What can I say, I’m crazy.

So, I was leveling my super cute  (actually, really not so cute) female troll mage this evening. Due to some technical difficulties (read: bad decision making), I did some things not condusive to leveling: letting my health bar hit 0 a few too many times, running a 40 minute av where we didn’t cap more than two towers, spent a good 30 seconds every 4 inutes youtubing a new song, etc. It took me something like 6 hours to power my way through the latter half of zangarmarsh and the first few long quest chains in Nagrand to get grom 64-66, and I ended up not achieving that beautiful “OMG I CAN FINALLY ICELANCE” level until 5:00AM, EST. (For those of you keeping record, it is actually 6AM for me, as I am writing this. :S)

Ideally, had I not made a large number of stupid decisions (honestly, spending an hour trying to solo three level 67 mobs who could crushing blow me for 1500hp when I only have 4500 and can’t be rooted was not my best idea), I probably could have done it by 3:00, which was my original plan. After that, I was planning on catching up on my two “survey” blogs that certain guild members have asked me to do before calling it the night at a ripe 4:30am-shockingly early for me. O.o (Note-I have class Mondays and Wednesdays, and work T-Th-Fri. On the days when I do work, it’s often 12-8, 1-9, etc., which is why I can have a schedule where I’m up until stupid hours of the morning. )

However, things did not work out as I planned. Upon exiting wow at like 5:15 and deciding to call it the night, I proceeded to read (NON-WOW :O) blogs for like 30 minutes, while pondering what my next step is. For, you see, this is what is on my plate right now:

A) Wow-related.

• Tank Survey
• DPS Survey
• Continued Coverage of 3.3 PTR information
• EnhSim Documentation Page, I needz 2 make it.
• TankSpot guide to PVE Enhancement DPS, I needz 2 write it.
• Articles for Big Hit Box.
• Articles for a currently-secret new blog, that I can’t let you know about, but that I got asked to contribute to today.
• Planning out my own second blog, which I think has real potential, about issues of gender/sexuality and mmoing.
• Getting Aching to level 80. (Honestly, now that I finally have ice lance, which I’ve wanted for like a year, my drive to push myself to level her as quickly might have died down a bit, which is a very good thing.)
• Raiding. Anub hard needs to go down.
• Raiding on alts. Notelam, Grazeless, and Darwinism are each just shy of a 4500gear score. Not that gearscore matters, but I want them ready for ICC10 in case we ever do alt runs of that. xD

B) School related

• Revised Proposal for my Shakespare Paper
• 10page Shakespeare Paper
• Shakespeare final.
• 50 minute lesson plan for sex. ed on social networking.
• Urban Anthropology final.
• Romanticism 10page paper, no topic yet.
• Romanticism final.
• Graduate in 3 weeks?

C) Work related.

• “Action Plan.” (Details of this are boring.)
• Resume’.
• Not having-a-heart-attack because my boss of six years decided this week that she’s leaving.
• Planning to get bosses’ job.

D) None-of-the-above-related.

• Feeding the needy on Thanksgiving. (Fun fact: My family hasn’t had an actual family Thanksgiving for like 4-5 years. We run a food-bank sort of thing every Thanksgiving where we make sure everyone who doesn’t have the means to feed themselves a Thanksgiving meal gets one. It’s pretty awesome.)
• Exercise moar. If I’m not the best looking person at Sarielle/Keaton’s wedding next December, I’mma be pist.
• Sleep.

I think I can start working on that last bullet nao, right? Since it’s 6:30 am and stuffs? Also, some fun psychological stuff to think about: did I put the wow stuff first because this is a wow blog, or because the wow stuff is my highest priority. And, if that’s the case…how bad is that? xD

Wtb the end of December, pst.

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. )

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!

“Enhance Your Game” is my attempt at a weekly (or bi-weekly) blog column. In it, I’ll be covering integral programs/addons that I feel benefit my playstyle, the melee playstyle, and playing an Enhancement Shaman. This is my first attempt at an actual stable column (small, clouded in mystery aside- this might not be my only column starting in the near future. ), so bear with me! This week’s “Enhance Your Game” will be covering one of the most integral addons of Enhancement Raiding- the Enhancement Damage Simulator.

“Sim It” is a phrase heard weeklydailyhourlyminutely on the shaman forums, a phrase that anyone who frequents the forums on a regular basis has probably read. The majority of them have probably said it at one point or another. Other forums have their own response to “sim it,” and these responses generally include the words “spreadsheet” and “it.” Simming/Spreadsheeting is an important part of end game raiding- a way for you to understand how to get the most out of your class’ dps potential. For this, Enhancement Shaman turn to the Enhancement Damage Simulator. I’m here to offer you a short (2500 word, xD!) tutorial on how to use the Enhancement Simulator.

The first thing to know about using this addon is that you need some form of “winzip” or assorted program to extract it to your computer. I’m not going to cover thise because A) I’m rather computer illiterate, and I’ll do more harm than good, and B) it’s not what this blog is about. Suffice to say, once you’ve figured out how to get the Enh Sim program onto your computer, return to this page and we’ll talk!

So, on to using Enh Sim. As soon as you open your EnhSim folder, this assortment of varied links should become available:

I not so subtly have a certain tab highlighted. Why might that be! ^_^

As you can see by my blatant highlighting of it, the program we are looking for is the Enh Sim Gui. Double click it, right click and go to open, roll your face on your keyboard toward the enter key, or sacrifice virgins to Cthulu, but do something to open that program. Once that happens, you’ll be faced with:

The Scary GUI of Death and Dismemberment. (Click4bigz!)

This is the main tab of the GUI. We like this tab. This is where we get to feel good about ourselves and plug our stats in. ^_^ Head on over to your local World of Warcraft realm, log onto your shaman, and open up your character tab.

It should look something like this. If it does not, you might be from outer space.

