As the title might suggest, shamanonramen.wordpress.com is officially no longer being updated.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!

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! )

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. <3

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.

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!

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? )

This is a really awesome transition for me, and thanks everyone for the views and support. <3

And again, it is www.shamanonramen.com.

1. Cleansing Totem: No longer pulses instantly when dropped.

I will probably do a post about this change in particular later. There is no way this is not a nerf in both PVE and PVP, but I’ll be frank and say I will not tolerate whining comments about this change. When I do a post about it specifically, this might change, but for now comments like “omg blizzard is so unfair” will get deleted without a second thought.

2.  Earthen Power: No longer causes Earthbind to pulse a persistent snare immunity aura. It does still remove snares from allies as an instant pulse, but there is no lingering immunity. Earthen Power now also brings Earth Shock’s melee attack speed reduction up to -15%/-20% (with 1 or 2 points in it, respectively).

For those of us who spec into pvp for Faction champions, this may in fact be a PVE nerf. For those of us who don’t spec into PVP for faction champions, it won’t. However, this is a slight pvp nerf. It may be warranted- it still removes snares on pulse/drop, it just doesn’t allow us to hand of freedom our entire 5s team for 5 seconds at a time.

3. Bug Fixes:

• Grounding Totem will now properly protect against the Death Grip spell.
• Lava Burst can no longer deal critical damage to targets who are immune to critical strikes (due to, e.g. Roar of Sacrifice, Blessed Resilience).
• Lightning Shield: This spell will no longer set off some trinkets when it is cast.
• Stoneclaw Totem’s pulses will no longer break stealth on nearby hostile units.
• Thunderstorm and Shamanistic Rage can no longer be used while Frozen, Cycloned, Sapped, or Incapacitated.

Grounding Totem vs. DG was a big issue when 3.2 hit because Grounding Totem recognized the taunt and the pull as two seperate effects, and grounded the taunt. Lava burst change makes sense. Lightning Shield change is fun- nerf to anyone who was trying really hard to spam their lightning shield to get mana back from trinkets!

The last two need a little more time: A) Stoneclaw totem’s aoe taunt has no damage component, nor does it debuff. There is no reason as to why it SHOULD break rogues out of vanish. Bug Fix. For the second, both of these abilities say “this spell is useable while stunned.” Cyclone isn’t a stun. Frozen isn’t a stun. Sapped/Incapacitated both break on damage and are not stuns. Once again, emphasis on the Bug Fix. If you’d like to see these changes actually implemented, post on the suggestion forums, but don’t call these nerfs. They were not working as intended.

4. The Awesomeness that is Flame Shock.

Flameshock received quite a few changes this patch. First off, it is no longer consumed by Lava Burst. Not too amazing for us, but Smellementals will love it. Second, the duration has been increased to 18 seconds- which might be awesome for us. And third, glyph of Flame Shock now allows Flame Shock dots to be critical strikes.

Now, the number crunching at Elitist Jerks is not totally finished, and we can’t be positive, so everything I say is conjecture, but it looks like we will be adding Flame Shock into the Enhancement Damage Priority system. I’m not sure how minor a dps increase this will be (it will be minor- don’t expect to be doing 1k more damage because of this)but, 200 more dps is 200 more dps! Additionally, one of the cool aspects of this is that it makes our priority system a little bit more dynamic- for something that hasn’t changed since 3.0, this is welcome.

Flame shock looks like it will be added into the rotation whenever you would Earth Shock after the Flame Shock debuff has run out. This is important, as Flame Shock will only do competitive dps if allowed to tick fully. So, you Flame Shock to get it up, and then fill in the next (3, normally, unless you get -a lot- of MW5 stacks) shocks with Earth Shock, and then once FS has fallen off you THEN add in a new Fire Dot.

To help make this easier on you, there are two addons you can configure to help you- Shock and Awe and Power Auras.

