Game on Pause

Comment on my previous post:

At July 27, 2008 3:19 AM , Anonymous Euripedes said...
Please don't stop.
For the love of god don't stop.
We need this blog! There's nobody else! We needs enhancement!

Don't sweat it Euripedes. I've put WoW on pause in my life for the time being while I job hunt and restore some balance to my otherwise heavily-skewed-to-WoW life. However, I am religiously following the WotLK updates and have a few posts in draft mode.

It's a gorgeous Sunday here in the city, my Thinkpad is all charged up (as is my backup battery) so I'm heading downtown to find a coffee shop with a sidewalk view to complete some posts here. OK I'll probably end up in a bar with a patio drinking microbrews, but don't tell anyone.

So yes, I'm on pause in-game, but I have a few posts coming out for you shortly. Thanks everyone for the great comments. I hope you are enjoying your summer and can take time from WoW to get some sun on that pasty skin I know you're all sporting!

WotLK Beta!

Beta is out!! And no, I did not get a key, but I'm still hoping for one to arrive... eventually. There were some updates and changes since my last few posts so I'm going to cover what's changed since then for Enhancement Shamans.

Ghost Wolf's mana cost is now 13% base
Ouch. This is a nerf. Right now it only costs 100 mana to shift into ghost wolf. Maybe the druids were QQing about Shaman's neat little shapeshift ability on the cheap?

Rockbiter ranks 5 through 9 have been removed.
Duh. No one used this before, might as well kill it.

Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
Haha! Sweet! Ghost wolf across the top of the water.

Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
This is a very cool item, and I'm sure will be useful in raiding situations. That means though that if only 1 Shaman in the raid it may make sense to drop Stoneskin instead of Strength of Earth.

Tranquil Air Totem has been removed.
The changes to threat and threat reduction is a complete change from the current game mechanic. I am going to have to research more of this before reaching any conclusions. But for now all I can say is that it scares me. Not losing Tranquil Air Totem (aka ghetto-Salv) but rather that an aggro-whoring spec like enhance may have to find new ways to cope with threat management. More on this as I learn more about it.

Unleashed Rage is now raid wide.
Hawt. More love for the Enhancers.

Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem.
Now Windfury Crits will truly be a shaman-only effect. Call me selfish but this is cool that we become special like that. In fact I wonder if we can have WF effect on our weapons and drop a WF totem... hmm... somehow I doubt it but it's worth investigating to be sure.

Windwall Totem has been removed.
Heh. Ah well. As Matthew Rossi said, it was really only useful in AV anyway.

Thanks go to Matthew Rossi at WoW Insider for a nice, neat, concise post about all the Beta Patch changes for Shamans

Sunwell Trash

I got my first taste of Sunwell last night. After our raid we decided to give the SWP PuG a go. We got about 10 people from Unorthodox and maybe another 10 from outside the guild. We were lucky to get 5 mages, which made it a lot easier. The idea here, if you are not familiar with it, is to clear the first robot patrol, and the first multi-pack. Then on the 2nd pack you kill everything but the dragonhawk. After you have everything down you zone out, that entire pack respawns, and you zone back in to clear them again. The first mob is on an 2 hour respawn timer and you can basically go at it as long as you have the group for it.

Some groups doing it have been lucky to see weapons or patterns drop. For our first foray into SWP we saw a lot of Sunmotes, a few gems, and the Wand of the Demonsoul. I was hoping for either of the JC designs Hard Khorium Choker or Hard Khorium Band. Neither dropped in the hour or so we were in there but I was happy to settle for a Sunmote. I will save these and when I have 5 I'll find someone that does have the pattern for the ring and pay them to craft it for me.

Farewell Fire-Toasted Buns

Let's have a moment of silence for my Fire-toasted Buns.

...

Today they all expired and disappeared. I did all the Mid-Summer Festival quests and had enough Burning Blossoms to not only buy the Brazier of Dancing Flames, but also well over 100 Fire-toasted Buns. Who could resist those buns? They are too good to pass up, those delicious, hot, sexy buns that give you 20 free hit rating in addition to your food buff.

