Between 2 @Elam threads, 3 people logging on level 1s on Black Dragonflight before my avatar updated to ask what I changed to (after posting once “why won’t my avatar update. ”), and 40 people I had never talked to before asking me why I changed race, I realized two things: A) I’m kind of a big deal. and B) Race Matters (and not just Cornell West style.) People all across Azeroth were weighing decisions and arguing with themselves about the value of looking good vs. performing well.

And so now, two weeks after my therapist-reviewed sex/race change, I figured I’d post the positives and negatives of my character transformation, and what I think everyone else should do.

A)Size matters too. In his “If I was Grecian I’d be a minotaur” form, Elam was a beast. His shoulders blocked out the sun, and the rest of the raid pew-pewd in the shade. More importantly for me, he blocked out humanoid–sized mobs, from trash mobs to Grand-Widow Faerlina. On quite a few of these fights, my only way of telling whether I was in front of or behind the miniscule mobs was by figuring out if I was surrounded by other meleers. And, since most of them fit inside my hitbox anyway, this led to more than a few instances of me standing on our cratchety undead tank(Ironically, he is now a cow-man) thinking I was standing our cynical corpse rogue.

This issue was exacerbated by my computer- a Dell Studio laptop, with an…18′ screen, I think? (I do have a 22′ monitor screen that I could hook up, but it was stolen by my family two months ago when they blew out their screen. They finally bought a new monitor yesterday, so hopefully I’ll be back to playing on a monitor where my raid members are bigger than a thumbnail soon.) Right now, this small monitor is my only problem with Elam’s new waistsize- when running fights where my camera needs to be set at max view distance, trying to discern which blob with axes in the center of the screen is me on an 18inch screen can be more challenging than the fight itself.

2. It is hard to get used to. Really. At least twice in the past two weeks I have confused myself for our male tauren enhancement shaman initiate, resulting in me standing out of melee range on two trash fights because I didn’t realize my weapons weren’t swinging. Moreover, messing with viewdistance has gotten stupid. I actually died to Pewx2 on Mimiron easy the other day because I had my camera zoomed in closer than I used to have it on Elam, and I didn’t realize this was a problem until he started to spin up on p4 and I couldn’t see the middle. I lost “Champion of Ulduar” for two people that night (as well as sabotaging my own chance at the achievement, since he was one of 3 bosses I still need too. ) I felt pretty damn silly.

3. The racials are excellent. There is no making this any prettier: Orc racials are simply the best that exist for Enhancement shaman, bar none. 5% expertise when wielding axes frees up at least 2-3 gems for Attack Power. Blood Fury gives 322 Attack power, 163 spelldamage, and through mental quickness you get another 107 spell damage (322x.30), so 270 spell damage. That’s the equivalent of at least a blue/bad epic iLevel 200 trinket, such as Loatheb’s Shadow. And, Command gives 5% extra damage to Spirit Wolves while they’re up, which is a minimal increase, but still not terrible. And, I’d need to check this to make sure and google is not making it easy, but I think 5% to fire elemental totem- something that will be excellent assuming permanent fire elemental totem is not changed for 3.3. Any one of these racials is an upgrade from the void of terrible tauren racials (for pve), and all 3 of them together blow tauren out of the water.

4. But Elam, races will be changed for Cataclysm!: This game is perpetually changing, and the idea of choosing to do anything  without remembering that is just silly. It’s just like people rolling fotm classes for pvp: they will eventually get nerfed. Recognize this fact, and use it roll with the blows. (E.g.: Enhance DPS is the third worst in the game right now, right before Elemental and Shadow Priest. However, we’ve been consistently good the past two patches, so pretending that our low performance in ToC is proof that the end is near for our dps is not really intelligent. This is even more true now that we’ve seen the patch notes for 3.3, and enhance is getting some considerable dps increases.)

So yes, Orc racials WILL be nerfed/changed. Honestly, they might even be made better- as far as I can tell, they’re not up to par with Goblin/Worgen Racials, and those two will be the new standard for racials sometime soon. I’m fully prepared for this, and was prepared the moment I typed in my card information on Blizzard Account Management. I’ve grown accustomed to my new green body, and I even like it, but I won’t mind eschewing it if tauren get beastly racials. (And, tbqh, I’m planning on going goblin in Cataclysm anyway. Free gap closer for a class that has no gap closer? Yesplz.)

5. I can wear boots. Seriously. You people who have worn boots your entire wow career might take them for granted, but for someone whose first 3 80s were a Cow Deathknight, Cow Shaman, and Blueberry Hunter, NOT HAVING HOOFS IS AWESOME.