For Shock and Awe, you have to use the /saa config command to bring up the configuration interface. From there, go to your priority list section and edit in Flame Shock.

I added it in right after MW5 Lightning Bolt and before anything else so that it takes the place of my ES_SS when Flame Shock debuff isn't on the target.

From there, it becomes up to you as to where you add it in. In my opinion, you should add it in right before Earth Shock, as then it will show up on your priority frame whenever Earth Shock would and the Flame Shock debuff is not on the target. This means that, if you’re using the ES_SS second priority “rotation,” you’d put Flame shock prior to ES_SS. If you’re using the cookie cutter MW5->SS->ES priority list, you’d add it in after SS and before ES.

And then, once shocks are off CD, this is what it should look like when FS debuff runs out.

SAA isn’t the only addon that can help you- and, if you’re one of the many that feels SAA is a bit “cheaty” (I’ve heard it quite a bit), there are other ways to monitor your FS. My personal favorite is Power Auras Classic.

The fireball is there to tell me Flame Shock is not on my target.

As the caption said, that little fireball is there to tell me that Flame Shock is not on my target. It does nothing else- especially not telling me where I am in priority to cast it. It just lets me know that FS is not there. How do you set one of these badboys up? It’s easy!

It looks scary, but it isn't.

To bring up the Power auras Classic screen, just type /powa. After that, click “new.” The right screen will show up. (Note- both these screens show up in the screen’s center- you can manually pull them apart, though!)

Now, to set up this debuff, first choose the image texture. As you can see, I dragged it to Texture 13, a nice fireball picture to remind me to cast my fire spell. You can then go to the little color box and choose a color- I thought orange made sense for Flame Shock. You can also choose “random color” if you want to spice it up. (You can also choose later to just make the Flame Shock icon show up. I tend to not like how that looks, though. ) Size is pretty self explanatory, x axis allows you to move the aura left and right, and y axis lets you move it up and down.

Now, head down to “activation by.” First, you want to use the pulldown bar to bring it to “debuff,” as that is what FS is. Second, you want to write in the name! After that, go to “Show when not active.” This makes it so that the aura shows up when Flame Shock is NOT on the target. If you don’t click this, you’ll have a fireball on your screen for the length of the debuff. Next, check only if in combat/ only if in raid- this will keep it from showing up while soloing and while pvping and stuffs! (If you run a lot of heroics, you might want to choose to not check only if in raid. And, remember- only use FS on fights that will last longer than 18 seconds.)

Finally, check Enemy Target. This will make sure that it’s only checking people you’re hitting for FS- otherwise, this will show up when you’re getting flame shocked by enemy smellementals.

5. Totem of the Quaking Earth now is a 400 AP proc, not 200.

This was needed to bring QE in line with DK/ret relics. This does NOT automatically guarantee that QE is better than Electrifying Wind. QE does not have a 100% uptime, as Lava Lash is late in the priority system and so isn’t used every cooldown, while LB is the core of our dps. This means EW has a 80%ish uptime, and QE has a 95%. This also means that EW is better: A) if your haste EP is over 2.1 and B) if the fight is not an aoe fight where you’ll be using Chain Lightning. For most other purposes, use QE. But own both!

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. ), 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.

“Sim It” is a phrase heard weeklydailyhourlyminutely on the shaman forums, a phrase that anyone who frequents the forums on a regular basis has probably read. The majority of them have probably said it at one point or another. Other forums have their own response to “sim it,” and these responses generally include the words “spreadsheet” and “it.” Simming/Spreadsheeting is an important part of end game raiding- a way for you to understand how to get the most out of your class’ dps potential. For this, Enhancement Shaman turn to the Enhancement Damage Simulator. I’m here to offer you a short (2500 word, xD!) tutorial on how to use the Enhancement Simulator.

