I Haz Puppies!

Sal and Mio finally copied over to the beta servers yesterday. I logged on Sal in the afternoon to spec her and mess around a little. Well, that was an adventure.

I heard about the changes to downranking (removed, basically) and I wanted to see the changes myself. I logged on Sal and specced her resto, then proceeded to spam myself with heals. To those of you not familiar with shaman healing, downranking is the only way we survive. Shaman have no talents built around conserving or returning mana, unlike all other healing classes. When I heard the news about removing downranking, my first thought was "How the hell am I supposed to heal without mana?!"

Well, we aren't supposed to heal at all, apparently. Mana efficiency was actually nerfed beyond removing downranking. I suspect a bug, but in BC with talents in improved restoration totems, my mana spring returns 24-25 mana per tic. In beta, with talents in improved restoration totems, my mana spring returns 20 mana per tic. Incidentally, that is the same amount my mana spring returns specced as enhancement in beta. I sincerely hope that's a bug, because Blizzard has basically castrated the spec if they plan on nerfing our only source of mana return and making it impossible to downrank.

On a brighter note, I ran my first instance in beta last night, only I was enhancement. Let me just say, the intellect to attack power conversion is THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER. Sal's AP in BC is about 1600. In beta, she was sitting right around 2000. I wish I had been running dps meters so I could see how her damage was, but alas I wasn't that prepared. However, someone did comment that her dps seemed really good ("things are melting when you hit them!") and I pulled aggro off a level 75 prot warrior numerous times. Oops.

Spirit wolves are kind of fun, though they are still under development. So far all they do is auto-attack. I can't wait to see what they can do once they get their special abilities.

I didn't get a chance to test the lightning shield or maelstrom weapon talents though. Lightning shield looks interesting and I'm curious to see how those talents work. Maelstrom weapon looks kind of dubious to me, but I don't know how lava burst works. I can't imagine an enhancement shaman stopping their melee attacks to cast a lightning bolt though.

Either way, I am really excited about enhancement and very underwhelmed with restoration. I may change my spec in the expansion. *gasp*