Gamer: The New Spoiled Brat

A lot of stuff has been revealed by Blizzard these past few days. We've seen tier 13 sets, rogue legendary dagger lore, maps and new models for NPCs inside the 5-mans and Dragon Soul raid, etc etc etc. I personally follow MMO-Champion, but I know lots of WoW fansites and information sites are posting this stuff as fast as they can. We've got nice PTR videos and previews of some of the new mounts coming in 4.3. Obviously some people love the new mounts, dungeons, and gear sets, and some people hate it. That's fine.

What's not fine is every single video I watched previewing mounts and Void Storage had things like this in the comments:

"Blizzard's seriously run out of ideas when they're letting us have major lore characters as mounts. I just hope when they make Deathwing a purchasable mount from the Blizzard store, he at least can carry 2 people."

"Ya know Blizz this would have been cool two years ago."

"Cool, another re-skin."

"I don't mind a cost associated with it but 100g per item better be a PH price cause that is retarted if you are going to use transmog very often"

Really guys? Really? I'm appalled. We're practically being showered with things we've asked for, and all you can do is bitch about how it's not good enough.

We wanted to be able to change the way our gear looked, we got Transmografication AND Void Storage to hold all our crap. "It's too expensive."

We wanted more mounts. "They're too plain, or they're reskins, or they're just not good enough."

Want want want bitch bitch bitch. There's a reason for you to hate everything and to blame the Blizzard employees for it.

The world we play in, the one we TAKE FOR GRANTED, that world is the carefully constructed child of hundreds, probably thousands, of artists, writers, 3D animators, musicians, composers, software engineers, producers, designers, and so many more. They work HARD on this stuff, and you look at it and say, "You didn't try. You're lazy. This isn't good enough." Do you even know what kind of work has to go into something as expansive as World of Warcraft? Can you fathom the kind of debates they must have when trying to please 11 MILLION players? The poor CMs on the forums and GMs in the game that must get screamed at by players who feel they've been wronged?

You know, I've never come across a GM in the game that brushed me off, or made me feel like I was wasting their time. Even when I had stupid questions, or made silly requests (GM hug!), they were endlessly patient, endlessly cheerful, and endlessly helpful. If they weren't sure on something, they let me know and apologized. How often must they get cussed out by players who are frustrated or having a bad day and expect a GM to pull out their God Mode and fix it for them? Heck, I'm embarrassed every time my DBM auto-responds because to me it sounds rude. But they don't care - I even had one /cheer at me because I defeated whatever boss I was working on. And that's awesome. Every GM I've talked to made ME feel important.


The GMs do what they are PAID to do - to provide excellent customer service. To make the customer feel important. I'm sure there are bad apples here and there, but I've never actually HEARD of a GM that was rude. There's plenty of people that will say they're useless, but I'm almost positive these are the people making insane demands.

I'm not saying I agree with everything Blizzard does. I hate the Firelands nerfs. I hate my tier 13 set. I think it's ugly as all hell and I'm insanely jealous of the other classes, especially mage, priest, and warlock. The clothy sets look amazing this tier. I hate rep grinds, and questing through Northrend, and how ugly tier 9 was and the stupid ToC arena raid, and the tiny amount of background draenei have, and gnomes. I really really hate gnomes. There's tons of random things about the game that irritate me. But there's so much that I love, and that's what I focus on.

They're trying to crank out so much content to keep all of their players happy, from the solo player, to the achievement whore, to the casual raider and the hardcore, there really is something for everyone. I mean, they even made it so you can see your equipped ilevel along with your overall ilevel! Those lazy bastards!


So instead of dwelling on everything you OMGHATE about this patch or this game, can't you get excited about the things you DO like? And if there's nothing you like, why are you still playing? Why do you even CARE?

Image of item level courtesy of Matticus, from World of Matticus, Plus Heal, Conquest of Nerzhul and other stuff that I don't keep track of. He is awesome, though.

Enhancement Shaman on Ascendant Council (BoT): Tips/Tricks

Note: This is not a complete guide to the boss fight, if you'd like a real guide please visit Tankspot.com or other such sites. This is merely tips and tricks an enhancement shaman can use to help keep their raid alive and maximize total raid uptime.

