Bindings of Lightning Reflexes

Last night the pattern for Bindings of Lightning Relfexes dropped. I had this item crafted for me by the top raiding guild on our server a few months back. It was great to see the pattern land in our guild. I can say despite paying over 3k gold for it a earlier in the year, I'm very glad that I did make the purchase when I did. That's my philosophy on gear: take your upgrades as the opportunity presents itself. Gearing properly is such an important part of being an Enhance Shaman you can improve your output dramatically by making the right choices.

If you are Enhance and you don't have the Bindings yet then here's what you need:
4 x Heavy Knothide Leather
4 x Primal Air
4 x Primal Water
12 x Wind Scales
4 x Heart of Darkness

The mats are easy enough to come by save for the Hearts of Darkness which drop off trash in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. I got my Hod ahead of our progression by paying a raiding guild for them, and if your guild isn't up to that level then you will have to do the same.

In my opinion, if your guild isn't up to MH/BT yet it is all the more reason to go out and get these bracers made. Yes there are other bracers out there you can get and some very decent ones, too. But the 27 haste rating on these makes them ideal for pairing with the Left and Right Fists of Brutality. And believe me, once you start stacking haste you will fall in love with it.

As for these bracers they rate 120.09 for my own personal Enhancement Point (EP) calculation. What the hell is that you ask? Read here. I'll also post some tips on creating an your EP calculator in Excel in a future post.

Kaz'rogal Down

This week is Mount Hyjal Week in our guild, Unorthodox. We are dedicating ourselves to getting to and killing Archimonde. After the reset yesterday morning we marched in there last night and took down Rage, Anetheron, and then finally Kaz'rogal.



We had a clean one-shot on Rage, followed by a wipe in Anetheron then a kill and then off to the horde camp. We saw Kaz on Monday as well, but I was tanking in Finn so I didn't get to experience the unique boss fight from a mana-user's perspective. Tonight I did get to face him on Stoney.

If you haven't faced Kaz, here's his gimmick: Mark of Kaz'rogal. It drains 3000 mana and then if you dont have any mana to drain, it turns you into a bomb. I must admit I was a bit off my game last night and I wasn't prepared for the fight. However, here are the tactics I did use:
1) Only dropped 2 totems: WF for my all-melee group and Mana Spring (duh)
2) Stopped shocking, need to conserve mana
3) Kept up Water Shield - his War Stomp procs 1 consumption so thankfully I was eating those water globules quickly.
4) And of course Shamanistic Rage and Mana Pots.

I still ran out of mana with about 15% health left on him so I think I could have played my cards better. My strategy was to wait until my mana pool was about 50-60% then pop Sham Rage. That turned out to be too late. At that point I was marked again and was losing mana faster than I could gain it. In the end I was too low on mana to risk being in melee range so I ran out and away from everyone, then my Sham Rage CD was done but I couldn't get back in melee range in time so I just had to sit outside away from everyone and blow up.

Next time I will pop Sham Rage earlier in the fight, maybe around 75% and as I'm marked. Then I will pot at my first opportunity. Hopefully between totem and Water shield I will be able to keep up for 2 more minutes, then drop Heroism when the Sham Rage CD is up again.

Either way, we're on our way to Azgalor who drops the Bow Stitched Leggings and the token for the T6 gloves! I'll probably let someone else get the gloves, but I want those legs!

Advice to a Guildmate

A fellow guildie powerleveled a shaman for himself. His main is a feral druid and one of our main tanks in raids, that also has full PvP sets for resto and boomkin. He's one helluva druid. So he decided to level the other awesome hybrid class: tha shammy.

He hit 70 amazingly fast. He leveled as enhance then immediately started grinding honor in AV in order to acquire S1 Gladiator gear. Today he came to me and asked whether he should spec Ele or Enhance. You will might be surprised to hear that I told him to spec Ele.

Traitorous? No. That was earnest advice for a friend. I told him straight out that if he plans to do arena and bg's that Enhnace is exponentially more difficult to play in PvP. Constantly fighting the global cooldown, always the first target in arena, subject to every root and snare effect, and no "super weapon" in PvP like an Arms Warr's Mortal Strike or a Mage's Ice Block, or pretty much any level 1 rogue talent. Also considering that he's three seasons behind in gear he doesn't stand a chance of gearing up well or even being satisfied with Enhance in PvP.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm Enhance for life. When I'm in instances and people want to know if I want the mail healing gear that dropped for off-spec I tell them "my off-spec is PvP." I don't heal. I don't cast. I do swing my weapons and I sure as hell bring the hurt.

