Archive for the ‘Real Life’ Category

*blinks*

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I guess I should have expected something this to happen. I really apologize for going so long without a post; I got rather caught up with several things that seemed to suck up all my time. Yes yes a lot if it was WoW—I knew I was going back to school so I wanted to get in as much time as I could before I had to be responsible again. So far I’m doing pretty well. I got on to raid last night, then logged off and read some for my Operating Systems class :) It also just occurred to me that today is maintainance, as I haven’t even tried to log in yet. *falls over from patting back too hard*

Anyways, to catch anyone up who cares, I finished my Texas trip and came back home, started making some preparations for the fall like lining up scholarships and filling out my FAFSA (DEATH TO FAFSA D:<). I’ve got my part time web development job set up as well, so I should be making some extra cash while I schools mahself. While I expect to leave much of my available time during the day for homework and the part time position, I should be able to arrange some time for teh blog *blows dust off the sidebars* I will first be picking up my class guide that I left off at Shamans because I don’t want people thinking I’m that vain about my class >.>’

In WoW News…

In case anyone didn’t go to Blizzcon or read MMO-Champion lately, Blizzard has announced the next expansion—Cataclysm. Apparently Deathwing (o_O’) is back and has torn Azeroth asunder. The premise of this expac is that they’re planning on redesigning the Vanilla zones post-Cataclysmic style and allowing the much sought after old world flying capability. Class/Race combinations are being updated, along with the addition of two new races: Goblins (H) and Worgen (A). It sounds nice and all, but I still don’t know how I feel about it.

Currently on Argent Dawn the instance server issue is it’s worst. Starting about 5pm server you have trouble getting into level 80 heroics ( i.e. it takes 30+ minutes of portal grinding to get in), which is absolutely ridiculous. Apparently after 5 you have to either raid, PVP, or run around aimlessly if you want to play World of Warcraft. What if you want to do non-heroics? Or old world content? Lol….

I made two level 60 characters for an experiment on our realm called Years Behind. A handful of individuals started this guild to see if there was any interest in raiding at 60 legit by turning off exp gain. The maiden voyage was three weeks ago when we had a ZG raid lined up for a Saturday. We had 15 60s show up to enter the instance and 20 level 60s in the guild at the time. Unfortunately after several members of the raid spent 3 hours (yes… hours) trying to get into the stupid instance, they called it. We tried again the next saturday only to have the same result. It was extremely disheartening.

Then one night a friend and I were trying to get into Onyxia’s Lair at 1am. We spent an hour without getting in. In the middle of the night… That’s when I first read the post on MMO-Champion and it really infuriated me. Blizzard is announcing that they’re basically planning on removing ALL the old content and making it level 80/85+ content. So not only will the content we made characters especially for be going away, but we can’t even run it right now because of the stupid instance servers.

Honestly I’m to the point that if they release the next major content patch before the servers are fixed I might stop playing. It’s frustrating me that much. Why should I pay money every month if I only get to do end-game raiding? I’m sure some people don’t have a problem with that, but I like playing more of the game than that. That doesn’t even mention all the people who have recently started playing the game who can’t get into ANY of the instances to level. That’s a humongous chunk of experience, gear, and lore that they’re all missing out on. It’s really frustrating, and I’m almost fed up with it.

On the Brighter Side of News…

I got my priest to 80 this past weekend as the product of some mysterious leveling obsession I found. Probably has something to do with the fact that I got her epic and cold weather flying >.> As soon I leveled and went to go train spells, another guildmate of mine who had also just hit 80 asked if I wanted to come heal naxx with him. Heh we tried to two heal it at first and that was a disaster XD Then we brought in a tree from the guild and all was well. I actually went shadow for most of it. I went in with blues and greens and came out in all epics but 2… not bad for a night’s work <.<’

[Edit]
Come to find out I had level 60 and 70 rank healing spells on my bar because I always ended up training in my Shadow Spec so the Holy Spec bars didn’t get updated >.>’ Priest healing is much easier now XD
[/Edit]