Phase One: Ignacious and Feludius

The usual strategy is to have melee dps on Ignacious and ranged on Feludius. However, in my guild I usually dps Feludius because I have the best interrupt in the game. This reduces a lot of random outgoing damage from Feludius's Hydrolance, which helps keep people alive and save healer mana. Good awareness will help you here, as Feludius also casts Glaciate which will kill you if you don't run out. You'll need to keep a good eye on both bosses health and slow or stop dps accordingly. Also, don't forget about Aegis of Flame and the interrupt that needs to go out. Usually I don't switch to Ignacious unless my dps is really needed to burn down the shield, but my guild does 25 mans and 10 mans may be different.

Phase Two: Arion and Terrastra

For this phase, you'll want to dps Terrastra unless Arion is way ahead in health. Remember, when Terrastra has Hardened Skin, they'll absorb a lot of damage until the shield is broken, in which they'll take a big hit. If Terrastra is already a bit low and has the buff on him, slow or stop your dps and possibly work on Arion. If you can interrupt the Harden Skin cast, do it. It's a pretty quick cast so be ready for it. There's really nothing too special you can do here as an enhancement shaman. If you see your group is a little low or healers struggling, use a 5 stack of maelstrom on chain heal. Usually there's a lot of movement in this phase, so Healing Rain is not necessarily a good choice unless you have everyone stacking up.

Phase 3: Elementium Monstrosity

During this phase you can help your healers out a lot. There's going to be a lot of damage going out, so as things progress start using maelstrom stacks on chain heal. Again, with all the movement Healing Rain isn't a good option. Another tip is to wait to blow Heroism until the Monstrosity is down to at least 20%. Blowing it right away is okay, but waiting that 5 or so percent really helps the healers. They're able to get more healing out with the haste buff when the damage gets a lot higher.

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I'll answer the best I can!

Surprise Me

A friend of mine and his guild recently transferred off their (very) dead server of Drak'Tharon to Stormreaver. I rolled a death knight named Vindin over there and joined their guild as a friend. I'm slowly leveling, and as I don't have a main or anything over there, I'm starting with no gold and no BoAs. I hit level 60 fairly quickly, but didn't have nearly enough gold for a flying mount (only had 100g or so).

While running around handing in quests and selling grays, a level 70 pally opens trade with me twice. I think he's accidentally doing this, so I close it and continue emptying my bags. Then he spoke.


That was the most unexpected and coolest thing that a random person has ever done for me in WoW.

So thank you, Lokisk of Stormreaver US. You are awesomesauce.

Skills to Pay the Bills

This is a BlogAzeroth Shared Topic, posted by amaranth608 from Specced for Drama.

What is your favorite profession and why?

I'm going to have to say my favorite profession is a toss up between Alchemy and Herbalism.

Yes, Herbalism.

I find running around picking flowers to be soothing. I also get a little thrill taking a node from under a hordie's nose. I even picked up Herbalism on my druid so I could farm faster (she has 310% flying while the shaman only has 280% - plus flight form = overpowered)

Alchemy is great because I can make my own flasks, potions, and transmute meta gems and truegold for money. The extra stats and length of flasks is awesome, too. Flasks from our guild cauldron last three hours for me! Not to mention the Flask of Enhancement that I can pop in arenas or when I just feel like getting an edge in random heroics without popping a full blown flask.

Plus it gives me this mad scientist feel. I get the image of my shaman cackling to herself in a corner while glass vials clink against each other.

Hee.

Face Smashing Tools

This is a very belated response to a Blog Azeroth Shared Topic, "What is your favorite weapon?" posted by Dangfool. I originally came across the topic on Fannon's blog, Dwarven Battle Medic.

I get very attached to gear rather easily. I love things that look epic, and replacing my epics with quest greens while leveling to 85 was a sad experience. I saved most of my level 80 gear, and sometimes run old stuff to get tier tokens and weapons so I can put them on and AFK in Stormwind and feel cool. (Even though I'm not.)

Generally, my soft spot is staffs. Any staff that just has a really awesome model I want to keep. My druid still has Origin of Nightmares from Naxx 25.

She also owns:

Twisted Visage (Ulduar 25)

Grand Marshal's Glaive (honor points)

Lupine Longstaff (ToC) and Shaft of Glacial Ice (ICC).

My shaman is carrying around Staff of the Plague Beast from Naxx 10.

