Lurker...Dead!

Friday night was my night to lead a Kara team. We had a bit of a rough start, something came up clearing trash to Attumen, and our DPS warrior needed to leave for a couple of minutes. Two minutes turned into fifteen so we found a replacement. Just in time too, as trash respawned even before we could get back to the entry. We had one wipe on Maiden as we weren't really thinking and had the Paly tank him. Not the best idea. We switched to the Bear next go and she went down easy. One shotted everything else up to Prince. We were doing well on prince on our first go until we had an infernal land right on top of him about 1/4 second after an enfeeble, and we lost all 4 melee dps. Got him down the second go. Loots were not quite a good this run. A lot more void crystals. I did grab Fool's Bane off of Ilhoof. That allows me to switch my S1 Axe back to MH and get rid of the BBW's Paw.

Saturday evening we headed to SSC for the first time. Our first target was The Lurker Below. Had a couple of wipes, but we took him down on Try number 3. Not the best drops, but we did get Mallet of the Tides for our Main Tank, which is great. Then we moved onto Hydross. We had a lot of people who had never been here before , and this is a fight that can take a bit of getting used to. We got four tries in, and our best effort got him to 35%. So not a win, but a good go on our first attempt. We just need to make sure everyone stops dps on the phase changes, as that's what was killing us.

Sunday was catch up day for me. Did a bunch of little stuff that I needed to do. I also decided that my raiding gear was a bit to weak for PvP so I went out on bought the ghetto PvP set Seer's Linked Armor I went on the cheap for gems and enchants, as the AH was pretty barren or massively over priced yesterday. I'll recheck for some better gems during the week. But its not to bad for a starter set. With my Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph and my S1 Axe, I'm at 185 resilience, and pushing 9k health unbuffed. I lived a bit longer in BG's and when we did our 5v5 last night, I felt things went better there too. Ended up going 3-7 which for our team with our gear isn't so bad. Should be sitting on over 1000 arena points next week. Not sure what I'm shooting for at this point. A S2 Axe perhaps, or the S3 helm. I'll probably just see what I get in drops by the time I have the points and fill in the gaps the best I can.

Patch 2.4

Well Patch 2.4 is here.
And my initial impression is a positive one. Yes there are some bugs. BG's had some major issues such as realms not showing, and last night on my server, they were constantly crashing. But these bugs should be worked out soon.

Shaman changes. Overall good for Enhancement. Not the buff we were promised in PvP, but still it was something. The tremor totem change has been very nice. The Totem UI I haven't used, as I prefer my xperl frames and Yata. Instant GW is nice. The reduced CD on totems is a bit hard to notice, but still its a nice bonus. I'm missing the longer duration of the damage redution from Shamanistic Rage. In sum I'm not noticing the class changes too much, so while I was hoping for more, all in all its a gain.

AV changes. Haven't had a chance to do any premades yet. The new starting position actually is a benefit for the horde in my opinion. By starting farther back, its much harder for people to just zerg. People are forced to play some defense, and the Horde is much more likely to win in that scenario than the typical n00b zerg that I see every AV weekend.

Quel'Danas. I like it. QD has moved onto phase two, the new dailies are a nice change of pace. Sure with everyone trying to do them it can be a hassle to get your spawns, but its not to bad. The rewards are nice as well. Lots of gold, rejuv pots, scryer/aldor marks, random greens, and even a BoJ so far for me. There is a lot of traveling invloved, so I wish I had my epic flyer, but all in all im pleased

Magister's Terrace. Or Mr. T as I prefer it. Ran it for the first time last night. Pretty fun instance. Intersting boss fights even if several of them are recycled. The first two bosses went to easy as pie. The priestess was a challenge though, and we wiped a couple of times on her. Finally the Kael fight was a real pain. The phoenix really can't be meleed, as he hurts bad. Its very healing intensive as well. I was spamming CH as fast as I could during the anti grav phase to help out the resto shaman. Still we lost people. We finally downed him when I dropped my fire elemental to beat on Kael during the anti grav, and then I anhked after dying and finished him up. Very good loots for a 5 man. Looking forward to wiping on it in heroic eventually.

Maggy Downed

Our second week of 25 man raiding saw us scheduled for Gruul again. High King Maulgar, was a pain as we kept losing add tanks. Took us 3 tries before we got our act together and downed him, but we then proceeded to one shot Gruul. I got Gronn Stitched Girdle to replace Shattrath's Champion Belt. No Dragonspine Trophy though :(

That took a bit over an hour so we decided to move on to the revamped Magtheridon. Dps was great as we took out the 5th channeller right as Maggy broke free. WE did have a bit of a suprise, as we thought the abbysals had been removed. Our locks reacted quickly and feared/banished them. Everything was going smoothly, got the first blast wave, clicked when somehow maggy started to beat on the druid off tank. He started cleaving though melee dps, and in the confusion we missed the blastwave call and wiped. Well. It was out first try at him as a raid, we get one mulligan, and used it to well. Second Go everything went perfect. All Channelers down just as he releases. Tank Picks him up, and we go to town. Our clickers handled their jobs. ( Only one team needed now woot!), and we burned him down fairly quickly. Boss Down, 25 raid members up. Flawless victory.

