Tauren Paladins & Priests

These ones make much less sense to me, but probably because the lore is still being written for this.

Regarding paladins, about all we know about tauren becoming paladins comes from the story of Aponi Brightmane, and there’s not much there. The tauren race has never been able to use the Holy Light like normal paladins and priests, and they certainly aren’t going to siphon it from a captured Naaru like the blood elves used to. Apparently, tauren paladins will be called “Sunwalkers”, and will draw their power from their sun god (An’she), just as druids draw some of their powers from the moon god (Mu’sha/Elune). It seems likely that Brightmane will become the first of the Sunwalkers when the Cataclysm comes.

Tauren priests probably won’t use the Holy Light either, and will probably also derive their powers from the Sun, like night elf priests draw their powers from the moon. Still too early to say on a lot of this though, an I hope Blizz adds lots of neat new lore on this subject.

Troll Druids

First, the trolls have always had an affinity with nature and the arcane, and traditionally they’ve lived in forest and wilderness areas. Further, shapeshifting is something that many powerful trolls can do – just look at many of the bosses in troll-based dungeons. However, the Darkspear tribe (which is the tribe that all Horde trolls belong to) is much more island-based, so they probably have lost those magic traditions. It makes sense that the tauren have probably taught them the druidic arts, and that the trolls have taken so easily to them.

Blood Elf Warriors

This one’s a no-brainer. If you can swing a weapon, you can be a warrior (though I still think that gnome warriors are ridiculous). The only reason why there haven’t been any blood elf warriors so far (from a lore perspective, at least) is because they all became Blood Knights (paladins). Now that the blood elves have mellowed a little, the appeal of forcibly drawing martial power from the Holy Light probably seems less appealing to many elves.

Alliance

Human Hunters

I had forgotten that humans haven’t been able to be hunters yet. It makes pretty obvious sense though: we’ve seen plenty of human hunters in Grizzly Hills, after all. Maybe the High Elves have been teaching them the art of the hunter, or something. Not much to say on this one, I guess.

Dwarf Mages and Shamans

In Northrend, we’ve gotten to see that the dwarves once had a great affinity with the natural elements of the world, especially since they themselves came from the stone. Essentially, dwarf mages and shamans have rediscovered lost aptitudes, and will be able to wield the elements once more. I guess they’ve learned to wield the arcane somewhere else.

Night Elf Mages

This one goes very deep into elven history. Arcane magic is what transformed the night elves into their current form (from trolls), so has always been a part of them. After they nearly destroyed Azeroth in the Sundering, they gave up arcane magic and switched to druidism. Obviously, some of them are overcoming the taboo against the arcane, especially since the night elves now have regular contact with other cultures who use arcane magic freely. Like the dwarves, they’re learning to use it once again.

Gnome Priests

Gnomes can basically do whatever they want, and they’re willing to try anything. There’s no reason why gnomes couldn’t  be priests, besides just being uninterested in it. Perhaps they now see how useful it can be to be able to heal others with magic.

New Races

The Goblins and the Worgen are very versatile races, and most of their class choices make a lot of sense. The defining characteristics of a race seem to come from whether they can be a druid, paladin, or shaman.

Goblins can’t be druids of course, since they clearly have no affinity for nature – they view nature as being there for the taking. They also can’t be paladins, since they’re far too undisciplined and crazy. But I wonder why they can be priests and shamans. I suppose they’re especially good at commanding various magical forces to do their bidding (like a warlock), and probably don’t bother to “ask” like shamans and priests traditionally do.

Worgen are naturally proficient at shapeshifting, which makes them naturally good at druidism. They, like humans, have no shamanistic tradition, and the Worgen Curse probably prevents them from accessing the Holy Light in ways that the humans do. In fact, they may even be drawing their powers from Elune light the night elves do, since it’s the night elves who save them from their curse.

Ok, there’s a lot of unfounded speculation there, but I was surprised by how much lore was available to support these conclusions. We’ll see if I’m right eventually, I’m sure.

