Good morning, and welcome to the second day of the rest of your life.For better or for worse, patch 2.4 has gone live.I must say that progressive testing has made it a pretty wild ride.I look forward to the weekend when I'll have more time to explore the changes.
We've all had time to read the notes and tinker around with the new changes.My plan for the day was to check out the notes and then head on in the battlegrounds.I must admit that I didn't get a chance to try out the new Warsong Gulch.I'm sure I'll get to it soon once the queue settles down.I did get a chance to arena, and that queue was popping incredibly fast.Apparently Bornakk spoke the truth about queue relief.
Back in February I made this post on Totem Talk discussing the patch 2.4 changes for shamans. Since then, things have changed and the current changes to the class are as follows.
Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
Chain Lightning: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc. (Edited to add - Hortus explain it all - it was rolled back on live.)
Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.
Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds.
Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
Stormstrike has a new icon.
Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%.
Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4 seconds.
The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.
That's a pretty substantial list of changes all told. Some are clearly bug fixes, while others are straightforward buffs (the totem cooldown being reduced to 1 second, Shamanistic Rage no longer dispellable, totem timers) and others have the horrible taint of nerf upon them (Call of Thunder giving 1% less crit). Still others aren't so cut and dried. So let's take a look at what this patch means for us shamans.
Now that the patch is upon us, it's a good time for reflecting upon all the new badge rewards available to us in the near future. As a hybrid class with 3 main viable specs (healing, tanking, DPS), it's no wonder that there's a lot of new badge gear for paladins in this patch. Allison did a fantastic write-up of new badge gear for druids a few days back, so I figured I'd follow her format as it relates to paladins!
Holy
Itemization for Healing specs has been pretty solid when it comes to badge gear, and the new stuff is no exception. Just like the Pier 1 set that 2.3 introduced, you'll find lots of healing, spell crit and mana per 5 on the new gear... just more of it.
Every week, Shifting Perspectives is written by someone who is not me. Except for that one time. Rather an addictive experience, stealing this column. Does anyone even read the italicized portion at the top? Hello? Nobody? I'm just gonna sing. "My baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R, my baloney has a [censored over copyright infringement] (ed. just do the column, please).
While I sincerely hope the rumors about the patch hitting soon aren't true because I'm sitting on all of 43 badges of justice right now (g@^#(*% mother-expletive piece of $%^@ fire resistance set), I am forced to admit that the times may possibly have caught up with me. I confess that for a long time I hadn't even looked at the new badge loot that will become available ingame, partly because things have gotten markedly busier with my guild of late and partly because I'd planned my 2.3 badge acquisitions very carefully and wondered if I could get away with keeping myself somewhat unspoiled for 2.4. That lasted until I found out just how expensive the 2.4 gear is actually going to be ("150 badges for a new weapon, Zach? Are you @*(#&#% kidding me?"). Noble effort while it lasted, though.
Well, no more. If 2.4 does hit next week, I'm going to be ready to stand in front of the badge vendor and know exactly what I can't afford to buy for all three specs.
This treatment looks exclusively at the new leather gear offerings available in 2.4 and assumes that you won't have access, or at least immediate access, to the new 25-man raid Sunwell Plateau. For my part I am still using six -- count 'em, six -- pieces of badge gear for various tanking purposes in Tier 6 content, which either says a great deal about the general quality of badge gear or says a great deal about how bad feral itemization is in endgame content. I'll be magnanimous today and say it's both.
Today I'm going to focus on the Zul'Aman drops. Here's a list by boss:
Nalorakk the Bear Avatar
(Cat) Bladeangel's Money Belt (Leather Waist) 227 AC, +25agi, +27sta, Blue Socket, +4atk socket bonus, +21 crit, +58 atk, 77 armor negation. A solid upgrade to the Girdle of Treachery from Karazhan, but not quite as good if you can get a Belt of Deep Shadow crafted. Arguably, one of the top 3 or 4 belts in the game. Be ready to /roll against rogues for this belt for your Cat Druid.
All versions of the trinket have a click effect to gain 1750 max health (kind of like the old lifegiving gem effect), along with a passive effect (your choice of 47 spell damage, 40 spell crit rating, 80 attack power, 40 melee crit rating, or 88 healing). (source)
They cost badges of justice, which will also be available off Kara and Zul Aman bosses. (source)
They're open to all classes. The click effects share a cooldown though, so you won't be able to stack that effect. (source)
One player was very unhappy that he would be forced to PvE just so he can got back to PvP'ing. Kaplan responded that experiencing different parts of the game isn't such a bad thing and stood his ground on that decision. I wonder if he'd feel the same if he forced PvE players into PvP for better gear.
Back in February I made this post on Totem Talk discussing the patch 2.4 changes for shamans. Since then, things have changed and the current changes to the class are as follows.
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by David Bowers and Dan O'Halloran. 
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