My ultimate goal for this character is to get her looking like the image to the left—full T6 with the Etherium Life Staff off Solarian. I basically leveled this character to be able to wear T6. OCD? Maybe, but then again if I were, it would have to be CDO to be in alphabetical order o.o

I also swtiched Audrae from Spellcloth to Mooncloth tailoring because I figured Moonshroud would probably help me out the most right now, and I don’t even use my spellcloth CD anymore. I got my warlock up to 68 for Alchemy Transmute Mastery and started xmuting epic gems with her <3 I will probably work on leveling her up to 80 next, but I won’t push too much for a while. My priority for the next week or so is making sure I have my classes taken care of and my schooling in order :)

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TGIF! I think… *checks calendar*

Friday, July 17th, 2009

So I was supposed to up and out the door about 4 hours ago getting new tires on my truck and making my way towards Southern Texas, but something about the soothing sound of morning rain kept convincing me to hit the snooze button >.> Somehow or another I managed to roll out of bed and make my way about gathering my belongings in preparation to travel. I figured it would be at least nice to leave an update post for the people that like having something to read :)

Tier 9

*grumpy grumpy grumpy* I’m still not impressed with the T9 sets >.> I have a right mind to set up a mod to automatically equip my T6 set whenever I’m in town just because the models of the new gear are so visually upsetting. I guess upsetting isn’t the most accurate term, perhaps more like indistinguishable or unimpressive. However, the bonuses for Elemental are probably the best set bonuses yet for this expansion.

From what I can tell, shamans in general are pumped about what 3.2 is going to bring as far as the totem bars and set bonuses. I certainly see the new totem UI being a DPS increase as that’s 3 GCDs fewer I’ll have to worry about in long fights or fights that move around a lot. Also, the 2-piece bonus that increases Flame Shock’s DoT duration means an extra lightning bolt every 30 seconds or so. Considering crit rating and whatnot in a boss fight, that’s 64k more damage roughly (for me), so I’m pumped about it.

Sorry there’s not much more >.>” Perhaps I’ll find something interesting or witty and amend it later today…

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The Online Melting Pot

Monday, July 13th, 2009

For those that don’t remember their History lessons from grade school, the United States was often referred to as “The Great Melting Pot” because of all the different types of cultures that were united on common ground. As a result, our culture is extremely diverse and ever-changing.

Today I set off on my two-week tour of Texas to visit all the family (so any form of consistency my blog did or did not have will almost certainly have some inconsistency).  As I drove back to my home state, I began to think of my past, present and future. I have no idea where I will end up geographically speaking, but I know that The South will always have a presence in my past, should I find myself making a life elsewhere.

All that pondering got me thinking about culture variations and what it might mean for me and my family someday, and then I began to think about the effect it has on WoW.

The Guild Effect

Some guilds are comprised of local individuals that all play WoW together. Some guilds are built from people who only know each other through WoW. Either way, unless you’re pretty restrictive about recruiting people for your guild, you will find yourself in the midst of some players from all around the world.

If you’re not in an entirely local guild, you might be surprised at the different regions represented on your roster. Making a guild map can really open your eyes to where people are geographically (no stalker business now…). I learned that we have a significant number of individuals from Canada, as well as one or two in the Philippines o.o

It’s natural for guilds to wind up generally occupying just two to three time zones because people will want to be on playing at peak log-in times for their guild. Of course, though, there’s always the one or two odd individuals that will play whenever it suits them :P

Raid times are generally what effects the distribution of your members geographically. Certain raid times will benefit certain time zones based on your general work/school schedule, so people will often migrate to groups that raid at times lining up with their personal free time.

The Role Culture Plays

Blizzard had certianly acknowledged the worldwide acclaim of World of Warcraft by developing realm groupings based on country. So far we have US, European, Korean, Chinese and Taiwan, and I think I’ve heard news of Russian servers in the works (feel free to fill in on any zones I’ve overlooked, I’m afraid I haven’t done my homework on this =X).

