2.0.6

[Kenrick]

This patch is now live following the server maintenence.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.0.6

Hunters

    * "Silencing Shot" now does only 50% of weapon damage instead of 75%.
    * The base damage for "Arcane Shot" has been reduced by about 9% and the bonus damage from ranged attack power reduced from 20% to 15%.
    * The bonus damage for "Barrage" is now 4/8/12% for ranks 1/2/3.
    * The bonus damage for "Improved Barrage" is now 4/8/12% for ranks 1/2/3.

Mages

    * Each rank of "Improved Fireball" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * Each rank of "Improved Frostbolt" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * "Counterspell" no longer triggers the global cooldown.
    * "Mana Shield" now absorbs magical damage as well as physical damage.

Priests

    * The bonus coefficient for "Shadow Word: Pain" has been reduced by about 9%. This should result in about 5% less damage done by "Shadow Word: Pain" for the typical priest.

Bug Fixes

    * The "Frozen Shadoweave Boots" will now properly increase shadow damage.
    * Players will no longer lose control of their character if they try to talk to an NPC while mobs are aggro on them.
    * The /equip command will now work on pieces of gear that are not in your primary bag.
    * Fixed an issue that was causing some players to disconnect in Hellfire Citadel:Blood Furnace.
    * The "Corruptor" 4 piece set bonus will now be properly applied.
    * The Legion Fel Cannons at Forge Camp Anger in Blades Edge will now properly spawn above ground.
    * The Arena queue tooltip will now show the arena that the player is queued for.
    * Fixed an error that was causing players to disconnect if they tried to socket a gem that had been gift wrapped.
    * Fixed an error that was causing players to disconnect forming a party with other members in the same area.
    * Pet icons will now properly update in the Stables window.
    * Improved the robustness of the pet action bar display. It is now less likely to be accidentally blocked by addons.
    * Players will no longer hear the gong sound repeated after initially joining a queue for the battlegrounds.
    * Having a group invite declined while queued via "Looking for More" will no longer remove you from the queue.
    * Nethershards will no longer cost honor to purchase but will cost gold instead.
    * Players will no longer be given access to both quest lines following the Declaration of Allegiance to the Scryers or Aldor in Shattrath City.

[Trouble]

Too bad they didn't fix mind control often causing you to disconnect. Second boss in Shadow Labyrinth is still nearly undoable because he mind controls the entire group at once multiple times in the fight. For us at least one person was disconnecting per round of mind control, sometimes two or three. We would be ok until the healer (me) or the tank disconnected, which happened every time we attempted the boss. Lovely bug that's been around for over a month and still not acknowledged as existing by Blizzard.

[SurfD]

This patch is now live following the server maintenence.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.0.6
Mages

    * Each rank of "Improved Fireball" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * Each rank of "Improved Frostbolt" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * "Counterspell" no longer triggers the global cooldown.
    * "Mana Shield" now absorbs magical damage as well as physical damage.

Nice change(back) on the counterspell thing.  What exactly does that Improved Fire/Frost spell thing do though?  The way it is worded makes it sound like a nerf?

[squirrel]

This patch is now live following the server maintenence.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.0.6
Mages

    * Each rank of "Improved Fireball" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * Each rank of "Improved Frostbolt" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * "Counterspell" no longer triggers the global cooldown.
    * "Mana Shield" now absorbs magical damage as well as physical damage.

Nice change(back) on the counterspell thing.  What exactly does that Improved Fire/Frost spell thing do though?  The way it is worded makes it sound like a nerf?

It is a little nerf from what I understand. Basically if you go with the improved talents the spell damage coefficient drops to reflect the reduced cast time. Overall the talents still increase DPS but the per-hit damage is slightly reduced (very slightly).

[lamaros]

It's actually a big nerf.

[SurfD]

It's actually a big nerf.

Yeah, after doing a bit of thinking, i would agree.

I seem to recall that the Base +Spell Damage coefficient was always based off of a 3 second cast spell (NOT counting talents to reduce casting time).

Fireball, untalented, is a 3.5 second cast.  Improved Fireball 5/5 is your bread and butter fire mage talent for a 3 second cast fireball.

Losing 10% of my spell damage co-efficient off of my bread and butter spell damage would be like nerfing all sinister strike damage by 3% per rank of Improved Sinister Strike......

[Shavnir]

Except it deals with the casting time and not the cost of the spells.

The equation is normalized off of a 3.5 second cast, all this nerf does is makes the spells scale back their dmg coefficent with the change in casting time.  Its a bit weird to only do this to mages though.

