Time for a re-link of an old post.  This was one I was going to link with the 200th post link-fest but decided that it wasn’t really relevant any more, because badges in Wrath were tiered and the situation was completely different to back when you could farm heroics for BT / MH level gear…

The recent patch notes, however, seems to have set the community all aflutter.  My viewpoint, as expressed via the linked post, hasn’t really changed since they big hoo-haa of 2.4 and all the high level raiders crying about people getting ‘their’ epics.

2.4 is Stealin’ Mah Epics!

Whilst I did like the idea of a tiered badge system the current one was, to my mind, too complex and the rewards not really ‘worth’ the badge cost given how slow it can be to accrue the marks if you’re not clearing Ulduar every week (we do not bad, but summer blues and a spate of bad luck have shaved our raiding days down at the moment).

But we did it the hard way!

The problem with saying that people should suck it up and go do it the ‘proper’ way is that they are limited – people who can’t be online a full 2-4 hours to do a raid, people who can only grab the odd heroic here and there, people who don’t want to leave family guilds just to get into a raiding guild and people who just can’t find a Naxx raiding guild who need or want them consistently.  Just because your situation allows for it, doesn’t mean everyone’s does.

What do they need the gear for? Well, they want their character to progress and grow just like anyone else.  They want to be able to do things easier and pump out bigger numbers – whether it be tps, hps, or dps.  Everyone wants their character to grow – consider how frustrating the last boss in Oculus and the biggest complaint which is levelled against it – ‘no matter what gear we’re in, that fight is always the same’.  Imagine not upgrading your gear for the whole ‘end-game’ period of the expansion just because you can’t play with the big boys.   You might not ‘need’ the upgrade, but it still sure feels good to get a shiny once in a while and progress your character.

And we don’t even need to go into why it would be good for rerolls or late starters…  If 2.4 hadn’t introduced the badge epics I wouldn’t be playing my shaman now as it was the only way I could get upgraded enough to go straight from Kara to MH / BT with my guild when I was tired of playing my rogue.

Old Content is Old

At the end of the day, when content becomes ‘old’ there is no reason it shouldn’t become ‘easy’ to get.  It’s not like they’re saying ‘here, take a full suit of epix for absolutely no time invested’ – you still need to go out, do Naxx, do Heroics, do Ulduar and work towards a goal.

Although clearing Naxx is not too hard for some – neither was clearing Kara by the time the 2.4 badges arrived – granted Naxx is still easier but it’s also still a limited number per week.  Heroics, whilst also easier, have become hard to get groups for and I can only hope that this change will mean an upsurge in groups for late-comers or people with alt-itis like me.

If you want to work through a tier at that tier’s level, that’s cool – but not everyone does and it’s not just because they’re loot-whores.  Sometimes when you’re working with a sub-skilled group you need the gear to make the difference.  ‘But the bads shouldn’t get to see content then’.  It’s a bloody game.  Grow up -  I learned to share my toys when I was a kid, didn’t you?  People play to have fun, not to have twitch-fingered little jerks who know how to play a damn video game better than they can laugh at them.

But but…

You want your epeen?  That what your achievements panel is for.  Gear is gear, people are people and this is a game in which most of what you have now will be obsolete within half a year.

…and jeez, it might not even happen.

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Seems mah wee sister is gettin’ oot in the world noo.  Mither an’ Faither say it wis mah fault she’s decided to go wanderin’ – but Ma says it wi’ a glare an’ Faither wi’ a grin…

The baby warrior gained a Project last week. Yes, all bolded and a capital letter to boot.

Project Alt

I, like many, often have high hopes and aspirations for my alts.  They will grow up to be ‘x’ or they shall blast through profession ‘y’ or suchlike.  My Dorfette, though, is slightly different – not a whole lot, but a subtle little thing.  I want her to be strong, independent and able to do many of the things she needs for herself – not having to log one of my mains to get her something she could easily do herself .  This, to me, means she will level all of her own secondaries – fishing, cooking, first aid.

This will also, thusly, mean taking my time – that’s good, it’s what I want from this alt – no mad dash to Outands and Northrend beyond – just a leisurely stroll through content I enjoy a some I might not have tried yet!

That’s not all, though, as I often decide upon many mini-projects along the way – my first one, on this character, was a little more ambitious!

Startup

Starting fishing and cooking, together, is wonderfully easy.  Buy a fishing-pole, sit in your capital city of choice and fish your little heart out.  I managed to get to about 180 cooking and just over 200 fishing and began to wonder.

Turtles!

Silly though it might be:  I decided, then and there, that I wanted to get my little alt a [Sea Turtle].  I know there’s not much benefit to having a turtle at low levels except that it’s sorta cool and it might make some water-based travel easier.  I liked the idea, though, of getting myself one before level 30 – so I could use  as soon as I’m able.  Impatient as I am, I decided that I’d go as soon as possible!

I would need, I figured, around 350+ fishing skill and preferably a [Weather-Beaten Fishing Journal].  The ability to track fish became rather invaluable so if you do plan on going to get one of these at low levels then I’d suggest grabbing one of these too. The lowest level area I could find to grab one was in Hinterlands – in the various pools by Southshore and all of the way up the river which runs through the zone as well as in the pond by Tarren Mill.  At level 18 I could manage to avoid most mobs by staying near or in the river and crossing where there were mobs near the river.

I even managed to run through the graveyard in Western Plaguelands – only dying once – and got myself the Chillwind flightpath when I ended up a little too far north in the river.  I think it took me several hours on-and-off and at least 30 watertight trunks before I got my journal.  Many people seem to get them a lot sooner, going by wowhead comments, but I wasn’t so lucky.

The plus side of all of the extra fishing here was getting to 351 skill!   I stayed and fished until I hit 375 skill and then decided it was time to go to Northrend.

Consumables

None of these were really necessary but, by lessening the number of grey items, they reduced the overall time spent turtle-catching.

