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Posts with tag elemental-mastery

Is Mortal Strike the new black?


What's up with Mortal Strike? And why is it, when Blizzard feels that a class or spec needs to be made viable in Arenas -- and let's face it, the game is all about Arenas now, isn't it? -- they give them a Mortal Strike-style debuff? When the developers were figuring out how to raise Hunters' representation in Arenas, they changed Aimed Shot in Patch 2.3 to give a heal-gimping debuff similar the the Arms Warrior's bread and butter ability.

Enter Patch 2.4 in the PTRs. When Kalgan finally descended upon the Shaman forums, he said that Shamans were definitely getting buffed just in time to quell the wake of an uproar to the nerfs made to the Elemental spec. Along with the reversal of the Nature's Swiftness and Elemental Mastery shared cooldown, the current iteration of the progressive patch is seeing a change to the Shaman's Flametongue Weapon and Totem, which happens to be -- surprise, surprise -- a Mortal Strike-style debuff. Yawn.

While it's certainly a welcome change, considering that Shamans get so little love, frankly it's getting a little boring. Allie mentioned calls for putting the buff on every class (Mortal Sheep or Mortal Portal for Mages is a classic), so this begs the question... is a Mortal Strike-type ability the only way to make a class or spec viable in the Arenas? Aside from the fact that Mortal Strike Warriors are conceivably the most popular class & spec, healing debuffs are clearly one of the game-breaking abilities in Arenas. With Resilience making crit-based and burst damage specs less and less viable, is there really a need for another Mortal Strike? Can't Blizzard make another buff to make a spec Arena-viable without using the same old trick? What do you guys think? How much more creative can you be?

NS and EM cooldown reverted on the PTR

In the interests of full coverage, we'll mention this one, but don't keep your hopes up: the latest build on the PTR has reverted the Nature's Swiftness and Elemental Mastery sharing a cooldown change, so Elemental Shamans will once again be able to crank out an instant Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt crit. Unfortunately, they shouldn't count on it, as lots of changes have gone back and forth on the PTR. It could be that the next time the PTR comes up with a new patch, this change will be right back in.

But it does serve as a reminder that no matter how bad some PTR nerfs may seem, nothing is finalized until it hits the live realms. The Test Realm is for testing, so we shouldn't be surprised when Blizzard does exactly that with it.

Thanks, Giusepe!

Is Blizzard properly separating PvP and PvE nerfs?

I like this arena. Can we get rid of Blade's Edge please? The promised class changes just keep on coming, some of them well received, some of them not so well received. Certainly the dust has far from settled, with Kalgan himself promising that more is to come only this evening, but there's already questions to ask. One that springs to mind seems especially pertinent in light of the upcoming 3v3 Tournament and Rob Pardo's talk about changing PvP into an E-sport: Are the recent class changes focusing on PvP at the cost of PvE? Druids and Shamans seem to be asking this especially, and we'll look at some of their changes after the break.

Continue reading Is Blizzard properly separating PvP and PvE nerfs?


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