As for the guildmate looking for the most viable PvP route, I told him to take the Ele tree. Granted the most viable and valuable is probably Resto, and he'll take that as an off-spec, but for being the lone wolf in AV and wanting to deal damage Elemental is better for him.

As for me, I'm up for the challenge. Arena updates to come this weekend. Stay tuned.

Re-gemmed

This week I decided to upgrade my gems. It started out by paying DKP for one Bold Crimson Spinel. Then I realized that I have all of these Badges of Justice in the bank that I'm not going to spend any time soon. OK, I could get Trousers of the Scryer's Retainer over the Cataclysm Legplates I'm wearing now, but I just got the legs, and we are probably only a few weeks off tackling Azgalor who drops Bow-stitched Leggings. When those drop I might want to switch out for the Tunic of the Dark Hour to keep my hit rating up. Besides, I just want to enjoy my T5 leggings while I have them.

Getting back on topic... I spent a few badges on a few epic gems. Specifically, 90 BoJ on 6 epic gems to cut into either Bold Crimson Spinels or Inscribed Pyrestones. I intentionally mis-socketed two items: I filled my Coif of the Jungle Stalker entirely with Bold Crimson Spinel, and put one Bold and one Bright Crimson Spinel in my boots. I lost the +8 AP on the helm and the +3 Hit on the boots. That wasn't a problem as the Enhancement Points of both being socketed as such outweighs the loss of the socket bonus. But since I replaced two Sovereign Tanzanite I ended up losing 12 Stam and therefore 120 HP. This shouldn't be a problem... buuut... for some reason in SSC last night I popped a Fel Strength Elixir which was another 100 HP down the drain, and with no Blessing of Kings my HP fell to 9099 raid buffed--the lowest it's been in months. I was quite disturbed and of course for the Leo fight having low HP is quite a liability. Granted my attack power was also 2004, which is the highest it's ever been (before combat buffs start kicking in) and my crit was sitting comfortably above 30%.

I enjoyed the high AP but decided it was too much of a liability anyway and popped a regular Elixir of Major Strength for the second attempt and kill. I didn't use a Flask because we weren't sure if we were going to Mags or Hyjal next (Leo was the only boss standing in SSC other than Lady V). We ended up going to Hyjal and one-shotting Rage, incidentally.

With my gear re-gemmed I haven't had a chance to crunch the numbers in WWS yet, but the loss of 3 hit was not tragic--my miss percentage stayed below 10%. And being in the high 1900's in AP out of combat made me quite happy.

Justice is Served in Boterac Valley

Blizzard unleashed massive bans on people that used the Glider program. Maybe now people will actually be playing in AV rather than AFKing.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/05/20/mass-bannings-strike-glider-users/

Going Downhill

We had a really rough arena day yesterday. We went 5-8 and drove our rating down to 1566. It sucked completely. At one point we were up to 1603, but we only had 9 matches so we had to play again. We lost that match and lost 18 points... ouch. So we played another, lost it but only lost 3 points. Another against the same team and lost 3 points again. Then we lost one more, lost a ton of points and had to call it a day.

The damn friggin rogues were ripping us apart. We need a strategy to beat the teams with rogues. I spend most of the fight with my shield on unless they are not hitting me. But when the team pops out they only see a warrior and a shaman so naturally I'm the target. I start with the shield, get totems down quickly, then back into Ghostwolf to avoid at least a Sap. But with us playing defensively we're giving the other team the opportunity to mana burn, mana drain, and do big damage. There are just so many tricks up a rogue's sleeve they don't even have to be well geared to compete against an S3 team. We focus-fire on them and they Shadowstep away or Cheat Death, Blind, Cloak of Shadow, Vanish, and get a heal. Then we are starting all over again. Even with Faerie Fire and dots up on them that Cloak of Shadows gives them the chance to get away.

If they are on our druid it's twice as bad. Our damage is wasted and our healer is going down. Nasty nasty nasty. We were all bent out of shape yesterday after arenas.

We are working on some rogue strategies. First of all, we're going to have the warrior Intercept when the rogue is on our druid. We're toying with the idea if we should Intervene as well. That would mean lost rage for him as he switches in and out of stances, but it might help with a timely Intercept/Intervene. We shall see.

The other thing that becomes clear is that if we are going to FF on a rogue, we have to keep after it. After he blows all his cooldowns, we have 1 minute to burn him down again or all those cd's will be back up again.

Another strategy is to kill anything that does not have a life-saving effect. That means no targeting mages, rogues, or paladins, and avoiding warlock and priests (assuming they are SL/SL and disc, respectively). That means we kill hunters (we loooove killing hunters), shamans, druids, and maybe even warriors. In fact, that's a thought. I wonder if we should take down a warrior first if the group has one? I can pop a shield and Shamanistic Rage to help mitigate the increased damage I'd take, but that could work if we face a warr/rogue team.

