I'd Spirit Tap that.

This post isn’t about Clergelam, though. As much as I love her (and wish she was already 80 so she could be my main alt), Clergelam will have to sit on the backburner for now. Because, in case you haven’t heard, Cataclysm is coming out. It’s coming out tonight.

However, while I know the impending doom of Azeroth is totally news to all of us, I have more news that ISN’T quite as common knowledge. This is good news. It’s personal news, news that makes my wallet happy and makes me as giddy as a stereotype at a Klan meeting. I got a job. And, not just any job. I got THE job.

I am officially Wow Insider’s new Enhancement Shaman columnist. I’ll be covering totems, I’ll be covering healing, I’ll be covering the benefits of being a gigantic cow person (being able to fit through doors is not one of them). I’ll be writing, and I’ll be getting paid for it. (And I’ll have my name and twitter link on a shiny “about” page.)

Please update your RSS feeds, your google readers, and proceed to e-stalk me. I promise I’ll be worth it!

I’ve never been good at capitalizing on these surges of readership on patch days, which is somewhat unfortunate for my google analytics account. For me, patches aren’t leisurely days where the servers are down and I can take my time writing a sweet blog post without having the temptation of tabbing back to wow to distract me from writer’s block. The only moments of my patch day that were not spent at work/eating/drab real life stuff that is required for living were spent on the Shaman forums, working on last minute guide edits while attempting to answer every single question asked of me in my guide thread, as well doing my best to be the level-headed dam in front of a never ending tidal wave of complaints, cries of nerf, and the general overflow of hatred towards Blizzard that accompanies every patch day.

This was not my first patch day- I’ve been doing this an entire expansion, and while I won’t pretend it’s not draining to have to explain why Lava Lash’s change to a 10second cooldown is a good change, I also won’t pretend that I don’t love it. I do really enjoy helping people, I do really enjoy debating…and not going to lie, it’s pretty cool (and downright fucking SCARY) to know how many people are following my lead. (Can I stress, again, how incredibly, omfg terrifying it is to know that if theorycrafting comes out tomorrow that says agility was the wrong way to gem, Blizzard will not be the only name Shaman will be cursing out on the forums? It’s a tad worrisome. )

However, less about me. The reason for this backstory isn’t to make anyone feel bad for me- there honestly is nothing to feel bad for. I love what I do. My goal for this blog post is to address one of the main issues that I notice with forum posting in general, especially in the day or two after a major patch comes out. The issue?

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS IS BAD. ADMIRAL ACKBAR HAS A FEW THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THEM.

Ok, here’s the deal. It has been a little over two days since a patch that has produced game-changing effects hit live servers.

Here’s a list of things you can do in two days:

1. Read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
2. Get married and divorced in Las Vegas.
3. Create a website whose entire purpose is to chauvinistically rate female undergrads at Harvard University.

And here’s a list of things you can’t do in two days:

1. Plan a good themed-brunch.
2. Develop accurate conclusions about class balance based on anecdotal evidence.

Here are Surreality’s logs from last Tuesday, October 5th and Thursday, October 7th. Here are Surreality’s logs from yesterday the 13th and today the 14th. Deathbringer Saurfang had me at 13,500 this week, up from last week’s 13,000. (Do remember that I’m in 264 mixed with 277 and 232 boots, so my damage output is less than many of you have come to expect) Professor Putricide had me at 9,000 this week, up from last week’s 8,500. Blood Princes had me at 9,400 this week, up from last week’s 9,000. Festergut had me dead this week because some jerk druid called out a malleable that didn’t exist that caused me to miss a spore and die to pungent blight, so we can’t test there. Rotface had me at 11,300 this week and 11,000 last week. All in all, if I were to draw a conclusion from this week’s raiding, I would say that this patch provided a slight dps buff to Enhancement shaman.

The twist is that we can’t draw that conclusion. I can’t draw that conclusion, you can’t draw that conclusion, and random shaman posting for the first time about how his dps dropped 3,000dps overnight can’t draw that conclusion. For one, I’ve made no mention of fight length, of buffs/debuffs present, whether or not I flasked this week and didn’t flask last week, etc. All of those would have an impact on my dps. Second, though, and perhaps more important: I could simply have been better this week. Other people could simply have been worse. It doesn’t matter if you’ve read my guide 8 times from start to finish- if you jump straight into raiding after spending zero time on the PTR and no time practicing, your DPS -will- suffer. On the flipside, I’ve been so incredibly psyched for 4.0.1 to hit and to try out the new Enhancement (which I am having a blast with, btw), that it’s very likely that I did so well because I was really invested in playing the past two nights…which is something a lot of us have been lacking while raiding ICC.

This is “dummy” testing on a higher scale. This is why we sim, taken to the Nth level. Forming a conclusion based on two night’s raids, no matter how high an opinion of yourself you have, is scientifically and mathematically wrong. A raid night isn’t a controlled experiment, where all your variables are accounted for and controlled. A raid night is a night where you tried your best to learn new abilities and down new bosses, and there’s the possibility that you did it correctly or incorrectly. This isn’t to say that any information collected from raiding is a bad thing- just that there’s not enough evidence within one raid week to form the kind of conclusions that are being thrown all over the forums right now. It’s like trying to write your dissertation with a single source, and that source is Wikipedia.

