Hey there, cool kids.
As the title might suggest, shamanonramen.wordpress.com is officially no longer being updated. This is in concert with the release of the 3.3 PTR, which I think is prime-time for Blogging. All new posts by me will be made solely on Shamanonramen.com for the time being, so I hope to see you there!
We had to cancel our Hard Mode Wednesday and Thursday raids this week. Again. It’s now something like the fourth week in a row. It’s none of our raiders’ faults- a good twenty of us have been online, prepared, and ready to go every week. However, due to insane holy paladin initiates (rage quit because he was a loot whore/general douchebaggery), bad warrior/death knight dps initiates (told they were not up to par with raiding with us), and good mage/warlock initiates (who happened to be friends of said bad warrior/dk who took the stunning revelation of “3k dps isn’t enough for ToGC as a personal insult), we’re just down a lot of pixelated bodies. Come Thursday night, morale was getting a little low (even for me, which is strange- I’m pretty much perpetually happy. It’s a condition.) So, our fearless femme fatale of a guild leader, stuck 20 minutes away from home while we were trying to get our group together, gave our officers an order: “Run something. Anything.” And we did. And it was the start of an awesome weekend of raiding for me.
Back in March, after I begged and whined and followed Ell around Orgrimmar like a sick dog, Surreality welcomed me back into their humble abode. (The story of my leaving the first time is one for another time- in a nut shell, peer pressure is bad. Unless I’m the one pressuring. In that case, listen to me.) They had pretty recently downed 25Sarth+3 for the first time, while my experiences had me at 10+1, a few sloppy Malygos 10 kills, and attempts at Undying that ended on Heigan. Thus, I was elated when they let me back in (and as enhance! ^_^. I was resto when I hit 80. Gross.) I was even more elated the week I planned to skip class to down Sarth+3 with them- I’d get my Twilight Vanquisher title pre 3.1, have some fun with my new guild, and feel like I actually got to experience some progression content. …that was the week 3.1 decided to land. I skipped class anyway in hopes of getting in on our first Ulduar pull, but my campus internet was at 2k, I was an initiate (and not trusted, at that), and the lag monster that is post-patch raiding reared it’s ugly head. I was pretty majorly bummed.
It was pretty awesome, then, when one of the officers let us in on the game plan Thursday night- Besting the Black Dragonflight, Twilight Zone style. With a full raid of twenty-two whole members, we ran in and engaged the fatty dragon like pros. the other 21 members of the raid (who had at least experienced whiping on 3drakes) were pretty used to the layout. I was stuck in the pug mentality of BIG DRAGON GO IN CENTER, (I’d done 2drakes once before, but not enough to be familiar) and promptly died to a void zone while trying to run away from a lava wave at the last second. 😡 I ahnked to be a badass…and then got hit by a random fireball. Buff reincarnation hps imo. Two lives down, and starting to feel like I was in a SNES game, our Marksman-Hunter-Turned-Resto-Druid battle rezzed me, and I proceeded to hold tightly to my bottom of the meter status. (Hey, even with my time spent dead, and no buffs, I outdamaged the tanks and hit 4ishk. I’m not -that- bad! :P)
Our Thursday night raiding didn’t stop there. While the brunt of our raiders left- some mages left to pee vee pee on their tree drood alts, some warlocks left to benchpress skyscrapers, and some tree druids I might name were busy getting an education rather than raiding, we managed to scramble together 12 raiders for a 25 man instance. A 25 man instance we had never seen before. A 25 man instance known as the Sunwell. (Sunwell Plateau if you want it to sound less epic.)
We didn’t technically wipe on the first boss. We happened to dps him rlyrlyrly hard, and he hit 0 before we realized the point of the encounter is killing the demon in the portal first. We then spent the next 10 minutes leveling weapon skills on a banished boss, hoping he would enrage and kill us all. He didn’t, our weapons dinged 400, and we proceeded to hearth out and reassemble. We pulled ourselves together, smacked a bitch dragon up, and proceeded to Brutallus…where our bear tank forgot he was in kitty gear and got murdered when it was his turn to taunt. We had no further issues, I topped dps on Brut and was happy, and I nabbed some sweet t6 token. We then wiped on Felmyst. It took us four tries to properly avoid the mind control fog. It was especially fun on the attempt we actually downed the dragon because dots made her hit 0 HP in midair- only one of us had to survive to win. All 12 made it through that time, though, and we moved on to Eredar Twins.
