None of this is me complaining, though! While I’m a little annoyed I won’t be raiding tonight, the backdrop of boredom that has been my day has had the usual powerful effect it has on professional procrastinators- in the sheer absence of amusing things to do, we’re forced to do the one thing we spend most of our life avoiding: being productive. Today, then, gave me my chance to do something I’ve been wanting to do for the past two weeks. I managed to sit myself down in a slightly-too-messy room (I think the boyfriend might be a little mollified to find my idea of not-procrastinating to be cleaning up a website and not my room, oops), surrounded by the sweet sounds of “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on an infinite repeat, and stared at my computer screen in a battle of wills until the CSS code gave up and made SoR look like I wanted it to look. In reality, I stared at the screen until the CSS code won, and my friend Naithin was like “You should just make the picture more transparent so people can read it. Fucking smart computer kids. (For the record, the sweet picture now adorning the top-right side of Shaman on Ramen was drawn by Eklo, artist extraordinaire, owner of the Shaman vent,  and slightly worse shaman than myself.)

As a result of today’s hard work, I’m proud to present the new Shaman on Ramen (to couple with the fact that I am once again playing my shaman. Turns out that hunters are pretty much as boring as picking up dog feces. I regretted main changing less than a month after I actually did it.) With a new face, a fresh start, and two new iLevel 277 fist weapons, I’m more than excited to announce that Elam is back!

I stumbled upon a Karazhan pug. We wiped on Maiden. (Our eventual victory got me a Shard of the Virtuous, though!) We wiped on Curator. We wiped on Shade of Aran multiple times. We called it after wiping on our third attempt on Terestian Illhoof after hitting the enrage timer for the third time…an enrage timer that WowWiki doesn’t even list because it’s -that- forgiving. (Something like 12 minutes.) We called it there, but I was hooked to raiding. Part of it might have been my topping healing meters (BC chain heal sup?), part of it might have been realizing that despite our wipes the fights weren’t so complex that I couldn’t make a difference (shade pooped on my comp though), and part of it might have just been running with another 9 people who were in the same awkward and afraid boat as I was, but Karazhan went being a scarier place than the Republican National Convention to being number one on my list of “things I want to do each week playing wow.”

My point isn’t that I conquered my fear of raiding, though. My point is that at one time, I suffered the same fear of raiding that a lot of new players have, and that while we might sneeze on heroic gear and say “10s are so easy a Geico Salesman could do it,” there is a legitimate and real fear of trying them. There was a thread on the forums yesterday asking about a “BiS heroic gear list.” Some laughs were to be had, as we assumed the guy was talking about Heroic ICC25 gear, when in fact he was talking about heroics five mans. It got me thinking, though, that while my server might spoil me when it comes to progression (Ranked 15th with 8/12 ICC25 Hardmodes, wut?), there’s a large amount of players playing now for who heroic five mans are the norm, who might not believe that Heroic raiding is ever going to be within their grasp but who still want to do their best when they step into a raid.

To that end, I took it upon myself to utilize Rawr and EnhSim to develop a BiS “Pre-Raid” list- that is, a list of gear to strive for without ever having to step foot into a raid. This is not exactly a “Heroic 5s” loot list, because “BiS Pre-raid” means “Best in Slot out of any gear available without raiding.” To that end, it includes craftable gear and Bind on Equip gear. While I totally understand that not everyone has the funds to buy BoE and craftable gear, this is the utmost “Best in Slot,” and you can make substitutions as you deem necessary. (For example, Boots of Living Scale simmed at 10-15 more dps than Spiked Toestompers, so you should be fine with either. Boots are the clear winner, though.)

The criteria I followed:

• I assumed the character was a Tauren with no professions. Racials and Profession Bonuses will add extra dps, but I wanted a gearset that would apply to everyone and could be tweaked from there. (On a totally random note, all the t9 gear is Alliance gear, because I totally forgot there was a difference until I was actually editing the links in here.)
• All gear choices were simmed with Standard Enhsim settings, assuming 200 latency. As a note, this includes both your internet connection, fps, and reaction time. Most of us aren’t actually playing at 200 latency.
• All Debuffs/Buffs were assumed. While this is a list of pe-raid BiS gear, the design is to make you the best you can be when you step into raids.
• Glyphs were Feral Spirit/Stormstrike/Flame Shock. Flameshock was a shoe-in due to the 4pct9, simming at a 60dps increase over the next competitor.
• Priority System and Spec are cookie cutter, taken from the Enhancement Sticky.
• All raid caps are achieved, assuming Imp. Faerie Fire/Misery.
• Just like I assumed you would have the money to buy BoE gear, I assumed the money for epic gems and the best possible enchants. I also assumed you would spend the time to level up reputations you would need.
• I assumed that you would spend on average a month gearing up. Without stepping foot in a ICC10/25 or a Weekly raid, your EoF intake would be 2 a day. Because of that, I thought a reasonable amount of Emblems of Frost would be 60. Everything else is Triumph/Craftable/Boe/Heroic Gear.
• There is not enough quality off-set gear to make up for dropping 4pc t9. (None of the iLevel 245 Emblem of Triumph gear is worth losing the 4pc for.)
• This is set to net you the best dps. It is NOT a gearscore set. I fully support getting gearscore items like the 245 EoT gear to use it to trick retarded people who use gearscore into letting you raid, but I do not support you than using those pieces in a raid.
• In theory, Enchant Boots – Icewalker is more paper dps than Tuskarr’s Vitality. However, it’s commonly accepted that having 8% runspeed takes the cake on any fight that isn’t Patchwerk (i.e., you need to move), so while there is a 15-20 dps loss not using Icewalker I kept to the conventional choice of Tuskarr’s.

Without further ado, my “Pre-raid BiS loot list.”

• Head: Nobundo’s Faceguard of Triumph, ReD Meta, Accurate Ametrine, Arcanum of Torment
• Neck: Wodin’s Lucky Necklace, Quick King’s Amber
• Shoulder:  Nobundo’s Shoulderguard’s of Conquest, Quick King’s Amber, Greater Inscription of the Axe
• Back: Accursed Crawling Cape, Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed
• Chest: Carapace of Forgotten Kings, Quick King’s Amber x 3, Enchant Chest – Powerful Stats
• Wrist: Crusader’s Dragonscale Bracers, Quick King’s Amber, Enchant Bracers – Greater Assault
• Gloves: Nobundo’s Grips of Conquest, Quick King’s Amber, Enchant Gloves – Crusher
• Belt: Belt of Dragons, Precise Cardinal Ruby x 2, Nightmare Tear, Eternal Belt Buckle
• Pants: Nobundo’s War-Kilt of Conquest, Precise Cardinal Ruby x 2, Icescale Leg Armor
• Feet: Boots of Living Scale, Quick King’s Amber x 2, Tuskarr’s Vitality
• Ring 1: Band of Stained Souls
• Ring 2: Dexterous Brightstone Ring
• Trinket 1: Mirror of Truth
• Trinket 2: Herkuml War Token
• Totem: Totem of Electrifying Wind
• Mainhand: Cudgel of Furious Justice, Enchant Weapon – Berserking
• Offhand: Nighttime, Enchant Weapon – Berserking -Note that this simmed at ~2dps over Black Icicle, meaning that there will be little to no recognizable difference.

The end result of this gear combination says that your Maximum Theoretical DPS is 8488 DPS. You’ll have a little over 40% unbuffed melee critical hit, 4110 Attack Power, 142 Expertise, 375 Hit (Now you guys get the helm gem choice!), ~20.75 melee haste…and like 200 armor pen. Even with all that haste (736 rating in mostly 232 gear!), Haste is still simming as the most desirable stat, with an EP of 2.80.

There you go, future raiders! A BiS gear for all of ya’ll too. Hope it helps!

I’d love to post a longer update- and I will, tomorrow, I swear!- but I’ve been wanting to die due to a headache all night and I just don’t have the words in me to post more.

For anyone who wants to stop by and suggest changes to the sticky, the url is

www.surreality-guild.com

So, here’s the deal: We used to have a !#@$ing awesome warlock. He was a High Warlord, he was one of our highest dps, and he pretty consistently managed to not stand in fires, something that not all of our dps can brag about. Azargoth was the superman to our Daily Planet. Unfortunately, a month ago, our super-forsaken went off to start a band, because he’s just that bad ass.

Enter “that kid we all saw running around Silvermoon City sporting his ‘Death’s Demise’ title,” or “tool,” for short. As a friend of our Super-forsaken, and on his sage advice, we invited “tool” into our humble abode. He was mediocre ( though possibly one of our best recruits in a while which is not saying much about the quality of raiders we have applying atm), and while some of us questioned who carried him to Yogg 0 (read; whose desk was he kneeling under?), we were happy to have a warlock who could reliably drop summoning stones, gather Dark Nuclei on princes, and shoot weird balls of shadow from his fingers.

