Blizzard has posted several of the class talent tables for Cataclysm tonight outlining the changes planned so far. Since the release of Cataclysm is still a ways off, this information is subject to change. However, let’s take a look at the Shaman changes proposed and see how they affect the class.

You can find a complete listing of the new talent trees here: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Talent Preview for Rogue, Druid, Priest, and Shamans.

You can find a listing of new Shaman Spells and the Mastery abilities here: WoW – Cataclysm Shaman Preview.

Elemental

The big ability that most players will miss here is the loss of Call of Thunder from the fifth tier. With this ability gone you will be losing 5% crit across the board. While this could seem hard to take, it is being made up by our new mastery ability that boosts our spell crit. So while you will miss it initially, it should be made up through our mastery abilities.

The same initial dismay over losing Lightning Overload should not last long. It is replaced by Elemental Overload which increases the damage dealt by any spell that is overloaded by up to 20%. Again through mastery in the elemental tree we will essentially gain a better version of Lighting Overload that will allow any direct damage spell to proc a lesser free version of itself. Hurray! This can add up to some extra damage by proccing off of your shocks and more.

Next up we lose Totem of Wrath, but gain an even better ability with the new Wrathful Totems talent. This talent allows your fire totems to increase the spell power of your party and raid members within 100 yards 10% essentially replacing your totem of wrath with any fire totem. Wow! Pick whichever fire totem you want and still get a spell bonus? Three cheers for Blizzard!

Elemental Shamans also gain two boosts to their AOE ability. The first is the new talent called Earthquake which is an AOE that does DOT to anyone that remains it it. It will last 10 seconds and has a chance to know down targets in the affected area. Shaman also gain Lava Surge which allows your Flame Shock DOT component to have a chance at resetting your Lava Burst abilities cooldown. Both of these added together grant a Shaman significantly more AOE damage capability.

Elemental Shaman appear to gain quite a bit with these changes. They gain AOE, more freedom in totem choices, and extra overloaded spells. The loss of certain talents seems to be covered off by the new mastery abilities, so it looks like a net gain for Elemental Shaman.

Enhancement

At first glance enhancement looses a number of key abilities. However when you look closer they have been shifted into the Enhancement Shamans mastery abilities. Those abilities grant extra melee damage, melee haste, and nature damage.

Thundering Strikes is gone so the 5% crit that it granted is gone. Deeper in the talent you lose Mental Dexterity which granted extra attack power. Lastly you lose Weapon Mastery which means losing 10% extra weapon damage. This will all hopefully be regained through the mastery abilities that you gain as Enhancement, but no final numbers have been provided yet for the mastery numbers.

In regards to totems, Earth’s Grasp is gone, as is Guardian Totems, and Earthen Power, however deeper in the talent tree you gain Totemic Vigor which adds up to 10% of your health to your totems which can really increase their survivability, especially in PvP. This will mean that they are not easily knocked out by a weak AOE blast.

Shamans also see a few new talents such as the tier one Focused Strikes talent that increases the damage dealt by your Primal Strike and Stormstrike abilities by up to 40%. This grants a big increase in damage right off the bat as Enhancement.

Enhancement Shamans also gain a little extra speed with the addition of Ancestral Swiftness which can add up to 15% extra movement speed. This extra speed can significantly increase your damage output in fights that require movement as you can get in and out of melee range quicker.

You will also gain a little extra damage due to Searing Bolts and Seating totem being able to set targets on fire. This is through the Searing Flames talent which places a DOT effect on anyone set aflame.

Lastly Lava Lash gains a little help through the new talent Improved Lava Lash which increases the damage of your Lava Lash ability by up to 30%, and by an additional 20% for each of your applications of Searing Flames on the target. It does consume those applications in the process, but it means that you can cause some significant extra fire damage in burst amounts.

Other than that several abilities move around in the talent tree but stay essentially the same.

Overall the tree maintains its flavor while seeming to gain a little damage. However, that will only be able to be determined for sure once the mastery numbers have been determined.

Restoration

The restoration tree received the fewest changes of the Shaman talent trees. Once again in this tree the +Crit talent has been removed, Tidal Mastery in this case, but here it is not replaced with a mastery ability that adds +Crit. How this will affect healing is unknown, however it appears that Shaman will rely more on larger base heals than by critical heals.

The mastery abilities for Restoration Shamans will grant extra healing, extra mana regeneration, and a new Deep Healing ability that heals a player more as they are lower health. This seems to reinforce the fact that Shamans will gain more healing power and be even more capable as a main tank healer because of it.

A very interesting new talent that has been added to the tree very early on in tier 4 is the Focused Insight talent. This talent comes into play after casting any shock spell. After a shock your next heal’s mana cost will be reduced by up to 75% of the cost of the shock and have its healing effectiveness raised by up to 25%.

This implies that Blizzard would really like to see Shaman healers able to do some damage as well in between healing. In fact doing so will almost be free mana wise, since you get 75% of the shocks mana cost back as a discount, and it increases the amount you heal your target for. This ability to through out a small amount of damage as well could make healing much more interesting and interactive for the class.

There is another new talent in tier 6 called Ancestral Resolve that will reduce incoming damage taken while casting a spell by up to 10%. This means that Shaman will take less damage from environmental damage in encounters when they are forced to plant and heal. More interestingly though is the effect it can have in PVP encounters. Reducing incoming damage by 10% could grant Restoration Shaman a lot more survivability in an Arena situation. Since most other healers have ways to avoid incoming damage based on cooldowns, this should bring shaman on par through a passive ability.

There is also a new Improved Cleanse Spirit talent that allows your base Cleanse Spirit to also remove a magic effect from a friendly target. This grants even more cleansing ability to the Shaman allowing more options for debuff removal in raids.

Overall not a whole lot changed in the tree, which was fairly solid already. The new “cause damage to boost healing” effect could be very interesting and maybe draw in a few more healers due to its interactive nature. Shaman healers are solid healers already though so the tree didn’t need a whole lot of work. If anything the mastery bonuses will grant what Shaman needed which was a bit more main tank healing power.

The Class as a Whole

The changes to all three of the talent trees come across as more of a refinement than full out change. That really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone though as the Shaman talent trees are already pretty solid and well defined. The changes remove several items that are now being handled by Mastery abilities as well as add items to fill in a few minor holes in abilities.

There is also some simplification in talents, but not as much as many players expected. As a class each tree seems to maintain a solid feel for what it is meant to do, while providing a few options for customization. At first glance though there still seems to be a definite primary build path through each tree. Blizzard had stated that there would be a less clear path and more optional talents, which I don’t see in these talent trees. There is still time for this to change before Cataclysms launch though.