Playing Catch-Up

So, I may have gotten slightly ahead of myself when I decided to state I was going to post more, but here is another attempt at such things...

One a personal note, Nef was put down a couple weeks ago, and surprisingly was not too bad. Here is an uber-awful video where I do some end of the key s-key allstar movements...

Learn more at the WoW Wiki

Now, since I always said this was more of an advice/theorycrafting blog, here we go...

Resto:

Thanks to recent 15% buff to purification, most of our heals are now in a competitive/comparable spot healing wise (125/110 = 1.136, so a 13.6% increase in healing) I could still complain about our coefficients lacking for most heals, especially as we progress further into the expansion. The buff to the coefficient of greater heal along with its base healing will probably keep that competitive.

10 Man Notes

My experience in this expansion has been solely in 10 man encounters, which is an entirely different monster than 25's in terms of possible spec and healing spell usage.

Now that we are working on heroics and I know the fights quite a bit better, I can see my healing percentages leveling off to more mana friendly levels.

4 pc T10 is a blessing, but also not really. It is wonderful in that it is a free 540 spirit, and if you look at your uptime, no matter your role, it should have an uptime of 90%+, but sadly does not stack with mana tide. It really is just a little extra "free" spirit since you are getting it for doing nothing different.

It is nice to know that we can seamlessly, for the most part, switch between raid and tank healing without a spec change.

Tank healing actually allows a lot of use of our mana efficient heals for the most part, I spent a lot of my time tank healing casting riptide, unleash elements, and healing wave, with the occasional greater healing wave. It is useful to note that we have a deadspot in our rotations where we will generally be casting a 3rd heal before our tidal waves buff comes back up; this spot can be filled with a healing surge (a better heal than greater without tidal waves up) or a healing wave depending on what type of damage you are looking at, or you can just sit and twidle your thumbs. People with telluric currents still specced could also consider a lightning bolt for some free mana here.

Raid healing is slightly more complicated on 10 man than, what I hear, 25. The general fight has people spread out so much so that your chain heal and healing rain become much less effective, and almost turns us into the "pally raid healer" of yesteryore, where we play wack-a-mole. Still, there are many opportunities during group phases in the current tier that allow you to get your ample fill of chain heals and healing rains in.

Talents

Stop talking about taking focused insight, it is at best a pvp talent, and does not reduce the cost of your heals. It reduces them by 75% of the shock's cost, for 30% more healing, and takes a gcd +25% of the shocks costs, which are quite expensive these days. There are things where this seems useful (while the buff is up, healing rain will receive this bonus until you cast a direct healing spell, using it), but it is not worth the points.

Telluric currents is something I would have swore by 2 months ago, I have long specced back out of it and no longer care. I think this is something that is great when you are clearing bosses which have a burn phase with low damage, and if you don't care about having a second resto PVE spec, I would suggest using it, but I doubt many of us have that opportunity, and although the mana return is excellent, my healing wave has moved into near mana neutral. I haven't had a fight since our healing was boosted that made we wish for this talent back to get some mana back. If you take it, drop points out the cheaper dispell, or extra healing on your earth shielded target, not movement speed. I don't know if you've noticed yet, but there is a lot of positional requirements to adhere to in the raiding environment, and you are getting a very nice boost over the boots enchant.

Ok, so I'm out of time for my break, since this post comes during some down time while I was waiting for sql code to pull out a few million records, time to get back to work.

I will try and do some at least better/more informative information soon, I promises it!

-B Rab

ps - unleash elements -> cast a heal and queue riptide, is appears the bug where the heal and riptide both get boosted is still not fixed...

pss - I like crit, it works as a mana regen tool. Haste is still an excellent way to increase throughput if you can afford it, and mastery is less lackluster than it was, but you wont catch me gemming or reforging to it

Time to get it going again...

I wonder how many people were afflicted with the obviously very contagious, week-long disease that happened in December of 2010. Another one for the record books, I'm sure, I know I came down with it.

Conditions? Chronic leveling which lead to chronic wiping in heroics, followed by an intense desire to drink the pain away...

People wanted me to do work during that week, but I just replied with a...



... and kept on playing.


The guild is back up and raiding, but sadly the only thing keeping me in touch with the elemental side of being a shaman is the new shaman we have in guild who will take some work. To get things done, I have gone to spamming chain heals, healing surges, and healing rain...



Now that I am a goblin (*cry*) instead of a troll, I went female, so this song is only more appropriate. I have strongly considered making a macro that yells "She's my kind of rain!" to encourage people to flock to it. So far though, that's not necessary as a fellow country music (Yeah, I'm sure most of you are not) lover keeps yelling it over vent when I do it. It's not annoying...yet...

