Friday, May 30, 2008

You know I took the poison from the poison stream

This one is for Kimmu-sempai, and those of you of more scientific bent.

Looks like the Tasmanian Devil might be on the verge of extinction due to...

The world's only known lethal contagious cancer.

Some populations have a 90% infection rate... and life expectancy after infection is like 6 months.

Doan google pictures of the sick devils. Ima serious, itsa terrible freaking disease.

Good luck Taz. The world would suck without you.

BTW... heresa link to a story on a non lethal contagious cancer.. who knew dogs had STD's?

I am not worried- I am not overly concerned

First things first... If'n Ratter doan lay offa the Nelf Lesbian Strangeness... Ima have to link him on some of the Furvert forums... and he can come face to face with the absolute zero of weird. Sudden bear on top indeed!

Second, I hada conversation with my guild's mage class lead. You know.. the one that banned Melvin and his brother from raiding? She's given Maj the ok for lighter raids, and when I get the spell damage up, she'll be clear for full content.

I haven't told Melvin yet.

So anyway.. the title of this post was supposed to be "How Sever got her groove back!"

See... I gotta lotta alts. I got Mabd, the uber orc hunter. Majeure, the lethal belf frost mage. Unbound, storm and fury enchance shammy.

But then there are the scrubs... who just didnt make the grade.

Tragedy, the 32 ret pally.
Heartless, the 30 affliction lock.
And then there's Sever, my first char on the server, a 35 arms warrior.

Sever also serves as my bank alt.

Well... Mabd went JC a coupla weeks back. And over the weekend, I finally got the skill up to 360ish. In the process... well... theres a ton of money in cuttin and selling uncommon gems. Ima makin bank.

Why am I sayin this? Well.. first, jc cutting patterns for rare gems are insano expensive. And second... theres this thing called brilliant glass. Ida link it, but ima at work, and can't :(

Brilliant glass turns 18 uncommon gems (3 of each type) into one rare gem.

This wassa good idea back when uncommon gems were goin fer 1g each. But since they no longer spawn offa mining nodes... they substantially more expensive. Ima thinking that one use of Brilliant glass costs 75g in mats. Ima also thinking that talasite, one of the rare gems you can make with Brilliant glass... goes for 5g.

So anyway... makin money and leveling skills cheaply are more complicated than one would suspect. But Sever is doin just fine now, and ima clearing a ton of cash these days...

Enough to afford the 1k I hadta drop for the teardrop living ruby pattern. And enough to get Maj her hippiegryph, after she grinds the last 8k rep with CE.

Some tips fer those leveling JC... you gonna need thorium ore... and lots of it. Best place fer it is Silithus. Those bugs are no longer elite, and theres tons of rich nodes... I was averaging 3 stacks an hour with Unbound.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

One is a genius, the other's insane!

Gentle readers, I must caution you before you read further...

Some of what follows will shock you.
Some of it will disgust you.

What's worse, some of it might make you think badly of me.

So be it.

Arms and Fury is no longer around to keep me centered. His computer blew up. And when I mean, blew up... I mean, pining for the fjords. It is an ex-computer. (God have mercy on you if you get that reference.)

That means that I am now alone in world of warcraft except for.... HIM.

Bad enough he brought his flea bitten druid along on my heroic Arc run. (We had a tank... the dumbass druid was "dps") And we had a heroic fail. Goddamn... my mage needed that for 3 quests, and Melvin could care less that he blew the run.

Bad enough he still doesnt know how to arena.

But now Ima in a bind. A while back I was watching South Park. There was an episode where Santa gets captured by Iraqis... and Jesus has to go rescue him. There's a scene lifted outta Three Kings, where santa gets brutally tortured. And Ima laughing my ass off. And Ima thinking.. here I am, laughing at a scene where SANTA, of all people, is getting tortured... what the hell is wrong with me?

The there was this... which I found insanely funny.

Yeah... you can see where we're goin with this. Melvin got his. Bad. And Ima friend. So I should be supportive... but I can't be, cuz, well... it's Melvin.

Melvin and his brother have been told that they're no longer welcome on guild raids. NOT cuz of the idiot tank. But cuz of the the mages... the mages that both are so fond of... the mages with 30 spell hit and 13k life. All spell penetration and no +spell damage.

