Dragonflight’s first major patch, Embers of Neltharion, has a lot in store for World of Warcraft players—Shadow Priest rework, a new gearing system, a new season, more Dragonriding abilities, a new Dragonriding drake, and major class balancing changes. In the sea of all these changes, a handful of tweaks coming to one specific class stand out.
On April 12, Blizzard Entertainment shared the PTR development notes detailing the latest additions to Dragonflight Patch 10.1. Since the large majority of players have focused on exhilarating changes to Mythic+ affixes in the second season, a couple of major Shaman quality-of-life changes slipped by unnoticed. Starting Patch 10.1, Bloodlust will cost Shamans only two percent of their mana and Spiritwalker’s Grace will have a grace period after it expires, allowing Shamans to complete their spell casts if it expires.
Right now, Shamans spend 21 percent of their total mana just to cast Bloodlust and this change will definitely make Restoration Shamans’ lives easier as they will have more mana at their disposal, especially in healing-intensive scenarios.
Although Restoration Shamans benefit the most from this, Elemental and Enhancement Shamans will welcome this change open-handedly. While Elemental Shamans only use mana for off-healing and this means more healing if something goes south after Bloodlust, Enhancement Shamans use mana as their main resource and will surely have an easier time managing their mana starting Patch 10.1.
Spritiwalker’s Grace, on the other hand, will predominately help Restoration and Elemental Shamans as both of these specs love having this tool in Mythic+ dungeons and raids to move and cast spells. Currently, if you start casting a spell and move when Spiritwalker’s Grace is about to expire, that spell cast is canceled. Even though this may not seem like a big deal, it can have a tremendous impact on how smoothly a pull in Mythic+ dungeon will go if you were about to cast a critical spell like Stormkeeper or Chain Heal.
These changes will roll out with Dragonflight Patch 10.1 on May 2 while the second season will officially start on May 9.
