Bloodboil Dead & Why I Hate Him

We smashed down Gurtogg Bloodboil last night bringing the guild up to 5/9 in BT. Congrats to Unorthodox on this kill! It took us a few weeks but we downed him last night in what would have been a nearly flawless kill, if it wasn't for me dying early on to a Cleave. There's so much bouncing of aggro between the tanks that it is hard to avoid if you end up in the wrong position, which I did once and I saw a rogue do once as well. But this isn't the reason I hate Bloodboil.

The reason I hate him is that I have to stay below the threat levels of not 1, not 2, but 3 tanks. You can't be below 2 and slightly around the 3rd. In fact, you can't even be anywhere close to the 3rd tank's threat level.

At one point I was well below the Druid and Warrior tanks and hovering slightly below the Pally tank. The Druid called out for a BoP to wipe the debuff stacks he had so Gurtogg switched to the Warrior. The Warrior got knocked back out of range so he switch to the Paladin. I saw this happen and saw I was way too close in threat. I stopped swinging and started backing up. As I'm backing up out of melee range he decides that in fact I am too close in threat, bounces aggro to me, one-shots me, then proceeds to one-shot a holy Priest and a Warlock before the Paladin can get control of him again. All of this happened in about a 2 second timeframe. BoPKnockbackPallyBackupOneshotOneshotOneshotPally. BAM!

Every attempt after that I sat back until the first Fel Rage--one full minute cooling my heels. Totems down for the Rogues but otherwise just one full minute of watching the threat meter and yelling at the hunters to Feign Death.

The Fel Rage phase is supposed to be there for the dps to pound his brains out without consequence, but until we brought in an extra healer I spent most of those phases healing the Fel Enraged person. I noticed that when I was not helping out with the healing the target died. My meager 1250 LHW's might not be much but I'm spamming them as fast as I can and it made a difference. Once we brought in that extra healer I was able to actually do some damage during that phase.

All said, this fight is a perfect example of the hate on melee.

No Caster Weapons

Saw a blue post this morning, here's the highlight: "If you are saving up badges or arena points or whatever for your enhancement shammy, I would definitely NOT go out and get two fast caster weapons."

Here's the full post:

We view Enhancement as a melee class that should be wearing melee gear. However, one of the interesting things about the shaman is throwing out some spells with that melee too.

Our view of things is that some smart theorycrafters started wondering if using two fast caster weapons with two flametongue enchants would end up being the right way to go. The way the discussion sort of ended up was "maybe, but it might be close" but a lot of the community took that as a mandate. Or maybe they were just shocked by the supposition because it felt wrong for a melee class. We agree it feels wrong, so we're doing some tweaks to make it even less likely to be the most optimal set up. If you are saving up badges or arena points or whatever for your enhancement shammy, I would definitely NOT go out and get two fast caster weapons.

Heartbreaker

I cried a little tonight. Really.

Well, ok maybe not.
But it was emotional.

We missed getting our very first bear mount in the guild by 30 seconds. Thirty freakin seconds. It could have been the extra time we took after Jan'alai. It could have been the three deaths along the way to Halazzi (mind included) that took an extra 10-20 seconds each. It could have been the 1 extra scout and the 1 extra pat we had to kill. It could have been anything in that 45 minutes.

We got to Halazzi's room with under 5 minutes to go. The first time we got the 3rd timed chest it was under 6 minutes. I knew we could do it and reminded everyone about that first ring.

The first phase was not promising; it was not going fast enough. By the time he popped out of his first split phase the mages must have started up their engines and we were roaring through him. We unloaded on him. Hard. DPS was unreal. Then in the 2nd split we lost our rogue to a Flame Shock. Then a mage to a totem. It was down to the wire with Fire Elementals out, Heroisms used, all pots and HS on cooldown and every major trick in the book already blown. The hunter went down and we were now down to only 3 DPS. Then a healer. We were on our last legs coming into the final 25%. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the little gnome step out of her cage and catch fire. The mount was lost. Less than 30 seonds after that Halazzi fell.

There was screaming, wailing, and the gnashing of teeth. It was lost.

According to WWS we did the fight in 3 minutes 16 seconds. Maybe we could have shaved off 15-16 seconds with all the dps up. Realistically the time was lost along the way in the prior 45 minutes. No one is to blame. Everyone did their job and did it splendidly.