This hit them HARD. Iva been tellin em for months that they needed to work on raiding gear sets.. and both have been blowing me off. Now it bit them on the ass. You can do Kara in arena gear... but god help you in BT. They're fire mages without elemental precision. They have less than 50 spell hit. They have less than 900 spell damage, unbuffed. And they didn't understand that this freaking matters.

Melvin likes mocking me for caring where I am on damage meters. He laughs, and says his mage has more important things to do than damage... like sheeping things.

And now he has been relegated to the ranks of noobdom, by a guild he was tremendously impressed with.

His options? Go back the old guild, which almost has enough for a second kara group...

I shouldn't wish this on my worst enemy... but itsa sooo funny...

Ima goin straight to hell ain't I?

Monday, May 26, 2008

I want to kill you. I want to blow you... away...

Part 3922 of infinite. Why Nelfs are asshats.


We see this charming nelf hunter shadowmelded on top of a questgiver in quel-thelas. At his feet... a hapless horde skelly.





So.. ordered the new computer. Thanks to all who gave imput. Ima kinda happy with it, even if my video card is kinda underpowered. I can upgrade it later... or even buy another and slap it in, the motherboard supports SLI.

Got a new monitor yesterday... BB had a sale on samsung 22" widescreens... score!

Tried heroic arc yesterday... did not turn out well. We died on those damn infernals. Pally healing for the loss.

Did Mags/Gruuls with the guild. First time I saw the mags fight. One reason I have a good feeling about the guild... this chat...

1> You heard about X?
2> What about him?
1> They got him his first tier 5 this week!
2> They're takin a lotta effort to get him geared out...
1> Well, X came in third in damage at Hyjal with kara level gear... after that, the officers made gettin him gear a priority.

(X isa rogue. For any rogue to beat the locks at damage in Hyjal... jesus... for the guild to recognize hes such an asset... even better....)

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Believe it or not, I started to get nervous...

If you haven't seen this story yet, you should check it out. A member of AC got banned... not sure why yet. TJ is on the story, but BRK has yet to post on it.

K, I was waiting for Arms & Fury to post on this, but he's been all, like, "lift weights!" "Ima GOKU!" And so he completely neglected to blog about a personal WoW milestone of his...

His first complete Kara clear, compliments of his new guild.

First... Ima really happy with the guild. They let Mabd run with the Hyjal crew, we downed the second boss yesterday, and Mabd is now honored, opening up the best ammo in the game :)

Second... A&F got to see all of Kara. Which is sweet. The nightbane fight, the illhoof fight, netherspite and prince. (Prince is a bitch again...)

He got to do Chess! Everyone who loves the game should get to do Chess.

So... I thought I'd spend a little bit talking about mages and shammies in Kara...

This was the first Kara run for Majeure. And I have to say... frost mages are definitely an awesome raiding spec. True... you aint got crap for damage compared to fire mages. But still... you can compete... you're insanely mana efficient... you crit like a bastard... and more importantly... between double ice block and ice barrier, you can survive crap that would destroy lesser squishies... alotta damn raiding fights are about survival as much as sustained dps...

Moroes... ice block outta garrote.
Maiden... ice block outta holy fire, ice barrier stops repentance damage.
Shade... jesus... cmon, ice barrier, fire ward, blink to get outta blizzard, ice block on those pyroblasts... the only real problem is having to use fire or arcane on the elementals. Maj pwned shade... didn't even need healing in the fight. It was sick.
Netherspite... 8600 back to back crits? Suckit Lock!

Maj got two new pieces of gear, a replacement for the frozen shadowweave, and the tier 4 gloves. Why would I consider the tier 4 gloves when I have season 3 arena gloves? The tier 4 has +20 spell hit... and I can put another +15 on that... so one gear switch, and ima that closer to the 126 cap for frost spells. I swear to god, season 4 damn well better pop soon, I wanna gear poor Maj as she deserves!

BTW... A&F got two epics fer his beloved warrior...

As fer the adventures of Unbound in Kara...

Ima coming to understand a bit more about burst damage. Two fights in Kara require quick target changes... Curator and Illhoof. For the mage... I gotta have 3 seconds to start damage on a new target (using fire blast after the frost bolt to get most damage out in limited time) And thats about 2.5 to 4 k damage.