I also like weapons that match, such as Aegis of Damnation and Hammer of the Astral Plane. I find both of these to be incredibly ugly, but they match! And that is cool.

P.S. Yes, my druid is wearing gear to match the level of the weapon she's modeling in each picture. I'm that much of a nerd. And I kept/farmed up that much gear. Yes, her bags are pretty much full of random junk.

Death to the Ugly Guy!

For a few raid nights now (probably at least 3, I think it's actually 4) we have thrown ourselves against Cho'gall and hit a solid wall. Lots of wiping.

I mean, LOTS OF WIPING.

We usually raid for about 3 hours 3 nights a week. So 3 hours full of Cho'gall smirking at us while we died lovely, horrific deaths was very frustrating to say the least.

I'm happy to say that we put together a 10 man group today, a day we don't usually raid, and wiped that smirk off his face. Also poked out his many, disgusting eyes. Ew.

Basically this is a post patting myself on the back, with a bit of bragging to boot. Even if Cho'gall decided not to drop a tier token for me.

(Jerk.)

Nefarion, you're next! I foresee many wipes in my future!

P.S. Drop my tier token, you hooker.

Problem Raiders: Should you give them an ultimatum?

Before I dive into the meat of this, I'd like to point out that I am not a guild master, merely an officer. I know different guilds handle problem raiders in a variety of ways, and this post is merely my opinions. If you disagree, I'd love to discuss it :] But flaming isn't tolerated and, as usual, will be used to toast my marshmallows.

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Problem raiders. Most guilds have them at one point or another. They come in all sorts of lovely (and by lovely I mean horrible) types. How do you deal with them? Here's a couple suggestions you can use to help alleviate your guild and raid of this phenomenon.

The Low DPS: These guys can be the hardest to deal with because a lot of the time they're genuinely nice people. Of course, sometimes you get the ones that just won't take your advice out of pride and get very nasty when you point out their mistakes, but most of the time, to me at least, the guys with consistently low DPS aren't jerks. The best way to come at them is politely. First, give them a good inspect and try to see if perhaps their spec is off, or if they're gemming wrong. Ask them if they're hit/exp capped. Find out their rotation. Their low DPS might be because they're stacking the wrong stat, or using the wrong rotation, or simply dying really early in the fight from standing in the goo. Work with them to fix it, especially if they reliably show up to raid.

Sadly, sometimes people are just bad no matter how much you work with them. At this point you have to make the hard decision to bench them or not.

The Whiner: We've probably all been this person once or twice, but a consistent whiner can bring an entire guild's morale down. Whether they bitch about loot, guild rules, raid times, or guild rank, it gets old very fast. Try to nip it in the bud early - whisper them and try to find out what's upsetting them. If the problem can be easily fixed, do it. If they continuously whine, you'll just have to tell them "This is the way things work. It's worked out pretty well for us for awhile, so unless you have a constructive suggestion to change it, please stop whining about it." Either they'll shut up or they won't, and again you'll have to make a decision to bench or guild kick them.

The Bad Attitude: This person is a lot like the whiner, but more aggressive. They might not complain about specific guild things, but more general things like "I'm so bored. I don't want to be here. I could be doing better things right now." Again, send them a whisper and try to find out what the problem is. Give them the benefit of the doubt at first - they might have had a bad day at work/school/etc. If they consistently have a terrible attitude that they're very vocal about, send them a firm message that they need to quit it or there will be consequences. Consequences can include benched for the night up to a guild kick. Decide what's best for your guild.

The Random AFK'er: This guy is really annoying. Pulling trash? AFK. Ready check on boss? AFK. They might even go so far as to mute Vent/Mumble (this has happened to me). Here I say go with the three strike message. The first random AFK let slide, maybe with a mention that they should let you know they're AFKing. The second ask them to warn you before they AFK. The third, give them a firm reprimand, especially if this is all in the same night. After that, start the consequences. A raider that's AFK most of the time is a worthless raider and a person who is always ready would be better to fill the slot.

The Unprepared One: Unprepared means they don't have flasks or buff food (if your guild doesn't provide it), they didn't repair before the raid, or they don't have the proper gear with them if you need them to switch specs. They also might be consistently late to the raid or never bother to try to learn the fights beforehand. They're usually a time sink as you wait for them to log on, or get their gear together, or go repair (if you don't have repair bots), or buy flasks/food/pots. Again, I suggest a three strike system. An unprepared raider is nearly as bad as an AFK one.

