Impact of the WotLK beta notes

The big news in WoWland today is the Wrath of the Lich King beta is starting and the first official patch notes are now floating around. You can check out the entire list here. Let's start by looking at the shaman changes.

Shaman

• All totems are now considered on the "Physical" school, and no longer magical spells.
• Ancestral Knowledge (Enhancement): Now increases your Intellect by 2/4/6%, instead of increasing your total Mana by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Call of Flame (Elemental): Now also increases the damage of your Lava Burst spell by 2/4/6%.
• Call of Thunder (Elemental) now also increases the critical strike chance of your Thunder spell.
• Concussion (Elemental) now increases the damage of your Thunder and Lava Burst spells.
• Convection (Elemental) is now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Now lowers the mana cost of Thunder and Lava Burst.
• Earth's Grasp (Elemental) is now a tier-1 talent, up from tier-2.
• Elemental Detestation (Elemental) is now a tier-2 talent, up from tier-4.
• Elemental Focus (Restoration): Now also can proc off Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave, and can be used on all healing spells.
• Elemental Fury (Elemental) now requires Elemental Focus as a pre-requisite
• Elemental Precision (Elemental): Chance to hit reduced to 1/2/3% from 2/4/6%, but threat reduction increased to 10/20/30% up from 4/7/10%.
• Enhancing (Enhancement) Totems is now a Tier 1 talent, up from Tier-2.
• Flametongue Totem is now a flat spell damage totem. All ranks have been modified.
• Frostbrand's snare effect has been increased to 50%, up from 25%.
• Ghost Wolf's mana cost is now 13% base.
• Grace of Air Totem has been removed. (Agility has been rolled over into Strength of Earth Totem)
• Improved Fire Totems (Elemental) is now (again) Improved Fire Nova Totem. It now has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets for 2 sec.
• Improved Lightning Shield (Enhancement) is now Elemental Shields, and is in Tier-1.
• New ranks have been added of Water Shield, starting at level 20. (Level 20, 27, 34, 41, 48, 55, 62, 69)
• New Spell: Earthliving Weapon - Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by x and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additionaly over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
• New Talent: Cleanse Spirit (Restoration) - Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect.
• New Talent: Elemental Shields (Enhancement): Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 5/10/15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.
• New Talent: Mental Dexterity (Enhancement) - Increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your Intellect.
• Rockbiter ranks 5 through 9 have been removed. Windfury Weapon is intended to replace Rockbiter at level 30.
• Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
• Shield Specialization (Enhancement) - Now a 2-point talent, and increases the chance to block with attacks by 10/20%, and increases the amount blocked by 5/10%
• Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
• Storm Reach (Elemental): Now also increases the radius of your Thunder spell by 10/20%.
• Strength of Earth Totem now also increases agility.
• Tranquil Air Totem has been removed. (Threat is being addressed by modifications to the base threat of players and/or "baked" into tanking abilities.)
• Unleashed Rage is now raid wide.
• Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified.
• Windwall Totem has been removed.
• Wrath of Air is now a flat 10% spell haste totem.

Ok, so that is a lot of stuff to look at. I will go through and point out the changes that have a bigger effect on Resto Shamans.

All totems being physical now is nice. It is more of a PVP change, but in some PVE encounters you can use time you may be silenced to refresh your totems.

Ancestral Knowledge is now +int instead of +mana. I imagine that will make it scale better and may make it worth taking. I would have to hunt down some theorycraft to see how much of an upgrade it is.

Elemental Focus in the elemental tree now procs off lesser healing wave and healing wave. Increases efficiency for tank healing.

Flametongue totem now adds spell damage! With the change to Wrath of Air, this makes us able to add spell haste and damage with our totems. Very nice.

Grace of Air removed and rolled into Strength of Earth. With totems now being raid-wide, we now have reasons to keep all 4 down at once.

Earthliving Weapon finally gives us a weapon buff for healing.

Cleanse Spirit puts all of our cleanse abilities on one button and even adds decursing! Yay!

Tranquil Air has been removed. All of the threat reduction spells seem to be changes significantly. Pallies salvation for example is changed dramatically. They seem to be pushing for tanks to be able to push more threat so you do not need these anymore.

Windfury is a flat 20% melee haste buff. I am assuming that is a buff, and it certainly is a buff for druids, since now it works for them.

Wrath of Air is a 10% spell haste buff. Since Flametongue does spell damage now, combining the 2 is amazing!

Overall these are mostly positive changes. I will follow-up this post with a discussion on the general direction of the shaman in WotLK so far. If you have not seen the changes in general, go check them out here.