Warning, My Mind Wandered... A LOT

It looks like more and more people are spending solid time on attempts at Firefighter, as it has finally passed 3 Tree Freya in % of people with the achievement Heroic: Firefighter. It appears as far as hard modes go now, the only thing harder would be Heroic: Alone in the Dark (discounting Algalon).

On 10 man, this fight is practically a joke, but on 25 man I imagine it could get quite hellish. I just don't trust our guild enough to do it. On a side note, anyone have any idea what dps an Affliction lock in full t8.5 and comparable off items should be doing? I'm gonna guess that its supposed to be higher than 4k -- if Blizzard Dev's looked at our recount/wws parses they would nerf me into the ground since I'm spankin his ass like a priest in an all-boys catholic school and I'm just a hybrid. Anyway, my point is that it's people like that, that don't know their class completely or how to maximize dps, that scare me about hard modes. I made the threat last night when people were asking to do hard mode Thorim, "As soon as you can all move out of the simplest mechanic in the game, then we can consider it." Of course, what I'm referring to is the cone lightning attack that occurs during the fight. "It's so hard to tell where it's coming from though." Oh wait, goes right back to the wall from which the lightning came... Surprisingly, for the first time in several weeks, no one died. Looks like I'll be eating my words next week when that comes up. [Heroic: Who Needs Lust?] -- that's a lot of fun, and if you are gonna do hard mode, you should read up on this. You can MC the Dark Rune Warbringer and cast a 20% haste buff, which can be stacked up to 3 times by having 3 MC's. If you are gonna do hard mode, I suggest getting the frost resist gear and getting hit capped with it. Our shadow priest that does it has around 35k health in his frost resist gear so he can keep MC'ing while the blizzard hits him.

Wow, this took an awful side tangent to talking about 3T Freya. I don't even feel like talking about Freya, it makes me think of the trash you have to clear. It's poopy. It makes me think of Naxx, which I am officially probably never running again, ha. I'm looking forward to no trash in the next raid, although that also means no epix on loot, I'm ok with it.

I'm just gonna continue away from where this started. Is anyone else feeling cheated by 3.2? Really? Like, yay, a new tier set. The stats are more than impressive on 258 gear, as it should be, but other than that, I'm not a really big fan of the tier gear. You think maybe they would just let me work my way back to skyshatter stuff design wise and they could give me the new stat allocations? Yea, I was a fan of it, don't hate, I'm crazy. It's kind of sad that for the most part they are going to remove Ulduar from the game with the next patch. There will be upgrades over the badge gear in there, and better weapons than older stuff, but unless someone really wants a legendary I think Ulduar will be pretty empty for the most part since you can buy most of the tier gear you will need from here on out just by running the heroic daily. I know, it'll take longer, whatev, I'm still not sure T9 ever is very deserving for someone who just runs a heroic daily. Look at me, now I'm an elitist jerk, wonder if they are recruiting.

But, back to 3.2 and feeling cheated -- are they really gonna have a raid with only 1 additional boss per week? It's a good thing there are 4 different lockouts, at least at the beginning. How sick of farming the first boss are you going to be in 1 month? Just as long as we aren't on vehicles for boss fights or ridiculous things like that I won't be too mad though. Flame leviathon was a great idea -- the first, second, maybe even 10th time through. Now though? How many people still like doing FL? I imagine there are still quite a few, but I have to imagine the majority of people in any halfway serious raiding guild is sick of going through all the annoyance involved in cracking open this loot pinata. We even do 4 Towers and I feel that way. ]

BTW, Blizz, give me new talents, I need to be able to beat mages so they can stop pretending they are sweet when 1 out of the 4 of them beats me on a fight and asks me what happened. I'm gonna set off a magma totem in their ass one day.

All I can say if you read all of that is sorry, so here's a cookie:
Two muffins are in an oven, the one looks over and says, "Is it hot in here or is it just me?" The other muffin gets a terrified look on his face and screams, "Oh my god, a talking muffin!"

Now you know that I have a dry sense of humor,
B Rab

Back on track... Sorta

Time to crack my knuckles and get a new post out. It was kind of a nice day off driving around doing things since it gave me some time to think about what else to post on.

I've done the dried up, tired rant about 3.2, including the positives and the negatives. I wasn't happy with that post really when I released it, it felt like it was 1 more person throwing a glass of water into the ocean. Same 'ol story, same 'ol qq, etc...

I would really like to get to work on those guides of BIS for ele and resto depending on what you're raiding (and assignment) -- a.k.a. T7 10 or 25 man content, and T8 10 or 25 man content, but with last weekend being my birthday, and me being out of town every weekend for around a month, it seems like those are just going to get pushed back far enough that they are no longer relevant due to emblem changes.

I would do another discussion of last night's raid post, but my internet has been in and out, with an emphasis on out, since Sunday. The tornadoes the other night in the area didn't do anything to help out my situation. I've even called the company and now I have a tech appointment where some geek is gonna come tell me the exact same stuff I know...This was my call:

Geek: Is your computer on?
Me: Yes .o0(Thinking: I hate you)
Geek: Ok, now what is the receive/send light doing?
Me: The receive light blinks for a while, then goes solid and the send light blinks, then it resets.
Geek: Have you tried resetting your modem?
Me: Oh, I never thought of trying that, ass clown. /sarcasm
Geek: Ok, can you go to your computer.
Me: Ok
Geek: Ok, type in /cmd and then /ipconfig
Me: The problem is that the router isn't connecting, not with my computer.
Geek: Sir, we need to explore every option.
Me: So would you like me to type /ipconfig release next probably.
Geek: Yes, have you already done this?
Me: No, I didn't even think to turn my computer on to try out my internet, how would I know how to do this.
Geek: Ok, I'm going to send out a tech, if they replace wires they can be 30-40$ each, would you like insurance on your wires.
Me: I have to pay for any faulty wires that you installed? (I gotta get in on that business plan, its easier than making gold in ah.)
Geek: Yes, but its only 4$ for insurance against this.
Me: I think I'll pass.
.
.
.
Appointment for the weekend, supa, maybe I'll get to meet him in person, but it seems doubtful. He might have been from another country that does help requests, I don't know. All I can say is that the next time someone suggests I turn on my computer on when I say my internet isn't working is gonna get a flame shock/lava burst/chain lightning combo to the face. And I'm gonna make sure it all crits. How dumb are people that they need to actually ask this question? Also, if I hear the big fix-all speech about /ipconfig release another time, probably the same thing. Or I might just pretend I'm a warrior and shield slam them with my new Voice of Reason, inherently giving me the voice of reason when I tell them how much I hate their dumb answers.

