4 Out of 6 Aint Bad?

Got the Eagle, Bear, Dragonhawk & Lynx bosses down tonight on my first "official" raid in the new guild. Went well outside of the Dragonhawk boss. We missed the 2nd chest by 2 minutes I think but wiped on the Dragonhawk about 3 times. 2 shotted Halazzi which was nice considering one of our healers was a PuG. Since it wasn't a full guild run we decided to call it after Lynx instead of heading to Malacrass.

The Bear boss dropped the Fury of the Ursine bracers which are a very VERY slight upgrade from the Windhawk bracers I crafted but they're cloth and would ruin my set bonus. I passed on them for a Mage. I did manage to get enough badges to pick up these sexy shoulders (instead of the boots). I didn't notice the amount of spell hit on them before and they were a HUGE upgrade from the crap shoulders from Aran. The boots are a nice upgrade as well but the ones I have at least had crit and MP5 on them as well as damage.. where the shoulders from Aran have the ever-useless spell pen. It doesn't hurt that they're sexy as well!



But man.. I'm so tired T_T. I have to get up in a little over an hour for work.

Also just wanted to give super kudo props to my wife's guild, Endless, for getting Bloodboil to 1% twice. I'm sure they'll down him if they go back on Sunday. Also wanted to congratulate my friends in Grand Theft Kodo for their first downing of Supremus. Although I'm not in the guild anymore, I DO have friends that still raid over there and just wanted to commend THEIR actions.

On a side note, I took Mutoh out of that new Kara guild, respecced BACK to Elemental and put him back in Forsaken for the time being. I need some badges for him so hopefully there is a Kara run sometime this weekend.

And Back to Raiding I Go! + Knowing When to Say When.

An officer from the guild I had applied to whispered me last night in the middle of a horrid Kara group on Mutoh. He had mentioned wanting to take me on a Kara run on Jandrae later in the night once he gets more people and I agreed to go to make a good first impression.

We WTF pwned Kara but left behind Nightbane because no one had their urn on them and we were in a hurry to finish the place so it wasn't worth the 2 badges. I'm now 10 badges shy of my Moon Walker boots. Wewt!

After the run, he whispered me again and said they were prepared to give me a guild invite and would like me to run SSC with them on Friday. I R EXCITED!

So by Friday I somehow need to obtain 10 badges and 9k honor.. ouch..

So yeah.. as of now.. I am a raiding Boomkin. <3

On to part 2!

A new guild had formed on our server and said they were just looking to farm Kara for badges once a week. I had whispered the guild leader and said that I had a Shaman I would like to bring and since they were short on healers I would respec Resto.

He shot me a guild invite and the way they were all talking in guild chat you would figure they've all been to Kara 100 times, they were geared and were just looking for a fast one night clear per week for 22 badges.. yeah right.

Tonight was our first night in Kara and it was a total nightmare. We didn't start the first pull until almost an hour after the raid started and the people that showed up didn't even have the gear to run heroics, let alone Kara. The healer assigned to the MT was in 60% greens with the Wal-Mart Healer package of the Crystal Pulse Shield and Essence Focuser. Nothing against those two pieces of gear but at least get them enchanted before you walk in to a raid.

Lets take a run down the raid list here. For our healers we had a Priest with a few pieces of S1, some greens and some isntance blues. A Holy Paladin which is who I spoke about earlier with mostly greens and the AH blues, and me. A Resto Shaman with +1400 healing,, 200 mp5 while casting unbuffed and the only person in the entire raid using consumables.

Our tank was pretty geared in a few pieces of S1, the badge shield and Thunderfury. He was the raid leader and I was actually pretty impressed with his tanking ability and raid leadership. Sadly, he was the only one in the raid that I was impressed with. Out OT was a Feral Druid with full S1. No PVE gear at all.. and he was taking a TON of spike damage.

Our DPS consisted of a Hunter, a Warlock, a Mage, an Arms PVP Warrior and a Rogue. The Hunter was wearing PVP gear which is OK for Hunters I guess. The Warlock had a few Kara epics so I figured they knew what they were doing but they seemed to die every.. single.. pull.. The Warlock and the Rogue were in a DPS race trying to out-do each other but they both just seemed to pull off the tank and die very very often so I stopped healing them.

The Warlock wore their Argent Dawn Commission trinket the whole time and said they didn't have anything else to wear. The Rogue was to concerned with his DPS and died regardless of how much gear he might have had. The Arms Warrior kept attacking shackled targets and was wearing the S1 2h sword and the blue pvp rep gear that came out with the last patch. Let me tell you, it was a great time and more than 2 hours after the raid started we wiped on Moroes for the 2nd time. 2h 30m in to the raid we finally down Moroes and then most of us wipe on the next trash pull so I called it quits.