But alas, like any good bun they have a limited shelf life. These were given the 14 days played that we first saw with the flying brooms in Hallow's End. I did my best to stretch out their lifetime. I bought them on the very last day of the festival. I played alts. I did my grinding and farming on other toons. I swapped back to Stoney only just before raid start time. I even took some time off from raiding (well, that was to travel to go see a concert). But in the end, 14 days played is still 14 days played and my buns expired.

Fare thee well, Fire-toasted buns, fare thee well. You will be missed.

Recent Stats

It had been over 1 month since I ran the last WWS for the guild. The CombatLog.txt file was 512MB, so large it made my dual-core beast of a computer sluggish as hell. I was curious to see my own performance as well as the rest of the guild's.

I'll use a consistent format: % of total damage | % crit | % Miss


SSC
Overall DPS: 1071
Swing - 47% | 39% | 10%
Windfury - 30% | 38% | 3%
Stormstrike - 8% | 35% | 1%
Notes: this was a five boss clear night. my highest dps is always on FL Karathress at 1371 because there's no start-stop nonsense like the rest of the bosses.

Hyjal & TK
Overall DPS: 1017
Swing - 47% | 35% | 12%
Windfury - 28% | 30% | 3%
Stormstrike - 8% | 34% | 1%
Notes: we went in and took down Azgalor but didn't have enough decursers for Archi so we headed off to the long-forgotten Tempest Keep.

Hyjal
Overall DPS: 1217
Swing - 42% | 38% | 13%
Windfury - 27% | 39% | 2%
Fire Nova - 9% | 8% | 2%
Stormstrike - 7% | 42% | 2%
Magma Totem - 6% | 7% | 3%
Notes: In Hyjal it's tough to shine if you are not a mage or warlock, but by twisting my Fire Novas and my Magma Totems I'm able to really pump out the dps on trash. I can't emphasize the importance of Fire Nova totem on these trash mobs. It was 12% of my damage on trash! It has its own threat table so the damage does not cause you to pull aggro, and the 800+ damage it does far outweighs just having up a Magma Totem the whole time. If you are in Hyjal you need to be dropping Fire Nova every time its up, and Magma when it's on cooldown.

Black Temple
Overall DPS: 965
Swing - 47% | 40% | 14%
Windfury - 28% | 40% | 3%
Stormstrike - 9% | 42% | 2%
Notes: This was our first foray into BT. We got down High Warlord and Supremus (another melee-hating fight btw). Looking at these stats I see could use some more hit to reduce my white damage miss percentage. It seems that number has been climbing over the past few raids. Maybe I'll start using Spicy Hot Talbuk instead of Roasted Clefthoof. Also, I know we were all a bit gun-shy for our first night. (OK enough excuses, more DPS next time)

WotLK Shaman Info Part 3

In this part I will cover the non-talent point spells for Enhancement Shamans. The complete and updated information can always be found here: http://wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Shaman. That is the alpha leak site and it includes the spells and talents I do not cover because I see little to no value for the Enhancement spec.

My first two posts can be found here: Part 1 & Part 2

Totems are in the physical school now.
That means silence effects do not prevent dropping totems. This is very cool for PvE and PvP. Thanks Blizz for this one.

Many totem's effects are being combined (e.g. Grace of Air and Strength of Earth into a single totem).
Combine that with...
Totems will now effect all nearby raid members instead of being confined to party members.
This is really something. Fewer totems to choose from, totems that do more things and effect more people. In a raid with two or three shamans we can cover the most beneficial totems to buff then entire raid. Very cool.

Windfury Totem: The effect is no longer a weapon enchant. It now provides a buff giving the same effect, the end result being that it now stacks with poisons, sharpening stones and also works for druid feral forms.
This slightly conflicts with another post on the wolkwiki site:
Windfury Totem: Removed. The effect is no longer a weapon enchant. It is now a party buff giving the same effect, the end result being that it now stacks with poisons, sharpening stones and also works for druid feral forms.
I'm not sure how to read this. "No longer a weapon enchant" scared me at first thinking that I would have to drop a damn totem each time I wanted WF for myself, and that would suck. Horribly. But the second post clears the matter up a bit, it will be a castable buff. A Paladin or druid aura comes to mind as what this may be like. That it can be used in feral form is cool. That we can use sharpening stones or weight stones is also cool. This is all very good news for not only Enhance Shamans, but all Shamans and all raids in which they participate.