Maybe I should move onto a more wow related note. Despite all the people calling for an immediate patch, and even me at one point, someone brought up a good point to me -- They haven't announced the end of the arena season yet. Now I know that this doesn't guarantee anything, and before that, I was telling people that I thought the patch would be this upcoming Tuesday because of the progress being made, especially due to the change in the rusted protodrake availability into 3.2, but I forgot about the fact that the new patch will bring with it a new arena season. It looks like we might actually be waiting until the Tuesday after Blizzcon. I hope I'm wrong, especially since that's a month away and I'm more than getting fed up with the current content, but I think that's more personal since our MT got a job that has had him working crazy hours so we cant get our best group together for it. Maybe this week will be the week. Now that he's nerfed I can't imagine it being too bad, but I guess all I've been doing is watching videos and pulled him a couple times. As soon as that goes down you can bet I'll have something to say on the issue.

If at first you don't succeed; call it version 1.0.

B Rab

Feliz Compleanos a ti

Yea, that's right, it was a happy birthday for me on Saturday. I made it through a whole PUG run that I started to finally get the Voice of Reason from Kel, that stingy bastard, it only took me downing him 21 times to finally actually see it. Sometimes there is just that 1 elusive piece of gear, I'm sure everyone knows that feeling.

Anyway, good news is, this all means I'm no longer a scrub -- the embarrassment of our Ulduar raids with my naxx10 cutesy shield. Instead, I've finally become a man, or something like that.

Sadly, its looking like a slow week for posts, some different field work bs activities are trying to keep me from my loyal 2 readers who come by just enough for me to post every morning. They have me out of the office for the next 2 days, I don't think they realize that I need to have a huge project done asap and their silly car rides to far away places are getting right in the way of that.

Well, from the looks of things, 3.2 might be dropping sooner than later. If you ask me, its coming in a couple weeks. I know kids did crazy posts about their pattern of dropping patches near blizzcon, but here's the thing. Most of those were larger content packages. We are only starting the first week with very little with design of only bringing out another boss each week. Also, the whole not removing the rusted proto-drakes, instead just saying they will still be available after 3.2 drops and give a months notice before they are going to remove them. To top is all off, I downloaded a second part of 3.2 this weekend. This makes me think that stuff will be dropping within the month, and by my estimate a couple weeks. We'll have to see what exactly happens with the ptr's new build and testing this week before I make any specific date predictions, but rest assured, I'll probably pick a Tuesday... We'll see if I can call the date of this patch like I did the last one.

Not a whole lot of other news floating around out there. It seems that the combination of being on the verge of 3.2 and it being the summer might have finally struck a blow to the guild. We started to heavily work on hard modes further into Ulduar this week on Tuesday, thats the last time we raided really as a 25man. Thurs obviously had a post about it, and how dc's and such kept us from going, but it seems like participation is going a little slower as of late.

Eventually here, I'll throw up a pic of the rusted proto drake we got last week, but I have been lazy/busy since I got it. Anyone got suggestions on where to get an epic screenshot? I have one of my flying in front of the BS in Dal, but I feel like that might not be good enough. I might have to go back to TBC to find something real amazing for a backdrop.

Pop your flasks,
B-rab


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Another big blizz crit

Blizz definitely crit all over our raid last night. We had constant dc's with the inability to log back in due to authenticator servers being down among the many other problems. We managed to do Hodir with about 8 dc's when we pulled, then called it a night. It had been 2hrs already just trying to get people online past the authenticator issues and then back in when dc's were occuring. Instead, I spent some time reacquainting myself with cod4.

So, tomorrow is my birthday, and I have no plans what-so-ever. Sad isn't it? I think it's cause I'm in the middle of B.F.E with no one but older co-workers around. Maybe I'll start a pug Naxx 25 and finally get the Voice of Reason that I have been waiting for for so long now. It's starting to get embarrassing having Ulduar25 hard mode gear and a Naxx 10 shield. Or, maybe for my birthday, Blizz will send me a Flare of the Heavens. I got to a point in my gear where I could stop using Dying Curse, unfortunately, my next best trinket is the badge trinket -- another embarrassing moment for me. Looks like I might be switching to the resto helm and back from BIS gloves down to T8 or something. I'm just not sure yet, sometimes you hit awkward spots with gear.

I reread yesterday's post and I felt a lack of effort. I think it was because I felt like such crap. Sorry, but, oh well, I'm not redoing it, people posting on old patch notes is old -- and boring.

The thoughts are coming slow today. Probably because I got lots to do that I'm avoiding at the moment. Enjoy your weekends, suckas.

B Rab


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

State of Shamans - 3.2

Well, since I felt pretty terrible this morning, I called in sick and decided to write a post where I could check out the patch notes and take care of one of my promises about upcoming posts. Most of this is going to concern restoration shamans since most of the patch changes apply to that tree.

"Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes."
No one remembers why this was done, all I can say that the increase to fix it ain't enough. That 7% base health works out to around 500 health at level 80. Extra health that won't be helped by any other buffs. I know as ele I don't have a problem with my health in pve, but for enhancement, when I switch on those rare occasions, aoe dmg can smoke you way faster than most other classes. I was hoping to see an increase of more like 15%, or some extra stam on at least the tier gear.

No one remembers why this was done, all I can say that the increase to fix it ain't enough.In general, the increased shock range is beneficial for all the classes, more so for enhancement in pvp, elemental in pve or pvp. The extra 5 yards is never a bad thing. The one concern I have is the changes to earth shock -- "This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap)." While I think that the attack speed debuff isn't a bad idea, I think most people will have trouble using windshock as the solo interrupt where as for so long earth shock has served the dual purposes of damage and interrupt ability. The one nice thing is that they took wind shock off the other shock cooldowns and it remains off of the gcd. This is awesome for allowing both elemental and enhancement shamans to continue a dps rotation while still allowing them the ability to interrupt.

"Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed." This is ballin' for all specs in pvp. While you can't do anything in this form for the most part, it will allow a large increase of mobility for defensive or offensive purposes. Definitely a nice change.

Finally, the last general great change before moving on to resto shamans is the totem sets. Of course, this is also a slight burden as well. We only get 3 totem sets which means you will still need to have several of your popular/situation totems easy to access. You will probably end up with just 1 set for pve and a couple for pvp that try to counter the most popular comps. At least people will no longer be able to macro kill your important totems -- that's a great pvp change for totems. Even dropping a mana tide and then a stoneclaw to protect it doesn't do much, 2 hits tops from most pets.

Restoration

• Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
• Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
• Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
• Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
• Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
• Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30-second internal cooldown and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
• Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
• Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
• Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Time for a look at resto specific changes. The ancestral healing should be decent depending on how theory crafters see how it works out. I'm avoiding the ptr as of late so I'm not wasting any time looking at combat logs or anything like that to figure this out. My simple opinion would be a flat 10% reduction in all incoming damage, but that's something Bliz generally avoids so it probably isn't as great as that. At least it will be good for other tanks to gain an extra 10% magic reduction or so from this talent.

The change from cure poison/disease to toxin just saves a mouseover macro. I suppose it makes it easier for people who can't tell the different on raid frames or something, but really it's not big deal.