This is the point of the night where we stopped listening to our elemental shaman explain boss strategies, and we developed strategies of our own- pop bloodlust, hit buttons, and kill it before it kills you. Somehow, this strategy brought us through Eredar twins, Mu’ru, and Kil’Jaeden. I was rewarded for my efforts hitting my bloodlust key rly hard with some sweet lolArmor Pen gauntlets, and our main tank was rewarded…with a legendary.
Yes, that is our main tank being a meanie and taking the bow over a hunter. However, he was nice and gave it back later. 😛 And I know, lolLevel70 content and lol70 weapon…but honestly. It’s orange lettered. It’s golden gilded. And it fucking SHOOTS LIGHTNING arrows. It’s awesome. ❤
That was not the end of my Thursday night, oddly enough. Somehow, I managed to scrounge up our New Zealandish Tree, fresh back from school, and 6 other friends from our ex-guild and put together a “The Dedicated Few” Naxx10 run. (Actually, that’s a small lie- the tree’s mage brother kept DCing and left, and I kicked a bad pug ret paladin. What started as a naxx10 turned into naxx8 by Gluth.) I think I might go more into detail about this in another post, but for now I’ll mention this: Paladin healing is fun. 1.75 second holy lights on KT frost blocks are fucking intense. However, I’m not about to rehash stuff that has already been said, and I want to sleep, so I’ll say this: I’m writing this rather than sleeping right now because tomorrow is maintenance day. So, in my mind, either A) You’re bored at home with no wow and only blogs to read, or B) You’re bored at work with no wow and only blogs to read. Either way, if you want the full story of Ent and Evangelist, head on over to Tank N’ Tree and check out this entry, which includes a treatise on why I’m the biggest douchebag in the world.
This was it for my Thursday night of raiding. It was a very fun, laid back, low stress night- the exact opposite of the raid we did on Saturday night(also an amazing one), which I’ll blog about tomorrow. It was also a great call by our leadership to have us raid old-but-fun content, at least imho. We’re considering farming Sarth+3 for drakes and trinkets weekly, now. So, I’m interested to know- feel free to comment, to e-mail Elamtheshaman@live.com, or to link to a blog about it- what awesome raid nights have you haad in the past? Any in particular that stand out for a reason other than “Omw we killed progression boss X” or “I got BiS item Y?”
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On an entirely different note, I’ve become addicted to alts and alt specs over the weekend. First off, after a disasterous attempt at tanking ToC10, and due to my utter hatred for tanking, Grazeless went back to being blood dps. However, I hate blood dps (even though 13k death strike crits are pretty), and due to a generous rogue friend, a boe holiday drop, and my realizing I was a champion of Thunder Bluff on my zombiefemcow, I was able to spec DW Threat of Tharassian, the dps talent spec my DK had been wishing for in her cold little heart the entire expansion. I happen to have an insane love of DW which predates WoW, and might even predate Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (best console game in history). And no, it doesn’t stem from a love for Drizzt Do’Urden- for all I care, while this may offend some, R.A. Salvatore can be crushed by a gigantic flaming pile of Star Wars novels for what he did to Chewbacca. And Drizzt/Co. lack any form of character development or personality. I’m happy now, with my pretty little zombie cow, and glad she finally can drink her problems away while beating them senseless with the mug.
Notelam hit 80 with the intention of one thing- going Retribution. Like Grazeless, she started as a He. unlike Grazeless, she started as a filthy human on Uldum. I could not stand for this, and 45 minutes after faction changes were announced, Idrawaggro the male human paladin from Uldum was Notelam, the female belf from Black Dragonflight. Much like her gender/spec/race, I was a bit confused with my plans for Notelam- I leveled her while I was on a melee kick (which I’m still on), where I wanted one of every melee class at level 80. However, paladins are super freaking boring with their SHINYLIGHTATTACKONE and SHINYLIGHTATTACK2 and YOUGETTHEIDEA attacks. Couple my boredom with religious light effects (my parents are both Presbyterian pastors- I don’t need more shiny lightside stuff in my life), and the fact that I leveled a lot in Alterac Valley where low level heals are infinitely more useful than low level dps, and we have a recipe for healing success. That said, she only has like five heroics under her belt, and it was a big stretch for Naithin and Co. to allow her 1600spellpower self into Naxx10. (He insisted I did well, I call bollocks.) Nevertheless, I found healing to be pretty fun, and I’m pretty comfortable keeping her that way, especially now that she sits just shy of 2k spellpower.