Aside from geographical targeting and languages associated with each region of servers, there’s a few game play differences. For instance, on Chinese servers the Forsaken race has a different model than it does on other servers due to cultural beliefs regarding corpses and the revealing of bones.

Blizzard does all kinds of region-specific marketing. I think most people know about the World of Warcraft commercials, in different languages, along with the numerous knock-offs. There’s also the various holidays through out the year such as the Lunar Festival and Brewfest that are modeled after actual cultural celebrations.

It’s quite obvious that Blizzard is aware of the people playing their game. I think it’s really interesting to see how the different cultures influence the game both socially as well as developmentally.

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Change (previously “Under New Management”)

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Well I was completely blown away last night at my raid. Once we got everyone in vent, my guild leader announced that she and her husband, the raid leader, would be stepping down from their positions. I have a pretty good idea why they have decided to make this move, but I think their reasons are best left as personal.

I’ve had a lot of tears and laughter with both of these individuals. While I didn’t always agree with them, and at many times was very angry at them both, it would be ignorant to let their contributions to the guild and raid group go unnoticed. I feel like my friend made an excellent Guild Leader, but I think the strain and stress of dealing with people’s problems (very many have been my own) have probably weighed heavily on her in this latest expansion. I can’t think of an individual of value that wasn’t fond of Ahi. I’m sure everyone will remember our former leader with gladness, and she will certainly leave a legacy behind her.

Her husband, the Raid Leader, seemed to do a decent job at not letting things get to him, almost to a fault. Yes, he did a good job making sure his gear was gemmed and enchanted—did a good job preparing himself for raids, but I think his lack of people skills was his Achilles’s Heel. He has this tendency to bear everything on his shoulders that he could, and while this may be a noble gesture, his attempts at being the martyr ended up causing some problems in the end.

I think perhaps at some point he forgot that the raid had other people in it heh. A lot of us were generally bright and intelligent people with varying perspectives of insight to contribute to the group. It wasn’t always about who had the best ideas or finding ways to make Bez look bad; a raid group succeeds together just as much as they fail together. We all put in our monthly fee (fees for some >.>’), we all put in our time each week, and we all want to see things go well.

It always seemed like the harder things got, the bleaker situations seemed, the more Bez would try to do things himself. I always had a tendency to take this as an offense instead of a gesture of good will. That has probably been one of the largest dividing issues for me, and I truly regret that.

A History (I think it’s supposed to be “An History”…)

I’ve been friends with the Guild leader since I started college, but we really got to know each other well during the Summer of 2007 when he husband, at the time fiance, was back home in Virginia. We spent about every other day eating dinner with each other, going shopping on the weekends, and spending vacation days just hanging out together. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life, to have someone include me that much in their own life.

When her fiance came back in the fall, they started spending more time together again and I got to see her less and less; part of this really was my fault as I had let myself get completely caught up in Rangarok Online, trying to salvage a dying server. In October I went on a business trip for work and made the decision to quit Ragnarok cold turkey. It worked—I haven’t played since that day.

Well I started trying to spend more time with my friend at that point, and I noticed more and more that almost every time I went over, they were playing WoW. After about 3 months of this, after about 2 years of being asked to play wow by the two of them, even after swearing I’d never allow myself to get addicted to WoW (because I was pretty sure it would happen if I started), I downloaded a trial copy of the game and created a human warlock. And so it began…

Over the course of the game I felt like like the two people that asked me to come play with them so much were the people that played with me the least. While, at the time, I didn’t understand what a big deal raiding was for them, I still was very sad that I was always seemed to be doing everything alone (with the exception of some amazing dungeon zergs with a certain hunter and shaman). I figured it would be better in the Outlands because they wouldn’t have to leave their continent XD but it still didn’t get much better; I felt like I had to guilt them into running a dungeon with me :(

So, while my frustration and pain might have come out of misunderstanding and overreacting somewhat, I still think I was justified in my disappointment. It was hard to swallow that I had gone from what seemed like the biggest part of someone’s life to being one person in a sea of online people with which she played. I felt neglected and abandoned, and began wondering why I ever started playing this game.