The first thing to know about using this addon is that you need some form of “winzip” or assorted program to extract it to your computer. I’m not going to cover thise because A) I’m rather computer illiterate, and I’ll do more harm than good, and B) it’s not what this blog is about. Suffice to say, once you’ve figured out how to get the Enh Sim program onto your computer, return to this page and we’ll talk!

So, on to using Enh Sim. As soon as you open your EnhSim folder, this assortment of varied links should become available:

I not so subtly have a certain tab highlighted. Why might that be! ^_^

As you can see by my blatant highlighting of it, the program we are looking for is the Enh Sim Gui. Double click it, right click and go to open, roll your face on your keyboard toward the enter key, or sacrifice virgins to Cthulu, but do something to open that program. Once that happens, you’ll be faced with:

The Scary GUI of Death and Dismemberment. (Click4bigz!)

This is the main tab of the GUI. We like this tab. This is where we get to feel good about ourselves and plug our stats in. ^_^ Head on over to your local World of Warcraft realm, log onto your shaman, and open up your character tab.

It should look something like this. If it does not, you might be from outer space.

Now, this point relies on a lot of alt-tabbing, so you might be better off putting wow into windowed mode for a few minutes and going back and forth. You want to make sure you’re using unbuffed stats to begin with. (The Enhancement Addon Shock and Awe also features an export function. I won’t be covering that tonight, but will in a future Enhance Your Game post.) For most of these stats, your mainhand should be the same as your offhand (such as for the mainhand/offhand crit categories.) However, orcs are weird, and if they have an axe/fist weapon in one hand and a mace in the other, they’ll have 3 more expertise in one hand than the other. Make sure for any category that has a % next to it you put the % number- the simulator does not need to know your critical or haste ratings, just the actual % they increase.

If you're me, your EnhSim GUI probably looks like this now. If you're you, the numbers are different!

The  middle part of the EnhSim is your boss frame. The developers already supplies default boss values for you, so we’re just skiping straight over that tab to procs and stuff. As you might be able to imagine, procs and stuff is where your procs AND STUFF, go. Most of these tabs are pretty self-explanatory. Mainhand imbue is windfury, offhand is Flametongue, not FT9. The enchant section only lets you put proc enchants- agi/ap enchants (you should be using berserking anyway, btw) would simply be stat additions at the beginning. We’ll go besererking/berserking, because we know that’s best.  MH weapon only applies if you’re an orc, so I’m not filling it in- if you’re an orc and you’re wielding an axe or fist weapon, go for it!

For trinkets, totems, and set bonuses either use the pulldown menu or use wowhead! (While the config files for the simulator have been changed to include set bonuses, the gui has not, so you need the spell numbers.

For Trinkets: Blood of the Old God: 45522. Death’s Choice/Verdict Reg: 47303. Death’s Choice Heroic: 47464 Dark Matter: 46038. Comet’s Trail: 45609.

For Totems: Totem of Electrifying Wind: 47666. Totem of Quaking Earth: 47667.

For t9 Set Bonuses: 2Pc: 67220, 4PC: 67221.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, if you have 4pc Enh sim automatically counts 2pc in it’s calculations, but putting both in to be on the safe side doesn’t hurt. If you have glove/cloak enchants, fill them in quickly and we’ll move on to glyphs! For glyphs for your first time, you might want to stick with the cookie cutter Stormstrike, Windfury Weapon, Feral Spirits. The awesome part of EnhSim is that once you know the basics, you can tweak these to figure out what really works for you.

Now, once again, if you're me, you might look like this! If you're not, than you'll look differently. Lets move to rotation!

The rotation tab is a pretty packed tab, and one that will be pretty difficult to decipher upon first look. So, let’s try to break some of this information down.

1) MH/OH Auto Attack: Check this, you want to be white hitting.

2) Wait SS w/ WF: Keep this on the default 0.00. This harkens back to a time where we believed it was better to proc after WF ICD in order to increase the chances of a proc. Since SS puts a debuff up that is quickly consumed AND is a chance at at least 2 MW charges, we don’t wait on it anymore.

