The New Face of the Shaman in Wrath of the Lich King

The new expansion to World of WarCraft – Wrath of the Lich King is finally here and offers more in-depth play with a slew of exciting new features and new areas to explore. Not only are there tons of great additions and balance changes, but some characters have undergone transformations like the Shamans. These changes were necessary to increase the appeal of shamans, as they were one of the least played characters amongst World of WarCraft players.

Shamans have gone through changes from expansion to expansion and this time, a number of changes have affected its character statistics and some of its abilities.

• If you are looking for a leveling guide, check out our Leveling Guide Review
• If you are looking for the top gold making guide: Check out our Review Here.
• Check out our other free guides

WotLK Shaman Changes

For the fastest way to level up a shaman check out this guide or you can read the review here.  Attack power can now be increased as both Strength and Agility statistics increase. The critical and spell critical ratings have been merged into a single stat. This merge has been applied to hit rating and spell ratings too.

New WotLK Shaman Abilities

The Shaman has been granted several new abilities with the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

The first ability is a skill that was used previously by Shadow Hunters in WarCraft III – Hex. The hex spell can turn their targets into frogs rendering them helpless and only able to move. Even if the target is damaged after transformation, the spell may not break so only restoration spells can cure it.

The two other spells are elemental spells – the Lava Burst and Wind Shock. The Lava Burst spell does some massive fire damage while causing some major slowdown to the target. The Wind Shock spell doesn’t do any damage, but lowers the chances of enemies to attack you as well as interrupting any spell casting attempts.

Regarding weapon enchantments, one new enchantment was added and an existing one has slightly changed. The new Earthliving Weapon is useful for shaman healers as they add a significant passive bonus to all the healing spells as well as give the healing spell a chance to heal over time. The healing bonus and heal over time effect increases as the rank goes up. The existing flametongue weapon gets an upgrade of its own and now gives a spell damage bonus to the Shaman. There were also changes to the Windfury Totem, which Is now no longer a weapon enchant and has become a buff that grants melee haste.

New WotLK Shaman Talents

Over 20 new talents for the Shaman were introduced in all 3 talent tiers. Here’s a summarized list of them all:

• Elemental Oath
• Astral Shift
• Lava Flows
• Storm, Earth, and Fire
• Thunderstorm
• Improved Shields
• Mental Dexterity
• Improved Stormstrike
• Lava Lash
• Static Shock
• Earthen Power
• Maelstrom Weapon
• Feral Spirit
• Improved Water Shield
• Tidal Force
• Cleanse Spirit
• Blessing of the Eternals
• Ancestral Awakening
• Improved Earth Shield
• Tidal Waves
• Riptide

These improvements to the WotLK Shaman talents and abilities make them a lot more useful allies and dangerous opponents. This opens up a lot of possibilities in allowing new talent builds to form and turn the tides of battle.

For the fastest way to level up a shaman check out this guide or you can read the review here.

Tags: class guide, shaman, shaman changes in wotlk, shaman guide, shaman info, world of warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Class Guides, WotLK Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.