Fast forward several months, several heartaches (many caused by me), our guild has grown from the people I saw in real life plus a few to over 50 active members. The group was teeming with life and diversity, and I felt like I finally had people who were able to distinguish me from the large group of people—for the first time it seemed like people were willing to pick me up out of the crowd every now and then, so I began to build a relationship with the guild again. It was then that I realized how much the guild meant.

The Moral of the Story

While a lot of this seems like girl drama and /weaksauce, I think a lot this goes on in WoW between friends and in friends and family groups. I’ve learned several lessons through the entire ordeal—some are lessons I’m not a big fan of, but in the end I found some peace with most of the things that bothered me. In the beginning I didn’t realize what a priority my friend had in tending to the entire guild, even as small as it was at the start.

It took me about 8 months to realize that my goals, my desires, my plans just weren’t as important to her as the overall goals, desires, and plans of the guild or even of her husband. While I still don’t think I agree with the earlier of the two, I can still respect it. I gave my friend a lot of grief about this during the first 6 months of my playing because it never made sense to me, but I think I understand better now. I’ll always want to be a significant part of her life, but I’ve learned that it’s not going to be the same as it was that one summer.

In the Future

I will certainly say that it’s always intimidating to me for people to put down the game for any period of time. I understand what a committment the game takes, let alone holding a leadership position of a guild or raid. I think my friends realized that and have made the responsible decision to dedicate more of their time to their lives. Like I say when anyone makes that decision, I highly admire them.

I honestly think that things will work out the best for everyone now. I wish my friends and my guild the best of luck in the coming months as we all begin new chapters of our lives.

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T.G.I.F. Everybody!

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

This is probably the first Friday in several months where I haven’t had to be at work, and I have to say it’s VERY satisfying to be able to roll out of bed at noon without consequence XD However, if my first few days of freedom are any indicator of the pattern my next month off is going to follow, I may be in for some trouble. I’m a big procrastinator in that I try to make the most of the moment, putting off things that I don’t really see as necessary or fun until later; saddly this tends to include things like laundry, vacuuming and taking out the trash @_@ BUT! I have already made the effort to take care of several things this morning in an attempt to set a better trend for myself :) *would like to point out that all the trash is gone*

I also was supposed to do something about my gold supply and working to get my dailies taken care of every day, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside too. Hopefully I’ll be able to get those taken care of today as well >.>’ Despite my noticed shortcommings, I still plan on enjoying my sweet Friday to the fullest.

Decipher This!

Wrath of the Lich King brought about a new profession, Inscription, along with Glyphs for each class. Glyphs are basically enchants for your spells that benefit or improve them in some way. I think the original idea was to provide a little more variation in how a player should build their toon, but it’s a widely held opinion that several classes are sorely lacking in options when it comes to glyphs. Some classes are a difficult to spec as a 25×25 sudoku puzzle, but I don’t think the Elemental tree is complicated at all. Like I mentioned in my spec post, you have more than enough points to get all the straight damage increasing talents in the tree; the only decision making comes when you’re choosing where to stick the remaining points.

I think the Glyphs for Shamans present a very similar situation. There’s a couple different glyphs that are applicable to an Elemental Raiding Spec, but generally there’s only 5 that are considered good for dps:

Glyph of Lightning Bolt and Glyph of Flame Shock are no brainers because Lightning Bolt is your main damaging ability and the Flame Shock/Lava Burst combo is essential to the Elemental rotation; however, determining the third glyph is a little more elusive. I had the Chain Lightning Glyph for a while, but this is only useful on trash and fights with multiple targets close together the whole time; Chain Lightning is also a terribly mana -hogging spell. So, I dropped Chain Lightning and picked up Glyph of Lava. These were the only options until 3.0.9 when Glyph of Totem of Wrath was added.