In all likelihood the patch will drop on Tuesday. In all likelihood that patch will replace the bear mount with something else. In all likelihood I have failed in my mission to bring the bear mount to Unorthodox.

If it is the end of the Amani War Bear mount then I want to thank everyone in Unorthodox that stuck with me along the way. Nearly a year of running ZA, learning it while undergeared, gearing up while wiping, and most importantly pressing deeper and deeper into the content against the clock. Too many names to name but thank you all for learning with me, for wiping with me, and for standing by me.

And by the way, the timer is still there and we're going to beat that clock even if there isn't a mount at the end.

Flametongue or Windfury? Ele or Enhance?

I've been reading the Elitist Jerks forums all morning about the up-coming changes to Enhancement. From the looks of it we are going to become true hybrid classes, benefiting equally from spell power and attack power. Should we be using Flametongue or Windfury? Should we be gearing with melee or caster gear? It looks like it's all a jumble right now.

I'm wading through the forums and through the new simulator to try and make sense of it all. As soon as I can come to some conclusions I'll post my findings here.

In the meantime if you want to review the thread yourself here is the link to Elitist Jerks Enhance Shaman WotLK.

Revised Talents at 70

With the changes to the Shaman tree since my last posts I need to redo my talent specs that I'll be using at 70, while leveling, and then at 80. Patch 3.0.2 is up on the PTR so here are Stoney's latest enhancement specs.

8/53/0 - Pure Raiding
No totem boosts, no defensive attributes (Anticipation or Toughness), not even room for Improved Ghostwolf, just pure damage. Active damage with additional spell damage and Lava Burst and intellect, and all sorts of goodies. This will be Stoney's spec when what's up on the PTR drops to live. I don't think I'll be PvPing much and I should be doing enough damage to kill trash when I need to do dailies. I think PvE specs will be simple: all offense all the way.

10/51/0 - Raiding--No Static Shock
[Added 9/28] Here's a build that takes Static Shock out of the picture completely. Extra points are put into Enhancing Totems and Call of Flame. I got to thinking about the tradeoff between passive dps increase and GCD usage. The devs have clearly stated their desire to make Enhancement a true hybrid spec--making us both melee and caster at the same time. So if we are casting and swinging the question becomes, will we have enough time to refresh Lightning Shield for the passive damage? If it turns out we have neither the mana nor the GCD to keep that up then I'll go with this spec (provided as well that Unleashed Rage proves viable).

8/53/0 - PvP/Ele Devastation
Here's a thought about a PvP spec that dips into Elemental Devastation. No Maelstrom Weapon, no Static Shock, not even Improved Stormstike. Have to sacrifice those things to get Toughness, Earth's Grasp, Imp Ghost Wolf and Earthen Power.

0/61/0 - PvP
Pure Enhancement tree spec for PvP purposes. Again no Maelstrom Weapon, but adding on Anticipation, Imp Stormstrike, and Guardian Totems.

I wonder if Maelstrom Weapon would be useful in PvP? The idea of tossing out an instant Healing Wave spell while getting beat on is a tempting idea, and I'll probably go for it once I get to 80. But for now at level 70 I don't think there will be room for it. I'll play around with it and post updates once the patch drops.

If anyone has other spec suggestions at level 70 I'd love to see them.

Shaman Tree Reworked

Greetings from Beijing! I'm here researching my new gold farming operation. I'm not sure about the name, either Stoneybaby Farms or Dirty Shaman Gold.

Just kidding. DON'T BUY GOLD!

Anyway, the shaman tree got completely reworked so I'll have to update all of my specs and rethink all of my Shaman 3.0 strategy.

More to come when I return to the states (Wednesday night)

WotLK upcoming Changes

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

There are some big changes on the horizon according to WotLK Wiki. The list is up but the changes are not yet implemented into any talent calculators. Once they are implemented I'll provide a full review and perspective. Until then head over here to check out the changes.

Using WoW Web Stats

Greetings from hazy, hot & humid Hong Kong. I'm in China traveling with my girlfriend for the next 12 days; she has to work in HK this week then we are off to Beijing on Friday for tourist activities. I won't have a lot of updates as I will not be raiding this week so I'm going to catch up on some things I wanted to blog about anyway, starting off with WWS.