The shammy, otoh, can start doin damage immediately... just needs a hop to the flare or chains, then 1st attack... 1k, second attack, 1k, shock, 1k, stormstrike, 1k, windfury, 1k, crit .5 k (all over 3 seconds...) 5.5 k, more if ya get luck with crits.

Over time, the frost mage will beat the shammy. But when it comes to damage NOW... burst is a lot easier to arrange with the shammy. When Unbound was in a group fightin Illhoof, those chains lasted no more than 3 seconds. Period. The flares lasted no longer (frost shock isa great attention getter.. and remember, the flares are easy to time..)

Oh yeah... does it make me a completely evil bastard that I wanna get Mabd a new pet, name it Arcane Demon, then PUG Kara?

Monday, May 19, 2008

Is he strong? Listen, bud... he's got radioactive blood!

So.. Sonvar is now blogging. The poor poor bastard.

As far as things go... here's some advice... try to have a small list of crap to blog on... and keep it updated. Me... I got Melvin, the gift that keeps giving.

But ya never really know when yuir gonna wanna vent on something. As things stand... I've been meaning to do a comic/sf/geek post for a while... and the whole spiderman costume kinda gives me an excuse...

WHY I AM NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO BATMAN.

K. Ima big batman fan. The comic book, not the crap they make movies outta. Batman Begins was, at best... acceptable. The camera work, I thought, really detracted from the fight scenes, but the story was pretty good. However, I have a really big problem with the series... and it goes like this.

The whole comic book thing goes two ways... either batman, or superman. Either you a fan of sherlock holmes, or you a fan of SWAT. Smarts or power. Batman is the avatar of the spirit of the vigilante. If you've never read Alan Moore's Watchmen, you owe it to yourself before hollywood manages to butcher that one as well...

What does it mean to be a vigilante? On the one hand, he's outside the law. He's dirty harry... someone who's use of force is bound not by regulation, but by a moral code (the more psychopathic, the better...)

He's also a detective... the keeper of the panopticon. In a community where evil does what it will in full view of all, the Batman archetype is the one who watches and remembers what everyone else, outta fear or apathy, choses to ignore.

So what is my problem with the movies? Batman gets turned into James Bond. It stops being about a semi divine madness and becomes about the toys. A crappy outfit. A rigged out car. A friggin personal plane. Oh lord, I have to fight the Joker! Better get into the fighter jet! From dramatic violence to cartoon violence.

So ima watching the trailers, and what are they emphasizing? A new stupid bat motorcycle. The worst parts of the first movie had to do with that moronic tank he was driving.

Batman does not drive a tank into your neighborhood to kick your ass. You know how batman works? You turn around, and see him right behind you, and realize he was there all along....

He really should be played as dark and obsessive as possible. McGuyver with a body count.

Which is why I was pleasantly suprised by Superman Returns. True, it was 90% drek. And Kevin Spacey really really blew. I hate camp in my superhero movies. But there was a great bit about the whole point of superman. You have this guy who can do anything, and he still busts his ass trying to save the world. Which inspires others to greatness.

Of course, at the end of the day, the message is mixed in all hero movies. "Good guy makes evil people stop being evil via judicious use of fisticuffs."

Force cannot make people better human beings. All it can do is terrorize them into acting the way you think they should. And if the world view of the one using force is a bit askew... the result can be tragic. There are few fates worse than having to live in a world of your own making.

Which is one of the reasons that Watchmen is such a great work. The whole point of Watchmen is various people saving the world. And in the process doing insane harm to it as well.

One of my favorite batman story lines... his old enemy Ras Al Ghul hacks into his computers... and what does he keep there but his notes and strategies on how he would defeat every other superhero on the planet.

Armed with all this info, Ras goes hunting the Justice League...

You better run!

It happened like this....

Friday night, I was noshing on some chicken fried rice, watchin BSG, when I gotta call from Arms&Fury...

"We need another dps for our kara group, bring Mabd!"

So I get on... Aerth said he'd played with the tank before, and that he was pretty good. As well, the off tank was Magebert's prot pally, and Magebert is kinda decent.

We crush moroes, get to maiden...and the main tank d/c's, not to come back.

Raid leader asks if anyone knows a tank...

