Improved Icy Talons

3.33: updated with some notes and strikethroughs, March 23rd 2010.

This is a really important buff, providing melee haste like a talented windfury totem. Either you provide it or a shaman does. In a 25-man raid, you should ensure someone brings it. In a 10-man, it’s a really nice benefit but not mandatory. Buff management depends on how progression-oriented your raid is. Normally I assume the buff is up in all my sims. DK and talented Shaman version are the same: 20% melee haste to the raid.

It costs 6 talent points though, so you have some trade-off to get it. Yet if another class brings the buff, 5 of those points are wasted in redundancy and the 6th gives you its par of 1% extra damage. Any Shaman can lay an untalented windfury (16% haste) but generally they’ve got better uses for that element if they’re not enhancement.

Key point in 3.3: if your 6 points are redundant due to a shammy, the 25% melee haste you personally gain are not as good an investment as spending the points in merciless combat and other talents.

In 3.33 the stacking has changed , so your IIT and your personal melee haste stack, giving 45% haste. More commentary in my 3.33 post.

In 3.3, if you did not have a shammy, the 6 points were better than alternative uses of the talents. I’m not sure this assertion in 3.33 yet.

How it procs

The raid buff procs when a target is hit by frost fever disease, which can be applied by glyphed howling blast or icy touch. It is procd by pestilence (I just tested it on dummies) contrary to many people’s reports. I’m not sure if rime proc’d HB or talented chains of ice do it (didn’t test).

It is fairly easy to keep up for its 20 second duration, since any frost tank will cast IT or glyphed HB every 20s unless they’re moving around or something.

Range of effect

The wowhead spell detail says 20 yards… of what, the disease? Totems have 30 yards. I’ll research, but perhaps one of my genius readers will tell us in comments.

Haste’s interaction with rune strike

Haste has a positive interaction with [Rune Strike]. There are a few variables to how often you can hit with RS: (a) how often you dodge (b) how often you have a melee attack (c) how much runic power you have.

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