Sunday Night Update

(reposted from Path of a Hero)

I've been working, I've been raiding when I can, and tweeting like a maniac. You guys are all looking great out there and I promise more regular updates as soon as I get this major project launched. Good stuff on the horizon.

As for Stoney: T7.5 shoulders and the Stalk Skin Belt meant I had to completely regem. I also spent DKP on the Arachnoid Gold Band. I was going to save up my DKP for the T7.5 helm off KT but two things convinced me otherwise: 1) I believe in taking upgrades as soon as you can get them because you never know when you'll get the opportunity again, and 2) our MT did not have his T7.5 helm and I knew he wanted it, and with his DKP being much higher than mine there was no reason to hold back because I would never be able to out-bid him. So I took the upgrades as they came.

I love the look of the T7.5 shoulders. It's a damn shame they're so pretty because I'll probably replace them when I finally get my hands on the helm.

I also picked up a Hand of Nerub to do some Theorycraft testing at the dummy one night.

My expertise thesis =P is nearly complete. That's also taken a back burner. I have the results of my raiding across multiple resets. What's left is the hard part: I need to figure out what the increase to DPS would be and if it's worth the trade-off in other stats. More spreadsheets!

Tomorrow we'll be in Sarth3D again, wish us luck! The 2D is like a walk in the park on a fine Sunday afternoon after wiping on 3D for 2 hours. But I don't mind the wiping because we were progressing each time.

And be sure to follow me on Twitter if you subscribe to that sort of nonesense.

May all your hits be crits!

Can I fark with my gear any more?

I feel like all I ever do is mess around with my gear and talk about the damned hit-cap. Gawd it was so much easier when there was no hard hit cap for Enhance and all we had to do was dip down into the Resto tree for Nature's Guidance. Do you remember Nature's Guidance? It's not even listed on Wowhead now.

Anyway, I won the Valorous gloves on Sath+1 on Monday and had to dip into my stockpile of gear to figure out how to hit cap. What I came up with was not only hit cap, but an additional 4 points of Expertise. I was able to get to EXACTLY 341 hit and 124 Expertise Rating which is only 1 wasted point of Expertise Rating (remember Expertise is only good in chunks and can actually be wasted).

So 341 hit and 124 Expertise Rating gives me a kinda of private nerdgasam. oh-oh-oh-oH-OH-OH-OHYEEEEAAAAAHHHH

And now in true man/nerd post-coital fashion, I am tired. good night all.

Updated PoaH

Captain Kel'Thuzad

Ugliest weapon in the game: Kel'Thuzad's Reach.

What's he reaching for? Why does he even need to reach? Doesn't he have some crazy Lich-like power so he doesn't have to reach? You know he's sitting up there in the pinnacle of Naxx watching the college bowl games using his Lichy powers to magically open the fridge and transport a nice cold beer to his lil beer cozy that says "I died for the Lich King and all I got was this lousy beer cozy." Maybe that's what he's using this thing for: to open some Lich-sized beers after a hard day of trying to the abom's meathooks out of the banshees while his back is turned. Is a Lich's work never done?

With hands like these... no.

Anyway, I put Berserking on it. The interesting thing is that now I only have Mongoose on 1 weapon, and it's my Off Hand, and my OH is faster than my MH, though just slightly. I was going to test out going WF/WF because of the Totem of Splintering, but now with Mongoose on my OH I don't think that will be a good option. I'll stick with WF/FT. (though that logic was based on thinking that Mongoose only affects the weapon that is imbued with it, and I'm not sure if that is the case... something to look into.)

Oh and I'm only using this weapon in raids. For soloing I use Angry Dread and Pride. For PvP I use Titansteel Bonecrusher and Pride.

Second Most Popular

PoaH update.

Turns out I'm the second most popular Path on PoaH. How do I know this? The first most popular guy made a comment to me congratulating me on being the SECOND most popular... hmmm.

Here's today's post:
I didn't buy the Savage Gladiator's Totem like I intended... because it doesn't exist in game yet. But I did spend some DKP on a new chest piece, then bought boots to match. I also picked up the Mirror of Truth and put on a pair of gloves without hit rating to keep my Hit at a decent level.

I now have 2 chest pieces, 2 bracers, 3 gloves, 2 belts, 2 boots, and 4 trinkets that I keep in my bags. Why? because they all have varying amounts of hit and if I want an upgrade and I need to increase or decrease my hit then I have choices in my bags. For example if Sapphiron drops Bandit's Insignia then I have a choice if I want to use that and Mirror of Truth, thus losing the 83 hit on Grim Toll. It's a constant balancing act.

