Kara Speed Run

Since we didn't quite have the right group make-up for another run on Zul'Aman, we decided instead to try a speed run thru Karazhan up to (and including) the Chess Event. 10 badges in three hours, not bad at all for ye olde casual guilde! and with no wipes!

/cheer

Only 31 moar badges to go for Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots. :\

But tonight I was lucky to pick up the Mithril Chain of Heroism, and though the math is somewhat unclear to me, methinks it's a smidge better than my Shattered Sun Pendant of Might because I'm not yet exalted with Aldor. The 200 AP proc is what I think makes the SSO neck so much more superior (4th best in the game for Enhancement Shaman?)... but rep grinds give me the hives.

Zul'Aman!

When I first picked up WoW again last year (had a trial membership in '05, and you should see the n00bish talents I picked for my... night elf lolhunter), I used to think of raids as things "those other guys" did, and pretty much resigned myself to never getting to see even entry-level raids like Karazhan and Zul'Aman.

Welp here we is, nervously looking up at them gates. ZOMG is King Kong himself behind there?! /shiver

So last we finally took a romp inside Zul'Aman to see how we'd do, and am happy to report we dids quite well. Admittedly it was a little swervy - all the research and video-watchin' doesn't ever fully prepare you for the real thing. Or the virtually-real thing. Or something.

As most ZA initiates do, we went right towards Nalorakk the bear boss. There's a bit of trash along the way, but nothing too crazy. Taking down the healers with their totems is first priority, and the rest were easily handled by the traditional two-tank/spank routine. Still, the new-ness of it all was pretty exciting, and my gamer-drenaline was a-pumpin'.

So we clear to Nalorakk and downed him on the third try. Woot! He apparently hits VERY hard on the tanks - ouch. But it's a very Enhancement-friendly fight: pretty much just stayed planted on his behind the whole time, making sure to keep my totems up. During his random charges I tried running after him, but it seemed more efficient just stay put, sling a bolt or shock (or heal) and wait for him to come back to the tanks. Popped Heroism and Fire Elemental at two-thirds or so, the usual tactic.

Now here comes the big mistake of the night: I opted not to take Bladeangel's Money Belt off Nalorakk. Noobish of me not to have researched the drops ahead of time, but Rating Buster threw me off a bit when it reported such a huge loss in Strength and some other trivial stats - it looked like a crossgrade. What I failed to realize was that the Agility and Crit rating more than made up for this loss, and MaxDPS.com reports something like +20 DPS over my current PeeVeePee belt. /l2pve

/embarrassed

Afterwards we went left towards the bird boss, Akil'zon. This encounter is prefaced by a gauntlet-style run up to his platform, pretty exciting but I liked the pace of it. It seems important to keep the group moving up the hill, so the clothies don't get ambushed from behind. The birds are a little annoying, but overall not a big deal.

We made it up to the big bad birdy and started a few attempts on him. The big issue here was making sure everyone bunches up for storm cloud, and then spreads back out again afterwards. Deadly Boss Mods is very helpful here. Again, a pretty Enhancement-friendly fight, the only trouble I had was when he flung me up in the air, it's a pretty hard landing when you come down. Have a pot or healthstone ready for immediate use upon landing. :)

During our 2-3 attempts we unfortunately had the gauntlet respawn behind us, and we just ran out of time so we had to call it a night, but I think we're all feeling pretty good about the progress and are looking forward to another crack at it (tomorrow?).

/cheer

Crafted

Just as I was lamenting about the relative uselessness of Jewelcrafting, I find that one of the best trinkets for Enhancers is the Shadowsong Panther figurine. With today's unlocking of the epic gem vendor on the Isle, it was time to turn in some badges and get this lil' kitty crafted. (Actually ended up buying only one gem with badges and the other off the AH, saving 15 badges for a future purchase.)

