Nearly three years later, everything has changed. Buffs to leveling, nerfs to experience needed, ridiculous buffs to damage output at lower levels (yes, that’s 47 Killing Blows), have made leveling a breeze, not to mention enjoyable. I consider this to be an excellent change, as I don’t believe that any one should play, write, or talk about balance issues in the World of Warcraft without having walked in the galoshes of every other class. Playing one single class allows us to kid ourselves into pretending that we’re the only class that “has it bad,” we’re the only class that has exploitable weaknesses. We pretend that the other nine classes are played by hooking up an “Easy” button from Staples as our mouse and mashing our head against it. This is a lie for every class except low level rogues. (Bind Easy to ambush, profit.)

I’m an altoholic. I have 6 80s, two characters leveling through Northrend, one in late-Outland, and one in early Stranglethorn Vale. I have no actual desire to change mains (partly because if I do switch mains I imagine the collective shaman community will flay me a live. Ditch them once: For shame. Ditch them twice: Murder.) However, as I have experience playing something like 28 of the 30 specs in the World of Warcraft arsenal, I figured I’d take the time to express my views on what the best five specs going into Cataclysm are.

Note: All of this is subjective. I’m also not making any claims based on numbers or viability of said spec, I’m making claims based on ingenuity of idea and overall playstyle. This isn’t “I’d play this spec to top meters in Cataclysm.” This is “I’d play this spec to have fun in Cataclysm.”

Number 5. Blood Death Knight.

The Blood Death Knight barely scraped onto my list today, getting in on the merits of “I @#$%ing hate Paladin, Warriors are boring, and I need a plate spec so an entire community doesn’t feel ostracized.” I almost skipped over Blood entirely because my hatred for Death Knight dps specs blinded me from the virtues of their one tank spec, but once I remembered Blood’s existence it was like a match made in Acherus. Blood Death Knights had a massive transformation in October, where they went from ARP stacking Meat Cleavers to blood-sucking Meat Shields. Death Strike in itself is a cool concept, it’s a drain-life esque ability on a massive scale, while Bloodworms add a bit of gore and some more fancy healing on top. Throw in some rune tap to convert one blood/death rune to 15% of your health every minute and you might as well start queuing with four dps…. though maybe one of them should be a hybrid, just in case. (This is a gross exaggeration of how much they actually heal for, but the idea on it’s own is cool!) My one real problem with Blood Death Knights is that Dancing Rune Weapon seems out of place in the Cullen-family inspired tree. Maybe make the 31 pointer a passive that makes your skin glitter in the sunlight?

4. Elemental Shaman

The Elemental Shaman will be remembered as one of the real excellent examples of developers actually listening to player feedback. “Ele Shaman had a static and boring rotation in Wrath of the Lich King.” Let’s throw in some chaos with Lava Surge, Unleash Elements, and Fulmination to keep you on your toes. “Ele Shaman hate having to waste three talent points in Improved Shields to get Ancestral Swiftness. We don’t need more mp5.” Let’s give Ele shaman rolling thunder as a mana return talent and Fulmination so that Improved Shields=improved damage! “Ele Shaman have a severe case of turret syndrome.” Unleash Elements and Fulmination are both instant and castable on the move! Also, Spiritwalker’s Grace lets you cast while you pew pew. “We got everything but Searing Totem being 26 yards blows.” That’s annoying, we agree. Here, have a talent to fix it at 85.

I’m honestly not jealous of Ele, just impressed at how the developers addressed practically every gameplay problem they had in WoTLK. Bravo, Blizzard!

3. Affliction Warlock.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about seeing giant numbers pop-up on your screen. However, sometimes you’d rather kill the boss by infecting her/his body with a myriad of curses and magical ailments that corrupt and decay. For the evil witch doctor in all of us, the Affliction warlock is our go to caster dps. With handy new tools like Soul Swap (which allows you to move your dots off mob 1 and on to mob 2), half of the dots being refreshed by some other filler ability that’s already in the lock’s priority, and an Area of Effect Curse of Elements, the Warlock’s toolbox has been broadened. However, I have a few hopes for the spec I’d like to see before I consider leveling mine to 85- 1) I’d like to see Drain Life do more damage than Shadowbolt on a cast-by-cast basis, so it becomes the go-to filler ability. It’s just more fun and afflictiony. 2) A use for Soulburn for Affliction that doesn’t rely on aoe situations. Blizzard made the Soul Shard system significantly cooler this patch…but it’s still not quite awesome yet.