Now, this point relies on a lot of alt-tabbing, so you might be better off putting wow into windowed mode for a few minutes and going back and forth. You want to make sure you’re using unbuffed stats to begin with. (The Enhancement Addon Shock and Awe also features an export function. I won’t be covering that tonight, but will in a future Enhance Your Game post.) For most of these stats, your mainhand should be the same as your offhand (such as for the mainhand/offhand crit categories.) However, orcs are weird, and if they have an axe/fist weapon in one hand and a mace in the other, they’ll have 3 more expertise in one hand than the other. Make sure for any category that has a % next to it you put the % number- the simulator does not need to know your critical or haste ratings, just the actual % they increase.

If you're me, your EnhSim GUI probably looks like this now. If you're you, the numbers are different!

The  middle part of the EnhSim is your boss frame. The developers already supplies default boss values for you, so we’re just skiping straight over that tab to procs and stuff. As you might be able to imagine, procs and stuff is where your procs AND STUFF, go. Most of these tabs are pretty self-explanatory. Mainhand imbue is windfury, offhand is Flametongue, not FT9. The enchant section only lets you put proc enchants- agi/ap enchants (you should be using berserking anyway, btw) would simply be stat additions at the beginning. We’ll go besererking/berserking, because we know that’s best.  MH weapon only applies if you’re an orc, so I’m not filling it in- if you’re an orc and you’re wielding an axe or fist weapon, go for it!

For trinkets, totems, and set bonuses either use the pulldown menu or use wowhead! (While the config files for the simulator have been changed to include set bonuses, the gui has not, so you need the spell numbers.

For Trinkets: Blood of the Old God: 45522. Death’s Choice/Verdict Reg: 47303. Death’s Choice Heroic: 47464 Dark Matter: 46038. Comet’s Trail: 45609.

For Totems: Totem of Electrifying Wind: 47666. Totem of Quaking Earth: 47667.

For t9 Set Bonuses: 2Pc: 67220, 4PC: 67221.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, if you have 4pc Enh sim automatically counts 2pc in it’s calculations, but putting both in to be on the safe side doesn’t hurt. If you have glove/cloak enchants, fill them in quickly and we’ll move on to glyphs! For glyphs for your first time, you might want to stick with the cookie cutter Stormstrike, Windfury Weapon, Feral Spirits. The awesome part of EnhSim is that once you know the basics, you can tweak these to figure out what really works for you.

Now, once again, if you're me, you might look like this! If you're not, than you'll look differently. Lets move to rotation!

The rotation tab is a pretty packed tab, and one that will be pretty difficult to decipher upon first look. So, let’s try to break some of this information down.

1) MH/OH Auto Attack: Check this, you want to be white hitting.

2) Wait SS w/ WF: Keep this on the default 0.00. This harkens back to a time where we believed it was better to proc after WF ICD in order to increase the chances of a proc. Since SS puts a debuff up that is quickly consumed AND is a chance at at least 2 MW charges, we don’t wait on it anymore.

3)Cast Lava Lash only if WF is on CD: You’ll see I have this checked in my upcoming screenshot- this is a mistake. You might not want to check it. As far as I can tell, this was meant for when we still believed WF on both hands was the way to go, so we didn’t want to risk using our instant offhand attack to proc windfury. You probably don’t want this checked. (I saw a 2dps increase not checking it! xD)

4. Bloodlust Casters/Sync trinkets with bloodlust: First part shouldn’t matter, as you can no longer chain bloodlusts. 1 is enough. Second part you want clicked, particularly if you have clickable trinkets. (I’m not sure how this treats wolves- I don’t think they’re always popped prior to bloodlust.)

5. Cast Lava Burst if “blah.” These three are all only activated if you activate LvB in the rotation bar. They’re useful for testing purposes, but you probably don’t want LvB in your rotation when just learning to use it. Leave these alone, and leave Lava burst unchecked.

6. Cast Flame Shock only if dots left: Once again, requires FS to be clicked in the priority frame. For just learning it, don’t click it.

7. Cast Lightning Shield only if charges left: This means that, once it gets to LS in your priority with nothing else up, it will check to see if it has this many or fewer charges before refreshing. Typically, I do between 0-2.

8. Cast Shamanistic Rage only if mana left: Default setting is 750. With the one minute cooldown, 0 points in improved stormstrike, and less mana back than we used to, I prefer to do it around 3-4k.

9. Use mana potion if mana =: Only does this if mana potion is checked on the consumable page.

Next, on to the actual priority tab.

• SW= Spirit Wolves.
• MW5_LB=Lightning Bolt with 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon.
• ES_SS=Earth Shock if Storm Strike Debuff is up.
• SS=Stormstrike
• ES=Earth Shock
• LL=Lava Lash
• MT=Magma Totem
• LS=Lightning Shield
• SR=Shamanistic Rage
• FS=Flame Shock
• LvB=Lava burst.
• Frost-Frost Shock
• CL=Chain Lightning
• LB=Lightning Bolt
• MW#_CL/LB=Self Explanatory.
• ST=Searing Totem

You organize your rotation in order of priority. Once again, the power of this is that you can fiddle with priority based on gear. For example, I have 4PCt9/5/5 Reverberation, so I go Earth Shock before Stormstrike as long as the SS debuff is still on the target.  Spirit Wolves is put first so that they are always popped as they come off cooldown. Mess with this to see what your ideal rotation is once you’re comfortable!

This would be my priority list, hastily thrown together!

The next tab you’ll see is “Talents.” As you might expect, this is where you would go to input your talent choices. This section is pretty self explanatory, and there’s not much that could be confusing about it, so I’m not going to spend any more time on it. Here is what mine looks like!:

Notice the 5/5 Reverberation, with 2/3 Call of Flame and no Imp. SS. Don't follow my spec- it's not cookie cutter.