So yup the stealth level boost is obviously useless (lolrogueitem), but at 80 AP and the on-use 320 AP it's kind of a no-brainer over the Ancient Draenei War Talisman (my last green). The lost crit will be easily recoverable once I replace one of my remaining three blues. I'm now officially over the 1300 AP mark un-buffed, with a still-respectable ~24.5% crit. The word on the street is that 1400 AP is the target for T5 raiding, so I'm more than happy to get just this far.

Funny thing when this item is used, a little panther pet comes out for the 15 second duration. :)

That New Leather Smell

Given all the DPS research and feedback I've been collecting recently, it was becoming clear that I needed to start looking beyond AP and crit for ways to improve damage output.

Raw stats are always good since they scale with Blessing of Kings (and we seem to have an abundance of Paladins around), but now that I've crossed the 1200 AP/25% crit range it's also time to stop neglecting +hit as much.

The biggest problem is gear itemization, especially when it comes to accessible gear for the casual player. I'm sure there's some megaphatlewtz in Mount Hyjal and Sunwell Plateau, but umm... I'm still LFG Kara, and intellect/mp5 does nothing for me. And I'm not a badge farmer either. PUG'ing 'roics gives me the hives.

So what kind of gear has hit rating and raw stats? Leather. Oh yeah baby, I said it. Mail armor isn't going to save my blue bacon in a heroic or raid anyway, so why not get back to my roots? For the past few weeks I've been monitoring both the Leather and Mail categories for good buys, and today a Shadowprowler's Chestguard showed up in the AH for relatively cheap.

/buy

So yes, this is definitely a kittydurid piece, but look at those raw stats when including the +6 All Stats enchant and three Bold Living Ruby's: 62(!) strength, 46 agility and 18 stamina - plus a bit of hit rating as well. Zomg now we're talking! (Also picked up a Cloak of the Craft for the additional hit rating and slapped-on the 12 agility 'chant.)

Took this new getup into Kara tonight, and while it's not completely scientific (mostly went up against Aran and Prince, so not so much trash), there did seem to be a pretty significant improvement in my DPS. Recount was showing ~625 DPS, up from ~550 on the previous report. Next time I get to participate in "night one" of a Karazhan run I'll update this post for more of an oranges-to-oranges comparison.

UPDATE 05/13: tonight we ran the first bit of Kara (up through Curator), and Recount showed an average of ~675 DPS, compared to my pre-leather average of ~550. Not bad!

Zoom zoom

With discipline and some incredible recent luck, I was able to pickup the reins to a Swift Red Griffon yesterday. :)

The discipline involved not buying some incredible pieces of gear off the AH (zomg Belt of the Black Eagle), and obsessively doing SSO dailies. Also in the last 24 hours, while doing these dailies, both a Blade of Wizardry and the formula for Cat's Swiftness dropped! They sold for a collective 1700g, so thankfully I'm not completely broke and can still happily spoil my alts.

Is the epic flyer worth it? The whole thing is pretty new, but wow this thing is faaast. It even runs at 100%, the same speed as an epic land mount - but a quick tap of the space bar and it accelerates to almost 3x that. Griffon races, anyone?

Next I need to research some good mining routes to take advantage of the new flight speed. :)

New Blue Shoes

When I first started writing this post, it was a rant about the horrors of PUG'ing and how attitude is everything, this is just a game, lets just have fun, not call each other names, not D/C at the first sign of trouble, etc. But let's just say that last night's experience in heroic Steam Vault reaffirmed my gratefulness to have found a mature and fun guild to run with, as the world (of warcraft) is full of immaturity and offensive noobrosity, and there's enough of that to deal with in the (real) world.

So instead... I will focus on mah new shoes!

After SV, a group of guildees decided to run the daily regular: Arcatraz. Generally tore our way through and had fun along the way, good times. So after downing that first voidy boss, lookie what drops: Outland Striders! Normally I don't get this excited over blues, but having posted on several occasions about my months-old level 63 boots, I was stoked to see them. We discussed the boots and since both the hunter and I were interested, we rolled and I got lucky. :)

Here's the brilliant part: after applying Boar's Speed enchant (it was significantly cheaper than Cat's Swiftness), I was able to swap out my old meta gem for the Enigmatic Skyfire Diamond. Net result: my crit is now just over 24%. Sweet.