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!

Grim Toll & Hit Caps

PoaH Update
Every time I get a new piece of loot I have to reconfigure my gear to get as close to the hit cap without going under. Grim Toll is a very nice upgrade and while there are better upgrades to be had in Naxx25, the time was right and I was next up on DKP. Glad I got it; it's a crapton of hit.

I tried using the ShareThis feature to publish directly to my blog but it didn't seem to work. Will be interesting to see if I end up with 3 posts tomorrow here or if they all go to the wrong blog. Anyway, if you are on PoaH hit me up as a rival. It's a fun site.

Upgrade Your Weapons

I hit 50 Emblems of Heroism last night and over 12k gold so I could do some shopping around for upgrades. There was a lot to consider as I'm still in BC shoulders, boots and relic, and I'm using a green cape for my raid-hit set. As I was looking over my spreadsheet wondering where to spend my marks & gold I realized that my weapons were lacking. Yes an upgrade to shoulders or back or boots would be a nice boost, but ultimately Enhance is a melee spec and in order to maximize damage output it requires excellent melee weapons.

To put it plainly: upgrade your weapons. Weapons are the single most important parts of an Enhance Shaman's outfit.

To get ready for raid tomorrow I decided to go straight to the top of my spreadsheet and bought Pride for my OH and purchased all the mats for a Titansteel Bonecrusher fo my MH. Then I hat to hit the AH and purchase GPE and Arcane Dust for the damn Mongoose enchant. I'm really kicking myself for unloading all of my BC enchanting mats, I should have looked to see if I would still need them. Really, who would have known that Mongoose would still be the enchant of choice? And when is Blizzard coming out with a Wrath version of Mongoose for us Enhancers? I think I'll run the sim today with some other enchants and see what comes out on top.

But I digress, two shiny new bad@$$ weapons ready to rock tomorrow in Naxx.

Enhance Gear Comparison Spreadsheet

I updated yesterday's post with a link to a downloadable MS Excel file. You can check out that post or just click here.

It's virus and phishing free. I run a tight network and have never been hacked (/knocks on wood) so you're safe with that link.

I'm glad you all are getting good use out of this document. It kills me that it's incomplete, but better to have it in your hands incomplete than not at all. Just keep adding rows to add more gear.

What I do to add in another item is the following:

1. Insert a row between two items from the same slot
2. Select that new blank row (by clicking on the row number)
3. Press Ctrl+D to copy the content of the row above down to the current row (this is the keyboard shortcut for 'Copy Down')
4. Type in the new item name, link, and location
5. Replace the item stats, make sure you replace all of the previous items stats including gems
   
6. Stop when you get to the grey cells as they are the formulas

Enjoy!

Stoney's Enhance Gear Comps Spreadsheet

What follows are links to Stoneybaby's WotLK Enhance Gear Masterblaster EP Spreadsheet system. The file is only partially complete but I guess it's better to put up partially complete than not at all. you should be able to view without signing in and edit when signed in. Let me know if you have any problems.

Google Spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pJQ7DpouhvwmV66yXk4zOUg

Webspage:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJQ7DpouhvwmV66yXk4zOUg

Downloadable MS Excel:
http://www.so-money.net/Documents/Enhance_Gear.xls

Let me know how it pans out.

EDIT 12/3/08 9:00 AM: added link for the Excel doc
EDIT 12/4/08 6:00 PM: Google Doc is now editable by everyone, or at least it should be. Don't #^$% it up! :D

Path of a Hero

I read an article on WoW Insider about Path of a Hero and I've got to say that I love the idea. I'll be posting some of my blog entries over there as well as here. Of course Windfury Crits will still be Stoneybaby's main home and all my posts will be here. I like the features over there at PoaH and so will be contributing to the community there.

If you guys sign up at PoaH then add me as a Rival and I'll do the same. Should be a fun way to track each other's gear and progression. Unorthodox starts on Naxx10 this week, and by the looks of it we'll be ready for 25's shortly thereafter, so look for Stoney's improvements over time. And I'd like to see how my fellow Enhancers gear upthroughout the expansion.

Get over to Path of a Hero and sign up, then add Stoneybaby as a Rival. I'm not sure if I'll get notified that you added me as a Rival so post a comment here when you sign up and how I can find you.