So please, please, please, keep posting observations. Keep up the discourse about what works and what doesn’t work in the shaman rotation. But please, please, please don’t continue (or start, or even validate others doing it) posting cries of nerf OR buff, because right now, on the Friday after 4.0.1. went live, we quite simply don’t have the tools to tell yet.

(And please remember this for any subsequent patches and such. If you don’t, Admiral Ackbar will find you.)

This has led to a lod of problems for us in the past, to be quite honest. Don’t get me wrong- in the first tier of Wrath of the Lich King, when 280 spellpower was a lot and no one was armor pen capped, our ability to combine our collective raid’s powers and go captain planet mode was a godsend. We won meters in naxx because we got 280 spellpower, 13% magic damage taken, 25% sundered armor, AND 687 attack power, and it was awesome.

But as Icecrown Citadel has made painstakingly clear to anyone who has been paying attention, scaling with every buff in the game is not OMG SUPER AWESOME past the first few tiers of content. When 687 Attack Power was 1/5 of our total attack power, it’s contribution to our dps was startling. When it starts becoming 1/10 of our total attack power, the buff starts adding less dps in the grand scheme of things (especially next to gear stats like Armor Penetration and Pure Weapon DPS). This also meant that any time we were missing a buff, our dps went down. Sometimes by 50 dps, sometimes by 500, but every buff missed added up.  By the end of Icecrown Citadel, what was once our greatest gift became one of the main reasons our dps blew.

Simply put: Wrath of the Lich King’s highest iLevel gear was supposed to be 239 or 245 before Blizzard decided to include hardmodes. We were designed with somewhat less base damage output than other classes, but that was countered by our scaling with buffs. When we broke past the barrier that those buffs were originally designed for, and gear levels started getting crazy, we ended up shafted.

Patch 4.0.1. changed all of this. 4.0.1 saw the end to Blessing of Might’s existence. It saw the end to Heart of the Crusader and Sanctified Retribution. It gave us drastic reductions in scale from sunder armor and curse of elements. All in all, after counting in losing 46 Attack Power from Improved Strength of Earth, 60 AP from losing Mental Dexterity (+AI is now mana now), 74 from losing the agility on the now non-existant gift of the wild, 687 from improved blessing of might, and 231.4 from Blessing of Kings (I have 2314 agility. Kings/MotW are now 5% stats, not 10%, meaning a loss of 231.4AP), I lost 1098.4 attack power from buffs alone. 1208.24 in all, once you add in Unleashed Rage.

And that’s not all that Enhancement lost last patch: We now have to deal with 13% less armor reduction for our stormstrikes, windfuries, and white attacks. We now have to waste 80 more points of itemization on hit that could have been used on crit/haste/mastery because of the loss of 3% hit, and we deal 5% less spell damage to a debuffed boss. We also lost 10% melee haste and 3% overall haste (windfury nerf/sanctified retribution removal), meaning a loss of 13% melee haste on top of all the haste we’ve itemized out of. (Could be a good part of why so many of us are noticing slow stacking maelstrom weapons now.) We lost 3% crit. We also lost Demonic Pact’s scaling with the casting lock’s spellpower. It now scales with OUR spellpower. This means that those nice locks who procced DFO/Glowing Twilight Shard and fed us with 600+ spellpower are no longer doing that, and we’re buffing ourselves with maaaaybe 350spellpower.

And yet, despite the total and complete nerf to buffs- a change one would expect to kill a spec so reliant on buffs- Enhancement wasn’t killed in 4.0. In fact, it’s damage remained somewhat consistent with 3.3.3 damage. I personally saw a slight damage increase on Saurfang (13,500 rather than my usual 13k, but my gear blows), other reliable sources have reported dps losses. We don’t really have enough data yet to make a substantial claim other than “We’re not mages who have been buffed to stupid heights” and “We’re not fury warriors, crying into their shadowmournes.” We’re fairly consistent with where we were previously.

And overall, this is a good thing. This means that Blizzard found a way to remove our reliance on buffs for all of our damage. As a whole, our base, buffless damage has gone up. While right now it sucks-and don’t get me wrong, it does suck. I wanted SO much for this patch to come out and for me to just hold the #1 spot on every fight in the raid tonight- we have to be aware that it sucks because while our class got buffed, the buffs we’ve relied on for so long have been nerfed. And to come out in the end fairly even with where we were before is a very good thing, and bodes well for us not having another expansion of playing Captain Planet and only succeeding in the first tiers of content.

P.S.: I got a new helm tonight and now I look like a Rhinoceros. This amuses me to no end, as Rhinoceri are my favorite animal. Also, it allowed me to reforge hit and expertise to exact caps, which is always nice.

POACHERS GONNA POACH

PSS: I’m not used to getting a lot of comments on my blog. To be quite honest, I’m not used to enough people reading my blog for me to get comments. So I apologize to all 7 people who commented today who I did not reply to. That’s not me trying to be a jerk, that’s me not thinking to log in and accept comments. I’ll get better at it, I promise!

Also, thanks to Sinlai of Slane Baanrit on Silver Hand for being the one to bring this to my attention.

