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.

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.

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.

Looking it over, a few things come to mind:

They’re itemized pretty nicely. There’s some haste on a few pieces, crit on every piece, and loads of that beloved attack power and agility on all of them. They also include some hit, but not -too- much- 116 combined. This is significantly less than we need, but at a point in the expansion where every class in the game is complaining that they have hit coming out of their ears (seperate links), we can be fairly certain we can make up the extra hit with offspec gear. (It might even give us a reason to use the emblem of triumph trinkets! Wutwut.)

That all said, something distressing about it is the fact that there is absolutely no expertise on any piece. We need a fair chunk of it (~100 for us qt green goblin wannabees, 140 for everyone who has yet to make the leap to change ). Unfortunately for us, we share mail with hunters who get absolutely nothing from expertise, which means offset pieces generally don’t have expertise. (They do have gobs of armor pen, though. >.<) We’ve historically gotten quite a bit of expertise from our tier, and not having that might be of concern. However, all this really means is certain offset pieces like the Seal of Many Mouths will most likely become BiS. (Or, we might use a single leather piece, such as Ikfirus’s Sack of Wonder- this piece alone would bring me just shy of expertise cap with axes/fist weapons, which are very vogue weapons in ICC.)

Something that I really enjoy about this set is it’s gem slots. Exactly two slots matches the two blue gems we need for our meta, both with fairly attractive set bonuses- a +12 ap bonus on legs, and a +8 on shoulders. While it’s possible we may see offset pieces with higher socket bonuses than +8, the shoulder bonus stat weight is petty characteristic of gemmable rings/bracers/neckpieces, and these are all pieces that will be designed with other classes in mind too, which means possible armor penetration/hit rating/etc. bonuses. Beyond that, we have FOUR red sockets, including one on a helm with a +16 attack power bonus- a veryveryvery nice addition. There’s one yellow socket on the chest, but the +12 apbonus means that as long as your haste/crit have an ep higher than .8, a 20AP/10 haste or crit gem will be a dps increase. (Also, if ICC hard-modes are anything like ToC, we’ll likely not use the chest as BiS, provided they itemize heroic chest pieces with an extra gem slot again.)

Finally, the shoulders have a nice equip effect. “Periodically calls forth the spirits of the Shoveltusk to bolster the bearer’s spirits in battle.” Most likely, this is simply a reference to the Shoveltusk ghosts the emenate from the shoulders, but it’s still cool to see on the shoulders.

Quick note: I used the 251 gear here because it was simplest. The 25 gear is very similar, just with higher numbers.

(As a total asides from this post, the designer of the EnhSim addon asked me today to become a part of the EnhSim development team. This makes me fucking ecstatic, and yea. I can’t wait!)

Picture courtesy of http://www.mmo-champion.com

I have to admit: the amount of whining that has gone on for the past week about “how much Blizzard hates shaman because out tier10 wasn’t released” was pretty pathetic. It filled be with great gratitude, then, to see that the reason our tier10 had not been released was because it is FUCKING AWESOME. Those tusks, those icicles, those…antlers? It’s all so awesome. I’m a little saddened by the fact that it seems very taureny (but badass, I’m-an-eskimo-who-will-eat-your-face-for-dinner-tauren), and Elam is no longer a tauren, but I am very-very-very excited to see this on my femorc soon.

“As someone who has written quite a few Shaman forum posts and a blog or two about the need to have Fire Elemental more available during raiding, I have to say that I was pretty stupid ecstatic to see the cooldowns cut in half.

(For those of you who don’t know: Enhance shaman drop magma totem, which an average ToC-geared shaman will have contribute about 800 dps. Every 20 minutes currently, we can drop Fire Elemental, who contributes about 1300dps- a difference of 500 more dps over 2 minutes. The problem with FE is that we have to be incredibly selective about the when/where/why we drop FE, and on Progression raid attempts with hard dps modes, such as I choose you Steelbreaker ({not calling the progression, just pointing it out because it was a dps race in p3}, we’re often left without one of our main dps cooldowns for the next attempt.)

As someone who has advocated this change for a long time, I can’t really say anything but thank you!