Maces, Mongoose, and Mounts

I dinged 77 last night which of course means Cold Weather Flying finally. What a relief it is to be back on an epic flyer zooming around the continent. It also means that when flying out of Dalaran I don't have to take the long way around on the flight path--I can hop on my mount and directly head off in the right direction.

We also did The Champion of Anguish and I snagged myself a Crimson Cranium Crusher. Going from the sleekness of Vanir's to this honking mass of stone and steel is going to take some adjusting (mentally). Replacing my first epic was a bittersweet moment. It clearly out-powers, out-dpses, and out does Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality. I was sad to see the badge weapon that I worked so hard for, but was comforted by the fact that I had it the day that 2.4 went live and definitely got my money's worth. Of course this also meant that I had to level my mace skill from 92 to 385! I did manage to hit 382 by the end of the night. Those last few points are always the hardest (axes are next).

The real question though is Mongoose. It is still viable at level 80 or do the procs scale back like the did with Crusader from 60 to 70? I couldn't find anything on mmo-champion, wowhead, or Elitist Jerks that said the Agi and Hit boosts from Mongoose were lower or that the procs were less. Since I couldn't find anything contradictory I figured I'd have to test it myself. One of our warriors swore that the PPM was significantly reduced so I downloaded Procmeter and set it to look for Lightning Speed. Through the rest of the night in Grizzly Hills I got a consistent 6.5% chance to proc. I'll keep an eye on this as I continue to level and see if the proc rate goes down. Unfortuantely what I did not check was whether or not the Agi buff remained at 120 or if that is scaling downwards. I'll check that today and post findings in the comments.

EDIT 1:26 PM: CONFIRMED Mongoose still grants 120 Agi per proc above level 70. Mongoose is fully viable in WotLK.

In the works

I have an Enhance Shaman WotLK gear file in the works that lists everything accessible to players from badges, PvP, instances of all levels, heroic instances, raids and heroic (25 man) raids and it ranks them all by EP values. I plan on using this to see just when I should be upgrading my BT-level gear.

The other thing that I use to compare gear is Pawn, and I'm working on a guide to use that tool this weekend as well. I should have posts for both this weekend.

Don't You Wish...

I was helping a friend of mine work on this Enhance gear for his Shaman Alt. He’s our main Pally Tank in the guild and the Shammy is his 4^th level 70 and he made the switch from dark side (Ele spec) to join the ranks of the amazing (Enhance).

As I was going over his gear and helping him figure out how he can make the most out of his greens and blues he invited his cousin's shammy to the party and asked me to look at him too. His cousin has a Boomkin main in a guild whose progression is above ours—they had Illidian down pre-patch while we were working on RoS. Anyway, he tells me that their main raiding shamans switched up specs with the Ele going Resto and the Enhance going Ele or something crazy like that. They were short an Enhance raiding shaman and asked him to take his newly minted (and quite green) level 70 shaman and make that their new guild raiding Enhance Shaman.

Now imagine for a moment if you will… going from Seer's Linked Leggings & Helm to Bow-stitched Leggings and Grimgrin Faceguard. Imagine getting loot priority on all drops in ZA, Hyjal, and BT. Imagine going from level 63 greens straight to BT epics. Imagine using Reflex Blades with Claw of the Phoenix. If you can imagine this then you can imagine his guy’s luck. (Actually the both of them have the most amazing in-game luck. evar.)

He’s a good guy and I’m happy as hell for him that he gets to join the wonderful world of Enhance. We were having a good laugh as I was putting Precise Strikes on the Fists of Mukoa while looking at the Sundered Waistband of the Bandit in the next slot down!

Grats man on your new main and welcome to the wild and wonderful world of enhance!

Gems

Sorry for the late reply to the question about gems, RL has been busy and I've not been online in a few days--and won't be back to raiding until Thursday night with the crazy week I have coming up.

As for gems... I went all AP & Crit, with 1 Hit Rating gem. I replaced all of my Str related gems. My Armory profile hasn't updated since 10/16, which was before I made these changes so they are not yet reflected online.