Flametongue Weapon: Bonus damage from spell power now based on weapon speed.Slower weapons will benefit more from spell power.
So, if I understand this right, although the base damage that FT does in melee scales with weapon speed, the bonus it gets from extra spell power it gets doesn’t. In other words, let’s say it’s doing 100 dmg with a fast weapon and 200 dmg with a slow weapon. Previously, let’s say it got 10 extra damage from spell power. With a fast weapon, that’s a 10% boost, but with a slow weapon, that’s only a 5% boost (and these numbers are examples only). This change, if I’m reading it right, will ensure that you get the same percentage boost for fast and slow weapons. Seems like a good change, although I don’t know if this favors slow weapons or penalizes fast weapons.

Frostbrand Weapon: Damage increased by approximately 20%.
Good. Nice to see them making Frostbrand more useful, and this’ll go great with the new Frozen Power talent in the Enhancement tree.

Mana Spring Totem: This totem has been redesigned.It now provides the same mana benefit as Blessing of Wisdom to the entire party or raid, but is exclusive with that effect.
Bah. It makes sense, but I’m really starting to dislike Blizzard’s homogenization policy. What happened to being unique?

Poison Cleansing Totem and Disease Cleansing Totem have been merged into Cleansing Totem. Cleansing Totem pulses every 3 seconds, down from 5.
Hell yes. I’ve been having a hard time deciding between the two totems in PvP, since one is good against rogues and one is good against death knights, my two mortal enemies. Now I can protect against both.

Talents

Enhancement

Earthen Power redesigned: Your Earthbind Totem has a 50/100% chance to also remove all snare effects and make you and nearby friendly targets immune to them for 5 seconds when it pulses.
Not really redesigned, but that additional snare immunity is nice.

Flurry: Now provides 5/10/15/20/25% haste instead of 10/15/20/25/30%.
Nerf. Oh well. Hopefully the other changes make up for it.

New Talent: Frozen Power: Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Lash and Shock spells by 5/10% on targets afflicted by your Frostbrand Attack effect, and your Frost Shock has a 50/100% chance to root the target in Ice for 5 seconds when used on targets at or further than 15 yards from you.
Coooooool. Makes Frostbrand worth using, finally. And that root on Frost Shock will be great against runners, and gives Enhance players a much-needed way to close the gap to melee.

Lava Lash now has a new icon.
Hell yes. It’s about time. Seriously, it’s a pretty nice icon.

Spirit Weapons: Now reduces all threat generated by 30%, not just physical attacks.
A good call, since Enhancement is so spell-focused, even moreso after this patch.

Stormstrike charges have been increased by 2, and cooldown reduced by 2 seconds.
So, Imp. Stormstrike is being rolled into the base spell. Nice change. (Remember when SS could only be cast every 30 sec? Ah, memories.)

Improved Stormstrike redesigned: When you Stormstrike, you have a 50/100% chance to immediately grant you 20% of your base mana.
This is pretty nice. Raiders probably won’t care much about this, but it seems like it’ll be nice for PvP and soloing/grouping. I seem to rememer having a hard time with mana during the week that I was Enhance-specced in crappy gear.

Toughness: No longer increases your armor. Instead, this talent now increases your total stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%.
I haven’t crunched any numbers, but this looks like a change that will increase survival across the board, though it’ll naturally make us a little weaker to melee attacks. Seems good.

Unleashed Rage: Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Now increases your expertise by 3/6/9.
Point decrease AND a buff? Who can complain? Also, note that the expertise only applies to YOU – it’s not part of the buff.

Elemental

New Talent: Booming Echoes: Reduces the cooldown of your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 1/2 seconds, and increases the direct damage done by your Flame Shock and Frost Shock spells by an additional 10/20%.
This is probably pretty nice for PvP. With this talent and Reverberation, you can get your Flame and Frost shocks down to a 3-second cooldown. The extra damage is nice too, but I don’t think it’ll be very essential for raiders.

Elemental Mastery redesigned: When activated, your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst spell becomes an instant cast spell. In addition, your Fire, Frost and Nature damage spells have a 15% increased critical strike chance for 15 seconds. Elemental Mastery now shares a cooldown with Natures Swiftness.
Ok, that’s a bit better. The new EM kinda sucks (it was better when it was a guaranteed crit, so I could macro it with Thunderstorm, which is probably why they changed it) so having it be the Elemental version of Nature’s Swiftness is a good choice.