[squirrel]

Except it deals with the casting time and not the cost of the spells.

The equation is normalized off of a 3.5 second cast, all this nerf does is makes the spells scale back their dmg coefficent with the change in casting time.  Its a bit weird to only do this to mages though.

They did it previously to Warlock dot's as well I thought? I don't have enough 60+ knowledge to know whether mages really needed the change though, seems like either it's so small it wasn't worth doing or it's a bigger nerf in which case why?

[trias_e]

Putting points into imp. fireball or imp. frostbolt now actually decreases your DPM, and the DPS increase has been lessened.  Kinda bleh. 

Its a bit weird to only do this to mages though.

  Yeah.  I have to wonder why say, Bane, or the lightning talent for shamans weren't effected in the same way.

The CS nerf from before was ridiculous.  And I haven't even played with it.  I thought Mages sucked against anything with a mana bar before hand honestly.   The mana shield and CS changes are good ways to help mages do decently against other casters again.

All in all...little PvP buff, little PvE nerf. 

[Sogrinaugh]

Pretty strange nerf.  Done strictly to mage primary dps spells, and not bane or lightning mastery (the single most powerful dps increasing caster talent for any class in the game, and scales better with gear then anything else in the game).

Are bane, lightning mastery, divine fury, etc, soon to recieve these same changes?   And if not, why were the mage talents singled out for this nerf?  A case could now be made against taking improved fireball for pvp, since it now hinders a mages ability to frontload damage.

For frost... as if the fact that rank 12 frostbolt does LESS damage then rank 11 wasn't odious enough (no, im not kidding, Tseric says its not a bug), you can now log in and see your frostbolts do even less then before.

On top of all this wierdness, the original nerf to counterspell (having it placed on the GCD, when it had been unaffected by it for the past 2 years of the game) was undone.  The reason listed for the CS nerf was consistency, that other interrupt mechanics such as pummel, earthshock, spell lock (OH WAIT, LOL), were on the GCD, thus so should counterspell.  Well gee blizz, what happend to that thar consistency thingamajig.

Tseric needs a good /facepalming

[lamaros]

Putting points into imp. fireball or imp. frostbolt now actually decreases your DPM, and the DPS increase has been lessened.  Kinda bleh. 

Its a bit weird to only do this to mages though.

  Yeah.  I have to wonder why say, Bane, or the lightning talent for shamans weren't effected in the same way.

The CS nerf from before was ridiculous.  And I haven't even played with it.  I thought Mages sucked against anything with a mana bar before hand honestly.   The mana shield and CS changes are good ways to help mages do decently against other casters again.

All in all...little PvP buff, little PvE nerf. 

Because Mages were doing too much damage with these spells, while Immolate and Shadowbolt are currently seen to be fine.

Understand that these changes are made mostly for PvE balancing, so that certain classes fall in to 'expected' areas of damage output. Mages were exceeding them in some ways, and this was the method they decided to use to balance it.

Same reason they lowered the Bate DoT coefficients for Warlocks, lowered the Mind Flay coefficient for Shadow Priests.. etc...

[MournelitheCalix]

This patch is now live following the server maintenence.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.0.6
Mages

    * Each rank of "Improved Fireball" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * Each rank of "Improved Frostbolt" now reduces your spell damage coefficient by 2%.
    * "Counterspell" no longer triggers the global cooldown.
    * "Mana Shield" now absorbs magical damage as well as physical damage.

Nice change(back) on the counterspell thing.  What exactly does that Improved Fire/Frost spell thing do though?  The way it is worded makes it sound like a nerf?

It is a little nerf from what I understand. Basically if you go with the improved talents the spell damage coefficient drops to reflect the reduced cast time. Overall the talents still increase DPS but the per-hit damage is slightly reduced (very slightly).

There was a nerf and there was a buff here.  I can't tell you how happy i am that Counterspell no longer has a general cooldown with it.  I also can't tell you how happy I am that my mana shield actually protects me.  While the damage clearly has been nerfed in fire and frost bolt, my only complaint is that we weren't given a respec on this.  I think a lot of the reason I decided upon improved frostbolt over the frost ward in my arcane/frost spec was that there was no downside.  With this change I think I would rather just wait my .5 seconds more and improve my frost ward.  As a player I really wish I was given that chance witout having to spend my gold on the new interpretation of balance..