We are raiders!

Saturday was our first 25 man raid. That's a pretty big step for characters and a guild that didnt exist 2 months ago. We downed the High King and the Dragonkiller, although both took 2 tries. With that success bouying our spirits and plenty of raid time left we decided to try Void Reaver.
We cleared trash, and had a few struggles doing that, but nothing to bad, then we had a go at our first T5 boss. First try didn't go to well, so we regrouped and tried again. Got him to 10% but couldnt take him down. Gave it another couple of tries, but we just couldnt keep enough people up to down him. Still all things considered it was a hell of a shot, and I'm confident we will take him down next time.

Growing

Our little guild is growing up. We are running two Kara teams this week, and still having to put people on back up. < Fire and Blood > is up to 87 members, 52 of which are 70's.(This does include a number of alts.) We have come a long ways in 2 short months since a half dozen of us rerolled level one toons.

I led last nights Kara Run. Well led in the sense that I had the RL icon and was Master Looter. I let the Main Tank handle the marks and pulls and order the CC that he wanted. It was a pretty smooth run, We didnt manage to clear everyone in the alloted raid time, but we one shotted everyone up to Chess. It will take a bit more gearing up for some folks before we are doing full clears in 3 hours. Loot was great. 8 bosses and no void crystals. Not everyone got something, but most did.

I got very lucky with drops. Attumen left me Stalker's War Bands,Moroes was wearing Edgewalker Longboots, and Maiden dropped Gloves of Quickening The mail items no one else wanted, so even though they aren't optimal, they are better than my blues. Our DPS druid didn't want the boots, so I took them ahead of the Druid tank, as they were a large upgrade for me.

So three bosses, three upgrades for me. I'm feeling a bit greedy, even though no one else was remotely intersted in the mail. So what should drop as we are clearing to Opera? Formula: Enchant Boots - Surefooted . There are two other enchanters so we all /roll, 98 for me. My enchanting is only at 364, so I offered to pass if either of them could use it now. But both were much farther away from 370 than I was. So by this time I'm almost hoping that nothing else drops for me. Opera is Red Riding Hood. Big Bad Wolf's Paw drops. I really need a weapon upgrade. I was main handing Gladiator's Cleaver which is more than suffiecent at my gear level, but I was still off-handing Mag'hari Fury Band No one was intersted in it so I gladly took it by default. Luckily the rest of the drops from there on out went to other people. So 15 badges, one formula, and four item upgrades on the run. A very good evening.

Kara Day 2

Curse you Netherspite. Sure you went down easier than George Michael at an interstate rest area, but you choose today to finally drop Skulker's Greaves? 6 months of clearing Kara on Bannonn and I never saw them. First clear on Baelor and they drop. Why is this upsetting. Because just hours earlier Quagmirran dropped Midnight Legguards, and I'd just spend 500 gold gemming and patching them up. So I passed Netherspite's pants to the rogue. *cries*

Day Two of Kara was great, we swapped in a few people who we had on backup Saturday. Two of them new recruits, who were past Kara gear wise, so that helped a lot. But Still one shotting everything in the seconf half of Kara, on the guilds first run is pretty impressive. I see a lot of really good players coming into < Fire and Blood > and it wont be long before we are into the 25 mans. When we rerolled 2 months ago, I never though we'd prrogress this fast and grow like we have. Its extremely gratifying to see.

Karazhan

< Fire and Blood > had their first Kara run today. We did extremely well. We oneshotted Attumen, and Moroes, before running into a bit of trouble on Maiden. That was more due to make up though. 5 Melee and only 1 dispeller. Took as a couple of wipes before we downed her. Opera was Oz and we one shotted that easily as well. Curator was our optimistic goal for the day, and we downed him just after the second evocate. I'm extremely proud of our guild. I know others have done it faster but under 2 months from rerolling to clearing half of Kara is extremely satisfying.

Patch 2.4 soon?

Well the background downloader is working at inserting the 2.4 files into our computer. The patch notes are getting smaller and less frequent. I'm guessing 2.4 will go live with 3/25 maintenance.

Here are the latest shaman notes

Shaman

Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
Chain Lightning: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.
Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds.
Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
Stormstrike has a new icon.
Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%.
Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4 seconds.
The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.