6. I’m kind of a big deal. Hehe, to be honest, this did factor into it. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people questioned my race change, and even more people log onto BDF to whisper/mail me questions, etc. People ask me stuff on the forums. It’s generally believed that I have a clue what I’m talking about, and I felt guilty about the prospect of telling people “Orc is the best class for pve,” when I was unwilling to make that sacrifice myself. Practice what you preach, that whole thing.

All of the above said, I don’t advocate race changing. There is absolutely no challenging the fact that orc racials blow Tauren (and trolls, for the most part) out of the water, but there is also no challenging the fact that it is your $15 a month to play. Will going orc increase your dps? Yes. But is 200dps(arbitrarily assigned- I can’t put an exact number to the increase atm) worth you spending $25 to play a race that you don’t want to play? That’s not something for me (or for anyone else) to decide for you. We can criticize your putting a 20 crit gem in your helmet, or using the higher dps weapon in your offhand, but when it comes to a question of spending real money AND possibly sacrificng enjoyment- that’s a personal choice, and there isn’t a wrong one. I’m a min-maxer who had cash to spare and felt that I was holding my guild back by not doing the best to maximize my dps, but that’s my personal opinion on the situation. I can’t/won’t criticize anyone for playing the race they want to play, because ultimately this game IS about enjoyment, and no one wants to loathe their character.

(PS: I didn’t get into the gender change, so here’s an addendum about that. I find male orcs to look vapid and clueless, and really they embody the traditional masculine charcteristics I hate. (Honor, unhealthy obsession with violence, competition, etc.) Female orcs don’t look stupid, have cool ponytails, and certainly do not typify stereotypical female gender roles. {“Estrogen? What’s that? Can I eat it?” }While my boyfriend glares at me whenever I bring Elam’s sex/race change up {apparently, he entered into this relationship with a male tauren! xD}, I think I made the right choice. )

Back in March, after I begged and whined and followed Ell around Orgrimmar like a sick dog, Surreality welcomed me back into their humble abode. (The story of my leaving the first time is one for another time- in a nut shell, peer pressure is bad. Unless I’m the one pressuring. In that case, listen to me.) They had pretty recently downed 25Sarth+3 for the first time, while my experiences had me at 10+1, a few sloppy Malygos 10 kills, and attempts at Undying that ended on Heigan. Thus, I was elated when they let me back in (and as enhance! ^_^. I was resto when I hit 80. Gross.) I was even more elated the week I planned to skip class to down Sarth+3 with them- I’d get my Twilight Vanquisher title pre 3.1, have some fun with my new guild, and feel like I actually got to experience some progression content. …that was the week 3.1 decided to land. I skipped class anyway in hopes of getting in on our first Ulduar pull, but my campus internet was at 2k, I was an initiate (and not trusted, at that), and the lag monster that is post-patch raiding reared it’s ugly head. I was pretty majorly bummed.

It was pretty awesome, then, when one of the officers let us in on the game plan Thursday night- Besting the Black Dragonflight, Twilight Zone style. With a full raid of twenty-two whole members, we ran in and engaged the fatty dragon like pros. the other 21 members of the raid (who had at least experienced whiping on 3drakes) were pretty used to the layout. I was stuck in the pug mentality of BIG DRAGON GO IN CENTER, (I’d done 2drakes once before, but not enough to be familiar) and promptly died to a void zone while trying to run away from a lava wave at the last second. I ahnked to be a badass…and then got hit by a random fireball. Buff reincarnation hps imo. Two lives down, and starting to feel like I was in a SNES game, our Marksman-Hunter-Turned-Resto-Druid battle rezzed me, and I proceeded to hold tightly to my bottom of the meter status. (Hey, even with my time spent dead, and no buffs, I outdamaged the tanks and hit 4ishk. I’m not -that- bad! )

Yes, it's seven months too late. Yes, I love it anyway. And yes, I am wearing the title. It's cute on me.

Our Thursday night raiding didn’t stop there. While the brunt of our raiders left- some mages left to pee vee pee on their tree drood alts, some warlocks left to benchpress skyscrapers, and some tree druids I might name were busy getting an education rather than raiding, we managed to scramble together 12 raiders for a 25 man instance. A 25 man instance we had never seen before. A 25 man instance known as the Sunwell. (Sunwell Plateau if you want it to sound less epic.)

