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.

12 comments

This week has been pretty mad – between running 10 and 25-man  Ulduar and all of the new quests available.  Lightwalkers has taken down Flame Leviathan with one tower up on both 10 and 25.

…but this didn’t leave us with enough time to kill XT on 25 (yes, I know he’s not the easiest next choice)  with some tactics changes we hope to deconstruct him next raid.  Unfortunately our raids are short so we don’t get a long time to work on bosses.  It was some solid progess, though, and I really am enjoying the challenge again – especially as a healer, things are hellishly hectic! *grin*

Dual Specs

When not doing raids I’ve been taking part in all of the other new things 3.1 brought us – two of my characters have dual specs though I haven’t even utilised Jhai’s second spec as can’t decide whether to go cat-dps, boomkin or resto as my offspec! Probably it’ll end up being whatever people need first.

On Avarix, I’m completely in love with dual-specs – rocking a pvp-elemental which is also nice to grind with for offspec.   It’s so nice not to take an age just to kill some mobs and dailies have just become trivial by comparison to what I had before.  Of course, I’ve already made the mistake of forgetting which spec I’m in – I was thinking Grid was copletely broken as it wouldn’t let me Earth Shield people.  Luckily I realised the actual reason for this before we engaged the boss! Hehe.

Fishing

The RNG seems to have been very much in my favour these last few days with the fishing daily.  On the first day all I got was a price of junk glass but on the second?  A [Jeweled Fishing Pole] and a  [Tiny Titanium Lockbox].  For those not in the know, the lockboxes seem to often contain the new epic gems – stormjewels and, true to form, I picked up a  [Rigid Stormjewel] alongside a few other blue-quality gems.  Talk about score.  I sold the gem for a silly amount (seriously, who pays 400g for a gem?) as I wouldn’t use it.  Sadly, I won’t be able to use the pole in higher fishing areas as I have a fishing line on my [Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole] but I spent plenty of time fishing salmon and musselback sculpin with it for the guild’s quota of fish feasts.  I am amused at my big male draenei using what looks like a Cardcaptor Sakura weapon.

On that note, [Fish Feasts] are not longer BoP, thank goodness! I hadn’t noticed this in the patchnotes so it came as a pleasant surprise when we were pondering what to do with the over-500 fish myself and another guild fisherman had stuffed into the guild bank.

Why so many fish?  Well, we were both wanting a [Sea Turtle], of course! I’ll let the picture say it…

There is a completely unsubstantiated rumour that people are finding a higher drop rate when having the Ghostfish fishing daily and fishing in Borean Tundra [Musselback Sculpin] pools.  I wrote this off as spurious but, oddly enough, guess when I got mine? One of the guild’s other prolific fishers also got his in the exact same circumstances – though we had both been fishing for hours prior to that.

Now off to do another round of dailies…

5 comments

Back in the day you had to gear up just to do a heroic, never mind a raid, and things took more ’skill’ and we had to dps, heal or tank uphill in the snow just to get a damn key for a heroic (which was further up the hill in deeper snow)!  Many complaints have been levelled about the ‘easy’ nature of Wrath and how fast people have out-done the content and I don’t entirely disagree (nor agree, either), but I have come to a conclusion in the last few days.

Easy heroics and easy starting raids are not bad!

Now, I hadn’t really been against them being easy in the first place (even though  for an organised and geared group, Naxx is now a chain-pull, over in 2 hours, snoozefest) but I hadn’t really realised how, long term, the ease of these could help Wrath have a little more lasting power or fun.  Now, this is coming firmly from an altoholic point of view but it also encompasses rerollers and slow levellers / starters.

In the Old Days…

When my shaman first hit 70 it was a nightmare – I had to run instance after instance to get my rep up, even if I didn’t need anything from that particular instance, and had to gear up to do heroics – even then, only the easier ones.  Crafted items were some of the best-in-slot pre-raid.  It took a veritable age for me to get Avarix Kara-ready because I wasn’t a huge fan of running instances over and over in one night and expecially not in pugs.

The reality was, too, that guildies rarely wanted to do normal instances – I couldn’t blame them, afterall it was almost two years into TBC and everyone had done them to death.  When the badge vendors were out, though, heroics at least were still relatively fashionable and a group was usually going – though I missed out on some of those, too, due to lack of rep.

Getting groups for normal instances was tough and, even just a few months into Wrath, its the same.

Now when I log on with my Death Knight, despite having just turned 80, I can go do a heroic with my guildies!  I’ve mostly stuck to the easier end of the spectrum so far but I’m still able to do heroics and contribute to them enough that I’m not a negative impact.  To put it more simply – I don’t require to be ‘carried’ by better geared friends.  Now, pugs might have looked at my few greens and said ‘no thanks’ and that is a limitation for newly dinged 80s without such a friendly guild or a guild who have higher constraints on their time (i.e. one with a lot of families or younger members) but reasonable upgrades are out there so that most classes can start with a relatively cheap, blue heroic kit or better as soon as they hit 80.