Elam is not an Alt. Elam is a main. He is enhance mainspec/resto offspec a good deal of the time, but has spent some time as enhance offspec. What Elam had never done, however, was spec Elemental- at least not this expansion. The last time I dpsed anything as elemental was early last October, where I rocked 1k dps on Caverns of Time: Durnholde trash through Chain Lightning/Lightning Overload awesomeness. I had not tried Elemental since Lava Burst/Wrath of the Lich King hit…and I’ve been missing out. Lava Burst crits for 10k on target dummies is awesome. Lava burst/Chain Lightning burst in battlegrounds is intense (though I admit to dying a lot- part of that is the staff, anyway.) Thunderstorming people off the Arathi Basin Lumber Mill cliff is hilarious. In all, Elemental is just a really, really -fun- spec, and I’d like to keep it my offspec. (This isn’t possible, as I’ve had my already-precarious spot in guild ten mans taken away if I keep it as my offspec- it seems being able to go ranged on ranged-friendly fights is not as useful as being a bad healer on healing intense fights. xD.) I’m not really upset about this decision, though- it makes sense from a guild point of view, even though I don’t like it. However, until I’m called upon to change it, I’m rocking my Elemental offspec and tearing up battlegrounds/alt and heroic runs.
How about everyone else? Do you have a new alt you’ve fallen in love with? Or tried a new spec you hadn’t used before and found yourself enjoying it way more than you might want to? I’d love to hear!
Please remember that I have gone self hosted. I’m no longer resizing screenshots for this blog, writing with the intent of posting on it, etc. If you’re interested in reading more, head over to shamanonramen.com to check stuff out.
There is an oft-repeated maxim on the shaman forums that Enhance shaman scale with every raid buff/debuff that exists. For the most part, this is true- I’m personally not positive what I’m getting from Divine Spirit, but other than that I’d agree. However, what we don’t tend to talk about is how much we scale with these raid buffs, and what raid buffs do we absolutely need to see in a raid.
I felt that it would be a fun project to see exactly how much we do benefit from each debuff, so I opened up my handy dandy enh simulator and simmed my DPS five times, averaging out to 7347DPS with .05% Out of Mana time. I then went and systematically removed buffs/debuffs and recorded the damage lost. For simming unleashed rage, I did one sim without changing my expertise to emulate not taking the talent, but having another 10% ap buff (abom might/trueshot), and another sim without changing my expertise and not having another 10% ap buff. For 3% spell hit, I dropped my hit rating down to 368 as I’m spell hit capped in my current gear. I also looked at the difference between using regular and improved versions of the buffs I remembered to.
Something important to keep in mind here is that these numbers are based on my own individual gear, and that they will probably differ from your own values. Beyond that, buffs and debuffs play with each other, so in order to figure out the exact data you’d probably have to do tons of combinations of sims. So, take these as they are: a basic idea of what you’ll get from different buffs and debuffs. Without further ado, this is the raw data I collected:
No Flask: 7232 DPS. Loss of 115 DPS.
No Potion of Speed: 7316 DPS. Loss of 31 DPS.
No Fish Feast: 7265 DPS. Loss of 82 DPS.
No Replenisment: 7323 DPS. Loss of 24 DPS. .85% OOM time.
No Blessing of Wisdom: 7343 DPS. Loss of 4 DPS. .20% OOM time.
No Judgement of Wisdom: 7345 DPS. Loss of 2 DPS. .11% OOM time
No Arcane Brilliance: 7291 DPS. Loss of 56 DPS.
No Imp SoE: 6995 DPS. Loss of 352 DPS.
Horn of Winter Instead of Imp. SoE: 7297 DPS. Loss of 50 DPS.
No Gift of the Wild: 7204 DPS. Loss of 143 DPS.
No Blessing of Kings: 7135 DPS. Loss of 212 DPS.
Loss of Totem of Wrath/Heart of the Crusader Crit Portion: 7158 DPS. Loss of 189 DPS.
Loss of Ferocious Ins/Sanctified Ret: 7144 DPS. Loss of 203 DPS.
Loss of Mookin/Ret Aura Haste: 7207 DPS. Loss of 140 DPS.
Loss of 3% Spell Hit. (I dropped my hit down to 368/14% for the purpose of this test, as I was spell hit capped in my gear.) 7248 DPS. Loss of 99 DPS.
Loss of 280 Spellpower: 7155 DPS. Loss of 192 DPS.
144 SP (Flt Totem vs. ToW): 7256 dps. Loss of 91 DPS.
Loss of 13% Spell Damage debuff: 7008 dps. Loss of 339 DPS.
Loss of 5% Spell Crit Debuff: 7218 dps. Loss of 129 dps.