2. Beast Mastery Hunter

Rogues may have the Tricks of the Trade, but Beast Mastery Hunters have the tools. BM hunters have a pet for literally every situation, from providing your raid with 10% melee haste to Bloodlusting. Beast Mastery Hunters pet’s fill the missing gap in every raid’s lineup, and with 90% less damage from AoE they’re much sturdier than your standard mouthbreathing Enhancement Shaman in a void zone. I also just might happen to be the only person who has played a hunter main who LIKES the changes to focus. New resource system means learning and adapting new skills to play as well as diversifying classes, two aspects of WoW I very much enjoy. I also never thought hunters made much sense with mana as a system unless they’re all D&D Arcane Archers.

(Also, what other class in the game lets you have multiple types of Dinosaurs follow you around and smite your enemies? That’s right- none!)

1. Smite-Spec Disc Priest.

Part of me hates admitting my newfound love for Discipline Priests…mainly because they’re possibly one of the trendiest class/spec combinations to come out of Wrath of the Lich King. In Wrath of the Lich King, it seemed every priest was discipline. And if they weren’t discipline, it’s because 3.0.1 hit and Chakra was just released. 4.0.1. introduced a new style of Discipline healing- through talents, your Smites get beefed up after casting them. Talents also cause your smite to hit the person within 8 yards with the lowest health for the same amount of healing as the Smite did damage. Add that to Train of Thought, which lowers the CD on your penance every time you Smite, and you have the potential for some mediocre damage done and some mediocre healing done…at the same time! You can then convert your stacks of beefed up Smite Spammage to grow wings and heal 15% better for 15 seconds, allowing you to bump up your throughput in times of need. To me, this makes smite-specced disc priests a pretty excellent third healer for ten mans- for fights with healing downtime and late surges of healing needed (Saurfang and Professor Putricide come to mind), having a healer who can do enough damage that they’re above the tanks while being able to switch into throughput mode if shit hits the fan is the definition of a fun spec. It’s dynamic, it’s an entirely new concept for a game whose closest thing to a dps/healer hybrid was an Enhancement shaman dual wielding Earthliving Weapon, and it’s probably the second thing I’ll be leveling to 85.

This may come as a surprise to a good number of you, but I really am. From my late high school days of secretly statting out Dungeons and Dragons Rangers in Journalism class to my first excursion as a fatty cowman trying to figure out why I couldn’t shoot a gun while running to the next plainstrider, I’ve played bow-toting foresterers whose best friends are animals. Prior to Elam’s creation, I had three hunters: Minotauren, my first cowman who reached level 7 before my trial expired, Lethreyn the blood elf male, who was deleted out of frustration with my inability to solo the level 30 hippogryff in Ashenvale at level 27, and another Tauren whose name escapes me.

Even after Elam began his massive trek from Mulgore to Mount Hyjal, I stalled his leveling at level 61 to start a Draenei Hunter. I had literally no interest in ever playing Beast Mastery, which was a vogue (read: most viable dps spec by a long shot) spec at the time, and I had read that Survival was beast CC- something Shaman were (and are!) notoriously lacking- while offering a unique raid buff in the form of Expose Weakness. Darwinism the Survival hunter (proudly SV from 10-80!) and his pet’s  <Charles> (I’m on <Charles> the sixth atm) were born, Alliance on Uldum, a rl friend’s server.

I’m not quite sure what happened, but shortly after Darwinism hit 62 (a level above Elam), I for some strange reason saw an appeal in leveling Elam. As Resto. Wtf. (I blame a certain British Protection-turned-Retribution Paladin, who IMed me one day with her glorious stories of tanking regular Mechanar and how she needed a good healer because all of her friends were terrible and wanted to dps.) A million lightning bolt casts, 11 mana tombs runs, and a particularly nasty attempt at regular shadow labs later, I was 70 on Elam and Darwinism was a distant memory, abandoned on a backwater server in the services of the lesser-faction. This was May, 2008. Darwinism sat at 63 for the rest of Burning Crusade, and the Wrath of the Lich King saw Elam, my Shaman who is very rarely on Ramen, and Grazeless, my Femcow DW Tankard O’ Terror DPS DK hit 80.

Finally, a little frustrated with being sat on the bench with nothing to do (I was a Surreality initiate in the Spring, and I had  terrible computer: I was the last person invited. ), I headed back over to Uldum one night as an escape. And, I fell back in love (part of it was my leaving Zangarmarsh and leveling elsewhere- I really hate that zone.) I felt the same way I have everytime I’ve played a hunter in the past, some sort of strange idea of returning to my roots. I got passionately into leveling Darwinism, ignoring the fact that it was my third time through northrend, I had no heirlooms to make life not suck, and Survival is -so- not optimal leveling. June of 2009, close to the anniversary of Elam’s level 70, and nearly 16 months after his creation, Darwinism hit level cap.