Its quite a mixed bag. The big changes were redacted. The shared cooldown between NS and Elemental Mastery was removed for now. And of course the MS debuff for Flame Tongue was nixed. Was it over powered? Perhaps a tad. Was it the best fix for enhamcement shamans in Arenas? No, but at least it was something. Take it back if you will, but give us somethng back please. Give us an Airshock that stuns like Hammer Of Justice, or have Ghost Wolf remove CC like Druid shifts. The Toughness change isnt enough. It turns a worthless talent into something to consider, having it apply only to slows and not roots, doesnt help enough. We will still die to rogues stunlocking us 9 times out of 10.

Now lets evaluate the changes being implemented.

Call of Thunder. Nerf, and the reasoning for it bad as well.
Chain Lightning. Buff, not breaking sheeps makes this useable much more often
Earth Shield. Very Tiny Buff, the mana per charge is slightly reduced but it needs to be cast more often
Flame Tongue. Nerf, but a valid fix
Ghost Wolf. Buff, will be very handy. Really one of 2 redeeming changes for this patch for me.
Totem GCD. Buff, 2 seconds less spent dropping totems really does add up.
Healing Grace. Buff, but not useful to any but full resto. 30% isnt that signifigant.
Rockbiter. Cosmetic change on a usless ability that shouldnt be used past level 10
Shamanistic Rage. Small Nerf, Nondispellable helps in PvP and is a buff. Duration halved is a big nerf, that half the damage reduction. Twice the mana in half the time should equal out to be the same, but there is less time to spend any extra you might gain so thats a slight nerf as well.
Stormstrike. Cosmetic, but still cool.
Totem Timers. Cosmetic, I'll still use a 3rd party add-on.
Toughness. Buff, but not as good as it could be.
Tremor Totem. Buff, less fears out of range is certainly needed. I'd like to see it reduced to 2 sec or increase the range.
Fire Nova. Fix. Now if only it wouldnt get destroyed before it goes of 75% of the time in PvE.

Overall there are more buffs than nerfs, but the removal of the FT debuff doesnt make it feel that way. I hope they still plan on helping enhancement more in Arena than that one try. Shamans were hosed on one review, lets not make it two.

Thanks for getting my hopes up Blizzard

Latest Patch notes.


Shaman

* Chain Lightning: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
* Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.
* Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%. (wording changed)
* (Removed from notes) Flametongue Weapon damage effects for rank 3 and above now also reduce healing done to the target by 50% and lasts 5 seconds. (removed)
* (Removed from notes) Flametongue Totem damage effects now also reduce healing done to the target by 50% and lasts 5 seconds. (removed)



So they take away mortal strike and make it so toughness doesn't work on roots.. Guess we are back to the new stormstrike icon. Yay!

And so it begins...

Well after finishing up a couple of straglers in BEM I moved onto Netherstorm, and ground quests. I got to about 98% when we decided to run Old Hillsbrad. So I ended up dinging 70 before my character was created. Unfortunately the time paradox did not leave a wake of epix behind. :(

It was really late by the time we finished so I dissed just enough stuff to create my runed adamantite rod. Then took the windrider to SWN to buy my mount. It only cost 900 gold, so I still have like 115G left. Woot.

So my second 70. Rolled on 1/22 dinged on 3/3. Just under 6 weeks. A month faster than on Bannonn. My gear is ok but certinly nothing to get excited about. A few instance blues and the rest quest rewards. Still I managed 450 dps in OH. I'm pretty sure I was well into Kara before I managed to reach that threshhold.

WoW is different than all the other games I've played before. The Elder Scrolls games, are open ended, but still have a main plotline you usually follow, and once its done, its done. The D&D based games are the same, They have a plotline you follow, and then thats it. Back when I was playing Everquest, I never hit the level cap. It was raised to 60 right before I started, and I never got much beyond 50. None of my guildies were much farther along. In fact I don't recall many max level characters at all. A level 60 was like unto a god back then. In World of Warcraft, half the characters are max level. Getting to 70 while an accomplishment, happens all the time. Unlike most games, in WoW once you hit the cap is when the game really begins.

On the precipice of 70

I dinged 67 Friday, 68 Saturday, and 69 Sunday. I didn't have enough left to push on to 70. I'm sitting at about 20% so I'm thinking It won't be tonight either, as thats a lot of xp for one evening. I'm pretty much done with all the solo quests through BEM. So I guess its time to move onto either Netherstorm of SMV. I've got to get Auchenai Crypts in asap, so I can complete the Hero of the Mag'har questline. Best quest in the game. A couple of really nice rewards from it as well, but the lore is what makes it so cool.

I managed to get enchanting to 350. The last 25 points are gonna be pricey I'm afraid. I could use a couple of instance runs to farm some shards as well. Money is coming in from questing, but not very fast. Its going to be very close as to whether or not I'll be able to afford my flyer. I still have a few stacks of ore up on the AH. Hopefully they sell today.