Earth shield only getting dispelled by charges, not the entire thing -- ballin' in pvp. Just absolutely ballin'. Getting a huge mana cost spell just ripped off in pvp sucks. Plain and simple. If anyone on the ptr could let me know if spell steal still takes the whole shield or not, I haven't seen much on it. Mostly because my research time has been cock blocked at work with those damn website filters.

Mana tide totem -- another pvp change. Specced for maximum health in pvp right now with deadly/furios, I have right around 23k health. This means my mana tide totem ends up with 2300 health. Not very much, but you can still drop a sstoneclaw totem to protect it, so it should get more than a couple ticks off from here on out. Overall, not bad.

Nature's Swiftness CD reduced -- big whoopty...whatev. I'm sure no one is really all that excited about this.

The change to tidal waves is interesting. The extra 25% crit gained on a lesser healing wave instead of the haste changes is from a quick lifesaver (sub 1sec dec heal) back to a slower heal, but with probably around a 65% crit chance in a raid setting. The one nice thing is that you can go back to getting haste for output without worrying about your lesser healing wave being faster than the gcd.

The water shield might be one of my favorite changes. No longer having to refresh water shield to waste a gcd when things get heated and it runs out is a big bonus. Plus the ability for it to proc off of chain heal, that should help the nub ch spammers out a ton for mana longevity. With the increase in the value of mp5, we should be sitting in a lot better place when we are on raid healing -- which leads my to my complaint.

12.5 Yards for a bounce on chain heal? Only loses 40% instead of 50% of the effectiveness? Super... /sarcasm. The only good thing is that it finally outranges the range meters for raids in Ulduar. It has a chance to possibly actually bounce between ranged. Too bad it's still gonna get the shit sniped out of it by lesser heals that kids love to throw out/max out the meters/then complain about being oom. I would prefer to see it being somewhere in the range of 15-20 yards but I guess beggers can't be choosers. The problem is still that it seems we aren't really great at anything. Holy priests and druids are way better raids healers, holy pallies are still gonna be better mt healers, especially with the ability to put more than 1 beacon on a target, and that beaconed target getting healed for the full heal (effictive + overheal). So where are we? Well, just doin' a little bit of everything.

Overall, the patch notes for shamans are improvements, there was obviously no need to nerf any of the trees so we weren't going to see that. Were they enough to help out what they were trying to do? I think elemental might benefit the most by not having any direct notes to the patch. We mostly just gain some ground based on problems from other classes. Next, I think resto fared better than enhancement -- if you think I'm wrong don't be afraid to let me know -- but at least they are doing something for us being oom without a mana return.

B Rab

Raid Reset and I'm Excited?

Man, just when I was getting sick of Ulduar comes a week when I'm excited to get back in and knee deep in the poo that is a fail Ulduar run -- we recently got ourselves a legendary, and since we have doubts of getting another one done before 3.2, and don't plan on farming Ulduar afterwards, that it's time for hard mode only kills. This should show what our guild is really made of.

This information also comes after finishing Glory of the Ulduar Raider last night with a "One Light in the Darkness" Yogg-10 kill. We also got our first night in on Algalon after also finishing Firefighter this week -- way harder than Yogg with only 1 keeper. First impressions? Algalon hits like a truck. The first pull, despite seeing videos, our mt wasn't ready for him to start combat while our holy pally was dropping a heal as he came out, can you guess what happened next? "Holy Pally gets crit for 46k, 26k overkill." Well, that was a fun main hand crit. Apparently this guy hits for around 18k main hand, 12-15k offhand. Yea, he dual wields, and he hits hard and fast, and kills with less mercy than the 80's the farm STV and Tarren Mill.

Plans for those posts I keep promising are in the works -- just need a free weekend so I have a couple of hours to commit. Later tonight I should be updating this is a sweet new snapshot of my flying around in Dal on my rusted protodrake -- "Everyone come see how good I look." It looks way better than my Naxx protodrake, which I was getting sick of, I even started flying on some of the Sarth 3d drops even though they are 30% slower. It never hurts to look good while you kick ass and take names (sometimes I forget to take names).

So the as the excitement builds up for me as I approach tonight, is there anyone else that is still excited to get back into Ulduar? I know progression keeps things going, and I think part of my being so excited has to deal with hanging out with Algalon while he bitch-slaps me back into the antechamber and tells me how I'm not worthy or something.

B Rab

Sportin E-Peen

Last night's raid was ballin'. We were still working solely on "Heroic: Three Lights in the Darkness" for our holy paly's legendary (25-Yogg without 1 keeper for those who aren't on top of the achievements -- we left Mimiron up top to play with himself and watch from above). We got this taken care of after about an hour, grats on nerfed content right? Thanks anyway, we aren't Ensidia or S.T.A.R.S, our raids aren't always optimal and some of us are carrying some dead weight for now. Anyway, it was an exciting day, and apparently the glyph of holy light can also proc the shields, although that only makes a shield that absorbs about 200 on everyone, it looks really sweet -- time for some people to drop the graphics down though probably.

With our new legendary we walked over to Mim in our 10 man hard mode group. We showed him our legendary and he just shot epic lootz right out of his ass and cowered in a corner. It was awesome. All we need now is to do "One Light in the Darkness" on 10 man (which we have heard is easy, we do manage the speed kill every week on this fight with our group). The plan is to only bring down Hodir I believe? Maybe it was Thorim. It's whichever one throws the killing blow on the spawned adds, and I have been to busy to do more than show up in the way of research lately.

Anyway, we are running back in tonight so we can have fun wiping for our hour this week on Algalon and get that last achievement required for the drake finished. I'm sick of looking at the Naxx one, its time for a new coat of paint. I really wish once I had a 310% speed mount, all of my old ones worked that way. I'd rather be on top of my Sarth 10/25 3d mounts than a proto drake -- but oh well.

I'm hoping this week leads to me getting things done that I am working on for work, and getting some free time to get back into reading the forums and such. All these trips around the country have been wearing me and my liver out. I'm out of the office a few days again dealing with some trainings to lead and some local activities I have to attend to share that which is my brilliant genius outside of WoW.

I still have high hopes for the gear lists , although that might be a post I have to write from home so I can do gear links and research a little easier than trying to find stuff I can look through a filter with. Also, there should be an inc resto shaman discussion and a post about my feelings on changes to shaman in 3.2 (some good, some bad -- like always right?).

Maybe this week I'll roll a hunter and /cast Hunter's Mark, /cast Aimed Shot at the boss, and figure out who I can Misdirect his aggro to. Probably a clothy...

B Rab

TGIF - Warning, It Gets Rando...

Well, I made it through another work week. I'm not sure how, but the reasoning is much less important than the success of the situation. With the busy second half of the week, I have yet to begin work on my promised "best of" which will be basically best-in-slot gear for different raid tiers. The way I will set it up I will make sure that you get enough hit (as a horde and assuming a spriest/boomkin) and then look at the amount of haste/sp you would have at that point.

