World Bosses

Bit of a weird raid night last night. We were planning on going into hyjal and we did. WEe pwned rage, and then the DC's started. Our Bear Tank Dc'd and couldn't get back on. I SC'd like 4 times in a row, and finally asked to be replaced. The raid ended up replacing several people before trying Anetheron. Lots of bad luck. Pally Tank DC'ing during trash, It was just a mess. So after 3 attempts, we decided to call Hyjal and take down some world bosses, as < Fire and Blood > had not attempted before. We invited all the back ups and headed to SMV and downed Doomwalker easy as pie. We then flew to Hellfire and took out Doom Lord Kazzak. So a couple of missing notches from our belt have been filled in. Then we headed to Gruul, for our weekly attempt at a DST for our melee. No luck again.


I also need to update that < Fire and Blood > downed Kaz'rogal and Azgalor last Friday. I'm kinda bummed that I missed the run, but had other plans. Sunday was BT. Supremus dropped a Syphon of the Nathrezim which I picked up. Nice slow 2.8 speed. Would have rather had the Axe from Naj'entus though

Kael'thas Dead!

So after our first full night of wiping on Kael last Friday, we cowboyed up and headed back yesterday and downed that SOB. Man that felt GREAT. < Fire and Blood > is a true T6 guild now in just under 2 months from our first 25 man raid and 4 months after rerolling. I'm extremely proud of all our people for pulling together and taking out one of the hardest bosses in TBC. Now on to Illidan!

All I Want is a Decent Pair of Pants

Well I managed to get another 100 badges and purchased Trousers of the Scryers' Retainer. Now I just need to get someone to make me a Nethercobra leg patch and cut a couple of Bold Living Rubies for me. I'm down to only one 5-man piece of gear now after replacing my Midnight Leggaurds.

For those who dont get my title reference please click on the link and watch the hilarious clip.

We Were Prepared!

< Fire and Blood > Has been itching to take down some new bosses, so we ventured forth into the Black Temple last night. This was virgin territory for almost all of us, so people were excited.

All in all we did very well. We wiped once on High Warlord Naj'entus, and then downed him on our second try. It was a bit dicey as he shielded at 1% and someone used the spike before people were healed up and took out half the raid. But he went down, all the same.

From there we moved on to Supremus. We had some troubled with healers staying in range of the tanks, and people getting trapped by Volcanoes on the first attempt, but we regroup and downed him rather easily on our second try.

Shade of Akama we next up, and we had a couple of wipes there too. First time we had half of our ranged dps die to adds. Second try we had too many adds still up and Akama went down with shade under 5%. Finally on the third try we took him out.

So we are now 3/9 in BT to go with 2/5 Hyjal. We still need to down Kael before we are a true T6 guild though. Hopefully that will be next week.

The Drums of Battle

Thousands of dead animals later I had enough leather, hides, and scales stockpiled to drop skinning and powerlevel Leatherworking. Cost to me was about 350 gold. Almost all of that was spent on training and patterns. I spent maybe 25 gold at the AH to fill in a a few items like buckles and elixirs, and silk bolts used in making a few items.

I didn't even bother to do the specialization quest at this point, as my gear is much better than the Ebon Netherscale set at this point. What I really did level for were the Drums of Battle 80 haste rating for the whole party? Yummy. With the changes to LW in 2.3 the cost on them is much cheaper and you don't need to be exalted with Shatar to make them. AS a matter of fact leveling LW on this toon was much much easier than on Bannonn. I got to 375 on him making expensive items like Heavy Clefthoof Boots and Felstalker Bracers Now with the lower rep and mat costs of the drums it was a much easier endeavor.

Fire and Blood headed back to Mt. Hyjal last night. Pattern: Swiftstrike Bracers dropped and no one else wanted it, so I picked it up. They are an upgrade from the Vambraces of Ending I'm currently wearing, but they aren't as good as the Deadly Cuffs of off Rage. I'll probably end up making them and letting the cuffs go to our rogues first. I just need to see if anyone has an issue with me raiding our small supply of Hearts of Darkness

How to Gear.

I was passing through Undercity awhile back and I got a whisper from a young shaman. He asked me why I was wearing all leather. It delighted me as it gave me the chance to pontificate for awhile on the failings of Blizzard to properly itemize gear for enhancement shamans.

The simple answer is that in most cases leather is going to be better for our dps than mail would be. Most leather has some combination of AP, crit, hit, and agility. Most mail has less of those stats due to the addition of Int and mp5. With the changes to water shield and mana spring totem, the mana pool size and regen rate are very unimportant. Unless the shaman is totem twisting the should never go oom as Shamanistic Rage will refill your pool every 2 minutes. Most of the dps mail items in the gave are itemized more for hunters than for shamans. Rogue leather on the other hand suits our needs nicely.

