Third Timed Chest in ZA

We did it. We nailed the third timed chest in ZA last night. It was close, I mean real close. We had 60 seconds to spare, maybe less.

Now before I get into the nitty gritty details of it I have a caveat: Stoney wasn't on this run. In fact, there was no enhance shaman on this run. OK, I did bring in Stoney for the Hexx Lord kill, as that is extremely difficult to do without an Enhance Shaman. But as far as the timed loot is concerned I tanked it on my druid, Finnmaccool. I really owed a run to our of our raiding rogues, Zorren, and it does not make sense to have 2 melee dps in the 10 man run. So I gave him the melee spot and tanked it on Finn. Having put that caveat out there (this is after all an enhance shaman blog not a feral druid blog) let's get on with the details.

We do Bear, Eagle, Lynx as our kill order for timed chests. Bear and Eagle both went off without a hitch and we saved both Tanzar and Harkor, who is by no small coincidence a distant relative of our uber-hunter Farkor despite Farkor's protestations otherwise.

For the Lynx boss we cut across the top of the waterfall and go in from the backside, killing one AoE pack, jumping through a hut and in the end skipping 4 pulls versus going in from the main entrance. This takes us directly to the Tamer and his 2 crocolisks on patrol. I must confess at this point I did not think we would make it to the boss in time. Our previous best run was about 3 minutes short of killing Halazzi, and that was with a 7+ minute boss kill. We had a Warrior (our guild's MT) and a Druid (me) tanking this time, versus the Pally tank we had on our previous best attempt. I was not expecting to get there and clear it in time, but I kept quiet about it because I wanted to see how close we could get.

We got to the chamber and the patrol was coming around to the entrance right at that moment. We picked up the pat and the next two pulls, with our Shadow Priest surviving the Mind Controls of the Amani'shi Flame Casters. We got to the boss, assigned healers and tanks and had 6 minutes on the clock. And then the magic began.

We DPS'd him so fast that he only got Fenzy off twice--normally he does it four times, once each time in Phase 1 just before shifting out to Phase 2. We were absolutely crushing him. As he came out of Phase 2 the second time, meaning we were dpsing from 50% to 25%, I called for heroism and I think it was a good use there. We barely even touched that phase and he split out. In the split phase he only got 2 totems down before he was back in combined phase and ready for the final stretch. It was blazing fast DPS. In 5 minutes he was done, and we freed Ashli for the first time in our guild.

The other thing that I think helped us dps him down so hard was that we had 3 leatherworkers in the tank group. Why was that helpful? Drums of Battle rotation!! That means for 75% of the entire fight that group was hastened. Granted that group only had 2 dps'ers, but it was hunter Scuttle and rogue Zorren. However I do believe it helped me and the MT keep a generous threat lead allowing for all of the dps to go all out.

As for loot? Bah. Bear dropped Elunite Imbued Leggings, which were subsequently DE'd. Eagle dropped Tuskbreaker which was given for an off-set. And damned if Ashli didn't give us the crappiest ring ever: the Signet of Eternal Life, which went to our Shaman healer alt for his PvP set. I hate that we DE'd so much, but no worries the real accomplishment was in reaching the timed chest.

Now for the long hard crawl to the 4th chest and the Amani War Bear mount. In case you are not familiar with the timed run, you get 15 minutes added to the clock for killing the bear, 10 minutes for the Eagle, and that's it. You have 45 minutes to kill 4 bosses. As of last night it took 44 minutes for us to kill 3 bosses. Jeez.

My game plan is to keep running that same route and shave 2-4 minutes off the run each week. When we get to the point that we can do 3 bosses in 35 minutes on a consistent basis then I'll change our kill order and we'll start working our way towards MY mount!

Haste Potions

I woke up early this morning to see the girlfriend off to work, then got to work myself... farming Terocone. The stuff is a pain because it gets over-farmed very quickly. But waking up early and spending 30-40 minutes circling Terokkar nets me about 50, as opposed to the same route in the afternoon gets half of that amount.

I use the cones for Haste Potions. Mmmm, delicious. With haste gear, Heroism, Drums of Battle, dual Mongoose procs, DST proc, and a Haste Pot my weapon speed drops from 2.60 to 0.92 or lower. That 0.92 is the lowest I've seen but I'm not always staring at my character screen as I would like to stay alive in boss fights and stay out of the Rain of Fire/Death & Decay/Infernos/Whirlwinds/et al. I'm sure there's an add-on out there that will display my swing speed, I'll see if I can find one.

If you are not using Haste Potions, give it a shot. Like everything with haste it's important to stack lots of it. I'll see how low my weapon speed can go and report back.

Just a quick post today. I've decided to get a job, so off to do some job hunting.

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.

Death is the Best CC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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