With summer here our druid is out of school and we will have more time to get in more arena matches. I'm glad because I hate having to do them at the last minute. I was also talking with a guildie that has three teams over 1800, including a 2000 rated 2v2. He says the best times he finds for arena is early in the morning and late at night. I'll be keeping track and we'll see when the best times of day are for 3v3.

Anetheron Down

Congratulations Unorthodox on downing the 2nd boss in Mount Hyjal!

Horde camp here we come!

We got a very late start because we had three healers who couldn't make it due to working late. Fellow guild leader and shaman Shawck respeced to resto, we pulled in a priest recruit and a paladin recruit and got started about half an hour late. After a one-shot on Rage and a wipe on Anetheron, Shawck's WoW crashed and we had to wait half an hour for him to repair it--no other healers were available. I worked on the positioning for the next attempt. With Shawck back online we cleared through the trash and took down the boss with a very clean kill. Very few deaths, lots of great healing, and heads up playing by the raid when they got infernos dropped on their heads.

I was pleased with my performance and was totem twisting of a different sort. I would drop Fire Nova totems every time they were up, the Magma totems when it was on cooldown. It was not the least bit mana efficient, but who cares? A quick drink between each pull and I was good to go. Other than the late start and the long break, it was a very fun night.

Enhancement Specs

I really only run with one spec now and that is the PvP focused one because it barely sacrifices any utility in PvE. This is the spec I stole from Push, Diivide, and all the other top arena Enhancement Shamans: 0/47/14

The 2 points in Guardian Totems and 2 in Imp Ghost Wolf make it the PvP spec of choice. The 2 second improved cooldown on Grounding Totem makes a big difference in long arena matches. And the Imp Ghost Wolf I love for chasing down crafty Druids. You think you can Travel Form away from me? HA! Frost Shock + Ghost Wolf and I'm on you. I'll even chase Taurens deep behind enemy lines in AV--I actually get past the usual wall of defense because I'm a bit less conspicuous in Ghost Wolf. That poor druid will be dead before the rest of the horde around him knows whats going on. Getting out is another matter...

Back to the spec. I'm not going to get into the Elemental Devastation debate. You can read all about the myth of that here. I went down that road one week and decided it was garbage. I am however going to point out how important the Nature's Guidance is for raiding as well as Totemic Mastery. Simply put, if you don't have points in Nature's Guidance as an Enhance Shaman you don't belong in a raid.

Prior that spec, I was spec'd 0/44/17 with 5 points in Anticipation being helpful when I did pull aggro (save my butt vs. Gruul a few times) . Also the Improved Reincarnation I considered to be a benefit to the raid. I took Tidal Focus and Healing Focus 3/5 to throw a few Lesser Healing Waves to the MT during some particularly nasty boss fights.

That's actually one of the great things about being a Shaman: so much utility. I can be a chart-topping dps'er and with one eye on the tank can toss in quick heals as back up when say 2 MT healers get Watery Graved in the Tidewalker fight. In fact I specifically keep my MT-Heal macro hotkeyed during that fight. I never used Healing Wave, only Lesser. And being an Enhance Shaman I'm never worried about going OOM. 15 seconds on swings on the boss and I replenish my mana completely.

Now in this spec the Toughness helps across the board against ranged & melee whereas the Anticipation would be a liability against Warriors and less helpful against ranged. Toughness is also unique that it reduces movement slowing effects by 50%, which is of course a huge help to keep from getting kited.

The biggest question for me was should I go 3/3 Mental Quickness and 4/5 Unleashed Rage, or 2/3 MQ & 5/5 UR? I ended up going with the 3/3 & 4/5. I think the extra heal power helps when I have to backup heal our druid and the reduction in shock will help in the final throes of a tight race to eek out one more wicked interrupt despite being so close to OOM that it hurts.

I Love My Shield

I love my shield. I picked up the Gladiator's Shieldwall a few weeks back and created a simple macro to swap between that and Fury. (Yes I still use that and not a S1 or S2 OH.) Recently in AV's I've found myself in small groups leading the charge to RH as 25 people go to Galv and 10 are botting/AFK. Being in the front of the charge means that the Frostwolf Bowman switch targets to me first. As soon as I hit IBT I pop on that shield and get ready to take some damage. By the time I'm past TP I usuaully dismount and heal myself then mount up again and keep moving. That's the first use of the shield I get in bg's.

