3.3 live tomorrow

Yep, 3.3 is going live tomorrow (at least for us euro guys), confirmed in pretty blue. Before I’m going to have a look at some patch note details, a quick personal wrap up of 3.2:

The first weeks after 3.2 were a little bit strange. You enter ToC, you oneshot one boss, you shrug, get back to Ulduar and wait another week. That’s the tribute to accessible 25 raids, not something that actually bugs me, just something making your first few nights in a new instance a bit less rewarding. The actual resto chances though were very nice: CH range was increased while the jumps did more healing each, Healing Way was turned into a decent talent, Ancestral Healing was turned into a flat physical damage reduction talent, Tidal Waves added crit instead of haste to our LHWs and CH started to proc IWS. Did I mention we got new totem bars?

Some weeks into 3.2 I lost the spot in my guild. After transferring back to my old realm, I joined the Steelvipers guild on EU-Teldrassil, which was just the best step I could have made. Not only because it meant playing with a lot of very nice players I knew since way back, but also because my girlfriend got back into the game, as healer! It’s been a good time, working on TotGC and steadily learning the tactics, even if it meant staring at the same walls again and again (and again). Hell, we even got the Twins Heroic Kill in before patch day!

Enough with looking back though. I guess we’re all excited to log in when the servers are back online, having all our addons break down, cursing at crashing or lagging realms and enjoying the bitter sweetness of a patch day.

While you wait for the server to patch and come back online, here’s a quick look at some highlights of the patch notes (full patch notes over at mmo-champion):

• Orc and troll shamans now have their own unique totem art.

Brilliant! Both models are beautiful. Screenshots over at mmo-champion.

• Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• Fire Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas

The Fire Elemental Totem offers a nice little damage boost, even for us resto shamans. A reduced cooldown makes the ability available in nearly every serious boss try.

• Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.

This doesn’t affect us resto shamans a lot, but it’s very nice to do some additional aoe damage with any fire totem already down.

• Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes.
• Improved Reincarnation: This talent now reduces the cooldown of Reincarnation by 7/15 minutes, down from 10/20 minutes. Reincarnation cannot be used in Arenas.

This might lead to us using Reincarnation a lot more. I’d even suggest to snatch some point from Tidal Focus and get Improved Reincarnation. Don’t forget: a RT right after getting up can save lives. You can mana pot again after reincarnating. Reincarnating while your boss timer announces some AoE damage isn’t a good idea.

• Top-level helm and shoulder faction-related enchants are now available as Bind-on-Account items that do not require any faction to use once purchased (they still require the appropriate faction level to purchase).

Good news for your newest alt. I just wouldn’t come out sane of another grind to Hodir Exalted.

• Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: Tooltip and functionality corrected to ensure this glyph will cause extra healing from Lesser Healing Wave regardless of which shaman cast Earth Shield on the target.

That’s good. Especially with a shaman heavy lineup in 25 man raids and if you heal tanks or spot heal tanks a lot.

Servers still offline? Gear Pollution over at Planet of Hats is a good critical look at raiding and the actual loot system. I know you probably don’t care some hours before a new loot fest, you should though.

More shaman related 3.3 posts:

Life in group 5

WTFSpaghetti

Blueberry Totem

Patch 3.3! ARE YOU EXCITED? sry caps.