Now it's fairly certain that my measly little pile of badges will be spent towards epic gems for that Shadowsong Panther trinket rather than PvP boots. :)

PvP Gear for Badges

Eonar entered Phase 3 of the Sunwell Isle progression, and now all sorts of neat gear is available for purchase via Badges of Justice or Tier'd tokens.

I've been languishing with Boots of Savagery since the mid-60's (months!), if only because it's hard to find raw strength on mail armor - most seem to be lolhuntergear, with non-scaling attack power and mp5. Yucky.

So after another Kara run or two, looks like I'll be able to buy Veteran's Linked Sabatons for a mere 40 badges - and more importantly, I can completely avoid EotS to get them! :)

Head on my Shoulders

Despite Alterac Valley being far more, uhm "balanced" after 2.4 (no more easymode honor), I managed to slog through enough matches tonight to finish the 14.5k honor needed for my 2nd Season 1 armor piece: the Gladiator's Linked Helm. With the two-piece bonuses (from both Gladiator's Linked and Seer's Linked armor sets), I'm now up to almost 200 resilience, which has made a notable difference in my PvP survivability - but I still (at some point) should get the movement-freeing trinket.

But for now, I'm done with BGs. Getting the axes, shoulders and helmet have been the very definition of grind, and not really a very fun one. All the unsportsmanlike commentary and juvenillia has really gotten on my nerves. (Sure, I know juvenillia's not a word, but it should be.)

Anyway, the whole point of getting welfare epics was to gear-up for PvE, and I think I've accomplished what I wanted to for now. Sure my boots are 6 levels outdated and I need a better crit trinket and cloak, but I figure these other bits will just have to come from lucky drops. Or from impulsive auction house purchases.

GG.

Cycloned

Last night's Karazhan run went very well: just about 2 hours to down Curator, passing through Attumen, Maiden, and Romulo/Julietta along the way. Died a few times on trash (oops, L2Omen), but managed to stay alive during all four boss fights (a tribute to our uber healz!).

The big news from last night was Curator's dropping of Gauntlets of the Fallen Champion, which can be used to buy Tier 4 Shaman gloves.

Now backing up a bit... the first time I made it to Shattrath and found Asuur, I started control-clicking the various bits of armor to see what the Cyclone set would look like on Exelus (look at those shoulders!). Thinking that I'd never really be able to get any of the this stuff, I /sighed and he eventually just became my repair vendor.

Fast-forward to the present (or last night), when our Paladins started passing on the token. A quick analysis showed that the Cyclone Gauntlets had more raw strength than my current Felfury Gauntlets, so I opted for the token.

Due to Felfury's gemming I actually lost a bit of AP and crit, but gained scalable AP (through strength), ~1% hit and 240 mana, so while technically not a huge upgrade, it's a step in the right direction. Especially if (when?) I get a 2nd piece of Cyclone, since the bonus would grant an additional 12 strength on my Strength of Earth totem.

Gruul's Lair, are you in my future?!?!

2.4 First Impressions

After last night's Kara run I had a chance to run up to Quel'Danas (aka Sunwell Isle) and poke around a bit. Having never seen Blood Elf architecture firsthand before, it was really cool to experience fresh content and new quests.

Getting There
Alliance have a flight point at Ironforge which will get you there pretty quickly via a loading screen while in-flight. Unfortunately, flying back to IF does not seem to work the same way, where you hit all those flight points in Eastern Plaguelands, etc. on the way back. So use your hearthstone to get back if possible (until the Shat portal gets unlocked). Tip: if you log out mid-flight, you'll land at the next flight point along your original route.

The Isle
Aside from being graphically beautiful, the storytellers at Blizzard did a great job of making it feel like you've landed in a warzone and need to get to work right away. The place was still a zoo at 1am server time, lots of folks running around - some looking very lost, which added to the realism of the storyline. :) When I started out, the quest givers reported 39% progress, but 30 mins later they were at 41%, so no doubt by now phase 1 is close to being over. At this point the island basically has nothing available other than a flight point, quartermaster and quest givers. Over time more facilities will be unlocked.