Shaman healing is apparently in the appropriate spot right now, which is sadly equivalent to druids, and under holy paladins and holy priests everywhere. At least disc seems to have no place in a raid, so we have that going for us, at least until the buffs to it. [Ed: This seems maybe too mean, sorry, I only want to imply that they seem to be doing the least for similar gear/skill levels]

Luckily, in 4.0.6, which I have mixed emotions about, we will be able to heal appropriately. I can put greater healing wave back into my healing arsenal, which is great, rather than spamming healing surge under the effect of tidal waves when someone needs heals. Unfortunately, I have also been pvping on a fotm ("Flavor of the Month") feral druid, and now they appear to be putting the serious hurt on them. Nerfing the bleed damage made complete sense to me, but for some reason taking away the ability to power shift out of snares seems odd. The iconic ability of a druid was the mobility this caused, and I think most people have learned to deal with this in some way or another over the last several years, so I am not sure why this is getting cut. Another interesting one is the removal of bloodlust type effects from arena. This is something I always thought was overpowered in arena, but it can be purged, so I figured that it was something that was evened out. The odd part of these ideas to me is the why now after so long?

Anyway, hopefully you can expect some new posts about resto gearing/speccing/glyphs in the near future. I know that there are several of these out there already if you search around on the web, or even in the armory. But I plan on either pointing people to good places for information or explaining any unique choices I may make, such as the necessity of telluric currents on many bosses (best two points I think I have ever spent).

Until then, the general strat remains the same for wow as it does for life...

Tank the jerk, kill him, heal the damage, and don't stand in shit...

B-Rab out

p.s. - Hey Blizzard, archeology is the biggest time-sink in the entire game, worse so than reps ever were, let me turn off types of digsites if I can only have 200 fragments in the near future. What am I supposed to do with 1300 fossil fragments? At least I got my trinket and ring, so it was semi-worth it.

[Ed: Update]
No disc-respect to disc priests! (It's a bad pun, sorry)

Holding Place

This post is basically a temporary placeholder that says, "Someday, I will continue to write valuable posts."

Sorry my loyal and faithful readers (there must be 1, somewhere?... No? Oh well) but work is busy pumping out stuff that has been put off for several years, so the Government doesn't have a giant hissyfit... have they seen what they take out of my paycheck? They should get about 1/100th of what I'm working on and be happy to get it...

My plan is to experience the leveling of a mage, although with all the cool sounding quests for low levels, it almost seems like a good idea to wait, guess I will have to delete my mid 30's hunter to start this mage, and that's ok, 'cause I didn't really enjoy managing a pet, this is probably why I don't like my warlock either. My imp is always like, "What should I do?" "I have no idea, attack my target... No, not the CC'd target, damn you...." Now all that lock does is make tailoring stuff, and hold my guild name until all the members come back for Cat.

Why does he have to hold the guild name? Well, because we reformed it on the Alliance side? Why did we do that? A challenge, on my server, the alliance side is near dead, and it was fun to be a part of the rare win in WG back when we were still all playing and decided to go. That's right, we did it for the challenge... in the end, people liked being their horde characters more, although I was pretty hot draenei with my pigtails. Yea, it went female for a little while, mostly cause I hate the way the Draenei dudes look, kinda like troll females...bleh.

Oh well, I'm off to kill two dwarves...

I mean, do some work...

-B Rab

Memories

I was talking with a friend this weekend when somehow this got brought up and made me think of how good it is now to be able to drop 4 totems with 1 button...

Here's the macro:

/castsequence reset=8 [combat] Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem

Yup, Totem Twisting, RIP

Oh, and rogues and fury warriors who begged for the above.... screw you

Another alt?

Well hello there from, uh, beautiful (not really) CT. I'm sorry if you live in Connecticut, your cost of living sucks, taxes suck, and traffic sucks. It's pretty much the worst of all worlds. It makes me sad that I will be back every 4-6 months, but at least I found a few places that have decent food. Luckily, some friends took the train from Manhatten and we went out on the town in SoNo, some people will know what that is, others can just imagine a po-dunk place that thinks its fun.

While I was on my trip here, I got a message from a guildy, asking about leveling up an alt for Cat since he wanted a priest... Now me, I'm a sucker for leveling alts, so much so, that I have 1 spot left on my character screen for my realm, although I was considering deleting my hunter since he hasn't made it near 80 yet. The only classes I have left are a mage, priest, or a hunter when I end up deleting him (I gotta save a spot for a goblin something or other come Cat).

So since hunter's aren't fun, yea yea, at least to me they aren't, even though I only made it to 62, I think my only choices are either mage, or roll around as double priest wanding the hell out of stuff at lvl 10, you know how it is, haha.