Loss of 5% Spell Crit Buff: 7213 dps. Loss of 134 dps.
Loss of 5% spell haste Totem: 7322 dps. Loss of 15 DPS.
Loss of 10% AP. (Changed expertise to 216 to not reflect loss of expertise in date.): 6916 DPS. Loss 431 DPS.
Loss of 10%AP+9 Expertise. (0/0 UR.) 6797 DPS. Loss of 550 DPS.
Loss of Imp might/BS- 687 AP. 6892 DPS. Loss of 455 DPS.
Loss of Imp Might, using regular might- 550 AP. 7258 dps. Loss of 89 dps.
Loss of 5% Crit- LoTP/Rampage. 7168 DPS. Loss of 269 dps.
Loss of 20%melee haste. 6692 DPS. Loss of 655 DPS.
Loss of 4% melee haste- no imp wf. 7213 DPS. Loss of 134 DPS.
Loss of 4% physical damage- 7191 DPS. Loss of 156 DPS.
Loss of 5% armor reduc- 7288 DPS. Loss of 59 DPS.
Loss of 20% Armor reduc: 7070 DPS. Loss of 277 DPS.
So, with the raw data behind us, let’s take a look at what this means. First off, let’s look at the buffs you bring to yourself in a raid: One Enhancement Shaman, specced into Cookie Cutter Imp. SoE/Imp. WF/Unleashed Rage (Relying on other for FT in favor of using magma): 1557 DPS. By not dropping your totems or speccing into unleashed rage, you gimp yourself out of 1,557 dps. So, don’t be lazy and drop your totems. That said, if you’re the type of person looking to play better by reading information on blogs, I doubt you’re doing something as silly as not dropping totems. 😛
Now, let’s look at something that a lot of people DO do- try to skip out on improving their own totems to gain talent points elsewhere. The rationale of “oh, the other enhance shaman brings imp. soe” or “the frost dk has imp. icy talons” might work…until they die. And once they die, and you’re left not specced into these abilities and this is the case: One Enhancement Shaman using untalented Imp. WF/Imp Soe/16% Melee Haste= 184 DPS. You gain 184 DPS just by speccing into these talents.
Some of the more important things to look at: Imp. BS/Imp. Might are the best possible buff for us, at 455 dps. Regular might is fine, but we lose 89 dps from not getting the improved version.
Finally, here are some of the best combinations of classes for us (assuming no one else in the raid can provide all their buffs. This is rarely the case- you might not have a moonkin, but your ret paladin will be supplying 3% haste. Or something.):
Boomkin give: 13%Spell Damage, 5% Armor Reduc, 3% Spellhit, 3% Haste 5% Spell Crit/Gift of the Wild: One Boomkin=914 DPS.
One Elemental Shaman: 5%Spell Haste, 5% Spell Crit, 3% Crit, 280 Spellpower: 530 DPS loss.
One Fury Warrior: 20% ArP, 5% Melee Crit, Imp BS: 1001 DPS.
One Arms Warrior: 20% ArP, 4% Physical Damage, Reg BS: 799 DPS.
One Combat Rogue: 4% Physical Damage, 20% ArP: 433 DPS.
One Feral Druid: 5%ArP, 5% crit. 328 DPS.
One Ret Paladin: Imp Might, 3%Crit, 3% Haste, Sanctified Ret: 987 DPS loss.
The kind of really striking thing to me was that the fury warrior ended up giving more dps than the boomkin, proving my own hypothesis wrong. D:
So, there you have it. These are the way debuffs play out for me, and I’d imagine most people would see numbers within a few standard deviations. Hope this helped!
As a reminder, my blog has moved. This is one of the few posts that will be published here before I permanently leave for Shamanonramen.com. If you have me linked/bookmarked/anything, you might want to update them there!
As anyone who will visit Shamanonramen.com might be able to see, I have officially gone self-hosted!! As anyone else visiting might also be able to see, the appearance of that blog is extradordinarily bland, but it’s 4:00 AM and I’m not going to bother making myself crazy prettifying it tonight!
This is a huge step for me- somewhat warranted by the fact that I’ve been able to maintain a steady 3-400 views per day for nearly a week now, but also just because it seemed like all the cool kids were doing it. And it just seemed fun.
