancement gives better DPS, and since Shaman have large issues PvPing, Im not exactly 'excelling' in Elemental PvP.


Does mobility include more instant casts?

Are you going to move Astral Shift into a more accessible position in the Elemental Tree?


Otherwise I hope to see some of this stuff implicated... I'll be enjoying my respectable PvE DPS 'til then.




Have fun.

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Q u o t e:
Q. In addition, many valued enhancement totem relics are only available via random drops, which has been voiced as something that we’ve wanted to avoid in the past. Are there any plans to change this?

A: The “relics” (the items that fill the ranged weapon slot) are always tricky to hand out, since they can only be used by one class, and are often attractive to only one spec. We have typically put them on badge vendors, and that might be the way to go with them in the future. On the other hand, several “best in slot” items for every character are subject to the inherent randomness of boss loot drops. Typically these upgrades are attractive but not so mandatory that you can’t do your job without them.

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I'd be glad if relics existed on badge vendors, but i'm also ok with them being boss drops.

Is there any news on why arguably the best relic[1] in the game for PVE for an enhancement shaman comes from doing arenas? I would love to have that totem, but i just don't like PVPing.

[1]Furious Gladiator's Totem of Indomitability - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42608

Quoted from Q&A:However, we didn’t want say shamans to no longer be attractive for raiding so we brought up their damage a lot. It might still not be as high as rogues or warlocks, but it’s close, and if you have the right gear and really know how to play, you can even beat those classes on some bosses.

Seriuosly has Ghost even played a shaman in raids since 3.0.

I have been enhance since BC started I frequently topped the meters then and ever since WOTLK came out I have been out DPSed by ret pallies and DKS in blue quest gear not even heroics loot. This toon is dang near full epics and even knowing my class inside and out, playing it well, using the right totems etc it matters not. I cant ever get above a pally on the meters unless he's holy. DKs well depends, only the true terribads am I able to beat. As for other classes if they have equivalant gear to mine and are not facerolling they too destroy me on the meters.

So exactly HOW did they boost our DPS. I am so sick of getting rickrolled by every other class in PVP and PVE yet blues saying there is nothing wrong with enhance. Lets not even mention the ninja nerf on lava burst.