Cuz I never hesitate to put a fool on his back...

So hit 80. Went resto.

There is an appalling lack of healers on my server. My services are in much demand.

And I demanded a lot.


You know its sad when you score Greed for yuir enhance offspec.

Some thoughts...

I've been asked for a level 80 elemental spec. This should explain my feelings. In short, elemental shammies are gettin 4 talent points back and a new penultimate talent. It's about freaking time. When that happens... I'll talk turkey.

That dual spec thing needs to hit soon. If blizzard thinks I can quest as resto, they on better drugs than Melvin is.

K. If you aren't level 80 yet... or if you are... here's the noobed friendly warning.

If you are not an inscriptionist, you will want shoulder enchants. They come from The Sons of Hodir. With one small caveat... it takes 27 days of rep grind to get exalted. They doan have a tabard. (Unbound is about exalted with Violet Eye right now :) )

That caveat... theres a spawn much like the infamous netherwing eggs that will give you rep. They very hard to find tho.

And the quest area is much smaller than netherwing ledge... which means, onna pvp server... the sooner you start, the less grief you go through. Cuz everyone, eventually, will need this faction. (Again minus the inscription people)

I never wondered where you went, I only wondered why...

4 bars from 77. And, for sake of my health, mental and otherwise, I tore myself from the game to go to work.

Here's Unbound chillin with her peeps. (I know, that one is gonna leave marks...)

One of my guildies hit 80 sunday. And was in Naxx last night. You can tell the crazies by how high they have their chars....

Oh, I'm second. Right ahead of the guy who uninstalled WoW twice to break the addiction. Even Melvin thinks I've lost my damn mind. (He hit 75 last night.) And this while wtfpwning the AH over Death Knight glyphs. I'm over 22k gold now, even after buyin my chars gigantique bags. And all the fundage blown buyin professions... and respeccs...

Not to mitigate my madness, but I did the Ampitheater of Anguish series... got a tell outta the blue from a warrior I'd done some stuff with... he asked me to heal as elemental for their group. (See, level fast enough, nice things happen...) Went great, and I got my new weapon... cept for one thing. There were *two* level 75 DK's in the party. Now really... that's hard core freaking crazy right there...

Here's the plan... hit 77 tonight, then level Mabd fer a bit while Unbound flies all over the map doin mining. Before the competition hits, and while prices are still high.

Why is Mabd back to MM/Surv? Big number addiction. The pet aint there to tank (unless I'm doin viper aspect...) The pet is there to snare. (Hyena) Gimma a snare... and I will murder the mob. 2k aimed shot crits...

Not sure about my ability to solo some of the elites when Mabd finally gets to leveling. But for damn sure Unbound can solo. First, she doesn't run out of mana. At all. Even chaincasting chain lighting... it doesn't happen. Once you get lava burst... flame shock, lava burst, heal, heal, heal, lava burst, etc... water shield gives 420ish mana every four seconds now (it seems they lengthened the cooldown) as well as +100 mp5.

Have respecced Unbound 5 times since start of expansion. Once to go resto and heal for some guildies, once to spec back, then a buncha times to move points...

If you play elemental... lava burst will rock your world. First, do yourself a favor and pick up the flame shock glyph. Flame shock now has a 40 yard range... and issa nice little pull mechanism. Throw down a earth bind, flame shock a mob, pullin three or so, then chain light/lava burst while kitin. Helps to have instant ghost wolf, btw...

A few notes on use and abuse of flame shock abuse. With the glyph, flame shock lasts 15 secs, and isn't consumed by Lava burst. Lava burst will auto crit on something with the flame shock debuff. And when I say, auto crit... I mean 4500ish, offa 1.5 sec cast spell with an 8 sec cooldown.

Strange things happen when shammies crit. Elemental shammies get a group buff that adds 5% crit for 15 secs, and their next two spells are at 40% less mana cost. With other talents, (notably on the third tier of enhance) this means shock spells cost about 30 mana. (No, that isn't a typo.)

So spell rotation... flame shock, lava burst, lightning, earth shock, lightning, lava burst, lightning, lighting, flame shock...

I like my DPS in instances now. Two pugs as elemental, led both, but circumstances were not quite random. (See... when you level fast enough, it really isnt a problem getting a pug as dps. Who are people looking for dps gonna pick for AN? The 72 hunter or the 76 shammy?)

Anyway, the flame shock debuff is about 100dps (with talents). With the glyph, it's 15 seconds... I leave the rest for my not so gentle readers.

So the question... I now have auto crit, and rely more heavily on a dot. Should I regear for +spell power, instead of all the damn crit I'm packing now? I'm gonna autocrit every 8 seconds.. so one lava burst, one shock, two lightning bolts (or just three light bolts)... I dunno. Will work on it.

The next voice you hear will be your own...

Sorry again fer not postin... I've been, um, indisposed.

Runnin Unbound through northrend first. Doin this post durin a 50 min queue. Unbound is 72, and doin quite well as elemental.

I respecced Mabd as BM. That lasted all of 5 mins, now I'm back to a Surv/MM hybrid. The end plan is to go MM til Master Marksman, and Surv till Lightning Reflexes. Might just only go 4/5 in Master MM to pick up wyvern's sting in surv.

I mean... the buffs are just amazing with this. It picks up every +crit and +rap talent, as well as Aimed shot, scatter shot, wyvern, readiness... so yuir all ready fer pvp lovin.

Makin tons of goldage offa DK glyphs. Still know better than to blow it on a mammoth tho...

Fer those zombie fans... heresa Simon Pegg interview on what makes a zombie scary, and why they should never run. And if you doan know who Simon Pegg is, shame on you!

And I wont turn around...

