Shaman on Ramen

I have to apologize for not posting something along these lines earlier; seeing as the patch hit 3 days ago, I’m sure bloggers everywhere worth their salt have come together and covered every new patch note, down to crying that the bug fix “Ancient Pickled Egg: This item can no longer be triggered by Life Tap” is a blatant nerf to Warlock dps. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of posting this weekend, as the day of patch 3.3 I was chugging away typing a paper on how Shakespeare’s Richard II, Prince Escalus, and Macbeth failed at being leaders because they didn’t fit into the Machiavellian ideal…and then waking up 3 hours after finishing that paper to start a 10 hour day of classes before rushing home to raid Wednesday night. I unfortunately did not have the time to really do anything. All of that said, I got in quite a bit of 3.3 play since Wednesday night, so here are some of my first impressions. (Also, sorry, no screenshots as-of-yet. I’m hoping to spruce this up with pretty pictures later!)  

1. On the list of 10 hottest things in the world, post-patch Enhancement DPS beat out that dude from Desperate Housewives for the number 1 spot.

For real. As some of you may know, Deathbringer Saurfang is the new Patchwerk for melee DPS. Seeing myself hitting number 1 consistently for our first four attempts on him was super cute. And by super cute, I mean “my sleep-deprived mind was desperately trying to figure out if I was actually dreaming.” Honestly, if WoW was based on Dragonball Z, Enhancement DPS just went Super-Saiyan 1. Jekell, our newly-and-finally-promoted-to-raider other Enhancement Shaman (just saying, he’s awesome) and I traded whispers all Wednesday night about how amazing our friendly neighborhood Fire Nova is. Beyond just having an entirely new ability that fits nicely into GCD gaps, there’s also the fact that we were able to use Fire Elemental consistently. As in almost every fight. Between trash before bosses, lengthy speeches, long-walks (as opposed to rezzing in the same circular room for the 825423th time), and popping FE at the beginning of boss attempts so as to let it’s cooldown wind down during the 5-6 minute boss fight, Fire Elemental went from being a clutch “I hope we down the boss or I just wasted my dps cooldown” spell to “pure sex.” And, I’m speaking about this purely from a single-target DPS standpoint. I’mma have to pug an Onyxia later tonight and post about my hax dps.

In regards to Enhancement DPS, I’ve not actually updated the sticky with optimal practices yet, but here are a few words of wisdom for now. The math is still being done and stuff, but these are what our thoughts are now on what works.

A) How to Spec nao:

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#hVhhqbZhbxsoxdIhuskuVo:Nfh -Personally, I went a 2/2 Imp+SS 0/1 Elemental Focus spec, but that was mainly because I was speccing from memory and didn’t do the research on which talent is more Mana-per-second. It may very well be that with our reasonably-high spell crit that Elemental Focus is more MPS back than a guaranteed 800 mana return every 8 seconds. Seeing as how it’s the new “cookie-cutter,” I’d advise this spec.

B) Once again, tentative, but this is a pretty solid look at our priority system now: Wolves->MW5_LB->Fire Ele->Magma->FS->ES_SS->SS->ES->LL->Fire Nova->LS As you can see, there are a few changes. Having a fire totem down takes priority over almost anything, other than Wolves and Lightning Bolt at 5Stacks of MW. Flame Shock should be used on any mob that lasts longer than 18 seconds. Fire nova comes after lava lash, as Lava Lash procs Flametongue, and can proc Lightning Shield and MW charges. This of course is a single target priority list-Fire Nova is much higher on the priority when adds are introduced. It might even be that we start carrying around extra glyphs with us, and switch out glyph of windfury weapon for glyph of fire nova on add-heavy fights.

C). Mana Conservation is a small issue. -

Shamanistic Rage Early, to make sure you’re filled to full.

Make sure you shamanistic rage 15 seconds before phases where you can’t guarantee 15 seconds of meleeing the boss.

D). Stop gemming haste.