I am planning, for the next few weeks or so, to continue posting blogs on both my original wordpress account and this blog to try and ease people into this new place. (I’ll probably include a little note at the end of the blog, reminding people to come hither!) After a little while, though, I will just abandon that blog in favor of the one I’m paying to have. xD (also, if anyone is linking to me- could you please update your links to reflect the blog change? :D)
This is a really awesome transition for me, and thanks everyone for the views and support. ❤
And again, it is http://www.shamanonramen.com. 😀
The happiest day of the month (or most dreaded, dependent on who you are) is finally here, bringing with it a sleu of nerfstoenhancepvpD: minor-yet-fun changes to Enhancement PVE, as well as the return of a lovable-yet-diabolical dragon with a bad attitude (and no basis in lore! :P) Now, on to the meaty stuff: Shaman changes in 3.2.2
I was making my merry way home from school today, after an exhausting day of SHAKESPEAREZIMBABWEFRANKENSTEINSEX classes, and I decided I really wanted soup. Because, you know, that’s how I roll. So, I stopped at Panera Bread (overpriced, I know, but excellent), grabbed my Baked Potato Soup, a Roast Beef sandwich ’cause I’m a fatty, and sat myself down at the closest table so I could spam f5 on free WiFi and count the blog views while enjoying my hearty night time dinner.
What I was not expecting was this:
Screenshot by Shadowxtz o nthe Moonrunner server!
Note some of the pretty things in this image:
A) It’s a 2.6 speed mace! Luvluvluvluvluv.
B) It’s BoE! So even if you don’t manage to see this QT in the next week (it drops off Mr. Direbrew in Blackrock Depths, but he’s shy and only comes out once a year), you should be able to buy one, albeit for a pretty penny.
C) It’s iLevel 226. For those of you for whom the word “iLevel” sounds like a foreign language (my dad included!), iLevel 200 items drop out of Naxx10/Coren Direbrew. ILevel 226 items drop off 25 KT/Reg Uld 25 bosses, meaning that this item is as well itemized as Calamity’s Grasp(and with Agi, Haste, Ap, Crit, to boot!) Because of this, not only are the stats nice, but it also has a whopping 171.5 dps, meaning no more farming H ToC for your dual Aledar’s Battlestar, which is only iLevel 219.
D) It looks preeeeeeetty.
Photo by same person as above photo. I'm unoriginal!
Yes, I want it. Minus the fact that it’s a downgrade.
However, I’m so going after it on my Death Knight Tank’s offspec-but-sometimes-main-spec-depending-on-my-mood. (Remember, Threat of Tharassian DW death knights follow the same weapon speed rules as us!) I’m totally looking forward to being a Femcow with mugs for hands. 😀
This is Elam, signing off from Panera, as I finished my soup before typing (it was so good!) and I think I’m getting weird looks from the other patrons from salivating over this weapon.
Cheers to all who get it!
“Enhance Your Game” is my attempt at a weekly (or bi-weekly) blog column. In it, I’ll be covering integral programs/addons that I feel benefit my playstyle, the melee playstyle, and playing an Enhancement Shaman. This is my first attempt at an actual stable column (small, clouded in mystery aside- this might not be my only column starting in the near future. :o), so bear with me! This week’s “Enhance Your Game” will be covering one of the most integral addons of Enhancement Raiding- the Enhancement Damage Simulator.
In reference to Lissanna over at Restokin, and because Blog Azeroth opened the question up to be answered, I’ve spent the past 12ish hours pondering: If I could change/remove/seperate/annihilate/lick any talent in the enhancement tree, what would it be? After less than 5 minutes of thinking, I had the answer: the rest of the day was spent wading through work, getting annoyed we had to cancel raiding again due to attendance (btw we’re recruiting, just saying), ToC 10, Dailies, complaining about my headache, commenting on other peoples blogs, and lacking the actual willpower to write. However, I have buckled down and started, and here is my answer: Shamanistic Rage.
By this point in the patch, the majority of us have probably taken our firsts steps into Heroic Northrend Beasts, be it on 10 or 25 man. This means that a large number of you probably know the basics of the fight: It’s a DPS race, as the bosses are released on a timer. There are no drastically different additions are changes to the fight, other than the scaling up of boss damage/hit points and the fact that Icehowl no longer gives you a sprint buff when he charges. Rather than talk about the general fight, here are some of the specifics of the fight itself as it pertains to Enhancement Shaman, as well as my perspectives and tips on not dissappointing your fellow raiders like they’re Taylor Swift and you’re Kanye West.
If this is your first time visiting here ever, you might not have noticed the new look. If this is your second time visiting here ever, you probably don’t remember what it used to look like. If you’re one of the 2 people who read my blog more often than I realize, you might actually have. Regardless of who you are, the look of this blog has changed, and it makes me quite happy.
Shaman On Ramen: The Diary Of an AP trinket! 