Blizzard has released news that yet another class will be receiving MS (mortal-strike) ability, Shamans. MS ability refers to the ability of a player to put a negative buff on his target that will limit incoming healing to that target. Shaman’s Flametongue Weapon, a temporary enchant a shaman can put only on his weapon, will now have the ability to reduce 50% of incoming heals.

This raises the number of classes with MS ability to four. Warriors were initially the main class looked at with a healing debuff. In that last patch though Hunters received a similar ability, Aimed Shot. The importance of this change by Blizzard at the time was that it could not be removed by another player.

Rogue’s being the only other class with a healing debuffs ability which is poison. The problem for a rogue is that it can be removed by classes with poison removing ability. In its current form Rogue’s enchant their current weapon same as shaman’s would yet Rogue’s ability can be removed by teammates of the person being attacked yet shaman’s would not.

Blizzard didn’t stop there though adding further increases to Toughness, Shamanistic Rage and totem global cooldown. The most important for arena is Toughness which will now have the ability to reduce movement impairing effects by up to 50%. This ability is currently 15 points into the Enchancement tree specialization. This should make it very difficult for shamans who are either resto (healing) or Elemental (ranged offensive) to receive Toughness.

On the outside this upgrade of the shaman class for arena seems like a response to the zero number of enchance shamans in the top ranks of arena points or recent tournaments world wide. Elemental shamans in 5 vs 5 have really been the only reliable location for shamans.

These buffs should make shamans a viable class in all formats. Still since flametongue is only applied when a target is in melee’ing another target and toughness is in the enchancement tree this seems like only an upgrade for one type of shaman not the entire class.

Here’s the full changes to shamans posted on mmo-champion.com:

-The global cooldown on casting totems has been reduced. It is now 1 second instead of 1.5
Flametongue Weapon now reduces the effectiveness of healing spells on your target by 50%. Lasts 5 seconds and refresh every hits.
-Toughness now Increases your armor value from items by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the duration of movement impairing effects on you by -10/20/30/40/50%.
-Shamanistic rage now let you regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power instead of 15. Duration reduced to 15 seconds. (Was 30 seconds)