Elemental Reach: Now also increases the range of your Flame Shock spell by 5/10/15 yards.
Just moving the effect to a different, more appropriate talent. Makes sense.

Lava Flows: No longer increases the range of your Flame Shock spell, but now increases your casting speed by 10/20/30% when your Flame Shock spell is dispelled for 6 seconds.
I’ve found it pretty annoying to have my Flame Shock dispelled, making it difficult to land a big Lava Burst crit on my target, so this’ll at least give me a boost in doing so. Not the greatest change in the world, but as long as it’s on something I’m going to be getting anyway, it’s nice.

Lightning Overload: Reduced to 3 points (7/14/20%), down from 5.
Awesome. This talent probably isn’t worth 5 points anymore, since a significant chunk of our damage now comes from Flame Shock/Lava Burst, so it’s nice to see Blizz recognize that. Plus, more points to spend elsewhere!

Storm, Earth and Fire: No longer increases the range of your Earth Shock or Wind Shock spells, but now also causes your Earthbind Totem to have a 33/66/100% chance to root all nearby enemies for 5 seconds when initially cast.
It’ll be a little annoying not having the range on ES and WS (not that I’ve ever had to use WS) but I’ll get over it. The only problem with this change to Earthbind is that my enemies will still be rooted in place right next to me, which is not where I want them to be. Still, combined with Imp. Fire Nova Totem, this gives us 7 seconds of AOE crowd control, which is pretty cool. More, with Thunderstorm. Of course, I’ll probably take this opportunity to drop Imp. Fire Nova, since besides the short stun, it’s basically an obsolete totem now.

Thunderstorm can now be cast while stunned.
HELL YES. TAKE THAT YOU FUCKING ROGUES! NO MORE STUNLOCKING ME TO DEATH!

Restoration

Ancestral Awakening: This talent now accounts for your ineffective healing, rather than effective.
Uh, what? I think this means that, before this patch, AA was ignoring any overhealing amount and only healing for the amount of actual healing done to the target. In other words, If you cast a 4000hp heal, and your target was only missing 2000hp, AA would only heal for a percentage of 2000hp, not the full power of the heal. Now, it’ll function on the full 4000, otherwise known as Amount Healed + Amount Overhealed.

Ancestral Healing and Healing Grace have swapped places in the Restoration talent tree.
Sure.

Cleanse Spirit now has a new icon.
Wait a minute, I’m actually against this change. If WoWhead is right, the current icon is a neat magenta swirly glow thing, but the new one is an ugly black & white hand. I call nerf on this.

Mana Tide Totem: This spell no longer costs mana.
I’ve always wondered why we had to spend mana to gain mana. And when will THIS get a new icon?

Restorative Totems: Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Increases the effect of your Mana Spring Totem by 7/12/20%, and increases the amount healed by your Healing Stream Totem by 15/30/45%.
That’s pretty nice. Not keeping quite as much extra power for MST, but HST is getting a nice buff, in addition to the point reduction.

Riptide: This spell has a new icon.
I like the current purple swirl, but the new icon is nice too, and probably fits the spell better.

Tidal Force: Now has a new spell effect.
Right on.

Glyphs

Glyph of Earth Shield: Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.
Seems decent.

Glyph of Feral Spirit: Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
I don’t know if this is good enough to use over other glyphs, but I’m guessing no.

Glyph of Hex: Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.
I don’t know how much damage a Hexed target can take right now, but I doubt this glyph will raise it above what I can do with a single Lava Burst crit, so it’s worthless to me.

Glyph of Riptide: Increases the duration of Riptide by 6 seconds.
Too bad it still gets removed when you Chain Heal the target. If they eliminated that aspect with this glyph (like Glyph of Flame Shock) it’d be a pretty good glyph.

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.
Whoa. Shaman damage shield! Apparently, this will absorb 4352 damage, and of course it’s castable every 30 seconds. I think I’ve found a new glyph to use. It’ll probably get nerfed.