• [Enchant Gloves: Fishing]
• [Captain Rumsey's Lager]
• [Sharpened Fish Hooks]
• [Swim Speed Potion]

Since Avarix is an alchemist and I had some Blackmouth Oil (made from fish I’d gotten whilst levelling fishing) I made a pile of Swim Speed Potions. I didn’t really need them but they were a nice extra for getting to the icebergs in the first place, then back again later.  You could easily go there with a lower fishing skill but even when I was over 400 skill, using Sharpened Fish Hooks and Captain Rumsey’s Lager I was still getting a fair number of grey items.

Travel

To get to the Icebergs quickly, with less chance of being ganked by the near-shore sharks, just jump off the boat as it goes in towards Valiance Keep – it takes a slightly different path on the way out and doesn’t go so close.  For the Hordies:  I’m afraid it’s a long run for you through Borean Tundra from Warsong Hold.

I went to Frozen Sea Icebergs off Borean Tundra (around 31, 67 on the Northrend map).  Although it’s not terribly easy to get up onto all of the icebergs, most can be scaled at one side / edge and then you are able to walk all the way around them to reach harder-to-get fishing nodes.

I just logged on and did 30 mins or so fishing every time I wanted to chill out or when I was watching tv – much better than the marathon sessions I did to get it on Avarix.  Now I just need to hit 30 so I can ride it!  Once patch 3.2 comes out, though, these will be available to ride at level 20!

For more information on various fishy things, go see El’s Anglin’ – A site which can give you a good number of tips for any fishing venture.

4 comments

Bloody hell, that’s some getup she’s got oan there.  Ah can see how thon kinda gear wid make it a bit less warm tae do some priestin’ in Hellfire Penincula, but it doesnae exactly seem decent.  No’ that ah’m compainin’, mind…

Another of my young characters has finally made their way through the Dark Portal!  Last week, my priestess Ahnara became the latest of my pile of alts to make her way through the dark portal.  The ritual screenshot, the walk through, the entry into another realm entirely: none of it has diminished in grandeur for me since the release of Burning Crusade – no matter how many times I do it.

As several of team-Ratshag have mentioned in the past: Outlands, aside from being a land of opportunity, killing gribbly things and being generally heroic,  is a place where female characters get the short end of the stick clothing wise.

Ahnara: Priestess, saver of souls and healer of the sick went from a rather respectable frock, to a somewhat more… interesting set of ‘garments’.

I had gotten used to wearing robes on my little priestess, so it feels odd to go back to a vest and erm… knickers.

Early Entry

Unlike many of my other alts, I actually headed to Outlands at level 58 – usually I wait until 60.  I am getting more and more tired of the old-world quests these days – especially those in the late 40’s through to the late 50’s – perhaps because many of the ones in that range are shared between factions and I’ve done them across alts on both sides.

Priestly Pontification

Playing a priest still feels odd – especially so when I’ve been asked to actually dps in pugs.  I feel, at this level, somewhat redundant as I can’t really do much before the other dpsers have already destroyed the mob.  Whereas I can see how shadow would be interesting over a slightly longer time frame, the big array of DoT’s and very little direct damage I have is so unusual to me as to be limiting.

However, I can’t say I’m having much more success with my offspec, either!  I had wanted to be disc, I love the idea of it and the concepts behind it, but I’m finding that at lower levels the efficiency isn’t there and neither does it seem ‘beefy’ enough to make up for said lack of efficacy.  I think I might, sorrowfully, spec to holy as my ‘levelling healer offspec’.

Ahnara is now 62 – well on her way towards Northrend… without even stepping outside of Hellfire!

3 comments

Wid ye belive it?  200! An’ a thought ah wis gonnae be retired years ago.

When grinding some faction rep you usually end up watching the numbers slowly creep forward, inching towards your goal, hoping that it will come soon and you will never have to gather / kill / quest for another hoojermahflip again .  Writing this blog has, I can happily say, not been at all like that – whilst getting posts out is sometimes hard for me when I’m feeling uninspired; I know  I can always turn to my blog when I feel like a little writing therapy.  Thus:  it wasn’t until last week that I noticed I was so close to my second ‘ding’ blogwise – post 200.

I know there are those out there who fire out a post every day but for me, writing my blog is theraputic, either in a cathartic way or because it allows me to formulate and describe ideas or opinions which just won’t entirely come together in my had alone.  I don’t write because I feel I have to, I write here because I love it – I also love getting comments, I love the community that wow-blogging has given me and I enjoy making pretty pictures.

The all-pervasive twitterites, though, had to give me ideas for the content of this post – they came up with a retrospective on some of the posts which I’ve enjoyed, have seemed popular, have had a lot of feedback or simply are still relevant.  Of course, as the author, I find it hard to judge, so I enlisted Khi to sit and read through all 199 posts and help me choose some – for which I am truly grateful!

Of course, how do you pick just a few posts from 199? Well, it’s hard, and we ended up with quite a pile of posts which, whilst not all super-awesome, were ones which also might have meant something to me or that I really enjoyed writing.

The First Post

My first post, ‘What this isnae‘ is often one I refer back to – it describes my simply aim for this blog and, whilst I may have strayed a little into territories where I’d never thought I’d set foot, I still think I hold to the simple ideals therin.  So, a plethora of posts for you to peruse if you wish – chosen from a larger pile and whittled down into those which I feel are still relevant or fun to read.

Pile o’ Posts

Dual Specs – An Anti Rant – A recent post, and one I enjoyed writing even though it felt like it took an age.

Boostin’ Versus Old Skool – Written a long time ago, this post is still pretty relevant.

Rage-Management.  No, Not that Kind O’ Rage – Anger management, wow style.

What You Need to Know About… Dwarves – My silly take on a Blog Azeroth topic of the week.