In response to a few suggestions by Rouncer, I switched the expertise rating from 136 to 531, as the sim was using the level 85 equation to calculate expertise (much like I did for mastery earlier). I also switched the bosses armor from the sim’s default to 8098, which is accurate for a WoTLK boss. I decided against switching talent points out of imp. shields as was suggested, but that was mainly for the sake of consistency between sims. This was also my reason for not dropping SW from the priority. Using the DPS priority that was top DPS in both my non-reforged and mastery reforged parses, dps after these changes went from 11,228 to 11,900.

Once I had the sim settings changed, I exported by hand my now Agility-gemmed stats to EnhSim. Most stats remained the same from the previous test, but here are the differences:

Agility: From 1670 to 1949.
Int: From 195 to 198.
Spirit: From 165 to 162.
Melee Crit: From 39.03 to 42.38.
AP: From 4432 to 5024
Melee Haste: From 27.90 to 19.67
Spellpower: From 2401 to 2700.
SP crit: From 19.41 to 19.42
Spell Haste: From 27.90 to 19.67

MW5, SW, FS, ST, LL, SS, ES, SR: 12,386
MW5, SW, SS, LL, FS, ST, ES, SR: 12,403
MW5, SW, LL, FS, ST, SS, ES, SR: 12,411
MW5, SW, FS, SS, LL, ST, ES, SR: 12,422
MW5, SW, ST, FS, SS, LL, ES, SR: 12,439
MW5, SW, FS, ST, SS, LL, ES, SR: 12,440

Conclusion:

Priority doesn’t matter a huge deal in Cataclysm, with most priority decisions having at most a nominal impact on dps. However, through every sim test, MW% Lightning Bolt>Spirit wolves>Flame Shock>Searing Totem>Lava Lash> Stormstrike> Earth Shock> 2pc Shamanistic Rage did remain the top dps priority, so that is what I’ll be suggesting in the 4.0 compilation.

What’s more important to note is the stat increases. Reforging crit into Mastery saw DPS go from 10,670 to 11,228 dps, a 558 dps increase. Regemming haste into agility saw us go from 11,900 to 12,440, a 540 dps increase, providing an overall dps boost of 1,098 dps. Pretty awesome.

In preparation for my Giant Slayer’s Compendium (everything you need to know about Enhance 4.0), I’ve been doing some research to try and come up with concrete data on what our priority system will be the day 4.0 hits servers. To that end, I’ve spent the better part of an hour and a half exporting stats by hand from a level 80 beta version of Elam and simming him with a variety of priority rotations to see which rotation would be maximum dps.

The problem, one I’d like some input on because it’s really confusing me as the sim was just updated this morning with Rouncer’s proper Lava Lash damage formula (http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t82621-enhsim_updated_thread/p20/#post1759278), is that the rotation we’ve all been assuming would be top dps isn’t. (MW5LB, SW, LL, ST, FS, ES, SR for those following along at home.) To give you a sense of what I’m looking at, here are my dps results for the course of the night, linked from lowest to highest:

1. MW5, SW, SR, LL, ST, SS, FS, ES- 10,533 DPS
2. MW5, SW, SR, SS, LL, ST, FS, ES- 10,553 DPS
3. SW, MW5, LL, SS, ST, FS, ES, SR- 10,573 DPS
4. MW5, SW, LL, ST, SS, FS, ES, SR-10,584 DPS
5. MW5, SW, SS, FS, LL, ST, ES, SR-10,615 DPS
6. SW, MW5, SS, LL, FS, ES, ST, SR- 10,616 DPS
7. MW5, SW, SS, LL, FS, ES, ST, SR-10,618 DPS
8. MW5, SW, SS, LL, ST, SR, FS, ES-10,626 DPS
9. SW, MW5, SS, LL, ST, FS, ES, SR-10,636.11 DPS
10. MW5, SW, SS, LL, ST, FS, ES, SR-10,636.78 DPS
11. MW5, SW, FS, SS, ST, ES, LL, SR-10,639 DPS
12. MW5, SW, FS, SS, LL, ST, SR, ES-10,644 DPS
13. MW5, SW, FS, SS, LL, ST, ES, SR-10,652 DPS
14. MW5, SW, FS, SS, ST, LS, ES, SR-10,654 DPS
15. SW, MW5, FS, ST, SS, LL, ES, SR-10,668 DPS
16. MW5, SW, FS, ST, SS, LL, ES, SR-10,670 DPS.

We can see some trends develop in this stream of numbers:
A). As we can see from examples like 9&10 and 15&16, firing off your five stack of MW yields about 2 more dps than holding it and using Feral Spirits.
B) Shamanistic Rage with 2pct10 belongs at the end of your priority. Any time I tried creeping it up sooner resulted in some of the lowest dps sims I had.
C) I started out my testing with Lava Lash being a high priority, but every one of those sims were near the bottom of the barrel. Out of the first 6 sims, the only time SS is ranked higher is the 2nd, which is so low a dps value due to how high I valued shamanistic rage as well.
D) You can see a logical progression emerge. LL is replaced by SS by the 7th sim, but was replaced by FS at the 11th sim, and SS is pushed back further again by Searing Totem at the 15th and 16th sims.

Glyphs used for all of these tests were Windfury, Feral Spirits, and Lava Lash. Glyph of Flame Shock, despite my overabundance of haste, simmed at a 117 dps loss in the max dps priority rotation.