The next section is an awesome section, devoted to debuffs/buffs on you. Remember, Enhancement Shaman scale pretty well with almost every buff/debuff in the game, so you want as many of these as possible. If you’re unsure as to what debuffs you do have present, think of your normal raid and compare it to these:

• 20% Armor Debuff. Brought by Prot Warriors/Smart DPS Warriors or Rogues in a Prot Warriors absence.
• 5% Armor Debuff: Druids of any spec, hunters with wasp pets, warlocks.
• 4% Physical Damage Debuff: Arms Warriors/Combat Rogues
• 20% Melee Haste. Yourself/Frost DPS warriors
• 5% Melee Crit: Fury Warriors, Feral Druids
• 688 attack Power: DPS Warriors/Ret Paladins. Tank warriors/other pally specs have worse versions.
• Attack Power Multiplier: It uses your unleashed rage if you don’t put points in, so don’t put points in to this. Would be blood dk/marks hunters, though.
• 5% Spell Haste: Mainly resto/elemental shaman, but you possibly could.
• 5% Spell Crit Buff: Elemental Shaman, Moonkin
• 5% Spell Crit Debuff: Imp. Scorch Mages, Frost Mages, Imp. SB specced Destro Locks.
• 13% (Make sure you change this from 10%): Moonkin, Unholy DK, Warlocks
• 280 Spellpower: Elemental Shaman. If you’re one of the rare few who run with a demo pact lock, this number might be slightly higher.
• 3% Spell Hit: Boomkin/Spriest
• 3% Haste: Ret Paladin, Moonkin
• 3% Damage Increase: Retribution Paladin, Feral Druid
• 3% Crit debuff: Elemental Shaman, most Paladins- in the Retribution tree.
• 10% stat Multiplier: Paladins, any spec.
• 52 Stats: Druid Gift of the Wild
• 178 Agility and Strength: You. Death Knights give 155.
• 60 Intellect: Mages

For flasks, you generally want flask of endless rage, for 180 AP.  Since you’re using a flask, skip guardian elixir. For potion, try out potion of speed, and for food use Fish Feast (assuming they’re dropped in your raid.) 80 AP+46 Spell power? Ffs yes plz.

For mana return buffs, click replenishment if you have one of the million replen giving classes present. Do not use water shield, as you are using LS. Choose either Blessing of Wisdom or Mana Spring totem, as they are the same thing. And, use Judgement of Wisdom if your raids normally have a paladin judging it.

This is what it will look like with a fully optimal raid.

We’re skipping over the EP tab-much like the bosses at the beginning, it is set up with default EP for a shaman. So, we’re going straight to the final side- “simulation variables,” also known as “oh noez scary math class! D:”

First, there is simulation time. This means that the simulator will run and pretend that it was going for however long is in that box. The generally accepted practice is to throw in an extra 0 to make it 10000 hours.

Second is Simulation Time Combatlog. This is what is used if you choose combatlog output vs. simulate.

Fight length: The number of minutes of each fight. So, if you’re doing 10000 hours of simming, it might be simming 120,000 5 minute fights. Fight length is important because it determines the amount of time cooldowns/trinket procs/bloodlust/etc are active. 5 minutes is a pretty stable amount of time, and is what is used in the Enh. BiS Gearing thread.

Report count: Actually not sure, will look into it. Same with threads.

Lag. 0-0 MS. Enh Sim is awesome because it can tell us how well we can play at perfect latency. However, the world doesn’t operate on perfect latency, and neither do our reflexes. Set this lag for what you normally play at- for me, 100-200.

Simulate Mana: Simulate mana is a powerful tool, but also one that can ruin your report if you forget to prioritize something like shamanistic rage. You should learn to use simulate mana to your benefit, but it is understandable to run your first few sims without this box checked. I know I did!

Output file: Output.txt

Combat log output file: Combatlog.txt

Simulate is a clickable box that will simulate your damage over the simulation time.

Calculate EP is a powerful tool that can be used to teach you how to gear better.

Combatlog output shows a basic breakdown of your damage over the past (however long you put in the combat log time box.)

Info shows you relevant information, such as caps you might have gone over by a small bit.

And finally, use the button after the box at the bottom that says path on top, and find the file that ends “EnhSim.exe” Throw that into the box, and then go up and click one of the buttons!

(Also, make sure to check out the organe donate button: these designers work hard.)

This is what my Simulation Variables typically look like prior to a sim!

Now, after all that hard work (It really only takes ten minutes at most), we’re finally ready to simulate! Hover your mouse over that nice simulate button and press it down. Watch the numbers scroll past. (note: If the simulation length is set to 10000 hours, the numbers won’t scroll fast initially. The simulation will take a bit long.)

Yes, that is 7366 DPS!

So, as you might be able to notice, there is a wealth of data we can see here. However, I’m only going over the very basics- I think next week I might go into what sort of conclusions/knowledge we can gleam from the simulator. And remember, these numbers are based on an ideal, patchwerkesque, five minute long fight- fights are often much different in reality.

Now, really quickly, I’m going to do a quick show of the other great function of the Enh Simulator-Calculate EP values. This one is a really useful tool- EP values are the value of an item as it relates to one point of attack power. I’m also not going to go in depth into thise (maybe next week! ^_^), but they are useful, so clicking that calculate EP values button helps.

Look at that stunning 3.09 haste EP. I've never seen numbers that high before. O_o

That’s it for my guide to using the Enh Simulator. I hope everyone who reads this can enjoy it, or at the very least use it. It is now 5:45 AM, and I’ve been working on it for nearly three hours, so I’m going to take a well deserved nap. xD

(That said, I think I’ve put as much effort into this blog as my enhancement sticky, and I’d really love to get the word out there. Even if people don’t want to read anything else on my blog, I would love to see anyone who needs help with simming get directed here! ^_^<- I’m addicted to this emote omg.)

Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler.

I wish I had tusks like that. ;~;

Gormok the Impaler is a stupid, stupid fight for Enhancement shaman, and one that might make you nerdrage. At least, that’s how it worked for me. First off, it’s not a melee friendly fight, not only requiring target switching, but also requires that your fellow raiders value downing the boss more than watching their dps skyrocket. After a 2-hour stint of wiping on Northrend Beasts last week, myself and the rest of Group 3 (gogo melee group!) were raging pretty hard in private (and, at times, publicly) at the number of people who could not grasp the basic concept of “with great snobolds comes great responsibility to RUN THE FUCK INTO THE MELEE.” So, for anyone who isn’t melee reading this, please do your local enhancement shaman a favor and skedaddle yourself onto Gormoks ass, so we can go about merrily stabbing things.