Oh god. It wasn't supposed to be this way... ARMS &FURY, YOU BASTARD!

Magebert... "I know a tank!"

And that's how I ended up running kara with Melvin tanking.

I can still hear the screams of the healers. The resto druid, its googly eyes looking into nothing, its proud trunk shattered... whispering "I can't feel my roots" in the same tone of voice you'd say, "Oh, we're outta milk."

All I could do was weep while I held him, telling him over and over... "its almost over, its almost over..."

Then A&F bails after curator. Leaving us to make the march to shade... there to get 2 wipes on flame wreath thanks to a truly idiotic fury warrior...

My HUNTER had a 50g repair bill. A friggin hunter. I F'D outta about 6 wipes. Good lord...

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Dear God, hope you got the letter...

Herk, this is yuir friend ReNoobed... and we gotta talk.

Ima sick of yuir incessant, cruel and bigoted remarks towards poor Majeure. Shesa frost mage. She gives her best, time after time, and gets nothing from you but scorn and condescension. She's reliably by yuir side in arena, laying frozen death upon those targets you mortal strike, setting you up for the execute you love so much, and gets not even a "good job!" Ora "thank you!"

Instead, its all... "Maj SUCKS."
"Mages are ueseless!"

Poor Maj has been crying her eyes out at your thoughtlessness... and I for one won't stand for this crap anymore. Spec since Maj could wipe the floor with you, and we both know it.

As well, we need to discuss yuir unhealthy obsession with Unbound. Yeah, I know she has bloodlust. And windfury totem. And gives you a 10% AP buff... but its not all about YOU is it?

Unbound is starting to get a little creeped out by all the attention. The fish parts in the mail. That little "totem of love" you keep bragging about.

I doan know how to tell you this... but Unbound groups with other warriors, you know. In BG's, in 5 mans... in kara... and they get the bloodlust and windfury as well. In fact, she was telling me the other day...

Well... let's just say, yuirs is not the biggest hammer she's seen.

Ima friend. And someone had to tell you. Best reexamine those priorities, buddy. Before yuir left out in the cold, old and lonely and with noone to group with... cept Melvin.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Oh no, this is the road to hell...

I've mentioned before that Melvin is trying to get me to respec Majeure the Magnificent back to a lowly POM/Pyro build.... btw... the sick POM/pvp build is heavy into arcane so you can follow up with uber boosted arcane missiles (mine would crit for 1k)...

Melvin is also a tad bit upset that I refuse to upgrade Maj's equipment until the new season hits. All the while deriding frost mage dps...

Melvin is also of the impression that his feral druid is actually useful in arena... The shared consensus between Arms & Fury and I is that if we had Melvin's druid, we'd swap it for a gnome, then delete the gnome.

Did arena with Melvin and crew last night... went 0-3 with the scrubs, and 6-1 with the better chars. We didn't have the world's worst warrior... we had his evil twin, mr. almost as useless warrior... Who, despite playing arena for the better part of 3 months, still doesn't know which way to face when the game starts... (Arms & Fury... "Where the hell did they find TWO of them?") and who can't dps his way outta paper bag. Despite that, we did well... Maj and Herk work well together on an arena team... (more on this in another post)

Melvin refuses to use windfury totem with his shammy, even when on a team with 2 arms warriors.... he likes wrath of air, which adds 100 to his spell damage. I, ah, had a conversation with him about this, but since it took 2 months to get him to start usin bloodlust, Ima not holding my breath.

Melvin's 3v3 team went 2-8. This is the team with the two season 3'ed out mages and the mr. almost as useless warrior. They lost because of... bad matchups. I think they're around 1350 now... This is why Melvin wants Maj to go back to POM... to be on this team.

So.. Melvin was telling me about a 3v3 game he was in... he and the team got pwnd by 2 players... a resto druid and a frost mage. ("Do ya see now how nasty frost is? Oh.. the frost mage was simple, that druid was the problem...")

"And after we were dead, a ne hunter came outta shadowmeld... I think he was auditioning the other two!"

BTW... in 5's... we ran across a team, druid, 2 rogues, pally and warrior. We killed the pally and warrior and then, wtf? Wait... wait... nothing else... stealth gems pop, we find a rogue... wait ... then run around... Maj finds the druid... finally, after 5 or so minutes, we find the last rogue, named illy.