I use WoW Web Stats to record every raid. I run a simple mod called AutoCombatLog, which automatically turns on Combat Logging when you are in a raid instance, then shuts it off again when you leave the instance. Pretty simple really. The same thing can be accomplished manually by typing in a slash command (I think it's /combatlog ) but I know I'll forget so I use a mod. Recount, an in-game meter mod, is great for a quick look but nothing beats the accuracy and details of WWS.

After getting the combat log uploaded the first thing is to click on your toon's name and look at the first level of damage data. I'm looking to see what is my percentage breakdown of Swing, Windfury, Stormstrike, and others. Typically I want to see around 47-48% damage from Swing (aka white damage), 30% from Windfury, and 7-8% from Stormstrike. If these numbers are out of whack then I know right from the start something went wrong. If Swing damage is low it's probably from misses. If WF is low I probably went for a period without WF on my weapons (doh!). If Stormstrike was low then I was not working in SS at every available moment.

In our Black Temple raid on Tuesday 9/9 my numbers were:
Swing - 47% of total damage (37% crit)
Windfury - 29% (36% crit)
Stormstrike - 9% (37% crit)
The WF is 1% lower than I would expect, but not so far out of range that I am worried. The crit numbers are right on for me and my gear. So far, so good.

Next I click on the Swing line. Do not click the word 'Swing' itself as this will take you to another page that shows everyone who did 'Swing' damage in that raid. Instead if you click on the line it will show you the detailed breakdown. Here I'm looking at the breakdown of the miss percentages.

Miss % is total number of misses, parries, dodges, and other (evade, immune, absorb) divided by the total number of Swings. In this case my Total Miss % was 12.7% which is a bit higher than I'd like to see it. However, I recently made some gear changes and reduced my total hit rating by about 12 points so I expected this number to go up. My Parry % was less than 1%, which means that I am standing behind mobs the majority of the time. If the parry % is higher than 1% then you are standing in front of the mob far too much.

Everything looks good at the high level so let's look at boss fights. To do this find the link that currently says "Full Report" hover over it, and then click on the first boss that pops up. For me it's High Warlord Naj'entus. Here's some key numbers:
Dmg. Out to foes : 292,244 (7 %) - that's OK but not stellar
DPS time : 4'57'' (90 % of presence) - the 10% where I'm not doing damage is either during the bubble or healing myself after the bubble is popped.
DPS : 983 - not good, I should be up over 1000 dps on a boss fight.

983 DPS is not ideal. Looking at the table below I see my miss % was 16.5%, but then I remember I stack stam gear for this fight which means I'm sacrificing hit rating. That loss of hit gear prevented me from keeping the 1k DPS mark. However, a dead DPSer does zero DPS. I'll have to see about making different gear choices for that fight next time (and maybe buffing with Spicy Hot Talbuk)

With that figured out I problem solve through the other bosses using that dropdown at the top of the page. There is even an option to see "All Bosses" or "All Trash" which is handy for other reasons.

I did manage to redeem myself in the Shade of Akama fight--one of the few fights that favors melee--by doing 1491 DPS and 9% of total raid damage. I was only at 8.3% miss and interestingly 53% of my damage was from Swing, but for that fight we had a constant Drums of Battle rotation going and I was popping Haste Potions so I was swinging so fast I was getting in more hits during the WF 3 second cooldown.

That's a quick look at WWS and how to use it to analyze your raid performance. If you have any questions please feel free to post, or if you want me to look at your WWS and give some feedback feel free to leave a link below.

Feral Spirit Implemented in Beta

Last week the Feral Spirit talent was implemented in Beta along with all of the wolves abilities. It is clear that this talent is going to be a must-have for Enhancement in both PvE & PvP situations. The summoned wolves will not be the dumb stumps that are the Boomkin's Treants. Instead they will be controllable via pet bar. Below is the rundown of the wolves talents.