Stats were from Elam, transferred to beta:
MH/OH DPS: 250.60
Str: 145
Agi: 1670
IntL 195
Spirit: 165
Mastery: 0
Melee Crit: 47.55%
Melee Hit: 21.44 w/ DW
Expertise: 136, 11 under beta cap.
AP: 4432
Melee Haste: 27.90%
SP: 2401
Spell Crit: 27.92
Spell Hit: 18.11

Talent Spec: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#hohZfIG0s0hRGo (The point from acuity is counted in base stat configuration- that talent isn’t in the enhsim gui.)

Questions:

Am I overlooking something? According to my simmed results, our priority in 4.0 should be:
Maelstrom Weapon 5 Lightning Bolt, Feral Spirits, Flame Shock, Searing Totem, Stormstrike, Lava Lash, Earth Shock, Shamanistic Rage…but that’s not what our common sense was telling us in the past. It’s possible LL isn’t being calculated accurately, but Rouncer’s testing and formula were sound and Ziff implemented it as is as far as I know, which means it should be calculating correctly.

Additionally, the EnhSim offers a choice of waiting for a 5stack of Searing Flames before using Lava Lash. Any sim where I replaced Lava Lash with this option, I lost about 10 dps. If I followed Lava Lash 5SF with a regular Lava Lash in priority, I’d get the same number as the sim without LL5SF. This makes me think that Lava Lash in it’s basic form as just LL will be used no matter what the stacks of Searing Flame on the target are, which should almost always be 5. The 10dps loss is indicative of no Lava Lash going off during the first 10 seconds of stacking Searing Flames, since there was no non-5stack Lava Lash there to press. (Hope that makes sense.)

So yea, data. Make of it what you will, give me some feedback, and hopefully we can figure out something concrete.

…did I mention that Brann Bronzebeard is up to his usual antics again? Everyone’s favorite Bronzebeard brother (that’s not saying much though. Honestly, with one of them encased in Carbonite in the heart of Ironforge and the other bugging out during every heroic gunship kill, the other two aren’t really contenders in the competition.) is back, and he’s been taking lessons from Indiana Jones. Literally. And there are troggs. And eyebeams. And Elementals. And crazy amounts of aoe damage. AND RIDING INTO BATTLE ON CAMELS. Can’t forget that part.

The video is from an Elemental PoV. I know that this is an Enhancement blog, but in all reality that is probably changing for Cataclysm. (Another post on that later). Elemental is just such a solid and fun spec right now that I couldn’t resist playing it. Also, bosses are a lot less impressive in a video when you spend the entire time looking at their butt. I won’t pretend that I’m some godsend of an ele player who never messes up, and you will see a few mistakes in the videos, which I tend to point out. (Next on the 10:00 News: Elam mistimes a Spiritwalker’s Grace and uses Fulmination with <6 seconds left on Flameshock, resulting in a noncrit Lava Burst. For shame!) I also try to include the dps at the end of the fights, not in any sort of “OH LOOK IM AWESOME” thing, but more because I wanted to show that Elemental is very much a viable and high damage spec in Cataclysm right now.

Without further ado, I present unto thee the first two bosses of Halls of Origination. (Did I mention that tank DCed after the second boss and we ended up disbanding? Which is somewhat good, as there’s 7 bosses and 4 mini-bosses in all in HoO, which would be a bit of an overkill for a single blog post.)

After spending last night messing with a variety of free video recording programs, I stumbled upon Xfire when my friend Naithin told me he was live streaming our Halls of Origination run for his blog readers/twitter followers to watch. It took me well into the morning (who needs to sleep before 5AM? Seriously?) but I can now confidently say that I’ve got this live stream/video recording stuff in the bag.

As my first two videos, I decided to do an introduction to some of the mechanics behind playing the two different specs of DPS shaman in Cataclysm, mainly showing off new spells like Unleashed Elements and Spiritwalker’s Grace. They’re fun little videos, but there are a few important things to remember here:

1) My dps doesn’t matter. I wasn’t strictly following priority (anyone who has ever raid lead can tell you how dps can suffer when you’re trying to explain fight mechanics while hitting dps buttons.)
2) Searing Totem is broken to not attack target dummies on beta. Hnnnnnng.
3) These are really basic videos that don’t really catch the coolness of certain abilities. (For example, it shows me strafing while throwing off a lightning bolt. No where near as fun as raining death from the air in Arathi Basin after jumping from lm to bs with slow fall on, one of the ways to utilize Spiritwalker’s Grace.)
4) In my Enhance video, I attack from the front because attacking from behind would mean really bad graphics and be confusing/annoying to the watch. Don’t attack from the front. That’s bad. Bad bad bad bad bad.
5) In both videos, I don’t attack the level 85 boss training dummy. I am spell and melee hit capped and expertise capped for 85 heroics, not for 85 raids (remember, blue gear!) and I didn’t want to miss a fulmination or anything when trying to explain how cool it was.
6) Most of the power auras feature in my videos are Syronious’ Ultimate Shaman Auras, with some of my own interspered. (For example, my game plays HADOUKEN every time LvB comes off CD, and I had to tweak the Lightning Shield power aura to warn me at 9 stacks since it’s currently set up to warn for low stacks as it’s meant for live enhancement shaman to use. The majority of the auras in the video are Syronius’, though.
7) I’m running really addon light at the moment, using only OmniCC (I still can’t fathom why this isn’t a default ui functionality), Power Auras, and Recount. I want to give anyone matching the most pure beta experience possible, so I decided not to try and retool my ui like it is on live…which is drastically different than default.