At first, I didn’t even think this glyph was worth getting, so I completely ignored it. Then I started talking some more with other shamans and it seemed like a lot people were opting for this glyph over Glyph of Lava. I even heard one person mention that 4k spell power was the point where Glyph of Lava actually scaled to being better than Glyph of Totem of Wrath. Well, now that numbers had actually been thrown into the mix, I had to sit down and figure this out for myself. I did some number crunching of my own and cane to the conclusion that Glyph of Lava scaled to be better than Glyph of ToW at around 2600 spell power. However, theory is theory—practice is practice.

[Hour and a half later...]

Ok so I drug my shaman out to Ironforge for some testing, got some Firecracker Salmon and a Flask of the Frost Wyrm and set myself up for some testing. Overall I did two rounds with each glyph twice, one round with heroism and one without. For the first four rounds I didn’t seem to have woken up enough to think to run a combat log, so I redid them. The first set of data lead me to believe that Glyph of Lava did in fact scale better with my 3103 spell power, but the second set seemed to tell otherwise. According to the stats report, my overall dps is actually higher with the Glyph of Totem of Wrath, so I think I’ll play around with it a bit in my next couple of raids.

The Latest Fad

I’m generally the kind of person that thinks for herself. I don’t run to the latest fads or trends just because the majority is doing it, mainly because people large groups tend to become less intelligent. On the other hand, I also like to think that I can consider all the options and make a fair and justified decision. This is what lead me to do all my testing with the glyphs and whatnot. I still think there’s a big difference between theorycrafting and what actual practice has to say on subjects, but it never hurts to get your brain involved in things.

I will admit that I tend to shy away from trends and take the road less traveled just to say I did, but I don’t want my tendency to divert from the masses to ever be my detriment (at least not long term). So, I challenge anyone reading this to use your head about things, don’t always listen to what the experts say, and to find out for yourself. You might be surprised at what you learn :)

Bonus Footage!

Dear Blizzard,

I know your attempts to keep classes balanced and gear volatile and exciting is all meant to make the game more fun to play overall, but seriously… T8 4-piece bonus? Worst. Bonus. Evar.

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Back to the Way Things Were…

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

So I sit here at my desk (yes I finally made myself go back to the office), shuffling around the last remaining papers, contemplating the freedom I’m going to have in the coming month. As I said before, I’ve decided to take July off for some personal time to get all my crazies out before the Fall semester starts.

It’s been an interesting experience being a full time worker in comparison to my life as a student. When I first started working I was so overwhelmed with all the awesome new things I got to do, like buying cool things, taking road trips, and living in an actual apartment. However, as the months went on, I eventually reached a year of this grand new life style and began to miss the easy life of being a student: my only responsibilities were to learn, something I do well and enjoy greatly. Somehow I’ve managed to piece together the best of both worlds (well, minus the monthly salary :P) and I think my last three semesters are going to be a lot of fun, with a little hard work.

I think a similar thought process goes on in WoW as well. I hear that when BC came out, a lot of people changed their mains and rerolled shamans on alliance because it was the big new thing; the same thing happened with WotLK where many people rolled DKs. The problem that a lot of people find out is that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. Both sides of the fence have pros and cons, but we tend to forget about the cons on the other side and just focus on the grass you haven’t been standing on for the past month.

My Shaman has been my main for the past year and a half that I have played WoW. I started playing just after Black Temple was released, so I never got to experience any of that Vanilla business. I know several people who have changed mains every expansion, some by choice, some by destiny. Some people can’t decide what class they want to play; some decide that their old main was better and revert. I think in the end it’s much more gratifying to stick it out and play a class you enjoy. Now, I could have just magically picked a class that I enjoy, play well, and that gets raid spots and it could be a huge coincidence, but I’d like to think I’m just content with my decisions :)

Dial 5 for Casting

I had a conversation with a Mage friend of mine this morning about casting stats. He’s been recently trying to experiment with his build to see if he can improve his DPS any, and was discussing his Tier 9 bonuses. As of now, the Tier 9 Mage 4-piece bonus seems to be an additional 5% crit to the core bolt spells. He mentioned to me that he was rather unimpressed with this, as I have been unimpressed with my Tier 8 bonuses. I took a moment to explain to him that that was like getting 5 free spells. He proceeded to give me a blank look… through the AIM chat window (I could feel it with my ESPN yo!).