Hmmm... big decisions ahead. The bad thing is, although I love leveling, I love going fast, then dropping the character when they hit 80 most of the time. I just don't like redoing the same stuff over and over on 1 character, let alone several. Like I really want to run a raid on a tank DK, a tank druid, my main shaman (whatever role im forced into to make things happen), a warlock, an inappropriately named rogue (Side note, its funny, because in TBC, all I wanted to do was play assassination, so I did, and now that it's viable, I just play combat all the time...), and then a tank warrior (who actually prolly cant hardly tank a heroic right now anyway). My paladin is still just sitting around level 70 in tanking gear, but I have been considering just switching her to holy (yea, I said her, big deal, wanna fight about it?). I think I just like to stand around safely outside of cleave zones and do what I do.

I almost wish heirlooms had never been created, sometimes they are nice when you need to powerlevel something to fill a hole in the raid comp, but I miss actually going through the zones completely and following the story somewhat. Nowadays, you can just do a zone, skip the next, etc. When's the last time you were in Netherstorm or Shadowmoon Valley to do an actual quest for experience, or for that matter, even Blade's Edge Mountains? You know?! That place has a pretty epic storyline if you think about the books in combination would the area. I haven't been there since I had to do like 4 quests there to hit 68 on my deathknight, ohhhh so long ago. And to think about the old zones, well it's nice that they are being revamped, because when's the last time you did a quest in desolace? I guess I'm not sure about you alliance scum, gaarrrrr, but the horde quests there are just out of your way with the decrease in xp needed combined with the increase of xp gained from things.

Anywho, just thought I would drop some thoughts between my plethora of fun meetings today...

"So I went to this troll spa the other day and I wound up with dreadlocks and a frigging bone in my nose! I mean come on! Who PAYS for that?"


I'm out like a light bulb...
-B-Rab

It's Friday!

1. Riptide should allow you to see through someone's shirt, you just soaked their white-t!

2. Healing rain in Cat better fix this issue... Hello wet t-shirt parties in Org, cause I know everyone loves orc boobs


3. http://shutupwomangetonmyhorse.com/index2.html
It's random, funny, and its a cartoon, but if someone is looking over your shoulder at work I'd be careful, there is a cartoon depiction of horse junk at one point, albiet very quick.

4. Careful the next time you think you are playing it safe by not getting into this van, he might wait for you to go to bed.



Cause....





5.Enjoy your weekend, try something new, listen to some MC Chris... ha!

Random Musings

Yes, I think we can all agree that this is really the lull before Cat. Summer has been upon us, loot will be replaced within mere months, and we've already done this dungeon one too many times.

Now seems like a great time to catch up on achievements, leveling those alts middling in the 50's and 60's, or just planning ahead for the future. Maybe you are gather old world materials because you're a goblin and you know they will only increase in value as people power level a new worgen/goblin.

Or maybe now is when you take your break from WoW, pick up a classic, or try something new. I know I have been busy with SC2, League of Legends, and Diablo 2. All those coupled with a new job makes the weeks just fly by.

You know what the best part is? I showed a friend who never played D2 the game the other day, so I let him make a character on my account. Can you guess what he picked? I bet you never will (and that's sarcasm for those who played D2).... Yea, a necro... big suprise right? Remember when it first came out? I know, we all read about it, decided on our classes, but lets be honest, that first day when you got everything finally installed, you went with the one with the coolest animation at the character selection screen.... The necro.

What does everyone else think of the abundance of cinematics in SC2? I have heard some grumblings about there being so many of them from many of my friends, personally though, I love it. I think they look terrific. SC2 has really made me one of those people that has to watch everything and click on everything between the missions. I suppose that's why it's taking me a little longer to beat it than it should have, but since the whole RTS thing against real people is not my thing (I have a friend that I work with and just take on as many bots as possible, 6 was our max in SC), I don't think I'm in much of a rush.

Blam! Healing Rain!

B-Rab

Twiddling Thumbs

Cat previews have me interested in WoW again, not enough to make an effort to come back now, but enough that I will start when they drop 4.0 on us all.

Until then, the rest of my friends that will compose my 10 man raiding guild (thank god we don't have to scrounge up 25 any more, on our tiny server there are just too many bad/ignorant players) so that news was well received by all of us (Plus we have never been accused of being people-persons....), have been messing around with old games. Things like Diablo 2, Lineage, League of Legends, hell I even went back to an old MUD to start a character again and do some random things, ha.

Enjoy your summers, I'll be in an office building calculating fun risk models and what not. Maybe I'll finally start using some of this modeling knowledge to do sometihng useful towards WoW, well for shaman at least.

Until next time, may the spirit of the wild heed your call.

It's my time of the month...

To get out a post! Duh...

