Gems

I made a quick spreadsheet to melee dps gems. Its kinda handy to see what gems are avaialble, so you dont spend 15 minutes searching the AH for a Expertise/Crit gem.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pJoE77BDXZPry8OCmnODgdQ&hl=en


Also got another upgrade last night
Belt of the Tortured. I've been sticking with mostly mail these days, but this was too big of an upgrade to pass on. But I'm now way over the spell hit cap. WTB Expertise! Missed out on the T7 shoulders by 1 DKP. Teaches me to pass to the Tank the first time they dropped :p

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Last night we went to kill Malygos, it was going pretty well, we got him down to the low teens when we had some people DC during wipe recovery. That was bad. Then one person was AFK for about 10 minutes, came back and had to leave because he was ill. Then the only hunter who showed up last night perma dc'ed. We were already melee heavy and we had no ranged to replace him with. In theory we have plenty of people, but we are hurting on ranged DPS at the moment. Our attendence has been pretty shaky by a lot of folks lately. One of out mages has been ill, another is working late, 2 Warlocks rerolled DK, our Elemental Shammy rerolled DK as well. One hunter has family issues and has been absent, Our Shadow Preist is going to grad school and is dropping out of raiding. So we ended up having to cancel the raid which was Ugly.

So I took a break for a bit and watched some MNF which I dont get to see often. I came back and did mu Hodir dailys and then we went and did 25 man Archavon.
Boy we need to farm him everyweek. He's the new loot reaver. Four epics for 10 minutes work. He dropped Valorous Earthshatter War Kilt, which was great beacuse my pants were, well pants, a medicore quest reward. Huge upgrade there. The 2 emblems of valor got me to 25 as well so I bought Ring of Invincibiltyas I was usuing a quest reward there as well. So amidst the Bad and the Ugly, there was some Good.

Naxxramas

< Fire and Blood > Had their first official 25 man Wrath raid last night. We had done a few 10 mans Clearing Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum, but we decided that we had enough 80's to resume our normal 25 man schedule. Went a bit slow being our first time there, but we cleared the Spider and Plague Quarters and the first 2 bosses in the Construct Quarter. The place is a bit of a loot pinata with 3-4 drops per boss.

I upgraded both of my weapons getting a pair of maces in Angry Dread and Split Greathammer Now I just need to level my Enchanting high enough to get Beserking. Of course Abyss Crystals are not all the plentiful yet, so maybe I'll stick with 50 AP or 26 Agi for a bit.

Upcoming Shaman Changes

Elemental Changes via GC

We are making some upcoming changes to the Elemental shaman tree. Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.

1) Unrelenting Storm – reduced from 5 points to 3 points. Bonus is 4/8/12% of your Intellect returned as mana.
2) Elemental Warding – now reduces all damage (not just Nature, Fire and Frost) taken by 2/4/6%
3) Elemental Shields – this talent has been removed, since its effects were combined with Elemental Warding.
4) Storm, Earth and Fire – reduced from 5 points to 3 points, but keeps around the same net benefit. In addition to current effects, also increases Wind Shock range. The damage bonus to Flame Shock has increased to 60% at 3 ranks. Storm, Earth and Fire has been moved up the tree as well.
5) Shamanism – this is a new 5 point talent in the old Storm, Earth and Fire position. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. We have not finalized the numbers, but it will probably be something like 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.

These changes will be available in the next minor content patch, and are in addition to the AE changes mentioned previously.


The Previous changes are

Upcoming AE DPS Changes and totems
I realize buffing totems sounds strange to players who are used to loltotems. One of the designers just made the comment that telling Elemental you are buffing damage totems would be like telling Holy priests we are nerfing CoH and you're expected to area heal with Holy Nova now.

But the change to Magma Totem in particular is substantial. The base points went from 170 to 370 and the coefficient from 0.67 to 1.0. In our tests, the pulses were doing something like 600 damage. You would be hard-pressed to get that kind of increase out of Totem of Wrath, even considering its benefit to the whole raid.

Yes you have to run up, but we don't think that is too much to ask considering you can still Chain Lightning or whatever while the totem does its thing.

Totems are a core piece of the shaman design. We want to make them work, not remove them from the game. (Source)

Ding!

Hit level 80 last night. Sooner than I thought I might prior to release, but still a lot slower than many in my guild who've been running heroics for a week and took 2 groups into Naxx10 this week. Sigh. 10 levels in 12 days shouldn't seem like you are already behind the game but it does. Oh well now time to start with the getting geared up.

My crit chance has plummeted from almost 34% unbuffed to barely 20%. My Hit rating is sorely lacking as is my expertise. Well at least AP didn't degrade.

New caps to shoot for

Hit: 368 hit rating. This is the hit cap vs boss level mobs counting a 3% raid hit buff from Misery or Farie Fire.

Expertise : 205 expertise rating. This is 25 expertise which negates 6.25% dodge chance of boss mobs. If I could find axes I'd only need 164 rating but Blizzard hates orcs so there are almost no top end axes for shamans.

Crit : no rating needed as agi adds crit as well. I like a minimum of 30% crit unbuffed. Crit rating provides 1% crit per 45.9 rating, Agi provides 1% crit per 83.3agi

Lots of work to do. Lots of rep to grind for patterns and shoulder and head enchants.
I need to farm up leather as well. No rest for the weary.

Welcome to Northrend

So its Day 5 of Wrath. How do you like it so far?

My impression is that its great. The landscapes are gorgeous. The early instances are fun , quick and easy, but, still interesting. The music is cool. The quests by and large are well organized and some of them are just plain cool as hell. I mean who doesnt want to go kick some scourge ass with High Overlord Saurfang.

I managed to hit 74 last night before logging off. I missed out on playing at all on Saturday, so I'm not too far behind. Hopefully another week or so and I'll hit 80.

Lots of areas to explore yet. I've only quested in the Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord so far. People have been pretty good about grouping for the unique spawn mobs which is really nice. Saves a lot of time. Its fun to be leveling again. I was using Lightheaded which I really liked, but some guildies reccomended Carbonite quest helper. I LOVE it. It so awesome. I haven't fully looked at all the features, but its incredibly nice to figure out where to go next. The carbonite minimap feature is better than sliced bread.

Sunwell Clear

Kil'Jaeden went down for the count Sunday night. It was pretty much on our third night of attempts. So while he has been nerfed its still not a fight you can grab 24 people off of /trade and do. It certainly was a bit less climactic than downing Kael, but all in all its something I'm very proud that < Fire and Blood > accomplished. From rerolling on Quel'Dorei at the end of January, I never dreamed that we'd manage to clear every raid in TBC before Wrath hit. I huge thanks to everyone who is and was a part of it.

RNG was finally nice to us as well as Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury dropped. Grats to Uhohhotdog. It also caused huge drama on the Realm Forums If it didn't involve my guild I'd have been much more ammused by it. Drama can be entertaining, but I don't want FnB to be involved in it.

He also dropped some nice gloves for me
Thalassian Ranger Gauntlets

So we've got another week and a day before Wrath its to farm Sunwell. Lets hope we get lucky on a few more drops for people.