Then throughout the rest of the bg as I'm facing off against Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, or Enhance Shaman I pop on that badboy and get to dropping the right totems. Boosting my armor up to 13k and my resilience to 329 makes a big difference in those fights.

If you are an enhance shaman you need a shield, period. I find myself using it over and over again. I use it as I'm running for my life (eqiup shield, Grounding Totem, Earthbind Totem, Insta-Ghostwolf and RUN!) and as I'm facing down one or more melee targets. Using that tactic I find I'm staying alive longer, which is always a good thing.

Not Much Action

Stoney's not been getting much action recently. I was out of town for the weekend--back to see my family for Mother's Day and so I didn't run ZA or Kara. Then due to some nasty spring showers my return flight was canceled and I missed our Monday Mount Hyjal run, which is too bad because I do enjoy Hyjal. On top of that the resto druid in our 3v3 is being punished by his parents and his keyboard was taken away! So not much action for arenas lately; in fact I didn't even get in throw-away points on Finn last week.

For raiding, this week we got a very late start in SSC on Tuesday and only got Hydross, Lurker, and Tidewalker down. One shot each. But the trash clearing and boss killing left us with no time to take down a fourth. We went back in on Thursday and finished off Leo and Fathom Lord Karathress. Then hopped over to Mags and one-shot him.

I took the token off FL for a shiny new pair of Cataclysm Legplates. According to my EP numbers it's about 10% better than my Vengeful Gladiator's Linked Leggings once socketed. I was debating putting in a Bold Crimson Spinel, but decided against it as I would be upgrading these legs again in Hyjal with Bow-stitched Leggings or could spend 100 Badges on Trousers of the Scryers Retainer. We have some gems sitting in the guild bank available for DKP so it's just a matter of being sure I put them in something I'm going to keep for a while. Being pretty sure I'll replace these pants sooner rather than later I just went with the Bold Living Ruby. And of course the Nethercobra Leg Armor.

Damage-wise in the raid last night I was putting out some good numbers. Once again I was over 1100 dps overall, but boss fights saw lower numbers to the nastiness of the Leo fight. We actually had a very clean kill on Leo this round. The healers did an awesome job keeping everyone alive. We won't mention how a certain Enhancement Shaman raid leader pulled the boss by running up to show where warlock tank stands and ended up aggroing the Spellbinders. Nope. Not going to mention that you can proximity pull them and it's not like the Mags fight where you have to damage-pull them. No mention of the 1/2 raid wipe as a result of that.

Ah well, I'm typing aimlessly at this point because I can't hit the Publish Post button because my internet is down. I better stop now before this becomes a massive nasty wall of text. Too late? Yep. (Yay for neighbors with unsecured Wi-Fi!)

The Second Most Important Thing

What is the most important thing to topping the DPS charts? For enhancement shamans I’d say the most important thing is gear. Well, gear and spec. OK, gear, spec, and constant shocks & Stormstrikes. One could say that makes what I’m about to say the fourth most important thing, but realistically if you are serious about raiding as an enhancement shaman you should have the spec and the shocks/Stormstrikes down pat, no questions asked. That again makes gear the single most important thing with what I’m about to say the second most important thing. Moreover, what I’m about to say as the second most important thing trumps spec and spells, because without it everything else goes to waste. What is it?

Staying alive.

A dead dps’er does no dps. Watch the 0/21/40 Warlock rip aggro too fast off the tank. Watch him die. Watch him continue to be dead and do no damage. Same goes for a bad enhancement shaman that Stormstrikes too early in a boss fight, or maybe even just starts out too early gets some unlucky windfury crits, rips aggro, pulls boss, and in a best case scenario dies. In a worst case scenario the tank can’t recover aggro, the Mage Ice Blocks, three healers die and it’s a wipe.

Similarly, Blizzard is quite fond of the “stay out of the fire/void/water/lava/poison/etc” type of encounters. Gruul: move out of cave-ins. Lurker: get under the water. Zul’Jin: avoid cyclones in phase 3, get out of the pillars of fire in phase 5. Rage Winterchill: run from Death & Decay. And along those lines there are whirlwinds to avoid on bosses (High King, Zul’Jin, Leo), times when aggro is dropped, and adds to pickup, kill, and/or avoid. Not to mention environmental damage.

