PvP Specs

hmm... somehow this didn't post on 12/23... here it is a few days later

Looks like it’s PvP posting week here at Windfury Crits. Hey when you got a good thing you go with it. Today let’s look at a couple PvP specs. First up is reader Lindy’s spec:

17/54/0

I would consider this a very offensive PvP build. Nothing going in for Toughness but still keeping the Imp WF totem and, Imp SS, 4/5 UR, and LL then going deep enough for 2/2 Imp Fire Nova Totem.

I like his build but tweaked it to suit my personal tastes for PvP and came up with:

17/54/0

I’m sacrificing some key offensive stats for increased armor and the movement impairment reduction of Toughness. Specifically, I’m dropping Imp SS and only going 3/5 UR. I like the UR buff and wish I could find a way to fit in the last 2 points.

Regardless of your tweaks there are a few talent options that only make sense for PvP. They are:

• Earth’s Grasp - increases Earthbind Totem radius by 20%, making it whopping 12 yd radius.
  
• Toughness - increased armor and reduced movement impairment makes this 5 point talent very attractive. It does require a 5 point investment though.
  
• Earthen Power - Earthbind Totem removes all snaring effects. This with Earth's Grasp make Earthbind Totem a pretty sweet combo
  
• Elemental Warding - effective Patch 3.0.8 this will reduce "all damage taken by 2/4/6%" A must have for PvP.
  
• Improved Fire Nova Totem - Increases FN damage done by 20% and 100% chance to stun when it goes off. This is a great pocket shaman trick especially out of the gate in today's fast-paced arena matches; 2 seconds can be an eternity.
  

Plus you absolutely do not want to miss out on:

• 5/5 Maelstrom Weapon - without this an Enhance Shaman is sunk, with it you'll be giving yourself heals as you deal damage and your opponents will wonder where the hell you're getting heals from in the first place.
  
• Feral Spirit - they heal you, they stun your enemies, they leap through the air, they last 45 seconds. Love em. I love Feral Spirit so much that if I started this blog post-3.0 I think I would have named it Spirit Wolves or maybe Spirit Walk. Ah well, if you're not using your dogs you're missing out!

The totem buffing options you choose depends on your game-play style. For example, Neither Lindy or I went in for Guardian Totems. I used to be a big fan of it for prolonged arena matches, but that seems to be a thing of the past. I'm interested to see your PvP specs and hear what's working (or not) for you.

Throw Away(?) Arena Team

As I mentioned in my last post about PvP gear, we did “throw away” arena yesterday just to get some points and get the ball rolling. If you’re not doing this I highly recommend getting it going in your guild; in my opinion it’s always good to have extra arena points.

What is a throw-away team? Get up to 10 people together, create a new 5v5 arena team, make a shtoopit name and a lame team banner and get in the arena with ZERO expectations. Win, lose, whatever, just have fun. One week early in Season 3 we all mounted up and raced around the arenas, whoever was the last one to die was the winner. With 10 people it’s 20g per week, provided you make a new team each week though in my experience even a piss-poor losing team can hold out for 2 weeks and still provide decent points. For the cost of 1.5 dailies you get to accumulate points for gear.

But I digress, we went into arenas last night with that expectation: hey, let’s just have fun, if we win that’s great, if we lose then oh well. I didn’t even try to optimize teams; I just made two groups of 5 based on who had to log early and who could stick around. I was in the first group: Holy Paladin, Arms Warr, 2 hunters, me. We zerged across the bottom of Blade’s Edge and ripped apart some clothies. It was over so fast I didn’t even know what happened. We faced the same team 3 more times and beat them handily each time.

Of course they were focus firing on me—why’s everyone always picking on the shaman? WHY?!? But the Pally did a great job with his heals keeping me up even when I was stun-locked then entire fight. (thanks Audax (the artist formerly known as Farkor)).

We lost 1 match to a 5 DPS team (2 Warr, 2 DK, 1 Ele Shaman, 1 Ret Pally) that simply DPS’d harder than we did, end of story. My group went 4-1.

The next group lost their first match because one of the hunters didn’t get the queue. They won the next four.

It’s worth mentioning that we’re a PvE raiding guild. Most of us do arena for kicks and maybe some gear. A few are solid hardcore PvPers, like Laasthope our MT DK who was arena point and honor point capped on two (three?) toons prior to Wrath’s launch. OK he’s a crazy person. But otherwise we PvP casually so you can understand my surprise when last night we stepped into arena with two ragtag groups of 5 and went 8-2, and by all accounts probably could have gone 9-1 if it wasn’t for Hump the Hunter not getting the queue. *shakes head* Normally, the first week of a new season is brutal as the badass PvP players slash their way through the ranks to fight for domination. Not so last night.

So yeah... It looks like I’m stuck with my arena throwaway team with the dumb name (Mele Kalikimaka) and lame colors (green, red and white) for a while. WTF.

Did anyone do arenas this week? What were your experiences? Did you go in to lose and come out with wins? Did you go all DPS, no heals and own or get owned? Any hardcore arena/PvP players reading this that can comment?