Unfortunately, not even 12 hours after his initiate stage was over and “tool” was promoted to the ranks of raider, at some ungodly early hour like 10AM, where decent, fun-loving people should be sleeping, “tool” peaced it like Gandhi back to the ranks of whatever dude he was sucking off’s guild, I guess desiring some more hardcore content for a decidedly softcore player. (Now, I’m not normally this bitter, but when I run our initiate channel and try and make myself available to every new player we have, it’s a pretty big slap in my face to not even mention to me that he had concerns about Surreality. Not gonna lie.)

So, all of this said, and my mini-rant over: Surreality is recruiting one warlock. We’d prefer it if you could go Illidan form and provide our mages with 82 billion spellpower or whatever, but destruction is ok. (Provided you bring the soul shards for portals. Fuck icecrown phasing.) Also, I think Liluye requires you be a forsaken. She has something against female orcs. (Also, don’t expect her to heal your demon. She doesn’t show pets in Grid, the jerk. ) ((Also also, everyone has something against blood elves, which is why the forsaken rule is enforced.))

Surreality (H: Black Dragonflight):

A) Is pretty awesome. We’re just cool people. Especially me. (Our bear has fleas, but he’s cool too.)

B) We’re a semi-casual raiding guild. We are -not- going to be getting server first kills. It’s not us. We’re not going to gkick you for not showing up for a hardmode raid because it’s your daughter’s ballet recital/your girlfriend scheduled a “meet the family” dinner/you rlyrly needed to finish that paper on string theory before midnight. It’s not us. Real life comes first.

C) We’re are going to work our hardest-being “semi-casual” is not an excuse for being bad- it’s a description that we have other stuff going on in our lives that we need to work around. We work our butts off on progression (when we have the people), and we expect everyone to come prepared with their flasks/potions of speeds/knowledge of what the fuck they’re doing.

D) We raid Tue-Wed-Thurs, 9:30-12:00 EST, which is also server time.(Though we ask you to be on at 9 for invites!) That’s 7.5 hours of commitment we ask from you- less than any job, significant other, or school ever will! ^_^

We’re pretty much only recruiting warlocks right now. Feel free to apply if you’re a class other than warlock, but we generally do not accept cross-server applicants just as a part of “we don’t want to be put in the position of looking like total douchebags when you turn out to suck” policy, but we are willing to part with that for really good warlocks.

As might have been evident by lack of posting lately (despite promises to the contrary), my mood has best been described as “apathetic.” It’s something that has been happening for quite a while; between weapons never dropping, using a computer that hates melee combat, and the fact that hunters are stupid fun to play (and historically are the main class I play in any game), my interest in Elam started to wane. I lost interest in blogging, I lost interest in raiding, I lost interest in doing much of anything (this is all strictly wow-related, btw. I was still interested in real life!) that wasn’t  being on my hunter. When I was raiding, I was wishing I was doing it on my hunter, and when I wasn’t raiding I was doing silly things like blowing 10kgold in a day on my hunter’s epic flying and leveling Engineering. So, earlier this month I applied to <Surreality>, noting that we were already running melee heavy raids. I trialed for two weeks, and three days ago Darwinism was promoted to Core Raider while Elam was demoted to alt.

So, where does this leave us, dear readers? Well, if you were only coming to my blog because I was an Enhancement Shaman blogger (which was as hard to find as a wild eevee) you’re shit out of luck. :3 This said, my good Pal Palioh has started a blog recently, which you should all check out. Additionally, Stoneybaby over at Big Hit Box is simply awesome, and I still wonder how he isn’t more popular.

On the other hand, if you’re for some strange reason enamored of my magnetic presence, my wicked wit, my dashing good looks, my pug, my overabundance of comma usage, or any number of other things, or you’re still just waiting on the damn Elam/Edward Cullen portrait I promised, you might actually be in luck. As of last night, I made a new blog, aptly named (Admiral Ackbar throwback yessss) “It’s A Trap.” Notice, however, that the website is spelt It IS a trap .wordpress.com, as “itsatrap.wordpress.com” was taken by some jerk who never posts anything. My hope is that blogging about a class I love and enjoy playing is going to make it so I’m back at a time that I love and enjoy blogging, so hopefully those of you who make your way over there will see a much more frequent pace of updating. Unfortunately, Hunter blogs are as common as Ratatas on the road between Pallet Town and Veridian Forest, so I’m going to have to think of something more witty than hunter information to keep you guys interested.