My question is this. When is it OK to say when? If you don't dislike anyone in your raid group but you just don't want to spend your entire night wiping on Kara with a group that has no business being there, when is it OK to tell the raid leader "I give up"?

During our second Moroes wipe I whispered the raid leader and told him that I was very familiar with Kara and didn't feel that we had the right group makeup or the gear to be in there. He whispered back and said it was a lot of their first times in Kara and to be patient but there has to be a line there. Is it worth being patient when 80% of your raid isn't geared enough to even run heroics?

I made an excuse and told the raid that my mains guild whispered me and needed me for something and I couldn't tell them "no I'm running something on an alt", hearthed, left the raid and have little to no interest in signing back up for their Kara runs. Part of me feels like a total jerk for doing that but at the same time I was told they were geared, experianced and just looking for a "weekly, fast" Kara runs which was far from true.

At least this allows me to focus on raiding 3 nights a week on Jandrae =X

Leveling 101: Shaman

There is no wrong way to eat a Reese's, right? With the Shaman being a hybrid class, there is no wrong spec for them. There are, however, two wrong specs to level as. If you take a look at the loot itemization early on in the game, you'll notice there isn't a lot of caster leather pre-40, nor caster mail post-40 until the late 50's or Outlands. This eliminates Restoration and Elemental as faster specs.

The key to getting your Shammy to 70 as fast as possible is to level Enhancement. I cannot stress this enough. There is a ton of Rogue gear to roll on until you hit mail at 40. At that point, the pieces in Scarlet Monestary will last you until Outlands.. yes.. that long. If you have a main with a few high level enchanting mats, it's worth it to throw on some +STR or +AP enchants to that gear.

The first thing is to not get discouraged early on in the game. You'll be using a 1h + shield until level 20 when you can finally equip a 2h so those are going to be the slowest levels for you. At 20 you want to focus on getting the best 2h Axe or Mace possible and keeping Flametongue weapon on it at all times. The most depressing news is that you do not get Windfury for quite some time so you'll be using Flametongue in it's place until then.

At 40, Dual Weilding becomes available and makes life much easier for you. Pop Windfury on both and go to town.

Before we get a bit more in-depth, lets discuss the races available for Shaman.

Your choice is simple if you plan on rolling Alliance since the Draenei are the only option. Their Gift of the Naaru racial is nice when you're out of mana or in a pinch. It also comes in handy to toss on yourself before pulling multiple mobs.

As a Hordie, you can pick from the Orcs, Trolls and Tauren. The Tauren have War Stomp which is great when you need to pop a quick heal or stop another player from casting in PVP. The Trolls Berserking works great, especially as an Elemental Shaman. The Orc's Bloodrage is a bit too situational for me but still comes in handy. My choice? Troll.

How about professions?

This really depends on how you want to spec your Shaman at 70. If you're in to making your own gear, you can't go wrong with Blacksmithing or Leatherworking (Dragonscale). If you're planning to level and stay Enhancement, Blacksmithing can provide some amazing weapons to deal out DPS. Shaman cannot use swords so going Swordsmithing is out of the question but there are some great 1h maces (i.e. Dragonstrike) that are Black Temple quality. Leatherworking will provide you with some great gear later on and you'll want to go with the Dragonscale specialization. This allows you to create mail gear that fits Elemental and Enhancement pretty well but not so much Restoration. If you're going Restoration I might suggest something like Engineering or Alchemy instead. As always, First Aid is important regardless of class.

Lets look at gear priority.

Since you'll be leveling as Enhancement, you'll want to focus on +STR and +STA gear. STR gives us +AP and scales better than raw +AP gear. STA is important since you'll be soloing as a melee class because you'll be taking a beating. AGI is more a Rogue stat. The common misconception is that Shaman need AGI for the crit % but that only helps our "white damage" crits. Unlike a Rogue or Fury Warrior, white damage is only about 30-40% of our DPS. The rest comes from Windfury and Shock damage which aren't effected by our crit rating.

While you're stuck with a 2h weapon from 20-40 you'll want to aim for about a 3.0 speed. Anything faster is going to lower your DPS but anything higher is for Warriors and Ret Paladins. They have attacks that work off of weapon damage where Shaman do not. 3.0 is the perfect speed because it'll do a decent amount of DPS and you'll have your Flametongue Weapon effect proccing each hit. Once you get Windfury, it has a 3 second internal cooldown so anything faster than 3.0 lowers you chance to proc per swing.