So, I threw on my spectacles and pulled out my invisible theorycrafting manual and began to explain to my friend the nature of casting stats. A caster has several different stats that effect your raiding performance. Each stat has a numerical conversion ratio:

Stam and Int are pretty obvious in what they do. Several classes and specs get additional bonuses from stats such as Intellect and Spirit, but Elemental Shamans don’t get any benefit other than the base amounts listed above *stabs at things* When I think about stats and how to build up my gear set, I think about the conversions in terms of probability; afterall, I am a Math Major :P

For a caster, hit rating is the first thing to stack. The reason behind this is that it’s the easiest to cap. At level 80 the spell hit cap is 17%, roughly 443 hit rating; this means with 0 hit rating, you will miss approximately 17 spells out of 100. While at first getting hit capped may seem like a daunting task, remember that hit rating is the easiest to stack at only 26 points per %. There’s also a hit talent in every caster DPS tree. On top of that there’s group composition buffs in the form of the Draenei Racial Passive (party wide), the Druid Balance talent Improved Faerie Fire (raid wide), and the Priest Shadow talent Misery (raid wide). Also, when the rolls are done for a spell, whether or not the spell lands is always rolled first.

Next comes Critical Strikes. Again, every DPS class has some talent that increases the damage of your critical strikes. For Mages it’s 50% extra damage, and for all other casters it’s 100% bonus damage, essentially increasing the damage dealt by 1.5x and 2x respectively (not entirely sure what the deal with Mages is here, so feel free to leave any comments on it). Now, the way crit rating works is that 1% crit generally translates into 1 extra spell crit in 100. So if you have 30% crit rating, you will theoretically have 30 spells out of a 100 crit. Crit is often thought of as a more efficient means of DPSing as it saves mana, but the downsides are that it tends to cause a lot of threat and it’s the hardest stat to gem or enchant. While there’s not really an official crit cap, the perceived cap is said to be 50%.

Last but not least, the mysterious Haste Rating. Haste is calculated at 33 rating to 1% haste. What does 1% haste mean? It means you shave 1% of your spell cast time off, essentially allowing you to cast 101 spells in the time it takes you to cast 100. This mechanic seems to rotate on a different axis from hit and crit, but they all mesh together somehow. There is an actual haste cap of 50%. This is because 50% haste rating reduces your global cool down to 1 second, but it cannot be lower than that. Therefore any additional haste will be lost once spells are reduced a cast time of 1 second or less.

What does all of this mean for me?

Well if you’re not an elemental shaman, this probably won’t mean anything to you XD But if you are, or have interest in them, read on :) Elemental Shamans don’t have any inter-proccing talents such as Nature’s Grace, so each stat has an independent dps effect; however, there are several talents that provide buffs that proc off crits.

In terms of Gems, the priority for stat allocation should be Hit Rating (if you are not hit capped), Spell Power, Haste, and then Crit. This is because of the value of the rating on the gems: 16 Hit rating is .62% hit > 16 Haste rating is .48% haste > 16 Crit rating is .36% crit. However, if you are talking about straight percentages, the order is a little different: 1% hit (again, if you are not capped) > 1% crit > 1% haste. The reasoning behind the latter list is because the elemental tree is chocked full of talents that increase damage and provide personal and raid buffs from critical strikes.

LOOOOOONG Post Short: 5% crit rating is nothing to laugh at.

I have personally tried out just about every stat composition possible. When I was working towards 70 I got the bright idea to stack my crit as high as possible; this often lead to me pulling off tanks in dungeons >.>’ Then I got a tip to get my hit capped first, and then build some spell power, so I got hit capped and gemmed completely for spell power. When Wrath hit, I was incredibly intimidated by the new hit cap, and instead began inadvertantly stacking haste. I think through this I got up to about 700 haste rating, and let me tell you—that was an interesting ride. It was EXTREMELY rough on my mana pool, especially considering the lack of replenishment in my groups at the time, but it’s very exciting to be able to pump out spells that quickly.