For those of you who follow me over to my new home: Thank you, and I’m sorry. You guys rock.

For those of you who don’t: Thank you, and I’m sorry. It’s been a fun 6 months, and hopefully the next six will be awesome as well! It’d be great to include all of you in it, but to each their own.

Stay classy, kids.

However, thanks to Eklo, this has all changed. For those who don’t know Eklo, Eklo is famous for perfecting the art of what is called “Eklocleave.” Commoners refer to this “Eklocleave” as “Davidbowiecleave,” but they don’t know that this is because it’s always been Eklo’s dream since he was a young blueberry shaman to be a 1980s glamrocker, and frequently laments the fact that time machines have not been invented yet after singing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody on vent.

At any rate, Eklo’s history behind us, Eklo decided to be cooler than everyone else (but me, ofc) and pony up some money to get a vent working for shaman to talk in/ask questions/not cyber. He deserves a pat on the back and many Black Bruises to drop for this noble effort. (However, since he is an Alliance, the fates will have it that Black Bruise drops weekly but he always loses the roll. That’s what you get.)

Beyond Eklo the Loaded, this vent will have a few administrators that exist to make sure that the rules (more on these later) are followed and the e-fawning over Elam doesn’t get out of hand. They are as follows:

Des, Hero of Orgrimmar, the Silent.
Yuuzu, Lord of the Torrented Anime, Resident Meme Master
Elam the Studmuffin (oratleastthat’swhathisgrandmothercallshim.)
Rival Clous, the Unaware
Private Eklo the Patient Jenkins

Anyways, we have a few groundrules to follow. Eklo isn’t aware of them yet because I only told him “Dibs on writing the introductory post” and didn’t explain what that entailed, but they’re totally the rules.

First off, these are the people we want to see in this vent:

Abhorrent
Palioh
Kiyolano
Your Mom
Hoofz
Renzolongjapanesename
Those girls from The Shining
Gurls in general
Koios
Ghostcrawler, Destroyer of Hopes and Dreams Jenkins
Levva
Rouncer
Darth Vader
Shaman who are interesting
Rita Repulsa
Shaman who have fun and worthwhile questions
Shaman who want to talk
Natalie Portman
Frequent Posters who we know but I somehow managed to forget. (I’ve done this before and I’ll do it again, and I’m sorry to anyone who I’ve done it to. I still <3 you. For instance, writing this, I just realized I totally forgot Liax. Rather than edit him in, I’m writing this so that he knows I remembered him. Hi Liax!)

People we don’t want in this vent:

Anakin Skywalker
Luke Skywalker
Lord Zedd
That level 79 shaman from the summer who complained about everything when he never hit 80. That kid was a prick.
Your dad.
Ash Ketchum
Your pug raid. Srsly. You will get permabanned if you decide to be cute and bring your pug icc25 onto vent with you.
13 year olds. Or 14 year olds. Or anyone who can’t pay for this game without parental assistance, really. Nothing personal, but I really don’t want to have to talk with your babysitter about letting her charge be corrupted by the likes of Des.

Things we want people to talk about:

Shaman. Norly.
Dragon Age: Origins
The Plagueworks
Power Rangers
How cute Elam is in that shirt
Davidbowiecleave
Puppies
Pokemon
Writing hearts on your notebook.
The Food Network
Star Wars
Why Daft Punk is better than topping dps, and why topping dps listening to Daft Punk is better than…puppies?
SNES
Dinosaurs.

Things we don’t want people to talk about.

Politics. For rl, no one cares that you’re voting Palin 2012, or that you think Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize was the best thing since Maelstrom Weapon. Save that @$@# for a first date you don’t want to score on or a boring people convention.
Why Elam plays his hunter more than his shaman. :3
Stupid Shaman questions, like whether WF/WF or WF/FT is better, or when to start gemming ArP. We’ll laugh at you and call you names like poohead and festergut.
Kittens. Vastly inferior to puppies.
Eklo singing on vent.

With all of that out of they way, the vent info is:

cobalt.typefrag.com
40147

/Nerdrage at mean hunter friends who leave my guild.

/Nerdrage at getting saved to a ToGC10 that didn’t Anub. I blame mean hunter friend.

/Nerdrage at not getting a single ICC5man in on my hunter today.

However, through it all, one word remains.

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.

I wish my Shock and Awe had a priority icon for "Print Screen."

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.

I swear to god, this is all true. >.<

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.

Most exhausting match EVAR.