We didn’t technically wipe on the first boss. We happened to dps him rlyrlyrly hard, and he hit 0 before we realized the point of the encounter is killing the demon in the portal first. We then spent the next 10 minutes leveling weapon skills on a banished boss, hoping he would enrage and kill us all. He didn’t, our weapons dinged 400, and we proceeded to hearth out and reassemble. We pulled ourselves together, smacked a bitch dragon up, and proceeded to Brutallus…where our bear tank forgot he was in kitty gear and got murdered when it was his turn to taunt. We had no further issues, I topped dps on Brut and was happy, and I nabbed some sweet t6 token. We then wiped on Felmyst. It took us four tries to properly avoid the mind control fog. It was especially fun on the attempt we actually downed the dragon because dots made her hit 0 HP in midair- only one of us had to survive to win. All 12 made it through that time, though, and we moved on to Eredar Twins.

This is the point of the night where we stopped listening to our elemental shaman explain boss strategies, and we developed strategies of our own- pop bloodlust, hit buttons, and kill it before it kills you. Somehow, this strategy brought us through Eredar twins, Mu’ru, and Kil’Jaeden. I was rewarded for my efforts hitting my bloodlust key rly hard with some sweet lolArmor Pen gauntlets, and our main tank was rewarded…with a legendary.

The Sunwell- 1,000Xmore powerful than a lightwell?

Yes, that is our main tank being a meanie and taking the bow over a hunter. However, he was nice and gave it back later. And I know, lolLevel70 content and lol70 weapon…but honestly. It’s orange lettered. It’s golden gilded. And it fucking SHOOTS LIGHTNING arrows. It’s awesome. <3

That was not the end of my Thursday night, oddly enough. Somehow, I managed to scrounge up our New Zealandish Tree, fresh back from school, and 6 other friends from our ex-guild and put together a “The Dedicated Few” Naxx10 run. (Actually, that’s a small lie- the tree’s mage brother kept DCing and left, and I kicked a bad pug ret paladin. What started as a naxx10 turned into naxx8 by Gluth.) I think I might go more into detail about this in another post, but for now I’ll mention this: Paladin healing is fun. 1.75 second holy lights on KT frost blocks are fucking intense. However, I’m not about to rehash stuff that has already been said, and I want to sleep, so I’ll say this: I’m writing this rather than sleeping right now because tomorrow is maintenance day. So, in my mind, either A) You’re bored at home with no wow and only blogs to read, or B) You’re bored at work with no wow and only blogs to read. Either way, if you want the full story of Ent and Evangelist, head on over to Tank N’ Tree and check out this entry, which includes a treatise on why I’m the biggest douchebag in the world.

This was it for my Thursday night of raiding. It was a very fun, laid back, low stress night- the exact opposite of the raid we did on Saturday night(also an amazing one), which I’ll blog about tomorrow. It was also a great call by our leadership to have us raid old-but-fun content, at least imho. We’re considering farming Sarth+3 for drakes and trinkets weekly, now. So, I’m interested to know- feel free to comment, to e-mail Elamtheshaman@live.com, or to link to a blog about it- what awesome raid nights have you haad in the past? Any in particular that stand out for a reason other than “Omw we killed progression boss X” or “I got BiS item Y?”

——————-

On an entirely different note, I’ve become addicted to alts and alt specs over the weekend. First off, after a disasterous attempt at tanking ToC10, and due to my utter hatred for tanking, Grazeless went back to being blood dps. However, I hate blood dps (even though 13k death strike crits are pretty), and due to a generous rogue friend, a boe holiday drop, and my realizing I was a champion of Thunder Bluff on my zombiefemcow, I was able to spec DW Threat of Tharassian, the dps talent spec my DK had been wishing for in her cold little heart the entire expansion. I happen to have an insane love of DW which predates WoW, and might even predate Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (best console game in history). And no, it doesn’t stem from a love for Drizzt Do’Urden- for all I care, while this may offend some, R.A. Salvatore can be crushed by a gigantic flaming pile of Star Wars novels for what he did to Chewbacca. And Drizzt/Co. lack any form of character development or personality. I’m happy now, with my pretty little zombie cow, and glad she finally can drink her problems away while beating them senseless with the mug.

I like her 2pc t7, 2pc t8, 1pct9. Gogo mismatched tier gear!