For anyone who is melee, here are a few tips (complete with a screenshot!) for getting rid of those pesky snobold nemesises. First off, set yourself up with some sort of way to indicate when a snobold is spawned. There are a few ways of doing this. A) Listen in vent for the caster who isn’t running into melee to scream “OMG SNOBOLD ON ME WTFF MELEE.” This will normally happen twice before you and the rogues do something about it, and then you’ll snicker about it until you get firebombed because you ran into range. B) Work with your addons. My personal choice for this fight is Power Auras Classic, which you can set up to notify you any time a raid member if afflicted with “snobolled.” I believe Grid also has a functionality for this, but I’m not positive about that.

^Click for enlarged.

Note the gigantic fucking snobold icon in the bottom left corner. Af ter that, the issue becomes finding a snobold. I did not want to clutter up the screenshot with nameplates, but they’re your best bet for actually finding the small things. Once you find it and you’ve managed to get in melee range, watch out! as people tend to move with the snobolds on them, and will likely keep dragging them out of your range. >.<

(Also, notice the lack of debuffs on the snobold in that screenshot: since most of your ranged are busy dpsing Gormok, you’re losing out on a lot of damage capability by losing debuffs such as 13% spell damage or Imp. Scorch. Since they’re generally not tanked, you probably won’t see a full stack of sunders up, either- thankfully, we have an awesome combat rogue who maintains high dps AND exposes armor every 30 seconds.)

If that’s not all for the fun on this fight, here is the real kicker: Snobolds are immune to AOE damage. This means A) Chain Lightning will only hurt them if you target them with it- it will not chain from Gormok to Snobold. This also means that one of our primary single target damage abilities- magma totem- is rendered useless. If you’re close to Gormok this doesn’t matter as much as he’ll still be hit by it, but it’s useless any time the snobold is dragged outwards. Additionally, fire elemental’s nova does absolutely nothing against these bad boys. (Note, this is not a problem unique to us. Ret Paladins are highly hurt by the loss of both Divine Storm and Consecration on snobolds, and Fury Warriors most likely lose out on Whirlwind damage- all aoe attacks that are included in their single target dps rotation.)

TL;DR Gormok:

• DPS Race, but fight is short. Use Fire Elemental here, as it will maximize Fire elemental’s time on target for maximum dps. Both Icehowl and Worms will be less affected. Do not use wolves, as you do not want them on cooldown for when worms come out and you pop bloodlust.
• Refresh Magma Totem while running out towards any stray kobolds. You might clip a tick, but it’s better to miss one tick when it has 5 seconds left than have a 15 second gap while you’re hurting the snobold.
• Don’t allow meters to distress you. Your dps will be lower here than normal, and that’s fine. Ranged is king for this phase. You’re badass yourself on Twin Valkyrs.
• Use addons to your advantage. They’re there to benefit you!
• Be nice to your ranged so they run to you.

2. Acidmaw and Dreadscale

Acidmaw and Dreadscale are a bit of a bitch for any melee, and there’s not much that makes them any worse for Shaman than it is for any melee. They do an unavoidable tail swipe that will knock you back- the most important thing here is to make sure you’re not standing in any place where you might be knocked in front of the other worm, as they have killer frontal cone attacks. Remember to pop your wolves prior to Bloodlust, which will probably be used within the first seconds of the fight. Fire Elemental is rather useless on this fight, as it tends to get confused after the worms bury and tends not to reaggro unless the worm pops back up under itself.

The more important thing about this fight is staying alive- the majority of your raid needs to make it through in order to avoid hitting the enrage timer on Icehowl. For that, here are a few tips:

• Do not do not do not follow the worms too closely as they go underground. They aggro wipe down there, and will pop up and one shot you if you’re too close/hit it before a tank does as it comes back up.
• Deadly Boss Mods is great for monitoring your poison, but it’s always nice to bring a back up. Once again, I use Power Auras classic.

This works for any Poison effect.

-As you can see, you choose debuff as the activation method, and write in the word “Poison.” (I use “Paralytic,” just to be safe.) This should notify you anytime any debuff is present on you that includes the word poison- this is useless for things like aoe poisons on the ground that do not show debuffs, but great for Lana Stouthammer/the Worms, etc. I chose lime green and the cool exclamation point, but there are other nice textures, such as a gigantic “Danger” sign. (Note-I took this screenshot at school where I couldn’t log on with my addons enabled without disconnecting, which is why my UI looks so plain! )

• If you have the poison, and your wolves are making their merry way eating worm face, make sure to use their Spirit Walk ability to try to compensate for the paralyzing effect and get you back to the worms in minimal time spent.
• Set up your bars with some flame shock/lava burst. If you get Burning Bile, you really don’t want to be standing near anyone. You can find a nice spot to sit and spam lightning bolt, but once Stormstrike wears off use a FS/LvB combo to try to keep Elemental Devastation up for when you run back in. You might not be able to get in range to Flame Shock without hurting someone (like a Holy Paladin. D:), but if you can, try this.
• Poison clouds spawn under whichever Jormungar that is not rooted in the ground currently. There’s no debuff to set up  a Power Aura for, so you need to actually watch for these ones. Try to stand at max range, as they start off small and grow fast.

3. Icehowl

Sleeping Beauties!

Icehowl is probably the least specific fight to try to explain. First off: make sure you spread out. If you see a knot of melee standing around you, strafe to another direction- just remember to do your best at standing behind him. Eventually, after stabbing icehowl long enough, he’ll jump to the middle and send you all flying into the wall. Position yourself so that you’re not thrown into any of the doorways surrounding the room, as it makes it infinitely harder to avoid the charge. Remember that the sprint buff Icehowl gives you on normal does not happen on heroic- if you’re worried about this, swiftness potions are you friend.

After you and your guildmates demonstrate your proness and avoid his charge is probably the best time to pop wolves, as they’re normally up by this time. You can utilize Spirit Walk to your advantage if he charged someone across the room, but regardless of how close you are Spirit Wolves will benefit from the extra damage Icehowl takes. This is probably a bad phase for Fire Elemental, as Icehowl moves around a lot- an extra 15 seconds of Fire elemental damage won’t make up for damage lost from leashing.