I am interested, however, in the fate of glyph of fire elemental. It currently reduces the fire elemental cooldown by 10 minutes, which would mean fire elemental would no longer have a CD. Personally, I think this is an awesome idea, as it’s a sustained dps boost. (I’d hesitate to say it’s needed, because I think it’s pretty hilarious how every class seems to disillusion itself that they’re the worst dps in the game.) However, the unholy AoTD talent for Death Knights was changed, so I am wondering- what is in store for Fire Elemental totem?”

It’s not a huge buff. BUT, Fire Elemental can now be up 1/5 of the time, and is going to be able to be used at least every other boss attempt, rather than every fourth or fifth. Considering FE is a good 500ish dps by itself, that’s exciting.

Thanks, Blizzard.

(Note- Fire Nova+Fire Elemental are somewhat clunky to use together. I suggest logging onto the PTR to make sure you get down the FE placement for maximum Fire Nova damage!)

• Item – Death Knight T10 DPS Relic (Obliterate, Scourge Strike, Death Strike) – Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike, and Death Strike abilities grants 73 Strength for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Item – Death Knight T10 Tank Relic (Runestrike) – Your Rune Strike ability grants 44 dodge rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Druid

• Item – Druid T10 Feral Relic (Rake and Lacerate) – The periodic damage from your Lacerate and Rake abilities grants 44 Agility for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Item – Druid T10 Balance Relic (Moonfire and Insect Swarm) – The periodic damage from your Insect Swarm and Moonfire spells grants 44 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Item – Druid T10 Restoration Relic (Rejuvenation) – The periodic healing from your Rejuvenation spell grants 32 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 8 times.

Paladin

• Item – Paladin T10 Retribution Relic (Crusader Strike) -     Your Crusader Strike ability grants 44 Strength for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Item – Paladin T10 Holy Relic (Holy Shock) – Your Holy Shock spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
• Item – Paladin T10 Protection Relic (Shield of Righteousness) – Your Shield of Righteousness ability grants 73 dodge rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

Shaman

• Item – Shaman T10 Elemental Relic (Shocks) – Your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells grant 73 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
• Item – Shaman T10 Enhancement Relic (Stormstrike) – Your Stormstrike ability grant 146 attack power rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
• Item – Shaman T10 Restoration Relic (Riptide) – Your Riptide spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

The numbers here seem a little low, at least for the Enhancement one. While it won’t drop off in any fight where we can stormstrike every 8-10 seconds like normal, 438 AP is only 38 more AP than our current Relic. However, as ghostcrawler has said- it’s much more work for them to put an item/spell/ability in than to tweak the numbers. (Nearly every relic buff seems to be about 10% higher than t9 relics, which seems to be a bit low at this point.) These are early PTR numbers, so the only thing we should really be looking at is how we feel it works.

First, I do have to say- I’m starting to be a little let down by Relics. Historically, they’ve given pretty cool varied bonuses from spec to spec and class to class. Having every Melee DPS relic in 3.2 be 200 strength/attack power/agility, Caster Relics be 200 Crit/ 200 Haste, every Heal Relic be 234 Spellpower, and every tank relic be 200 Dodge Rating wasn’t terrible. It was A) New, and B) It was known the patch had it’s focus set on PVP and Isle of Conquest, and that ToC was a playground so that the kids didn’t get bored. Which was fine.

But 3.3 isn’t that. 3.3 is Icecrown Citadel, the culmination of all our efforts in Northrend. It is largely a PVE patch. And having evvery relic be virtually the same as every other classes’ is just a little annoying. Every melee class will hit and gain ap or strength in stacks. Every caster will throw up their dots and get crit rating. Every healer will use their instant heal for 255 spellpower. The only real difference is in tanks, where Paladins and Death Knights will get dodge and druids will get agility.

Beyond just being annoyed with the sameness, I don’t really like the stacking effect. I’ve got fury of the five flights on Grazeless, who also uses Rune of Razorice in her offhand. Both abilities stack on melee hit, and have short durations- FotFF has 10 seconds, the rune has 20. If there is any boss that might require us to be away from the target for extended periods of time (I’m looking at you, Northrend Beasts. Burning Bile sucks. Also, phase transitions like Mimirons) will cause us to have to restack our stack. Even if Stormstrike is hit the second it’s off CD (which isn’t always the case) it will take us 24 seconds to restack to it’s fullest. That said, I just find it annoying- not stupid/broken/anything.