Team name... "now try to find Illy."

Melvin.. "I think we attacked them before they were ready!"

Monday, May 12, 2008

Yeah, he's built just like a quarterback and swears he'll testify...

Today's song lyric is for Fedaykin. It's the ULTIMATE texas rock song.

Anyway.. weird damn weekend. Ima in an abusive relationship, and I ain't talkin about the one with melvin. It was Kim's birthday sunday... and you aint screwed until your b-day is on mother's day or christmas. Just sayin. So I took kim to see Iron Man. Liked the movie, but I have the usual complaints about how hollywood sees the military...

Anyway, we had a discussion about when we were goin.
Me: "We can go early..."
Her: "Sure.. gimme a call about 11am..."
Me: "That's kinda early... Ima be up late doin the game..."
Her: "Well... just call whenever..."

So I get a call at 11am. From Kim. After a long night killin stuff.
Kim: "Just wanted to tell you that I was sleeping in late, so I called you so you wouldn't call me and wake me up."

Now THATS abuse. At least her pally is finally 70.

Onto the Melvin funhouse!

Melvin moved his mage and tankin druid to my guild. This doesn't quite make me happy, but at least the whole crew is around now. The problem... Melvin is no longer getting requests to tank... *gasp*

So he's thinking about moving back to his old guild, which "values" tanks more...

So... sat night... Melvin gets into a group for the heroic of the day... Underbog.

An hour later, all his friends... (and two of his enemies, me and arms&fury) get into another group for underbog. Magebert's pally tanking, Palmy's pally healin, the world's worst warrior as dps, Arms&Fury's boomkin as dps, and Majeure the wonderful, frost mage sani pari.

We blow through with only 3 wipes. (One and a half caused by the world's worst warrior) We finish.. get the loot, turn in... and check the friends list... Melvin is still in UB.

An hour later... Melvin finally shows in Shat.
"You finished! Grats!"
"No... I just had to repair..."

Another half hour, and Melvin earns his bonus 2 badges. He blames the healer, who only had 6k life.

So... Unbound finally got into Kara. We wiped twice on Nightbane, then killed him, wiped once on Illhoof, decided we didn't have what it takes, and stopped after chess. All in all, 5.5 hours, 15 badges... and every freaking boss dropped mail. Unbound got a new dps chest, 5 healing items (mail shoulders, gloves, belt and leather pants and boots) AND the schema for the crit scope. AND curator dropped the shammy glove item. (which I passed on outta respect for the undergeared rogue in the group. We de'ed 3 mail items Unbound didn't need...)

All in all, a nice run. Even if everyone is threatening to never run with Unbound, the loot tauren (better than loot ninja, doan ya think?) again.

BTW... more on enhance gearing problems... my new dps chest has a LOT of mp5 regen.

Look people... enhance shammies DO NOT run outta mana in raids. Ima sorry. It don't happen. By the time you get to the bottom of your mana pool, shamanistic rage is back online. I would die, reincarnate, heal myself till I ran outta mana, run back to the fight, and be back at full before the fight ended.

Mp5 is useless for melee shammies. It takes the place of crap we really need more of... sta, str, ap and crit. Oh, and leave off the damn +hit. Ima hit capped at 30, and due to gearing problems, am running around with 80 +hit. (you really can't get away from it...)

Just another side to the hunter/shammy dps mail hate fest...

One thing... dps as melee is AWESOME. Curator fight was insane, with Unbound bouncing around beating down flares. Rest of the time, Unbound had to struggle to avoid pullin aggro offa a tier 5 tank. (who wasn't terribly impressive, but that's another story...) Its a lot more frenetic than the stand and shoot hunter/mage style. And I like to think Unbound represented herself well :)

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

You've been... thunderstruck!

This is my beautify Unbound, in her new ride, a turbo charged, uber prop machina. Oh baby!

Yep... 8 primal fires, 24 khorium bars, 48 fel iron bars, 32 eternium bars, a hula doll (90g) and my left spleen... and I ride in STYLE!


K, this is the great enhance shammy post... again, some history...

Unbound was my first pvp server char. And she was wonderful... many was the paladin (and back then, they was all alliance paladins) that got smashed 12" shorter by Mabd and her big ass windfury stick.