I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I did making them!

I’ve also now branched out in the social networking scheme of things and got myself a twitter to tweet upon. Fo shiz. My main use of it will be for tweeting when I’ll be live streaming on xfire, but I’m more than cool with talking to people and such. Whatever normal people use twitter for, at least.

(Oh, and my xfire profile name is Elamqt. I love friends, btw.)

This type of quest set-up is what Blizzard world developers and beta testers have taken to calling “breadcrumbs.” In this case, rather than helping Hansel and Gretel home from the evil witch’s house, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm breadcrumbs steer you straight into danger- however, they’re polite enough to choose level appropriate danger to steer you to. In the case of the Dwarves, the breadcrumbs for leveling are: Dun Morogh->Loch Modan->Wetlands->Arathi Highlands->Hinterlands->(breadcrumb nyi on beta)WesternPlaguelands->Eastern Plaguelands->Badlands->Searing Gorge->Burning Steppes->Swamp of Sorrows->Blasted Lands->Hellfire Peninsula. You can feel free to deviate from the Deeprun Tram of leveling and leave for any other level appropriate zone without any negative side effects-these breadcrumbs exist just to help you decide where to go next if you’re not sure. They also serve pretty well in giving you a concrete feeling of being a dwarf, with both your 1-25 and 45-50 experiences doing what you can to assist in Khaz Modan, and spending the rest of your time assisting in Lordaerdon-as well as helping the Wildhammers hedge out a home for themselves in the Hinterlands.

For me, the breadcrumb from Ironforge leading to the Valley of Kings (the first place you enter in Loch Modan) was awesome. (Well, actually, it sends you to assist a Dun Morogh explorer, get mauled by a bear who freaking JUMPS, and then sent to Valley of Kings. But in all intents and purposes, you end up in Valley of Kings as you enter Dun Morogh. One of the cool things about Cataclysm leveling is that while it’s a total rework of the system, they did make a conscious effort to keep some of what we remember from pre-Cata leveling in the game. So, for those of us oldies who have leveled through Loch Modan before, the first quest chain in Loch Modan allows us to remember that experience as we go on a test through the Valley of King’s surrounding mountains to kill Troggs.

There’s some definite cool things to be found while leveling in Loch Modan. First off, by either level 11 or 12 I found myself in position of two green quality 2.6 speed weapons that were quest rewards (I made the decision to buy nothing but bags off the AH to get the cleanest leveling experience possible.) Even cooler, one of these weapons was an off-hand fist weapon; the developers were definitely cognizant that shaman would be leveling through this zone. Another really cool thing worth mentioning is that mob’s in Loch Modan start having weird abilities. In addition to the bear that JUMPED OFF A CLIFF AND TRIED TO EAT MY FACE from earlier, there’s also mobs like rogues that shadowstep behind you and gnolls that have damage absorbing procs. While your general mobs have normal “I cast frostbolt” or “I hit you with hammer real hard” abilities, it’s really sweet to lightning bolt a rogue to get him in combat and watch him disappear in a cloud of smoke and stab you in the back. Cool in the suicidal sense, ofc.

The quest quality in Loch Modan was not Dun Morogh quality, but it definitely wasn’t poor. I wouldn’t even give it a “fair.” It was a pretty solid “good.” You have two major hubs for questing in Thelsamar and the Farstrider Lodge, both with quests that fit their area; i.e., Thelsamar has you do dwarven settlement things like kill giant spiders and trick murlocs into attacking gnolls while Farstrider Lodge does your more generic hunter things, such as kill a second BEAR WHO JUMPS TO TRY AND EAT YOUR FACE and pick up prickly seeds that are responsible for 97% of seed-related accidents by hunters. The two huge quest hubs are joined together by flight paths, something that Blizzard really made an effort to include in Cataclysm leveling. There’s some new faces to be found in Loch Modan, such as the Modan Monster, an elite lvl 15creature in the middle of the Loch who will most likely eat your face off for saying hello (and he drops no loot, so you probably don’t want to try), and some nefarious twilight cultists who are responsible for some of the…changes in Loch Modan. It would be unfair for me to spoil the surprise, but Loch Modan’s fate will have you damning the Twilight Hammer.

Almost every zone has at least two flight paths, providing easy travel to both ends of the zones. They’re also joined by a number of smaller hubs, which often have 3-5 quests in the hub and are almost always connected by breadcrumbs, meaning you don’t end up missing quests because no one ever directed you there. The zone ends with an epic flying tour around the zone that brings you to the breadcrumb leading you into the Wetlands, whic his the exclamation point on the well-structured sentence that is Loch Modan questing. To top it all off, Loch Modan introduces us to a new feature in old world leveling (and Loremaster Achievement getting), the zone-based quest achievement.

This achievement gives you an easy way to know A) That you’re close to done with leveling in the zone, B)That for the purpose of loremaster achievements, you’re done or nearly done with Loch Modan, and C)That you just gained 10 more achievement points. It’s really nice for adding a sense of accomplishment to finishing up a zone’s questing and readying yourself for moving on.