Versatility or ‘Big Green Blob Syndrome’ – A post which I still feel is relevant – on how giving us similar buffs and abilities does not homogenise us.

Flyin’ Arrows an’ Chained Heals – The first blog post where my ‘baby’ shaman Avarix is mentioned on the blog.

The Burning Crusade – A retrospective on TBC.

Druid  – Epic Flight Form Questline: A Guide – This guide has continued to be my top-viewed post, week by week, since it was written, so I guess I did something right!

Flowery Writin’ – There have been multiple wow-ku memes, but this was the only one I participated in and I really liked how they turned out.

We’ve Come a Long, Long Way Together… - post 100

Thanks once again to those who still read and comment here – hopefully it won’t be that long before I’m hitting 300!

7 comments

Enhancement vs. Elemental Grinding

In the time between raids this week and last I’ve been doing a pile of different things.  The biggest change was once again speccing enhance as my offspec.  About once every six months I get the urge to try the ‘other spec’ and go through my bank and various reps to see if I can get myself a decent set of kit to try it out with.  Well, this time I had collected a small pile of Ulduar-10 gear (we had no other shamans and no hunters so I was pretty much snapped up all of the dps-mail drops) – head gloves, shoulders and a belt.  I then grabbed rep legs, boots, chest and back, crafted some cheap rings and a necklace and bought a pair of BoE gloves cheap off the AH.  I was left with a ‘hybrid trinket’ and a spellpower one but I fgured that’d do for now.

The main reason for the change was that I wanted to grind some TBC rep.  Whilst it was totally possible for me to make my way through Botanica as elemental I felt that I had a hard time balancing healing and damage and that I had a lot of down-time.  I thought that enhance might be a bit less problematic for mana, would be a bit tougher and wouldn’t suffer versus spell-interruption.  Really, I think I made a good choice.  Even without having much of a clue, keeping a ‘rotation’ as enhance is so much easier versus multiple mobs and Ghost Wolves make it a lot easier to control 5-6 mob pulls (there are a few in Botanica) and were really nice on the boss fights simply as extra healing which meant I could output more dps.

Looking incredibly at home, here amongst all those crystals before taking on Thorngrim. The feral staff dropped every time I killed him… never had luck with that in TBC on my duid, of course.  I am incredibly tempted  keep enhancement as my offspec for some time – I’ll be keeping it at least until I’m done grinding reps.

Of course, this would be the week where I’ve ended up being asked to go along to a few heroics as dps since we have a baby resto shammy to train up!.  I was also asked to go along to help one of the guild’s priests to get his [Reins of the Bronze Drake] from a timed CoT: Strat run.  I had only gone on to take some screenshots for this post, but I knew he’d been trying hard for it so what the hey.  The upshot of it was (after half an hour of instance server busy) we got in, he got his shiny new drake on his 33rd attempt (gz Maca!) and karma smiled on me with a shiny new enhance fist weapon:

I’m very tempted to buy its counterpart but I think I’ll wait a little while longer to see if this enhance ‘phase’ wears off, hehe.

Moar Pets!

Whilst waiting on said instance server to stop playing silly-buggers I took the screenshots that I’d actually gone on for:

Whilst raiding last night, our GM Indigo spied two of the horde pets cheap on the auction house.  When I go to  the auction house they’re never less than 5-8k so I asked her to grab me them.  So, when I finished the raid, I had these two beauties in my mailbox – [Sen'jin Fetish] and [Enchanted Broom].  Thanks again, Indi! Now the only two I have left to buy are the scorpion and batling.  Personally, I love how the scorpion looks so that’ll probab be my next one once I actually have some gold again.  I need to save up to get my herbalist epic flying first, though, so it might be a wee while.

‘Sekrit’ Alt

Although I am levelling my herbalist (my baby priest), I’ve done a ‘bad thing’ and created another alt.  Or, really, started using an old one.  I had a bank alt whom is now my ‘peace’ character – I love being in my guild and I love my guildies dearly, but sometimes I need to be totally on my own in-game and this is the character for those times.  There’s just something so very different about the game when you play it without your guild ‘blanket’.  It makes WoW feel almost ‘new’ again.

I got a few odd looks when I turned up in the starter zone with a pink dress on, but it was quickly replaced and my baby warrior is now running around Dun-Morogh in knee-length trousers and a chain bikini-top with half-bare feet.  I know dwarves are tough but I can’t help but shiver when I see her running over snowy areas in that kind of get-up!

Shortasses

Talking of short warriors, I finally spied a certain one in-game for the first time:

/wave at Namthe.  Unfortunately I was on my (other) bank alt at the time.  Typical.

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So, you’ve just got your shaman alt to 80 and you want to try out resto – or maybe you decided to grab that dual spec and don’t know where to start or you finally realised that being a priest / druid was far too easymode and you wanted to try a class which actually took skill to heal with?  If so, this here is the guide for you!  In the last few days I’ve had a  two guildies get their alts near / to 80 and start asking these questions and have had a few others ask for offspecs etc.  Whilst I love to wax lyrical about my favourite class, I felt it would be better to actually write something down which I could refer people to rather than trying to explain (badly) in relatively short sentences how to ‘do it rite’.  (It’s also a good excuse for me to do a cathartic outpouring of shamanyness).

This guide is meant as an entry-level guide – going into spells, stats, mana regen, talents and tips at a relatively basic level.  The aim is to give people who’re just starting at resto shamaning a primer with a few quick-start points but enough detail for those who like to know ‘why?’.  In depth and number crunching is not here – that’s for someone else to teach – and I’ll provide a few links for further reading at the end of the guide.  It’s also based around lower-end healing such as heroics and t7 content where most fights are over in 5 minutes or less.

The only assumption I am going to make here, though, is that you are already level 80.  I will not assume that you’ve levelled as ele or enhance, I will not assume you have any clue at all about healing as a shaman (or any other class).  I’ll also point out where things will differ depending on if your focus is towards eventually raiding 10 mans, 25’s or doing heroics with your friends.