All this adds up to a lot happening to everyone in the raid, and lots of hurt for the healers to fix. You might not get a timely heal so don’t take chances. Instead take measures to ensure you stay alive. Here are the things I do to be sure I’m up and about throughout the entire boss fight:

1) Don’t start until the tank is good and ready. On fights like Gruul and Void Reaver I wait a loooong loooong time. I know I’m going to out-threat at least 1 of the 3 or 4 tanks. I want them to have as much of a lead as possible.
2) Use health pots. Sounds logical right? You’d be surprised how many dps’ers don’t show up to raids with health pots. Or that don’t use them. Buy the mats on the AH, find a potion master in your guild and have them make you stacks—procs FTW.
3) Healthstones. In my guild we call it “Stoney Crack” because I’m addicted to healthstones. I ask for fresh HS after every wipe and before every boss fight. I want to be sure everyone in the raid has every opportunity to stay alive, but also, the HS is the first thing that I use.
4) Lesser Healing Wave. Yeah, you can heal yourself! Go figure. In fact, if you are spec’d right you even have +healing based on your AP. Throw yourself a heal.

Seems logical right? Not breaking news here; not telling you anything you don’t already know. But how often do you pop a HS, a pot, and throw yourself a LHW? If you die on a boss fight with either HS or pots on CD then you've failed--except of course for those 27k Hurtful Strikes. ouch.

I’ll throw out one other tidbit. OK two-—I’m feeling generous, maybe it’s the Guinness talking. First, hot key your means to heal. Be it HS, pot, or LHW, keep them close at hand. I learned this in the fall as we were taking on Lurker. After taking a Whirl followed by a Geyser (or vice-versa) then scrambling to get my mouse over to the health pot section of one of my action bars as my life ticks away 500 health at a time from Scalding Water and a close call or two and a death or three, I decided to make full use of my mouse. I have a 5-button mouse and in real life the two thumb buttons on mapped to Ctrl+V and Ctrl+C for quick copy and paste functionality as I’m Excel-ing my way through the day. So in WoW I have them bound to my HS and health pots; occasionally to a auto self-cast LHW. Pressing a button is 0.5 to 1.0 second faster than seeking and clicking—-and often makes the difference between life and death.

Finally, I have a WTFOMGHOLYS#!& heal macro. The macro pops everything I have that can possibly heal me in one click. I stopped using it in raids where healers are quick to respond and a HS+pot combo results in about 3 subsequent over-heals, whereas popping a HS will save my ass long enough for the healers to react and top me off. But, if you want the macro it’s something like this:

/use Master Healthstone
/use Crystal Charged Focus
/use Cenarion Healing Salve
/use Bottled Nethergon Vapor
/use Super Healing Potion

The “Master Healthstone” will use any of the three levels, and since it shares a CD with Crystal Charged Focus you won’t burn both. Next just for laziness I include the two instance-specific heal pots followed by the general one.

Happy dpsing with your new-found extra long life. LHW FTW!

AV Timing

Just an observation, but WTH is with AV’s during the afternoon? I do my best to only do AV in the morning or late at night. Come 2pm server time (3pm EST) I stop playing bg’s altogether. I find the quality of alliance play dramatically decreases after 3pm EST. My guess: the kids are out of school and start joining bg’s before their dinner time. It’s the only thing I can come up with to explain the dramatic difference. Today I was waiting for a flight back to see my family so I had time to kill after my girlfriend left (she doesn’t game) and before my I had to leave for my flight (which got delayed two hours anyway). I braved the AV battleground for 2500 honor points worth-—it was AV weekend after all—-and tolerated some of the most colossal and spectacular losses.

Now at this point it’s worth mentioning that the arguments of “Alliance sucks at bg’s” and “Alliance PvP suxor” is just complete nonsense. My PvP record in all bg’s is above .500 meaning I’ve been in more winning bg’s than I have in losing ones. That counts both on the whole as well as individually per battleground. Yes even AB. But AV is the closest at only 56% wins, probably because I play it the most even when I know the kids are out of school and we’re going to lose. A losing AV on AV Weekend will net more honor than a winning WSG & AB… combined.

So I ask again, what’s with winning AV’s in the morning and losing in the afternoon? It’s not the Alliance sucking. I think it’s the kids coming out of school.

Damn Rogues

Tonight was a rough night in arena for us. We went 5-6 and dropped nearly 20 points in our rating. We had to call it a night due to our Druid needing to get to bed, but agreed to try again later in the week to get that rating back up.

The problem tonight: rogues. Damn friggin rogues. Hate. If it's not Kidney Shot it's Cheap Shot. Then it's Vanish or ShadowStep or Cheat Death. And it's not that they do a lot of damage--they don't It's just the complete and utter immobilization. The worst part was that we were not handling the group makeups very well and going after
the wrong players. It was an off-night to say the least.