That’s about it for my take on Northrend Beasts. Hope you thoroughly enjoyed! (PS: Comments r 4 nice.)

http://i774.photobucket.com/albums/yy28/FueledByShaman/SupAnub.jpg

I think we’re as bad at posing for pictures as anub was at avoiding dying.

He dropped his axe, and I did in fact nerd rage offline for a good fifteen minutes before calming down and realizing A)The Rogue who got it has spent all of WoTLK trying to make Combat work since he loves the spec, and now that it’s competitive with mutilate and he has this axe he never has to respec. B)He’s both good, and has been with the guild way longer than I could even come close to. C) It’s my fault I didn’t have the EPGP priority. One or two more raids I hadn’t missed would have meant the axe was mine, so the only person I could be annoyed at is myself. Doesn’t make it suck less since I still need two, but I’m happy for him.

At any rate, here are my first impressions of ToC (Number/5 is my personal rating system-1 is worst boss in instance, 5 is best):

Northrend Beasts, 2/5: To be quite frank, I’m not sure how this belongs in a raid that drops iLevel 245 loot. It’s not the loot pinata that non-hardmode Flame Leviathan is, but it’s fairly close. Snobolds on the first phase can be somewhat annoying-even with nameplates on, I find some of them spawn too far out of range of my nameplates and I don’t see them, so I watch for our qt rogue leader man to take off in a random direction.

The two jormungars are relatively easy, with the only real problem being slime pools- I got poisoned, ran toward the tank with burning bile on him, and a slime pool spawned. He turned left while I was running right around the slime pool, and I and two other melee would have been paralyzed had the worms not burrowed and he ran towards us.

Icehowl is obnoxiously easy (this coming from someone who died on him on his first attempt in 25man-I thought you had to click whoever he targeted to see if they were near you. xP) Beyond the fact that he spins around to face the direction he’s going to charge, Deadly Boss Mods now offers a GIANT BLUE POPUP OF TEXT saying “Charge near you, run!” so as to remove -any- doubt that the giant thing now staring you down might be charging you.

And, taken as a whole, I dislike this fight because it isn’t melee friendly, and it definitely isn’t totem friendly. First phase: Chase down Snobolds. Second phase: Avoid slimes, run debuffs, chase down burrowed worms. Third phase: Increased damage for 10-15 seconds!…which doesn’t help when I’m across the room because he targeted someone in the complete other direction. However, not every fight can be melee friendly, so it’s not worth being mad about. xD

Lord Jaraxxus 5/5: I love this fight. I’ve loved it since we first engaged it weeks ago and our entire group of melee got one shot by a portal we stood too close to. It’s a mindfuck for DBM-I don’t think I’ve ever had that addon go off more in a fight than it does on Jaraxxus. Part of my enjoyment comes from the kind of epic high-fantasy feel of the fight: You’ve got succibui, demon lords, creatures made of green magma, magic volcanoes, fireballs, curses, gigantic purple portals and more. Part of my love for it might be because I get to do more than just dps on it- I’m a windshear and purge spambot. And, the last third of my fangirl tendencies towards Jaraxxus come from the fact that it’s very melee-friendly, while the ranged get to be the ones who chase down the adds.

On a side note, healing Jaraxxus is fun too. I wasn’t able to figure out how to make incinerate flesh show up on Grid, and I may have forgotten to earthliving my weapon…but I’d do it again if I had to. I’m actually really enjoying the more spot-healing aspect of restoration at the moment.

Faction Champions, 1/5: I very rarely feel negatively towards Blizzard. They’re a hardworking group of people who will never be appreciated by the majority of players who feel that their class is somehow more worthy than others to be better. That said, Blizzard’s Human Resources department needs to have a chat with whatever designer came up with the idea of Faction Champions (and, preferably, put him/her down for a mental health evaluation.)

Seriously. Does no one remember the massive amount of QQ that surrounded Priestess Delrissa in Heroic Magister’s Terrace? She was hated. And no, the “You just don’t like it because it forces you to think outside of the box” argument holds no water. PVPing is not thinking outside of the box, it’s just a different box. I choose not to partake in that box, I like my box with the shiny PVE label, tyvm. At least I already have my nice expertise trinket, so I don’t need to do a Burning Crusade and do this mockery of a real fight 33 times in a row. :/

Twin Valkyrs 4/5: Twins are a fun fight. The relationship of light and darkness is a theme that’s been explored in almost every form of media, and it’s fun to see how they took that idea and designed an encounter around it. Execution-wise, it’s a cakewalk. Provided your rogue leader doesn’t forget to tell the melee group that all physical dps are on the left valkyr and you and two others end up going right and the raid wipes due to lack of dps on the left side twin pact. Other than that, the only semi-difficult aspect of the fight is avoiding the globes of color opposite what you’re buffed with, and doing your best to grab the ones that match your color. Or, you could do a me and switch colors to avoid a dark vortex, but then end up one shotting yourself because you forget that when you switch colors to avoid taking aoe damage you don’t want to continue picking up the same colors as before.

Anub’Arak 3/5: This fight deserves more than 3 stars. It has an epic intro- if you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t spoil it for you, but make sure you bring your glyph of water walking and a guild member with a sense of humor/your worst enemy and have fun murdering them. Beyond the intro, the fight itself is well designed. Phase 1 is pretty melee friendly, as your ranged friends get to shoot down pyrite permafrost and nuke the adds, and phase 2 is more ranged friendly as you run around through snares avoiding Anub’s spikes and try to kill adds. Phase 3 is a good old fashioned dps race, and DPS races are always a tension-heavy way to end an instance.