Another thing I want to work on is somewhat of a resto shaman guide. I know that a couple people have voiced their frustrations to me about some different aspects of it. What you have to understand right now is that we are better single target healers in a lot of situations, letting ancestral awakening heal someone else for part of the crit. Until I get around to it, there are some other guides to read like ensidia's mek. He and I seem to agree on the current situation resto shaman are in, and the fact that in patch 3.2, things aren't gonna put us in much of a different situation -- there are some good things and some bad. I think if I can send myself a copy of all the shaman patch notes from home I will work on getting out a positive/negative post on how they aren't actually fixing us (cue sarcastic,"Yay, 12.5 yards on chain heal..." -- This isn't really going to fix much at all, I was looking for at least 15 since so many fights in Ulduar require spreading out so much)

In guild news: We had probably one of the worst ever nights of raiding, half of which I'm glad I didn't participate in. One of our tanks had work till 10, so we weren't getting back into Yogg-1 until he got back on. To keep people online, as officers we decided to take requests on old 25 man runs -- well some people did anyway, I have my limits. First we did a 25-VOA which took all of 5 min even with only 20 people in the raid and one of those afk at the entrance. So, to keep people on for later, we asked what people would like to do -- Maly-25 or 3d-sarth-25 were the continual answers. The deciding votes went to Maly-25 and I went afk, cause I hate maly. It doesn't matter how good your gear is in phase 3, when you forget how to do the fight things get fail. Luckily, I was playing cod4 and had vent on my speakers. It sounded like the worst thing ever. It eventually started to piss off our mt that people either couldn't remember or didn't know how to do things so he made the decision to roll over to a sarth 3d. This I was up for, it's easy and people still need Illustration and the Pennant Cloak. I was flying over when everyone else was inside when someone pulled the left side group onto the group while the mt was getting a drink. Needless to say, all the frustration from Maly-25 boiled over and we just sat and waited until our tank got back from work.

Now, I don't know if all this fail led to all the fail attempts at yogg, but it was possibly the worst I'd ever seen it. We only made it to phase 3 once in 2hrs -- granted, we called for a lot of wipes early that we could have made it there, but that means out of about 12-15 attempts, we only had one good p2. Embarrassing for a group of people who come in and one shot yogg most of the time. The worst part is Sunday is our weak attendance night, and normally a weaker group, so our holy pally is worried about seeing his legendary this week. We even have tried enticing people saying that when this is over, we can just go for hardmodes... Who knows when it will be over though I suppose.

That seems like a lot of qq and hate, so I'm gonna pick it up by talking about how awesome I am. If interrupting the shadow volley on yogg was a competition, it still wouldn't be, I get the interrupts when the melee are on him, I get the interrupts as he goes/gets to Sara. Unfortunately, I think that my ability to interrupt has caused others with an interrupt to forget that there is something to use it on -- since I'm not always focused on every target (I know, what a nub right? Well, suck it, cuz I'm just only so good) some happen to go off when I'm not around, aka killing the adds on yogg, cuz, lets not forget that through all this interrupting, I'm the sickest ele shaman you might ever meet. I chuck lightning bolts from my hands, ass, and eyes. It looks weird at first, but you get used to it and the 5k I do while just running around shocking and slangin' that hate. Yea yea, you do more than that, well screw you, moving hurts me and my dps and thats all I do in p1, now relax before I take your mother out for a nice seafood dinner.

I feel myself getting a little silly, probably because as I'm writing this I am checking in for my flight back to where I went to school (U of Michigan, bring the boos you haters -- and if any of my fan base is from Ohio, well, nm they don't have internet there I don't think) for a little bit of golfing and a lot of partying. I might be getting to old for this, I'll know Monday when I come to work while it feels like someone shot my liver and punched me in the kidneys all weekend.

Enjoy your weekend, do something useful -- start getting the old school rep towards the insane or some new mounts, do a couple old world test towards your loremaster, run some bg's and pwn the people with less than 20k health (They are generally pve geared), or just sit on the bank sign in org (personal fav).

You know you're addicted to WoW when your microwave goes ding and you say, "GRATZ!!"
-B rab

Today was supposed to be a, "Sorry, no post, etc," day...

Last night we ran a quick "up to mim" 10 man Ulduar, our holy pally got a nice new shield while I am still stuck with this Naxx 10 crap. At least when he gets his legendary he won't look like such a scrub... On a side note, it's fun to know you can at least somewhat "bring the player, not the class" being as on fights we 2-heal, we use two holy pallys in these hard mode encounters. On 3T-Freya we switch our spriest to disc, but that's just his loss...

On a fun side, in getting our holy pally his shield, we had to get the 3min Hodir kill, which last week for some reason we couldn't do (missed it by 2 sec for the first time in a long, long time) -- I stood atop my high horse and proclaimed to the masses how they could all suck on these hybrid... well you get the point, I did 12.8k dps, I was proud, I think that's my new high on that fight where I normally hover around 11k. Anyway, the point was, even after missing it last week with all 10, this week 2 dps died to the first frozen blows (its tough to not move and get rid of biting cold, don't be so hard on them) and we still got it with around 20sec to spare -- Did bliz nerf his health without me paying attention?

Anyway, this was just supposed to be a short, no post today message since I am going to be out to a training and visiting some random places for work, at least I'm getting some OT in. Guess you got more than you bargained for and more than I was planning to give. I feel like a cheap whore, but hey, if you call it taxi cab money neither of us will get busted for prostitution so it's A OK!

Also, on a side note, when putting in a ticket, I always think it is best to ask for an RP GM, cause they are hilarious! The last one kicked his horse into a gallop with six guns a' blazin. Sweet.

B-Rab

Double Post Upon Request: The Elemental Shaman

Damn, still don't get used to the double post, it's only because someone posed a lengthy and thought out question, and I don't wanna program SAS at the moment so I spent some time drudging through an old post I was gonna post originally, and filling it out, so without further ado...

This is going to be a rather lengthy and wordy post, so I am going to leave the math out of it. Mostly because at my current job (and I don't really blog from home, too much other stuff to do) I can't see EJ, look at wowarmory, or run simulation stuff to figure out stat values. If you are interested in any of that, head over there, learn to love Binkenstein and his spreadsheet -- man is a freakin' genious and props on that. All his work makes sense to me when he's done, but until then I have no idea how he goes about figuring some things.

I got asked to write a blog about the one thing I actually know something about... pressing D (for me, that casts lightning bolt). But B-Rab, it can't be is simple as that can it? Well, no, but it's pretty darn close.

Overall, an elemental shaman is decently easy to play. The rotation is fairly simple depending on where you are with some stat values. There are some things to keep in mine though throughout this post:

Spec - There is the general cookie cutter spec of 57/14/0. This spec does have some room to play with. Since elemental shaman rarely have mana issues, and this includes even on hard mode General Vezax where we don't regenerate mana, you can move these points from convection (which reduced your mana cost by 2%/talent point, up to 10%) where ever you see fit. I prefer to spec 55/16/0, and move 2 points from convection into imp. ghost wolf. Why, is it useful? Not really, but I like to travel around in it a lot rather than mounting up. Plus, there are occasions when dungeons and raids are outside and it can help with mobility. Mostly though, its for shits and giggles. Since it turns out that each point in convection is actually worth an estimated 12 mp5 (if you want math, its on EJ), I prefer to go with 3 points in Unrelenting Storm and 3 points in Elemental Warding which is nice for Ulduar. 6% less inc. damage is always plus when we have one of the lower health pools, which leaves you with the same 55/16/0 build.