3)Cast Lava Lash only if WF is on CD: You’ll see I have this checked in my upcoming screenshot- this is a mistake. You might not want to check it. As far as I can tell, this was meant for when we still believed WF on both hands was the way to go, so we didn’t want to risk using our instant offhand attack to proc windfury. You probably don’t want this checked. (I saw a 2dps increase not checking it! xD)

4. Bloodlust Casters/Sync trinkets with bloodlust: First part shouldn’t matter, as you can no longer chain bloodlusts. 1 is enough. Second part you want clicked, particularly if you have clickable trinkets. (I’m not sure how this treats wolves- I don’t think they’re always popped prior to bloodlust.)

5. Cast Lava Burst if “blah.” These three are all only activated if you activate LvB in the rotation bar. They’re useful for testing purposes, but you probably don’t want LvB in your rotation when just learning to use it. Leave these alone, and leave Lava burst unchecked.

6. Cast Flame Shock only if dots left: Once again, requires FS to be clicked in the priority frame. For just learning it, don’t click it.

7. Cast Lightning Shield only if charges left: This means that, once it gets to LS in your priority with nothing else up, it will check to see if it has this many or fewer charges before refreshing. Typically, I do between 0-2.

8. Cast Shamanistic Rage only if mana left: Default setting is 750. With the one minute cooldown, 0 points in improved stormstrike, and less mana back than we used to, I prefer to do it around 3-4k.

9. Use mana potion if mana =: Only does this if mana potion is checked on the consumable page.

Next, on to the actual priority tab.

• SW= Spirit Wolves.
• MW5_LB=Lightning Bolt with 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon.
• ES_SS=Earth Shock if Storm Strike Debuff is up.
• SS=Stormstrike
• ES=Earth Shock
• LL=Lava Lash
• MT=Magma Totem
• LS=Lightning Shield
• SR=Shamanistic Rage
• FS=Flame Shock
• LvB=Lava burst.
• Frost-Frost Shock
• CL=Chain Lightning
• LB=Lightning Bolt
• MW#_CL/LB=Self Explanatory.
• ST=Searing Totem

You organize your rotation in order of priority. Once again, the power of this is that you can fiddle with priority based on gear. For example, I have 4PCt9/5/5 Reverberation, so I go Earth Shock before Stormstrike as long as the SS debuff is still on the target.  Spirit Wolves is put first so that they are always popped as they come off cooldown. Mess with this to see what your ideal rotation is once you’re comfortable!

This would be my priority list, hastily thrown together!

The next tab you’ll see is “Talents.” As you might expect, this is where you would go to input your talent choices. This section is pretty self explanatory, and there’s not much that could be confusing about it, so I’m not going to spend any more time on it. Here is what mine looks like!:

Notice the 5/5 Reverberation, with 2/3 Call of Flame and no Imp. SS. Don't follow my spec- it's not cookie cutter.

The next section is an awesome section, devoted to debuffs/buffs on you. Remember, Enhancement Shaman scale pretty well with almost every buff/debuff in the game, so you want as many of these as possible. If you’re unsure as to what debuffs you do have present, think of your normal raid and compare it to these:

• 20% Armor Debuff. Brought by Prot Warriors/Smart DPS Warriors or Rogues in a Prot Warriors absence.
• 5% Armor Debuff: Druids of any spec, hunters with wasp pets, warlocks.
• 4% Physical Damage Debuff: Arms Warriors/Combat Rogues
• 20% Melee Haste. Yourself/Frost DPS warriors
• 5% Melee Crit: Fury Warriors, Feral Druids
• 688 attack Power: DPS Warriors/Ret Paladins. Tank warriors/other pally specs have worse versions.
• Attack Power Multiplier: It uses your unleashed rage if you don’t put points in, so don’t put points in to this. Would be blood dk/marks hunters, though.
• 5% Spell Haste: Mainly resto/elemental shaman, but you possibly could.
• 5% Spell Crit Buff: Elemental Shaman, Moonkin
• 5% Spell Crit Debuff: Imp. Scorch Mages, Frost Mages, Imp. SB specced Destro Locks.
• 13% (Make sure you change this from 10%): Moonkin, Unholy DK, Warlocks
• 280 Spellpower: Elemental Shaman. If you’re one of the rare few who run with a demo pact lock, this number might be slightly higher.
• 3% Spell Hit: Boomkin/Spriest
• 3% Haste: Ret Paladin, Moonkin
• 3% Damage Increase: Retribution Paladin, Feral Druid
• 3% Crit debuff: Elemental Shaman, most Paladins- in the Retribution tree.
• 10% stat Multiplier: Paladins, any spec.
• 52 Stats: Druid Gift of the Wild
• 178 Agility and Strength: You. Death Knights give 155.
• 60 Intellect: Mages

For flasks, you generally want flask of endless rage, for 180 AP.  Since you’re using a flask, skip guardian elixir. For potion, try out potion of speed, and for food use Fish Feast (assuming they’re dropped in your raid.) 80 AP+46 Spell power? Ffs yes plz.

For mana return buffs, click replenishment if you have one of the million replen giving classes present. Do not use water shield, as you are using LS. Choose either Blessing of Wisdom or Mana Spring totem, as they are the same thing. And, use Judgement of Wisdom if your raids normally have a paladin judging it.

This is what it will look like with a fully optimal raid.

We’re skipping over the EP tab-much like the bosses at the beginning, it is set up with default EP for a shaman. So, we’re going straight to the final side- “simulation variables,” also known as “oh noez scary math class! D:”

First, there is simulation time. This means that the simulator will run and pretend that it was going for however long is in that box. The generally accepted practice is to throw in an extra 0 to make it 10000 hours.

Second is Simulation Time Combatlog. This is what is used if you choose combatlog output vs. simulate.

Fight length: The number of minutes of each fight. So, if you’re doing 10000 hours of simming, it might be simming 120,000 5 minute fights. Fight length is important because it determines the amount of time cooldowns/trinket procs/bloodlust/etc are active. 5 minutes is a pretty stable amount of time, and is what is used in the Enh. BiS Gearing thread.

Report count: Actually not sure, will look into it. Same with threads.

Lag. 0-0 MS. Enh Sim is awesome because it can tell us how well we can play at perfect latency. However, the world doesn’t operate on perfect latency, and neither do our reflexes. Set this lag for what you normally play at- for me, 100-200.

Simulate Mana: Simulate mana is a powerful tool, but also one that can ruin your report if you forget to prioritize something like shamanistic rage. You should learn to use simulate mana to your benefit, but it is understandable to run your first few sims without this box checked. I know I did!

Output file: Output.txt

Combat log output file: Combatlog.txt

Simulate is a clickable box that will simulate your damage over the simulation time.

Calculate EP is a powerful tool that can be used to teach you how to gear better.

Combatlog output shows a basic breakdown of your damage over the past (however long you put in the combat log time box.)

Info shows you relevant information, such as caps you might have gone over by a small bit.

And finally, use the button after the box at the bottom that says path on top, and find the file that ends “EnhSim.exe” Throw that into the box, and then go up and click one of the buttons!

(Also, make sure to check out the organe donate button: these designers work hard.)

This is what my Simulation Variables typically look like prior to a sim!

Now, after all that hard work (It really only takes ten minutes at most), we’re finally ready to simulate! Hover your mouse over that nice simulate button and press it down. Watch the numbers scroll past. (note: If the simulation length is set to 10000 hours, the numbers won’t scroll fast initially. The simulation will take a bit long.)

Yes, that is 7366 DPS!

So, as you might be able to notice, there is a wealth of data we can see here. However, I’m only going over the very basics- I think next week I might go into what sort of conclusions/knowledge we can gleam from the simulator. And remember, these numbers are based on an ideal, patchwerkesque, five minute long fight- fights are often much different in reality.