Caveats done, let’s start:

• Spells
• Stats
• Mana Regen
• Talents
• Addons
• Gear / Gems / Enchants
  
• Random Extras
• Links

Spells

Chain Heal (CH)- Multi-target, moderately heavy on your mana.

Chain heal used to be the bread and butter of shaman healing.  In fact, it used to be the filling, too – and for good reason – with downranking and high spellpower, it became more efficient than any of our other heals – even on a single target.  Thankfully this is not the case anymore. Using chain heal and only chain heal will run you dry pretty fast – so it has to be used with a bit more care, especially in 5 and 10-mans.  Chain heal, moving from target to target, is usually referred to as it ‘bouncing’ – i.e. ‘Bounce the chain heal off the tank onto the melee’.

One thing to be clear about – if only one person has taken damage, or if people are more than 8 yards away from the player targeted, chain heal will not bounce.  Practice shows that the chain chooses where it will jump when the heal lands – so preemptive casting when there’s incoming AoE damage is a good trick to learn.

Chain heal, whilst very pretty and the supposed ’signature heal’ of Shamans will not work in a good number of situations.  Get used to using it only when people are close together and multiple people are taking damage as your other heals are faster (with tidal waves), can heal for more and don’t run you out of mana so quickly.

You should also get used to using this with Riptide to maximise its effects in heavy-damage situations.

Things which can effect this heal:

Riptide: Boosts the amount of healing done by your chain heal by 25%

Glyph of Chain Heal: Chain Heal may now hit 4 targets.

~o~

Lesser Healing Wave (LHW)- Fast, small heal

This heal used to be the red-headed step-child of Burning Crusade healing.  Woe was he who touched the lesser healing wave button!  In Wrath, this spell has come back into its own – especially when glyphed it is relatively efficient and good for tank healing.  In situations where the group is very spread out to the point where chain heal will not bounce, this heal is a good one for topping people off.  Having a decent amount of crit on your gear really helps to make this heal more effective – LHW used to trigger an improved water shield proc 100% of the time when it crit but, alas, no longer – only 60% of the time and thus it’s not as super-efficient as it was.  Nonetheless, it’s a very potent tool for 5-mans and sometimes larger groups too.

Things which can effect this heal:

Tidal Waves: Chain Heal and Riptide can proc this effect which reduces cast time by 30% and gives a 10% bonus healing.

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: A really nice glyph which is good for 5-mans.  In raids, its value really depends on how often you’re likely to be assigned to heal the tank.

~o~

Healing Wave (HW)- Slow, big heal

Healing wave is the big daddy of heals – it’s tricky to master using this heal as it is rather slow, but once you have it down it’s a very nice healing tool.  In raids this heal tends to go to waste on overheal unless you’re the only person healing your assigned target, or your target is not a tank.

Things which can effect this heal:

Tidal Waves: Chain Heal and Riptide can proc this effect which reduces cast time by 30% and gives a 20% bonus healing.

Healing Way: This resto talent was buffed to only require one heal to put up the full buff rather than three. Whilst of limited use in 5-mans, it can be a valuable tool in 10/25-mans – especially if you are often assigned to tank healing.

Glyph of Healing Wave:  This glyph doesn’t really effect the spell much except to heal yourself when you use Healing Wave on someone else.  In my opinion, this is a weak glyph compared to the others – though I imagine it has its pvp uses.

~o~

Riptide (WOOSH!)- instant, mana heavy, HoT

This is the new kid on the block – fast, makes a cool sound and has a fun spell effect.  It’s a very tempting heal to use but, if abused, can eat through your mana.  It’s a spell which can also end up being a bit of a crutch and you should make sure not to use it where the hot will be completely wasted or an instant heal is not needed – often a LHW may be better.  The secondary function of riptide is to boost chain heals and it can be very useful to riptide your tank (the hot is rarely completely wasted in a 5-man) and bounce CH’s onto the melee – keeping your tank topped off and your melee un-dead (despite them standing in fires).

Riptide has a high synergy with other heals – boosting chain heal and proccing tidal waves.

Things which can effect this heal:

Glyph of Riptide: Increases the Duration of your riptide by six seconds.

~o~

Earth Shield (ES)- ‘reactive’ heal

Earth shield is flying rocks you can put on another person.  It is very cool! Most people use this on the tank, but in 5-mans it can be a lifesaver for any squishies and can even be used on yourself if you’re having trouble with mobs / attacks hitting you and increasing your cast time – especially so when a boss has a channelled AoE or direct damage attack.

Earth Shield should be up at all times.

Things which can effect this heal:

Improved Shields: Going into enhancement for this is a good idea and part of most standard resto builds – esecially as it also boosts your water shield.

Glyph of Earth Shield: boosts your Earth Shield by 20% – a decent raiding glyph, though I feel it lacks utility for 5-mans in comparison to the other glyphs available.

Spellpower:  Earth shield can be super-charged by trinketing or using other buff effects before putting it on someone – including your totems.  It is good to get into the habit of laying your Flametongue totem (if you’re using it) before you put your earth shield up.

~o~

Healing Stream Totem – Passive ‘hot’

Not a true ‘heal’ per-se, but if you happen to run with a group which does not need your mana-stream totem (you have two paladins, say) then this little totem comes into its own.  It still only works in your own group, but can be used to some effect for low-level, constant damage – allowing you to keep your attention elsewhere for longer and can buy an extra second or two if someone is reduced to very low health suddenly.

Things which can effect this heal:

Glyph of Healing Stream Totem:  This boosts the output of your healing stream totem and, whilst nice padding, isn’t really all that great outside of high AoE-damage encounters.

