Dual Wielding and Hit

Dual-wielding has been on the brain lately, both with a new guildmate leveling Enhancement as well as my DK acquiring his second spec, a Dual-Wield Frost DPS spec (0/53/18). The contrast between the two dual-wielding classes is pretty striking - the melee Shaman relies heavily on spell damage for DPS these days, and much of Lolknight DPS relies on abilities that scale with physical damage and actually making contact with your target.

Hit Rating
When it comes to "not missing skull-level bosses," caster DPS have straightforward goal: reach hit cap, then focus on other stats. For my Draenei Elemental Shaman, this magic number is 342. (source)

For dual-wielders, the hit cap idea is less straightforward. Since there's a huge to-hit penalty imposed on dual-wielding (24% instead of 5%), the actual hit cap for DWers (untalented) is in the 800s (source). Of course, the sheer number of hits-per-minute exceeds those of say a Mage, who's large nukes take several seconds to cast. So at some point, the DW's misses become acceptable, assuming other stats like AP are in good shape.

Thanks to math junkies and spreadsheet jockies (/salute Elitist Jerks), "soft caps" and other hit rating milestones have already been figured out for us. :)

Special Attacks (Yellow Hits)
The first hit milestone relates to special attacks like Stormstrike. This number is very low and attainable almost without trying: 66 for Shaman (33 for Draenei Shaman). (source)

Spell Hit
Since Wrath, spell damage has become a much larger part of Enhancement DPS - so much so that even Magma Totem is considered part of the "rotation," even against single targets. The conventional wisdom now seems to be the actual soft cap for Enhancement is the same as the hard cap for Elemental: 368 (or 342 for Draenei). (source) Melee hits will still miss at this number, but as long as your specials and spells are hitting, you should be free to buff your other stats (AP, crit, haste) - any hit rating beyond that number is bonus.

DK Hit
Death Knights were clearly built around the notion of using large two-handed weapons for DPS and Tanking, so for those of us who "just like the idea" of dual-wielding, we have a large hill to climb. Our DW talent is Nerves of Cold Steel, inferior to a Shaman's Dual Wield Specialization or a Rogue's Precision.

After some Googlin', the DWDK hit numbers I've been able to come up with are upwards of 400-500 (source). Ouch. In my own testing, there does seem to be a significant difference as hit rating is added, but my DKs gear is (at this point) barely passable for heroics, with hit rating in the low 300's and AP only in the upper-2000's. I have a feeling that DW scales better with higher gear levels, so we'll see!

Lots of Other Factors
Whether you're a Titan's Gripper, Enhancement Shaman, Death Knight or Rogue, being a successful dual-wielder ultimately comes down to some combination of things: theorycrafting, talent specs, rotations, weapon imbues, and of course, player skill.

Now if I could buy a third spec, my Shaman could 1) have his cake, 2) eat it and 3) throw frosting at Patchwerk with both hands, too. In the meantime, I'll fulfill my dual-wield fetish with my gimped DWDK. :)

UPDATE
After giving it my best effort of getting my DK to almost 400 hit rating with heroic-level gear (mix of blues and epics), I was averaging maybe 1,700 DPS on a single target. By switching over to a more typical two-hander DPS spec, he can now reliably output 2,200+ in the same gear. Looks like if I really want to get my dual wield on, I have to roll a Gnome Rogue. /sigh

Ulduar First Impressions

Naxx is pretty fun, but getting to see new raid content with guildies takes the cake. The rumors are true: Ulduar is not easymode, coordination matters, and folks need to stay on their toes. I'm sure over time these encoutners will become more trivial, but for the moment, it's great to have a little challenge in front of us.

Flame Leviathan
The Occulus is my least favorite instance. The Aces High daily bores me to tears. Quests with horses and dangling carrots make me nuts. Sensing a pattern? Yep, I'm not a huge fan of fights where you have to assume the abilities of some other thing.

So I admit I went into Ulduar annoyed that the very first thing to do was climb into a vehicle. Luckily, the vehiclular combat turned out to be surprisingly fun! Ex got to ride shotgun in a Demolisher, blowing stuff up on the ground and shooting stuff out of the sky.

Nothing really Shaman-specific to go over here - but becoming familiar with the various driver/passenger abilities beforehand is recommended so you can cover whatever duties your raid leader assigns you to. Also keep your highest item-level gear equipped here, as your vehicle's stats increase with ilevel rather than your personal stats.

When picking through FL's wreckage we found the Firestrider Chestguard, not a bad piece but unfortunately a downgrade from my T7.5, especially considering the loss of set bonuses and sockets.

