Friday, November 16, 2007

Respec sooner than I thought

I got around to logging in Kuanchichi last night and ran around Dustwallow beating on level 39 and 40 mobs with 2H axe and mace. It took abotu 10 mins before I noticed the blank buttons, and then that Blizzard had succumbed to the massive shaman outcry and zero'd out the shaman specs.

Here's what I've done so far. I started working out the numbers and mana benefit from Unrelenting Storm and comparing them to what the 2.3 changes yielded... because in a raid situation Kuan's problem is he runs out of mana quite rapidly in long fights.

• 5 points in Unrelenting Storm assuming 400 Intellect yields 40mp5 which is 480 mana per minute.

• The mana spring totem went from 12 mp2 to 20 mp2, which yields 240 mana per minute. So right there I free up 2 points.

• The change to Water Shield worked out to 204 mana per globe, which was renewed every minute, so a minimum of 612 mana per minute.

• And of course, the damage nerf to Lightning Bolt was also a mana nerf, so it uses less mana.

Now, the question is, what is more important. The expensive Totem of Wrath, that grants party members +3% spell hit and crit? or the insta-cast Nature spell every 3 mins? I am inclined to the latter, since I've used it a lot in oshit situations in Heroics and Kara, tank health is dropping and healer is silenced o shit! I am sure the guild casters would rather see the totem. If the totem was a clear win (in terms of group damage output) over using a Searing to cast fireballs, that'd be an easier call. But Searing wins against any mob without fire resist.


Gee, a lot of WoWwiki on this stuff is stubs. I should fill it in

3 comments:

tanthalas said...

FWIW, here's the armory link to our guild's one and only eleshaman.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Spirestone&n=Azhangers

Our DPSers love him for his totem too. But I guess if you find yourself needing to heal occasionally in a 5-10man, then NS might be worthwhile.

tanthalas said...

wow, blogger does weird things to length URLs.

here

draNgNon said...

I got an error from that link, I think Armory is down. But I did go with NS, in the middle of a ZA pug too, and used it within 60 seconds of dropping the point in there.

The nice totem is good for helping mages, but I have seen people do extensive testing and the group damage boost is less than a searing. Of course, on a boss like Prince where you can't always get within 20 yards then a Searing loses.

You are right though that the value of NS decreases as my ratio of time in real (20+) raid setup increases. But our guild is not-quite-on-farm for Kara - one team is, they are going to break it up to gear people up - and I hate to say it, but ZA hurts us. So NS it is. Used it a lot in Heroic ramps last night too. Sometimes that instant unexpected heal saves the tank when the MH is silenced or OOM.