[Jayce]

Pretty strange nerf.  Done strictly to mage primary dps spells, and not bane or lightning mastery (the single most powerful dps increasing caster talent for any class in the game, and scales better with gear then anything else in the game).

This might be the jaded Alliance player in me, but I personally can't recall ever seeing a shaman nerf.  And I've been watching too :)

Can anyone provide evidence of this reclusive creature?

[SurfD]

At one point, they reduced the attack power bonus given by windfury when it procced.

[Merusk]

At one point, they reduced the attack power bonus given by windfury when it procced.

And then promptly changed it back because, "oh fuck Horde warriors can't hold aggro now."

[Slayerik]

Pretty strange nerf.  Done strictly to mage primary dps spells, and not bane or lightning mastery (the single most powerful dps increasing caster talent for any class in the game, and scales better with gear then anything else in the game).

This might be the jaded Alliance player in me, but I personally can't recall ever seeing a shaman nerf.  And I've been watching too :)

Can anyone provide evidence of this reclusive creature?

Have you ever seen a shaman buff? :)

[Morat20]

I've never seen an engineer buff, if we're complaining. You know what I want? I want a dead-man's switch. I want a cool engineer trinket, on maybe a 30 minute cooldown, that if it's cooldown is up and I die while wearing it, it blasts the crap out of everyone around me.

[Flood]

Pretty strange nerf.  Done strictly to mage primary dps spells, and not bane or lightning mastery (the single most powerful dps increasing caster talent for any class in the game, and scales better with gear then anything else in the game).

This might be the jaded Alliance player in me, but I personally can't recall ever seeing a shaman nerf.  And I've been watching too :)

Can anyone provide evidence of this reclusive creature?

*cough* Windfury *cough*

[Fordel]

Shaman's are easily the least changed class throughout WoW's lifetime. Even their talent trees have only went through minor upgrades compared to others.


Probably why the Shaman has been considered overpowered/underpowered at all times depending on your perspective. Back when half the classes were only half finished, the shaman was mostly complete and therefore overpowered relative to the crappy classes. Then when classes started getting massive changes to fix the incompleteness, some were brought a little to far and now the shaman, which had remained relatively the same, was underpowered. I'm not sure how well shamans scale with gear, but I'm guessing they were in the same boat that Paladin's and Druid's shared... IE: The armor you'd want to wear, doesn't exist. Mostly remedied by TBC I hope.


I almost feel some sympathy towards shaman, almost... then I eat a LightingBolt, Shock and a Windfury crit and die near instantaneously 

[Morat20]

I just hate Shamans because of their totem-forest. PvP sucks when there's 47 totems lying around irritating me in 47 different ways and you have to manually target each one.

Admittedly, letting you AoE them down was crap too.

[SurfD]

Actually, a well geared Enhancement shaman is an absolutely frightening thing to behold in PvP / Solo PvE.

One of the shaman in my guild had been collecting gear in anticipation of burning crusade.  His 2 main weapons for dual wield build were Maexxna's Fang offhand, and Bone Slicing Hatchet Main hand, along with some pretty good all around Mail gear.

He demolishes shit.  Better DPS then most of our similarily (or better) equipped Fury Warriors.  Almost never runs out of mana, and supposedly, once he gets Bloodlust, his DPS just goes apeshit.

Of course, the downside to this is that since he has very low armor compared to most tanks, and absolutely NO aggro mitigation, in raid / group situations he can rip aggro off a tank and get himself pasted faster then you can possiblyt imagine.  Still, PvP, well geared enhancement shamans are just SICK.

[Venkman]

I just hate Shamans because of their totem-forest. PvP sucks when there's 47 totems lying around irritating me in 47 different ways and you have to manually target each one.

Admittedly, letting you AoE them down was crap too.

I hate those totems. But not being able to AOE them is really crappy. There just aren't enough seconds in a fight to burn down a Shaman with his forest out, no matter how many crits I would get. And even crits will be less relevant anyway.

Not sure what the answer is though. Maybe a combination of letting them be AOEed, but having higher HPs or some resist. But not sure it's even worth talking about.

[Jayce]

I almost feel some sympathy towards shaman, almost... then I eat a LightingBolt, Shock and a Windfury crit and die near instantaneously 

I feel the same... and I admit that my earlier comment was fueled by a PvP death earlier today.  I wondered exactly how the fight was over so quickly, so I scrolled back up in the combat log and busted out the calculator:  5k damage in approximately 5 seconds.

Doubtless he didn't have a lot of cooldowns left probably, and granted I am teh big suck at PvP, but damn.