Then the great shammy redesign hit, and I kinda lost interest. As well, I had absolutely no clue how shammy dps worked under the new rules. Ignorance did not help... I did a lot wrong, and my poor Unbound suffered greatly from my neglect.

However, I finally chanced upon the elitist jerks thread on all you need to know about beating the unholy crap outta things as an enhance shammy....

The problems with enhance...

You are WAY too dependent upon crit. For PVE, this isn't a problem. I'll explain why later... however, for PVP, this can be murder. Functional pvp builds run on one of two themes as far as crit is concerned.

1. Don't need it. (we got stuns, or something even meaner...)

Locks, mace warriors, mace stun rogues, disc priests, ret pallies.

2. Got so damn much of it thanks to class mechanics, you can stack resilience all you want, it wont help...

Frost mages, MM hunters and freaking mutilate rogues.

At this point, shammies are usefull for the buffs, being almost as hard to kill (with better healing/buff options) than pallies... and an elemental shammy can dump a pretty awesome amount of regular damage out.

But enhance shammies aint doin it in pvp. Or so I thought until last weekend.

First... I was in a WSG. We won 3-0. (For some reason, Melvin always loses WSG. I don't know why... he's usually solid when it comes to BG's) The win wasn't that relevant... but the thing was, Unbound came in second in damage, and had a flag recovery. And Unbound had pretty crappy gear, since I was saving all my arena and honor point love for the upcoming resto respec.

The thing was... first in damage was another enhance shammy, from my server... and he had almost 300% my total damage, as well as several flag recoveries... where ever he went, allies died like rats. Anything in cloth that got even near him died a horrible death....

So of course, I bugged him for tips. Which, being pretty cool, he was more than happy to give. But the main thing was... like warriors, enhance shammies really really do need the best gear. So I went out, bought the season 2 main hand, and the season 3 boots and belt for unbound.

And saw immediate improvement.

So... enhance shammy tips...
Totems matter. Two in particular... earthbind and grounding. Grounding totem will eat a hunter's freeze trap... (and don't think I wasn't terrorizing every hunter I found last weekend...) Earthbind is just vital. You really wanna use earthshock where you can for the damage bonus. If you need to close range, frost shock is nice, but insta cast ghost wolf is better...

Stormstrike has to be timed. Its best to save storm strike for immediately after a melee attack that DOESNT proc windfury. This pretty much assures the storm strike as being outside the WF cooldown window. (Windfury has a 3 second cooldown. Since there are no weapons slower than 2.8, this means the melee attack after a windfury proc will not proc windfuy.... stormstrike is best used at this time.)

Stack AP. No, really. Crit works for enhance shammies like this... a crit every 10 seconds gets ya 10% more attack power. A crit every 6 seconds gets ya a much reduced mana cost shock (this is vital for grinding, less useful for pvp...) A crit every 4 normal blows will get you a 30% increased attack speed.

Looking at this... every 10 seconds, you should see 12-14 swings (counting windfury, flurry and stormstrike) so... 8% crit should see the melee bonus always up.

Over 6 seconds... maybe 7 swings. It breaks funny. anything near 24% crit will keep your shocks with a reduced cost...

Over 4 normal blows... at remember... you really should be packing windfury on both weapons at this point. (Dont even start talking about 2h weapons... I will feed you to rabid leper gnomes....) you'll have about a 70% chance of a wf. Assuming theres no storm strike in the mix... we're looking at a 1 in 6 crit rate to keep flurry up. (Cuz WF hits dont eat flurry charges, and if your weapons are the same speed, flurry means your next two swings of both will be 30% faster, for 4 hits instead of 3.. I din't believe this either... till I tested it out...) So what? 24-28% crit will keep flurry running unless you get serious bad luck...

Crit for enhance shammies seems to lose appeal after getting near 25%. After that, it's nice, you get double damage hits and all... but you don't get special effects...

Compare to our favorite class... hunters... everytime they crit... free pet attack, free pet focus, 230% damage instead of 200%... on and on...

Mabd by the way... does 1.03 x 1.03 x 2.3 = 244% damage on crits (on humans at least... resiliance THAT bitches!), thanks to talents and her meta gem. A meta gem that's pretty useless for shammies...