It appears that the latest job has not worked out well with me also finishing school, doing research for a professor, and also teaching. I was forced to take off the last two weeks to avoid getting my grades smoked by the last minute homework which was handed out the same day as our final projects in all of my classes. They did not appreciate that me driving 3 hrs to get there would be a slight hindrance to the minimal time I already had for getting things done. So today I turned in my completed project (on schedule...) and it will be my last day.

At least now maybe I can get some WoW time in while I prepare to do one of two things: I will either be returning to school and getting a PhD (Yay! Professional student status!) or getting a job. This means that while I study to pass my departmental exam at a doctoral level, I will also be flinging applications at any one who will accept it and has something to do with statistics, or analysis, and all that mumbo jumbo. When it's all said and I done, I'll see what's happening and choose what I really want from there...

The tl:dr version: Time to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.

With this semester being over though, and me no longer having anywhere to go, I guess that means its time to get back into WoW, maybe even raiding. I have several friends asking me to come back and blow stuff up with lb's and keep people alive with those bouncing green lazers, and I think I am going to take them up on it.

This is going to require a transfer back to horde, and although I'm going to miss the cute pigtails, I won't miss people on the Alliance side of my server, the grass is not always greener on the other side.

I am happy to say that this shift should be happening on Tuesday, right after I get arena points, since we have landed above 2k, and I need some cute shoulders, of which I am around 200pts shy. Curse all the times I got sick of trying to win a random BG...

Switching gears, I am noticing a lot of noise happening over the 10 vs 25 player lockouts and what not. I know I am late to the party, and I don't have much of anything to say about it, other than that I'm happy that if I really do start raiding again, and that is the plan, that I won't have to run a 10 man and a 25 man every week just to keep up. I think that will help avoid burnout for a lot of players, which is always a good thing. I have had to many close friends just give up because of the excessive amount of things you "had" to do to stay competitive with other good guilds.

I know most people are looking at 25's in that they will just get more loot as drops, but I also am under the impression that your points for gear (whatever they are calling them now) for the current raiding ilvl will increase faster by raiding 25's rather than 10's.

Whether that is enough to keep people at 25's, I'm not sure. I know there will still be lots of 25 man raids, don't get me wrong. But I think a lot of people, when getting the exact same loot as a 25 man, and especially on low pop servers, will forgo the difficulties that can arise when attempting to fill out that last 5 slots for a 25 man with as Gevlin would say, the ms.


My last thing, I promise... Last night I was talking to a few friends about beta, for whenever it comes (I'd expect May, but wouldn't be surprised if it was later than that), and if they would play it. Personally, I appreciate all the people that go play beta and get the bugs out, but I'd rather see everything as a whole new experience at midnight, you know, while I keep getting server crashes and what not. My question is what do you all think? Would you like to play beta for Cat, or wait for it to come out?

Don't Hate

Yea, Yea, I know my posts are few and far between, but that's just the way life is. Even sleep is losing its slice of the pie that makes up my day's activities.

I thought today I would try and switch things up a little bit, I just don't play/raid enough anymore to keep dolling out advice about things I can't test, so I'll leave that to someone who can. Google it, I'm sure you'll find something if that's what you're interested in.

The last couple weeks have kept me busy enough that I have struggled to get in 10 arena matches either week, and somehow just barely made time to get a daily heroic and daily random in (nice feature, btw) to keep things rolling along. Now that these last couple of weeks are over though, I think it's time to make the push for 2200 to get myself some hot pants, and by hot pants, I mean a sweet new pvp weap. It's gonna be so crazy, that instead of casting spells, I'm just gonna show it to people and make them run, and if not, then just show them my sweet capped daggers skill. Pro, amirite?

Anywho, maybe when the semester ends, work begins, and cat beta is out, I'll start talking more about things. Someone should obv just give me their key as I am way above WOTLk by now... Yea, I know, we all are, but we can look back with some fondness... *Queue 80's montage music* Maybe that's a good side project, a WOTLK memories slide show? I'll start looking for random screen shots and see what happens. If you have any good ones, let me know.

p.s. - LvB on anyone with less than 15k health is now very funny to me, since that's where its at dmg wise

F Titles

Since this is about the rate of my posts, I have decided I am going to switch from attempting to give awful advice, to just talking about the little things I find entertaining from time to time in the game.

I noticed after all the time playing I have developed some very strange habits while in the game. Anyone else always jump/fly through a dungeon portal? I can't walk through it, it doesn't feel right.

Or how about the jumping right before you mount? Yea, some days I'll miss-time it, but I think after so long I finally have it down to an art.