PvP Gear Through Badges...

We ventured into the arena last for the start of Season 5 (more on that in my next post). I only wanted to get a group together for a “throw-away” team just to get points so I can get either my Hateful or Savage Totem of Indomitability on Tuesday. In case you didn’t know the PvP totems are deemed to be the best totems for Enhance, even better than the badge totem. The Savage (rare quality) is only 175 arena points and 6,400 Honor points.

What about the Hateful Gladiator’s Totem? Good question. I wanted to link the totem and list how much it cost and then weigh in on Savage vs. Hateful. But the problem is that I can’t find a vendor who is selling the Hateful totem. Thottbot doesn’t even have an icon for it. Wowhead & Allakhazam have pages for it but no vendor listed. There is no rating requirement for this totem but that hardly matters since no one appears to be selling it.

Savage totem it is, for now.

The other thing that’s interesting about PvP gear is that you can acquire item with rating requirements without having the rating. How? Emblems and boss drops. You can gear up entirely for PvP with Emblems of Heroism and Emblems of Valor for Hateful and Deadly gear, respectively. Archavon the Stone Watcher drops Hateful gear on regular and Deadly gear on heroic. If you’re running enough instances you can gear up for PvP faster than someone who only does PvP, and not have to worry about the rating requirements. As Wowhead said on their S5 gear guide page, “If you manage get your hands on them, you're good.”

The Hateful set is up for grabs for anyone that regularly runs heroic dungeons and regular raids.

The other option to consider is the Swiftarrow gear. If you raid regularly then Swiftarrow may not be better than your current gear. For example, though my PvE gear doesn’t have resilience I will lose too much in the way of AP/Agi/Crit to make Swiftarrow viable for me, except for 2 peices. But if you’re still hanging on to S2/3/4 gear or in dungeon blues then Swiftarrow will provide some nice upgrades for PvP.

Conclusion:
• Savage Gladiator’s Totem of Indomitability for PvP & PVE
• Emblems + Vault of Archavon = easy PvP gear
• Raid Purps > Swiftarrow > Dungeon Blues > Brutal Gladiator
• WTB Hateful Totem vendor!

Enhancement Shaman Changes Patch 3.0.8

There's not much out there for us this patch, but I do like what I see. Here's a quick recap:

Fire Nova Totem: Now no longer generates threat.
Good stuff. We can drop these totems earlier to coincide with an AoE pull and not have to worry about it pulling its own threat off the tank.

Magma Totem: The damage and scaling has been increased and no longer generates threat.
More damage here and no threat is awesome. I'll be interested to see how much more damage it does.

Mental Quickness: Reduced the mana cost of instant cast Shaman spells by 2/4/6% and increases spell power by an amount equal to 23/46/70% of your agility.
This is AWESOME. Love it! 70% of my Agi goes into SP as opposed to 100% of Int. That's another 45 SP for Stoney immediately. This will also change the EP value of Int and the relative worth of Ancestral Knowledge. Looks like we'll be leaning to leather once again.
Thanks guys for the correction! Revised 12/15: This SUCKS! OK it's a nerf. Not that big of a nerf but a nerf nonetheless.

Edit (again) 12/15 - update from Ghostcrawler (Thanks Phil for the link)
Long story short, after reading your feedback and thinking about it some more, we no longer like this change and are going to revert it. We will likely swap the positions of Mental Quickness and Static Shock as some of you have suggested. Bottom line: Mental Quickness will still convert attack power to spell power.



Lava Lash - Fixed a bug which allowed you to use the ability even if you had a shield in offhand. Now requires a 1hand axe, fist or dagger to be able to be used.
Damn, I guess I missed out on Lava Lashing with a shield.

And then there are changes to Elemental Warding and Elemental Shields in the Elemental tree (go figure!) that will have PvP implications.

• Elemental Shields: This talent has been removed. It has now been merged with Elemental Warding.
• Elemental Warding: Now reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%. Changed from only reducing Nature, Fire and Frost by 4/7/10%.
• Elemental Shields was reducing flat physical damage, not a percentage. Now properly reduced by a percentage.

Elemental Warding coupled with Toughness could make for some great damage mitigation in PvP.

Wintergrasp: First Experiences

This weekend I had the pleasure of participating in some Wintergrasp action. I got to both assault and defend the keep (victorious both times tyvm). And man did I have fun.

I was worried about running around in PvE gear with mixed blues, purples, and level 70 gear. So I used Outfitter to create a "Max Stam" outfit and put that baby on for some PvP action.

Josh, over at Eye for an Eye, has a good post titled Wintergrasp is Concentrated Awesome which sums up my thoughts exactly. I couldn't have said it better myself.

