Just a quick reminder, patch 2.3 goes live tomorrow. It’s a big patch, for both PvP and PvE. MMO and WoR have excellent summaries for all the changes here and here. The final PTR patch notes are here — keep in mind there maybe some changes in the notes for live. Arena Season 3 is next week, which means you have one week to try out new specs and get your new gear ready.

Elemental Shaman Spell Coefficient Tweaked
In a change that made it just before the bell, Eyonix posted end-of-day Friday that shaman will be getting a small adjustment to their damage coefficient for their Lightning spells. After weeks of players theorycrafting, testing and even (gasp!) starting in some good ol’ drama, Blizzard finally admits that their DPS buff in 2.3 really was a nerf.

Here is the full post by Eyonix:

“Elemental shaman were told that while we’d be nerfing the damage coefficients for lightning bolt and chain lightning bolt in patch 2.3, overall they’d notice a damage increase. We know most of your tests reveal a damage decrease, however. We’ve been running extensive tests of our own and have identified that there is approximately a 6% nerf to elemental dps (depending on gear of course). As a result, we’re going to increase lightning bolt and chain lightning bolt’s coefficient so that elemental shaman gain approximately 5 to 6% of their damage back if you assume roughly 1200 spell damage.

It should break down as follows

If you have below 1100 spell damage you will see a slight buff to your dps

If you are between 1100 and 1200 spell damage you should see neither a decrease or increase to your dps

If you are over 1200 spell damage you will see a slight nerf to your dps.

This change should be hotfixed onto the PTR at some point soon, and we’ll be watching the situation closely. -Eyonix”

Arena elemental shaman all fall in the first category. From tests over the weekend, the new coefficient is suspected to be .794, an addition of 8%. So assuming 850 spell damage from an S2 geared elemental shaman, here are the differences in +damage after coefficients are applied for Lightning Bolt:

Keep in mind that while the per bolt damage will be lower, but the new Lightning Overload (20% proc at 50% dmg) is expected to compensate. It will be interesting to see if this noticeably changes the cadence of elemental damage.

4x 2345 = 2k?
While it isn’t as impressive as Kollektiv blowing up fat kids (see 18:10), this is quite entertaining: a video of a 2-man 5v5 team with one guy playing a resto shaman and the other guy 4-boxing four elemental shaman.

Tags: News

5 Responses to “Patch 2.3 Tomorrow; Last Minute Shaman Changes”

1. Hexd Says:
   November 12th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

   That 4 shaman vid is pure teamwork

2. Auvria Says:
   November 12th, 2007 at 4:11 pm

   That has to be brutal. Kind of curious how he links all their attacks.

3. cadel Says:
   November 12th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

   I’d think bliz would get pissed and ban them or something. seems kinda weird.

4. Auvria Says:
   November 12th, 2007 at 5:38 pm

   Unless they’re at the top 10 of their ladder, they likely won’t garner enough attention. I’m curious what kind of matches they actually lost.

5. Nooblar Says:
   November 12th, 2007 at 8:54 pm

   I wanted to see a warrior spell reflect that. Tragic.

Leave a Reply