Hex: Transforms the enemy into a random critter, reducing the target's movement speed by 75%. While moving, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells. Only one target can be hexed at a time. Only works on Humanoids and Beasts. 100 mana. 1 mintue cooldown.
CC for SHAMANS! It just keeps getting better here. What's interesting about this is that the hexed target still has control of its actions, it can still move about, but not attack or cast. From the video it seems the spell does not restore health as a Mage's Polymorph does. Also, it does not state that damage breaks the CC. So even if an NPC wanders into the Paladin's Consecrate or the Warrior's Thunder Clap it will continue to be CC'd.

Summon Air Elemental: Summons an Air Elemental to accompany the caster until dismissed.
This is listed as an Elemental spell but is not a talent-spec choice; it's available at the trainer apparently. Wowhead shows it is a 3 second spell but that's all the information they have. Does this mean if you are enhance you can summon an Air Ele and wolves? I'm anxious to learn more.

Skin of Earth: Thorns sprout from the friendly target causing $s1 Nature damage to attackers when hit. Lasts $d.
Thorns! cool. The good stuff just keeps on coming.

Heroism/Bloodlust will affect all raid members nearby in the same way as totem changes.
Forget Drums of Battle, multiple shamans in a raid means chain-heroisms!

I know everyone gets cool stuff with expansions and 10 new levels, but of my three level 70's (warlock, druid, shaman) I'm the most excited for Stoney's changes.

WotLK Shaman Info Part 2

Has it been nearly a month since my first post on WotLK for enhancement Shamans? I need to spend less time gaming and more time blogging apparently. If you want to read the first post it can be found here.

Improved Stormstrike - Increases the amount of Stormstrike of charges by 2 and reduces the cooldown by 2 seconds (with 2 points in it). Requires 30 points in Enhancement; requires 1 point in Stormstrike.
This will be interesting. On the surface this looks awesome. It looks like the synergy of Enhancement with Elemental in one raid/party will continue, and that we'll have time to use up our own SS bonus during our Flame/Earth shock rotation instead of them being immediately eaten by those Ele hogs! No doubt the extra 2 charges will be well worth the point investment for the raiding Enhancer. But Stormstrike every 8 seconds, is it going to be a good thing? Will we have to start timing our Stormstrikes with our WF procs? Just a guess, but I'm going to say, no. WF runs independent of the GCD, meaning by having an extra SS attack you are only delaying a possible WF by a split second and not 1.5 secs. My guess is this will be among the best 2 points spent in the tree. We'll see how it pans out.

Mental Dexterity - Increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your Intellect. 11 point talent.
Stoney's current intelly: 247. Even if your Int didn't change one bit over the next 10 levels and the subsequent gearing that's 247 free AP. And we know the Int will go up and be prevalent among the mail gear. This will be the easiest 3 points to spend at that level. As an aside, it seems to me that Blizzard is doing this to make rogue/leather gear less appetizing in comparison to hunter/mail gear. They are trying to keep Shamans in mail in my opinion. What it means to me is more gear options as both leather and mail will bring different benefits, oh and a much larger gear comparison spreadsheet.

Elemental Shields - Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 5/10/15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.
In a pure PvE spec this will couple nicely with Static Shock, the 41 point talent where your Lightning Orbs have a chance to proc when you strike, as opposed to when you get struck. I've already been toying with PvE versus PvP specs for Stoney and I will be including both this talent and Static Shock for PvE/Raiding.

Other changes to the enhancement tree include:
Enhancing Totems was moved up to the first tier.
Improved Lightning Shield was removed.
Shield Specialization changed to a 2 point talent
Ancentral Knowledge changed to a 3 point talent.

That covers the Enhance tree for WotLK as it stands now. Next post: the spell changes unrelated to the talent points.

I did opt-in for the beta. I want to get Stoney in there and start poking around as soon as possible. Hope to see you in there!

