Lethal Shots

Recently I’ve had a few in-game friends ask questions about gearing their Shaman. Granted my main is a Hunter, but with my big leveling push with my Shaman recently people assume that I know at least a little about them. Naturally, I try my best to help them out and answer their questions. One thing I have noticed is that everyone who has asked for advice plays a Hunter. And when I think about it, I know a lot of Hunters that have Shamans as alts.

So maybe, just maybe, the advice I have been giving will be useful to some other Hunters out there. Bear in mind that there are much more knowledgeable players than me when it comes to Shaman, and most of what I know applies to leveling. Anyway, on with the advice.

For those that don’t know, Shamans got a huge overhaul when 3.0 hit. Specifically the itemization for Enhancement Shamans. Pre-3.0 Enhancement Shaman stacked Strength, Agility, and Intellect. Think about it, how much gear have you seen that provides all three of these? Luckily Blizzard changed that.

At level 30, the talent Mental Dexterity becomes available. What this does is allow a Shaman to convert his Intelligence into Attack Power (Careful Aim anyone?).

Further down the tree you will find Mental Quickness, available at level 50. This talent converts up to 30% of your Attack Power into Spell Power, eliminating the need to stack Spell Power to buff up your shocks.

Now with these talents in mind, lets review what stats Shamans need to stack:

• Intellect – Enhancement Shamans may be a melee class, but they are also a caster which means they need mana. This will also give you Attack Power once talented for it.
• Agility – You are in melee and a good chunk of your DPS comes from White Damage. The Attack Power and Crit Agility provides are crucial.
• Attack Power -  Same reasoning for Agility applies here. This also provides Spell Power once talented for it.

Now what gear provides those three stats and is Mail (leather at earlier levels)?

That’s right, Hunter gear. As an Enhancement Shaman, you will want to look for the exact same gear a Hunter would wear. It really is that simple.

You know the drill by now:

• Extended maintenance today, but no patch. Good, I’m not ready for it yet.
• I’m slowly learning to heal on my Shaman. Plenty of wipes that I can’t help but feel responsible for, but luckily some very patient people to wipe with me.
• Not much news on the raiding front. A lot of guildies were experiencing extremely high latency over the weekend, and disconnecting every time we tried to fight a boss. Finally just gave up. We’ll try again this weekend.
• On the real life side of things, I started riding my bicycle again. I feel like crap after every ride, but I know it just means that I need to do it that much more. Plus side though is that the boy loves riding in the little trailer behind my bike. Quality time with the family, and getting much needed exercise.
• I’m starting to feel the hybrid class woes as I spec my Shaman to Resto to run an instance and then back to Enhance to solo. I feel like I truly understand where players are coming from who have been begging for dual specs for years.

Well, that’s all I’m thinking of right now. What’s occupying your thought processes today?

When you run an instance, who is the boss of the group? Is it the tank? The healer? One of the DPS? In my experience as a Hunter that role is most often filled by the tank, and if not then it is the healer. It never bothered me. I am more than happy to sit back and just kill things, leaving the details of strategy to others. But last night that all changed.

I was on my Shaman healing Nexus for some friends. By far, I had the most experience running the place (all of it on Santyn). I started the run pretty normal. I just stood in the back and did my best to keep everyone alive. It wasn’t long though before it became different though. We hadn’t even gotten to the first boss before I was telling people how to position for pulls. Then I was calling out CC duties. This was soon followed by me telling kill orders. By the time we got to the third boss I was calling out what abilities for people to use.

It was at that point that it hit me what I was doing. I was telling other people how to play their class. Needless to say the thought made me somewhat uncomfortable. I quickly apologized, and luckily no one was offended (the joys of running with friends).

It seems they were so quick to listen to me because I had so much experience in the instance. They just assumed I knew what I was doing and went along with it. I really should have recognized this since it is what I do when I raid. When the raid leader gives an order, I follow. They are the raid leader for a reason, so I don’t tend to question them.

This was the first time I ever felt like I was in that position. It kind of scares me how naturally I took to ordering my friends around, but I would like to think that in doing so I helped the run end successfully. This is something I will have to keep an eye out for in the future. The last thing I want to do is go to far and piss someone off. But if taking charge leads to a successful run then maybe it is a good thing.

I would love to hear what your thoughts are on this. Or even acounts of similar situations you may have been in.

As my ventures in Naxx have continued, I haven’t seen much in the way of gear upgrades. This week that has changed though. Wednesday night Noth was nice enough to drop the Trespasser’s Boots, allowing me to finally get rid of my old blue boots, leaving my with a ring and trinket away from being fully “Epic-ed” out.

Last night was the big score though.  The token dropped for T7 pants and I managed to win the roll. With that in hand I was finally able to snag my 4th piece of T7. All together I have the shoulders, chest, legs, and gloves, with the gloves being the only piece that is Valorous.

Now this leave me with some testing to do. Sure, tier pieces are nice and all, but do they offer the best stat choices for me. To equip them I will lose a considerable amount of +hit and crit, both of which are crucial to my current build. The +hit I can make up by swapping out a few other pieces, but the crit is going to hurt. I will have to do some testing at the target dummy to see if the extra AP and set bonuses provide more DPS than what I am currently wearing.

As a side note, this is why I rarely get rid of any piece of gear. Stat stacking is all about balance. Upgrading one piece may mean that you need to swap out other pieces to maintain the balance. Once you have an item and have gemmed and enchanted it, make sure to hang on to it because you just might need it later.

Hard to believe, but it’s been another week already.

• Santyn is on vacation right now. The only thing I have done with him is run 25-mans. All the rest of my time has been spent leveling the Shaman.
• Speaking of leveling, I will never understand how people can level so fast. In the same time it takes me to get from 70 to 72, I have a guildie who went from 71 to 79. How the hell?
• I’m debating if I want to keep doing Hodir dailies or just take the Gorilladin and AoE farm mobs for Relics.
• Also note that AoE farming with Gorilladin does not work near as well since I specced Survival.
• I tried something new. I decided to leave General chat on while questing, and I am amazed by the amount of stupidity I see in it and the number of people willing to rag endlessly on the stupid. Now the problem is that it is too entertaining to turn off.
• I am discomforted by the fact that I have become comfortable in a Spec that is going to get turned upside-down when 3.1 hits. Surv still looks fun, but the changes to Marks have made it look more appealing.
• Of course there always BM to fall back on, but with it so difficult to keep pets alive in raids, DPS as a BM is going to be iffy. Will forever be my soloing spec of choice though.

Well, enough of my ramblings for now. What’s on your mind?