First, we have the original Flametongue Weapon change from a few days ago: “Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).” According to current PTR testing, it is bugged on the PTR and inheriting the 50% damage reduction when used on an offhand weapon. However, without that bug the damage seemed consistent with current Flametongue, meaning it isn’t a nerf provided the bug gets changed. Unfortunately, the power of Flametongue weapon meant that it still seemed a slight increase in DPS to use double flametongue with a caster weapon.

As a result, meet the new nerf on the block: “Flametongue Weapon procs now deal roughly 20% less damage.” This is a pretty blatant damage nerf to our offhand FT procs and should be enough to force us into using that old staple, Windfury weapon. On the other hand of the spectrum, though, we see this pretty awesome buff: “The Windfury Weapon proc can now trigger 3 additional attacks, up from 2.” This hopefully will counteract the damage loss from not using a caster weapon w/flametongue and the damage loss from losing 20% FT damage in our offhand. If it manages to keep damage consistent with where it is now while shifting us back to using WF/FT, patch 4.0.6 is really starting to look up.

A) Your items suck. Honestly, I get it: You spent all of Wrath of the Lich King workin’ hard for your purplez. You have deep, lasting, emotional connections with everything from your Heroic Sindragosa necklace to those boots from ToC that you were never able to upgrade. The idea of getting rid of them makes you sad, like you’re ditching your aging dog for a new puppy.

Get over it. I know that heroic Black Bruise is nice and you worked hard for it, but the Necrotic Touch proc has sucked since 4.0.1, and it sucks even more as a leveling item. Add into that the fact that there are blue weapons that require level 80 that have the same dps as H Black Bruise (that looks ten times better). The end result: Your weapons should be replaced by level 81, if you get lucky with drops. Stonecore (which you can queue for at 81 if you’ve found the portal), has two excellent Enhancement weapons: Heavy Geode Mace and Fist of Pained Senses. HGM has some lackluster leveling stats, but either hit or expertise can be reforged into mastery. Both of these weapons blow every weapon from WoTLK (from Pride to Heroic Havoc’s Call) out of the water. You’re hurting yourself by hanging on to your relics.

Did I mention how cool they look?

Armor is slightly less important to replace asap, but they’ll still be replaced soon. Elam just hit 83 and got Troggbane Chestguard to replace his 264 Tier10 Chest. It comes out to four more agility (counting two 20 agi gems), 60 more haste, 137 less crit rating, and a wopping 137 mastery. I’d exchange 137 crit for 137 mastery any day of the week. The only downside is losing my 4pct10, which means I won’t be equipping the Green quest reward until I can find another green that outpaces my tier gear.

Trinkets should be replaced fairly soon. Hyjal has Bileberry Smelling Salts, early Deepholm has Gear Detector. The base agility on these trinkets is huge, kicking the crap out of Herkuml War Token‘s haste, Tiny Abomination in a Jar‘s…everything, and Deathbringer’s Will‘s crit base. The haste procs are meh enough that Sharpened Twilight Scale might be worth hanging onto, though.

B) Enchant. Enchanting is your friend, and WILL make your life easier. This is a rule for both leveling and early heroic grinding- if it’s on you, you should enchant it and gem it. WoTLK enchanting mats are dirt cheap (I was buying Dream Shards at 50silver a piece last night. In total, berserking cost me 30 gold), and those enchants are still relevant. If you get an item in a heroic or five that you know will be replaced in a week, spend the thirty gold to enchant it with WoTLK enchants and blue or low-priced epic gems. No one will shame you for putting lesser-quality gems in lesser-quality items, and it’s so cheap to do now that there’s no excuse to lessen your performance by not doing it.

Now, back to leveling. See you all at 85!

I'd Spirit Tap that.

This post isn’t about Clergelam, though. As much as I love her (and wish she was already 80 so she could be my main alt), Clergelam will have to sit on the backburner for now. Because, in case you haven’t heard, Cataclysm is coming out. It’s coming out tonight.

However, while I know the impending doom of Azeroth is totally news to all of us, I have more news that ISN’T quite as common knowledge. This is good news. It’s personal news, news that makes my wallet happy and makes me as giddy as a stereotype at a Klan meeting. I got a job. And, not just any job. I got THE job.

I am officially Wow Insider’s new Enhancement Shaman columnist. I’ll be covering totems, I’ll be covering healing, I’ll be covering the benefits of being a gigantic cow person (being able to fit through doors is not one of them). I’ll be writing, and I’ll be getting paid for it. (And I’ll have my name and twitter link on a shiny “about” page.)

Please update your RSS feeds, your google readers, and proceed to e-stalk me. I promise I’ll be worth it!

Enhancement shaman have always been a cooldown dependent class. As we all know, there was absolutely nothing more frustrating in ICC than engaging a boss with your Fire Elemental on cooldown, because you were missing out on damage potential in the thousands, an incredibly unfun prospect. It made Enhancement dps incredibly frustrating to play when learning new fights, engaging bosses that were not far spread apart…or even running heroics.

4.0.1. saw a buff to Enhancement that has left Fire Elemental next to useless for us in non-aoe situations. (Playing perfectly, we can maybe squeeze out 100 more dps with a FE-fire nova last priority rotation.) 4.0.1 also saw a nerf to Feral Spirits duration, dropping it by 15 seconds.

I have a theory that these are the reasons for the high dps drop cited by some shaman in patch 4.0.1- particularly the shaman playing in the best guilds in the world. I selected the first 25 shaman I could find out of the top 80 WoL parses in 3.3.3 who also had parses for Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang in 4.0.1 and compiled some data. Average DPS among the 25 was 18026 in 3.3.3, with the average fight duration being 2 minutes and 25 seconds. That means that on average, these parses were taken after having Spirit Wolves out for about 1/3 of the fight, and having Fire Elemental out for nearly 4/5 of the fight.