• Feral Spirit (Tier 11): now implemented, including pet skills for summon wolves:
  • Bash: Your Spirit Wolves stun the target for 2 sec. (45 sec cooldown)
  • Twin Howl: Your Spirit Wolves howl, forcing all enemies to attack them for 6 sec. (15 sec cooldown)
  • Spirit Walk: Removes all movement impairing effects and increases the movement speed of you and your Spirit Wolves by 60% for 15 sec. (25 yd range, 32 sec cooldown)
  • Spirit Hunt: Your Spirit Wolves' attacks heal them and you for 5 sec. (10 sec cooldown)

A stun, a taunt, a snare-removal, and a heal. This is brilliant and I love every bit of it. I am going to revisit my earlier post about WotLK specs and be sure I'm including Feral Spirit in every one. I can not wait to get these bad boys up and running!

Swiftsteel Bludgeon!! w00t?

I am full of fail. For some reason I don't seem to have my head screwed on straight for common sense things this week. Case in point: Swiftsteel Bludgeon. It dropped on trash yesterday as we were clearing our way to High Warlord Naj'entus. I spent DKP on it.

You'll notice the 1.50 speed. You'll also notice how that weapon speed entirely sucks for enhancement shaman. You'll notice again that I spent DKP for it. You will notice the fail.

What happened was that I just recently recreated my loot spreadsheet. In this spreadsheet I have listed every drop that would be of interest to an Enhancement Shaman from Karazhan through to Black Temple, including BoE crafted items. Item values are entered in manually by me and then compared to the Enhancement Points system. It is sorted by slot and then by total EP value so I can tell at a quick glance whether or not an item is worth the upgrade--and worth the DKP.

When the Swiftsteel Bludgeon dropped I checked my file only to find it wasn't listed. I whispered in officer chat to our GM to hang on as I needed to plug in the values to see if it was worthwhile. Another officer replied back "stoney look at the speed" and I thought to myself, yeah 27 haste is pretty sweet! I said I'd take it and spend DKP as a main spec item. After I looted someone asked in raid chat why I wanted a 1.50 speed weapon. My reply was the only appropriate one: "fuck me"

Thankfully we have a very good guild leader who let me put in a ticket with a GM to have it go to the next interested party, and didn't charge me DKP for it. Interestingly, we saw that weapon drop 2 more times last night so a rogue got 1 and a warrior got 2 (for an Execute set).

Pawn Values for Enhancement

Pawn. It's an add-on that allows you to assign weighted values for different stats (i.e., Strength or Haste or Hit Rating). It then multiplies each stat by the weighted value and sums it up for total score. This allows you to compare items according to your own customized scale. This scale for Enhancement Shamans is often referred to as "Enhancement Points" which is a spin on the mod that started this concept "Tank Points."

If you've ever wondered, is this piece better than what I've got now Pawn helps figure that out in-game.

With Unorthodox clearing deeper into BT I figured it was time to look at my gear choices and compare those to the loots we're seeing drop. Here are the values I plugged in for Stoney:

Stat	EP
Attack Power	1.00
Strength	2.20
Agility	1.50
Hit Rating	1.21
Crit Rating	1.54
Haste Rating	1.38
Armor Pen.	0.18
Expertise	3.37
Red Socket	22.00
Yellow Socket	18.69
Blue Socket	11.00
Meta Socket	25.00
MH DPS	9.03
OH DPS	3.70

Now keep in mind these are my own customized values built around our current progression level. That is, they are probably best suited for those of you at the T6 level.

Reapplying these values I took a hard look at my gear and made some significant changes. It all started when one of our raiders was on her Enhance Shaman alt and asked me why I was wearing the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve. My answer was that I wanted the extra hit and expertise, and that the stam didn't hurt for heavy damage boss encounters. This got me thinking... was this really the best use of my gearing options?

After applying the Enhancement Points and looking at my gear I realized I could get my +hit from other sources and use a better neck piece.

I ended up replacing Coif of the Jungle Stalker with Grimgrin Faceguard that keeps my AP and damage output up there while bringing in the hit I need to replace the tanking SSO neck. Next I replaced that neck with the Shattered Sun Pendant of Might. Just those two swaps ended up being a total gain of nearly 74 EP for me which should translate into slightly more damage over the long haul.