When the rogue got on me I would switch to shield and pop Shamanistic Rage, but that's only 15 seconds of love. When they got on our druid healer he was immobilized and I had to backup heal. This took the pressure off their healer who could then assist with DPS and/or CC. Horrible all around. We are all looking up some strategies on how to handle rogues because let's face it, the RMP (Rogue Mage Priest) combo is the nastiest of them all and we are sure to face more and more rogues the higher we get.

I'm ok with losing a hard-fought match, though it sucks. And losing to a 2000+ rated team is quick and relatively painless. But losing to an undergeared rogue just because it's a damn rogue just plain sucks.

Our only loss against a no-rogue team was to a holy pally, ret pally, MS warr combo. that couldn't be a worse combo for us. It would be a caster's delight, but not ours.

On the plus side on the night, we faced ourselves (enhance sham, MS warr, resto druid) and owned them. That felt good, we realized we are doing something right that we could take down a team that matches us.

I think I am going to make a kill-list-order for us to set a few must-kills from the start so that we can take them out the moment they appear on our screens. Then after they are down we can go after the lower priority targets. More to come on that.

Ah, to AoE

Our first night in Hyjal on Monday was a smashing success and I'm sure we'll be back again on next Monday to down Anetheron. I was trying to do the WoW Web Stats on that first run but apparently the Java applet is broken right now. I did want to see the WWS data because the Recount data I had showed something very interesting: I was top on DPS for melee, but the mages and warlocks KILLED IT.

Those fights are AoE crazy and with a Paladin tank once he gets 2 ticks on Consecration off those mobs are going to stick to him like glue. Seed of Corruption, Blizzard, Arcane Explosion, you name it, the AoE'ers were having a field day. It was madness!

I would drop a Magma Totem, but really what's 125-150 damage per tick compared to those casters? I had my fun on the the Banshees but oh to be an AoE'er and bomb those AoE targets! Hyjal is a field day for mages and warlocks.

Once I get the WWS up I'll take a look at my damage and see how I fared. I recall that Recount showed my miss at only around 8%, which is very nice.

Mount Hyjal: First Experiences

Last night was a big night for us as we stepped into Mount Hyjal for the first time. Of course someone went up and talked to Jaina Proudmore and got the event started before we were all ready--heck most of us had yet to even zone in. That did not start things off in on the right foot but the rest of the night went smooth as can be.

The trash waves were nuts. We had 2 bear tanks, 2 warr tanks, and 1 main prot pally tank. Plus we had me and a dps warr to pick up odds and ends when there were too many casters. I was main assist for the night and found the hardest part was helping the tanks get the caster mobs down into the AoE. But despite having to almost entirely single-target kill all the casters our melee dps team was up for the challenge. We did have three rogues, that fury warr and me. Plus the bear tanks switching to kitty when their targets were down.

We made it through the first few waves and wiped on the 8th wave on our first attempt. Our second attempt we saw the boss and 1-shotted him! Awesome job to everyone on the kill.



We got to Anetheron on our 2nd attempt and wiped to Infernos. Same story a second time. Some revisions to that strategy and we will get him down.

1608 - The climb begins

It was a good night for Stoneybaby over all. We did a Kara power-clear for a quick 22 badges, followed by 3v3 arena where we went 13-5 and took our rating up to 1608, then had some consecutive AV wins to round out the night.

The 3v3 team consists of Riddaren the MS Warrior, Schlimmy the resto Druid, and me. Schlimmy is an amazing arena healer and a flawless kiter. Ridd is an extremely smart player and though still working on his pvp gear goes blow for blow with me in there for damage output.

Our strategy is Shock & Awe--charge in and get on a clothie before the other team can adjust and set up a strategy. The hardest part of this for me are the initial 10 seconds of the fight. I have to get totems down, get my healer focus-target set, Frost Shock our dps target to keep it slowed, and pop Heroism. Even without dropping totems, just a Frost Shock and a Heroism is 3 seconds worth of fight. I also try to drop WF totem right away to help the warr. That's 4 seconds of GCD used. If I'm stunned or spell-locked those 4 seconds can become 6, 7, 8 or more. Then add in if I become the focus fire target of two melee or a hunter/melee combo I immediately have to put on my shield and pop Shamanistic Rage. That may not seem like much time, but in one of our wins and one of our losses the first to die was within 3 seconds of engaging. And believe me, you lose someone that fast you know it's over at that point. Deciding what to do first is a split second decision and can be crucial.