[Fordel]

That's just how Shaman's are. Their sustained DPS gets chewed up by the 'real' dps classes, but the only thing that can unload more burst dmg is a trinket mage with all his toys up. Which is why they get called out as nerfbait so often, since anyone can mash purge/shock and auto with windfury up... and unlike an oldschool retnoob, a shaman actually hurts when it goes stupid like that.

If the shaman actually uses it's support abilities, that's just gravy, but its burst is so considerable, it can do nothing but burst and still contribute to the pvp team.

[SurfD]

i will have to hunt up the thread, but a well buffed Elemental shaman can actually output some pretty good sustained DPS.  Ezareth, one of the big shaman shit talkers on Tich finally got my guild to let him DPS on one of our patchwerk kills, just to see what he could do.  He didnt do half bad, but he was also buffed out the wazoo and has an assortment of gear that makes most people cringe.

[Slayerik]

I just hate Shamans because of their totem-forest. PvP sucks when there's 47 totems lying around irritating me in 47 different ways and you have to manually target each one.

Admittedly, letting you AoE them down was crap too.

I hate those totems. But not being able to AOE them is really crappy. There just aren't enough seconds in a fight to burn down a Shaman with his forest out, no matter how many crits I would get. And even crits will be less relevant anyway.

Not sure what the answer is though. Maybe a combination of letting them be AOEed, but having higher HPs or some resist. But not sure it's even worth talking about.

There are what....3 totems worth killing? Grounding if you are a caster (otherwise ignore), earthbind, and windfury. Make a macro to target them.

[Morfiend]

I dont play a Shaman, but a few of my good friends do. Once thing that is never mentioned is how much freaking mana totems cost. When you see one of those totem forests, you should know that it cost the shaman about 1/3rd of his mana to lay them down, and unlike Paladin buffs, as soon as the shaman moves on, he loses the buffs. Also, when they where AEable, in any large PVP totems where totally useless.

[Morat20]

I dont play a Shaman, but a few of my good friends do. Once thing that is never mentioned is how much freaking mana totems cost. When you see one of those totem forests, you should know that it cost the shaman about 1/3rd of his mana to lay them down, and unlike Paladin buffs, as soon as the shaman moves on, he loses the buffs. Also, when they where AEable, in any large PVP totems where totally useless.

That's why I said AoEing them was crap too.

Also, to poison cleansing totems need to die too. Irritates Hunters and rogues. :)

[Rasix]

As a dual wield enhancement shaman, I figure I'll put in my 2 cents although everyone here has pretty much hit upon the major issues.

My gear setup isn't that bad now: 

Approximate values (unbuffed):
680 AP
22% crit (trading off crit % for AP in a lot of cases)
4.5k HP/Mana
High Warlord Bludgeon (main), Grunt's Waraxe (faction item) Offhand.  Other key pieces: crown of destruction, don julio's band, AQ20 quest ring, and a lot of +AP gear from TBC.  Only 2 new blue pieces, rest are yellows. Still haven't found a decent bracer upgrade yet (WTF).  I've replaced a lot of ZG/outdoor world boss/MC gear already. I'm probaly only at +4-6% to hit from gear, which is an issue.

Possible spec at 70. Currently level 63 and working on the resto portion of my build.  IMO the 41 point talent is pretty goddamn useless unless you're in a raiding guild, where it might help in endurance fights.  It helps some grinding, but I wouldn't trade it for Nature's Swiftness (water shield helps with mana for grinding).  And when you've got the low armor due to no shield, it helps to have an emergency button.

Here's how my melee damage can go a bit nuts:

Stormstrike (instant hit with both weaps)
On a crit (22% chance): AP +10%, Flurry (+30% attack speed for 3 hits)
Use new blue crit trinket from Hellfire +200AP for 10 seconds (every 2 minutes)
Windfurry (20% chance for 2 instant hits for +400 AP)
Strength of Earth/Grace of Air totems (another 150AP, 5% crit) (not always dropped due to mana concerns)
Berzerking (Troll racial 10-30% haste)
And in the future I'll be able to add Bloodlust *drool*


With this going, I've hit 1k+ damage on each swing on my mainhand windfurry crit.  Combine this with possibly leading off with a frost shock (700 damage) and then 6 seconds later adding in an Earthshock that will have a 20% damage bonus to it.   You can melt people when you close distance.  Only class I seem to have problems with are paladins due to the stuns.   