For those of you not at the T6 level or interested in reading more into this I recommend going to Elitist Jerks (of course) and getting their recommended scales. But in case you are too lazy to click... here they are for your enjoyment:

Stat	T4 EP	T5 EP	T6 EP	Sunwell
Attack Power	1	1	1	1
Strength	2.2	2.2	2.2	2.2
Agility	1.91	2	1.69	1.89
Crit Rating	1.97	2	1.74	1.94
Haste Rating	1.28	1.48	1.82	1.98
Hit Rating	1.34	1.4	1.69	1.8
Armor Penetration	0.22	0.28	0.35	0.41
Expertise Rating	3	3	3.18	3.53

* assumes you have Blessing of Kings

As you can see my personal EP values differ slightly which is the result of extensive modeling I did for myself on Yo's Simulator.

Good luck setting up your values. Post any questions you have about EP or gear and I'll be happy to help.

Gold Goal for Wrath

With the expansion fast approaching I'm wondering how much gold am I going to need going into it? Professions to level, gear to make, mounts to buy... all of it is going to be expensive. Especially considering that I have 3 level 70s, each with different professions. That means 3 toons to level, 6 mounts to buy (assuming new ground and air mounts), and 6 professions to level. It's going to get expensive for me.

I have not yet looked into the discussions surrounding how much gold is going to be needed so I'm just setting my own goal. I'm shooting for 9k gold, or 3k per toon. I'm sitting comfortably at 5.5k right now as I try to always keep my gold reserves up around the 4-5k mark. I have my work cut out for me, but I do have a few things going in my favor.

First I'm going to start clearing out my bank and selling off all the mats I'm currently just hoarding. Those supplies are mostly enchanting and leathers mats at this point. I don't have a miner so I don't have an abundance of stones or ore to sell. All of those enchanting mats will be useless to me post-expansion and I expect the prices to plummet in the first few months of WotLK. The exception to this will likely be herbs of all levels as they will be needed by people trying to powerlevel Inscription. Selling off my mats should net me about 1k gold if I time it right to maximize the price.

The real money is going to come from turning badges into gems. I'm sitting on 418 badges: 223 on my druid, 137 on Stoney, and 58 on Nixhex my warlock. I am keeping some badges on stand-by for Finn once I upgrade his weapon I'll need some new gear to stay uncrittable. And Nix needs new PvE gear so I'm working on that stuff. But Stoney... Stoney is maxed out right now for our current level of progression; I don't need the badges. I think I could hit my gold goal in short order by selling rocks.

It's the Stoneybaby pre-WotLK Fire Sale!

Second Skin - A Review by a Gamer

Last night I went to the NYC premier of Second Skin, a new documentary about the life of MMO gamers. It covers players in WoW and EQ2 extensively, with one sidebar to Second Life.

Highlights:

• Thoroughly researched and featuring real people and the top authorities in the online-gaming world
• Focuses extensively on gaming addiction
• All-around a good film that every gamer should watch

The premier was part of the ACE Film Festival in NYC. I had left my cell phone in the cab by accident and so was in a bit of a foul mood when I arrived, only to find that the movie was starting half an hour late. I waited in the lounge and overheard many conversations about gaming. Half an hour bled into an hour and when the ticket holders were taken down to the theater we found it was already 3/4 full. If the premier wasn't sold out, it was nearly so. I assumed the people who were already seated were part of the film festival crowd and not the gaming crowd. My suspicion was confirmed when the movie started and the audience was laughing at the sequences blending the gamers' real and virtual persona's together. I didn't think the sequences were funny or meant to be funny, but yet the crowd not only found them hilarious but was also chuckling at the documentary stars like school kids in the lunch room.

As an avid gamer and not an avid film fest attendee I was looking forward to seeing the complexities of interaction between real and virtual life played out on the big screen. What I wasn't expecting was the audience snickering at people because of how they looked or laughing when they talked about gaming being an important part of their life. I would expect a more mature reaction from the crowd, but was definitely let down.

But this is a review of the movie, not the audience, right?

The movie follows three main story lines: 1) a group of four friends in Ft. Wayne that live close together and game together, 2) a couple that met in EQ2 and were meeting in real life for the first time, and 3) a gamer in Philadelphia struggling to overcome his addiction to WoW and the self-proclaimed online gaming addiction counselor he sought for help.