So... Maj kicked it old skool, ran all three CE instances saturday, and got her new flyin mount.

Ain't he pretty? I think I'll name him Chicken Biggie Little. Much better than a stinking gorilla or devilsaur...

Had about 1400-1500 sustained dps across all three instances as frost. Most of that was due to spamming blizzard on fights. But on boss and single targets... frostbolt spam was doin 1200ish. I blew away a surv hunter that the group had been bragging on. Nuttin better than spanking people who think they can hang. At the end of the run, our enhance shammy was reduced to joking... "Second in healing! Let's see yuir mage top that!"

Fingers of Frost is a SICK SICK dps boost. Between blizzard and frostbolt, I hada about a 50% crit rate (my base crit was about 23%, running with molten armor). Im surprised that blizzard wasn't critting more... I think that the last patch had a unannounced nerf on how fingers of frost affects targets in blizzard... my crit rate was quite a bit higher before the last patch.

Brain Freeze, as far as I'm concerned, is now nerfed to oblivion. It no longer procs on Blizzard... and I suspect it won't on Cone of Cold, either. It would seem to proc only onna frost bolt hit... and let's face it, the dps boost from an instant cast fireball vs another frostbolt (considering GCD) seems dubious at best. Time to move those three points somewhere else.

What was Unbound the Stalwart doin? Shoppin fer haberdashery in Old Hillsbrad. I also managed to heal heroic MgT with a very... strange... PUG. Two ret pals anda rogue from one of the server's better raiding guild. A pugged healer (Unbound), anda pugged tank, some poor pally they talked into respeccing prot for the run.

Very skilled tank, even if she only had 11k life. And very upset at the end of the run, since she had been promised any plate drops since "everyone else is in tier 6..." Only to find the retadins rollin against her.... and one of those bastards kept pullin aggro... and MOVING THE MOB OUTTA RANGE OF CHAIN HEALS.

Are ret pallies the new huntards? I thought locks would take this slot, but they've disappeared since the big patch....

Sorry about only havin one post last week. I've been ill. *pitieous cough* Still feel like crap. Still... release is next week, and I have tuesday off, while im taking a half day thursday, and all day friday off.

And Melvin? He's leveling a warrior.

I am the ballot in your box, the bullet in the gun...

Dearest Megs...

Ima sorry to disappoint you. But this is, and shall remain, a family site. Besides, Halloween is a time of reflection on our mortality. Why else dress children as monsters? For a holiday that exemplifies the hormone driven sexual excesses you seem interested in, wait for Thanksgiving.

Weird weekend... finally finished all the netherstorm quests on my shammy... so Unbound could go back to resto.

However, a strange thing happened on the way to the talent trainer...

A prot pally friend of mine asked me to help heal kara. His guild has *one* decent healer. (A holy pal that spams 1.5 sec heals...) So I, ah... healed Kara as enhance.

KK. Things to note so far about shammies. First, every GODDAMN shaman blogger I used to read gave up. So... anyone has links, I'd love to see whats up. Since Ripper does mages better than I ever could, and BRK (pronounced "dorf") AKA Big Red Monkeybutt, does hunters... I'm pretty much stuck with shammies. Not that I doan love shammies. Shammies are cool, and get to hang with all the awesome tanks. Still... things to note...

Enhance.

Spirit puppies are probably one of the best pvp talents in the game. They add crap to dps, but those healz are broken, and I expect them to be nerfed. That bein said, enhance in pvp is like playin a rogue without a stun, or a ret pally without a bubble. Orra warrior without charge or intercept. You gonna do nice damage, but the ranged classes will destroy you. And the melee classes will hurt a lot as well...

However... the enhance shammy has the best talent tree of all three builds. Doan get me wrong... I loves me some resto. But if you go resto or elemental, you HAVE to put points in enhance. Mostly cuz the first two tiers of elemental and resto suck donkey balls. Cept for elemental devastation, which only enhance shammies would take...

But there are two talents in the upper enhance tiers that murder anything even loosely associated with game balance. First, a 3 point talent that gives you 100% of INT as AP. Not to bad... similar to a really nice hunter talent in the marksman tree. HOWEVER... later on you get a 3 point talent that gives you 30% of AP as Spell Power.

So... 30% of int becomes spell/healing power. Arcane Intellect... 25ish spell power buff. Battle shout... 100. Totem of earth... 54. Bless of might.. 125.

Then you put earthliving on both dual wielded weapons... +300.

I got unbound's +healz up to +1700. AS ENHANCE. As resto... she's at +1100. All I did was spam lesser heal and chain. And I was gettin higher numbers than I do as resto spec. When I got healer aggro, I'd throw the puppies at something and heal back up. Saved a wipe that way once. Got low on mana, I'd shammy rage my mana back up. When things got tight, I'd wade in, storm strike, lava lash, and spam insta cast maelstrom chain healz.

I still went back to resto. First.. earth shield got much lovin. My es is now proccing for 1200, 1800 on crits. (Theresa bug here, but i gotta look into it more... my ES doan crit when its on other targets...)

Riptide is precious... its like bein a resto druid, only still bein able to like girls. But... the gap between resto healin and enhance healin is less than I'm comfortable with. And I keep havin dreams of a crazy enhance/elemental build that would scale like a motherlovin bastich. Unbound can get to +1500 spell power easily... in my spell gear, with the proper talents, I might be able to hit +1700.

Still... resto in BG's is like bein a god. I laugh at ret pally damage. No purge, no dispel, no HK.

Other news... looks like the inscription market is slowin down. So, here at the end... Im at about 17k gold, up from 6k before the patch of infinite wealth. Melvin says he wont be impressed till I'm over 30k.