The Meter Whore: They spam the DPS or healing meters after every fight, boast about their position on the charts even for trash pulls, and constantly put down other raiders. Their ego is bigger than your entire raid put together. The problem with these guys is they love topping the meters so much, they're more likely to tunnel vision and make a mistake and get themselves killed.
Example:
Back in ICC, we were working on Rotface, we had a pally healer who was pretty damn good. He thought he was godly though. He got the debuff, ran out, stopped, healed the tank, died. We asked him why he didn't cleanse and run - his response was if he stopped healing the tanks they would die since he was carrying the heals. He really thought he was the sole reason the tanks were alive. /sigh

Meter whores are another one that's hard to deal with because they do tend to be exemplary players. However, constant meter spamming and putting down other players will also lower guild morale. If you see other players getting frustrated and fed up with the meter whore, politely but firmly tell them to stop the bragging. If they refuse, start the consequences.

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In conclusion, should you give a problem raider an ultimatum?

Eventually, yes. What the ultimatum is depends on the what type of raider they are and what works for your guild.

No Resilience? No Problem!

Last night I discovered something.

Enhancement PvP.

Oh.

My.

God.

I've never been much of a PvPer. I don't keybind enough stuff, and I use WASD to move - although I'm getting better at using my mouse to turn. I might go cold turkey and bind A and D to strafe and force myself to use my mouse to turn, but we'll see. That would open up Q and E for cooldowns. But anyway.

My shaman has one piece of PvP gear. It's Vicious resto gloves I won out of BH because I was the only shaman there. I don't even have a trinket. Pretty much all the PvP I've done has been on my druid as resto, and I'm not particularly great. I tend to live for a long time if I get focused, but I'm chalking that up to resto druids are ridiculously OP. Seriously. PvPing as melee has never worked for me because I had problems getting close enough to people.

But last night, my boyfriend wanted to do 2's on his warlock (who is decently PvP geared with over 3k resilience) and he doesn't like doing healer/dps 2's teams, as they're slow and don't have much burst (he's affliction). So I went on my shaman - full PvE gear/spec.

The first few games were about 50/50 win/loss, as I can be really easily blown up. I decided to respec my resto spec to PvP enhancement, switch out a couple glyphs, and put on my stamina Alchemist stone.

As it turns out...

I blow bitches up. I do have really decent PvE gear, which definitely helps, but I've never had so much fun PvPing. I still die really fast if I get focused, and I really need to build a PvP set, but holy crap. PvP Enhancement is SO MUCH FUN. I've been running battlegrounds today to build up enough honor to buy a trinket.

Fun Fact: I always ride my Celestial Steed in battlegrounds. Why? Well, how often do you see that mount and think "noob"? Then if said noob runs up and kills you, wearing 0 PvP gear...

Yes, I am trolling battlegrounds with my sparkle pony.

Melee on Atramedes - Turning Down the Suck

Atramedes is a blind dragon in the Blackwing Lair raid instance. I've noticed that a lot of melee seem to have some difficulty with him - there's a lot of things he does that you need to avoid. You also will have what is called a sound bar during this fight. It, obviously, tracks how much sound you're acquiring. If you get 100 sound, Atramedes will know exactly where you are and brutally eat your face off, resulting in your death. This is not the desired outcome.

For most people, anyway.

The way my guild does this fight is we have all melee stack up on the left side of the room (as you walk in), and all ranged on the right. Usually we put 1-2 healers with the melee and the rest in the ranged group. Atramedes is tanked in the middle, head facing the door you walk in from. We have a hunter mid-direct pull onto our tank, then run back into the ranged group.

The most important part of this fight is tracking your sound bar.

It looks like that. The blue center will grow or shrink depending on how much sound you have. You MUST make sure that your sound bar is visible! If certain elements of your UI are blocking it, you need to move them.

The second most important part is avoiding anything you can that give extra sound. Some things are unavoidable, such as Modulation. Modulation looks like large rings, a bit like a sonar, and fills the entire room. As for things you CAN avoid:

Sonic Breath: "Cast at the highest sound player. Does 15,000 damage per second and adds 20 sound per second. Follows the player faster the higher their sound is." This happens on the ground phase. Depending on what boss mods you're using, you'll probably get a skull or x above you're head. At this point, you need to run away from your group - my guild has them run counter-clockwise, while everyone else takes a step or two in the opposite direction.