XT-002
This brat was our second boss tonight, and we chose to employ the "spread-out" strategy rather than the "clump-up and run-out" one, which seemed best for sustained DPS. Pro tip: use DBMs /range feature to make sure you're 15 yards away from the others (right-click the range window to change radius), and you can stay still to ranged-DPS or heal when infected with the debuffs. Melee enhancers will still need to run away from others, of course.

Add control is one of the keys to this encounter, and since they conveniently make a beeline for the boss, it's easy to lay down Earthbind and Magma totems in their path. One thing to take care with are the robot bomb adds - I'm pretty sure I killed one of our priests by downing one too close to him. Doh!

Even as a DPS shaman, throwing a few spot heals during Tympanic Tantrum can help take some pressure off your healers, as the fight is a little less of a DPS race now that the enrage timer has been nerfed.

Razorscale
There's something especially cool about dragon fights, and Razorscale is no exception. The first half of the fight alternates between taking down waves of adds and working on Razorscale when he's brought down to the ground, and then a kite-n-dps strategy for the second half.

Things can get a little chaotic between multiple adds, fire spots on the ground, fireballs hitting, and Razorscale being close enough to DPS - but keep your focus, stay out of the nasty stuff, and epics shall be yours!

Kologarn
It's been a while since I've had a "whoa" moment in WoW, and the appearance of Kologarn was one of those moments. (I purposely haven't done a lot of previewing fights in Ulduar.) This dude is BIG. So BIG you can target his arms! Craziness.

Lots of nature damage in this fight, so if you don't have a hunter handy consider Nature Resist totem. Avoiding the beams is pretty important, but also don't drag the beams into others. Sometimes I'd find myself boxed into a corner, so some self-healing was useful here, as well as backing-up on raid heals whenever a healer gets gripped.

Was finally able to replace some lame reputation boots with the Greaves of the Earthbinder from Kologarn, which I made into DPS boots using a Glowing Twilight Opal and the Icewalker enchant. The boots do seem to favor Resto, though, with the blue socket and all. Still, a little Mp5 doesn't hurt us Elementals:

Mana Regen
I had noticed the effects of the Great Mana Regen Nerf of 2009 in our recent Naxx runs, but it was especially noticeable in Ulduar. I was finding that liberal use of Thunderstorm was necessary to produce steady DPS over long periods. Also adjusted my rotation on some longer fights, going with FS > LvB > LB spam > repeat, rather than incorporating too many Chain Lightnings and Earth Shocks.

Overall, had a great time, and am looking forward to seeing more of this raid in the coming weeks/months!

The Problem with Emblems

Then
Back in The Burning Crusade, we had Badges of Justice which dropped in all heroics and raids, and were used to purchase all sorts of "endgame" gear.

The scenario worked out pretty well, allowing new 70s to run a few heroics to help get geared for raiding, and towards the latter stages of TBC, allowed the purchase of some pretty awesome gear, stuff that was close to the same level as Sunwell loot. For us casual raiders, this meant that (some, not all!) close-to-best-in-slot gear was within grasp if we worked hard enough for it. This was a good thing, as it kept raiders involved with random guild heroics as well as raiding.

Nostalgic moment: I remember working for a looong time to get my dual Vanir's fists, 150 badges total. It's a shame they look so ridiculous, because they're badass. Still have 'em in my bank!

Now
In Wrath of the Lich King, we've got multiple levels of badges... err emblems:

• Emblems of Heroism from level 80 heroics and Tier 7 regular raids
• Emblems of Valor from Tier 7.5 heroic and Tier 8 regular raids
  
• Emblems of Conquest from Tier 8 regular hard modes and heroic raids
  
• ...eventually, Emblems of Teh Awezum for Tier 9 raids? (Icecrown)

The Problem
I understand the goal of tiered emblems was to appropriately reward raiders with purchasable gear of matching level, but in practical use, for players in casual raiding guilds (which I believe makes up the vast population of WoW players), it causes several problems:

For one, I've completely lost interest in running heroics with my main, as EoH are basically useless for Exelus, who already has two four-piece sets of T7/T7.5 (healing and DPS). I believe this has a negative effect on casual guilds, as the incentive for geared players to participate in heroics diminishes over time.

Blizzards stated goal is to allow even casual guilds to see all endgame content, which is great, but along the way we'll end up with little piles of emblems that just won't be useful for the next/current level of raiding. This is just kinda annoying, since emblems are meant for level 80 players but can lose practical value rather quickly.

Solutions

• Add a few next-gear-level items to be purchasable with many lower-level emblems (like Vanir's in TBC!), or an equivalent emblem trade-up program (3 for 1).
  
• Make emblems (and Stone Keeper's Shards!) account-bound to help gear-up alts.
• Make emblems vendor-able for some non-trivial amount of gold (to help with raiding consumables, repairs)
• Some professions (like Jewelcrafting) use a token or other currency system to buy patterns and mats, so make emblems tradable for these tokens.
• Allow PVP gear to be purchasable with PVE emblems.
• Make emblems the currency for Scrolls of Level-Granting!

