Moving in Stereo

"Its so tough to get up
Its so tough
Its so tough to live up
Its so tough on you"



Man, that's exactly how I feel going to work at my internship for these last 7 days I have. I never thought I would be so excited to go back to Grad School and start teaching again. Statistics before you ask. Anyway, they have pretty much run out of project for me to work on here besides my final report that I am touching up to hand over -- at least it's supposedly confidential, although maybe one day when it gets published I'll throw in a link, and you can all see just how sweet I am at other stuff besides just WoW.

Some quick and easy upgrades:

Elemental shaman, if you find yourself still using the original badge trinket (Yeah, I was since it was either that or dying curse when I'm already 25hit over the cap without gems or socket bonuses), go do the reg ToC. It's supa easy and plus it drops an equivelant haste trinket. I ran some RAWR models from Binkenstein's blog over at EJ (sorry no links since I'm at work and it's blocked), who I think is probably one of the smartest Ele Shaman theorycrafters I've found so far. It was around a 30-40 dps increase change between the trinkets. Plus if you are still using this on all those mobile fights in Ulduar, switching it out gets your casts off faster between movement phases.

Resto shaman, there is also a nice int trinket from reg ToC. The best part -- a chance to return mana upon spellcast. These are my favorite kinds of trinkets. Unfortunatly, I have yet to grab it, it dropped 3 times in a row when we were farming it for getting someone soe other piece of gear that I can't remember for the life of me. Why didn't I get it? I had dc'd during the previous boss and continued to have internet problems all night. I kept getting text messages that it had dropped every time, those jerks.

Obviously, there are some other sweet upgrades if you haven't gotten to spend a lot of time in Ulduar for every class. The did pretty well on loot tables for covering everyone with at least some stuff, just remember only the reg mode drops the trinkets.

T9 gear changes:
For starters, 2pc T8 + 4pc T8 > 2pc T9 + 2pc T8, so first switch that off piece you aren't wearing keeping in mind there is a hit redistribution between pieces of T8 and T9, and a lot more of it on each piece. To make up for losing the 4pc T8 bonus, you need to make up a total of around 140-150dps that the electrocuted dot was ticking for. It's very unlikely that 2 pieces will do this with the new bonuses or stats.

The new 4pc T9 is a very impressive set bonus, with early estimations of around 250dps being added. The increase dmg value of lava burst by 20% means that we will be switching from the Glyph of the Totem of Wraith back to the Glyph of Lava. The new Totem (200 haste proc chance on casting lb) will be better than the Thunderfall Totem (215 additional base dmg to lava burst).

Finally, a replacement to the Totem of Hex! The new emblem of triumph (I always type badge and then have to delete it) trinket appears to be a solid upgrade with near 100% up time. I'm currently waiting for some more saps to go out and purchase it before I do, but it seems like it will be a very good upgrade.

Tonight the plan is to finish 25 Ulduar and do the Trial of the Crusader or Champion, whichever the raid is, on 25. Pretty impressive being as we only had about 10 of our core raiders left. The three of us that were strongly considering transferring instead stepped up big time and have things going in the right direction for now, should be a good night!

For all my experience, I never knew there was a smiley face under Kara until the other day. Don't know about it? Find it and check it out!

B Rab