Glyph of Thunder: Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 seconds.
I love blasting rogues off me as much as the next guy, but there are plenty of better glyphs to use instead.

Glyph of Totem of Wrath: When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for 5 minutes.
This is kinda nice. 84 extra spell power is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s only worthwhile if you’re dropping ToW every chance you get. Raiders/dungeoneers will probably like this a lot.

Well, there we are. Naturally, these things may change, but we seem to be close to the release of the new patch (my guess is April 14) so hopefully they’re satisfied with most of the changes.

AOE

Well, Blizzard's verdict on Shaman AOE is in, and the news is pretty good, though I was kinda hoping for a new spell. What they're actually doing is removing threat from Fire Nova and Magma Totems. Which is great, because I'm tired of losing them when I try to use them against something I haven't damaged yet. Also, they're boosting the damage done by Magma Totem, which is quite welcome.

Some players have complained that we still have to run up to a target to do damage. That's an issue (though we still have Chain Lightning) but it's not that big of a deal. After all, Mages and Warlocks need to get up close for Arcane Explosion and Hellfire. If you're trying to AOE something you can't get close to (like a boss), you're probably doing something wrong. That's why we have Flametongue Totem and Totem of Wrath, or you could also use Searing Totem.

I still think we need to get our damage-dealing totems off the same element as our buffing totems though. It sounds like Blizz is still trying to improve totems, so maybe we'll see something in the future.

Talent Changes

Here's the stuff that makes me squeal with glee. Well, not really. I don't actually squeal, and I doubt I'm capable of feeling glee. But anyway...

Unrelenting Storm will only cost 3 points (down from 5) and its effect goes up to 12% (from 10%). Sweet.

Elemental Warding and Elemental Shields are being combined, so the talent just reduces ALL damage taken by 6%. That makes it a much better talent, and puts it on par with the mage version. I'm still not going to get it, but it's now a matter of preference, not lack of quality.

Storm, Earth, & Fire will only cost 3 points (down from 5) for the same effect. Well, not exactly. They're BUFFING it so it increases Flame Shock by 60% now (from 50%). And it's being moved to where Elemental Shields used to be.

NEW TALENT! "Shamanism". Pretty non-specific name, isn't it? A 5-pointer in Tier 8, which will give Lightning Bolt an extra 10% of our spell power (finally making up for the coefficient nerf from back when they changed LB's base casting time) and Lava Burst an extra 20%. (Numbers subject to change.)

All in all, this is a great patch for Elemental shamans. Which is a first.

UPDATES! Dec. 15, 2008

Whoa, Blizzard isn't done buffing us, apparently.

Elemental Oath will now cause Clearcasting (aka Elemental Focus) to boost our damage by 5/10% while active. If you've got enough crit (33% or so, I'd say) you're going to see a DPS increase of about 10%. Nice! (Note: that's only OUR damage, not the group's.)

Elemental Mastery has been changed, and it's about time! Now, it'll increase crit chance by 20% for 30 seconds (cooldown is still 3 minutes). I'll miss the old version somewhat (I have it macroed into Thunderstorm so it does a ton of damage when I use it, which is probably why they changed it) but this new version is definitely a buff. Makes Glyph of Elemental Mastery much more appealing too.

Glyph of Lightning Bolt will increase LB damage by 4% instead of decreasing its mana by 10%. Sounds good to me, since I was thinking about getting rid of the LB glyph anyway. Mana hasn't been much of an issue for me, but damage has.

Glyph of Fire Nova Totem reduces FNT's cooldown by 3 seconds, instead of increasing its radius. I'm not sure what to think about that. If it's decreasing the "detonation" cooldown (like Imp. FNT used to), it's awesome. If it's decreasing the 15-second cooldown between uses, it's kinda lame. I think it's probably the second one.

Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem will now reduce the totem's cooldown by 10 minutes, up from 4. That's...huge. Does that mean it'll be usable in Arenas?

There are some other non-elemental Shaman updates, but they're not nearly as interesting. In general, you should just keep MMO Champion on your news reader at all times.