~o~

Earthliving Weapon – weapon imbue, small ‘hot’

This is your restoration weapon imbue – use it, love it and cherish it.  Besides giving you a hefty healing boost, it also sometimes triggers a small hot on the targets it hits.  The healing by Earthliving is never omgimbapwn but there is no reason you should not have this on your weapon at all times whilst healing.

Things which can effect this heal:

Glyph of Earthliving Weapon: Earthliving has a 5% increased chance to trigger.

Elemental Weapons:  This is another enhancement talent – one which you may or may not have depending on your build.  Various sources seem to calculate its worth at around 45 sp – so whilst it is a nice boost when you’re just starting, you might eventually want to put your points elsewhere.

Stats

Yes, horrible numbers, but they let you know which shiny gear you want.  You do want shiny gear don’t you?  Yes, yes I thought so! Greedy buggers.

• Int

Intellect is the base stat which determines how big your mana pool is.  It also gives you a small amount of crit per point of intellect (it takes around 166 points of Int to gain 1% spell crit for a Shaman). With the talent Nature’s Blessing – which is pretty bread-and-butter in a resto spec – you’ll also gain a little bit of spellpower from your intellect.  Intellect is also very good regen stat for shamans – which I will go into in the regen section, below.

Intellect is, thus, a pretty well-rounded stat for a shaman – more mana, more crit, more spellpower.

• Bonus Healing (spellpower)

Spellpower is the thing which gives meat to your spell – boosting the shiny green numbers which you see above peoples heads when you heal them.  Using your Flametongue Totem will net you an extra 144 sp.

• Crit Chance

Crit is a stat which gives a lot of bang for your buck: it sometimes increases the size of your heals – those heals can add armor and may proc ancestral awakening if you have the talents.  Crit also gives you come mana back from improved water shield, if you take it.  It is now a very desirable stat for a shaman.

• Mana Regen

Mana regen, or mana per 5.  The number you care about here, when  you mouse over it, is the while casting one.  Generally you want to have about 110-150 before you start doing heroics and closer to 200+ for starting Naxx (including water shield).  This is your ‘base’ regen which you can count on to sit, ticking merrily away, slowly adding to your mana pool.  

• Haste

Haste makes heals faster.  Whilst this has the benefit of getting more heals where they need to be in a short amount of time, if you’re a bit trigger-happy you can end up running yourself out of mana faster.  Two of our heals – Healing Wave and Chain Heal have relatively long cast times and both benefit from having a good bit of haste to reduce time spent casting.  It also benefits us by allowing us to cast and move more frequently if needed.  If you are using your Wrath of Air totem you will get 5% spell haste from that alone.

~o~

You want some of all of these – though you don’t want too much haste to start with.  At first, go for a decent mana pool and mp5, crit as a side dish, and then eventually start putting some haste on top once you’re having few mana problems.  You don’t want no haste at all, you’ll probably end up with around 200 haste rating on your gear very early on even if you’re not trying to stack it.

Shoot for:

• 18k Mana
• 1.9k SP
• 150-200mp5
• ~200 haste rating
• ~20-25% crit

This is pre-Naxx, and  although you can go there with a bit less, these numbers will probably see you most of the way through with little trouble.

Mana Regen

As a healer, a large part of your time may be spent managing your mana.  If you constantly spam spells you will end up running oom, but, of course, not doing enough healing is bad.  Therefore, we have to look at the various methods of mana regen.

First of all, you can forget spirit-based regen – that’s for druids and priests.  Spirit means bugger all to a shaman and is wasted stats on any item which has it.

Intellect Based Regen

Intellect regen is based on the idea of utilising the multiple talents you and others have which return a % of your base mana.  The higher your base mana, thus, the more they return per tick to you.

Replenishment is the ‘best known’ of these and can be given by:

• Survival Hunters
• Shadow Priests
• Retribution Paladins
• Frost Mages
• Destruction Warlocks

This is, of course, if they have each specced into the necessary talent!

The other source of intellect based regen is your Mana Tide Totem.  A lot of people seem to forget this totem and, worse, some seem to think it’s a wonderful thing to never have to use it! First off, it benefits not only you but your whole party (not raid!) so be aware that even if you’re at full mana, others may get something out of you using this totem.  Secondarily, if you have so much mana you are never going below 75% then re-gem or re-enchant or twist around some gear and boost your throughout.  You will always have your mana tide totem,  so you can gear around using it – especially for fights where your heals need to be beefy.

I know not all will agree with me on this point but I see absolutely no point in ending a fight above 50% mana unless you vastly out-gear it, have too many healers, have had a lull to stand around regenning or accidentally took a mana pot just before the end of the fight! 10 Intellect = ~6 mp5 if you can count on replenishment and always use your Mana Tide totem.

Mana Per Five

At the beginning of The Burning Crusade this stuff was shaman-crack – you could not get enough of it, you always wanted more and you’d do a lot to get your fix including hanging around with 24 other people looking for trouble…  However, when Water Shield got its buff – becoming both free to cast and giving a hell of a lot more mp5, the extreme lust for that same stat dropped.

In Wrath, Water Shield gives a whopping 100mp5.  Still, even though you don’t need to stack mp5 to the hilt like in TBC, this little stat, beloved of shamans, is still relatively important.

If you mouse-over your ‘mana regen’ (under spells in your character pane) you’ll see two numbers.  The first is your non-casting mana regen.  That is the rate at which you will regen mana when you’ve not cast something within the last 5 seconds.  The other number, which will be a bit smaller, is your mana-regen whilst casting.  As a shaman, standing around and waggling your tail (or other appendage of choice for orcs and trolls…), will net you very little – you don’t have a huge difference between your casting and non-casting regen like a priest or druid does and cannot regen a whole lot of mana that way in a short time.

Therefore – mp5 is a solid base of incoming mana which is always ticking away in the background.  Having a reasonable amount of this is essential, even in crit-heavy builds.