I wanted to use as few hit gems as possible so I figured out how to do my gear and enchants in such a way that I only needed 1

I then used as honor points and DKP to pick up the following:
1 x Bold Ornate Ruby - Honor Points
1 x Gleaming Orante Dawnstone - Honor Points
1 x Smooth Ornate Dawnstone - Honor Points
1 x Rigid Lionseye - DKP
1 x Gleaming Lionseye - DKP
1 x Bright Crimson Spinel - DKP

The three red gems went into my helm, the Grimgrin Faceguard, where I skipped the socket bonus to stack AP. Then all of the yellow gems went 1 each into my chest, gloves, belt, and legs to get the socket bonus on each of those.

It was a nice upgrade across the board. If you don't have enough Honor Points or access to gems through your guild bank you should check the AH. Prices are dropping on everything right now and you can probably pick up some rare-quality gems on the cheap.

Enhancement Points for 3.0.2

OK. After running the EnhSim tool with Slow/Slow WF/WF and my best rotation among the five spells, I came out with current EP values. Keep in mind these are relevant to my current gear. That means two things
1) I am going to change my gear based on these values and then run the simulator again
2) they may not be relevant to you if you were at a lower or higher progression level than me

But what the hell, they can make for a nice baseline for all of us:

AP	1.00
Crit Rating	1.87
Hit Rating	2.53
Expertise Rating	3.02
Haste Rating	1.49
Armor Pen. Rating	1.40
Spellpower	0.48
Strength	1.00
Agility	1.79
Intelligence	1.17
MH DPS	6.80
OH DPS	4.13

What I find interesting is the high value for Hit Rating. That is interesting because I ran the calculations assuming I was already hit capped. What I'll do is just treat it like I used to treat Defense on my feral druid: it is the single most important stat until capped, then when capped its EP value goes to zero. (FYI in case you missed my post below, the hit cap for Alliance is 164 and it's 177 for Horde).

Next step is to plug these into my EP calculation spreadsheet and see what I need to replace.

EnhSim Results, and Other Findings

I've been running EnhSim playing out different variables. My limitation is that I am really only running it in Enhancement gear so I can't test results against pure Ele gear or a mix of Ele and Enhance. I do have some good findings though just from my pure Enhance gear setup. All tests were based off the 8/53/0 spec with Imp Shields instead of Imp Ghostwolf.

Across the board Slow/Slow beat out Slow/Fast regardless of enchants or spell rotations. Slow/Fast was usually around 50 DPS lower than Slow/Slow. I suspect this is due to my current gear setup, so I would be interested to know if anyone ran tests in mixed gear to see if the spell damage coefficient kicks in and makes up for the OH-eaten WF procs.

Result 1: Slow/Slow we go! I'm definitely relieved that I don't have to rush out and find a decent fast OH weapon.

Next, spells. There are five possible spells we can use in our rotation now:

1. FS - Flame Shock
2. SS - Stormstrike
3. ES - Earth Shock
4. LL - Lava Lash
5. MW5_LB - Maelstrom Weapon 5 point Lightning Bolt (aka instant)

I tested 192 different simulations. First I used a WF/FT setup I ran all 96 possible combinations of FS, SS, LL, and MW5_LB while keeping ES last. Then I switched to WF/WF and ran all 96 possible combinations of FS, SS, ES, and MW5_LB while keeping LL last.

Running these tests while fully raid buffed in Enhancement gear using Slow/Slow weapons I found that WF/WF edged out WF/FT.
Average DPS for WF/FT across all rotations: 1911
Average DPS for WF/WF across all rotations: 1936

Result 2: WF/WF ftw!

It would seem things haven't really changed, just that I'm now kicking out a helluva a lot more damage. But again, I come back to the fact that it may be heavily gear dependent.

As for a priority of spells, it's a tough call but let's say I'm in the middle of a fight and all of my CD's are up at once and I have 5 procs of MW built up, what do I do? I Flame Shock. FS does on average more damage than the other spells. It's close, but the DoT makes the difference. The next best spell is MW5_LB, followed by ES and then SS. Really, it's splitting hairs. I could mash all five of my spells and still come up with 1930 DPS.

Result 3: Roll Face Leftwards Across Keyboard to Maximize DPS

Well, maybe not to that extreme...

Hitting Hit Cap

It has been determined by the brain trust at Elitist Jerks that there is now a specific hit rating that Enhance Shamans must reach. That is 177 for Horde and 164 for Alliance. (Alliance shamans benefit from the Draenei aura that gives +1% Chance to Hit)

There a lot of ways that you can reach the hit cap, the key is to do so without gimping the rest of your stats. Here are some of the easiest ways to get up to the hit cap including buffs, rep rewards, and easy-to-get rings:

1. Arcanum (formerly Glyph) of Ferocity +16 - CE Revered - If you don't have this you better start grinding CE rep now!
2. Spicy Hot Talbuk +20 - kill them 'buks!
   
