2.4 Respec

Being the type of player who like to dabble in the various aspects of WoW, I tend to favor the jack-of-all-trades approach to both gear and spec. A typical night usually involves dailies, a raid/instance and PvP. If you're a min/max'er, those are distinctly different scenarios, but given my class, playstyle and interests, flexibility is key so I'm always trying to find the right balance.

With the advent of 2.4 and my increasing PvP activity, I've been tempted to spec into insta-cast Ghost Wolf (as well as improving raid utility) so last night I switched from 0/45/16 to 0/47/14.

Basically I took points away from cheaper totems and gave them to Improved Ghost Wolf*, since I tend to only drop one or two totems while soloing, and mana is not an issue in groups. Having instant travel form is pretty fantastic, especially on the new dailies where it's a race to tag your mob first. PvP gains a lot from this talent, like immunity to sap and faster maneuvering on smaller maps like WSG and EotS. I also took a point away from Anticipation and max'ed Improved Weapon Totems for raid utility (Windfury for all FTW).

On the resto side I moved the first five points from cheaper heals to faster heals - usually when I'm healing it's in PvP or in some other emergency basis, so faster seems better for the moment.

*Note that if you're pre-62 (when Water Shield becomes available) and don't do a lot of PvP, I still wouldn't recommend Imp GW over Imp Lightning Shield (or Anticipation).

2.4 First Impressions

After last night's Kara run I had a chance to run up to Quel'Danas (aka Sunwell Isle) and poke around a bit. Having never seen Blood Elf architecture firsthand before, it was really cool to experience fresh content and new quests.

Getting There
Alliance have a flight point at Ironforge which will get you there pretty quickly via a loading screen while in-flight. Unfortunately, flying back to IF does not seem to work the same way, where you hit all those flight points in Eastern Plaguelands, etc. on the way back. So use your hearthstone to get back if possible (until the Shat portal gets unlocked). Tip: if you log out mid-flight, you'll land at the next flight point along your original route.

The Isle
Aside from being graphically beautiful, the storytellers at Blizzard did a great job of making it feel like you've landed in a warzone and need to get to work right away. The place was still a zoo at 1am server time, lots of folks running around - some looking very lost, which added to the realism of the storyline. :) When I started out, the quest givers reported 39% progress, but 30 mins later they were at 41%, so no doubt by now phase 1 is close to being over. At this point the island basically has nothing available other than a flight point, quartermaster and quest givers. Over time more facilities will be unlocked.

Other highlights:

Dailies
It looks like there are lots of new options for dailies, which is fantastic. I find the bombing run quest extremely annoying and the Simon Says one mind-numbing, so it's good to have other things to try. There are both PvP and PvE dailies, scattered over Shattrath and the new Isle.

Teleport to Caverns of Time
There's now a representative from the CoT in the lower city who can teleport you directly there. Genius! Now they just need one for Sunwell Isle, maybe that will come later?

Marks for Honor
A new repeatable quest allows you to turn in 1 of each BG mark (AB, AV, EOTS and WSG) for ~300 honor. This is all win, except for needing the EOTS ones. Bleh.

Black War Elekk
This thing is way hotter in-person (in-game?). After the Season 1 helm, the elekk may be my next PvP goal: only 30 marks each from AB, AV and WSG.

Reputation PvP Armor
I went around and collected all the Seer's Linked pieces but as I tried to mix/match them into my current set, I only found that the chest and legs integrated well in my setup. RatingBuster FTW. I mostly gem'ed up with strength and crit, and now feel like I've got a decent setup as far as a hybrid PvP/PvE set goes.

Last night in Kara we had too many melee DPS for (Iron) Maiden, so I was rotated out to help heal - I'll likely go buy a set of Seer's healer gear to help in those situations. It's nice to have the option of a premade gear set for trying out alternate specs! Now just have to Learn2Healz.

Patch 2.4 Notes

With patch 2.4 dropping today, I was going to start a post about Shaman-specific updates, but Matthew Rossi over at Wowinsider beat me to the punch with an excellent write-up.

Things We Like:

• Ghost Wolf cast time down to 2 seconds, instant-cast if talented - handy for PvP or PvE grinding.
• Totem global cooldown reduced to 1 second - great for instances/grouping.
• Integrated Totem Timer icons in default UI - with individually dispellable totems! (begone, Searing Totem)
  
• Toughness for PvP viability - not that I'll be re-spec'ing for PvP (I'm stubborn that way), but it's good to know this option is available.
• Tremor Totem now ticks every 3 instead of 5 seconds.
• PvP Reputation Armor

Things We Don't Like:

• Shamanistic Rage nerf - now only 15 seconds of incoming damage reduction. Boo PvE nerfz.
  

Now just hoping my mods still work for tonight's Kara run!

UPDATE: looks like Omen has a 2.4 update, and DamageMeters is out, so going to try Recap tonight instead.

Patch 2.doh

Patch 2.4 news is pretty big on the Shaman front, specifically in regards to PvP viability. Sadly, some of these changes translate to significant PvE nerfs. For example, even though Shamanistic Rage now increases mana regained from 15% to 30%, the duration of the ability is reduced by half. Doh! I often use this to mitigate damage during boss and AOE fights (SR reduces damage taken by 30%), so the reduced duration is a serious PvE nerf.

Flametongue (both weapon imbue and totem) now cause a debuff that lowers healing on the target by 50% during a 5-second refreshable duration. Again, great for PvP, but kinda meh for PvE except on certain fights when bosses take healing in some form. Ghost Wolf cast time reduced to 2 seconds, so conceivably a fully talented Improved GW will make it insta-cast, good for PvP and perhaps for a soloing non-Enhancement Shaman, I guess. For Enhancement those points are still better spent elsewhere.

And the biggie - ZOMG Karazahn attunement removed.