Every one of these players saw dps drops, with the average dps drop being 3,258. (3027 if you don’t include one really poor outlier who saw a 9,000dps drop.) Fight length differed across the board, but the average disparity in fight times was 6 seconds-4.0.1 fights were on average only 6 seconds longer than 3.3.3 fights. (If you want to see more of the raw numbers on this, here is the downloaded excel spreadsheet. Shamandps If you are one of the shaman named here and you want your name removed, e-mail me at elamtheshaman@live.com.)

Now, you might be asking me why this matters. This matters because not every shaman is playing in a guild that can down Heroic Saurfang in (on average) two minutes thirty seconds, and my belief is that those of us who aren’t playing at that level are the ones noting dps increases. If you look at my deathbringer parse for this week, you’ll see 13,817 dps on a 3:43 fight. Last week’s parse, however has me at 13,441 for a 3:59 second fight.

I’m only one person, unfortunately, and for some reason I’ve not been able to get a large number others to post parses where fights both this week and last week’s lasted 3:00 or more. (If you’d like to get involved in this, please post your parse links in this thread.) However, going off my own data and some educated guessing, here’s my theory:

For Enhancement Shaman raiding the cutting edge of content who are in guilds that are able to down bosses in under 3:00, patch 4.0.1 was a nerf to damage on those short fights. It lowered our cooldown damage substantially and made an attempt at rolling that damage into Enhancement’s sustained dps. If this is true, this means that longer fights will see consistently higher damage than we saw pre 4.0.1- if you could imagine, a DBS fight that lasted six minutes rather than 2:30 in 3.3.3 would have shaman doing less dps than they would on the same fight now.

The really positive effects of this change would come into effects in Cataclysm, where we’re not at the absurdly high gear levels where we’re not at the tail-end of a year of the same bosses becoming loot pinatas and getting the pve-version of globaled. Since they’re new fights and probably will never grow to be ten months old without being replaced, these fights will be tuned to require more time than the current fights we have do, and Enhancement’s lack of reliability on cooldowns should turn into a real boon. This would mean that 4.0.1 would ultimately be a buff to Enhancement’s sustained damage per second, but the current burst nature of most ICC boss fights means the best enhancement shaman in the world are playing in an arena where everyone else has the handicap.

1.Shamanistic Rage now causes your skills, totems, and offensive spells to consume no mana for 15 sec.

This is technically a buff from the old (as in, previous beta build) incarnation of Shamwall, where your skills, totems, and offensive spells cost 10% mana for 15 seconds. Now they cost 0%mana. This is all well and good and stuff, but I truly feel it runs counter to the design philosophy Blizzard has for SR- where they want it to be less something we use on Cooldown for mana and more a damage reduction CD. I’d much rather see skills and offensive spells removed from Shamanistic Rage and make it “Shamanistic Rage now causes your totems and defensive spells to consume no mana for 15 seconds.” We know that Cataclysm will see healers with mana issues and dps needing to take responsibility for their lives- having a button that reduces incoming damage but prompts you to keep attacking within that damage reduction in order to gain the benefit of no-cost spells and keep your mana pool high seems much less effective than an ability that reduces incoming damage and allows you to heal yourself afterward without worrying about killing your mana pool- which will be an issue for Enhancement in Cata.

This is not me saying that the new SR is useless, by any stretch of the imagination. Primal Wisdom is at it’s core an RNG talent, and having a button in place to give you 15 seconds of attacking and allowing your mana pool to refill will be helpful any time you run into a dry spell of PW procs. I just personally would rather see it fully made into a total defensive cooldown than the hybrid it is today and will be in Cataclysm.

2. Enhancement – Increases all elemental damage done by 20%. Damage increased further by mastery rating.

Earlier in the year when Masteries were revealed, there was a bit of an uproar by the Enhancement community when Survival Hunters’ mastery turned out to be Elemental damage while Enhancement got left with “Nature” damage- seeing as Searing Totem, Lava Burst, Flametongue, Unleash Flame and Flame Shock are all on the menu for Enhance in Cata-not to mention the frost spells for pvp- we were naturally a little worried that SV hunters got what we perceived as our mastery. (For the record, Elemental damage does make sense as a SV mastery!) The rationale that was posted was that Blizzard wanted all 30 masteries to be unique- unfortunately for Enhancement, the uniqueness of our mastery meant less damage than we wanted.

Thankfully (and seriously, thank you Blizzard!), our concerns were heard and addressed, and while we do lose out on having a unique mastery, this beta build announced that we will have our mastery bonus effect all our non melee/windfury attacks, and not just the nature one. This is a great change, and while I personally would have preferred a more interesting mastery a la Blood DK’s or Fury Warrior’s, beggars can’t be choosers and I will be happy as a claim with our mastery as is.

On a slight aside, I’d like to apologize for posting this late, but I happened to (we think, doctor will confirm tomorrow) tore a muscle in my knee at work on Wednesday, and I’ve spent the past 3 days being emo and lethargic. On the plus side Sashafears, my undead warlock, went from being level 1 Thursday afternoon to level 40 tonight…which just goes to show you exactly how much time I spend on this game when I don’t have the outside influences of work, gym, family, relationships, etc. keeping me from sitting in an armchair with my laptop on my lap.

To give you an idea of how awesome my knee is right now, here's a picture.

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

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

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

The criteria I followed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People we don’t want in this vent:

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

Things we want people to talk about:

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

Things we don’t want people to talk about.

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

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

cobalt.typefrag.com
40147

Looking it over, a few things come to mind:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. )

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

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