Crit

Crit heavy builds?  What?!  Crit is for Paladins, isn’t it? Well, yes, but with the homogenisation of gear it made sense for Blizzard to prod the two non-spirit using healing classes closer together so that they can use similar gear.  So where does crit come into the equation?

Improved Water Shield.

This little talent, fully maxed, will allow for a water shield orb to be consumed when you crit on a Healing Wave or 60% of the time on a Lesser Healing Wave.  Each of those little balls of water is ~400 mana (depending on talents and glyphs) – not a huge deal, but it somewhat helps lighten the heavy costs of both HW and LHW.  The one issue with this regen is that it is rng based – if you do not crit you do not get mana back and an unlucky streak may leave you dry.

There is also the other issue of keeping water shield up – if you crit, use your shield up and don’t refresh it then you can end up with a net loss of mana – the best choice is usually to refresh it any time you have a spare global cooldown so that you need not stop healing at an important part of the fight to refresh it.

Talents

5-Man Build

This build ignores healing way and picks up healing focus.  Even after the mechanic change, pushback can be a killer on your longer spells and you’re more likely to have loose mobs chomping on you in a 5 man than a raid.  If you know your tank is solid then you could consider putting points in focused mind, healing way or even some in totemic focus since you’re more likely to be uprooting and replacing your totems more frequently.

Note the recommended glyphs: LHW, Water Mastery and Chain Heal.

Water Mastery glyph works out as 30mp5 so if you feel your mana is in a good place you can drop it and take something with more utility – HW, Riptide, Healing Stream glyphs for example.

Mixed Raid Build

This is my current build and glyphs – I can be assigned to tank heal on one fight and raid the next so I pick up Healing Way and drop elemental weapons.  As much as I’ve never been a huge fan of focused mind it can be useful  in a raid build – though you could easily switch those points to elemental weapons or imp. reincarnation.  Totemic focus is generally not needed in a raid setting as you will often  able to ‘fire and forget’ your totems for the less-than 5-minute duration of most boss fights in Naxx.  Even in Ulduar there aren’t many fights which require repositioning of totems, either.

Tip from Drug:

In a raid situation, 1/3 healing way works pretty good for me. Sometimes you get an unlucky RNG and it takes some time to get the buff to proc, but if you really need to spam HW over a long time, it really does the trick.

Addons

For those who’ve never been healers before:

As a healer, a lot of the information you’re going to be digesting will come in the form of health bars.  You need to be aware that only concentrating on these is bad and can lead to healer-in-a-fire syndrome where you’re so busy healing that you don’t realise you’re bringing about your own doom.

Using a good, specialised unit interface for groups and raids can mean you can spend less time figuring out what’s going on and more time staying out of fires. A good raid unit frame will give you health and mana bars, notification of debuffs and, if you want it, buffs as well as being relatively compact so that they do not obscure your view.

Grid / Healbot / VuhDo

These three addons are those recommended by many healers – VuhDo is a new addon which I’ve not tried yet but it’s gotten some good reviews.  Grid and healbot are both tried and tested with Healbot being said to be the easiest to install and get going, but grid being the more customisable and flexible one with many additional specialist modules.  Personally I use grid and I may do a post about the particular way in which I set up grid in the near future.

This addon simply allows you to cast a spell by clicking on your unit frames of choice rather than selecting a person then hitting a heal or using mouse-over macros.  Personally I like to keep my left hand free for trinkets, nature’s swiftness, tidal force, and push-to-talk so clique is perfect for me.  Having a 5-button mouse really helps in this regard – though you can do every shaman heal in your book with a three-button mouse and modifiers!

It is important that you are able to see curses, diseases and poisons on your unit frames so that you can remove them when needed.

Gear

I started a section on some nice pre-raid pieces and then realised that it really needed a post of it’s own. I’ll link it here when I’m finished with it so <under construction>.

Gems / Enchants Quick Reference

• Meta: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond
• Red: Runed Scarlet Ruby or Luminous Monarch Topaz
• Yellow: Brilliant Autumn’s Glow or Luminous Monarch Topaz
• Blue: Dazzling Forest Emerald or Royal Twilight Opal

• Head: Arcanum of Blissful Mending (Wyrmrest Revered) or Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (KT Revered)
• Back: Speed / Greater Speed
• Shoulders: Lesser / Greater Inscription of the Crag or Lesser / Greater Inscription of the Storm
• Chest:  Super Stats / Powerful Stats or Greater Mana Restoration or, if you’re cash strapped Exceptional Mana
• Wrist:  Superior Spellpower
• Hands:  Exceptional Spellpower
• Legs: Azure / Sapphire Spellthread
• Feet:  Greater Vitality / Tuskarr’s Vitality

“Wait, what, Tuskarr’s Vitality?  But that’s a tank enchant!”  In a raiding situation I’d take extra run-speed over a tiny bit of mp5 and hp5.  We are not terribly mobile healers and any little bit helps – especially if many of those you’re going to be healing will have some form of movement boost.  Utility here, for me, wins out over raw stats.

In general I’d always use the cheaper enchants unless you don’t expect to upgrade a piece for a long time – the stat differences are often minimal for the extra expense.

Random Stuff

So you healed at 70…?

Maybe your guild needed an extra resto shammy for raiding, or you switched chars and, for whatever reason, you’ve come into Wrath and you’re not sure ‘what’s changed’.

No down-ranking – You have four direct heals, and none of them is Chain Heal (Rank 5).

Chain Heal is no longer your God – We are now polytheistic and worship all spells more-or-less equally.

Your mana spring totem doesn’t stack with a paladin’s Blessing of Wisdom (improved) so if you have a paladin using that, you should use Healing Stream (or any of the others if they happen to be useful for a particular fight).

You now have a weapon imbue especially for healing – no more stacks of mana oil, woohoo!

Priests still cry about your ‘op raid healing’ despite the gazillion buffs they’ve gotten.  Some things never change.