In Burning Crusade, in the time it took me to gear up from normal instances, my heroic buddies would be heading for Karazhan and I wouldn’t want to drag them through instances just for my alt etc.

Gear

With the exception of a few items (notably some crafted ones) most items from heroics were ‘easily’ replaced by Kara epics – that is, there was little by way of sidegrades or small upgrades – almost everything was a direct upgrade!  Whilst cool, it somewhat dampened the feeling of ‘winning’ against those tough heroic bosses (or at least doing them 25 times for that one upgrade).

Now, though, that is hardly the case.  Naxx 25 gear might replace heroic gear a little more quickly but there are a few heroic items which last well into Naxx 10 and many ‘upgrades’ are partial sidegrades.  That you can raid Naxx in quest blues is kinda nice – that you can raid Naxx smoothly in heroic gear means that, as with on Wednesday night this week, a bunch of mostly-alts and late starters / rerollers got through most of Naxx in a few hours.  Unfortunately we had to stop at Saph because it was getting late but I don’t doubt that we will finish the place later in the week.

Skill Level

Another factor in this ‘ease’ is the faily soft levelling curve between normal instances, heroics and Naxx.  Running from one to the other seems a much more smooth progression than in Burning Crusade where the ‘curve’ was more like stages you had to go through and big leaps in difficulty.  I remember walking into Heroic Sethekk (I think) with my shaman and just being gobsmacked by the amount of damage I was suddenly expected to heal compared to normal instances!   Despite the many cries of ‘must have more than 3k dps and have achievement’ people in LFG, most heroics in Wrath are entirely doable with slightly sub 2k dps and a not-amazingly geared tank and healer – I know because half of the instances I’ve run this week were with both a tank and healer who had decided to reroll / go back to an old main and have only just started gearing up!

Hell, we even almost completed a timed Stratholme this morning – only jinxed by an accident which ended in a wipe (we had 4-5 minutes left and were past the ‘breathing point’ already).  Some heroic achievements do take a little more skill or gear – say doing a 5-bronze Oculus to batter out two of the achievements at once or some of the speed-skill achievements (having two dps doing 4k dps on Maiden of Grief sorta guarantees the under 2 minutes achievement…hehe) but heroics on a base level are entirely doable with a hodge-podge group who at least have half a clue.

Tokens

Heroic tokens in Burning Crusade were a blessing and a curse – a blessing in that they allowed you to get gear from running heroics and Karazhan over and over.  There was a wide variety of gear on offer for badges – much more than there currently is for 5 and 10 man tokens at the moment but the gear quality varied enormously.  You might think the lack of badge gear would discourage people from running heroics over and to some extent I’d agree but I also think that it works out well as it sort of gives you a little push into Naxx or Sartharion.

Where in Burning Crusade most alts only ever got to go to Karazhan (maybe Maggy, Grull, SSC depending on your guild and time constraints), now alts could actually follow your main in progression at the 10-man level (or be equal to your main if you do 10-man as your main progression).  Personally, I’m not a huge fan of 10-mans on my shaman, not because I don’t like them, but because I feel shamans are more suited to healing larger groups and I enjoy healing larger groups. Also, ten mans are my ‘fun runs’ and I’d rather sit back and tank or dps for my giggles.  Or at least heal as a different class /shame.  Of course, this waits to be seen as, currently, we really only have one level of progression!

Keys

It is a shame keys were so frustrating as I do like the idea of keys.  However, in a system which encourages people forward into raid content a bit faster, and where normal to heroic progression is very easy, keys don’t make sense.  They’d just be a huge stumbling block.  Indeed, they often felt like that in Burning Crusade – I remember having to buy an epic flying mount on my first druid as, despite having done all the quests and buying my skill, I didn’t have enough Lower City rep to enter Sethekk Halls and summon Anzu!

As with gear, keys acted as another barrier to progession with friends – after they changed it to honored, it became a little less tough but getting revered just to be able to go to a heroic meant you were usually already sick of the place from running it on normal.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

So, overall, I can’t help but feeling Wrath is better for its simpler curve, its easier grouping, its ‘everyone should join in’ policy.  Perhaps people are too bored at the moment to see it or perhaps I’m being my usual, over-optimistic self but I can’t help but hope that, in the year to come, we find that this system is one which works out for the best long-term.

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I don’t often rant here – in fact, I shy away from it like some sort of plague.  I do this as I know my rants tend to be very different to my usual writing form and, often, get slowly angrier as they progress.   However, I ask your forgiveness in this matter as, in reality, it is only my wish to put my point across vehemently which makes my wording so extreme or my writing a little more emphatic than usual.