How did Stoney hold up in that mixed bag of gear? I owned. Spirit Wolves are amazing in PvP. Between their stuns and their heals I was keeping myself alive despite immense pressure from Warriors, Warlocks, and Priests. I had the pleasure of taking down a Warlock in 1-on-1 outside of a machine shop. I surprised him and got the advantage out of the gate. I popped Feral Spirit and my dogs stunned as I ripped him to shreds with weapons. When he came around from the stun I was ready for the Fear and interrupted the first cast. The Death Coil followed suit, at that point I had him to 1% HP but the coil healed him back up. All the while my dogs are keeping at him and winding his health down. When I came out of Death Coil he of course had the fear ready and stupid me I didn't have a Tremor totem down. So I went for a run... When I came back from my little jog my dogs were still all over him. I popped into Ghostwolf chased him down and finished him off with 1 Stormstrike.

A priest showed up at that point and I ripped her to shreds so fast I can only assume it wasn't an 80 toon. Then two Tauren Warriors who were working me over pretty good. I got one down and the other low enough that I felt OK about myself as I finally succumb to the inevitable. Granted it was after 2 full MW5_HW and another MW3 that just couldn't wait.

I did kill a DK at one point but it didn't really register in the confusion so I can't say much about staring one of them down.

PvP Last Night

I respec'd to 0/61/0 for some PvP action. In retrospect I should have taken 2 points in Earthen Power instead of Improved WF totem. I also didn't change my glyphs to match the Static Shock build, but I'll do that today (after RL stuff). We are raiding SSC or TK tonight as a guild PUG, and my ZA run is scheduled for just before that so I will have some results of my output in both PvE and PvP.

But as for PvP last night all I can say is... WOW. It's like gaming in fast-forward. The speed of the action is twice as fast as pre-patch. We have all the buffs and hard-hitting abilities without the stam increases that will be coming in WotLK. So it's bambambamdead. Of course you all probably know this already, but last night was my first PvP action since August when I needed to take a break from all the filthy rogues out there.

Here's how I fared against different classes:
Druid - didn't get to square off with any droods last night. I recall getting smacked with Starfall and thinking OMG I can't get away from these damn things! But other than that no interaction.
Hunter - Still a struggle. This is where I needed Earthen Power to break the wingclips.
Mage - Actually found mages easier to kill post-patch. Seems they didn't get any crazy new tricks.
Paladin - hmm. Yes they got killer buffs, and yes the long duration stun sucks, but considering that they were always hard to take down for me before I didn't find them that much worse. Grounding Totem, Medallion of the Alliance, and MW5 HW are life savers. I always struggled against Pally's because of the combination of high armor and healing ability (prot Pallys were a waste of time for me pre-patch). Now if I have grounding totem up that'll eat up the hammer, a quick switch to shield for more armor, and Medallion for the next stun. What was pleasing was that I was able to rip apart the poorly-geared Pallys despite their stuns.
Priest - Disc priests still take a loooong time to kill, which post-patch means like 10 seconds. But I would say they are easier to take down now because the insane boosts to damage outpaced the buffs given to heals.
Rogue - still filthy. I both love and hate rogues. OK, I don't love them, but I can appreciate a well played rogue who uses all of their dirty filthy cheap tricks. The jury is still out for me as to whether or not rogues are easier, harder, or the same. Right now I'm leaning to easier/same. My damage is just as bursty as yours filthy rogue! But I get ARMOR!
Shaman - Elemental shaman... as long as I can get in before getting smacked in the face with a Chain Lightning crit then they're toast. But on more than one occassion I went in at full health and by the time I closed that 30-40 yard gap (in Ghost Wolf no less) I was at 50% health. I know they didn't get buffed as well as other classes but that initial hurt is NASTY. Once I'm in and above 50% health... pffft. ES that next cast and /wave /goodbye.
Warlock - Ouch. Warlocks got nasty. I used to be able to take down locks on a consistent basis--it was all about totem management and timing heals against dots. Now those dots bring the pain faster and harder. I found myself having to choose between dpsing them or healing myself. And when you get to that point you have to ask yourself, is this worth it? Of course with a healer behind me these guys are just another bloodstain on my fist weapons.
Warrior - BBBBBBBLADESTORMMMMM sucks. I thought I'd take advantage of that "cannot be stopped unless killed" part... yeah, not so much. Word of advice: when you see a Warrior doing the whirling dervish - run away bravely.

Things that are awesome:

• Spirit Wolves - I love my wolves
  
• Spirit Walk - I love my wolves even more
  
• MW5 HW - thought you had me didn't you filthy rogue?! HA! Insta-heal!
  
• Windfury Crits - of course :D
  

I know not much about Static Shock in here. Jury's still out until I can look at some numbers post-raids tonight.

Replies to Comments & Questions

Thanks everyone for the comments. Your feedback means a lot to me so keep it coming. Here are two questions/comments posted earlier, and one request from me.

Bert asked: so for 3.0.2, what do you reckon to be the weapon speed of choice? since maelstrom weap deals 25% xtra dmg for OH, when imbued with FW, I was thinking of using a faster OH (i got bad mojo dagger and swiftsteel bludgeon)

Bert, the Slow/Slow WF/WF is still shown to be better than the Slow/Fast WF/FT combo, even with the extra damage for MW. It’s only between 2-5% better according to my theorycrafting and what I’ve read of others. 2-5% is really splitting hairs at some levels, especially now in World of Nerfcraft. But at an end-game raiding level where wipes at 1% on bosses are as common as Warriors whirlwinding sheeps that 2-5% extra DPS can make the difference. If I were you I’d hang on to that dagger and the bludgeon in case they want to make Fast/FT the ideal OH combo. But for now if that 2-5% makes a difference then I’d go with Slow/Slow WF/WF. If it doesn’t make that much of a difference then have fun with it!


