Lethal Shots

Another week, and another restart. So what went on since the last?

• Ran a few instances on my Shaman as DPS. I’m slowly learning how to play Enhance in instances. Biggest thing I have noticed? Scrolling combat text makes it hard to position correctly. If my adventures as Enhance continue something will have to change.
• No Ulduar last weekend, but I did run in two different Naxx-10 groups, one with my Hunter and the other with my Shaman. Both were successful in their own way, and loads of fun
• It may be bad, but I find myself whispering random Hunters I see and trying to give them advice on what gear and enchants to change. (Why do people think spell power is useful to Hunters?) I try to be as tactful and non-pushy as possible. So far I have been getting mixed responses. Some thank me for the advice, and even go on to ask specific questions, while others become outright hostile.
• I’ve been slowly stockpiling Titanium Ore in preparation for 3.2, here’s hoping that it pays off in epic gem sales.
• I’ve reached the point where one alt with 4 32-slot Inscription bags can not hold my inventory of glyphs to sell. I either need to cut back on some of the less profitable glyphs or set up another alt to sell glyphs also.
• Thinking about going back to a fresh UI and and building a fresh one. My current one is becoming too cluttered.

Well, that’s all for now. Time for me to head off to bed and get some sleep.

Yes, as strange as it is, I really think that is the case. But first, a little background to help explain my thought process.

I currently have two level 80 characters, a Survival Hunter and a Resto Shaman. My Hunter is in Ulduar ready gear (have yet to pick up any drops there) and my Shaman is in a mix of heroic and Naxx gear. I have long considered the Hunter my main, but with very little to do on my him outside of raiding (I hate dailies), he has been seeing very little play time. Consequently I have been taking a deep interest in learning to heal with my Shaman and getting him geared up.

Also, these 2 characters are in different guilds (on the same server). My Hunter is simply a raider in Soulbound, while my Shaman is a senior officer in Circle of Friends. I won’t go into any more detail about that here, I’ll save that for another post. The raid leaders in Soulbound are aware of my Shaman, but will generally only ask me to bring him if our raid has entered PuG status since the toon is in a different guild. Anyway, enough background and on with with the story.

This realization of multiple mains came upon me last Saturday night during a 25-man VoA run with Soulbound. We were short people so we started pulling in PuGs to fill slots. The raid leader wanted Heroism, but we couldn’t find any Shamans. My Hunter already has the achievement for Emalon, so I offered to switch to my Shaman. So I jump over while the raid continues the search for more people. Long story short, in the search for more people I end up inviting a friend of mine (an awesome Prot Paladin) who I have been running occasional heroics with on my Shaman. We did Archavon first, and then started to weed out the people with too low DPS for Emalon. Several Soulbound people had started to log on so we began pulling them in for Emalon. One of those pulled in was another Resto Shaman, so I was asked to switch back over to my Hunter, which I of course did.

At this point my friend (the Prot Pally mentioned above) whispered me and asked if I had switched to an alt. His question confused me for a second, and then it dawned on me. While he has grouped with me many times, I had always been on my Shaman, never on my Hunter. I was even on my Shaman when I invited him to join the current VoA run. Naturally I explained to him that my Hunter was my main and that my Shaman was an alt.

But after that I got to thinking. I have been playing my Shaman so much lately that it has become more than an alt, yet my Hunter is still my main when it comes to raiding. So that leaves me with a declared main, and an alt that is more than an alt. Well, what is more than an alt? A main.

That leaves me with two mains.

As many of you have figured out by now, I am really enjoying playing my Shaman now, almost as much as I enjoy my Hunter. And as a direct result, changes to the Shaman class now interest me a great deal, so I am going to cover them here also.

Classes: General

• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

This indirectly effects all classes, but i think I’m going to feel this especially hard as a Resto Shaman who is still trying to get geared up.

Shamans

• A customizable totem bar will now be available for shamans allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.

Huge! Even Huger than huge! This is a large step in streamlining the Shaman class to help it keep up with others. Tune in later, I have a lot to say about this change.

• All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
• Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
• Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.

More range, more health, more healing power. All three of these changes are solid buffs.

• Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.

Nothing special, just more of the across the board changes to travel forms and mounts.

• Talents
  • Enhancement
    • Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.
  • Restoration
    • Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.
    • Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
    • Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
    • Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman’s Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
    • Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman’s health.
    • Nature’s Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30-second internal cooldown and increases the shaman’s maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
    • Nature’s Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
    • Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
    • Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Honestly, all of these talent changes seem pretty solid to me. The shorter cooldown on Shamanistic Rage will take some adjustment, but I think it will offer greater flexibility. All of the Resto changes look great, and I especially like the change to Improved Water Shield.