Like celebrities, our love affair was passionate and brief. Try as I might, I couldn’t make playing alliance on another server from my home guild and friends work, especially when the Alliance guild I was in on Uldum was full of turds who wiped on Ignis for an hour and 30 minutes,(No lie- I was there.) and my only friend on the server is the biggest introvert I know, who I’ll go out to dinner with and hold entirely one-sided conversations with myself while he sips beer and doesn’t talk. (Whispers are even more painful. >.<) I left Uldum behind for another two months, and actually grew to disdain my hunter as a representative of all that was bad on that server. I did end up trying to level a THIRD tauren hunter during this time, but she reached 13 and I got bored. :S

When news of having level 80s of both factions on one realm hit, I didn’t consider transferring Darwinism, because I still was feeling the aforementioned disdain. Rather, I cleared out his 1500g bank account, spent all of his emblems on heirloom gear, and loaded up my unfortunately named Paladin alt “Idrawaggro” with everything he needed to make the leveling process not suck. Idrawaggro spent levels 55-73ish on Uldum, before one night changed his identity changed forever, making the move from Idrawaggro, the male human paladin from Uldum to Notelam, the Female Blood elf on Black Dragonflight. A week or two of question and Notelam hit 80 in Early September, gearing herself up as a Holy Light bot. Darwinism still lay neglected.

And then, about two weeks ago, Frost PVE changes were announced on the PTR that made Frost Specced Mages look like they might be close to viable dps in 3.3. Excited as heck, I took my level 32 Frost Mage out of retirement, gave ger some nice heirlooms, and started the grind towards 80, because I am the quintessential alt-oholic. This grind was different, however, as my guild leader accompained me on it- queuing us for BGs on her hunter  (Btw, Warsong Gulch is horrid for leveling.) and pewpewdpsing Uldaman with me.

Somewhere in the midst of watching Villanie (and her pets- Elam the Raptor and Buttercup the Scorpid-) ENJOY her hunter play (srsly, she loves it),  and getting mercilessly owned by them in 40-49 BGs, my interest in Darwinism was renewed. I had been planning on transferring him Horde side for a while, but the cost dissuaded me. (Really, my boyfriend’s opinion on the cost dissuaded me. ) I struck a deal with him four nights ago- I’d realm transfer him this paycheck, and then NEXT paycheck I’d faction change him. It was great…until I gave into temptation upon deciding I wanted to play him that very night and blew the extra 30 bucks on a faction change, too. And Darwinism, the female orc with pig tails, was born.

I took a lot of little liberty on her gear. :S Those definitely are not the naxx10 epics she's actually wearing. xD

Now that the history is all done, here is the crux of what this post is about: Darwinism is an orc now. As I might have mentioned in this post, other than one blood elf male who was deleted for being useless, all my attempts at Horde hunters were tauren. Why? Because Tauren are the single coolest race in the game, bar none. On sheer awesome factor, from 1-Elam, Tauren come in somewhere around 32 million.

However, when I was actually PAYING to make Darwinism an orc, I had to put more thought into it than “what looks best.” Tauren racials are piss poor for Hunters- while war stromp may situatinally be useful, you don’t want to be in melee range. 5% base health increase is negligible, the herbalism bonus is not something I worry about very often, and I don’t pvp enough to care that Balance Druids are hitting me 2% less often. On the other hand, Orcs offer Blood Fury, a 2minute cooldown DPS trinket, and command- a racial that is equivalent to the 2pc t7 bonus. (5% pet damage.) I didn’t want to deal with the “lol why tauren hunter” comments; not did I want to fake naivety and not knowing when I made the character that the racials were subpar. And, I wanted to maximize my dps- and that meant orc.

I think this is really important, as it is a question a lot of us are going to be asking ourselves within the next month or so, once race changes become viable: At what point does min/maxing take priority over personal pleasure? I never want Elam to be an orc- I don’t like the race very much, but 5% feral spirit damage, an AP trinket, and 5 expertise for each axe I equip seems a hefty tradeoff for the please of looking awesome. However, when race changes become available, would I be willing to face the critique of “why didn’t you go orc?” Because, in effect, it becomes the same as not getting epic gems in your gear or enchanting it properly- I would have to willingly forego a proven DPS increase for no visible gain. Is that a choice that I would be willing to make? I’m not sure yet, and I’d love to hear others feelings on the matter.

(I’m going to try to comment on comments as much as I can, but I doubt I’ll be posting much this week. Besides a side-project I’m planning, Ciderhelm from Tankspot gave me the go ahead to develop a text-based guide to playing an Enh Shaman, so I’m planning on using a lot of my free time this week working on that. )

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!