I’m also wondering a bit about the elemental relic. Crit is sux for Elemental compared to haste- having an instant crit every 8 seconds (6.5 with 4pct10!) means that crit is not their friend compared to haste. Also, no Elemental shaman in their right mind will be wasting a GCD to cast flameshock before they need to…which is every 16ish seconds. After the buff has fallen off. My hope would be that they change this as a chance to give crit on Flameshock ticks. (Really, I’d prefer they did haste, but w/e.) Because, as of now, Electrifying Wind looks to be BiS in ICC.

Meanwhile, crit is very attractive for Enhancement, as it effects both spell crit and melee crit. Anyone who has really high crit ep values might want to consider getting this totem for Enhancement, as we do shock every 6ish seconds or so.

Srsly need to finish this paper. Peace out chillun.

Edit: “The Elemental totem is haste, not crit, and I believe it is a 30 sec duration.”

Go go, Ghostcrawler! This totem is so much better now.

• Item – Shaman T10 Restoration 2P Bonus – Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
• Item – Shaman T10 Restoration 4P Bonus – Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over until cancelled.
• Item – Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus – Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus – The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 15 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Enhancement 2P Bonus – When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 sec.
• Item – Shaman T10 Enhancement 4P Bonus – Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

Shaman
Enhancement

• Earth’s Grasp now also reduces the cooldown of Stoneclow and Earthbind Totem by 15/30%.

That’s pretty much it for now. I’m pretty excited to talk about these bonuses, but it’ll have to wait a few.

Edit: Since it’s only been an hour or two, I’m not going to right a new post about these changes. I’m just going to edit this one.

First off, let’s talk about Shamanistic Rage 2pc. It’s, dare I say it…awesome. It gives us a damage cooldown, something we presently don’t have (excluding wolves, ofc!) Moreover, it’s on a minute long cooldown, and it’s a cooldown we’re already going to be using every single minute. With the new fire nova making our dps even more mana-hogish, we’ll be using SR as much as we can.

For some quick napkin math, this set bonus equates to about 3% base damage increase over the course of the fight, assuming you use SR the second it’s available.  (15/60=1/4 uptime. 1/4X12=3%) Timing SR with things suck as Deconstructors Heart Phase will yield an even higher result, and timing SR with things like Yogg Brain Phase will ensure higher DPS when it matters most. Excited? Yes, yes I am.

As for the second set bonus…the jury is still out on it, but I’m quite excited. I figure that in 4pc t9, I’ll be sitting at at least 7k raid buffed. 1400 AP for 10 seconds is nothing to snear at. Even if it is a 15% chance to proc, it’s a 15% chance to proc on something that stacks to five every fiveish seconds. This means you should be proccing 1400 AP every 30ish seconds. (Note: This is very simple speculation. We sometimes go 10seconds without stacking mw5. 15% chance might mean it doesn’t proc for a minute or so. This bonus is very RNG, and people hate that. I’m just talking in a very specific case that is somewhat normal to give an idea of what it -might- be like.)

So, assuming it does proc every 30ish seconds because you magically convinced MW5 to behave and stack every 5 seconds, we’re looking at 20 seconds per minute of 1400 Attack Power. That’s around 470 static attack power assuming 7k attack power. And, that’s not at all! (If you order now we’ll send you…) On bloodlust + potion of speed, you’re going to stack MW much more quickly. -Any- form of haste buff is going to have you stacking MW slightly more quickly. The quicker you stack MW, the more chances you have at this buff. Personally, I’d like to see the chance upped to between 25-30%, but overall I do lovelovelove the idea of this set bonus. It just seems fun.

(Note: Don’t believe all these numbers, again. I was using assumed static numbers to prove a point- if this thing procs when your trinkets have both fired and stuff, it means even more ap. 7k attack power was chosen because it seemed a reasonable number for t10 but mileage will vary. See store for details.)

(OH! I edited this and forgot to talk about Earth’s Grasp. It’s an awesome change for pvp- 9 seconds off stoneclaw shield, 4.5 seconds off earthbind totem. Being able to use a 3rd Stone claw shield per minute is just amazing, imho. )

However, on things like Onyxia whelp phase, we don’t just suck. We blow. We blow like cocaine. Iirc this week’s Onyxia, I was sitting at a merry 6300-6500 DPS during phase 1, somewhere within the top 5 spots. Phase 2 hit, and while I ran around dropping my magma totem and throwing out some chain lightnings, I watched our rogue FoK himself to 10kish, and our mages and locks unleashe their targeted aoe of doom to put up some pretty nice numbers. I kept myself at around 6kdps…but dropped from 4ish to last on recount.