Here were the matchups we had tonight (listing healers first)
Pr-Pa-Wr -- W
Pa-Sh-Wr -- W
Dr-Wl-Wr -- W
Pa-Hu-Ma -- W
Pr-Hu-Wr -- W
Pr-Ma-Pa -- W
Sh-Hu-Ma -- L
Dr-Ro-Wr -- L
Pa-Ma-Wr -- L
Pa-Ro-Wl -- W
Dr-Wl-Wr -- W
Dr-Wl-Wr -- W
Ma-Ro-Wl -- W
Pa-Sh-Wr -- L
Pr-Pa-Wr -- W
Sh-Hu-Wl -- L
Sh-Hu-Wl -- W
Pa-Sh-Wr -- W

We set a goal of 1600 rating on the night and were within 5 points when we took our fifth loss. It was to an all-dps team that zerged me and ripped me to shreds. In that fight we chose the Warlock to kill first but afterwards we talked about it and decided if we got them again we should go for another. He was SL/SL and so would not be doing much damage and and would take too long to kill. We figured that we should have gone for the hunter first if we faced them again--and we did!

Same team for the next match, I equipped my shield before we began, knowing they would come for me again. Ridd charged in, I got off heroism before they got to me, and put down a grounding and a tremor totem. I probably should have popped Shamanistic Rage before the totems because by the time I did pop it I was already below 50% health. But we had the hunter down low, too. It was a DPS race and though we only had two DPS to their three, it was all tied up. Schlimmy, left to his own devices, was spamming Regrowth on me trying desperately to keep me up. I was taking a beating even with the shield and Sham Rage. The hunter Feigned Death but we were wise to it and both got crits off on him to finish him off. And then immediately after I was down to a Lightning Bolt from the opposing shaman.

It was now two against two and they went for Ridd next. He was low at one point but Schlim got off a Swiftmend bringing him back to above 50% health. During this the warlock had stopped casting/dotting and was chain-fearing Ridd. Eventually after so many fears Ridd was immune and thus free to beat the shaman down to a pulp, which he was doing to the best of his ability between fears. The warlock tried to solo those two but to no avail. We took the win and recouped some of the points we lost to them in the first match.

Our last match of the night proved easy. We went for the shaman first--of course everyone does! He was squishy and the paladin was late coming out of their starting area. It was over before it started with a fast Heroism, some Windfury crits, and wicked execute by Ridd. BAM! 1608 on the night.

I'm feeling good about this.

Overall Damage & DPS

Yesterday as I was prepping for our raid a fellow Enhance Shaman pinged me and asked me what was my AP & Crit%. I get these random pings every so often as I'm pretty well geared--probably geared ahead of my guild's progression level thanks to lots of hard work collecting badges. I replied I'm at 1562 AP and 29.65% crit, to which he replied that he is at similar levels. He asked for some suggestions on gearing so we found each other outside of the Aldor bank and like two dogs sniffing each other's privates we started inspecting one another.

I have a helpful inspection mod that summarizes the target player's key stats so I quickly noticed he was at 140+ hit rating. As we were comparing notes he told me I should get more hit as I am currently at 113. As an aside, I don't know how one goes from asking advice to doling it out, but that's not the point here. As I've read there is no magic number of hit for shamans, we get a good deal of it from Nature's Guidance but in truth I would be sacrificing something in AP, crit, or my new favorite: haste. I'm in no rush to start stacking hit; as long as my miss % stays around 10% during 25man raids I'm happy.

Next we launched into a quick discussion about dps in raids. For some reason I was overcome with a brief moment of modesty--I don't know what hit me!--and said my raid DPS is somewhere in the 800+ range, topping out at 1000 on good nights. And like all good random people in WoW I was immediately one-upped with a "oh well I top out at 1200 and am usually around 1000 dps. Yeah, you need more +hit." OK, now he's gone from asking advice, to doling out bad advice and lousy oneupmanship.

Despite being put off it got me thinking, what is my damage like? I went back to some recent WWS summaries and realized I was being quite modest--and also talking about overall sustained DPS, and not a flash of Heroism-inspired burst damage. Here's a few snippets of damage in both 10 and 25 man raids:

SSC - 4 boss power clear night

• 1,041 DPS overall on the night
  
• 9% of total raid damage, 2nd in damage meters
  
• 1,254 DPS sustained throughout the Karathress fight!
  
• 12.8% miss--wow that was higher than I thought
  
• 44% of my damage was from white swings, 27% from Windfury, with 36% and 38% of those two being crit strikes, respectively

ZA - 4 bosses down, took in some guildies for a gearing run

• 767 DPS overall on the night
  
• DPS during boss fights was mostly 970+, though Jan'alai I do significantly less because I'm killing one of or both of the hatchers
  
• White damage was 45% of my total, with 37% of that crit and only 10% miss
  
• Windfury was 29% of total damage and 35% of that crit

Gruul/Mags Night - another gearing run for some that still need T4

• Only 885 dps, 2nd in the raid right behind our main s-priest
  
• But that low overall DPS number is to be expected consider all the running around in the HK and Gruul fights
  
• 968 was my best dps against Mags.
  