As I said, this fight deserves more than 3 stars…but it doesn’t get them, simply due to the rather terrible tuning of Anub 10.  4.2 Million HP is 2/3 of what Kel’thuzad had- and with adds that barely require any attention from the ranged (we just let the single bad add be tanked on anub and die to incidental aoe) and a really small health pool, Anub’arak can be kept from going under more than once just from average (4.5-5.5kish)dps per person. On 25 man, the fight is much more finely tuned (it took us 8 attempts, iirc, vs. the 1 attempt with not deaths we got in ten man today.) I kind of hope they stealth buff Anub- I don’t want to be elitist, and I really don’t want to be the type of person to throw out cliched phrases like “catering to casuals,” but Anub really is too easy.

As a Whole: I like ToC Reg. With the exception of Faction Champions, the idea behind every fight is cool to me, and they all seem well designed. But, it’s entirely too easy of an instance. Ulduar was difficult at times-we’ve been perpetually cockblocked by Hard Mode Iron Council for a month now (partly due to end of summer attendance issues), and our first Yogg kill came on an off-night where we decided to push through the slump of days of attempts and kick his ass. Anub was not Yogg. There was accomplishment, but there also was the feeling of “we should not be able to down the last boss of an instance the day it’s released. We’re not that hardcore.”  I do understand the casual-logic of “Well, hardcore players are not the only ones that deserve to see [major lore character], but they should at least have to work for it, aand I don’t get that sense from ToC.

That said, I am quite excited to see the heroic version, as I do believe it will be harder. I’m also excited to see Icecrown Citadel-it seems quite apparent that ToC was the side project to keep us tied over until IC, and I’m perfectly fine with that- provided IC is badass. I have faith in Blizzard that it will be so.

(I’m also excited to see Cobra Starship and Boys Like Girls in concert together on November 20th. Just bought tickets. )

((Yes, it is 5AM in the morning, Yes I am blogging, and No I have not slept yet. :/)

*I have nothing against Ringo Starr, though I do prefer every other Beatle to him. I just thought it was a catchy first line, so don’t flay the skin from my body or something.

Now, with that awkward vignette out of the way, you shoud click below this shiny line to read my ramblings about why On Use trinkets are underrated additions to your enhance arsenal. (Also, that sentance ending was LIKE assonance, but not. >:()

Trinkets tend to be seperated into two distinct groups- On Use and Equip. Anyone familiar with itemization at level 80 probably understands difference between the two: Both trinkets tend to provide a passive bonus (such as 84 critical strike rating), but On Use trinkets also provide a temporary bonus you click to activate, while Equip trinkets provide a temporary bonus that activates after filling some sort of condition: e.g, after getting a melee critical strike, you have a chance to gain 1000 Attack Power for 10 seconds. Equip trinkets tend to be viewed in a better light than On Use trinkets, mainly due to their lower Internal Cooldowns- the majority of Equip trinkets you’ll get have ICDs of 45 seconds with durations of 10 seconds, while On Use trinkets generally have cooldowns of around 2 minutes, slightly less powerful buffs (670 On Loatheb’s Shadow, iLevel 200, vs. iLevel 200 Mirror of Truth‘s 1000AP) but 20 second durations. The assumption becomes that on use

This means, assuming the above stats and RNG favoring you enough that the trinket procs as soon as the ICD expires, that on a 6:00 Patchwerkesque fight your Mirrot of Truth will have an uptime of around 70 seconds (10 Sec First Proc +45 Sec +10 Sec +45 Sec +10 Sec +45 Sec +10 Sec +45 +10 Sec +45+10+45+10 Sec). 70/360 Seconds is just below 1/5 of the fight. 1/5X1000AP means Mirror Of Truth is optimistically a static 200 ap bonus. However, Mirror of Truth only has a 10%chance to proc, and that chance to proc comes off crits, not just any hit, so first you have to crit, and then you have to factor in the 10%, so the uptime of MoT is probably more around 50-60 seconds. Pessimistically, assuming it has a 50 second uptime on a 6 minute fight, MoT comes out to 140ish Static AP.

Loatheb’s Shadow, on the other hand, looks like this: (20 second use + 120 second cooldown +20 second use +120 second cooldown +20second use  +60 second cooldown till end of fight.) Because you chose when to use it, and you used it as soon as it became available to use again, we know that the trinket has an uptime of 60 seconds. 60/360 is 1/6 of the fight as uptime. 1/6+670 is about 110 Static Attack Power. Your RNG would have to be pretty far off the mark for a fight to only have a 40 second uptime on mirror of truth-you’d have to go about 30-35 seconds after the ICD without proccing it every time- but that is about the amount of time you would need for the two trinkets to be equivalent. This would be why On Use trinkets tend to be seen so disfavorably.

However, I’d like to offer up some reasonings as to why every raiding DPS, melee or caster, (healers/tanks are a different story-more on that later) should HAVE at least one appropriate iLevel On Use item, even if it’s not a part of their regular gear set. Here is the main reason:

Every Boss Isn’t Patchwerk.

We tend to speak of DPS in terms of ideal situations-Patchwerk is the closest thing to these ideal situations, as all you do is sit there and hit him. However, here are some situations where I believe On Use trinkets might win out-and guess what? None of them are Patchwerk.

A) Masochistic Bosses make On Use trinkets fun. You get to time your trinket to go off at the best possible moment to maximize your damage output in accordance with other things that buff you. On some fights, this may simply be a bloodlust. On others- Deconstructor Heart Phase or Hodir when Singedx30 is up while you have Storm Power AND a Haste Cloud are both situations where you want to be able to hit harder on command. If your MoT procs during transition into the heart phase, or your pyrite infuser infuses you with pyrite while the storm cloud is sitting tight in the ranged and your precious moonbeam of gloriously fast blows has a giant ICICLE OF DEATH rune sitting under it, it doesn’t matter that you’re hitting slightly harder than normal. If you could have timed your trinket, you could be hitting much harder than normal.

B)Dying because you didn’t DPS hard enough sucks: Think Iron Council Hard Mode, where you have 90 seconds to do about 14million damage. 4/9 of that fight will be bloodlust, and during that bloodlust you’ll be popping everything- feral spirit, potion of speed, firing off some rapid prayers to your deity of choice, etc. It’d be so uncool to see your wolves fade into oblivion, your potion of speed sweated out of your pores, and your bloodlust fade…just as the 45icd on your Equip trinket comes up and you feel awash in the Belated Blood of the Old God while the rogue who popped his trinket mutilates his way up the damage meter.