Jaron (Azjol-Nerub) adds: Right now I have my enhance shammy specced w/ full pts in static shock and imp shields. I don't fool with Lava Lash at all at 70. Is Elem-Dev really that much better? I'm playing with EnhSim and not seeing much difference. I pvp enough to enjoy the better LS (especially with the glyph!).

The thing with Ele Dev that people love is the synergy it creates between melee and casting—which is the essence of Enhance right now. Since we cast a spell on every GCD (well, except when SS is available) Ele Dev should proc regularly and should have an uptime between 35% and 40%. That’s a 9% increase to Crit 40% of the time. It’s like Sex Panther by Odeon “60% of the time it works every time.” Ele Dev isn’t made with bits of real panther, but it is damn fine.

As for Ele Dev vs Static Shock, what is the difference that you are seeing Jaron? I’m a hardcore min-maxer so I obsess over squeezing every last drop of dps out of my Stoneybaby. I also believe raiders have a responsibility to their fellow guildmates to maximize their potential. If it comes down to 5% difference or less, that could be negligible for some but not for me. If you’re talking 10% difference in DPS then I can’t condone that.

Ultimately it comes down having fun playing your class. And I do really want to try out the Static Shock. I was just saying last night that I haven’t PvP’d on Stoney since August and I want to get back to it. That 0/61/0 spec you have Jaron is exactly one of the ones I’ve been eyeing! I’m considering yours and 5/56/0. What do you think of those? Maybe this weekend I’ll respect and glyph it up and see how it goes.


Finally, keep the comments coming. I appreciate the input and I want to know what’s working for you. I’ll keep you informed of my findings (new EnhSim is up btw and my armory profile is finally updated) and if you find a spec/gear/chant/gem combo that’s really singing for you in PvE or PvP post us a link to your armory and details on what’s working for you

Thanks again and stay tuned for more!

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.

Dumped

* I started this post and did not complete it, so I'm backdating to the day that I started it *

Dumped. I got dumped from my 3v3. Not for lack of skill, not for lack of cooperation, but simply because our resto druid decided he could get further with a ... a ... I can't even begin to say it. *chokes back tears* a rogue. I got dumped for a rogue.

Damn! At first I thought he wanted the combo that won the recent 3v3 tourney: Resto Druid, Rogue, MS Warr. But a few days later I came to find that he dropped the MS Warr too in favor of a warlock and another rogue. This move didn't make any sense to me. For all my angst of rogues I can understand dropping me in favor of one of Blizzard's favored children. But why drop the Warr? And it was for a warlock that just started PvPing and a rogue that's an alt in our guild. Well, the first rogue is one of our top DPS rogues and a damn fine player, Zorren.

So I got dumped from my 3v3 and I'm in search of a new group, a new team. I'm out on the street trying to make a new life. Wish me luck.

Start of S4 on the 5v5

We kicked off season four last night on our 5v5. We rolled with the Disc Priest, Holy Pally, MS Warr, Hunter, and me. We went 6-6 on the night and ended up with a grand total of 1506 rating.

As I expected there were some sick teams. We got rolled by a few with full S3 gear who must have just started their season as well. There was one 4 dps / 1 healer team that decided to FF me down first. They charged across the bridge in the BEM map and I started dropping totems. By the time they got to me I hit Heroism and as my health was dropping I popped Shamanistic Rage and I was toasted before that GCD was up. It took two GCD--three seconds total--for them to rip me to shreds. ouch.

And then there were some teams trying to make their way like us. As the gates opened on our 2nd battle there was no one to be found. We speculated the possibilities: all rogue, all druid, druid/rogue, or stealthers + Shadowmeld. The priest got sapped so we started beating on that rogue who popped up behind enemy lines, and then our Proximo's lit up: five rogue team. It's both my dream come true and my worst nightmare all rolled into one. If our team was a 4 dps team or if the rogues had their stunlocks down better they probably could have stunned the pally, killed the priest and then made trouble for us. But being rogues they are not required to have skill or strategy so they didn't have their act together and we picked them apart one by one. Mmmmm DELICIOUS. With rogue blood on my blades we looked for the next challenges.

I made two tactical errors that at worst cost us matches or at best made the loss go down faster. The first was on a two healer team I had us going after a dps first. It was a Pally, Disc Priest, SL/SL Lock, Frost Mage, MS Warr team. A pretty vanilla combo for 5v5 and one that makes choosing a target tough. I picked the Lock and chose wrong. Mental note and 5v5 Arena Rule Number 1 for our setup: On two healer teams, take a healer first. We could have very easily attacked the pally, forced the bubble, have the priest dispel it right away and finish him off. Then we are free to dps through the Priest's heals.