After that I managed to get hit capped and starting building my gear up, trying to swing towards Crit over Haste. Now I’m kind of back to where I started, seeking a careful balance of stats; although, I have replaced all my crit gems with haste gems and that seems to have improved things a little.

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Has you seen mah bucket?

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

It has happened; not even a week into my new blog and I’ve missed a post @_@ Ah well, hope this makes up for it… somehow >.>’

As I was flipping through the channels this morning trying to find something entertaining to watch, I paused on Spike to watch some CSI. One of the commercials was announcing their Summer Bucket List event later this evening—all the things you need to do before the summer is over. I’ve always had lists in my head of things I wanted to accomplish, but most of the time I end up busying myself with other things and having to settle for less. So I have decided to make summer bucket lists—one for WoW and one for Real Life *gasp*

WoW Summer Bucket List:

  1. Get my Priest and Warlock to level 65 so I can do Northrend tailoring
  2. Get the Rusted Proto Drake for my Shaman
  3. Get my gold supply above 10k (somehow o.O)
  4. Get a Raven Mount for my Shaman

Real Life Summer Bucket List:

  1. Make the WoW Machinimas I’ve been talking about forever
  2. Develop a new, better daily lifestyle routine
  3. See at least 5 new movies in theatres
  4. Completely clean up my apartment and set things up the way I want
  5. Lose 10 pounds
  6. Read a new book

Now that being said, hopefully the public statement will give me a little more impetus to follow through with my goals :)

Elementary, my dear Dawson!

I figure at some point or another, blogs dedicated to a certain class will talk about specs :) So, I’ll take this time to give some of my preliminary thoughts on the elemental tree in terms of raiding. As most good players know, you always put a few points in other trees to get a well-rounded spec. For Wrath so far, the Enhancement tree appears to be the best place to find well-rounded talents for both the Elemental and Resto trees. This appears to be the basic Elemental Build; the main differences between specs lie in rows 2-5 of the elemental tree among the talents

Now each of these talents has it’s own purpose and I’ll explain my perspective on them. Elemental Warding, which used to reduce elemental damage taken by up to 10% (my good friend E pointed out that this was EXTREMELY helpful on the Naj’entus fight), now reduces all damage taken by up to 6%. This is clearly a survivability talent, and while most will say it’s purely for PVP, reducing damage taken can be very helpful in boss encounters post-3.0. Just about every boss fight has some form of AoE raid damage now and being able to reduce damage can go a long ways towards keeping you alive longer; it’s a well known fact that dead players do no DPS *makes scholarly face*

The next talent, Reverberation, reduces the cool down of your shock spells by up to 1 second. Again, many people consider this to be a PVP talent, but I feel it too has it’s uses in PVE content. The group I raid 25 mans with has a boomkin that has graciously specced into Improved Faerie Fire, which is comparable to a shadow priest’s Misery. This 3% hit buff is amazing to any caster, so accordingly I adjusted my gear, gems and enchants to best maximize my stats. Now the 10 man group I run Ulduar with has neither hit buff, which often brings me great distress (not to mention the priest started bringing his elemental shaman instead, and for the sake of avoiding certain sexual connotations, I will just say that it makes things feel VERY crowded). Anyways… I have been too lazy to adjust for the 3% hit loss considering I’m only 1% under the cap. That means occasionally a spell will miss. I usually don’t notice it unless it’s a Flame Shock and I’m like OMGWTHBBQQQ!!?!??!one! WHERE’S MAH DOT??!? What on earth am I going to do with this Lava Burst now?!??!?!!!? Well with Booming Echoes down in tier 8 of the tree, Flame Shock’s cool down is reduced 2 seconds in addition to any points in reverberation, meaning you can probably cast a Lightning bolt and then Flame Shock will be back up again.