Notelam hit 80 with the intention of one thing- going Retribution. Like Grazeless, she started as a He. unlike Grazeless, she started as a filthy human on Uldum. I could not stand for this, and 45 minutes after faction changes were announced, Idrawaggro the male human paladin from Uldum was Notelam, the female belf from Black Dragonflight. Much like her gender/spec/race, I was a bit confused with my plans for Notelam- I leveled her while I was on a melee kick (which I’m still on), where I wanted one of every melee class at level 80. However, paladins are super freaking boring with their SHINYLIGHTATTACKONE and SHINYLIGHTATTACK2 and YOUGETTHEIDEA attacks. Couple my boredom with religious light effects (my parents are both Presbyterian pastors- I don’t need more shiny lightside stuff in my life), and the fact that I leveled a lot in Alterac Valley where low level heals are infinitely more useful than low level dps, and we have a recipe for healing success. That said, she only has like five heroics under her belt, and it was a big stretch for Naithin and Co. to allow her 1600spellpower self into Naxx10. (He insisted I did well, I call bollocks.) Nevertheless, I found healing to be pretty fun, and I’m pretty comfortable keeping her that way, especially now that she sits just shy of 2k spellpower.

SHINYLIGHTATTACK42

Elam is not an Alt. Elam is a main. He is enhance mainspec/resto offspec a good deal of the time, but has spent some time as enhance offspec. What Elam had never done, however, was spec Elemental- at least not this expansion. The last time I dpsed anything as elemental was early last October, where I rocked 1k dps on Caverns of Time: Durnholde trash through Chain Lightning/Lightning Overload awesomeness. I had not tried Elemental since Lava Burst/Wrath of the Lich King hit…and I’ve been missing out. Lava Burst crits for 10k on target dummies is awesome. Lava burst/Chain Lightning burst in battlegrounds is intense (though I admit to dying a lot- part of that is the staff, anyway.) Thunderstorming people off the Arathi Basin Lumber Mill cliff is hilarious. In all, Elemental is just a really, really -fun- spec, and I’d like to keep it my offspec. (This isn’t possible, as I’ve had my already-precarious spot in guild ten mans taken away if I keep it as my offspec- it seems being able to go ranged on ranged-friendly fights is not as useful as being a bad healer on healing intense fights. xD.) I’m not really upset about this decision, though- it makes sense from a guild point of view, even though I don’t like it. However, until I’m called upon to change it, I’m rocking my Elemental offspec and tearing up battlegrounds/alt and heroic runs.

How about everyone else? Do you have a new alt you’ve fallen in love with? Or tried a new spec you hadn’t used before and found yourself enjoying it way more than you might want to? I’d love to hear!

1. Cleansing Totem: No longer pulses instantly when dropped.

I will probably do a post about this change in particular later. There is no way this is not a nerf in both PVE and PVP, but I’ll be frank and say I will not tolerate whining comments about this change. When I do a post about it specifically, this might change, but for now comments like “omg blizzard is so unfair” will get deleted without a second thought.

2.  Earthen Power: No longer causes Earthbind to pulse a persistent snare immunity aura. It does still remove snares from allies as an instant pulse, but there is no lingering immunity. Earthen Power now also brings Earth Shock’s melee attack speed reduction up to -15%/-20% (with 1 or 2 points in it, respectively).

For those of us who spec into pvp for Faction champions, this may in fact be a PVE nerf. For those of us who don’t spec into PVP for faction champions, it won’t. However, this is a slight pvp nerf. It may be warranted- it still removes snares on pulse/drop, it just doesn’t allow us to hand of freedom our entire 5s team for 5 seconds at a time.

3. Bug Fixes:

• Grounding Totem will now properly protect against the Death Grip spell.
• Lava Burst can no longer deal critical damage to targets who are immune to critical strikes (due to, e.g. Roar of Sacrifice, Blessed Resilience).
• Lightning Shield: This spell will no longer set off some trinkets when it is cast.
• Stoneclaw Totem’s pulses will no longer break stealth on nearby hostile units.
• Thunderstorm and Shamanistic Rage can no longer be used while Frozen, Cycloned, Sapped, or Incapacitated.

Grounding Totem vs. DG was a big issue when 3.2 hit because Grounding Totem recognized the taunt and the pull as two seperate effects, and grounded the taunt. Lava burst change makes sense. Lightning Shield change is fun- nerf to anyone who was trying really hard to spam their lightning shield to get mana back from trinkets!

The last two need a little more time: A) Stoneclaw totem’s aoe taunt has no damage component, nor does it debuff. There is no reason as to why it SHOULD break rogues out of vanish. Bug Fix. For the second, both of these abilities say “this spell is useable while stunned.” Cyclone isn’t a stun. Frozen isn’t a stun. Sapped/Incapacitated both break on damage and are not stuns. Once again, emphasis on the Bug Fix. If you’d like to see these changes actually implemented, post on the suggestion forums, but don’t call these nerfs. They were not working as intended.