OK some ideas are a stretch, but we did see some of these types of solutions implemented towards the end of The Burning Crusade, hopefully we'll see similar adjustments as we move through Wrath.

3.1 Initial Impressions

Dual Specs
...are awesome. Works as advertised, and Exelus is now officially Elemental/Restoration and the young Paladin is now Retribution/Holy. It feels like a huge restriction has been lifted in terms of how I will be able to enjoy the game and help out guildies (and do it with less toons!). Flexibility is at the core of hybrid classes, and we just got a lot more... flexible. /flex

Later this week we have Naxx10 and Naxx25 runs coming up, and I'm very much looking forward to the idea of being able to fill either role of DPS/Heals, even mid-stream! For example, when Elemental Ex is "tanking" one of the Four Horsemen in 10-man he's able to keep himself alive with Lesser Healing Wave spam, but it can get dicey. By contrast, as Resto it's easysauce thanks to Earth Shield and Riptide - also freeing me up throw extra heals on the other ranged "tank" as needed.

Exorcism
Got the Ret (and Holy!) Paladin into Hellfire last night, and was happy to find that Exorcism certainly does work against all mobs now. In terms of DPS rotation, he feels a lot more like a Death Knight now that there's another button to push. I updated my single-target FCFS (first come first serve) macros to this castsequence: J, CS, Ex, J CS. Seemed to work out nicely but I need to verify if it's the best way to go.

Argent Tournament
The new area in northern Icecrown is very cool - from a lore/RP perspective, you certainly do get the sense that something's building, that the troops are preparing for war. This is the Isle of Quel'Danas 2.0, and I'm looking forward to spending more time up there.

New Textures
Certain parts of the Exodar seemed to be sporting a slightly-darker color scheme - to better match the earth-tones of Northrend perhaps. These slight visual improvements are a welcome change, it's good to know that Blizzard is intersted in going back to revisit old zones to keep things fresh.

70s Porn Star
Yes, I know they're coming back (thanks a lot Jason Giambi), but I was surprised to find that Ex grew a mustache overnight. I was so irritated/distraught I took him straight to a barber and dropped 8g on a new face. Apparently I'm not alone, as the "Great Mustache Controversy of Patch 3.1" has spawned a WowInsider post and a dozen-page-long thread on the forums.

:{

Patch 3.1

It appears that Patch 3.1 is being deployed right now! Maybe I had too much coffee this morning, but it's all making me downright giddy.

Dual Specs
Exelus will finally be able to flip between Elemental and Resto at-will, which I'm most excited about. Two-toons-in-one, FTW. Got my glyphs and gold at-the-ready.

My latest alt (yeah another one, get over it) is a Retribution Paladin named Lightus, who is already on the verge of crashing into Outland thanks to these fancy shoulders. It's looking very likely that he'll go Ret/Holy dual spec for soloing and running dungeons on his way to Northrend.

Argent Tournament
The tournament is not something I know a ton about yet, but I've read it's a very solo-friendly event so I'll likely send my DK over to take a look. Plus, this sexy tanking one-hander (pic) definitely caught Neverus' attention. He'll take two, please.

Ulduar
Our raid officers are currently putting a plan together for taking our first peeks into the new raid zone, and I'm pretty stoked on all the preview material I've seen thusfar. Been watching live PTR feeds of guilds trying-out various bosses; wipe after wipe after wipe. /salute to these PTR guilds for giving the new content a try so us casuals have some sense of what to do when we get there!

3.8mb of 742mb... this is going to take a while.

Totems: Raid or Party?

The other night during a guild raid, I asked to be moved into the ranged group so our mages could benefit from my totems - when someone piped-up with, "aren't all totems raid-wide now?"

Uhh... err... wha... I'm not sure anymore!

/equip noobhat

Turns out Rakhman at Flame Shock has already covered the topic and I consider myself smarter because of it. :) The cliff notes from his post:

• Buffing and Resistance totems are now raid-wide
• Restorative and Cleansing water totems are only party-wide
• Grounding and Tremor totems are also only party-wide

Therefore, it's still a good idea to group Shaman with mana-users for Mana Spring (and Tide), but all casters and/or physical DPS (within range) should be able to benefit from your major buffs like Flametongue and Strength of Earth.

Learning to Resto

I'll admit it... I went 80 levels (and a year-and-a-half) before I even thought about healing with my Shaman. So Blizzard releases WotLK and the second-coming of Naxxramas, and (like many guilds) we found ourselves short on healers when raiding resumed.