• Overall white damage was 47% to total, with only 31% crit and and 13.9% missed
  
• Windfury was higher with 30% to total damage but yet only 28% of that critting.

I think that last bullet is the most interesting. Windfury contributed 30% to total damage which was the highest of the three examples given, but yet it was the lowest crit of the three. What this means is that I was landing more Windfury's off my main hand than my off hand. Now given that my gear was the same on both nights, I wonder what else is at work here? Is it the Blizzard RNG at work, or is there some way to time my shocks and stormstrikes...? Anyone have any thoughts about this?

But overall, it just goes to show at even at 113 hit rating I more than make up for the misses with increased damage. Though I still might go to Yo's Simulator to and try to tweak my raid gear choices a bit for Monday's raid.

Death is the Best CC

I didn't play Stoney at all yesterday. I logged on to cut a gem for someone, grabbed all the Shiny Fish Scales and Fish Oils that I had sent to myself from Finn and Nix, disenchanted some stuff, and then that was it.

Part of the problem was that we didn't have the right raid makeup for ZA last night so I canceled the raid. No raid usually means no playing on Stoney. Why is that you ask? It may sound arrogant, but Stoney has become too leet for 5-mans. OK maybe not too leet but I struggle running 5-man instances without Salv from a Pally. My raid gear has a good amount of haste stacked: 96 Haste Rating and while that only translates to 6.09% more fastiness (did I just make that up? yes) that is before DST procs and flurry procs. I end up being completely unable to control my aggro--something I know all enhancement shamans face and our Ele brothers and sisters feel too. Add in the fact that I'm starting to stack leather thus making myself squishier and you get one instantly-dead shaman after an unlucky string of crits.

My options? I can run 5-mans in my PvP gear. It's a gearing downgrade plus with all the resil and armor I can survive long enough to take a few hits for the tank to taunt, me to pop a pot and the healer to toss me few heals. Or I can only run with paladins, but considering they are sadly few and far between in our guild that is easier said than done. I could also run instances completely devoid of Stormstrike and Flame/Earth Shock. But what fun is that?

Really though I've been trying to run heroic Magister's Terrace. I love running it with my guild because we have some awesome tanks and healers. And it's a challenge for me because I go in as one of the CC'ers. Yes, you read that right: I go as CC. For those enhancement shamans out there that are unable to get into heroic MgT groups because of our supposed lack of CC you are missing your unique, unbreakable form of CC: killing a clothie caster. Death is the best CC. My group knows I'll pick up the warlock; I usually rip him down maybe only take one unlucky spell in the face. Here's how I do it.

They key is to start with a Grounding Totem down. You have to do this at least 10 seconds before the pull to ensure your cooldown is up again. When the tank pulls there are going to be multiple caster mobs and you won't always catch your mob's spell in the grounding but you need to have it down early. For the packs on the lower level the tank is going to LoS pull for the most part, so start out peaking around the corner and after he pulls Purge the Fel Armor. He won't recast it, it will get him to pay attention to you and not the tank, and the slightly less spell damage helps. Once he's around the corner if your Grounding Totem has been sucked up already then drop another. Start beating on that lock. Hard. Now here's the trick: on his first cast Earth Shock him even if your Grounding Totem is down and would suck it up anyway. You have 40 seconds before the totem despawns so let it suck up the second cast, if there is one. You need to abuse the CD's blizz gives you. This way if he goes for a quick cast after the first one is shocked your totem picks it up and you have your ES ready for the third cast. The rotation is Grounding, Purge, LoS, Grounding (again if needed), Earth Shock, let Grounding absorb, Earth Shock.

If you let the totem absorb the first cast and you shock the second one, you're completely without means of interrupt on the third cast. And worse, if he gets a heal from the Physician or a Blood Knight you are now behind in the cooldown rotation and going to start taking Immolates and Incinerates. And the latter blows up the former making you one crispy shaman.

When there are Magisters in the group you're going to take a spell in the face because you can't control which spell gets grounded. But for the most part my CC-via-death works wonders. I HIGHLY recommend practicing on regular mode to get a feel for it. Once you do, you're ready to take your CC to the big leagues.

It's gotten to the point that I ask tanks to assign me casters in other heroic runs now. Since my aggro can't be controlled we decided to use my powers for good and not for evil! That rotation plus windfury crits on a clothie = Shaman CC

You read it here first! Shamans have crowd control! It's called: death, and it's unbreakable. Take your sheep and go home magey!