Once you start to dual-weild, stay away from fast weapons. You want both weapons to be at 2.6 speed or slower. This doesn't blow the Windfury internal cooldown as often and deals more damage with Windfury when it procs. Some people use Flametongue on the off-hand since off-hand has a higher miss rate and deals less damage than the main-hand by default. The reasoning behind this is to not waste a Windfury cooldown on a weaker off-hand hit. If you have a faster off-hand weapon than 2.6, I'd always use Flametongue Weapon over Windfury on that weapon to make up for lost DPS. If both weapons are 2.6 or slower, having Windfury on both will increase your DPS.

Shock it to me?

As you level, you'll eventually learn Earth Shock, Flame Shock and Frost Shock. Each serves it's own purpose and should be used in your combat rotation.

Earth Shock - ES deals burst damage and interrupts spell casting. Since it is nature damage, the damage is increased if the Stormstrike debuff is on the target. My advice is to have Rank 1 and your max rank on your bar. If you just need to interrupt a spell cast, Rank 1 does the same thing that the max rank does. Only use the max rank for DPS purposes.

Flame Shock - Flame Shock works like a Warlock's Immolate spell where it deals intial burst damage followed by damage over time. This is the highest DPS shock for a Shaman and is very underestimated. I also recommend having Rank 1 on your bar if you PVP. Hitting a Rogue with a Rank 1 shock will remove their ability to Vanish.

Frost Shock - Frost Shock deals burst damage and adds a slowing effect to the target. The downfall of this shock is that it also deals additional threat, so avoid using anything over Rank 1 in dungeons or you'll wind up tanking the mob. At first, this will deal more damage than Earth Shock but in the end (at 70) Earth Shock will beat it at.

Your shock rotation should be Flame Shock -> Earth Shock when cooldown is over, repeat. Always start with Flame Shock to let it's DoT deal it's damage while piling on Earth Shock as well.

How bout dem totemz?

At first, totems will become a bit overwhelming. You'll get a ton of them very early and I recommend downloading a totem mod to keep track of them for you. I prefer YATA but some people prefer Chaman. Totems are broken down in to 4 categories - Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Only one totem from each element can be dropped at a time. Any totems dropped afterwards will replace the previous one of the same element.

For example - If you drop Strength of Earth and then drop a Tremor Totem, the Tremor Totem will replace the Strength of Earth since both are "earth totems".

Honestly, you'll waste a lot of mana dropping one of each totem. Most are better set for group settings but for soloing I'd only use Strength of Earth and Grace of Air totems. You won't get Grace of Air until after 30 I believe. It's also a good idea to set yourself in the middle of the mobs you'll be killing, dropping your totems and then pulling the mobs to you. If this is the case, feel free to drop a Mana Spring totem as well. If you're going to be killing and moving, Mana Spring will cost more mana than you'll receive in return and will be a waste.

SPECS! SHOW ME SPECS!

The first 5 points don't give you many options. Shield Spec is useless so go 5/5 Ancestral Knowledge for +5% mana. The next 5 should go in to Thundering Strikes to increase your melee crit chance by 5%. Both of these are very self explainitory.

The next point goes in to the new Ancestral Focus which gives you a mana reduction on your next shock whenever you land a critical melee attack. Since shocks are a huge part of your DPS, this is a great idea. Toss the next 2 points in to Enhancing Totems for a 16% boost to Strength of Earth and the drop the final 2 points up in to Improved Ghost Wolf making it an instant cast. Some people laugh at this but it's a great GTFO button and gets you from point A to point B faster.

Tier 4 should have 5/5 Flurry to boost attack speed by 30% whenever you land a melee crit. This is huge when you're stuck using a 2h weapon.

When you reach the Tier 5 level, put the first point in to Spirit Weapons. This is the only way to get Dual Weilding. This is also the only way for Shaman to learn "parry" and it's threat reduction helps a lot in dungeons. Pop 3 points in to Elemental Weapons to increase the damage bonus to your Flametongue and Windfury effect. This is also the only way to learn Stormstrike which will be a great addition to your combat rotation. Now you're stuck with 1 point to throw somewhere to hit Tier 6. My advice is just to throw it in to Improved Lightning Shield to help kill a bit faster or to put a point in Anticipation for +1% to dodge.

Put all 5 points in to Weapon Mastery to increase your overall melee dps. Tier 6 is pretty self explainitory.