C)Some bosses make you move. More at 11: Nearly every 80 raid fight in this game has something you have to avoid, run out of, run into, etc. It doesn’t matter if your trinket gives you 10,000 Attack Power- you still just wasted it running away from your raid because Grobbulus’ gave you his beauticians number his disease. It doesn’t matter that your trinket has a 15 second duration when it procs while you’re meleeing the first brain-room tentacle on yogg-it won’t be up for the brain phase that matters. Trinkets that proc prior to you needing to move are wasted dps.

That said, there are some fights where double equip trinkets are great. Kologarn, Patchwerk, General Vex, Sartharion, etc. all maximize time on target (for melee) and don’t buff your dps in any way.While an On Use trinket might be beneficial during a bloodlust, you might see better result using two very good Equip trinkets.

There’s more to this story for other classes: Warriors/Death Knights might want to use Mjolnir Runestone/Death’s Choice/Verdict nearly all the time despite their being On Use, because Strength and Armor Pen are so incredibly powerful for them. Healers don’t want their Egg of Mortal Essence to haste them up during XT Heart Phase, but Tears of the Vanquished’s 500 mana back proc is highly coveted. And tanks probably exclusively want On Use items, as procs aren’t reliant forms of damage mitigation.

In my opinion, for DPS, you want to have a set of one reliable On use trinkets, and two pretty good Equip trinkets- just ike 3.2.2 will make it so that we might want to switch out totems for different fights, we should ideally be switching out trinkets the same way. This becomes a bit of an issue in ToC, as the only on use trinket that is really ideal for us is Vengeance of the Forsaken/Victor’s Call, but there is no matching Equip Trinket that gives us 83 expertise. Since expertise above the cap is worth absolutely 0 dps, we either A)Don’t use this trinket, or B)Remove Expertise Gear/Gems/Enchants to match the expertise on the trinket. The second option isn’t great, however, because we then are stuck using the Expertise trinket for every fight-we can’t sub it out for anything else or we’d no longer be  expertise capped, and we can’t sub it in for a normal trinket while expertise capped because the 0 benefit it’s passive stat would give us outweighs any benefit of having an on use trinket.

TL:DR: On Use trinkets are situationally use them. Use them in those situations- don’t just right them off because they underperform on Patchwerk.

No, this is not to reroll. No, it’s not because I’ve “grown disillusioned by the utter crap that is the shaman class” like the thousand other people who have yet to realize that they’re not nearly as amazing as they think they are. Actually, what it is for is to gank my guildmates and friends since it is on my home server is a few reasons. A)I’ve only played tauren melee dps at 80, and a small part of me worries that the gigantic cow in the front of my screen is affecting my performance in some way, mainly dpsing from behind on human sized mobs that I can barely see past my fatty self. If it does seem to be better on the small side, I might consider race-changing Failam to orc when it’s released. (No, the OP racials have nothing to do with it- they’re jsut a nice benefit.) B) I’m leveling the ret to learn.

Ideally, I’d like to have every melee dps at level 80 within the next few months- ret paladin (who is pretty close) rogue, feral, and warrior are all that are left for me, I believe. I’m of the opinion that focusing on one character is a bad idea- first off, you become overly aware of that one classes problems, and take for granted their benefits. I feel playing a single character restrains a large number of people from seeing WoW as a whole, and rather they focus entirely on what makes them better without regard to class balance. (I swear, if I see another person post “It’s Our turn to be OP,” I’m going American History X and curb stomping them. Srsly.) Second, I just find it useful to understand how other classes gear /work/dps, and learning different ways, as this game is constantly changing, and class A mechanics you may have a handle on today might be entirely overhauled in Patch x.y to be more akin to class B, etc. Oh, and, Outland is fun. This post, however, is no longer about my qt baby retadin, even though she’s fabulous.

I’m not sure if it’s in the water or something, but I’ve been reading a lot of whining from a large number of people who have no idea what they’re talking about (Also known as the shaman forums) in regards to the Retribtion talent The Art of War. (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=53488) For those of you who don’t know about this talent, it’s the Retribution answer to Maelstrom Weapn- a chance on melee critical strike for them to be able to cast an instant flash of light or exorcism. To hear it said by quite a few players, it’s ridiculous- they don’t have to stack their instant cast, and it only requires a two talent point investment to reach. So, I’d like to spam purge on some of this QQ and provide a nice, neat, comparison between the two talents.

1) Maelstrom Weapon lightning bolts are our single hardest hitting on command ability. (Windfury can hit harder, but we have no control over it.) We prioritize MW5 Lightning Bolts over sex while raiding, both because it hits hard and because each second gone by not hitting it means we’re missing more potential MW procs. By comparison, instant excorcisms are a Paladins LAST priority- where we would refresh shields/totems, they’re hitting exorcism. Even consecration is more highly valued on Ret Priority than exorcism.

2) Exorcism has a 15 second cooldown. MW doesn’t have a cooldown. This means that while we might be firing off an instant lightning bolt every 5 seconds, Retribution Paladins who don’t need the instant flash of light are letting their Art of War just sit there for 10-12 seconds at a time waiting for that exorcism to be up again. I know that when I’m dpsing, I tend to have a near 100% uptime on art of war, since it does proc quite frequently- but most of that uptime is spent waiting for the cooldown  to be up, and then, when the cooldown IS up, making sure there is nothing else on my priority list that needs to be done before using it.

3) Maelstrom Weapon provides more versatility. Single target dps fight? That’s cool, I’ll use lightning bolt. Mimiron Phase 4? Chain Lightning and I are bffs. Learning Hardmode XT Deconstructor for the first time? Sure, I’ll use some instant chain heals on the melee during tantrums. OH SHIT I’M DYING? Instant Healing Wave ftw! Wait, what? Trash exists somewhere that needs to be CCed and is currently eating our wild-growth spam sapling’s face? W/e man, he’s now a frog. Instantly.