So, what is this issue that has me irked, annoyed and agitated?  Well, at the moment quite a few things concerning the beta and people scrambling to denounce specs and classes as OP / UP before they’ve even had a chance to mature or even be completed.  Most of these I will not defend overly as I also do not know what will happen and arguments where both sides are based on speculation are generally somewhat… pointless?

One particular argument is one which is mostly based around personal feelings and beliefs (of which I have plenty experience *ahem*) is that of ‘Big Green Blob Syndrome’, or, “omg all the classes are losing their uniqeness /crai”.

My view on this? Mostly complete and utter nonsense.  Gaining a similar buff to a class or an ability which overlaps a now available buff does not make one class more or less unique than another.

The reason I’ve seen cited for these changes, by blue posters, is to make it so that you do not have to rely overly on stacking one class or deny a friend and good player a place on your raid team simply because they do not enjoy or have the gear for a ‘good’ raid spec (boomkins, retridins, MM hunters, frost mages for example).  Now I know you may wail and cry that there are examples of these specs already raiding and doing well but I have not yet heard of a guild who stacks boomkins – feral or resto are more useful for the ‘class benefits’ – in this case, battle res, innervate etc. – and the benefit of bringing two along is negligible – improved faerie fire cannot stack and the aura competes with the better buffs an elemental shaman could bring in their place, for example (alongside self res, a full set of totems, heroism…).

So, allowing a lot of classes to share buffs or simply making it so that similar buffs don’t stack no matter what the class is means that you only need “some dps, one with an AP booster, some tanks, one with an armor / AP reducer or slower, and some healers capable of… healing” rather than “we need at least two shamans, two priests, one warrior, one paladin tank, one survival hunter, two rogues, three warlocks and two mages minimum”.  The direction they are going in will allow for more freedom of choice for the player and for the raid as a whole.

You should be able to play with your friends and you should be able to play in a spec you like competitively. Burning Crusade was a step towards that (Wow, druids, shamans and paladins don’t have to be healers all the time?) and I’m hoping Wrath will continue the trend.  In fact, in my opinion, this allows for a far greater degree of individualism than if classes were restricted to one or two ‘amazing’ raid specs with the other being left in the dirt.

Crossover does not equal cross out, for example:

On my Shaman I rely heavily on +healing and mp5, holy Paladins in my guild also rely partially on these.  We both heal, use shields and choose similar ‘extras’ (rings, trinkets, food etc.). Does that mean we lack flavour compared to each other?  I don’t think so.  We’re very different classes.  If I gain a good, fast single target heal worth casting it still doesn’t make me a Paladin and a Paladin gaining some multi-target healing does not make them a Shaman.  Big mechanics – like totems and blessings, magical shields versus elemental shields, mitigation versus off-spec dps will always make these two healing specs feel very different.

However,  if need be I could single-target heal or they could raid heal without gimping the raid.  If we only have 8 paladins available for one evening why should that stop us from just saying ‘lets go!’?  Having similar skills across multiple classes simply means that a big glaring gap in their toolset (using the above example) as a healer has been reduced a little, allowing them to fill a healer spot rather than just a ‘paladin’ or ’shaman’ spot.

More specifically, having only certain classes able to ‘cleanse’ certain debuffs means having to build a raid around those classes for specific encounters.  Having these sorts of abilities as available from certain talents (without adding them as general class skills) means being able to have each specialist-spec have a tool-set wide enough to not be a burden simply by playing a class and spec they enjoy.

This is why I am supportive of the efforts to spread the love around, talents wise.  This is why I am glad they are doing so and why, I hope, others might begin to see all of this in a more positive light.

After half writing this post I noticed that Rohan at Blessing of Kings touched on another aspect of what I was trying to say in his post on the new buff system:

I think that, on the whole, this will be a good change for the game. There are some posters at EJ however, who feel that this will lead to a new form of raid stacking. Essentially, you figure out the minimum number of characters to cover all the buffs and debuffs, and then stack the rest of the raid with the flavour-of-the-month DPS class.

This is a possibility. However, in my view, there are essentially two types of raiding guilds: guilds which have access to multiple characters of every class and spec; and guilds which don’t. Maybe the first type of guild will stack, but they would have stacked anyways. But this change will make life a lot easier for the second type of guild, allowing much more leeway in recruitment and raid make-up.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment – hardcore raids who must have optimal setups will find a way to ‘exploit’ the new system.  Other guilds, who are more based around friendships or friendly, more paced raiding, will be able to raid more comfortably with an un-balanced number of one class or other.  I refuse to believe, at the moment, that granting buffs and abilities to multiple different classes will mean a loss of uniqueness for that class.  I believe, in fact, it does almost the opposite – allowing any one person to play their class in the spec they enjoy with the knowledge that they are a positive force for their raid group and friends.