Now, there have been a few complaints on the beta forums about Loch Modan, with the major issues being that it isn’t Westfall/Darkshore/Silverpine/Northern Barrens, which are all known by now for having epic quest lines for level 10-20 zones. And, since I’ve had the privilege of leveling beyond Loch Modan and into later zones where epic questing is the norm, I can say that there’s some definite truth to that. That said, I also have the benefit of having done Loch Modan first, unspoiled by the opinions of beta testers before me, and I can say with confidence that at the end of the zone I felt accomplished, I felt satisfied, and I felt like I needed to pee because I hadn’t gotten out of my computer chair for too many hours because I was sucked into the questing. So, while it didn’t have the same effect that some of the “wow, that was awesome!” zones, it didn’t whisper “go do something that’s actually fun.” It also was an excellent example of giving a taste of what Cataclysm leveling is: It’s consistent, it’s laid out, it’s accessible, and it comes with a fabulous matching set of armor at the completion of the zone.

Elame, the most fashionable dwarf there is.

So yes, it’s not a 10/10. In terms of Cataclysm zones, it’s maybe a 6/10. But in terms of Pre-Cataclysm, old-world leveling? I’d give it an 11.

And this is where our journey ends, at the mouth of Dun Algaz. Tune in tomorrow (or Monday, haven’t decided) for Elame’s damp adventure through the fens of the Wetlands.

DUN DUN DUN.

Now, I know I’m not alone in this, but leveling my shaman back in Burning Crusade was a chore-even moreso than it is now. For one, we had to talent into using a two-handed weapon (which meant level 1-20 was done with either sword and board or a staff), rockbiter was the weapon imbue of choice till level 30, and shocks and lightning bolts were so mana intense (shamanistic focus came in the place of the 2handed weapon talent) until you got to shamanistic rage-our top tier level 50 talent- that drinking became our best friend. Over the past few years, I’ve made a number of efforts to try and level another shaman. Generally, they fall short around level 13 where I get bored and play something else on wow.

Cataclysm changes that. It makes level 10 an achievement-not in the points sense, but in the “holy @#$% look at these spec-defining abilities I just got. For Enhancement, the three passives we get at 10 are Lava Lash, Mental Quickness (now 50% of our ap and 60% reduced shock cost!), and Dual Wield with 6% hit baked in. This means that straight out the bat, at level 10, an Enhancement shaman can dual wield (and dual wield two weapons with flametongue weapon, our level 10 ability) and has primal strike, lava lash, and Earth Shock all at his disposal. The days of autoattack-autoattack-autoattack-shock-dead are over. Enhancement has turned from a wooden spoon to a leveling meat grinder with the Cataclysm talent changes, and it’s -fun-.

Mechanically, Earth Shock should be your priority during these levels. At level 16, I was rocking 102 spell power with 106 Attack Power; 53Mental Quickness SP, something like 15 from flametongue (30 since I was dual-wielding), and the rest made up by the intellect-spell power conversion. Earth Shock hit hard. Earth shock crit harder. And on a six second cooldown and being a short-range ability, there was seriously no reason not to lead off with it and hit it every time it’s up. Love the Earth Shock-it’s there to be your friend. Primal strike seems to come next, if only because your first three points (levels 10, 11, and 13) will be spent in making it do 45% more damage. Now, Primal Strike is inferior to Stormstrike in every way-including being a non-scaling “adds x damage” attack- but for low levels, it gets the job done. It’s also good for starting your auto attack if you’ve not macro’d /startattack to your Earth Shock, and it’s only downside was that while I was leveling it had no icon. /tear.

Lava Lash is a strange beast. I didn’t see it hitting harder than Primal Strike on beta during this level range, but I’m not totally surprised, as it doesn’t have the talents and glyphs that prop it up later in the tree. (Imp Lava Lash and Glyph of Lava Lash, to be exact.) It’s good damage, but not quite good enough that I was prioritizing it over ES and Primal Strike. The weirdest thing about leveling in beta is the GCD gaps in between using these abilities. You’re often not hitting quite hard enough that the mobs are dying before PS is up again, and with everything on cooldown there’s this feeling of “BUT THIS IS NOT ENHANCE SHAMAN PLAYSTYLE RAAAWR.” It’s not true, my mind just has to get accustomed to GCD gaps happening. You also can use these gaps to refresh lightning shield.

I already went over glyphs in a previous post. You’ll get your first glyph when you hit level 15, as this nice ui element will be sure to let you know:

You can read the older post to see me wax poetic about how amazing glyph of lightning shield is, so I won’t go into it again, but I do think it’s amazing for leveling.

Being a hybrid and all, a definite fact of leveling is healing. From 10-20, you’ll have two heals: Healing Wave and Healing Surge. Healing wave is your go to for in-between fights healing. It’s a 3 second cast time, doesn’t hit for spectacular amounts, and it’s low mana cost makes it excellent for keeping you topped off without hurting your mana. Healing Surge is your “OH SNAP” button. It’s a 1.5 second cast, hits like a truck, and takes a Jaws-sized bited out of your mana pool. You want to use this muchmuchmuch less than your healing wave, but don’t let it’s mana cost deter you if you’re about to die. Beyond that, with ghost wolf at level 15, leveling 10-20 should be a cinch.