Now you may be asking, how should I decided which piece to use over another. Well that is where our theorycrafting tools come in. Enhancement shamans should determine a relative stat weight, or EP scale. Most people use Attack Power as a baseline and weight every other stat in relation to AP. The posters over at Elitist jerks have come up with some good scales based on different gear levels. The ideal method to compare one piece of gear to another is to use Yo's simulator You can derive your own personal EP levels based on your current gear using this sim and input them into a site like Loot Rank.. From there its a simple matter to see which items have the highest ep value. Loot Rank does not take item procs into account however, so the trinket and totem values are not accurate. It also cannot measure the relative value of slower weapons, so Keep that in mind for choosing your weapons.

Walking Guy is scary

I was unable to make Friday night's attempt on Kael, which was disappointing. Our first time seeing the fight didn't go all that well. But gradual progress was made, and they got farther along every time. We are heading back there today, and hopefully he will be added to the downed list tomorrow.

Saturday we had an unofficial raid. It was originally scheduled to be a Gruul/Mags run but we ended up doing them on Wednesday after clearing the first 3 bosses in TK. So we headed to SSC. We downed Hydross, Lurker, Tidewalker, and Karathress. It was a pretty solid effort as raid composition was not ideal. It was nice as we got several recruits/ non regular raiders in, including several who hadn't been there before. I ended up getting Ranger General's Chestguard

Windfury...

Its the defining ability of an enhancement Shaman. But what exactly is it? How does it work? There certainly can be a lot of misconceptions about it.

Windfury Weapon Rank 5
190 Mana
Instant cast
Requires Melee Weapon
Imbue the Shaman's weapon with wind. Each hit has a 20% chance of dealing additional damage equal to two extra attacks with 445 extra attack power. Lasts 30 minutes

This is the imbue Shamans cast on their own weapons. 99 times out of 100 you will want to use this over Rockbiter, Flame Tongue, or Frostbrand.

There is also a Windfury Totem.

Windfury Totem Rank 5
325 Mana
Instant cast
Tools: Air Totem
Summons a Windfury Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem enchants all party members main-hand weapons with wind, if they are within 20 yards. Each hit has a 20% chance of granting the attacker 1 extra attack with 445 extra attack power. Lasts 2 min.

A shaman should never use this to imbue his own weapons as it only grants a single extra attack. Still this totem is so good that every DPS warrior, Rogue, and Ret Pally in the game will beg to be in your group in a raid. It flat out increases their white dps by around 20%.

One thing every shaman needs to be aware of is that the weapon imbue version of Windfury has a hidden 3 second cooldown. So using almost any 1H weapon in the game a shaman can never have consecutive WF procs. This also results in slightly under 20%proc rate for 1H weapons.

The implication of this cooldown is very straightforward: it is in the best interests of the Shaman to wield weapons whose speed is as slow as possible while still dual wielding. The reasoning for this is also straightforward - the white damage done by a weapon of any speed that has the same DPS as any other weapon of a different speed with the same DPS, so you cannot modify your white damage contribution from your weapon. You must maximize your extra attacks - in this case, maximizing the damage that each Windfury proc and Stormstrike attack will cause. Since neither WF procs nor Stormstrike are normalized (using a flat AP value regardless of weapon speed for a given class of weapon) they both hit much harder when using slow weapons. Under a perfect set of circumstance the maximum proc rate for Windfury Weapon is 20ppm, though it is typically around 15 ppm when wielding slow weapons -- this is far from a trivial contribution to your damage.

Also note that the chance to proc for WF when dual wielding is 36% as long as both weapons have the windfury weapon imbue.

The Windfury totem does not have a 3 second cool down. In no circumstance believe that the lack of a cooldown can make up for the difference in getting that 2nd extra attack. Never rely on the totem for your own weapons.

An enhancement shaman also has talents that improve both the weapon imbue and the the totem.

Elemental Weapons Rank 3

Increases the damage caused by your Rockbiter Weapon by 20%, your Windfury Weapon effect by 40% and increases the damage caused by your Flametongue Weapon and Frostbrand Weapon by 15%.

Improved Weapon Totems Rank 2

Increases the melee attack power bonus of your Windfury Totem by 30% and increases the damage caused by your Flametongue Totem by 12%.

So now your weapon imbue gives you two extra attacks with a bonus 623 AP and the totem gives a bonus attack with 578 extra AP.

And that folks is why everyone loves Windfury. :)