Another scenario for why this talent is handy is on fights like Assembly of Iron or Freya where a mechanic of the fight relies heavily on interrupting spells. Considering Booming Echoes, Earth Shock puts your shocks on a longer cool down than Flame Shock does (or Frost Shock for that matter FROST SHAWK!!!1!), and because Flame Shock is such a vital part of the Elemental DPS rotation, it’s important to be able to have both spells as ready as possible.

Eye of the Storm—no, not the Battleground… Yet again, another talent that I’ve heard so many people describe as being a PVP talent. First off I would like to point out that this talent + Concentration Aura means ZERO SPELL PUSHBACK. As mentioned before, almost all of the fights these days have some form of raid damage, which means pushback, which means time lost in your dps rotation. I would say that if you can afford it, max this talent out.

The last talent on my list is Unrelenting Storm—the mana regen talent. When I first hit 80 and set up my raiding spec, I had maxed this talent out because I was always running out of mana. Then two things happened: I did a little research and figured out that Chain Lightning had no place in my normal rotation on a single target, and suddenly our raids were filled with Ret Pallies and Survival Hunters. Suddenly I couldn’t go below 95% mana o_O I would die on a fight, ankh, and be back to 100% mana by the end of the fight. Somehow, this talent didn’t hold much value to me anymore >_> However, that is not to say that it is a useless talent. Not all raid groups are blessed with the ocean of replenishment talents, so you may find yourself running out of mana a lot anyways and see a purpose for this talent. Don’t forget to use Thunderstorm though! (Just make sure you’re off in a corner away from the mobs and potentially grumpy tanks >.>’). If you still find yourself having mana issues, I would say to look into Improved Shields over in the Enhancement tree, tier 2.

The Audrae Spec

I’ve explained my thoughts behind some of the expendable talents above, but I figured I would spend a moment to explain all my decision making in my spec :) First off, many people will comment on the points I put into Improved Ghost Wolf in the Enhancement tree. The way I see it, they either go there to help out with mobility mechanics, or they go into Elemental Warding or Reverberation. The short explanation is that I notice the difference in the Ghost Wolf talent moreso than the other two. The long explanation is that on fights like Flame Leviathon where I’ve just caused a shut down, I insta-ghostwolf off back to my demolisher because the choppers are incapable of picking me up for some reason. I also help fire harpoons on the Razorscale fight. In outdoor areas, the time saved by being able to sprint off somewhere can really improve your efficiency.

Also, as I’ve said, mana regen isn’t a problem for me anymore, so I pushed those points into Eye of the Storm; it just seemed like an all around win-win situation. That left one point left over, which drives me crazy. There are no one-point talents left in my trees so I’m forced to stick it somewhere to receive a meager benefit. I decided the best place was Reverberation to help with the whole shock cool down business.

At this time I feel like there’s not much that can go wrong with the Elemental spec if you take the time to understand what each talent does. It’s not like the Prot Pally tree or the Balance Druid tree where you have 100 points worth of useful spells and only 71 to spend; now, granted, I could just be unfamiliar with these trees, and it could be as obvious as the elemental tree as to the no-brainer decisions. I know my hunter friend seems to come up to me once a week telling me about something he’s changed in his spec to try and squeak out some more dps. Sometimes I’m glad my tree isn’t that complicated, but that means a lot of people are going to have the potential to perform as well as me without having taken the time to think this critically about things.

Updates for 3.2

It looks like the new Epic JC patterns will be available for purchase from the vendor in Dalaran for tokens, though I still think they shouldn’t ALL be available that way (that might just be the overachiever in me talking though >.>”). Also, they’re putting a trade timer on BoP items from instances so you can trade the item with people who are also eligible for that piece of loot. It appears blizzard is trying to find ways to cut down on the mis-master-looting tickets.

Also, I nearly flipped out when I saw the list of new tier sets and viewed the Shaman set; come to find out it’s just the PVP gear, so it was merely a false ugly alarm XD

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