Lately, I have been leveling tanks, lots of them, in fact, every type. With all the free emblems being thrown at me, and no raid gear upgrades to buy gems for, I just buy heirloom gear. I think I have the full set for any class in the game I want to play now. This means that I have been trying part of wow where everything in a dungeon tries to beat your face in, but can't, which is nice. Of course, you have to throw out some nasty insults to keep everything pissed at you, but it's going well. I got a feral tank to 66, a prot pally to 58, and a prot warrior to 35 over the last couple weeks.

I think the only reason I really go for tanks is that I have enough down time already on my main, I want quick queues when I am going to level and such.

I don't know, this post is random, so it gets no title...



Get a bottle of something nice so when Garrosh comes to town you can pour one out for your homie Cairne...

Pee Vee Pee?

PVP as an ele shaman? NO WAI!? Actually, I think, for some time now, we have all known that the burst done by ele is crazy enough to blow someone up in an arena. I mean, you can flame shock, lava burst, chain lightning, ele. mastery + lightning bolt, and then frost shock for some pretty sick damage. Enough so that a silenced druid out of tree form is pretty much a free kill and then it's mop up the dps.

Yes, I think it's funny when someone goes from 100% to 0% in just a couple gcd's, it brings a smile to my face.

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Now that I am back to work part time, doing some risk analysis 20 hrs per week, finishing the masters in statistics, and working with a professor on possibly continuing on to a PhD, I have basically been roflstomped in the time for WoW section. This means less raiding, more pvp than normal. In fact, pvp is something I normally only very rarely did, to see how fast I could blow people up in near BIS gear for the patch. But since arena is something I only have to rely on a handful of people for, instead of 24, it's much easier time constraints. The good news is that I'm obtaining a fair amount of experience pillar humping, thunder****ing, and just generally nuking down people.

One of the first things I noticed was how beneficial a PVP spec really is. I will try to add a link to one later on, but my firewall here at work leaves me pretty limited. Taking 6% less damage at all times, and 30% less damage when stunned or feared, is a major shield wall the next time that rogue locks you up. Add that to the ~25% damage reduction you are getting from resilience, and that you are taking around 40-50% (can't think of the number off the top of my head) less damage from physical attacks due to armor, and all of a sudden, a lot of people can't do much damage to you. Arena is not a bg, you need pvp gear (there are exceptions caused by set bonuses, such as with t9 where you just grab 4pc, and then gem resil in everything else).

So far, success is pretty good playing a wizard cleave using mage, ele shaman, and disc priest. We probably don't have the best healer for our group, but it works out really well since our disc priest is actually very good.

This is only the second real week of 3's that we have been playing, so I expect a rise past 1800 this week, or at least somewhere close if we get enough time to play. I'm gonna miss rocketing to 1500 as we tore apart laughable teams and learned a little more about our comp.

- B Rab

Planning for the future...

Immediatly after I decided to get back into blogging as a way of relaxing my mind from things, I up and leave. How typical right? Not permanently mind you, just for temps!

I had a nice vacation down to Florida to visit some friends, went to some theme parks, saw some ocean, and most importantly, traded 10 degree weather of the northern US for the much warmer 65-70 degree temperatures of Florida.

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There are plans to do several BIS lists in the future, probably for elemental only, sorry resto and enh, the feelings just aren't the same. In actuality, I have no clue on how to really even play enh, short of downloading that mod that tells you when to do what, I forget the name for now..., and resto, well that BIS depends on your job. Some shaman raid heal, some shaman tank heal, both are viable, but your BIS depends on what you are doing.

The idea is to create a reg 10 icc, hm icc 10, reg 25 icc/reg 10 icc/hm icc 10, and finally a hm 25 icc list. I know, big things right? Hopefully I can follow through.

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Is anyone else excited for Cataclysm? I know I'm just like a kid on Christmas Eve, and just the same, it's taking too long to get here. Don't get me wrong, I haven't even cleared all of icc yet, which is strange for me. Especially after we were the 2nd best guild on our server, until our rl got a diff job, strange hours, and couldn't raid. People slowly gravitated out. Our 5 man core that we started with faction xferred to alliance, now life is even more interesting -- want to do VOA? Hope you're up between 4 and 10am, cause thats the only time we control it. Wanna get a pug rolling for ICC 10/25? Good luck finding a hunter without stam gems in almost every slot, caster dps with the int trinket from badges, etc... At least they don't go oom right?

Now I'm all for helping people get gear faster nowadays, heck I wouldn't have gotten here after I came back without being able to grind out all the emblem of triumph gear and such, but there needs to be some check, some sort of difficulty in this game somewhere. The other day I ran a heroic with this terrific hunter, every pull he would run up, drop his traps, then melee the mobs... I kinda laugh about his tactics for a while, so I inspect his gear... What a mistake, yellow sockets all got defense gems, some even with +20 (cause purples are better!), blue with stam, and red got int/ap or something like that. Do people still buy characters off ebay? Sometimes I wonder...

