We have one last round of changes before the weekend that will go out after the realms finish restarting this afternoon:
Druid- Survival Instincts: Now also increases healing done by your spells by 20% while active.
Developer’s Notes: Pure healing druids have correctly pointed out that they are without a compelling rune option for the Boots slot. Allowing Survival Instincts to act as an on-demand healing cooldown helps fill this gap and provide Druids with another powerful healing tool.
Shaman- Earth Shield is no longer exclusive with Lightning Shield.
Developer’s Notes: Earth Shield has seen its value increase with Shamanistic Rage becoming a baseline ability. While this is a great improvement, tank shamans now often feel like they at a disadvantage when playing with a Restoration Shaman and vice versa, because of how a Tank wants their Lightning Shield active for their wrist rune, which makes them ineligible Earth Shield targets. We’re reducing the friction here by allowing Earth Shield to be active at the same time as Lightning Shield.
Riptide healing can now trigger the Power Surge rune when used.
- Developer’s Notes: In the Waist slot, Restoration has typically been taking Power Surge, standing within 20 yards of the boss to Flame Shock, and then look for procs to cast an instant Chain Heal. We think reimagining power surge as a more generalist rune and enabling its usage for Restoration shamans to use using their normal toolkit while also playing at a standard healer range of 30+ yards away is a great way to increase quality of life for healing Shamans that select this rune.
The chance for Static Shock to trigger when using a two-handed weapon is now 12% and the chance to trigger with one-handed weapons remains 6%.
The Shield Mastery additional benefit from Defense now triggers off an any shock spell and not just Flame Shock.
The Shield Mastery Defense benefit changed from Attack Power to Spell Power:
- Developer’s Note Even with Mental Dexterity in the mix, Spell Power over Attack Power feels like a more thematic conversion for Tank Shamans. Most of a Shaman’s threat is also not in things that benefit from Attack Power directly, so this change helps the shaman tanking kit operate more synergistically.
The additional threat caused by Way of Earth has been increased to 65% (up from 50%).