3. Enchant Gloves Precise Strikes +15 - 6 GPE, 2 AD, 2 LPS
   
4. Violet Signet of the Master Assassin +25 - Kot Exalted & Quests
5. Ashyen's Gift +21 - CE Exalted
6. Fused Nethergon Band +28 - 60 BoJ
   
7. Garona's Signet Ring +18 - Curator
8. Ring of a Thousand Marks +19 - Prince Mal
9. Shaffar's Band of Brutality +19 - Heroic Mana Tombs
   

As for Stoney, I'm hitting hit cap by doing the following:

• +24 Grimgrin Faceguard
• +16 Arcanum of Ferocity
• +20 Pauldrons of Primal Fury
• +23 Belt of the Silent Path
• +17 Softstep Boots of Tracking
• +25 Violet Signet of the Master Assassin
• +21 Vanir's Left Fist of Savagery (or Brutality)
• +20 Spicy Hot Talbuk

For a total of 166 Hit Rating. It's 2 points over the cap, but it was the best I could come up with based on my current available gear, and without regemming anything.

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.

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.

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.

Bow-Stitched Leggings

I knew it. Bow-Stitched Leggings. I knew they would drop. And they did tonight. Being highest on DKP among mail wearers I got them. But I lose 21 hit rating by dropping Cataclysm Legplates.

But I was ready for this and had badges saved up for Belt of the Silent Path to replace Bladeangel's Money Belt, which resulting in picking up 23 hit, or a net gain of 2 hit rating after the switch of the legs & waist items.

Overall it ended up being some sweet upgrades. I gained a whopping 79.20 in enhancement points between the two; 62.96 on the legs and 16.24 on the belt. And now according to my EP calculations there are ZERO leg upgrades left for me until SWP. (I know I know I owe a post about EP and how I run my numbers. I'll get there soon enough, I promise).

Azgalor Down

3 wipes. 4th attempt = kill



The 4th attempt was spot-on. We SS'd the healers that got Doomed. The shaman's used Ankh for self-rez, and the druids brought up those healers that went down and we couldn't get an SS on before they expired.

We did something different than the bosskillers.com playbook. We tanked the boss at Thrall and the Lesser Doomguards at the Tauren Warriors. We had 3 OT's for the dooms, 3 dps, and 2 healers. The Doomguard dps was all melee in an effort to reduce chance of Rain of Fire on the main tank. The ranged and healers we split into two groups and given general areas where to stand then instructed to spread out from those points. Resto druids were reminded to keep the tank HoT'ed at all times, especially as the silence CD is up. A quick reminder that the MT is the main healing priority of ALL the healers and off we went.

The trash was rough, as always. But we made it through, as always. The first Distract was successful, buying us a few more seconds to get HS, top off mana, and get into position. But the 2nd distract was resisted and so we engaged.

The fight was very well executed by the whole raid. Everyone was doing their job: Healing, DPSing, tanking, running out of Rain of Fire, running to the doomguard section when Doomed.

By the end of the fight the Tauren Warriors and the 3 OT's were completely overwhelmed. At that point Azgalor was at 3% so I called for the rogues to sprint over to Az and help finish him off. He went from 3% down to 1% very fast, and like all 1%'s on bosses that lingered for a while, maybe just a few moments longer than it should.

And then he fell.

We got 2 Gloves of the Forgotten Protector and 1 Gloves of the Forgotten Vanquisher. I was the one taking tells for the Warr/Hunter/Shaman gloves and when that went out my screen lit up with 8 tells from people wanting to spend DKP to be one of the first to get T6 in Unorthodox. As for me, my Gauntlets of Rapidity rate 175.15 EP versus versus a meager 156.92 for the Skyshatter Grips. It's simply not worth it for me to spend the DKP.

We then went and practiced wiping on Archimonde. Fun! Congrats to Dwarfknight, Shawck, and Siobhann for guild-first T6.

Bindings of Lightning Reflexes

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

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

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

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

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

Re-gemmed

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

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

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

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

I Love My Shield

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

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

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

Not Much Action

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

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

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

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

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

Overall Damage & DPS

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

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

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

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

SSC - 4 boss power clear night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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