Get hit capped -- This can mean a lot of different things. You need a total of 17% hit rating to be capped. We gain 3% from talents which means you need to get to 14% (If you are silly and are alliance and are/or raiding with a squid, you can cut that down to 13%). Finally, if you are in a regular raid group and can depend on a an imp FF from a boomkin or you raid with a Spriest, you get another 3%. This means horde would need 11% (289 hit) or an alliance would need 10% (which I think is like 263 hit? I was just working backwards without an ability to grab actual values).

Pre-Ulduar gear is going to make getting hit capped a lot more difficult. While you are first starting out, run h vh over and over and over and over and over....well you get the point, run it 'till you the that hit trinket. It's a good start towards that cap and a decent on use for a blue that you can tie to elemental mastery. In Naxx10/25, there just aren't that many items with hit on them save for the bit on tier. Grab a dying curse asap. If you are still gearing up for getting into a Naxx 10/25 even, don't be afraid to nub it up just a tad -- save your emblems and buy the cloth belt. If you fill it with a +hit gem, thats 53 hit right there which sets you on your way. If you are still lacking quite a bit, you can even consider the off-hand with hit. Yes, you will look like a scrub shaman, but just blow 'em away with the deeps. Normally, our best hit gear will come from cloth items -- if you are in a guild that lets you roll on them, kudos to you, I get them after every mage/spriest/lock gets them, which means neva, cause we don't farm old content too often and by the time that opportunity comes around better stuff has come along (think Maly's chest and legs with all that luscious hit...). Ok, I'm sure we all understand the value of being hitcapped, and it gets easier to get there as gear improves, so enough about that.

After you are hit capped, the best stat for you to go after is spellpower. You will generally gem for it over everything else ignoring most socket bonuses (there are exceptions, but they are few, like the amount of people able to still read this wall of text). Your stats importance will always go SP > Haste > Crit (This is due to haste effecting all spells -- it lowers your gcd for flame shock -- where crit for most people will only effect the initial hit of flame shock and your lightning bolts/chain lightning. With the T8 2/4pc bonuses, even though they are both related to crit, haste is still a more desirable stat.). The only meta is the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (21crit, 3% crit dmg)-- don't use anything else -- fill two random pieces with a couple Glowing Twilight Opals (9sp, 12stam) to activate it (get socket bonuses out of your gear that are the best for these). Don't worry about other purple gems, spirit doesn't help us, we don't need mp5, and bosses don't have resistences that you can use spell penetration to get through. The stam is always nice.

There are pretty much a certain set of major glyphs to use, while only 1 minor is as important:

1. Glyph of Lightning Bolt - cause 4% more damage on approximately 65% of you damage is balling
2. Glyph of Flame Shock - You don't want to be casting flame shock after after Lava Burst consumes it, plus it extends it so you can fit 2 lava bursts inside of the flameshock dot portion.
3. Glyph of Totem of Wraith - There is math done here to prove that this is superior to the Glyph of Lava until you reach around 2500 spellpower unbuffed This means no totems, no buffs, no flametoungue, no flasks, nothin. This is achievable with the current gear out, but this glyph probably wont be used until T9 if those set bonuses remain the same.

Minor Glyphs: The only minor glyph I feel is somewhat necessary is the Glyph of Water Shield, the extra orb will save you the worry of refreshing it as often (you know, cause when it falls off thats the first thing we worry about as elemental shaman with our mana problems). I just generally refresh it when I am running around. Even that isn't a very big deal. The others are just about your personal flavoring -- personally I'm all about the Jesus ability to water walk for free, and I like to not worry about hearths so I have astrall recall. If you like to PVP the ghost wolf glyph might be more suited for you. The minor to remove the knockback on thunderstorm would also be ok if you like to see big number in Naxx without pissing off too many people when you macro thunderstorm to yell, "Thunder****!!!" If you PVP a lot though I wouldn't recommend keeping it in there since the knockback and be both fun and useful -- eventually people will learn not to be near the cliff at LM (also great for seperating a healer and his dps in arenas like the sewers...

Quick set bonuses: T7 2/4pc - 0/~30dps T8 2/4pc - ~70/120-140dps increase

You can quickly see that when you are moving from Naxx25 -> Ulduar you can quickly break set bonuses, sometimes without even forming the new t8 set bonus.

The Rotation: Flame Shock (FS), Chain Lightning (CL) Lava Burst (LvB) -- There are really two spots to be at in this rotation if you have at least some of the crafted epics since haste is quite abundant on most of our gear. The current premier rotation would be when you are above 520 haste or so. What you are looking for is a sub-1.6s lightning bolt (lb) cast. With this amount of haste you can fit 5 lb's in between lava bursts which means your rotation should be as follows: FS-LvB-LBx5-LvB-LBx4 and then repeat. You open with the FS-LvB to get elemental oath proc'd asap to grant everyone that 5% crit, and also to proc clear casting for yourself which increases the damage of the next 2 spells by 10%.

If you are sub 500 haste, your rotation will depend on how far below that your haste is. If you are around 400 or higher and can keep it up, your rotation will generally be: FS-LvB-CL-LBx4-LvB-LBx4 and then repeat. The chain lightning would just save you those few tenths of a second you weren't shaving off with haste and could possibly run you over your LvB CD but shouldn't. If you are below that, many people will do a FS-LvB-CL-LBx3-CL-LvB-LvBx3-CL or something similar, or even just cast CL whenever it's off CD. If you get a few crafted pieces though, even as nearly fresh 80 you should hopefully be past this mark.

On trash, you just want to throw out some CL and twiddle your thumbs -- if you get brave you can run in and drop a magma, depends on how ambitious your feeling. Remember -- you're here to buff, not actually dps... just kidding, you can dps too, pretty well actually.

Ok, so that's specs, gemming, glyphs, stats, and rotations. I'm going to work on an ideal gear set using just OS/maly/naxx10, just T7 (including 10/25), and possibly one for someone without raiding. That's a pretty big goal at the moment though, since all weekend I will be back in my old stomping grounds for a golf tournament (I'm not good, I go for the drinking and fun).

Close, But No Cigar

This isn't a post about some sort of mischievous Bill Clinton news, instead, it deals with our attempts at getting our hands on a server 2nd legendary (Yes, our server is bad, its ranked reaallllly low, and only 3 guilds I think total have downed Yogg-25 with no keepers).