Anyway, here's looking forward to 3.3.3 and the bg finder... kind of exciting, but it will be a lot better if people can only queue for one at a time. I know, longer wait, but then there will be less Isle of Conquests for me that start with 40 horde vs around 25 ally... just sayin'

May your lightning bolts proc overload,

B-Rab

Been a while...

Sorry to anyone who still notices that it has been so long since the last post. September 1st was the last time actually, and as I went back to school last semester I didnt like the recent switch in guilds, and it killed my spirit for WoW. Luckily, some friends came back to the game and got me back into it, so in the beginning of January, I started trying to catch my shaman back up.

Since then, I've got some ICC experience, although it seems like the people I came back to play with are solely interested in pvp, which is fun, but I want to see Arthas die as well.

Other fun stories, in coming back, I switched from Horde to Alliance and have discovered some important things on our server. Both sides have their share of annoying kids, adults who need more meds, and teenagers who need to get outside and stop nerd raging over little things. Unfortunatly, the Alliance side on our server is pretty far behind in progression, so getting a couple decent pugs to fill our 10mans has been difficult.

Anyway, now that I cut my week into half school, half work 3 hours away from school, I think I will find some more time to write, need those breaks from work every now and then, and hopefully get back into the community.

PS - good thing I threw chain healz into the name of this blog because due to the lack of good players on the alliance side, we all switched from dps to tanks/heals, except out one tank who turned into dps...funny how life works.

PS - on the PVP side of things, good thing that auto-crit LvB t10 bonus didnt go through...crap for pve, but woulda made a nice pvp bonus.

To wish you off on a good note, hopefully your random heroic isn't CoT: Strath...

Still around, somewhat

Sorry for the delay in posts for so long. I am still pretty busy getting things up and ready for the new school year including lecture notes, books, moving in and getting stuff for a new apartment, all those great things. I imagine I will get back to pretty regular posts very soon here, as soon as my schedule gets a little bit more regular.

I haven't noticed much in the way of big news as of late other than a couple of nerfs for things that 'weren't working as intended' such as fok and such, which will make 5v5 games a lot better when some rogue is running around spamming that crap.

I have been trying to get on and continue doing some raiding. We also spent our obligatory hour on Algalon, looks like we should be able to get him next week even with a group poorly tailored for buffs. We have made it through a couple big bang transitions, which seems to be the worst part.

Hopefully, things will get get rollin soon and I can bring out a video that I am still gathering clips for, which with my lack of time are not building up very quickly...

Anyway, servers are almost back up which means its time to get ready to down all sorts of new bosses and get arena rolling again.

Lok'tar ogar!

Busy as all hell..

I have been busy packing and cleaning to posts are going to be sparse. I have started to collect some video from fraps, slowly but surely. I don't know when I will have time to work on it though.

On a side note, a couple friends and I had started leveling alliance gnomes, partially because they are funny to look at, mostly to race change them to into goblins when the expansion came out. Then Blizz slapped us down and said, "Nuh uh bitches!" Yeah, so no instant 80 goblins, as least that's how it's looking. Oh well, I will probably still leveling her (yea, it's a chick with bright pink hair and such) because it gets me away from things when I just want some time to myself without people asking about enchanting and other such things.

Thanks to those who asked horrific questions about elemental shaman at Blizzcon, I wish I coulda gone, but that was when I was finishing too much stuff at work. The worst part is that there was only 1 decent question asked, too bad it was paired up with crap about another class which was the only thing that got answered.

At least in the notes it looks like totems might radically change, for better or worse I'm not sure, we'll see. Also, it looks like we might get some more mobility instead of being turrets in pvp, which should be nice. I know that description gets used a lot but it's pretty damn accurate. Blow stuff up before it gets to you or die. It's actually not that simple, earthbind rooting people helps a lot now that ghostwolf means you can be slowed below 100% run speed. Resto shaman also look to get a huge buff eventually, which is awesome. The new chain heal is very nice, but it still can prove much less effective in some hard modes than other AOE healers.

That's all I got for now, I just didn't want to leave you all hanging.

B Rab

My Last Day

Now with WoW or blogging sillies, with work. I finally get to turn in my big research project. In a couple weeks, I head back to school to finish my MS in Biostats and get back to teaching for the school year, so I'm heading back early to get moved in with my roommate and settled down. The good news? That's no more time consuming than my current job, so posts should remain pretty constant as long as I can find something to berrate, bitch, or cry about. Sometimes I might even through up helpful advice.

I still want to do some work with fraps, maybe try my hand at making a video, but first I need to clean some junk off my computer. WoW got down below 30fps yesterday, and even down to 15fps when I was doing some raiding, I didn't like that. I know, people play with like 3fps and stuff like that, but that kind of stuff pisses me off. So tonight I'll switch gears and play some Halo or COD4 and clean up my computer. Then fraps, then movie.