And then, our of the darkness, mmo-champon and the worldofwarcraft.com official patch notes updated with this rainbows-and-happiness filled patch note: Fire Nova now Causes the shaman’s active Fire totem to emit a wave of flames, inflicting 893 to 997 Fire damage to enemies within 10 yards of the totem. And I saw it. And it was good.

So, here is the initial breakdown on Fire Nova:

It replaces Fire Nova as a spell. Your Fire Nova totem is extinct as of 3.3, and unlike the dinosaurs, this extinction is widely seen as a good idea. It deals similar damage to what Fire Nova Totem does now, and crits for double damage with Elemental Fury. At the moment, it does proc flame stacks for Reign of the Dead/Unliving, the BiS caster trinket. However it does not proc Elemental Devastation. It is emitted from your current fire totem, not from you.You can talent the totem to do 20% more damage and have a 6 second cooldown, and can glyph it down to 3. It costs 967 mana on the PTR right now.

As you can see, it comes out of the totem.

Now, to talk about this ability and how it impacts game play! I’m breaking this into three sections: AOE, Single Target, and PVP. First off:

A. WE CAN AOE. OMG.

This is demonstrated in these next two screenshots of an Onyxia 10 I did while writing this post:

DPS I did immediately following her first liftoff, during the two waves of whelps.

This is mislabeled as Postsarth. This is post-Ony- my first time ever seeing anything other than melee as my number one damaging ability.

My dps is pretty low, but that was mainly due to the tank turning Onyxia at the start of p3 and getting me cleaved. If I had been alive to use Fire Elemental, Ghost Wolves, and Bloodlust, I’d have ended the fight with 7k+ easily. For aoe, Fire nova was priority over everything. Magma totem was second, and moved up to first if the tank moved anywhere even close to out of range of the totem. After that, MW5Chain Lightning+regular priority system took over. I think it worked out fairly well.

One of the real pros of Fire nova for enhancement is that we’re already reliant on magma totem for single target/aoe damage, and we have to be in melee range of the mobs to do damage anyway. This means that we’re moving with the mobs anyway, and thus we don’t lose anymore dps than we already would. For Elemental, Fire Nova becomes more of an issue, as they do have to move and redrop totems to use Fire Nova and Thunderstorm. In my opinion, this is a good thing- Fire Nova Totem was an iconic shaman ability. TOTEMS are an iconic shaman ability. Fire Nova coming out of the totem is a good thing; mechanically, a targeted aoe of blandness would be better. However, not homogenizing our aoe into bland circle of doom and making it totem based was a good class design idea.

Beyond that, I like the fact that this totem makes shaman think. It’s not fire and forget. It makes the shaman go “Whelps AOE is pretty excellent- would it be better for my personal dps to move and throw down some aoe?” The answer is pretty definitely yes. (Besides, that lock using rain fire/mage with blizzard have 8 second channels anyway- your aoe takes 2 gcds to complete. You have 5 seconds of movement time to catch up. ) OR, it makes you think “I know rubble on Kolgaron is always tanked here, maybe I should drop my totems here as we run in, and then proceed to fire nova liberally whenever rubble is down for the rest of the fight.” All in all, a good change for both specs, imho.

This takes place on a more minor scale with Enhancement. Fire elemental totem is a huge dps increase for us, and should be used liberally. However, more than ever, we now will need to be cognizant of where we lay our Fire Elemental totem. I ran away from a fire wall and dropped him on the opposite side of Sartharion last night. While he moved and aoed adds+sarth, my fire nova ability was trapped to the totem on the wrong side of Sarth. It stayed consistent single target damage, but it didn’t help my aoe a bit.

B. Fire Nova-A boost to single target dps!?

Much like my good friend Magma Totem, Fire Nova (as far as I can tell) provides a boost to single target dps. To show this, here is a screenshot of a 10 minute long damage test done on a SWC Level 83 dummy, done during non-peak hours to make sure no debuffs were present on target. Failam is spellhit capped, 1892 spellpower, 24.33%spellcrit before totems/unleashed rage. I dropped magma rather than flametongue, because I’m really bad at ever remembering there was a time when I didn’t just drop magma totem. It’s also worth noting that I am/was specced into Improved Fire Nova, which makes Fire nova do 20% more damage and shortens the CD to six seconds.

