Today my shaman died a little.

A post over on the forums caught my eye (and need for something to calm my nerves so I wouldn't go on a frothing rampage of Bloodlust and Flurry) and caused me to cry out along with many other shamans as well as a few of the other healing classes. Zarhym started out by explaining some ideas about how they were going to change dispelling to help PvP and PvE (he later made a post about how they are keeping both in mind with these changes). Truthfully I'm not sure what to say other than as an Enhancement shaman I am not happy. I'll let you read the post, and interject comments as necessary.

We wanted to introduce some of the changes to dispel mechanics coming in Cataclysm. Our goals were to make dispelling a little less trivial to do in PvP, and to make sure there is more equity in dispel capabilities among healers in both PvP and PvE.

So far so good. Sounds like a good plan, a little "spread the love" mentality. And making dispelling more trivial in PvP sounds like a good plan. "Less think, more SMASH!"

Within the system, there are currently five types of dispellable (or curable) buffs and debuffs: curse, disease, poison, defensive magic, and offensive magic. An example of defensive magic dispelling would be using a dispel to free a polymorphed ally, while offensive magic dispelling would be utilizing a dispel ability to strip away an enemy’s buff or heal-over-time (HoT) spell. The main distinction between these two types is in whether or not you can target an enemy with your dispel.

Some clarification of the 5 types of dispels. Note defensive magic dispelling is magic dispelling used defensively and offensive magic dispelling is magic dispelling used offensively.

In Cataclysm each healing class will be getting three out of the five types of dispels, with one of these always being a defensive dispel magic. This design makes sure that finding a healer with the ability to remove magic isn’t restrictive in building teams for Arenas or rated Battlegrounds. It also allows the encounter designers to assume, when designing dungeon or raid fights, that every group can dispel magic.

More explanation and clarification. Sounds like there is going to be plenty of magic debuffs floating around on boss fights in cataclysm much like disease and poison was during the current expansion. So healers having the ability to remove magic debuffs would be a good thing. Preemptive note: should say "each healing class will have potential of 3 out of the five types of dispels".

In addition, we're making the opportunity cost (what the player could have accomplished with different actions) for dispelling a bit steeper. We think the cost is too low for three reasons: 1) The actual mana cost is low. 2) You never waste a dispel. If you try to dispel a debuff that isn’t there then the dispel just won’t go off. 3) We have spells that remove debuffs with minimal input on the part of the player. In Cataclysm we are raising the mana costs, making it possible to waste mana by casting a dispel when there is nothing to dispel, and removing Cleansing Totem, Abolish Disease, and Abolish Poison from the game. With these changes in mind, we are working to plan dungeon and raid encounters where dispels aren’t in constant demand or spammed in order to be successful, though some need for dispels will still be a part of the design.

/cry and beginning of frothing outrage. I understand making it a little more exciting for dispelling since truthfully dispelling can be easy and like they said doesn't have a downside since it won't fire if there isn't anything to dispel and is relatively minor mana cost. But the point that caught my attention was "removing Cleansing Totem" I'll wait a bit to continue my Bloodlust fueled rage, but I would like to say I don't like losing totem that are useful. (I'm Looking at you Sentry totem!)

As previously mentioned, we are providing three dispel capabilities to all healing classes as follows:

• Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
• Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
  
• Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
  
• Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

Druid: check, Paladin:check, Priests: check, Shamans......wait a minute. Where is our disease and poison control.

There is some trade-off that is being made in making these changes and we wanted to expand on this further.

• Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
  
• All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.
  
• Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
  
• Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
  
• Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
  
• Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
  
• When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.

Frothing rage resume. So let me get this straight. You are removing one of the best shaman utilies in PvP and occasionally PvE from our list of buttons to push, due to trying to spread out the love a little. Talenting into the dispel magic isn't that bad considering I already drop a point into cleanse as a shaman to get rid of curses. Magic was the one thing we couldn't do so it's completely logical to get rid of 2 of our dispels in exchange for 1 that can only be accessed by the healing tree. You might see where I'm starting to go with this as an Enhancement shaman.

We will be the laughing stock in PvP if this goes through. Enhancement shamans already having to deal with kiting, curses, and magic now will also have to just take the poisons and diseases. The only thing I will have left as an enhancement shaman is my purge button to offensively dispel magic. Looks like I can now cleanse curses. Whoopti-freaking-doo. I might as well just /afk out of battlegrounds if I ever find myself up against a Rogue or DK. Sure we were kinda OP against DK with our cleansing totem (once killed a DK in arena as resto, neither of us extremely geared) But every class has some sort of anticlass for the most part. Mages hate druids because they can't polymorph or root them, DK's hated shamans since a ton of their DPS relies on diseases being on a target. Cleansing totem was THE totem I used for water in PvP since it put me on level ground with rogues(if i could break the stun chain) and DKs (since plate wearing dps vs mail wearing dps needs a little help). I wonder if we will be good at taking down any other class now that this is potentially in the works.

True these are just potential changes and all the details aren't out for everything that is happening, but needless to say I feel like I won't be PvPing very much come cataclysm. Might as well re-roll on a PvE realm.

Or maybe I'll just PvP on my OP druid since I'll be immune to poly and can un-poly all my teammates to boot.

As with all of our Cataclysm previews, keep in mind that any of these decisions could change when we’re in beta.

The thread can be read here