Talent breakdown:

• 10: Focused Strikes, 1/3
• 11: Focused Strikes, 2/3
• 13: Focused Strikes, 3/3
• 15: Elemental Weapons, 1/2
• 17: Elemental Weapons, 2/2
• 19: Ancestral Swiftness, 1/2

(Note: Elemental Weapons increases the damage of both your weapons FT imbues by 40%, which in turn increases shock damage, their own proc damage, lightning bolt damage (for pulling) and lightning shield damage. Improved shields provides an overall greater bonus to shields (which are a chunk of your damage), but the loss of sp to the rest of your abilities is to much to make the improved shields route that viable. (Also, percentage based bonuses-while ultimately better at higher levels- tend to stink at low levels. 10% of 50 damage is only 5 damage, not a huge benefit.)

Elemental

• Stoneclaw Totem deal and absorb effect reduced by 50%.

This is mainly a nerf to all three specs in regards to pvp. Less damage absorbed by the shield means quicker totem deaths, and that shield’s base absorption is what the glyph of stoneclaw totem multiplies to create it’s player-bubble. My personal hope is we’ll see this accompanied by a change in stoneclaw totem that allows the shield to scale with players’ stamina, as currently Stoneclaw shield absorbs about 4200 damage no matter your gear level. Nerf.

• Chain Lightning now has a 3 sec cooldown, down from 6 sec.

Buff to Enhance aoe as long as we have the mana to sustain a CL every 3 seconds. For Elemental, they already talented into a CL nearly this quick with Storm, Earth, and Fire. Now we all get it base. Buff.

• Earthquake base damage increased by 55%. Now has a 10% chance to knock down the targets (down from 20%). Lasts 8 sec, down from 10 sec. Mana cost changed to 60% of base mana, down from 86% of base mana. Cooldown removed.

Definitely seems to have moved from a pvp control ability to a pure damaging aoe with a slight possibility of control. Spammable, higher damage, lower mana cost all for less of a chance to knock down anyone without a range interrupt. Overall a buff- definitely for pve, and everyone on the forums had stubbornly made up their minds not to use it in pvp anyway, even if that was stupid of them.

Storm, Earth and Fire renamed to Earth’s Grasp – Grants your Earthbind Totem a 50/100% chance to root nearby targets for 5 sec when cast.

Storm, Earth, and Fire did three things: Lower CD on CL, increase FS dot damage, and gave your Earthbind Totem a chance to root nearby targets. CL is base 3 seconds now, FS gains dot damage through lava flows, and Earth’s Grasp has appeared in Storm, Earth, and Fire’s place. This is a buff to Ele PVE, allowing them to more talent points to spend elsewhere. To Ele pvp, it’s not a buff or a nerf.

• Lava Flows now also increases the the periodic damage of your Flame Shock by 20/40/60%

Explained above.

• Totemic Wrath is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 4.

I’m annoyed, because Elame JUST got Totemic Wrath. >:( Other than that, I like this change: Lava Flows and Elemental Oath become shoe-ins for your 39, 41, 43, 45, and 47 talent points, and then you’re faced with the really hard choice of Fulmination vs. Totemic Wrath vs. Elemental Mastery at level 49. For anyone above level 60, this change doesn’t matter very much.

• Elemental Precision now increases damage instead of your chance to hit.

My initial feelings are that this is a buff. Since hit is not going to be static in Cataclysm, spirit found on gear is going to matter a lot. Losing this talent means that you need to work harder at getting hit capped from gear alone, but that always ends up with you eventually over the hit cap and wanting to drop points from hit giving talents in order to pick up dps increasing talents. This way, no one will want to ditch Elemental Precision.

• Item – Shaman T11 Elemental 2P Bonus – Increases the critical strike chance of your Flame Shock spell by 10%. / Instant

No reason it shouldn’t, but I hope this increases the critical strike chance of the dot portion too. Otherwise, solid bonus.
Item – Shaman T11 Elemental 4P Bonus – Reduces the cast time of your Lightning Bolt spell by 10%. / Instant

Seriously, that’s like a billion haste or something. Definitely a nice bonus.

Restoration

• Cleansing Waters base healing increased from [ 1916 to 2075 ] to [ 2634 to 2970 ]

With cleanse spirit talented to remove magic and curses, this seems useful. I cleanse you of your dot and heal you for what it’s last two or three ticks of damage did! It’s a free heal on top of something you already were going to do to help that person survive. It’s definitely a choice talent, but for those who choose to take it this buff is nice. (And remember, that’s base healing-unmodified by talents/sp/etc.)

• Tidal Waves no longer affects Lesser Healing Wave. Now affects Healing Surge.

http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/8004/<-Lesser Healing Wave is now Healing Surge. This is a good thing, as my LHW was hitting substantially harder than my healing wave on beta- definitely not my definition of lesser. It’s a high throughput, fast cast, high mana cost spell-the name fits it nicely. (Tidal Waves does the exact same thing it did last build, the only change is in the name of LHW.)

• Telluric Currents is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 6./Improved Cleanse Spirit is now a Tier 4 talent, down from Tier 5./Nature’s Blessing is now a Tier 3 talent, down from Tier 5./Nature’s Guardian is now a Tier 2 talent, down from Tier 4.