As a comparison, here is my lava lash damage.

Fire Nova and Lava Lash are a good single target comparison, as they’re both abilities with a six second cooldown, and would both be prioritized after your MW5/ES_SS/SS/ES in your rotation for single target. As we can see from these screenshots, even though I actually did less Fire Novas (54) over the course of the fight, it actually did MORE damage than Lava Lash, which I cast more (56). Moreover, let’s look at the raw data:

Fire Nova hit for between 1800-2k. It crit for between 3800-4200, as it makes use of Elemental Fury. It uses my spellcrit chance, so it crit around 25% of the time. It added 4.6% to my damage- a hefty amount for an ability that is totally new and fits into GCD gaps nicely. And, it did 131,186 damage over 10 minutes. 131186/600seconds=219DPS. This is unbuffed, with no flametongue totem or anything. While it’s possible to model the changes in dps that adding another 10-15% crit, 13% spell damage, 280 Spellpower from tow, spellpower from might, etc, I’m not that good at math. However, I’m fairly comfortable saying that in a raid setting, we’ll see Fire Nova contributing 400-500 single target dps, provided full raid buffs/debuffs.

Lava Lash: Hits for between 900 and 1200. Crits for between 2200-2500. It crits much more than fire nova (37% according to my recount) because it takes from my melee crit rather than spell crit. Even though it is less damage, it can proc flametongue, a mw charge, and a static shock charge. It’s still a useful spell, but it does not frontload the damage that fire nova does. It contributed 3.6% of my damage over this fight, but I can’t guess at how it impacted my dps by proccing abilities. 88,367/600 is 147dps, which would also be ramped up by raid debuffs.

My own personal feelings are that we’ll be using a priority system of MW5LB, ES_SS, SS, ES, Fire Nova, Lava Lash, Refresh Totems/Shields. When Magma Totem drops off, the system would be MW5, ES_SS, SS, ES, Lava Lash, Refresh Totem, Fire Nova, Refresh Shield. At least, this is my personal opinion and conjecture. (I’m using one test as my example, but I have been using this rotation for the past 2 days and am finding it pretty awesome.) The sim will eventually tell the whole story, but these are how I feel for now.

C. The ugly: PVP nerf.

The new Improved Fire Nova is an excellent talent. 20% fire nova damage, 6 second cd, yes plz. (In fact, I think it’ll be mandatory and provide a greater dps increase than 3/3 imp. shields.) That said, the new talent takes the place of an old and beloved talent- a talent that allows your fire nova to stun anyone hit by it for 2 seconds. It is an elemental shaman’s only stun, and one of two for Enhancement: (The other is on a 3minute cooldown and requires you using your wolves to do, which is a drawback on it’s own.)

To be honest, I’m pretty baffled by this change. Fire Nova stun, to me, was perfectly balanced- due to the 4 second wait for it to go off, it require great execution and finesse to pull the stun off, and was rewarding when it happened. I’m fairly certain part of the removal of the stun has to do with the removal of the 4 second wait, but I do believe it is overkill. In my opinion, the best case scenario would be to lose the rather cruddy glyph of fire nova (which shortens the cooldown to 3seconds-your mana will be dead), and replace it with one that increases the cooldown by 14 seconds and allows fire nova to stun. 14 seconds is to make it 20  to compensate for the fact that it is now a clickable ability, rather than one we have to wait to go off and hope the opposing player is still there.

I’m never an advocate for insulting Blizzard. Personally, I feel I’m rather good at taking nerfs/buffs in stride, knowing that the main goal of the company is overall game balance, and I think sayings like “OMG BLIZZ HATES SHAMAN” or “Itz bcuz opclasses lyk rouges cant have counters” are stupid. All of this said, I am more baffled and a mite annoyed by this nerf than I have been at most nerfs in the past, mainly due to the fact that I don’t understand the rationale behind it at all. If that is ever posted, I might have to reconsider my opinion, but for the moment I’m pretty confused and let down.

However, despite ending on a downer, I have to say this: I love Fire Nova. Sososomuch. If Fire Nova were a guy, I’d elope to Vegas with it. Hopefully maybe get in the tabloids. That’d be rad.

And now, myself and Failam bid you ado. G’night!