With the introduction of fire nova into our rotation, we’ve added in another ability (like shocks/lava lash) that gains absolutely 0 benefit from haste. This further pushes attack power as something we want to gem, and reduces hastes usefulness. This does NOT mean haste is bad, or something we don’t want on gear-it simply means that we’re less inclined to gem for it than we were pre-patch.

2) Icecrown Citadel is what raiding should be. (Spoilers wut)

A) It’s like Lord of the Rings, with half the endings.

Whether you’re racing through 5-mans with Lady Sylvanas at your side, or helping Overlord Saurfang commit filicide in 25s, Icecrown Citadel is a literal loregasm. This is a distinct break from the other well-designed raid of the expansion, Ulduar, which left a lot of us sitting back and wondering “De donde esta el lich king?” This is not to say I disliked Ulduar, or that I disliked the lore behind it, but it was a random break from the theme of the expansion. (Which might even have been needed, tbqh.)

B) Bosses that I don’t hate!

I can’t remember the last time I was happy with a boss in ToC. Northrend Beasts was a mess of Enhancement Shaman hating monsters that liked to knock melee back, spawn adds that melee had to kill, or focus on cleave damage that we were notoriously lacking. I spent the past 3 months raiding and listening to our fearless guild leader refer to our Ret Paladins as our “best melee dps” (and they are really quite good) while they cheezed meters with A)Not killing adds that were AOE immune (for good reason) and B)Doing insane cleave damage on fights that allowed it, even without rocking seal of cleave. Oh, and C)They didn’t have their mainhand axe taken by a rogue who couldn’t wield it less than a month prior, and didn’t have the only weapons useable by them drop off the last boss of the instance (or, in one’s case, PVPed for his axe). This meant that when we were doing ToC25, I was behind the curve in that pretty much –all- of our melee dps had 245 mains and offhands before me, and when we did ToGC and didn’t down anub I was stuck with a 245 mainhand and a 232 off while our mut rogues and 2hander users were making ^_^ faces after getting weaps from easy kills. Calling them our best melee dps was enough to give me a complex!

ICC (so far) isn’t like that. Marrowgar seems to be weird, as I can’t tell what the point of his whirlwind ability is other than minor aoe damage to everyone. His coldflame ability is fun, though I’m admittedly bad about not running across it when I’m trying to get to a bone spike or something else. :S Lady Deathwhisper is what Kel’thuzad should have been, as she has a non-excruciatingly boring add phase in the beginning, utilizes a fun concept that is based on in-game abilities (mana shield), and has an intense burn phase. (I love burn phases!) My one issue with her is that, dealing 45% melee damage and 55% spell damage, when the adds come up that are immune to one or the other I wonder if I’m just better sitting on the boss where I’m 100% effective. (Which is something I’ve heard enhancement shaman/ret paladins talk about.) She’s still a fun fight. The airship battle is #$@#ing intense and I love it. It’s honestly a loot piñata, and that’s perfectly fine- not everything in the game has to be hard. Rocket packing between ships, dodging cannonballs, and pretending you’re Legolas in the middle of a fucking MID-AIR MAGICAL VERSION OF PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN is honestly just awesomesauce, and I give major props to Blizzard for making an encounter that is that fun. Deathbringer Saurfang is an interesting fight, that I think gives the healers carpal-tunnel syndrome and requires a few of the ranged dps to consider disengaging off the walls, but for melee it’s like Patchwerk with twice the HP. Sitting at between 8-9k on almost every attempt left me a very, very happy Elam.

Also, speaking of Saurfang as a melee snoozefest of a fight.

C) Ugh, gated raid.

They did this to stall for time in Sunwell. They did it with ToC. They’re doing it now. And honestly, I don’t think it was a problem in Burning Crusade, where guilds were still working through Black Temple and gearing themselves up. But now, after 3 months of standing in the same fucking room for 4 Alt 10mans, 2 ToC 25s, and a ToGC25 every week, I want to @#%@#% @#%^ whatever asshat suggested that we farm the same four bosses of ICC for a month before we move to the hard ones.