I want to put up a screenie of my new UI, but I am not quite happy with it yet. I think I need to do some work on getting the nice black box frames at the bottom or something to keep recount/bartender/sexymap/chat frame in.

I'm always full of promises right? This weekend while I'm packing I should be bored enough that hopefully I actually come through on some of this stuff!

Elemental Shaman Note! The totem of electrifying wind (I think that's the new name, I still can't tell you which totc is the raid and which is the dungeon so stay off muh back!) which has a chance to grant 200 haste for 12 seconds upon successful lightning bolt casts is finally an upgrade over the Totem of Hex. Some quick details: there is no known icd (internal cooldown) on the proc, although a lot of testing is saying it won't proc for around another 6 sec in straight lightning bolt or regular rotations, so if there is an icd, it is like to be around that 6 sec mark. This totem will be better on everything except fights where you are hitting the 50% haste mark while casting (Vezax, Hodir, Thorim). Yes, I said Thorim, because the easiest way to beat him is having a spriest get himself some frost resist gear that is hit capped, and gem for stam. When you MC the dark rune acolytes, they give you a 20% haste buff, these can be stacked 3 times if you have 3 spriests willing to make this sacrifice. There is a spot in the arena that you can stand in and it will never get the lightning cone attack, you wear frost resist to eat all of Sif's bitchiness.

See, fun stuff, you learned the fun/quick way to do Thorim, and got some free shaman advice. Some people pay for that shiznit. Well, they don't pay me, but...well, nevermind.

I'm looking for a good way to end this post, hopefully one that's entertaining. Maybe this clip of one of Oxhorn's Shorts will keep you going today...



B Rab

Moving On

On a side note, that's obviously from youtube, so the comments going on don't apply to me, per se...

Not from WoW! You haven't succeded in that, yet, Blizz. No, in fact, my 5 other real life friends and I have made a move to a new guild to raid 25s. It was nice that most of the people we have been playing with for a long time understood the situation.

So onto my new home. Obviously, being the first run for the us, we were pretty quiet in comparison to our normal raids. Testing the waters, seeing what flies, trying not to offend anyone on the first night out. I should at least have seen them naked before we have our first big fight, imo. I think that we will fit in well eventually, immersing ourselves will be the difficult part at first.

I should get some new ele shaman advice up soon. The guild I moved to has an elemental shaman who is just ridiculous. I don't really understand how he does it. I plan on looking at some of the recorded parses and seeing what's different between us. It might just be the his ridiculous understanding of everything about the class. I definetly got put into my place, apparently I'm only the second best elemental shaman on the server. Oh well, I'll have to see if I can't learn some of what he's doing and bring it back, or else go resto and hide my shame.

I know a lot of people have been throwing their hat into the ring on this discussion about Ony and new class/race combos. Consider mine tossed as well...

Man, the things I could learn to do with my free time if I didn't play WoW. Well, I can guarantee you I wouldn't be trying to learn this, but you get the idea.

Anyway, back to my original point, the two major news articles.

1. Onyxia v2.0 - She's back(!) and she's meaner(?). I know there has to be mixed camps on this. First of all, there are two groups looking at this right now, those who did Onyxia at level 60 and those who didn't. To those who didn't, finally getting to see the fight will be exciting and new to them, in fact, it's the same as creating new content for this audience. Everyone else, therefor, falls under the "have already been there, done that" category. Now I think that even this category gets split up into those who barely got to see the encounter back then and those who had to farm it to get everyone Ony cloak's. The majority of the first part of this group is probably excited to have a boss revitalized and revamped so baddies can't go 2-man her at 80. I think that most people that farmed her, at least the majorrity who I have talked to, are less than thrilled about reusing content that they are already bored with from oh so long ago. My opinion? Fun for a while...I could always use another bigger bag anyway, I only have 10 open slots on my main, and even with 5 alts fully loaded with bags, I have about a free bag on each... I don't know where I get all this crap! I'm thinkin' I should take it to the flea market and sell it... To your mom! JK... What am I, 10?

2. I was only skimming over new race/class combo's until one caught my eye, and quite frankly, pisses me off (Hey, you, troll, better than being pissed on, I get it, I've heard it before) -- A dwarf shaman?! A DWARF SHAMAN?!!! Excuse me, but F' dat homey. On a side note, I will be leveling a NE druid, so I can make him a troll! Cause trolls rock mon! Can I get a 'woot woot' for the best race in all of WoW? Yea, you might think that something like this is an 'opinion' or 'up for debtate', but I assure you, neither of those are accurate. Especially with the flat 20% haste racial now. Sometimes, I pop Berserking with Bloodlust (Heroism some of you, which I don't hate because you're ally, just because you're not trolls!) and cast 1 sec lb's. Man, sh*t is crazy.