Not much to say. Movers gonna move.

• Improved Chain Heal is gone.

Nerf to most pve resto shaman, methinks. Not that anyone is especially sad to see a bland %increase talent go, but chain heal healing 20% less won’t be fun.

• Restorative Totems renamed to Soothing Rains – Increases the amount healed by your Healing Stream Totem by 25%, and your Healing Rain spell by 15/30%.

With a 20% decrease to chain heal, we see a 30% increase to Healing Rain! Seems to me like this build is screaming “Be good and use all your aoe spells and break the green laser spam mindset.” I also like the name. I find it…soothing.

• Blessing of the Eternals is now a Tier 6 talent, up from Tier 4. No longer icnreases the critical chance of your spells.

Admittedly, I had no idea this talent increased the critical chance of my spells. It’s probably a nerf though, as no one likes critting less. Well, people who hate RNG do. But those people have no sense of fun and adventure!

• Ancestral Awakening is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 3. This is now linked to Ancestral Healing.

One good talent linked to another good talent, both win ancestral in it’s name. For flavor, I approve. And since I would have spent all five of those talent points anyway, I see no problem linking them.

• Improved Water Shield no longer affects Lesser Healing Wave. Now affects Healing Surge.

See Tidal Waves.

• Item – Shaman T11 Restoration 2P Bonus – Increases the critical strike chance of your Healing Wave spell by 5%. / Instant

Healing Wave on beta is a really mana efficient, slow heal. It’s kind of the heal to use when someone is taking steady damage but not really in danger of dying. This bonus probably would be nicer on something like Healing Surge or Greater Healing Wave, where it’s less likely to overheal, but it’s not like your melee attacks are giving you a chance to cast an instant lesser healing wave or anything.

• Item – Shaman T11 Restoration 4P Bonus – Grants 540 Spirit for 6 sec after you cast Riptide / Instant

An increase in mana regen after using your mana-heavy instant cast spell. Not terrible- provided the pieces of the set are good, there’s no reason not to get this.

Enhancement

• Stormstrike now increases your chance to critical strike the enemy with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lightning Shield and Earth Shock spells by 25% for 15 sec instead of increasing nature damage by 20% on the target.

I’ve not seen concrete math on this being a buff yet, but for all intents and purposes it seems to be. 25% more chance to crit means 25% more chance to proc Elemental Devastation. Seeing as we’re not critting every 8 seconds anymore, this is a good change. On another note, this also tells us Lightning Shield can crit now- something that hasn’t happened in the past, and is in itself a large buff. I believe this talent is a buff, but time and math will tell.

• Windfury Weapon – Unleash Weapon now lasts 6 swings or until 12 sec, instead of a flat 12 sec.

This is a bit of a nerf, but an increase in weapon speed by 50% for 12 seconds on a 15 second cooldown seemed a bit drastic anyway. Nerf, but I’m not mollified.

• Ghost Wolf speed reduced from 40% to 30%.

Ugh. Nerf. Can glyph back to 40%. Freedom Wolf is a pretty powerful ability though. Not happy about this one, but I’m not keen on rallying for it either.

• Maelstrom Weapon no longer affects Lava Burst.

Sucks. An instant crit that did lots of damage and procced Elemental Devastation was awesome, and I’m going to be sad to see it go, if just because it was a fun spell. Ultimately, though, we’re probably better off for it:

A) Lava Burst always felt like we were intruding on Elemental’s territory. It’s definitely the definitive spell of Elemental, and is kind of like them imbuing windfury. That said, with them getting both Lava Burst burst and Fulmination burst, I’m stupid jealous.

B) It really makes the rotation less clunky to cut out. my current haste rating, I seem to average 5-6 seconds for MW to stack to full, sometimes less. I’m sure we’ve all had it where we were in the middle of aoeing, shot an instant CL and got a full stack way before CL was off it’s six second cd.  That would mean our priority would be like “LvB on five, stack to five, Lightning Bolt and risk Elemental Dev falling off and not having a full stack as LvB came off CD” or “LvB on five, stack to five and wait for LvB cooldown to fall off, wasting potential MW procs.” The new scenario is more “LB on five with increased chance to proc Elemental Dev/ Chain Lightning for aoe.” Overall it’s smoother, but noticeably less fun.

These points don’t really outweigh the fact that I really freaking want LvB on Maelstrom Weapon, but they help me cope. :3

• Item – Shaman T11 Enhancement 2P Bonus – Increases damage done by your Lava Lash and Stormstrike abilities by 10%. / Instant

Lava Lash and Stormstrike already hit hard on beta. Now they hit harder. I can’t foresee us wanting to skip this set bonus.

• Item – Shaman T11 Enhancment 4P Bonus – Increases the critical strike chance of your Lightning Bolt spell by 10%. / Instant

10% more means that we’ll be sitting at a 35% crit rate on LB after Stormstrike without factoring in any gear or buffs. We’ll easily be seeing a 50% crit rate on Lightning Bolt within the first tier of raiding in Cataclysm with the SS change, epic gear, talents, and this set bonus, helping waylay the pain of losing Lava Burst a small amount.

That’s it for this build. Tomorrow, Elames adventures through Loch Modan, the tale of which was inconveniently interrupted by a new beta push.