Practice Makes Perfect

Twee, perhaps, but very true – especially if you’ve never healed before.  Get yourself out there and heal some pvp matches to get used to your key bindings, then hit up some easier instances and, eventually, jump in and grab some heroics.  Never be afraid to tell people you need them to slow down a little bit or wait for you to regen your mana.  If you’re used to playing a priest or druid be aware that you may need to drink a bit more between pulls – shamans don’t regen mana that much faster out of combat than in!

When I first levelled my shaman I was a hyrid ele/resto spec 60-70 so that I could heal.  Without half-decent gear, though, some of the Wrath instances may be tough to heal for an offspec, newbie healer.  Dual specs are expensive but helpful in this regard.  If you cannot afford that then I’d suggest getting to level 78 (or before!) and then switching to a resto spec and then healing your way to 80 from there.  That way, you’ll get plenty of experience, a little gear and, more importantly, realise if healing is for you or not.

Nature’s Swiftness

This spell, contrary to popular belief, does not come married to Healing Wave.  Quite often it will be more useful for you to use in conjunction with Chain Heal so get used to activating it and utilising it in a number of situations.

Links

• Drug @ Shield’s Up and Faulsey @ Faulsey.com – both of whom read over my post and helped me polish it up.  /hug /kudos
• Llyra@ Healing Way – Drug linked me to this  blog – she has a number of awesome posts up which are well worth reading for those new and not-so-new to resto-shamaning.  Specific reccomendations are her post on wanted raid buffs and which totems work in raid or party only.
• Elitist Jerks – Not always the best resource for those brand-new to the class or who are not raiding, but EJ has the number crunching that I don’t.
• Shield’s Up – Drug is a wonderful resto shaman with good articles about best-in-slot gear,  glyphs and raiding as a shaman in general.
• Wowwiki – I am terrible with numbers and stats so most of the above statistics / numbers come from Wowwiki.
• Wowhead – See above.

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I’ve continued my busy streak this week, tidying up loose ends:

Netherwing Exalted

I mentioned that I was using far sight to scout the Netherwing mines out for eggs – one time I managed to far sight outside of existance! I think I centred my far sight a little too high and ended up seeing the  mines from outside of the 3d-space.  Somewhat cool – I could see the crust burster mobs loller-skating underneath the ground.  As you can also see from this screenshot (randomly at the same time), Softi got her mount! Big gratz, Softimoo!

After spending about 4 days grinding eggs, and nearly giving up when it got to stupid-o’clock on the last day, a lucky streak of finds and drops brought me to the eggs I needed to grab exalted Netherwing.  I was so tired I knew I wouldn’t enjoy getting my ‘little ding’ there and then, so I played the delayed-gratification game and left the last egg until I logged in the next morning.

I’m pretty sure we killed this guy, but apparently he’s still hanging out in Black Temple, and now expecting the Dragonmaw Commander to bring him my carcass.  Oh well, sucks to be him.  *ahem* In all honesty, I really do miss Black Temple. Nostalgia is really setting in for ‘the good old TBC days’.  Loving my tbc-style netherdrake, too:

Hordeside Inclinations

Look, Ma, I’m a tauren! I sent a little note to a player who had a mulgore hatchling listed on the auction house – the second I’d tried – and asked if she’d be willing to trade her hatchling for any of the Alliance pets, as I have some seals spare, now.  I got a message back saying she was and only a few hours later was the proud owner of a [Mulgore Hatchling]! On Bloodhoof the horde-side pets are rarely going for anything under 5k gold on the Alliance auction house (and the neutral one!) so I was rather happy to be able to trade – I’ve set myself an amount for spending on pets and that was far and away more than my limit.

I have always been a Tauren at heart, and I miss my horde characters, so having both my kodo and hatchling is soothing to that side of me.  Tauren in spirit, if not in form.

Whelp!

After 15 levels of grinding whelps, a total of 3884 whelpling kills, I finally got one.  I honestly thought the bugger was never going to drop and had resigned myself to moving on if I reached level 50 without getting one.  Cue a great deal of squeeing and joy in guild chat (and real life…heh).  I don’t know if I will have the stamina to go back and try for the other two for a while, but the joy of grinding them far outweighs that of just buying them, so I will, no doubt, eventually subject myself to that particular grind again.

It’ll be odd to actually quest on my priest again – I’ve barely done any so far, just under 200 at level 47.  Outlands in 11 levels.  I think I can manage that…

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Aside from the rampant pet collecting suggested by my last post, I’ve been storming through a number of other achievements…

Argent Tournament

First and foremost I’ve been keeping up with my Argent Crusade dailies – though after I had gotten all of the pets I wanted I gave myself a break and stopped doing it on three characters at once.  So, when I did my dailies for today I grabbed five achievements at once:

Champion of Gnomeregan > Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan

Champion of the Alliance > Exalted Champion of the Alliance > Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance

As much as I do enjoy the dings and titles brought by these dailies I can’t help feel that it’s a little ‘too much for too little’.  I guess that, though, might be because I was already exalted with all of the alliance factions and the argent crusade – if you factor in all of those, the time taken is a lot more.  Still – 6 titles in the space of a few weeks is a pretty big haul!

Now that Avarix has what he wanted (I’m not really that interested in the current mounts – I love my Kodo on Avarix and my Raven mount on Jhai) I am gong to go back and get Jhai the [Silvery Sylvan Stave] and Yjin the [Claymore of the Prophet].  I may also pick up the [Dagger of Lunar Purity] for Jhai but, with the offhands available to me it’s abit of a sidegrade to my [Sulfur Stave], despite that being a dps weapon… /sadface

I keep meaning to do a small video tutorial with various ways to do the jousting since some people seem to still be having trouble doing it – I use several methods based on what I’m fighting and which computer I’m on (the laptop is a lot slower).  Gotta get off my lazy rear and add those before people stop doing it altogether!  I’m also considering a small grid tutorial specifically aimed at shamaning after helping the guild’s other (awesome) resto shaman set it up and failing miserably at explaining in text.

