Patch 3.3 PTR

Patch 3.3 is up on the PTR and the notes have appeared. Several blogs have already covered the changes, among them Big Hit Box, WoW.com, Windfury and Healing Way. Although I've refrained from commenting on PTR changes in the past, if I don't there isn't much really to discuss on patch day, cos its all been said before!

Sadly the premade character copy is full on EU, so I have transferred Kam the not-geared-for-Icecrown across to participate in the fun. Now I have a huge new hard drive, I am able to download the many gigabytes of patches required to get a 3.3 PTR client running. Just a pity I can't get a premade across, the best tactic is to constantly refresh the character copy page until the premade copy gets enabled.

So what are the interesting changes so far?

Elemental

* Fire Nova now Causes the shaman's active Fire totem to emit a wave of flames, inflicting 893 to 997 Fire damage to enemies within 10 yards of the totem.
* Elemental Reach now affects Fire Nova
* Improved Fire Nova now Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova by 20% and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 sec.

The few times I've been AOEing as Elemental, I have been using Magma totem so with this change instead of waiting for CL to get off cooldown, I can be spamming the Fire Nova spell instead. The Elemental Reach change means I can still stand back from the action and get the Fire Novas off, although with a 20 second duration, I need to run back in a lot to relay Magma. Perhaps Blizzard could add a "Refresh Totems" spell to reset the counters on them all? Please pretty please?

My current Elemental build has two talent points spare which I couldn't really find anywhere DPS increasing to put. Not any more, they will go into 2/2 Improved Fire Nova for a chock-full build.

This may or may not affect Enhancement, see the Big Hit Box article for more details... discussions on EJ are still ongoing basically.

* Enchant Weapon - Black Magic now cause your harmful spells to sometimes increase haste rating by 250.

Possible replacement for Berserking!

Right, now to get that PTR client installed so the fun can begin!