Switch to my qt femret. Single target dps fight? That’s cool, I’ll use exorcism. Mimiron phase 4? Still here, still hitting exorcism. Learning Hardmode XT for the first time? Oh shit son, I just flash of lighted myself for 3k. Pity that rogue next to me died though. These healers need to lrn2play. OH SHIT I’M DYING. Nice, instant flash of light. That almost brings me out of killsho–you cannot do that while dead? Wait, what? Trash exists somewhere that needs to be CCed and is currently eating our wild-growth spam sapling’s face? Fuck excorcism. /cast Divine Storm!

4) Maelstrom Weapon has a chance to proc off melee hits. The Art of War has a chance to proc off melee critical hits. On any target that is standing still but has a lot of resilience in pvp (not done very much, I know), you’d have a better chance of proccing MW than the Art of War.

5) That said, the Art of War does not need to stack, so you can fire off instant underwhelming abilities fairly often in pvp, while the shaman needs to stick on top of something to try and fire off a more powerful attack.

6) The Art of War provides a base damage increase to a few abilities, which is a nice benefit to taking the talent.

7) The Art of War is only a two talent point investmentm, while MW is five.

The last three, in my mind, are beneficial for The Art of War’s cause, but not enough to counteract the amazingness of Maelstrom Weapon. For Ret, the Art of War is a nice free damage bonus, much like our lava lash. For Enhance, Maelstrom Weapon is spec-defining in it’s glory. There is absolutely no reason to QQ about TAoW.

Totem of the Electrifying Wind (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47666) is somewhat comparable to quaking earth in that A) It provides a 200 pt bonus to one stat. B) Assuming 60 PPM (I sim at 61 due to gemming haste with the t8 4pc. Other people’s PPMs might be lower, but I assumed 60 for ease, because it means one proc per second, and for the purpose of napkin math I’m saying this is one static proc per second- no more, no less), you should be firing off an instant lightning bolt every 5-6 seconds, comparable to the 6 second cooldown on lava lash.  C) It has a high proc chance, albeit slightly less than Quaking Earth’s- 70%. It also has a shorter buff duration- 12 seconds, to Quaking Earth’s 18.

The difference with Electrifying Wind is that it has a 6 Second Internal Cooldown, which means assuming a lightning bolt every five-six seconds will result in your first lightning bolt not being able to renew the buff. This leaves you with one lightning bolt that CAN renew the buff before it falls off, at a 70% chance to proc. Your next chance to proc the buff would be at 15 seconds, also at a 70% chance to proc. Because it has such a high proc chance, my best guess is that you’d rarely go anymore than three-eight seconds without a proc, and at times would keep the buff up consistently. (Once again, this is assuming you had a static proc per second of maelstrom weapon- you will be seeing more and less than that at different times.)

However, this slight drop off in buff uptime can be counteracted by the fact that the buff is 200 haste, rather than 200 attack power. Assuming Unleashed Rage/Aboms Might/trueshot aura being up 100% of the time, the maximum EP you’re going to get over a 36 (Least Common Denominator FTW) second period for Quaking Earth is a static 220. I’ve seen Haste EPs of between 1.7-2.3- I’m going to assume 2 for simplicity. This means that if you get super lucky with your 2nd lightning bolt always renewing the buff, you’re going to see 400 EP from Electrifying Wind. If you get somewhat unlucky and you miss out on renewing the buff before it falls off and instead proc it at 15 seconds every time, you’re going to see an EP of 400X30(12 seconds + 3w/o + 12 seconds +3 w/o +6 seconds to the end of test uptime)/36(test length)= 333.33 EP. Still, 113.33 more than Quaking Earth. Assuming RNG hates your guts and you only proc it on your fourth lightning bolt every time, you’re still going to see an EP of 400X24 (12 sec + 8 w/o +12 sec +4 w/o)/36=266.66 EP. Even with the RNG Gods hating you (and I don’t think there’s much of a chance of you going longer than 8 seconds without seeing a proc refresh), you’re looking at a totem that packs a serious punch. (Note: On fights with a lot of AOE where you’ll be using chain lightning most of the time, Quaking Earth may be a better choice.)

Now, the irony about me writing an as-of-right-now 660+ word post about these totems is that you can read the front page of the shaman forums and see Enhancement Shaman being told to grab the Totem of Electrifying Wind. It’s easily accessible information. What is also accessible, however, is the rampant trash talking that has gone on about blizzard since this information has gone live. And, honestly, it both shocks and appalls me. I’ve heard everything from “Blizzard is lazy” to “Blizzard has no idea about how enhancement shaman work” (this one always gets me- they can make sure that pve dps for nearly every class is where they want it to be, but they don’t understand how the classes work? Dear stupids, stop saying stuff like this. <3) to “Blizzard is intentionally trying to nerf enhancement by giving it a subpar totem.

And honestly, the best thing I can say to this is “stop and think.” Please, for the sake of the mental health of everyone around you, stop being a turd and ask yourself a few questions. What is the chance of Blizzard not realizing that haste is an incredibly desired stat for enhancement, a spec that uses lightning bolt as it’s single hardest hitting ability? I’d say slim to none. Despite the fact that lightning bolt is in the elemental tree and lava lash is enhancement, and the fact that the totems respective spells on wowhead’s database say “t9 enhancement or elemental relic,” is there anything about these totems that say “limited to enhancement or elemental shaman only?”  The answer to that one is “nothing.”

Last question: In a game where half the player base is already complaining that content is “too easy,” why do we want our gear choices to be easy to choose and dictated by the fact that it “looks” like it belongs to our spec? Personally, I find that “I-don’t-want-to-have-to-think-about-my-gear-choices” mindset is pretty lame, as might be evident by this blog post. To me, the fact that Blizzard was able to design a totem that is highly desirable by both enhancement and elemental, made it ottainable through emblems rather than a competitive random raid drop, and then gave us another totem that screamed “enhancement” to fake out the shaman who don’t want to do the work to remain on top makes me applaud them. I applaud them a lot. /applaud!

Also, go go nearly-1100 word blog posts. I should be an English Maj–oh wait.