The other tactical error I made was choosing a 2nd target on a very unusual team combo: Disc Priest, 2x MS Warr, Resto Druid, Feral Druid. We got the priest down first and fast. Then I called out to go for the Resto Druid because I recognized the Kodohide Spaulders and thought he would be very weak. But he did an amazing job of kiting using Cyclone, roots, cheetah, and pillars to save himself. At that point the three physical DPS had taken down the priest, even after a bubble, and then the hunter. Props to the druid in crappy gear, goes to show skill+spec > gear. Of course it helped the rest of the team had full S3 gear including shoulders and weapons. That resto druid was the natural choice, but he sure had some great people carrying him.

On the whole it was a tough start to the season, but in the end we fared... well, mediocre. Maybe we'll get a crack at it again today or tomorrow.

Patch 2.4.3 for Enhance Shamans

For a sub-patch (is that the right term?) there are a significant amount of changes taking place, and not just bug fixes but gameplay improvements, UI changes, nerfs and buffs. Here are a few key pieces for enhance shamans:

Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
This will affect Purge on enemy targets. Currently I do not know if Purge attempts to dispel non-dispellable effects, but I can only assume this is an improvement.

Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.
Oh man oh man. Rogues will actually require resil? One calculation I saw was that to achieve the pre-patch level of mitigation a rogue would need well over 430 resilience. Now when we have that damn rogue down to below 3% I know my Stormstrike will waste him and not just bounce off his cheat.

Activated beneficial effects from jewelcrafting trinkets can no longer be dispelled.
If you are a JC and use the trinkets this should be good news. Though Stoney is a JC I don't use the JC trinkets because I have better ones for both PvE and PvP. I'm curious, can you use the trinkets in arena?


Magister's Terrace nerfs listed here.

This seems to be a pattern of Blizzard's: release content erring on the side of difficult then after a few months nerf it for the masses. In some regards I'm disappointed to see what I've earned, most often the hard way and early on, be brought down a notch for the sake of the masses. But on the other hand I suppose it's the nerfing that keeps the semi-casual players interested and thus subscriptions high--so I can see how it is a good decision from a business point of view for Blizzard. But I digress, I posted here about how to get your enhance shaman into an MgT run as most groups were only looking for CC classes. I expect groups will still be looking for CC classes but the nerfs should make it easier for us enhance shammys to get in runs.


Earth Elemental: This pet will now leash back to its totem when pulled beyond 50 yards away.
I've never had a problem with this but again I suppose any bug fix is a worth a fix. Anyone know of any specific cases where this was a problem?

That covers 2.4.3 for Enhance Shammys. Enjoy!

Season 4

Wow I haven't posted in five days. That's a long stretch for me and considering everything that's going on: Season 4, WotLK updates, Summer Fire Festival thing, and Patch 2.4.3. Let's start with Season 4.

I have over 70k honor, enough marks to buy any of the gear, and 3872 arena points. The best rating we had on any of our teams at any point in time was 1635. This means I can get the neck, waist, and wrist pieces very quickly. The ring will be doable with a bit of work and the boots a stretch at 1700. What will be helpful is that I am replacing 2 pieces of PvE gear with the neck and waist. Granted the War-Feathered Loop was a nice cross-over piece with armor ignore and some decent stam, but nothing beats resilience. Those two replacements will give me an additional 39 resilience. The bracer upgrade does not increase my resil but does give additional stats.

For arena gear I am looking at the legs and chest as the first upgrades. Unfortunately my only two pieces of remaining S2 gear are the helm and the shoulders, so I will be replacing all of the S3 gear for starters. The 1550 rating on the legs should be very easy to obtain, with the 1600 doable once all the hardcore teams grind up to their 1900-2000 ratings.

This brings up a point I made to my team: let's not jump into arenas first thing on Tuesday. Considering that every team starts over at 1500 rating the uber groups will be sitting in the lower bracket grinding points off the mid ranks and the scrubs. So a team we would normally lose 6 points to could take us for 15-16 and do so over and over again. They don't seem to share my viewpoint so I told them I'd play a few but if we are getting wasted and losing lots of points we need to cool it until the weekend.

Good luck to you in Season 4 and I'll see you in the arena.

Controlling AV

After clearing 3 bosses in Hyjal last night a big group was up for some PvP in order to get their trinkets for the Archimonde fight on Thursday. We had 8 people at one point and let me tell you that was more than enough to completely control the battlefield. It's amazing that only 20% of the total raid can make such a huge impact but having such a well coordinated force (with plenty of healers) makes all the difference between an otherwise ragtag bunch.

We were rolling with:
Enhance Shaman (yours truly)
2x Hunters
Rogue
Holy Pally
Resto Shaman
Resto Druid
and after a he leveled his axe skill... a newly minted Enhance Shaman (guildie mentioned here who decided to roll with the true spec of hardcore gamers)

Yes that's 3 healers and 4.5 DPS (sorry Last, but with only 10% crit rating unbuffed you're only getting credit for 1/2 of a dps'er!!) What a difference having multiple healers makes. Here's what we did.