Anyone in either the melee or ranged groups can get this, so be ready to run.

Sonar Pulse: "Sends discs of sonic energy flying around the room. If touched inflicts 5850 to 6150 Arcane damage and adds seven sound."

(Yes, I'm dead here.) These are REALLY easily avoided. The easiest way to do it is to stand at maximum range then strafe to the left or right to avoid them. And his hit box is MASSIVE.

That far away I can still hit him with all my abilities and have fair warning when discs are going to come at me.

Air Phase: This phase only lasts 40 seconds, and for that full 40 seconds you want to be constantly moving around the outer parts of the room. Atramedes will be dropping fire on the ground, and more sound discs. The difference here is these sound discs don't move but they do have a sonar bomb that falls into them, and if you're standing in it you gain a whopping 30 sound. He'll also cast Roaring Flame Breath, which is a lot like Sonic Breath. It will target a player and follow them, leaving fire on the ground and speeding up. If you get targeted, you'll want to save any speed boosting abilities for when it really closes in. This breath will target the person with the highest sound going into the air phase, but once someone hits a gong it will then target that person. You shouldn't be hitting gongs unless assigned to it.

If you want to check out the entire boss fight, take a look at this video from Tankspot:

Chimereon and You, the Enh Shaman

*dances*

"Billy Jean is not my loooover, she's just a giiirl that thinks that I am the oooone!"

Chimaeron!

And how to make your healers love you

Do not accidentally hit Chimaeron before the tank/raid leader pulls. This will lead to an immediate wipe, the wasting of food buffs and elixirs, and MUCH grumbling. Keep your back to him and do not target him if you're having issues not hitting him.

This fight is not a dps race UNTIL the last 20% - phase 2. It is mostly a healing fight. Therefore, you want to keep as many people alive for the actual burn phase. This can be really tough on the healers - they have to keep everyone above 10,000 health (except the tanks, who need to be kept as high as possible). And during Duel, which is where Chimaeron's heads fight each other, they need to try to top EVERYONE off as fast as possible and keep them up. This is a huge drain on their mana, obviously. This is where you come in and help and save the day and stuff.

Enhancement shamans have this lovely talent called Maelstrom Weapon. This talent says:

When you deal damage with a melee weapon, you have a chance (higher than rank 2) to reduce the cast time and mana cost of your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Hex, or any healing spell by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 30 sec.

Let's look at one part of this. It reduces the cast time AND mana cost of a damage spell, Hex OR HEALING SPELL by 20%.

Free, instant-cast healing spells. And yes, it does work on Healing Rain.

You can be a clutch component on the fight against Chimaeron by using your full 5-stack of Maelstrom Weapon on Healing Rain, Greater Healing Wave, and Chain Heal. You'll keep yourself alive, you'll keep people near you alive, and you will help alleviate some healer headaches.

The best way I've found to do this is to make sure any melee dps near you are right at the edge of 6 yards away from you. Try to position yourself in the middle. Now, watch your health. If you're below 10k and you have a full stack of maelstrom, blow a chain heal off yourself. This will get you up a stabilizing health pool and will help stabilize dps near you as well. After Chimaeron casts Massacre, drop a Healing Rain or chain heal to boost your health back up.

During Duel, drop Healing Rain on the stacked up raid and start smashing Chain Heal, bouncing it off yourself. You're going to run out mana most likely, but your heals will help bring the entire raid up, and once you spread back out again it's absurdly easy to get a full mana bar again. Before Chimaeron goes into phase 2, try to throw a few more chain heals or Healing Rain (or both) to top yourself and others near you off.

Once Chimaeron hits phase 2, all healing is negated, so go back to your normal dps rotation. Be sure to spam Wind Shear whenever it comes off cooldown if you're a pretty high dps to minimize your threat and maximize your time alive. However, if your dps leaves a bit to be desired, you can actually change your imbue to Rockbiter, and change your shocks to Frost Shock to raise your threat. Sacrificing yourself will allow other, higher dps individuals to live longer, increasing the likelihood of a boss kill. Remember, it's about the kill and the team, NOT about your numbers and ePeen.