Now, really quickly, I’m going to do a quick show of the other great function of the Enh Simulator-Calculate EP values. This one is a really useful tool- EP values are the value of an item as it relates to one point of attack power. I’m also not going to go in depth into thise (maybe next week! ^_^), but they are useful, so clicking that calculate EP values button helps.

Look at that stunning 3.09 haste EP. I've never seen numbers that high before. O_o

That’s it for my guide to using the Enh Simulator. I hope everyone who reads this can enjoy it, or at the very least use it. It is now 5:45 AM, and I’ve been working on it for nearly three hours, so I’m going to take a well deserved nap. xD

(That said, I think I’ve put as much effort into this blog as my enhancement sticky, and I’d really love to get the word out there. Even if people don’t want to read anything else on my blog, I would love to see anyone who needs help with simming get directed here! ^_^<- I’m addicted to this emote omg.)

I think, to any raiding/pvping/anything Enhancement Shaman, the awesomeness that is Shamanistic Rage is readily apparent. Between our regular mana heavy rotation, dropping magma totem every twenty seconds, and situational mana uses (Purge and Wind shear are both 329 mana each- I spend a good 4-5k mana minute on just those on Jaraxxus), we’re mana hogs. Being able to replenish our mana from nearly 0 to full every minute is awesome.

You know what else is awesome? Not dying. Shamanistic rage helps us with that. While we’re pewpewing our lives away, we might notice the scary boss man is unleashing his lightning nova of doom. We somehow missed the gigantic pedowolf voice telling us to run away. What do we do? (Well, I don’t know about you, but I have enough HP now- a tier later- to survive Emalons lightning nova with 1.5k hp to spare. That’s besides the point, though.) We shamanwall!

Heroic Training Dummy begins casting Lightning Nova?

And herein lies the problem- what happens when both happen at different times? What happens if we know the boss is a heal check, like XT-Deconstructor pre-nerf, and we know that Shamwalling the tantrums will lead to an easier time for the healers, which in turn leads to more mana for healers, which might mean  downing the boss. Do we take a dps hit of possibly going oom because we used shamanistic rage at a suboptimal time?

Or, on another note, what happens when an unforeseeable large hit of doom comes up, and you just popped shamanistic rage 20 seconds ago to regain mana. What can we blow when the Vezax trash warrior comes spinning towards us with his 15k bladestorms? Our fingers might twitch to our Shamanistic Rage button, but since we needed that cooldown to continue dpsing we lost out on our one possible “get out of death free card.”

And, all of this is only pve. There is a myriad of situations in pvp where using Shamanistic Rage is a huge choice- “Do I think my healer can keep me up while I try to live through this rogues vanish-opener? I’m pretty low on mana.” “Do I think now is a safe time to use SR, or is his burst cooldown going to come back up within the next 60 seconds?” Etc.

So, we have in Shamanistic Rage a kind of spec-defining attribute/flaw/cool thing- combining dps and survivability cooldowns into the same thing. (Much like the RP generation aspect of Anti-magic shell!) We see this in Feral Spirits: Dash, Spirit Walk, and their healing ability all make wolves a survivability cooldown, but their beast damage makes them our ONLY burst cooldown as well. Maelstrom Weapon gives us the potential for high damage attacks, but also allows us to heal at the cost of damage. Shamanistic Rage allows us to continue bringing the pain, or helps us avoid having the pain brought to us. (If you’re like me and like to stand in Lightning Nova when at low mana and hit SR to maximize time on target, it helps you do both! But shh, don’t tell my healers. They might get mad.)

I love the design philosophy behind Shamanistic Rage. I love the hybridized feel it lends to the Shaman Class. Part of me even loves the fact that it requires thought and choice to use.

I’m just not sure it works.