You see why I have her Crit near 34%? 46% with multishot?

Unbound is different... you gotta tweak crit for the special abilities... but resiliance really really messes this formula up.. however, against high resil targets, you might be working with flurry only up half the time... the +10% attack power buff will be there...

So why AP? Well... enhance shammies get an awful lot outta AP. Increased spell damage and healing, works with the unleashed rage buff. Both of these scale the way that crit based talents dont. And a normal hit for tons and tons of damage isn't mitigated by resil the way a crit is. As well, your mana regen ability, Shamanistic rage, is based entirely offa AP... not damage.

So... whats the new play style? Watching this guy... insta wolf to close, open with a nice frost shock, dump totems while getting first hits in, then beatdown time.

So whats the second thing? I was was usin the new style to grind ghosts in shadowmoon for that damned Guldan quest. And wouldn't ya know, his athletic supporter just wouldn't drop! I killed like 30 before getting the drop... wolf, jump, beatdown for the kill, wolf, move to next... If I pulled more than one, I'd drop stoneclaw, and by the time it was dead, so were the extra mobs. If I dropped below 70% health, I'd do a quick heal...

I keep mana bar full the entire time with a combination of water shield and the 15 sec mana regen talent. (Shamanistic Rage) And when I was done, I stood alone in a field of dead ass level 68 mobs.

And then I got the whisper...

"You were awesome!"

WTF? look around... and then see the belf rogue killin the same ghosts, only much slower...

And then I realized... Majeure could cleared the field with aoe... but woulda been out drinkin half the time... Mabd could killed em as fast... maybe... mabd has serious aggro problems...

The point was... Unbound had arrived. As lethal as my other alts, in both PVE and PVP. (well, nowhere near Mabd in PVP, but then who is?) And the play style is as frenetic as anything I've seen.

One last tip... water shield... you can blow through the three charges in 9 seconds.. thats 600 mana regen every 9 seconds as long as something is beating on you, and you keep it up. Lightning shield is great if you don't expect to outlive your mana... but water shield, with the reduced mana shocks, and low cost of stormstrike... (grounding totem, earthbind totem and ghost wolf are also pretty damn cheap as well...) and with every 2 min, getting a full refill of mana offa Rage... (I get 350 mana per proc... and it procs about half the time... so over 15 seconds... 16-18 swings, about 3k mana returned...) you really shouldnt have mana problems while grinding...

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

But it just might be a lunatic you're looking for...

Tonight, heavy drinking, and watching election returns.

A few promises... an enhance shammy post later this week. It'll be good! I swear... so spread the word...

I also vow to continue kicking alliance ass, and just generally being a bad mo-fo. K... enough channeling my inner Samuel Jackson.

Um... I just had to take a second to comment on the blurred out name of Melvin's druid. It's not really that I'm trying to protect his identity... I just hate the name. OTOH, I asked him, and he would rather people not stop by the server to talk to him. Just as well... I'd hate to lose my monopoly of stories.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Dark angels follow me, across a godless sea

"A madman is not someone who has lost his reason. A madman is someone who has lost everything but his reason," wrote English writer G K Chesterton, adding, "Poets do not go mad, but chess players do."

Shut up when I'm talking to you!

Alright.

Now for your weekly Melvin story.

This one... I had to take a screenshot, I couldn't believe it.

I'm just gonna let you guys pick up the joke here... a hint, why go to kaliope, when you can just ask Melvin how to level crafting? In this case... leatherworking for his feral druid...

Rawhide!

Yep... I was there... Ima the one in the middle.






I mean, I like the shirts and all, but couldn't someone have been handing out pants? Some of these bulls are hung like orcs...





Lookit the hunter pets!
Oh wait... um... those aren't tamed, are they...

Reminds me of one of the funniest commercials I've ever seen, a cat food bit declaring a kitty's "instinctive craving for..." beef and tuna. Yeah, at the ranch, we'd lose a dozen head a year to house cats...


Reason #1,392 why the horde pwns the alliance. Much improved building standards... You think dwarves can build a roof that would hold 120 head of cattle?



Unfortunately, I had to leave early to join my guild at our first run into Mt. Hyjal... At the end my poor cow was still level one, and hadn't been killed... no thanks to a certain human pally who decided to take butchering as a profession...

