Two things jumped out at me with our ZA raid, 1. Tank threat generation is exponentially higher. (I am not in beta so I have no clue if it still feels this way at 80). 2. AOE Dps/healing clearly rules the day. AOE encounters are most definitely going to be bigger, badder, and more intense, its clear due to blizzards focus on talents, abilities and changes that effect aoe.
Class specific points:
- I was concerned about my dps as elemental. I ended up bouncing from 4th to (very briefly) 1st and staying mainly 3rd behind our arms warrior and balance druid. There were 4 dps that consistently stayed above 1300. I probably do really really well on 2 and 3 mob pulls due to chain lightning hitting all of the mobs, anything more than 3 and im no where near the others. Fortunately there was a blue post stating shaman aoe is going to be looked at and will be changed to increase shaman aoe effectivness.
- Efficiency: in BC this was my main downfall. Getting dangerously close to OOM too often on boss fights was often times unavoidable. This has dramatically changed. Elemental is now highly effecient both on live and according to multiple sources, on beta. With blizzard constantly pushing haste as an important shaman stat this was inevitable since +haste = OOM. My strategy for now and probably while leveling is to glyph for effeciency (+30% to watershield passive mana regen and -10% cost to lightning bolt) and gear for haste.
Things are good, and I am frothing at the mouth for my first venture into Northrend.
