Less QQ more Pew Pew

We don't balance solely around the top 5% (in PvP or PvE). I've explained before why I think it would be a mistake to do so.

On the other hand, the very best guilds are good barometers. They will stick with tradition as long as they can, but they will switch completely to a different strategy / class / tradeskill / whatever if they think it is required for the content.

The reason I bring up good guilds a lot really is this: these guilds are often phenomenally better than the average guild. They aren't 5% better. They are hundreds of percentage points better. Therefore, obsessing over a 5% buff for your class won't affect your success rate nearly as much as improving your game. I'm not terribly sympathetic to arguments that you can't improve your group's performance at all, and if that's really the case (which I find unlikely), why are you worried about hard modes anyway? The normal modes of raids are designed to be completed by most groups with any interest in raiding. Most of these players would barely detect a 5% buff or nerf to stamina. They will get far more out of making sure Demo Shout or Curse of Elements are up 100% of the time or even swapping their gems.

Translation : Stop Whining. Raiding is easier than ever, if its to hard L2P and stop sucking.

Well thats how it reads to me, and yeah its pretty true.

In other news we got Heroic Faction Champs and Twins down last night, so we can at least kill all the same bosses as we could before, so I'm pretty happy about that. Twins dropped my Boots, Greaves of Ruthless Judgement, so aside from the Band of Callous Aggression, I'm done w/ non Anub loot. I guess I'm lucky that ICC is dropping.

Antler video

I'm really starting to like this set more and more.

Been awhile since my last update. Progress took a bit of a hit for < Fire and Blood > last month. We beat our heads against the heroic Anub wall too much. Bad luck , bad RNG, bad attenedence, bad effort, bad execution, all conspired at various time to keep us from downing him. I'm guessing we had at least a couple hundred goes at him, had him down into single digits multiple times, but we just never quite got it all together. The big downside is that both our Tanks, including our raid leader got burnt out. So we are rebuilding out tanking corp which requires retraining and regearing. Still with all new tanks, we got through normal Toc and through Lord J on Heroic our first night this reset. Thats as far as all but 3 other guilds on our server have gotten. With Icecrown set to drop next week, I think It may be a while before we get back to Anub... Which sucks as I hate leaving content unfinished.

Antlers?

Finally the Shaman Tier 10 set is revealed, and apparently we are slaughtering and wearing Rudolph.

Go Go Elementals.

Shaman

•Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
•Fire Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Fire Elemental is a bit more damage that Magma totem, but being on a 20 minute cool down I tend not to use it much, as I want to "save" it for when I think I really need it. with a 10 minute c/d I think I'll use a lot more. Glad to see this change.

patch 3.3 notes

New Relics (totems)
Shaman

•Item - Shaman T10 Elemental Relic (Shocks) - Your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells grant 73 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
•Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement Relic (Stormstrike) - Your Stormstrike ability grant 146 attack power rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.
•Item - Shaman T10 Restoration Relic (Riptide) - Your Riptide spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

So depending on how the stacking works this could be a nice little upgrade. Stormstike is much higher on the priority list than lava lash so its less likely to fall off than the buff from Totem of Quaking Earth So with a full stack this gives 438 AP compared to 400 for ToQE. It does have the drawback of taking a minimum of 16 seconds to get the full stack. As uptime of ToQE is close to 100% this ends up being a pretty small upgrade, but an upgrade is an upgrade.

In addition to the totems we also get this little boost.

Shaman

•Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 50 minutes (Improved Reincarnation will continue to lower the cooldown by 10/20 minutes).

A 10 minute reduction is a nice little bonus for free. I miss my improved reincarnation from the old TBC enhance/resto build.

ETA: on relics, looks like the elemental relic is going to be a very solid choice for Enhancement as well. 12 seconds to get a full stack as opposed to 16 seconds and right now Crit is simming as higher than 2ep for me.

Apparently the elemental bonus is going to be Haste rather than Crit, which with the 4pc T10 bonus is probably going to be very valuable.

T10 set bonuses

Shaman

•Item - Shaman T10 Restoration 2P Bonus - Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
•Item - Shaman T10 Restoration 4P Bonus - Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over until cancelled.
•Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 2P Bonus - Your Lightning Bolt spell reduces the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 1 sec.
•Item - Shaman T10 Elemental 4P Bonus - The cooldown on your Lava Burst ability is reduced by 15 sec.
•Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement 2P Bonus - When you activate your Shamanistic Rage ability you also deal 12% additional damage for 15 sec.
•Item - Shaman T10 Enhancement 4P Bonus - Each time the beneficial effect of your Maelstrom Weapon talent reaches 5 charges, you have a 15% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

Lets look at the 2 pc first: an additional 12% damage for 15 seconds every minute. Or an extra 12% damage 25% of the time, which averages out to 3% extra damage. At 7k dps thats 210dps. Seems pretty nice to me.

The 4 pc set is a bit trickier to do napkin math on. Due to RNG it can take anywhere from 2 seconds to 20 seconds to gain 5 charges. Lets say on average its 6 seconds. I doubt the procs would stack, but the duration is longer than the average chance to proc, so lets say up time is 15% lets use 6000 as an average AP in raid. So the bonus is 1200ap 15% of the time or 180 ap average. 6000 ap is probably a bit low in an optimized raid, so the better your buffs the better this bonus is. I think i need someone a bit smarter than I am to work out the value of the 4 pc. :)

Twins Down.

After a 3% wipe late Friday night < Fire and Blood > downed the Twin Valkyrs on 25 man Heroic ToC last night. Got them on our second go of the night. We have 24 attempts to use on Anub tonight. Wish us luck.