Friday, May 2, 2008

You're intruding on what's mine...

Quote of the day...

"Is the glass half full or half empty?"

"Itsa bleeding shot glass! It's either full, or it's empty, or someone's not bloody well trying, are they?"

Why can't I be you?

Lunch with Melvin... he has expanded his general attitude towards tanking to include the provision that healers that pull aggro offa a tank must be doing something wrong...

"why can't they watch omen like everyone else?"

He's currently grinding CE rep for earthwarden. He invited me to join him... I ask, "SV?" he responds... "heroics."

I point out that I could just buy the coilfang armaments, skip the repair bill, and come out ahead.

He really is having a hard time understanding that the point of a tank isn't damage, it's threat. I kinda used Arms & Fury as an example...

Lookit Herk... he generates so much aggro, after he dies, the mobs spend 3 seconds kicking his corpse...

I dunno... its killing him to suck so much. He was so proud of the mage, just spamming scorch and watching omen, and believing that this was skill...

Cuz I'm a LIAR!

First, a shout out to Arms & Fury. Check this out, then pretend you can lose weight...

John McCain was in my dreams last night, offering me a job. God, I have weird dreams. And have been following the election too closely....

So I had to get my fix last night, logged in just long enough for an EotS daily on unbound.

First, I have serious mixed thoughts on Unbound. I really did used to love playing an enhance shammy... but I havent wanted to respec a character this much, ever. Unbound is goin resto, just a matter of when.

However, that aside, this was a very interesting EotS. The allies just... fell apart. Unbound was part of the group that rushed the flag. Unbeknownst to me... a season 3'ed out resto shammy had my back... I run in, rogue and warrior jump me... 10 secs, Ima still alive... good lord!

I HAVE THE POWER! Out comes the fire elemental, since Ima gonna live long enough for him to have some fun...

Let's see... rogue is gettin healz... why lookit the stupid resto druid hanging just a bit too close to the action... why was she stupid? With a sudden case of "enhance shammy on top syndrome" she decided to try to cast regrowth. AND she only had 6k life. Earthshock's a bitch baby. More than you can bear...

K. Healz done for other side. Rogue and warrior STILL on me. Time to kill mr. dual sword rogue. And he goes down... then the warrior...

You have to realize.. warriors and rogues are two really bad classes for enhance shammies to face. With my near immunity thanks to the heal master, it was time for revenge! Nay, for Justice! NO! DIVINE RETRIBUTION! FEAR THE SMACKDOWN!

So I tapped the warrior... then I hit him... then I hit him some more... and things got blurry, and he had to go live with a foster family for a while...

Its weird how some games of EotS get defined in the first coupla minutes. In this case, the allies poured reinforcements into the center, losing DR in the process... we got the flag out before the wave hit, and capped it with three bases controlled... then the allies capped. Then they grabbed the flag... and held it the rest of the game, while the able horde defended three bases easily...

Looks like ima gonna do a few 5 mans this weekend... current goals.. get Maj exalted with CC so I can get the Hippogryph mount. Get some more honor on Unbound for gear for the respec...

A point of contention between Melvin and myself. Melvin is very upset that Majeure hasn't upgraded her Bringer of Death yet. (Blue, level 70 caster staff...) I told him I was waiting for season 4 to hit, then was gonna blow my honor on the season 2 staff, and my arena points on the rest of the season 3 glad gear. At which point Maj would pretty much have the same gear as Melvin's beloved, and useless, POM mage. With a hell of a lot less effort on my part.

Sigh. And unbound whould have a nice mix of resto gear on the same day... she has about 3500 arena now, and 40k honor. Ima gonna go ahead and pick up the season 3 bracers and boots, since the season 4 look like they'll require arena ratings...

Thursday, May 1, 2008

It's not a habit, I'm not an addict...

Ima jonsin... bad.

We had a ton of stuff due yesterday, and I got it all done. Haven't played since I hit exalted with SSO on Mabd monday night... and tonight I have to spend a coupla hours cleaning my apartment for an inspection tomorrow...

And here I am at work, nuttin to do, thinking about the morality of farming co-workers for cloth and money drops.

Oh lord, here comes the shakes.