Shamaning

On that note, I’m really glad to finally have another shaman in the guild to talk to.  Whilst I am always wary of new healers (it’s hard to judge if they’re ‘doing it right’ compared to other  roles),  I am very glad to have Sci as my co-shammy healer. He and I have slightly different play-styles and having another resto shammy around means I can be free to tank-heal a bit more!

I think I may do another look into LHW / HW / CH like I did just post 3.0 – I feel that, even in 25 man, LHW and HW are taking a much larger part of my healing quotient and are, in fact, the better way to heal some encounters.  Riptide glyphed and with 2-pc T8 bonus is wonderful, by the way, I’ve become a big fan of the spell and keeping this up on multiple people is really nice in 25 and wonderful in 10-man.  Shamans are not hot healers, I know, but I can’t help but enjoy keeping people topped off or instantly bringing them back from the edge of disaster – though it doesn’t half eat through your mana.  I would like to be able to use the bonus on Hodir but 4pc-t7 boosted Chain Heals are just too nice!

Speaking of 2-pc – I was lucky enough to grab the legs and shoulders (t8 and 8.5 respectively) these last few weeks and have been playing about with them in my tank-healing set.  Whilst pootering about in Dalaran, though, I was amused to note that both my new shoulders and my new weapon were bigger than a gnome is wide – wonderfully modelled here by Grav!

Other Rep

The day before, too, I spammed guild chat with another few milestones hit at once, though these I had not even realised were so close:

The Kirin Tor > Northrend Vanguard / 25 Exalted Reputations

I’m now also working on Ogri’la and Netherwing Rep (hence the orcish nature of the last post!) and, to be honest, I’m really enjoying the old Burning Crusade landscapes – I guess when you don’t have to play it all the time you can look back with rose-tinted glasses.  It’s been fun cruising around Netherwing Ledge looking for eggs and abusing Far Sight to check the mines, and after three days I’m now almost 6k into revered – it’s a lot easier to level when there’s, at most, 3 people grinding the rep /eggs and usually only me by my lonesome!

Priest-let

With her current gear I like to think of my priest as some sort of holy-ninja-priest.  White face mask r cool, k?

I’m now at over 13 levels of grinding whelps and no luck with drops (I’ve had a world-drop epic, but no pet) – I’m working on the dark whelp at the moment – killing circuits of them in Badlands. I figure I can stay there for another few levels before they become so little xp it’s not worth it.  After that it’s ooze time…

I am enjoying my wee priest, though it’s very different to any of the classes I normally play – dotting things up and being generally a little more mobile whilst casting that my druid or shaman ever felt.  I am now considering a second spec, though.  Personally, I’ve always loved the idea of discipline but I intend to try and get as many instances as I can on my way through Outlands / Northrend and was wondering if it would be more worthwhile for me to be holy for those – if it would be a bit easier to ‘learn’ priest healing as holy then switch to disc or whether disc is good enough to do with not-so-great levelling gear and as a newbie priest?  Any help and hints here are appreciated.

Druid

When I’ve had a spare moment from the above I was slotting in runs of UBRS.  Why there?  Well, I wanted to grab myself an [Ace of Beasts] so I could make a [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] for Jhai.  She had two pretty poor trinkets (a green borean tundra one and one of the brewfest ones, if I remember right) and had some trouble with regen in harder instances.  One of the guild’s resto druids, Qain,  had mentioned how nice this trinket could be so I figured that I’d collect my cards.

Despite quite a few runs, I had no luck getting the Ace.  However, Indigo came to the rescue and used a few mats she had to create [Darkmoon Cards] with inscription and lo and behold… an Ace!  So a big thanks to Indi for getting me my first darkmoon trinket!

On that note – I have finally tweaked my druid’s grid to be actually useful for her – with timed hots á la Keeva.  For some reasons poisons and curses aren’t showing, though, and I can’t get wild growth to go where I want it, so further poking of grid is required.  I may post at some point of the length I go to to abuse grid. /grin The new setup is also helping with regen – I’m not clipping my hots as much as I was and tracking lifebloom is so much easier when you can see stacks and time.  I, personally, love the lifebloom changes as they suit what I like abusing lifebloom for – a short, sharp heal which is slightly time delayed – there are so many times where that can come in handy if you’re used to pre-emptive cast healing.

Raiding

Lightwalkers has been progressing through the content at what I think of as a ‘decent’ pace for us – we’re having major trouble with Bloodhoof’s ‘Thursday Fail’ – wherein the server always seems to lag, dc people, fall over, stutter and all of those lovely things even more than usual.  I am sure we’d have gotten further, too, if it wasn’t for Kologarn’s pissing annoying habit of continuing to ‘Grip’ people after they’ve been freed.  Buggy encounters are pure joy…

Still, we’re up to Mimiron on ten, now and have Thorim and Mimiron left on 25 out of the watchers – we haven’t tried Thorim yet due to time constraints imposed by said buggy Kologarn but I don’t think it’ll take us long to down him on 25 given our practice on tens (which has really helped for all boss kills, in my opinion).  We’ve also now completed FL +2 on 10, which was amazingly fun, if a little frustrating at times.

One boss we were having issues on where we should not have is Freya – wtb people who understand STOP DPS, pst. *ahem* It only takes one nuke happy dps to screw that encounter up,  annoyingly, much to the chagrin of the other 24 people.  We got her down eventually, though, and I don’t really consider her a ‘hard’ fight – though it is interesting and I imagine the reason she’s so ‘easy’ is because she scales up so much with the addition of her adds – much like Sartharion +0 is extremely easy for his ‘position’ in the tier hierarchy.

Obligatory Gratuitous Screenshots:

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Lil’ Game Hunter

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