In PVE, the damage is completely sporadic and heavily dependent on crits.  Once you get some crits going, everything else just cascades.  I've seen mobs go from 75% health to dead in a second.  The DPS also goes to a trickle if you get unlucky and you don't crit/windury or only get windfury procs in your offhand.  And yah, your aggro is completely unmanageable unless you just stop attacking after random-number calculator graces you with a slew of crits and main hand windfury procs.

Of course, in every instance I've been invited to, I end up throwing on my old tier2 gear, Aurastone hammer, and my hotbar goes away except for Lesser Healing Wave (Healing Wave can be a bear to get off at times).  No one wants to even let me DPS.  I get an invite to a group and all of the sudden they stop looking for a priest and the druid is going to tank. 

I'd be curious to see what I could do on DPS charts.  But, that would require raiding or people not giggling when they see a shaman toting 2 weapons.

Edit: but all things considered, I'm a happy shaman. This is the way I've always wanted to play the class, and the enhancement tree for the most part is rock solid.

[Phred]

Tseric needs a good /facepalming

Makes me feell sorry for the customer reps at Blizz. They are quite obviously kept on a very tight leash, and have to take all the abuse for stupid decisions they had no responsibility in making.

[Modern Angel]

Short version: I went from 1500 damage fireballs to 1200-1300. My crits went from 2500 to barely 2000. That's a 25% nerf to my crit damage. Not a "little nerf"

Someone Alliance side has to roll a shaman I suppose...

[Paelos]

I'm still waiting for them to give more utility to the protection tree for warriors. TBC added some cool items at the very end of the tree, like Devestate for example, but frankly it's not nearly as powerful as it should be for that deep a cost. I'd much rather have it on a longer cooldown or a higher rage cost if it did more threat. Vitality is a rocking skill, and so are improved shield mastery and improved defensive stance. However, Improved Disarm is still in there looking useless. Improved Shield Wall still isn't worth the points. One handed Weapons spec only gives 10% extra damage for 5 points. Do they realize how much damage we do? It's like a 25-30 damage increase for those 5 points. Who cares? Basically 15-20% of the tree is still completely pointless, with another 20% questionable if they didn't lead you to the upper teir badass talents.

Also, what the hell is up with the worthless new warrior skills?

61: A new intercept that adds 20 more damage, and a new slam that adds 17 more damage.
63: Added FIVE damage to revenge? Are you kidding me?
64: Added 17 damage to shield bash
65: Added 21 to mocking blow
66: Added 19 to heroic strike, added 30 something to Shield Slam
67: Increased damage of hamstring by 19, added 20 to thunderclap

The good ones new ones are Commanding Shout and Spell Reflect. What's the main issue here? Half of the warrior skills added a few damage points that have absolutely NOTHING to do with damage. They didn't increase their effectiveness, or bump their intended use, they just added a trickle of damage. They could have reduced rage costs, added more threat, included new abilities or bumped previous effectiveness percentages, but they didn't. Adding damage/healing to spells makes sense for other classes because most likely that is their main purpose, but for warriors the updated "skills" are basically no more effective than the previous rank

[bhodi]

They've facepalmed a lot recently. A promise that they won't reduce the cost for GM weapons turned into an across-the-board nerf to honor. Technically true. Rogues got the same sort of treatment; our 41 point talent is an alternative backstab that requires poison. That's pretty much it.

[SurfD]

I dont play a Shaman, but a few of my good friends do. Once thing that is never mentioned is how much freaking mana totems cost. When you see one of those totem forests, you should know that it cost the shaman about 1/3rd of his mana to lay them down, and unlike Paladin buffs, as soon as the shaman moves on, he loses the buffs. Also, when they where AEable, in any large PVP totems where totally useless.

Actually, depending on shaman type, alot of those totems wont be popping up ALL the time.  And many shaman will have talents to make their totems cheaper.  Really the only super expensive totems they have are the Magma and Nova totems.  Add in Totemic Recall (the ability to suck your totems back up for a bit of a mana refund), and it isnt quite as bad as it used to be.

[Tannhauser]

Glad I went Arcane with my mage.  With my shiny new BC gear giving me a 25% crit chance and my arcane missiles reallly ramped up, I can do 622 a crit per pulse of AM.  That's some good pve eatin' for a lvl 62.!  Takes me 3-4 spells to drop a mob; Pyro, FB, AM and then sometimes Fireblast but usually a crit or two has sealed the deal already.

I was disappointed with the mage nerf, but it's my favorite class so I just try to roll with it.