So, losing 1 of your lights really sucks. No wonder the S.T.A.R.S strategy made me sick to read (Their stacking classes made me think about grabbing buffs from pallies outside raids...). Anyway, I can't imagine not having any helpers in that situation. Yogg has become a trivialized encounter for our guild but this changed everything. We decided, based on our knowledge of what each keeper helped us with, that we would go without the help of Mimiron. He's an annoying guy anyway, doesn't look very cool, and tries to touch me inappropriately almost every raid -- he's gone, I can breath a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, he speeds you up, and slows casting time on debuffs in p2. Outside p2 went from a cakewalk, to terrible. We got through it every time, although after a couple hours we only had a few decent attempts. Our first attempt may have actually been the best of the night, had it not been for the silences he does in p3 we probably would have been done there.

I'm not sure if this is because we ran through Ulduar-25 in about 2-2.5 hrs searching for fragments like rats looking for food. We needed 2 more to start the night, and it dropped off of our final kill -- no, not General, we had left up Razorscale and Ignis to move quicker and only got 1 in the rest of the place. After General, we can back and killed Razorscale, no frag, this is where our Pally started to get nervous about waiting another week. Walk across to Ignis, and success! Needless to say, he was excited.

Anyway, back to my last connected thought, our first attempt may very well have been our best. I think we all forgot about the silence, which means no taunts or death grips off that holy pally running with righteous fury on to pull adds...that doesn't work well when a mob that hits real hard at full health comes swingin' away and someone -- the sword and board technique is less than impressive when you are holy apparently...

Anyway, we spent a couple hours going after it, even staying an extra hour, which explains any mistakes I might have in this post today since I'm exhausted at work -- hot damn, I don't mind 6 hrs of sleep, but I ended up with about 4 and that doesn't work very well for me. We have plans to go back Thursday with better results coming soon hopefully -- and you know there is an incoming screenshot of this thing when it drops, from the front and back (gotta show off someone rockin' that Naxx10 shield with a legen--wait for it--dary.

Heartbreaker

Shame on all of you that thought of XT hardmode, I'm actually talking about Mariah Carey:

"Heartbreaker, you got the best of me, but I just keep on coming back incessantly. Oh why, did you have to run your game on me, I should have known right from the start you'd go and break my heart"

Ok, so maybe not, I'm pretty sure that song really annoyed me, but I can hardly even remember how it goes, I had to look up the lyrics on Google, I promise. Just one of those random thoughts when you type/say something and some memory skitters across your neocortex (whatever that is).

Hardmode XT, or Heartbreaker, might be one of the first ones you can complete at a guild. It is a healing intensive fight compared to regular mode, but aren't all hardmodes? To start hardmode, you must put out the dps necessary to kill the heart during a heart phase. On 10 man, you can get by without lust (On a side note, earned Who Needs A Lust the other night on Thorim, look it up, its fun) due to the low hp and save it for later. In 25-man, you will probably have to pop lust to be able to kill the heart.

As soon as the heart is dead, kill as many adds as possible, with a focus on bombots and the Shredder's. If you tank him in between two piles on either the east or west side, you know that you will only get adds from the far pile and you can even keep XT from regaining all of her health back -- Can I all a robot a girl? She has a girl's voice...

When you are in hardmode there are some new effects on old abilities:

1. Light Bomb - Does slightly more damage than on regular mode. Releases a charge out of whoever is the light bomb which much be killed as soon as possible. Kiting it is a good idea by shifting aggro between ranged dps, as getting hit can crit and 1 shot you.


2. Gravity Bomb - Along with the original effects, this now does quite a bit more damage and when it goes off it drops a void zone wherever you are standing. If you get this, just run it away from the raid staying within range of heals.


3. Tantrum - Same idea here, it just hits for a lot more damage (I believe 120% over the same amount of time as non-Hard mode), timers are nice to use through it to reduce raid damage if you have one.
   

Range in this fight will spend much of their time going after that dastardly spark that spawns from the light bomb -- like chasing the Golden Snitch, except if it catches you, it hurts -- a lot. There are no more heart phases so you won't get increased dps anymore on XT which puts you a lot closer to any enrage, make sure you dps are using cool downs as often as possible. (On a side note, the first time we ever walked into Ulduar, we killed XT by not dpsing the heart because we thought it would start hard mode and nearly hit the enrage -- man were we nubs...)

As soon as I can find a page at work that I can view the updated patch notes without this blocker, I will right an overview and inform you why its leaving a bad taste in my mouth every time I look at shamans, especially resto -- short side of it is that what I rolled my shaman for, I can't do, which was raid heal. More on that another day though.

Flame Leviation - 4T

I thought I might start an installment of hard mode guides, mostly for 10 man, but also for any 25 mans I have experience with as well. We are currently just working on Firefighter in 10 man for a new 310% speed mount.

10 Man

The best part of 4T FL is that you have significant less trash to clear, always a plus on a fight, which after having done it on 10 and 25 man on at least 1 character every week since Ulduar was released has become at least an annoyance.

Knock down the towers along your way that spawn adds. For trash, you can take whatever you want, but keep in mind in the end you are going to want to use 2 siege engines, 2 demo's, and 1 bike -- but that only adds up to 9 people right? We'll, I'm getting to that, but for now just have the extra person grab a bike and ride to FL.

The general strategy here is to keep the demo's pyrite stack rolling (Keeping those 2 stacks rolling does an insane amount of damage). Of course, there are problems here -- ice blocks, Freya's adds, fire rings, and demo's being targeted. At least there is no longer a slowing debuff, it used to be worse! And lets not forget that he used to have more health.

Ok, so you are sitting there looking at the last bit of trash before FL enters the arena and you start the encounter. You will want to pull them individually, not at all at once, the goal being to leave one big guy up for now so FL doesn't engage. When you get there, gunners with anti air guns need to start filling the area with pyrite barrels. During this stage, drop the your boy out of the extra bike (someone you are comfortable with going onto FL to cause an overload (I'm going to assume you know how to do this, mostly because I'm already an ass -- pop cool downs, blow bloodlust/heroism, whatev), generally ranged dps on 10 man since damage isn't as intense as on 25 man) and have a demo passenger (whoever else is going up) load themselves to be shot out. The person who dropped the bike is going to become that demo's new passenger.

Time for some positioning: We want to have a demo on each side by where the pyrite barrels are hopefully collecting. See pic at the top, since I'm a nub to blogging and can't figure out how to pull it down here.

Ok, now that the area is littered with pyrite, and one demo has someone loaded in the man cannon, its time to finish off the last of the trash. As soon as FL comes out and targets someone the man cannon should be shot, launching the person onto FL to begin work on an overload. Make sure you are close enough, I've been shot short plenty of times. I can assure you its not funny after the 3rd or 4th time. Also, make sure FL has someone targeted or else the chain wont pull the person shot on top of him.

So now, one person is on top, working on an overload. The goal is for the demo's to get there stacks to 10 asap with the pyrite while their passengers grab pyrite to keep the demo's full and continually shoot more down. Gunners in the siege engines should be using the cannon on any adds that show up, or else shooting down pyrite. I don't know if you're getting this, but its all about the rolling pyrite, everything else is insignificant in comparison. The bike's only job in this is to throw down oil to help keep add's kited and to pick up the person who causes an overload. There is no dropping of tar in front of FL like the days of old, mostly because normally the bike ends up taking more damage then any it will cause.