Season 4, Week 2

Week 2 is behind us as of this morning, though my struggles and frustrations continue. Stoney is now capped on arena points but lacks the rating to even get the Brutal Linked Leggings which only require the basic 1550 rating. In fact the source of my points for the week was the 5v5 team which and it's crappy 1420 rating. We did 7 games with what was supposed to be our "good" group and got eaten alive by full Vengeful teams still in the 1500 bracket. We finished out the week with three games going to a "throw-away" group just to get points on some of our alts.

I think I will end up spending the arena points on the Vengeful helm and the Brutal Gloves, just to get some sort of an upgrade. To say nothing of the 40k+ honor points sitting there.

Nix is another story: 1577 rating on 3v3 after only 5 games but only 197 arena points (before today's reset) and a constant need to bring honor. Thankfully it was AV weekend and I could bang out AV's all day Saturday to grind enough honor to get Nix his Guardian bracers. But it is so frustrating to have the rating and not the points on one toon, and the opposite for the other toon.

Ah well. I'm off to DC today to catch the Dropkick Murphy's and Mighty Mighty Bosstones in concert TOGETHER! Two of my favorite bands in one night. I'm stoked. It should wash away my PvP point woes.

Nixhex

Nixhex is my warlock. I started him pre-BC to see what was up with the class our guild could never seem to recruit. In 40-man raids we would be lucky to have 1 or 2 warlocks. I found the class to be easy to level and fun to play. Lots of spells to choose from and three different pure damage dealing trees were new to me.

Nix sat in the mid 40s until the beginning of the year when I decided I needed an herber to make me pots and elixirs. I power leveled him, which I found to be even easier than leveling Stoney had been a year earlier. And then just used him for herbing and running dailies. I had no interest in gearing him in Kara, let alone getting the key for it. Occasionally I would run him on the weekly throw-away 5v5 just to get points. The points accumulated and soon I found myself with enough to buy S3 chest and legs.

All of a sudden I realized I have in my hands one of Blizzard’s favored children: the warlock. This could be a PvP powerhouse just by the unique structure of arena and how spec plays into that.

I grinded out enough honor to get the S2 shoulders & helm—two of the best looking pieces in the game in my opinion—plus the Guardian belt and neckpiece. I found a resto druid and an MS Warr for some 3v3. On our first night we went 5-0 and got a 1577 rating. Played right, it’s a great combo.

Now here is the great irony: after months and months of gearing, specing, reading, testing, tweaking, and all around optimizing Stoney for arena I step in with a half-geared lock and roflstomp the competition, as opposed to Stoney's struggles to break even in the first week. In fact, by comparison the resto druid of Nix's team is only half as well geared as Schlimmy, the former resto drood of Stoney’s team.

It proves a point that I have known, that is well known and nothing new to be revealed here: arena is heavily class & spec dependent. A single player (me) can accomplish more, easier and faster in arena with an undergeared SL/SL lock than a well geared and tweaked Enhance Shaman.

I’ll keep you posted on both teams as the season progresses. Let’s see if I can get Stoney up there as well as I can Nix.

The New Team

*Another post I started and didn't complete. Back-dated to the original date. *

After getting dumped for rogues me and Riddaren moved on in search of a healer for our 3v3. That night we were running bg’s with a friend of his from EQ days, Slyok a priest that just PvPs as he’s burnt out on raiding. We talked him into being our healer on a 3v3. He had never done arena and was only now experimenting with a Disc/Holy spec, but he obliged.

Gear-wise Sly has mostly S1 that he got from casual honor grinding in bg’s over the last few months. We’ve run with him before and he’s a good guy, It sure does make a difference to have a healer in a bg. That aside he definitely needs some gear upgrades but we decided to give it a go.

We went 6-7 and ended the night at 1486 in some very frustrating losses. It’s a learning experience for everyone. The Disc priest style of play will have to be very different than the resto druid style. The advantage is that we can FF down Pally and Mage, call for the Mass Dispel and continue to burn through them after the bubble or Ice Block has been cast aside. The downside is that he will be very gear dependent. His bonus heal, mana pool, and resil are not at max levels right now. Regardless, the team has promise as we learn to work together.

I'm excited to see what the new week brings.