First few matches it was the textbook Alliance AV win strat. We rushed RH because you can count on everyone else going to Galv first. If there was no defense then we split up and capped the flag and the towers. If help was needed at IBT, TP, or FWGY after we capped the southern points then a few of us broke off to help, with the rest staying behind at the flag and the towers to prevent ninja capping. Then after the last or 2nd to last tower capped we'd call for ALL IN and take down Drek with ease.

This went on for maybe 5 matches. All lightning fast victories. It's great... for a while. Then it gets boring so we tried to mix it up. Next match we hopped between Stonehearth and Icewing. We actually went down to IBT first, capped it and chilled out down there until we saw SH get capped by the Horde. Then we rolled en-mass to SH and laid waste to the two defenders there. Of course at that point IW was capped so we went there and took that. We spent the rest of the fight bouncing between SH & IW, holding on to those for the duration of the fight. When Alliance was All In we ran back to Dun Baldar to mess with the Horde in Van's room. It was an outstanding victory with plenty of bonus honor for saving 2 towers.

For the next match we decided to have a bit more fun and defended Belinda. I think though we played our cards wrong and gave away not only that there were Alliance waiting in her room, but A LOT of Alliance. We only met sporadic resistance for a good five minutes in there. So we broadened our defensive strategy, moving between SH, IW, and Belinda. We let the Horde keep the SHGY because it not only gave us a bit of a challenge but also provided us with plenty of fresh HK's. In fact at one point we had both towers safe and decided to just farm people coming out of the GY.

But soon we realized that the Alliance had no forward graveyards... NONE. And the entire Alliance force was on defense. We had forced a turtle. The only ray of sunshine was that IBT & East FW tower were destroyed. Other than that, no other towers were taken by either side. This is where things got fun for us.

We popped back into Belinda's room to thrash the five or so Hordies that were trying to tackle her, recapped SH, then all eight of us rolled straight south. We picked up the Iceblood GY and asked two alliance there to guard it. More alliance were joining the offensive push and some took TP. As for us, we ran down and just completely mauled the resistance at FW. We got split up into two groups in inadvertently with two Hunters, rogue and Pally getting caught between FWGY and the bottleneck. Me, the resto shaman, and the resto druid rolled up into West, capped it and held it against two rogues and a pally. The other half caught up with us and the fighting was intense at this point. Horde had a Warrior, 2 Rogues (you know how I feel about rogues), Mage, Warlock, and Pally. We pushed them back deeper to the RH GY and then capped RH. They still had FW and were making a push on to us, but at this point a few more Alliance joined the fight and kept the horde busy down there.

With towers capped we would have called for the All-In but there was only the eight of us and one more resto Druid. We were feeling bold so the healers told me to strap on a shield and get to tanking! There was some horde resistance inside who we dispatched with ease. Our rogue and hunters pulled the dogs off and killed them. I saw misdirects from the hunters, and constant heals coming in from four different sources. It was brilliant! I had down Stoneskin, Grace of Air, Healing Stream, and Searing totems to help with the defense. I popped Heroism and Sham Rage right from the start to help with the initial chaos and until we got settled into position. I never dropped below 50% health with all the heals, and down went Drek.

Here are two screenshots of me tanking the Frostwolf Clan leader:

and



It was a 26 minute AV with 520 bonus honor and I must say it was the most fun I've had in that BG. I can honestly say in that instance the eight of us controlled the flow of that battle entirely.

Arena Update

I did a good amount of arena between Sunday and Monday nights. Both 3v3 and 5v5 matches. I would say it was a good weekend for arena, not just because we gained points on two teams, but because I got to smash a lot of dirty filthy rogues.

On our 3v3 we climbed 30 more points to 1576. We faced a wide variety of teams and for the most part we did a great job with it. Schlimmy our resto druid pointed out that we had gotten away from our Shock & Awe campaign. Sitting back even for an extra couple of seconds gives the other team a chance to assess and setup. We are a burst DPS team with limited CC and being all melee, we need the element of surprise. We agreed that even if we are attacking the "wrong" target from the beginning that's OK, just get in there and sow chaos. So this week we dropped the defensive stance we'd been taking and got on offense and it had a positive impact.

Riddaren, our MS warrior, was a hamstring maniac. I was giving him WF as much as possible and using my Rank 1 Earth Shock macro to interrupt healers as much as possible. I think if we played a few more we could have gotten back up over 1600. But we called it a night as it was late on Sunday already.

We had 1 heart-breaker of a match. It was an RMP combo, we wasted the rogue as soon as he popped but they took down Ridd a split second later. That left Resto Druid/Enhance Shaman vs Disc Priest/Frost Mage. It was a long long fight with the Priest and Mage both going OOM countless times. Perhaps the most annoying part of it all though was the constant Sheeping by the mage. I thought you were supposed to go immune due to the diminishing returns effect, but there I was, bleating away for 8 seconds throughout the fight. It seemed that after an "immune" to the cast the diminishing returns reset. Then it was 8 seconds of sheep, 4 seconds, 2 seconds, and then it seemed to start all over again. I suppose those 15 seconds went by fast enough to reset the DR effect. Unfortunately it took me away from the priest long enough to let him drink up, and then I made the mistake of going after the mage, who just kited me despite being practically OOM--I guess just enough mana left for Frost Armor and Frost Nova. Ah well, the right play would have been to stay on the Priest, and work him down. In the end we lost but only lost 5 points. I must say I'm pleased we held up so well against such a highly ranked team.