Ok, you got an overload, now comes one of the tricky parts. One of the demo's will be throwing a passenger up eventually, until he is ready, the bike needs to pick the person coming off of FL, and hold onto him. This part doesn't necessarily require verbal communication, but it would help if you quiet bastards would talk in vent! Since you can't shoot pyrite with a passenger loaded into a demo, the demo driver is going to have to shoot pyrite as he comes back online, then his passenger will load and get shot up immediately so his stack doesn't stop rolling. The bike passenger will hope into the demo without a passenger now. That's all there is to the tricky switch.

Oh, except that you have to do this with Freya's adds up and running around, Hodir's Ice Beams, and the fire ring that does a decent amount of damage if you go into/through it. If you can keep this rotation up, and your stacks rolling, the encounter takes almost no time at all.

Note to demo drivers: You are eventually going to get targeted, the best way to handle this is to shoot your pyrite, turn around and sprint, turn back and cast pyrite quickly, then drive away from him again as soon as you do. Before your stack falls off he should be done kiting you and moved on like a sucka. Make sure your passenger knows whats going on.

Alright, since this is becoming a wall of text very quickly, I'm just going to say that the 25 man version is very similar, taking all the demo's possible. You'll need 3-4 bikes, depending on your raid composition; 2 ranged + a hybrid to heal in case things head south can take down all 4 turrets quickly, otherwise, you can send up 4, hopefully still with a hybrid who can throw heals, and take 4 bikes.

If we want more of a guide for 25 man, someone let me know and I can work one up.

Friday Funnies? We'll see

I'm thinkin' just a short post about something I find entertaining. Now if I can only think of something entertaining... Maybe I'll drift off about our raid last night until something strikes my fancy/funny bone.

Oh, I have a question for you. Last night we were downing Yogg-25, which we have 1 or 2 shotted for the last 4 weeks or so, and we just couldn't down him. In phase 1, one of our warlocks kept pulling agro on the adds (since he's affliction). Now, we have told him to relax on dots before, just shadowbolt/drain soul, whatever, just don't pull agro. Well, after the 3rd time it happened, we said goodbye and brought someone new in. Got it that next attempt. So, does that seem fair in your eyes? It sucks since this warlock has been faithful for a long time, but he knows the fight and what he shouldn't be doing. What are your thoughts?

Oh here's something I find, at least personally, very amusing. One of our holly pallys will be getting the legendary next week, giving we can get 2 shards on the way to Yogg, what's fo funny about that? It's funny because he is sporting the same shield as I am, that Naxx 10 bs off of Maexxna (Aegis of Damnation). Our guild cleared naxx 25 a little more than 20 times, never seen a Voice of Reason once. In fact, as a guild, we have only ever seen 4 spell power shield drops -- 2 Aegis of Damnations, 1 Shield of Assimilation, and a Pulsing Spellshield from XT. There are 3 of us who want spell power shields in our core 25 man runs, and 2 of us still have the Aegis of Damnation... Our guild apparently has bad luck with that kinda of stuff. Is there anything you have been looking for still for several runs (its an ok to QQ!?)? I know back in naxx 25, all we got was the gun and the axe for the most part, never saw Calamaty's Grasp either, wierd how that stuff happens. Anyway -- I strayed away from my point -- I think it's funny that someone will have a legendary weapon, and a Naxx 10 shield... maybe I'm alone in that.

My mind has pretty much gone blank at the moment while I sit here chatting away with a friend who moved to Japan (Not Ixo, although that would be sweet). All I can really think about is how I'm excited for It's Always Sunny to come back in the fall.

Hmm... the classic fallback -- hopefully this is familiar to you and not a bunch of jibberish.
“Baba Booey! Baba Booey! Howard Stern's penis! Baba Booey! Baba Booey!”

Double Post Day? It's not gonna be a tradition

Alright, I know I already posted something today, but I wrote that I wrote yesterday when I was still unsure of how to take the new about the heirloom tome of flying. I'm sure by now you have all formulated your own opinions, jumped on your respective like it, love it, hate it bandwagons, and are good to go. Turns out that I'm no different.

Overall, I like the idea, it is necessary to already have an 80 to be able to purchase this heirloom. Now, personally, I have my last 3 or 4 alts on my main's server down in that 30-40 lets to some pee vee pee in STV (besides the lv 75 warlock). Oh wait, you don't get any honor when you're 80 there? Wierd, with all the alliance camping that area I thought there must be some sweet rewards.

So am I going to ever buy this heirloom tome? No, probably not. I think when I get my 4th 80 I will have more than enough work on my hands than the amount of time I have to play WoW. Do I think its a good idea? Well, I could be elitist and say everyone should go through all the trouble I went through with each of my characters, or at least the second 2 times I leveled through Northrend on my DK and rogue, but I just don't feel that way. I wish I would have had it, but I understand why we didn't. The one plus is that, this time, on my lock, I don't need questhelper, I don't need to look up anything, or even read quests -- I know where that shit is, I know it like the back of my hand (insert 90's sitcom joke -- "Hey, what's that on my hand?!").

So I say congrats to those of you who are months behind in leveling alts, taking your precious time, and reaping the rewards as blizz nerfs not only raid content, but also leveling content. JK! See, I could pretend to have that attitude, but I'm all for anything that makes leveling quicker. I'd be ok if they let me start at 79 with nothing explored, you need to get enough xp in that last level that you could learn what ever you needed to know about that class.

Enjoy the double post... It will only happen randomly

Along with the upcoming hard mode guides, I think I might have a conversation with myself about how I feel about the current state of resto shaman and the upcoming changes and what they will do for us.

I forgot until just now, then kids started acting out again last night, you know anal this, anal that, chuck norris is your mom and stuff, so I'll just share a tidbit so you can all feel my pain, although this one isn't as bad...

Chuck Norris.. the man who destroyed the periodic table, because only he recognizes the element of surprise.

Edit: It's the second post of the day, but it seems to have pushed back the rest of the posts a day

The Ideas Keep Rolling

I was considering some sort of epic math post, showing the best rotations, glyphs, totems, etc. for an elemental shaman. Then I thought about it, started work on it, and now I think I'm scrapping it. At least for now, unless someone expresses some interest. Maybe even just a simple one if I decide to find some time at home to look up links over to EJ, then I won't even have to do any of my old math. Of course, that hinges on how quickly we finish 25 man Ulduar and our 10 man hard modes Ulduar whichever week that comes up.

Since I'm unsure of where exactly I want to go with this blog, I am still starting random posts and leaving them during random breaks in the work day. I wonder sometimes if they are even appropriate, or if they have been run into the ground, all sorts of things like this. Hopefully, that doesn't happen, and instead you enjoy a different viewpoint.