Once you ding 40 you have a choice to make. Dual Weilding or Storm Strike first? Personally, I'd go for dual-weilding and pick up Stormstrike at 41. Stormstrike attacks with both weapons dealing their exact weapon damage and applies a debuff which increases the amount of nature damage the target receives by the next 2 sources. This is the reason you want 2.6 speed 1h weapons. Drop the last 3 points in to Dual Weild Specialization for a quick +6% chance to hit in melee.

5/5 Unleashed Rage for Tier 8 and 1/1 Shamanistic Rage for Tier 9 is what you're aiming for.

There is really nothing more to spend points on with Enhancement so you'll want to move over to the Restoration tree from here on out. Rather than give you an order to pick from, here are the talents to place points in and you can decide which are more important to you. Personally, i'd get down to Healing Focus as fast as possible and put 5 points in that. That and 3/3 Natures Guidance are the only reasons to really be in Restoration.

5/5 Improved Healing Wave
2/2 Improved Reincarnation
4/5 Totemic Focus
1/1 Totemic Mastery
5/5 Healing Focus
3/3 Natures Guidance

Thats pretty much the jest of it. One you get in to Resto it's just icing on the cake. You have all the tools you need from Enhance to breeze your way to 70. Just keep Lightning Shield up, drop Strength of Earth & Grace of Air totems, keep Windfury on your weapon and unleash the Shamanistic Fury.

Name Change pt. 2

I had previously made a post explaining the name change and new direction of my blog but Blogger was kind enough to give me an error message when I hit the "publish" button. Normally it saves it as a draft but I had lost everything.

The short version of this is that recently I've been blogging about all 4 of my toons and wanted to steer away from a Moonkin-only blog and layout. The title of the blog is a play on "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" considering my toons are a Warlock (Lock), Shaman (Shock) with 2 female Nelf toons being a Warrior and Druid (two smokin' night elves).

Here is a little info on the 4 toons in this blog-

Veresitha - My 70 female Human Warlock. Raided with her in SSC, TK, Kara, Gruuls and 4/6 in ZA before putting her on hold. I put the most work in to her but GTK's raiding schedule doesn't match my work schedule so I discontinued raiding for the moment. She's 375 Shadoweave Tailor as well as 375 Enchanting and is currently Demonology raid specced 5-46-10.

Mutoh - My 70 male Draenei Shaman named after The Great Muta, Keiji Mutoh. Raided Kara and Gruuls but nothing more. I played him as Resto but hated healing 5-mans as a Shaman so I respecced Enhancement. Stayed Enhance for awhile but went back to Elemental which I leveled as and currently love it and refuse to respec out of it. I had a blast running heroics and Kara getting badges for gear but once our alt-Kara runs stopped I didn't have much to do with him so much like Veresitha he's on hold for the moment. Mutoh is my farmbot at 375 Herbalism and 375 Mining.

Adiar - At the time of this post, she is my level 63 female Night Elf Warrior and my primary focus in WoW. Once she hit's 70, she'll be my main toon and focus when WOTLK is released. Currently leveling as DW Fury, I love tanking and will be Prot specced at 70. She is a Blacksmith/Engineer but very low at the moment. I'll focus more on these at 70.

Jandrae - Currently sitting at 63, she is my female Night Elf Druid Moonkin. I play her along side my wife's Shadowpriest, Catalis. She's currently playing her Hunter, Darbley, so Jandrae is on hold until Catalis gets the dust knocked off her. I leveled her Balance and love the spec but I don't want to play her without Catalis. She is a 375 Skinner and 330-ish Tribal Leatherworker & I have full intentions on getting her to 70 before WOTLK.

I'm also going to put more effort in to the presentation of my blog with images and links. The lack of this is due to the fact that 100% of my posts are done at work where certain websites I need to link are blocked behind a firewall. I'm also going to work on tagging posts that deal with specific toons, raid/boss, professions, etc., to make it easier to navigate.

At the moment I don't get a lot of readers but I'd rather have it look nice to attract new readers. Lets see how things turn out!

Kara: Round 2

With the mass amount of upgrades I've gotten for Mutoh, I was asked to attend our casual Kara run on Friday last week. Unlike last week, I got 3 pieces of healing gear, another T4 Helm token and 22 badges of justice. To round out my healing set, I used the token on the Resto spec helm.

I did manage to pull my weight this time with the help of the recent upgrades and after the run and a few more heroics I picked up the badge shield. I know Nightbane drops a caster shield but it's MP5 and not crit. Crit is my friend.