As for 5v5 we once again coordinated a throw-away team for points and then tried to make a "winning" team. The final 7 games were Resto Shaman, Holy Pally, Hunter, MS Warrior, and Enhance Shaman. Again we are limited in CC so we went with another Shock & Awe strategy. Also, Ridd and I are accustomed to running like this so it was an easy transition. We faced this one team 4 times out of 7, beat them the first time and lost the next three. They were: Disc Priest, Holy Pally, MS Warr, Warlock, Feral Druid. The first time we beat them I was left alone and pounded the everliving crap out of them all, doing around 50% of the total damage. Thus the next three times we faced them they FF me down right away. I barely had time to pop Sham Rage between the stuns and fears before I was toast. Ah well, in the end the team went 6-4 on the night and climbed 26 points to 1540.

We decided that we are going to start a consistent 5v5 team and try to bring that rating up as well. The hardest part with that seems to be getting the right 5 people online and able to do arena matches at the same time. We want to go with a 2-healer setup with Awl (Holy Pally) as our anchorman healer. We would love to find a PvP geared Disc Priest to add to the team as well. We will have three healers and four dps to choose from, but the key I think will be to have Ridd on for his MS. Here's what we're looking at right now:
Heals: Holy Pally, Resto Druid, Disc Priest (need to find one)
DPS: MS Warrior, Enhance Shaman, BM/Surv Hunter, Mage, Warlock (depends who's online)

We'll see how it all pans out.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

PvP Night

On Sunday I spent the morning reading everything I could get my hands on about Enhancement Shaman PvP. I devoured the thread at Elitist Jerks as well as the one at the official WoW forums. I checked out specs on Push, Diivide, and others. I made new macros, retooled my bars for PvP, re-gemmed, and changed some enchants on my PvP set. I was stoked.

First I had to MT at Kara run on my druid for some guild alts, mains (that want badges), and some guild friends/family. It was nice to actually see gear get used and have people /roll for it rather than just send it all to the disenchanter for voids. Normally we just farm that place on the weekend for badges.

But I digress. After kara I got together whoever was available for some 5v5. None of my arena teams are anything special, I've just been point farming since near the end of season 1, but now I'm committed to being a damn good enhancement Shammy in arenas. For this group we had an unusual but surprisingly good setup (for the lower brackets anyway). We had a resto shaman, prot pally in healing gear, marks hunter, MS warr, and me. Basically the shaman was in charge of healing with the pally dispelling, bubbling, and backup healing. We went 7-3 on the night and stopped there. Our first loss was to a full s3 team that FF down the hunter, the warr, then me. They kept one healer cc'd with a sick cc rotation of sheep, cyclone, hammer, lather rinse repeat. It was over before it started.

The wins were coming frequently though. We would mostly run a "shock and awe" campaign with the warr going in first or charging up the right-hand side of the BEM map, picking up a warlock and MSing him right away. The rest of us would follow the warr except the resto shaman who would be the only one to go left with the intention of holding a pillar and staying out of the action. That worked very well as we were well coordinated, focused fired, and didn't give the other team a chance to setup. We didn't have any cc other than the pally's HoJ.

I did enjoy my new shield when I was the FF target. That was one of two major changes to my strategy: rather than try and heal through a rogue or warr on me with points in Healing Focus, I opted for a Gladiator's Shieldwall which effectively doubles my armor to nearly 13k. That extra staying power helped the healers keep me up through a few rogue/warr or rogue/hunter combos on me. I popped on my shield, cleansed myself and enjoyed the heals while still chasing around whatever target I was on.

The other major change was no more 2H. Dual wielding is hands-down proven to be far superior to a big fat 2H. I shelved my Axe of the Gronn Lords permanently.

The resto shaman and I each set up a focus-interrupt macro, I would call out a healer that we were going to set as our focus interrupt target and with the help of Quartz add-on and Perl Classic I could keep track of the healer and interrupt as often as possible. The macro is:

#showtooltip Earth Shock
/clearfocus [modifier:alt][target=focus,dead][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Earth Shock(Rank 1)

I had it bound to my fifth mouse button and between the two of us it allowed us to stop a few key heals and turn the tide in a few matches.

For our final game of the night we went up against 5 rogues. I'm not even going to say how horrible and disgusting that team setup is. I'm not going to even say anything about how we lost either, and how pathetic it was of me to be running around in Ghost Wolf form scouting them out only to get chain stunned and ripped to shreds. I don't want to talk about it.

Ah well, back to raiding this week. Tonight we're taking shots at Lady Vashj again. I'll post about my Strider kiting strategy later.