So, just some general thoughts about what's coming up in 3.2, and what people are up to maybe? What are you doing in the game right now? Are you making preparations for anything?
I know personally, I have abandened almost all of my alts for the time being, save for my level 75 warlock who I somehow just lost the passion to level a few weeks ago. I started him during one of those close to burnout phases. Stress as an officer will do that to you, and like so many others, I rolled an unknown alt that I practically powerleved with some heirloom stuff. I'm not sure exactly how long it took me, but I know I raced to Northrend within 2 weeks time. It was quite peaceful really, like fishing, but less annoying.

There was just one problem, just as when I go fishing, I was down in the officers channel on vent chatting away without thinking about the fact that I wasn't online that anyone knew of. Well, one thing obviously led to another, and my alt had been found, and at that moment the fun successfully was executed from that character. I think I was actually going to enjoy being unguilded and working on starting a new character from scratch. Now what I'm left with is a level 75 warlock sitting in moaki harbor with 3 full bars of rested. I logged in tuesday night, switched specs to destro, and did a couple quests before raid, it's possible the entertainment might be back... only time will tell. Maybe it's time to wait until earlier flying mounts, new heirloom items, and faster reg mounts to get back into leveling. On that same notion, the couple other level 30-40s will have to wait.

I think this post is just turning into a general to know me a little bit, so I'm going to roll with that. If you saw my UI, you saw my main Rabidkoala (I'm not much on RP names, more like, ridiculous names -- don't let that lead you to think I'm 12, I'm totally 13/f/cali like all the other female belfs!). Anyway, I still want to do some work on the UI, I don't know if I'm ever satisfied. I might go back to xperl, or I might just go try something new altogether. I haven't found the perfect UI yet, but its fun seeing what people's mods have created. I may have a masters in statistics, but programming WoW addons is over my head. For now. Maybe someday I'll look into it, but it seems doubtful, I'll probably stick with appreciating other people's work. Anyway, I have a couple other 80's -- My TBC main was the second character I got to 80, an undead rogue named Foodstamps, not to be confused with the jerk mage Foodstamp who came along after me... Anyway, main's switched since I liked healing, then our guild needed caster dps, not heals, so I was forced into elemental, and been there loving it ever since.

I also have a lol DK like everyone else. At least I use mine for tanking if that means anything. I think the only reason I even made it to 80 was because of how fun it was to pull around 6-8 mobs and kill them with full health at the end. It was ridiculous! If I didn't have so much random naxx 25 gear and stuff like that, I would consider rerolling him just to go through all the again, plus the starting area is amazing.

Upcoming plans: Hardmode guides, including FL+4, XT, Thorim, Hodir, 3 Tree Freya, General, and hopefully Firefighter on Mimiron soon (need to finish Firefighter to learn more about it...)

That looks nice...

I figured one thing a lot of people look for when playing is a way to clean up their UI. There is nothing wrong with playing with the original UI, clicking on your spells, and keyboard turning for some people. If that's what you like, more power to you, WoW is just a game and the only thing matters is that you are enjoying it.

In my opinion though, no matter how well you can click, you will see an improvement, no matter which of the 3 roles you are currently fillings, be it dps, healing, or a tank, with an efficient use of key bindings.

I get a lot of questions while playing about my keybindings, and these are here just in case you can't make them out in the screen shot. Keep in mind, these are merely my suggestions.

3 Quick Rules:

1) Stop keyboard turning. The only thing you will possible need anymore is a key binding to go forward, and 2 to strafe. You can keep these at q w e, move them to a s d, wherever is comfortable. The point of this is to get you from using a and d to turn, which is slow to do and even more painful to watch. Unless its in arena, and you're melee dps on someone doing it. Right click your mouse and rotate, its tough at first, but the benefits are tremendous.

2) Keep everything home. If you're hands are going to be by the asdw keys, don't put spells out of reach of them that you are going to be using. I wouldn't want to bind lightning bolt to 9, flame shock to 1, and lava burst to 5. I know that sounds silly, but you should have heard some of the ridiculous keybindings people told me about. I'm going to assume you stuck with q and e as strafe, clearing up A and D. A and D should be bound to the meat of your rotation, they are easily spammable now. Make use of the shift key, hitting shift-A or shift-D is just as easy. This should fill up almost any class' rotation. How many more keybindings you are going to need depends a lot on your class. I recommend not going past the 5 for any of those "oh shit" buttons, and then keeping it withing the t-f-c line. This may not seem like a lot of keybinds, but when you factor in the ability to shift- or ctrl- letters to binds, you shouldn't have any problem.

3) If you have a mouse with buttons, use them. Just as hitting the A and D key are easy, using the buttons on the side of your mouse are easier. If you have them, make use of them. You're hand is going to be on it anyway.

Addons Used:
SpartanUI - Gives the general layout
Bartender - The bars inside SpartanUI (comes with SpartanUI but doesn't need to be used)
Grid + Grid Quickhealth (Raid frames + Quick Health grabs health updates from the combat log rather then the ui for faster health updates)
Clique (For when healing gets lazy, although mouse over macros generally are superior)
Quartz (Cast bars and debuffs on a target)
Elkano's Buffbars (Self buffs and debuffs w/timers)
Miks SCT (I prefer it over the WoW standard text)
Omen (Necessity for anyone, at least some time of threat mod)
Recount (To feed your dps e-peen)

I have a couple other addons that I make use of but these are purely for daily things such as questhelper, auctioneer, and gatherer. On a side note, my omen pops up where my recount is during combat, and my recount is set to hide on combat. Are there addons you couldn't live without?

Edit: Also, just noticed that 2 of my bars are missing. Above Bar1, normally I keep a couple totem macros and some specific mouse bound totems in there along with some randomly used spells and my bar at the top of the screen which contains potions (speed, health, mana), food, and health stones for the F1-F5 keys, which are easy to hit since I play on a laptop... oh well.

Filling In...

Seems like it has been almost a mass exodus of people leaving the wow blogging world, of those that around, only a handful are regular updaters. This isn't to knock down those that are, I am happy you are still around and enjoy reading every one of you. My largest complaint was the lack of a regular shaman perspective for me to find while I'm sitting at work, someone to bounce ideas off. Hopefully, someone else has been looking for that so I don't just post complete ramblings here every day to amuse only myself, although that's the most likely outcome of this I'm sure.

This blog is going to be solely focused on wow, that much I can guarantee. The topics might be somewhat random depending on whats going on or what I am currently working on, but I like to think that they will be mostly based on my current main, my level 80 ele shaman (I have dual specs into resto pvp or pve most of the time even though I'm terribad at pvp, but occasionally I'll throw on a couple axes and go to town as enhance).

I'm hoping what eventually comes through here is my sense of humor, some guides for Ulduar on 10 man hard modes (our 25 group may not quite be up to par for this) from a resto or ele shaman perspective, and other random nonsense that will hopefully at least entertain you.

"Paper is fine, nerf rock." - Scissors