Other highlights:

Dailies
It looks like there are lots of new options for dailies, which is fantastic. I find the bombing run quest extremely annoying and the Simon Says one mind-numbing, so it's good to have other things to try. There are both PvP and PvE dailies, scattered over Shattrath and the new Isle.

Teleport to Caverns of Time
There's now a representative from the CoT in the lower city who can teleport you directly there. Genius! Now they just need one for Sunwell Isle, maybe that will come later?

Marks for Honor
A new repeatable quest allows you to turn in 1 of each BG mark (AB, AV, EOTS and WSG) for ~300 honor. This is all win, except for needing the EOTS ones. Bleh.

Black War Elekk
This thing is way hotter in-person (in-game?). After the Season 1 helm, the elekk may be my next PvP goal: only 30 marks each from AB, AV and WSG.

Reputation PvP Armor
I went around and collected all the Seer's Linked pieces but as I tried to mix/match them into my current set, I only found that the chest and legs integrated well in my setup. RatingBuster FTW. I mostly gem'ed up with strength and crit, and now feel like I've got a decent setup as far as a hybrid PvP/PvE set goes.

Last night in Kara we had too many melee DPS for (Iron) Maiden, so I was rotated out to help heal - I'll likely go buy a set of Seer's healer gear to help in those situations. It's nice to have the option of a premade gear set for trying out alternate specs! Now just have to Learn2Healz.

Shouldered

Finally, my first piece of Season 1 PvP armor: Gladiator's Linked Spaulders. Currently rocking +8 strength and +8 hit gems with the +26 AP inscription. Now doesn't that look better? :)

Next up, teh epix helm?

Also a shout-out to the awesome guildee who crafted Felfury Gauntlets for me. Woot!

Windfury This!

After a bit of panic over extended server maintenance (and a forum post about an error in honor calculations), I logged-in to find my weekend honor grind had paid off... Exelus is now the proud pwner of (count 'em) two Gladiator's Cleavers!

For now I've just got Crusader on both, a relatively cheap enchant that procs +60 strength at level 70 - but the beauty is that it can stack-proc on both weapons for a total of 120 strength (240 attack power). That's all kinds of win, right there. The top enchants for Enhancement Shaman seem to be dual Mongoose, but I'm in no hurry at this point (it's a very expensive enchant).

As far as I can tell, I now have the highest DPS one-handed weapons attainable by solo efforts. Anything better requires Arena play or extensive Tier 5+ raiding, neither of which I'm likely to do anytime soon (nor do I have the desire). So for the moment, I can picture myself happily entering Northrend with these bad boys at my side. :)

Now, just gotta do something about those ridiculous green shoulders...

Current Gear

According to Warcrafter.net, I currently have a "blue" gear rating of 774, and so I thought I'd outline my current random mix of greens, blues and purples for posterity (and a good laugh once WOTLK comes out and we're all drooling over quest greens again).

Head - Stalker's Helmet of Second Sight - Quest
Neck - Talon Lord's Collar - Quest
Shoulders - Netherstorm Shoulderguards of the Soldier - AH
Back - Cloak of Impulsiveness - Old Hillsbrad
Chest - Breastplate of Rapid Striking - AH
Wrists - Stalker's War Bands - Karazhan
Hands - Handguards of Precision - Quest
Waist - Netherstorm Belt of the Soldier - AH
Legs - Scaled Greaves of Patience - Old Hillsbrad
Feet - Boots of Savagery - Guild Bank
Ring - Violet Signet - Quest
Ring - Acrobat's Mark of the Sha'tar - Quest
Trinket Ancient Draenei War Talisman - Quest
Trinket - Darkmoon Card: Crusade - Random Drops and AH
Main Hand - Reflex Blades - Arcatraz
Off Hand - Mag'hari Fury Brand - Quest
Totem - Stonebreaker's Totem - 20 Badges of Justice

Obviously room for improvement, most notably weapons, shoulders, waist and trinket. The weapons and shoulders should be fixable with PvP rewards, the waist from the Arcatraz key quest reward, and the trinket from running Black Morass a few times (Hourglass of the Unraveller).