With a gulp and and one eye closed I hit the "unlearn talents" button and found myself staring at the Resto tab for the first time. It's been a few months now (with many respecs back and forth), so hopefully my experiences can be help those giving Resto a try - especially with dual specs around the corner!

The Tools
Earth Shield - the orbiting poo is usually placed on your main tank, soaking up damage on a periodic basis. Always take Improved Earth Shield, and after 3.1, consider the glyph of ES as well. (Grid users should add it as a buff to help keep track of it's uptime: on my setup I use a little yellow dot in the lower left corner of the unit frame.)

Riptide - an outstanding instant-cast splash heal with a trailing HoT (heal over time), which I use for either main tank damage mitigation or quick spot heals on a single target. Also brilliant for two-left-footed dancers in Heigan. :)

Lesser Healing Wave - a fast but rather inefficient heal on it's own, when combined with the glyph on an earth-shielded target (usually your tank) it starts to approach the efficiency of it's big brother Healing Wave. Excellent for topping-off your tanks, and with a healthy amount of crit, good for triggering Ancestral Healing.

Healing Wave - personally I rarely ever use this spell (except when combined with a Nature's Swiftness macro*), as I'm not really talented for it and I prefer a more twitchy healing style rather than the pre-cast/cancel style (more on this later).

Chain Heal - the defining Shaman heal, excellent for healing melee-heavy groups. The longer cast time means some pre-casting may be required, but it's a very efficient way to patch up two or more people (up to four when glyphed, excellent for raid heals).

Cleanse Spirit - not a heal, but a very important utility.

Healing Styles and Talent Builds
Maybe I spent too much time as a Tree in the Burning Crusade, but I grew fond of the mitigation-style of healing backed-up with fast-cast reactive heals. As such, I've personally adopted a style that keeps ES and Riptide rolling on the tank with glyphed LHW and Chain Heals as needed. My typical Resto spec looks something like this.

The other style which may appeal to others focuses more on pre-casting/cancel-casting big Healing Waves, and requires a slightly different spec. I have not personally tried this one out yet.

Gearing
If you adopt the mitigation+fast cast style, Mp5 becomes very important since we're hardly ever out of the 5SR (five second rule). Otherwise if you're going for big Healing Waves, haste is likely to be more important to you, since hopefully you're staying inside the 5SR as much as possible.

With so many abilities triggering off crits, having high crit is important: 25% is probably a decent number to shoot for, but if you can get to 30% you're in good shape.

Weapon Imbues
Glyphed Earthliving Weapon, always! Also I read somewhere (EJ?) that the Elemental Weapons talent in Enhancement scales poorly with better gear, but it may be useful early on as you're starting heroics.

Tactics: Typical Heroic Trash Pull
Your tank's about to charge into a typical heroic trash group, CC be damned! If you have time, spam a few LHW's on him to trigger Ancestral Healing beforehand (or better yet use a single Tidal Force macro**), and make sure he's got a full stack of ES and Riptide him just before the charge.

Spikey damage happens, so have your fingers ready to LHW, CH or NS+HW. Try to build a mental database of which mobs murder melee or do big AoE damage (whirlwinds, etc), and pre-cast Chain Heals.

Heroics can get a little nutty if your tank has a hard time picking everything up, so I recommend taking Nature's Guardian and also learning to use Wind Shock and Hex to save yourself.

Tactics: Raid Healing
If you have plenty of healing classes to go around in your raid, chances are you'll be assigned to raid heal, which is arguably our forte:

Bind every key to Chain Heal and roll your face across the keyboard.

I'm halfway kidding - you should also keep ES on either MT or OT depending on who's likely to take bigger damage on a particular pull/boss. Since Riptide has a six-second cooldown I usually reserve it for someone who just took a big hit from a loose mob, but otherwise keep it rolling on one of the tanks.

Main Tank healing in a raid setting is certainly possible and viable, just have to ensure that you're fully spec'ed into Ancestral Healing (have it up as much as possible) and Improved Shields, along with the usual Improved ES and Riptide business.

Handy Macros
*Nature's Swiftness + Healing Wave
This is your tanks-gonna-die-now-unless-you-do-something-quick button.

#showtooltip Healing Wave
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Tidal Force
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast [target=mouseover] Healing Wave

**Tidal Force + Lesser Healing Wave
This macro guarantees a LHW crit, triggering Ancestral Healing.

#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Tidal Force
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast [target=mouseover] Lesser Healing Wave

Both macros above have /use 13 and 14 to auto-pop your trinkets, and have [target=mouseover] since I use these in conjunction with Clique to click-cast my heals. The Sound_Enable and UIErrorsFrame business just keeps the game from spamming you with "that ability is not ready yet" feedback.

Further Reading
Check out Elitist Jerks and Plusheal.com.