The Ft. Wayne boys were a lively crew. One is married and expecting twins, he and his wife both game together. Another is getting married and moving out. The other two continue on with their bachelor/gaming existence. It follows the crew pre-BC, their attendance of the Burning Crusade midnight release, and their race to level to 70. The two couple relationships are shown in a healthy light. Interestingly the couple that raids together (and is expecting twins) did have some tension surrounding play time, but I was glad to see this was not played up by the film. The crew did a great job of portraying the normal lives of these gamers to the point you're rooting for them and sincerely hope they all continue to find happiness, whether online or off.

The second most prominent storyline follows a couple that meets in EQ2, falls in love online, and eventually moves in together. Both have experience in taking virtual love into the real world from prior relationships, all with disastrous consequences. This couple's tensions play out on the screen in a big way. We follow them from their first meeting in real life, their decision to move in together, and a vacation to the Sony conference in Las Vegas. Thankfully their story was interspersed with interviews of other couples that fell in love online and made their love in real life work. Actually the other couples interviewed not just make it "work" but all very clearly share a vibrant love for each other. It was great to offset the drama of the new EQ2 couple with the success stories of the other gaming couples.

The final main storyline was of a single gamer seeking to overcome his outright addiction to WoW. He seeks the help of a woman in Harrisburg, PA who has an online gaming addiction website, but eventually he moves back to Philly and finds answers on his own. It's difficult to hear him talk about letting his life dwindle away to play EQ2 and then WoW but you root for him as he makes his breakthrough and deals with his own personal demons.

The creators of the film also tracked down Dragons, the founder of the largest and longest standing MMORPG guild: The Syndicate. His story and the story of The Syndicate could have been an excellent track if the movie was more focused on the positive aspects of online gaming. For more on The Syndicate pick up the book The Legend of The Syndicate

They also interviewed the two leading researchers of online worlds, Ed Castronova, PhD and Nick Yee, PhD. Both provide a academic and intellectual insight into gaming culture, community, and interaction. I highly recommend reading Synthetic Worlds as well as Nick Yee's site The Daedalus Project.

Ultimately, the addiction angle is of course a very powerful story to tell. Gaming addition can be broken down into a 30-second snippet on the nightly news, taking the one terrible case and wrongly generalizing it across the 50 million gamers worldwide. It is sensational and easy for non-gamers to understand. It is also the underlying theme of this documentary but thankfully it doesn't beat you over the head with it like a Michael Moore movie.

However, it is important to look at these peoples' lives in Second Skin and use them as a litmus test for our own. Am I addicted? What trade-offs do I make in real life for the online world? Am I happy with those trade-offs? I hope that you all take the time to watch the movie and find the right balance between your real and virtual selves.

WotLK Enhancement Specs

In my last post I looked at possible specs to take up when the new talent trees come out in advance of the expansion. Meaning, what do we do with ourselves at level 70? Now I'm going to look at some specs after reaching level 80.

11/60/0 - Raiding
This build would be a pure-raiding build as it sacrifices the quick getaway moves of Improved Ghost Wolf, doesn't have any of the defensive talents of Anticipation or Toughness, and skips Spectral Transformation. It does go deeper into the Elemental tree to bring more usefulness out of Lava Burst. Finally, it also taps into the passive dps of Static Shock+Improved Shields.

0/65/5 - PvP Defensive / PvE Solo
In this build I'm focusing on defensive abilities over offensive. While Anticipation can be a liability against Warriors, I put points into it as an added safety net against those filthy rogues. As for Maelstrom Weapon being worthwhile in PvP situations I'm undecided on it. It would require 5 critical strikes on 1 target, and each must occur within15 seconds of the last crit to keep the stacks going. It may have usefulness in certain situations where that extra damage from an insta-cast Lava Burst could put you over the top, but that remains to be seen. I will test both with and without Maelstrom when the time comes. This build would also serve well for soloing in PvE content because of the defensive talents.

8/63/0 - PvP Elemental Devastation
A more offensive build than the one listed above, it does not include Anticipation but still puts points into Earth's Grasp and Guardian Totems. This one dips down into Maelstrom Weapon and then put remaining points in Elemental Devastation. I can see this being a very effective build for PvP that will capitalize on the shaman's burst damage and make casting viable while ensnared.