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Wow, this week feels like it’s been hellishly busy…. and it’s only Wednesday! I feel like I’ve abandoned my poor little blog (despite posting a long post only a few days ago) and feel like I could use some writing therapy. I can’t even bring myself to do a little starter blurb or images this time so it’s just text-spam I’m afraid. I’ll try and make it pretty text-spam though.

So, what have I been up to?

Raiding, instancing, boosting, buying.

First of all, though, you’re going to get some recruitment spam!

Recruitment

Lightwalkers on Bloodhoof (EU) are actively looking for the following:

• 1-2 Resto Druids
• 1-2 Mages
• 1 Warlock, possibly 2
• 1 Holy pally, possibly 2

We would consider a good application from:

• 1 Elemental Shaman
• 1 Boomkin Druid

To quote the guild recruitment post:

“We’re looking for people that enjoy both raiding as well as the social aspect of the game in a stable, mature guild community, who are interested in reliably attending 3 progress raids every week, know and like their class, can handle constructive criticism when it’s needed, and come to the raids with the neccessary preparation (buffs, tactics, etc)”

You can find the website and more information at lightwalkers.net. We’ve lost a few raiders due to summer attrition and general game-apathy so we’re looking to bolster our ranks with some eager new members!

Raiding

This week my schedule looks like this: Mon: SSC, Tues: ZA, Wed: Kara, Thurs: MH, Fri: who knows. ._.! I’ll be exhausted. I usually only raid 2/3 nights so this, plus the fact I jumped in as backup last Sunday means I’ve been raiding a bit above my normal limit. Ah well!

Instancing / Boosting

Well despite my diatribe about boosting I’ve been doing and taking a lot of it this week. Myself and A (previously mentioned!) have been boosting each others alts – sometimes with the pleasant company of Softii – Softthistle’s new ferlol druid. Almost every night we’ve been hitting ZF / SM / RFD and my little druids gear is quite spiffy considering her level!

Buying

I couldn’t sleep last Sunday night so I was reading up on gear for my new baby-druid. I’d been looking to buy a few things ahead of time as no doubt when I wanted something later it’d be pricey or non-existant on the AH. I was trawling through Wowhead and found this little pretty: [Warden Staff]. OMNOMNOMNOM. So, feeling a little tired and icky I did myself some retail-therapy and hit the AH. I was in luck – 200g buyout. *yoink* Mine! It’s a pretty staff and I’ve stuck +35 agi on it (cheaper and easier to get than the pre-tbc one for me…) so my little druid is looking very twinked out. Add to that some very nice boost drops and craftables and my little tank is sitting pretty with a hefty chunk of def / armor / stamina.

Now I just need to find some groups. *ahem*

Grinding

Have you ever heard anyone complaining about not having enough grinding time? Well, that’s what I’m doing now! Because of all the extra raiding etc. I’ve ended up low on consumables, crafting mats etc. I also haven’t had time to touch my hunter and kitty or level my druid outside of boosts. Today, though, I spent a long time fishing and shooting at some bog giants to replenish my stocks and get the primals I still needed for my shadow res cloak.

And on a totally different note..

I’ve been made a guild admin in Lightwalkers. I’m happy but somewhat terrified – new responsibilities and a lot of learning in my future but I love the guild dearly and I hope I can make them proud of me!

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Hug one, hug all. Does it really matter who’s got whit as long as yer still enjoying yersel? Does it make ye happier to deny someone else somethin’? Ah really cannae understand this whole thing…

You’d think, the way some of my guildies and some others are talking, that when 2.4 comes out they are going to have all their epics perma-removed and given to newly dinged 70’s. In fact, it’s worse, their e-peen is going to be cut off and tossed to the murlocs!

I usually stay away from topics like this, I even tend to try and ignore them in g-chat as they’re something that’s likely to bug me and both sides have pretty strong feelings. But, to hell with it, I’ll write it all down here where no-one can interrupt me while I write.

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Cannae be daein’ wi’ adventurin’ or slayin’ on an empty stomach an without my bag full o’ bit an’ pieces which give me a wee bit o’ an advantage.

So, Onionpeels over at Blog Azeroth suggested jotting down what we take for raids and I thought I’d do a little writeup on what I take as it sounded kind of fun. As a rogue I don’t have any reagents to bring (thankfully) but that doesn’t mean I don’t bring bags full of consumables to a raid!

When I started raiding I had one raid bag. I put everything I needed into it so I wouldn’t forget when the time came to go somewhere. Slowly, as I added more items to my repetoire and started doing a wider variety of bosses my little stash grew and now takes up almost two full bags, not including the extra stamina gear and trinkets I carry with me just in case!

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