Bug Fixes

• Shamans
  • Fixed a bug where Frostbrand Weapon (Rank 9) was not scaling properly with a shaman’s spell power.

As always, bug fixes rock.

The changes this patch for Shaman have me way more excited than wha tis planned for Hunters, I just hope Blizz comes through and doesn’t drop anything at the last minute. But enough of my opinions, what are yours?

The following exchange is what I imagined happening between the gnolls in the Wetlands yesterday when I strolled into the middle of their camp on my Shaman to pick some Briarthorn while leveling his Herbalism. I was giggling to myself so much I decided it might be worth sharing.

Gnoll 1: Hey, look over there. Some guy just walked into our camp.

Gnoll 2: Huh? Where?

Cnoll 1: Over there, right next to Carl.

Gnoll 2: Oh yeah, I see him now.

Gnoll 1: He looks awful familiar…..

Gnoll 2: That’s the same guy that keeps riding by on an elephant.

Gnoll 1: What’s he doing?

Gnoll 2: Um, it looks like he’s picking a flower.

Gnoll 1: Why isn’t Carl hitting him with a club or something?

Gnoll 2: Well, I think Carl is doing his best to pretend the guy doesn’t exist.

Gnoll 1: Come on, lets beat the guy up.

Gnoll 2: Um, I think Carl has the right idea. The guy is minding his own business, so lets just leave him alone.

Gnoll 1: Leave him alone? But we always beat up people who come in our camp.

Gnoll 2: Look, I just don’t think it’s a good idea.

Gnoll 1: Why not?

Gnoll 2: Cause this guy is not the typical adventurer we see around here. I mean look at him. He’s huge. And one of his daggers is encased in fire! I mean do you really think its smart to mess with a guy walking around with a dagger encased in fire?

Gnoll 1: Well, granted it might be a tougher fight than usual doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Gnoll 2: Try? Sure, go ahead and try. You can end up like that crocolisk over there. He copped a bad attitude with the guy and now I now you can’t even count the pieces.

Gnoll 1: Yeah, but we’re a lot tougher than a crocolisk.

Gnoll 2: Did you not see what happened to Steve when he accidentally bumped into the guy yesterday? The guy’s dagger cut poor Steve in half, and it was just hanging on the guys belt!

Gnoll 1: So why don’t we go get even?

Gnoll 2: Nope. I’m going to do just like Carl and pretend the guy doesn’t even exist.

Gnoll 1: Come on, we can’t do that. Everyone will laugh at us if we don’t try and take him.

Gnoll 2: Fuck that. Let everyone laugh, at least we’ll still be alive. Just let the god damn hippie pick his fucking flower and get out of here. If you really feel like beating some one up after he leaves we’ll just gank that level 20 mage wandering around over there.

And another week has passed us by. Got a lot on my mind this time :

• More maintenance today, with more realms getting hardware upgrades. I am retracting my previous guess of 3.1.2 today. I don’t think it will drop until all the hardware upgrades are done.
• It’s been a little slow on the raiding front for me lately, but there is a Ulduar-10 run scheduled for Wednesday. I can’t wait.
• My server went down last night. So I popped over to Ner’zhul to say hi to Amava and Matticus, then started working a DK through their starting area to kill time.
• I really miss Amava’s blog. Hopefully my small prompting will encourage him to revive it.
• I fail at scheduled weekly posting. I promise the next installment of Hunting Tactics will be out soon.
• I’ve been leveling Inscription as my DK’s second profession. So far I have gotten it up to 200. I don’t have an Herbalist, so all herbs have been coming from the AH. I’m just hoping I can at least break even by selling the junk I have to make to level it.
• I did join in on a successful guild run of VoA over the weekend, downing the new boss on the first try. Let me just say the new boss is way more fun than the old one.
• I tried leveling my Paladin, but I’m just not ready to grind through the old world again yet. So I have decided to work on my Death Knight. As of last night he is up to 63 and just started in Zangarmarsh.
• I healed a normal Gun’Drak for my friends in my alt-guild. It went great, and I think I am getting their interest primed for moving up into heroics.
• The biggest problem my friends in my alt-guild have? They under estimate themselves. These guys know their class and are solid players. With a few craftable gear upgrades and a few things from normal level 80 instances, they could be rocking heroics.
• My gem business is holding pretty steady. It’s not making me a millionaire overnight, but the income is pretty steady.

Well, that’s all I got. Now give give me your thoughts.