4. The Awesomeness that is Flame Shock.

Flameshock received quite a few changes this patch. First off, it is no longer consumed by Lava Burst. Not too amazing for us, but Smellementals will love it. Second, the duration has been increased to 18 seconds- which might be awesome for us. And third, glyph of Flame Shock now allows Flame Shock dots to be critical strikes.

Now, the number crunching at Elitist Jerks is not totally finished, and we can’t be positive, so everything I say is conjecture, but it looks like we will be adding Flame Shock into the Enhancement Damage Priority system. I’m not sure how minor a dps increase this will be (it will be minor- don’t expect to be doing 1k more damage because of this)but, 200 more dps is 200 more dps! Additionally, one of the cool aspects of this is that it makes our priority system a little bit more dynamic- for something that hasn’t changed since 3.0, this is welcome.

Flame shock looks like it will be added into the rotation whenever you would Earth Shock after the Flame Shock debuff has run out. This is important, as Flame Shock will only do competitive dps if allowed to tick fully. So, you Flame Shock to get it up, and then fill in the next (3, normally, unless you get -a lot- of MW5 stacks) shocks with Earth Shock, and then once FS has fallen off you THEN add in a new Fire Dot.

To help make this easier on you, there are two addons you can configure to help you- Shock and Awe and Power Auras.

For Shock and Awe, you have to use the /saa config command to bring up the configuration interface. From there, go to your priority list section and edit in Flame Shock.

I added it in right after MW5 Lightning Bolt and before anything else so that it takes the place of my ES_SS when Flame Shock debuff isn't on the target.

From there, it becomes up to you as to where you add it in. In my opinion, you should add it in right before Earth Shock, as then it will show up on your priority frame whenever Earth Shock would and the Flame Shock debuff is not on the target. This means that, if you’re using the ES_SS second priority “rotation,” you’d put Flame shock prior to ES_SS. If you’re using the cookie cutter MW5->SS->ES priority list, you’d add it in after SS and before ES.

And then, once shocks are off CD, this is what it should look like when FS debuff runs out.

SAA isn’t the only addon that can help you- and, if you’re one of the many that feels SAA is a bit “cheaty” (I’ve heard it quite a bit), there are other ways to monitor your FS. My personal favorite is Power Auras Classic.

The fireball is there to tell me Flame Shock is not on my target.

As the caption said, that little fireball is there to tell me that Flame Shock is not on my target. It does nothing else- especially not telling me where I am in priority to cast it. It just lets me know that FS is not there. How do you set one of these badboys up? It’s easy!

It looks scary, but it isn't.

To bring up the Power auras Classic screen, just type /powa. After that, click “new.” The right screen will show up. (Note- both these screens show up in the screen’s center- you can manually pull them apart, though!)

Now, to set up this debuff, first choose the image texture. As you can see, I dragged it to Texture 13, a nice fireball picture to remind me to cast my fire spell. You can then go to the little color box and choose a color- I thought orange made sense for Flame Shock. You can also choose “random color” if you want to spice it up. (You can also choose later to just make the Flame Shock icon show up. I tend to not like how that looks, though. ) Size is pretty self explanatory, x axis allows you to move the aura left and right, and y axis lets you move it up and down.

Now, head down to “activation by.” First, you want to use the pulldown bar to bring it to “debuff,” as that is what FS is. Second, you want to write in the name! After that, go to “Show when not active.” This makes it so that the aura shows up when Flame Shock is NOT on the target. If you don’t click this, you’ll have a fireball on your screen for the length of the debuff. Next, check only if in combat/ only if in raid- this will keep it from showing up while soloing and while pvping and stuffs! (If you run a lot of heroics, you might want to choose to not check only if in raid. And, remember- only use FS on fights that will last longer than 18 seconds.)

Finally, check Enemy Target. This will make sure that it’s only checking people you’re hitting for FS- otherwise, this will show up when you’re getting flame shocked by enemy smellementals.

5. Totem of the Quaking Earth now is a 400 AP proc, not 200.

This was needed to bring QE in line with DK/ret relics. This does NOT automatically guarantee that QE is better than Electrifying Wind. QE does not have a 100% uptime, as Lava Lash is late in the priority system and so isn’t used every cooldown, while LB is the core of our dps. This means EW has a 80%ish uptime, and QE has a 95%. This also means that EW is better: A) if your haste EP is over 2.1 and B) if the fight is not an aoe fight where you’ll be using Chain Lightning. For most other purposes, use QE. But own both!