(Totally unrelated note, I went into ToC10 tonight and got myself a…caster staff! Because, that makes sense. It’s now a part of my badass walking around/log off set. It’s also better than my spectral kris+shield of assimilation combo, but seeing as I don’t have a resto spec currently we’re going to ignore that. But srsly, look at me, being badass:)

Using a Staff on a Shaman is like eating the second slice of chocolate cake: Possibly socially unacceptable, definitely fattening, but it just feels so right!

Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler.

I wish I had tusks like that. ;~;

Gormok the Impaler is a stupid, stupid fight for Enhancement shaman, and one that might make you nerdrage. At least, that’s how it worked for me. First off, it’s not a melee friendly fight, not only requiring target switching, but also requires that your fellow raiders value downing the boss more than watching their dps skyrocket. After a 2-hour stint of wiping on Northrend Beasts last week, myself and the rest of Group 3 (gogo melee group!) were raging pretty hard in private (and, at times, publicly) at the number of people who could not grasp the basic concept of “with great snobolds comes great responsibility to RUN THE FUCK INTO THE MELEE.” So, for anyone who isn’t melee reading this, please do your local enhancement shaman a favor and skedaddle yourself onto Gormoks ass, so we can go about merrily stabbing things.

For anyone who is melee, here are a few tips (complete with a screenshot!) for getting rid of those pesky snobold nemesises. First off, set yourself up with some sort of way to indicate when a snobold is spawned. There are a few ways of doing this. A) Listen in vent for the caster who isn’t running into melee to scream “OMG SNOBOLD ON ME WTFF MELEE.” This will normally happen twice before you and the rogues do something about it, and then you’ll snicker about it until you get firebombed because you ran into range. B) Work with your addons. My personal choice for this fight is Power Auras Classic, which you can set up to notify you any time a raid member if afflicted with “snobolled.” I believe Grid also has a functionality for this, but I’m not positive about that.

^Click for enlarged.

Note the gigantic fucking snobold icon in the bottom left corner. Af ter that, the issue becomes finding a snobold. I did not want to clutter up the screenshot with nameplates, but they’re your best bet for actually finding the small things. Once you find it and you’ve managed to get in melee range, watch out! as people tend to move with the snobolds on them, and will likely keep dragging them out of your range. >.<

(Also, notice the lack of debuffs on the snobold in that screenshot: since most of your ranged are busy dpsing Gormok, you’re losing out on a lot of damage capability by losing debuffs such as 13% spell damage or Imp. Scorch. Since they’re generally not tanked, you probably won’t see a full stack of sunders up, either- thankfully, we have an awesome combat rogue who maintains high dps AND exposes armor every 30 seconds.)

If that’s not all for the fun on this fight, here is the real kicker: Snobolds are immune to AOE damage. This means A) Chain Lightning will only hurt them if you target them with it- it will not chain from Gormok to Snobold. This also means that one of our primary single target damage abilities- magma totem- is rendered useless. If you’re close to Gormok this doesn’t matter as much as he’ll still be hit by it, but it’s useless any time the snobold is dragged outwards. Additionally, fire elemental’s nova does absolutely nothing against these bad boys. (Note, this is not a problem unique to us. Ret Paladins are highly hurt by the loss of both Divine Storm and Consecration on snobolds, and Fury Warriors most likely lose out on Whirlwind damage- all aoe attacks that are included in their single target dps rotation.)

TL;DR Gormok:

• DPS Race, but fight is short. Use Fire Elemental here, as it will maximize Fire elemental’s time on target for maximum dps. Both Icehowl and Worms will be less affected. Do not use wolves, as you do not want them on cooldown for when worms come out and you pop bloodlust.
• Refresh Magma Totem while running out towards any stray kobolds. You might clip a tick, but it’s better to miss one tick when it has 5 seconds left than have a 15 second gap while you’re hurting the snobold.
• Don’t allow meters to distress you. Your dps will be lower here than normal, and that’s fine. Ranged is king for this phase. You’re badass yourself on Twin Valkyrs.
• Use addons to your advantage. They’re there to benefit you!
• Be nice to your ranged so they run to you.