Saturday night after our guilds ZA run, some people still wanted to raid so they through a collective Gruuls run together for an easy 5 badges. It consisted of half Grand Theft Kodo members and the other half Unrestrained members. Some of Unrestrained are former GTK alumni so we worked together fine and 2 shotted High King and sent Gruul packing in 1 shot.

They offered to let me take Mutoh in and I actually won my T4 shoulder token. Cyclone Shoulders FTW! Afterwards we ran heroic UB and I picked up the epic legs from the Black Stalk. My Shammy is sexified!

I've been in need of another alt to take up my time and have a Warrior, Shadowpriest, Moonkin and Rogue available. My Moonkin is on hold until my wife gets bored with her Hunter alt and comes back to play her Shadowpriest so Jandrae is out of the question. Telura, my Shadowpriest, is fun sometimes but it's a little boring since i've already played 2 Warlocks and leveled both Affliction from 10-50. I've played the DoT-n-Run game twice. Bucksavage, the new Rogue, is fun but more a screw around type toon. I decided to stick with Adiar, my Warrior.

I sent her some gold, respecced her DW Fury and got 3 levels on her last night. I heard that 2H wasn't a good leveling choice until 50 when you can afford to put points in to Fury for Imp Slam. The Splam spec, as it's called, puts out amazing DPS according to WoWwiki but is tough to master and requires a very slow 2h weapon. I might check it out later but for now I need to worry about leveling first.

At the moment, Adiar is half a bubble from 37 and I have 2 pieces of Herod's gear in my bank. I have a Troll Warrior at 53 but from there I'm clueless. I leveled Aulbeth as Prot and it was sort of a nightmare. I went DW Fury for a few levels but I mostly ran instances pre-BC with him so Prot was the way to go for me.

I love alts.

Guild Drama

Last night was an unusual night for Grand Theft Kodo. I had notified my guild that I would no longer be raiding but was asked to come to SSC. The guild leader had no problems that I had respecced out of my raid spec and was full Affliction, had no consumables and a whopping 9 Soul Shards so I knew they were desperate for help. They've done a lot to gear my character so the least I could do was help them when they needed it. I just hope they don't get the wrong idea and ask me to come to ALL of the raids. I stopped raiding for a reason.

My wife explained to me that earlier in the night we had a few no-shows and to fill the gaps they had invited people in to our guild and ranked them up to a raider without giving them a trial. This irritated our raid leader (who is not our guild leader) and he said that he refused to lead a trash raid filled with people who didn't belong in there and with new people who weren't even given a chance to prove themselves so he logged out and took his wife with him (who is our head healing Priest).

I totally agree with the guy. When I joined GTK I had to have close to full epics just to show that I was serious about my toon BEFORE I applied. I also had to run the gauntlet of doing numerous heroics with Officers to show that I knew my class and could follow directions and take criticism. I EARNED my raid spot. Pulling in people who haven't even sent in an application and instantly making them raiders not only shows favoritism, in my opinion, but shows desperation.

Dragging these people in to SSC on a moments notice without them reading strats or even so much as watching the videos is not only unfair to those of us that attend, wipe and spend money and consumables for them to learn the fights but also the guild. Like I said, I earned my spot. Nothing was handed to me or the people I raid with normally. This irritated our raid leader so he quit. Not only did he leave the raid group but he gquit shortly after.

Hopefully he comes back as he was, hands down, our best raid leader. Last nights SSC raid was blind without him and was a complete nightmare. If he doesn't there will be a large gap in our guild that I'm not sure could be filled by anyone else.

I had a bit of an issue last night as well. After notifying GTK that I would no longer be raiding I still attended the last 2 raids because I knew they needed help. They still had me listed as a raider and I was earning EP (DKP-ish points). Last night when we downed Lurker, the cloth boots dropped and they were a nice upgrade for me. I notified our Master Looter that I was interested in them and I hadn't spent any EP since our frist raid in SSC about 2 months ago. I lost out on them to a Shadowpriest (nothing against him. I like him and he's a great player) who has gotten 2 pieces of loot over the last 3 weeks.

Later in the night, Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet dropped off trash and I wanted it for my Demonology set. I lost out to a Druid (who is a close in-game friend of mine) who I know had a lower EP/GP ratio than me as well. I had no idea why but sometime in the last 24-48 hours I had been demoted to a "relief pitcher" which means that I cannot win loot, reguardless of my EP, if a player of "raider" status rolls against me. You're welcome for the help. GG.

After 4 miserable hours I did some of the SSO dailies on my Shaman and called it an early night. I worked early the next day (today) and needed to get some sleep.