Efficiency FTW

In a span of 2.5 hours tonight, I managed to finish all three big daily quests and wound up with two epics! Today's daily dungeon and heroic dungeon both happened to be Steamvaults, which I've done in both modes before. Found a PUG and blew through pretty fast in spite of the hunter who refused to trap because "we're doing pretty well without CC."

OK. Hold on right there.

BigRedKitty would so disapprove. It's not a question of "doing pretty well," it's a matter of getting into good habits, honing your skills for when it really matters, and making things easier for everyone else in the party. Not trapping is like not using totems. L2trap.

So we tried to keep the group together and go back in Heroic, but we lost our tank (and trapless hunter thank god) and it seemed that all the tanks on Eonar went to bed early. So while doing mining loops, a call went out for melee DPS, heroic SV for "just the last boss." Felt a bit guilty about leaving my party, but I /whispered anyway.

"How's your damage?" they ask. I was feeling pretty cocky, having been #1 on the last boss meter in regular SV... "A few bosses into Kara," I replied. Pfft. (As if that means anything, I totally give all credit to my kickass guild for taking my charity-case-green-gear-wearing ass into Kara... twice.)

But it worked, I was in. :)

First attempt was great until 4%. Then blam, wipe. Hmm... woops forgot to pop Heroism. L2heroism. Ate some strength food and downed an agility pot, lest we forget Heroic bosses are basically like raid bosses, so every little bit helps.

After the 2nd (3rd?) water tank went down, we seemed to be "in rhythm" so I fire off Heroism and down goes Warlord Kalithresh in short order. Woot! One badge, a completed daily quest (for two more badges!), and Wave-Fury Vambraces in 20 minutes. Of course the bracers are offspec, but I banked 'em anyway, cuz ya never know. L2heal? Nah!

So after the quest turn-ins I find myself with 20 Badges of Justice, just enough to replace my wrong-spec Totem of the Plains with Stonebreaker's Totem!

As if this post isn't long enough, I capped off the night going 1W/1L in Alterac Valley (the daily PvP), with both matches lasting less than 15 minutes each. Roughly 1,600 honor plus 4 marks.

All in all, not a bad night. :)

Merely Honored

ZOMGWTFBBQ. It appears that the reputation requirements for the upcoming PvP rare armor sets (like Seer's Linked Battlegear for us Enhancement Shaman) have been reduced to merely Honored for all five pieces. Woot, I'm already there! /sighrelief

Now just have to wait until 2.4 actually comes out...

Thinkin' DPS

While I've been doing a lot of thinking around armor lately (mostly for aesthetic reasons), the reality is that Enhancement Shaman are all about DPS - so I also need to also be thinking about weapons. Especially considering that while raiding/instancing, I'm typically near full health, only taking the occasional AOE damage.

Currently I've got two blues (Reflex Blades and Mag'hari Fury Brand), both with Crusader enchants. Not terrible, but we're still only looking at a base DPS of 103. It's looking like the best available (and predictably attainable) options for me are the Season 1 weapons, either Gladiator's Cleaver or Pummeler. With two of those equipped, base DPS would be 136.2. (Even just one Gladiator MH plus the Fury Brand OH ups my base DPS to 122.5.)

Problem: 36,000 honor plus 40 EOTS marks for both. Ouch. I think I have about 7,000 honor and 7 EOTS marks, and it's been painful to even get that far. :)

Karazhan, Part Deux

Second time in Kara tonight, and this time I got to see the first part of the instance: Attumen & Midnight, then the (Iron) Maiden \m/, then Romulus & Julianne and finally an attempt on Nightbane! Went really well overall - prior to Nightbane only had one wipe on random trash, and the rest of the bosses went down fairly easily. Nighty was a whole different story, though. /readbossstrats

So remember when I was wondering what to do about my green bracers? Well guess what dropped tonight?! Stalker's War Bands. Second evar epic! Another nice Shaman-friendly piece also dropped: Beastmaster Pauldrons, but those went to our hunter, natch. Grats!