Turtling In the Turtle

Tonight I was PvPing with my late night PvP partners--normally a hunter, fire mage, MS warr, and drood. But tonight the MS Warrior was playing his wife's resto shaman and the drood was AFK.

First we grabbed the daily--Eye of the Storm--and hopped in. There was a larger premade than ours (we had 4) so I knew we were off to a good start. We stayed on offense the whole time and quickly 4-capped pushing the horde back to their starting gy where we just farmed kills until they broke through. Quick win.

Went for a second EotS and I was leader meaning we had the biggest group joining that instance. It started out bad with 2 towers each and most everyone fighting in the middle but horde always coming out with the flag. After some chasing and pleading to stop fighting on the flag--at this point we were behind in points--we got our first 3 cap and started to press the advantage. Again staying on offense the whole time and murauding across the battlefield we were able to hold at least a 2-1 and usually a 3-1 advantage. I think I had 9 kills on a single warlock, 9 on a mage, and another 7 on a priest. Another win for the night.

Next we popped into AV. For the first one we decided to ping pong between SH & IW, playing defense and trying to hold those two for the alliance as long as possible. We ended up losing IW but holding SH. Our MS warr playing his wife's resto shaman was really getting a feel for the OP-ness that is resto shammy. Meanwhile the hunter and I were having fun putting the pointy ends of sharp things in horde. Unfortunately we lost that AV due to the horde being able to take Van despite the extra battlemaster.

For the last AV of the night we lost the fire mage to sleep. So the three of us got the queue. In the bg I let the lock and resto drood know we were rushing RH. They were down. When we got to RH there was a huge defense so I called out over vent to take the east tower. Really I wanted to pop in there and use it for cover. That worked. Only a warrior, pally, and mage follwed us up to the top. In the close quarters the mage couldn't kite and fell quickly to my blades. The pally was squishy and I forced a bubble, switched to the warr. He must have been prot bc he was doing no damage and taking even less. Back to the pally... Windfury CRITS! Stormstrike, let him flash heal, wait for the Holy Ligtht, there it is EARTH SHOCK for the interrupt and WF for the finish.

At this point someone below took FWGY before RH ( /sigh ) so the turtle was only going to get worse. Wave after wave or horde crashed upon our shores. Spriest (2H Windfury procs ftw). Druid (purge purge purge). Pally back for more. But with 8 totems down the tremors tick fast, the poisons go byebye. We held the east tower in the midst of a nasty turtle. Then jumped down, grabbed west and did the same. The best part was that we eventually broke the turtle, got RH and took down Drek amidst half a dozen horde in his room.

All in all, a very satisfying night of PvP.

How am I going to get to 1750?

How AM I going to get that rating?

I don't know how I caught the PvP fever, but I've got it bad. I think one of the things that happens with end-game raiders is that you run out of things to do that are worthwhile and/or interesting once you get deep enough into raid content. There are fewer gear upgrades for me; most of which come from badges or SWP crafted (once someone starts selling them on our tiny server). And I feel like I've run every instance 100 times. But once I got into PvP I discovered a whole new world. It's always new and interesting (except when I get chain stun locked by a mace spec rogue named Stabuxyz for the billionth time).

I started doing arena just to get the gear for PvE. A fellow guildie convinced a group of us to start a new team each week. We'd spend 40g apiece and pretty much go 0-10. Hey we didn't care as we were getting loot out of it--eventually. And somewhere along the way, something changed. I started trying to win. We started rejoicing in victories and pondering over defeats.

Now I'm an avid PvP'er with 3/5 vengeful, 2/5 merc, a merc MH axe, 2 vindicators, and my battlemaster trinket. And I only use 2 pieces of PvP gear for PvE now.

But I've never been on a team rated higher than 1650.

Looking down the road to Season 4 I'm wondering how the heck am I going to continue to gear up without having a decent team? More to the point, I wonder how am I going to be competitive as an enhance shaman?

Resto shaman? They rock PvP. MS Warr? A must have in arena. But enhancement shaman?!? No friggin way. Not a top-of-the-chart spec for arena and with little hope of any changes coming to correct that. In fact, Blizzard has stated that they do not intend every spec to be viable in PvP. I'm not saying anything you, the well-read enhance shaman, doesn't already know.

So how am I going to get to 1750? I am going to try two paths: 3's & 5's. On the 3v3 we have a top rated resto shaman, an MS warr, and me. On the 5v5 we have 2 holy pallies, 1 frost mage, 1 fire mage, and me.

The strategy in the 3v3 is shock and awe. Warr charges in first, I follow close behind. We pick a target and MS it right off the mount. I pop heroism and drop a WF right away (he'll have some WF left from the totem be down in the prep stage). Then resto druid pops out of stealth under the cover of the chaos we are sowing in melee. That's the idea....

For 5v5 I picked that setup for 2 bubbles, 2 healers, 2 ice blocks, and I'm kinda the odd-man out. Actually, the frost mage is instructed to drop frost nova every time it's up so I get kited less. And one of the Paladins is cleansing me and giving me blessing of freedom so I get kited less. That's the idea there...

Problem is that we've not put it all to the test. I'll keep you posted.