2. Acidmaw and Dreadscale

Acidmaw and Dreadscale are a bit of a bitch for any melee, and there’s not much that makes them any worse for Shaman than it is for any melee. They do an unavoidable tail swipe that will knock you back- the most important thing here is to make sure you’re not standing in any place where you might be knocked in front of the other worm, as they have killer frontal cone attacks. Remember to pop your wolves prior to Bloodlust, which will probably be used within the first seconds of the fight. Fire Elemental is rather useless on this fight, as it tends to get confused after the worms bury and tends not to reaggro unless the worm pops back up under itself.

The more important thing about this fight is staying alive- the majority of your raid needs to make it through in order to avoid hitting the enrage timer on Icehowl. For that, here are a few tips:

• Do not do not do not follow the worms too closely as they go underground. They aggro wipe down there, and will pop up and one shot you if you’re too close/hit it before a tank does as it comes back up.
• Deadly Boss Mods is great for monitoring your poison, but it’s always nice to bring a back up. Once again, I use Power Auras classic.

This works for any Poison effect.

-As you can see, you choose debuff as the activation method, and write in the word “Poison.” (I use “Paralytic,” just to be safe.) This should notify you anytime any debuff is present on you that includes the word poison- this is useless for things like aoe poisons on the ground that do not show debuffs, but great for Lana Stouthammer/the Worms, etc. I chose lime green and the cool exclamation point, but there are other nice textures, such as a gigantic “Danger” sign. (Note-I took this screenshot at school where I couldn’t log on with my addons enabled without disconnecting, which is why my UI looks so plain! )

• If you have the poison, and your wolves are making their merry way eating worm face, make sure to use their Spirit Walk ability to try to compensate for the paralyzing effect and get you back to the worms in minimal time spent.
• Set up your bars with some flame shock/lava burst. If you get Burning Bile, you really don’t want to be standing near anyone. You can find a nice spot to sit and spam lightning bolt, but once Stormstrike wears off use a FS/LvB combo to try to keep Elemental Devastation up for when you run back in. You might not be able to get in range to Flame Shock without hurting someone (like a Holy Paladin. D:), but if you can, try this.
• Poison clouds spawn under whichever Jormungar that is not rooted in the ground currently. There’s no debuff to set up  a Power Aura for, so you need to actually watch for these ones. Try to stand at max range, as they start off small and grow fast.

3. Icehowl

Sleeping Beauties!

Icehowl is probably the least specific fight to try to explain. First off: make sure you spread out. If you see a knot of melee standing around you, strafe to another direction- just remember to do your best at standing behind him. Eventually, after stabbing icehowl long enough, he’ll jump to the middle and send you all flying into the wall. Position yourself so that you’re not thrown into any of the doorways surrounding the room, as it makes it infinitely harder to avoid the charge. Remember that the sprint buff Icehowl gives you on normal does not happen on heroic- if you’re worried about this, swiftness potions are you friend.

After you and your guildmates demonstrate your proness and avoid his charge is probably the best time to pop wolves, as they’re normally up by this time. You can utilize Spirit Walk to your advantage if he charged someone across the room, but regardless of how close you are Spirit Wolves will benefit from the extra damage Icehowl takes. This is probably a bad phase for Fire Elemental, as Icehowl moves around a lot- an extra 15 seconds of Fire elemental damage won’t make up for damage lost from leashing.

That’s about it for my take on Northrend Beasts. Hope you thoroughly enjoyed! (PS: Comments r 4 nice.)

In order to commemorate this fine moment, my loving guild leader over at altadin.com made me a fresh new banner for the middle of the page. Let’s see if it takes you all as long as it took me to get it.

Also, go read my last post. It’s much longer than this one.