All in all a very fun night, with 9g in repairs (ouch, I'm coming to collect, Nightbane!) and 7 badges, now just three shy of being able to get that nice totem.

In PvP news, I continue to be disheartened by the continual "You can't do that right now." I swear I spend half my time on the battlefield dazed. Since I'm trying to get welfare epics and rares primarily for soloing and PvE, I don't want to blow 8k honor just for the entry-level movement-freeing trinket! Also am leaning towards the Gladiator's Linked Helm rather than the shoulders now, but we'll see how things shake out once I actually get 2.4 rare PvP bits and grind out the 8k more honor I need. GG.

P.S.: I did it, got Crusade. :)

Karazhan, Etc.

Not two seconds after logging in last night I got an invite to my first Karazhan run. Good timing FTW! It was "night two," so we started with Maiden, then did the Opera event (Wizard of Oz), then finally Curator. Only one wipe on Maiden thanks to an experienced group and a great raid leader who explained everything perfectly. No Shaman drops, but got six badges and am looking forward to possibly spending my first 20 on the Stonebreaker's Totem.

In other news, I'm now Revered with Keepers of Time which means when 2.4 drops I can also pick up the Seer's Linked Leggings for a total of 3 pieces. Also about 5k honor away from my first welfare Epic, the Gladiator's Linked Spaulders. Still need to figure out what to do with the two remaining "of the Soldier" greens: belt and bracers.

Finally, I'm seriously considering putting together a Deck of Blessings to get the epic Crusade trinket, it seems tailor-made for Enhancement Shaman. Only downside is that it'll likely cost me about 1,000g to finish the deck, but I'm in no hurry for the epic flyer, so why not? :)

Shoulders

Have I mentioned that I'm obsessed with finding better shoulders? No doubt it's some form of epeenery, but my Netherstorm Shoulderguards of the Soldier just ain't cuttin' it. The stats are decent enough for an Enhancement Shaman, but they're undersized and look like an auction house green - because, they are, in fact, an auction house green.

Enter Patch 2.4, where we'll supposedly be able to buy a matched set of PvP-geared armor for a smidge of gold and rep. Throw in a few PvE gems and I should be ready to rock with some decent looking kit. Currently I have enough rep to get the shoulders and gloves, and with a few more Keepers of Time runs (3?) I'll have enough rep to get the skirt. Err, kilt? Then, it's either grinding Sha'tar or Honor Hold rep to get the 4-piece set bonus of a faster Stormstrike cooldown. Woot.

UPDATE: KoT revered!
UPDATE 2: All pieces only require Honored now?!

Endgame

Getting over the 70 hump felt like a huge accomplishment, but luckily there's still plenty to do:

Shadow Labs - Got my first Kara key frag last night, but it's really not an Enhancement-Shammy-friendly place... I got owned by our mind-controlled hunter (that was embarrassing), and then again on Murmur's sonic blast (twice). Ugh. Makes me consider respecc'ing Elem/Enh so I have more options for doing ranged DPS.

PvP - Finally entered Arathi Basin for the first time. The first match was haxored by the Horde: they had captured two nodes before our gates even opened. WTF, reported. The 2nd match was close but it seemed that everyone fell into place as far as knowing where they should be and what they should be doing. Four marks and a handful of honor kills, not bad for an hour of play. I always feel like PvP makes me a better PvE player anyway, so it's something I'll be doing more because...

Gear - I seem to be obsessed with getting better shoulders (and matching armor). After some research, Welfare Epics are starting to look nice - the Arena Season 1 rewards are decent, and it's conceivable that after a few weeks of occasional PvP I'll be able to build a nice set that I can gem for PvE, too.

Oh, and I'm still enamored with flying, but after re-amassing almost 1k gold after the flyer purchase, I don't think I'll be actively working on an epic flyer just yet - maybe after Wrath when income is likely to take another boost.