Anyway, I'm out to go chris brown some work and some WoW research, and by that, I mean knock it out!! Booyah, oh no he didn't...


I may be a hybrid, but don't expect to me to cast heals if its gonna nerf my deeps...
B Rab

Really?

Who wants to hear some fun tidbits about WoW currently.

We, as a newly rerostered raiding guild (I will talk more about this later since it is still frustrating me), can currently down T9 content, but don't have the dps to keep the arena manageable on Thorim. Conclusion? T9 < Ulduar.

Honestly, have any of you felt a challenge yet? The current "raid" feels cheap. I feel cheated. We can take in AOE healers who can hardly break 1k hps, dps in heirloom items, and still come out victorious. Both of those, surprisingly, are not lies. We have a resto druid who constantly puts out 900-1k hps, if he gets to 1100 he thinks he did well, as well as a holy priest who manages a constant 1k also. It's no wonder that some of our best dps are healing now. In comparison, our old spriest, who went to a holy/disc dual spec, and me, obv an elemental shaman, are both putting out between 4-4.5k effective on aoe fights.

Our old healers/dps are carrying the new healers/dps, and our backs hurt. I never thought I would get to that point, but last night, I logged in for 1 reason. To talk with another guild about combining. Afterwards, I did the daily, since I am 2 emblems away from my 245 shoulders, and then logged. There was no more healing heroics so people could get new gear for things. I can't take it. The worst part is that, now, people can have 2-4 pieces of conq without stepping into Ulduar. You have no idea who is good or not just by gear. Well, if you look at weapons you get some clue, but now even H ToC, the joke that it is, is fixing that for a lot of people.

This may have beneficial on alts overall, but in many other ways, I'm just not happy with 3.2. I'm also not happy with the lack of mention still about ele shaman in the latest ptr notes. Are we in that good of a place right now? Maybe I'm just missing it since I have been lost in grid for the last couple weeks.

Anyway, to alleviate all the guild stress about taking a step back, to where half-ass Ulduar bosses are progression again, I'm going to just run away. Well, not just me, probably more like 10-12 of us are considering joining a different guild. They have been around since pre-tbc, but they may have the worst name ever on our server. They couldn't down Yogg for weeks post-double nerf. They say their problem is their bottom end is reallllllly bad. I don't know, we'll see. If that doesn't work, its probably going to open back up transfer discussions between at least the 6 of us who know each other in real life. Man, WoW is just become like a shitty soap opera or something.

To take your mind off of it, here's some Mr. Conway Twitty -- Just kidding, it's Trailer Park Choir, and it's better...(official video)


The actual music video is better and linked above, but they disabled my embedding. It may not pertain to WoW, but it cracks me up every time I hear it.

Alright, I feel like after all that I at least owe you something helpful. Resto shamans -- if you have the dps where the fight won't be incredibly long, stack haste. T9 requires a fat amount of chain heal now that it hits so many people. Hell, so does Ulduar. If you aren't going oom, thicken up the hps with some much needed haste. You could even go crazy like Mek from Ensidia and stack it to above 800 (hopefully armory link inc later when I get home). Plus, when we get out of T8 bonuses, you need to get enough haste to make up for losing the .2 sec off chain heal for 5% crit instead. What this means is take haste gear for off pieces, rob those poor elemental shaman blind of their crit/haste gear without mp5 on it. We will hate you for it, be forewarned.

Ele shaman, at least if you are doing 25's, hard or not, eventually here we will get to replace ilvl 213 boots with at least ilvl245, at least that's some good news.

- B Rab

Friday is the new plaid

I have no idea what that even means.

For those of you posting up guides on how to do Lord Jaraxxus, I'm about to one up you. That's right, I'm posting Tankspot's video for those of you who haven't seen it. It does a good job explaining the fight, especially since now that I had to deal with people a lot more often as an officer, I've given up trying to be funny while explaining the fight. That's someone else's job now.



Much credit goes out to them for consistently throwing out good video's.

Now the plan is to move on to some funnier movies though. Heck, I've even considered downloading me some Fraps and making a couple of my own. Maybe some PvP, maybe some random nonsense, I don't know. I think I will probably start collecting this weekend if I can get it up and running smoothly with all of my other addons that I have.

Thanks to a newly unblocked youtube, I can provide hours of entertainment in my corner.


Hopefully, it will be something along the lines of this, but I'm probably cooler, so it will be better. Check out all 4 of these videos about doing a little Thunder...well, you know the term.


Inc video soon and new UI,

B Rab