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

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. :)

Magister's Terrace

Last week we had a chance to visit Magister's Terrace, the new 5-man instance on Sunwell Isle. Having read so much about it's high crowd-control requirements and general melee-DPS unfriendliness, I wanted to wait until I could enter with mostly guildees.

Our party consisted of a Feral Tank, Mage, Hunter, Holy Priest and myself. A pretty solid group, geared mostly from Karazhan and PvP rewards. Nothing extraordinary, but no slackers either. :) We took it generally slow, and had relatively smooth-sailing up until the infamous final trash pull, more on that later.

Trash
Pulls were usually a mix of casters and melee'rs, easily-controlled encounters by using the usual best practice methods (CC, marking kill order). As a Shaman, it's important to use Earth Shock against the Blood Knights as they heal as well as DPS. Against Physicians, use Poison cleanse totem. For encounters with too many casters to fully CC, Grounding Totem is very effective.

Selin Fireheart
First thing's first: get everyone into the room at the same time! A magic forcefield locks players out who don't immediately come into the room. We wiped here not knowing that, as only our tank and one other made it into the room. Even on the second attempt, full well knowing about the forcefield, the hunter still got locked-out. Heh. Cannot emphasize this enough: all in right away. Other than that, it's pretty easy. We managed to down him with only 2 DPS. Same story as the final Steamvaults boss, destroy the crystal power things as soon as they're attackable.

Vexallus
Similar to Karazhan's Curator, this guy sends blobs of Pure Energy into the room that need to be burned down ASAFP. (like that? I just came up with that last week, been using it ever since!) It was hard to locate them, so spamming this macro (hotkeyed to your keyboard, just like Cartman recommends) might help:

/target Pure

Our tank managed to down Vexallus himself after everyone else wiped around 1%. See? Bare durid iz 4 fite 2! :)

Princess Delrissa
The infamous 5v5 PvP fight. Everything you've read is true, there is no attack table, so tanking does basically nothing here. In fact, kill order didn't seem much help either as it was pretty chaotic. We wiped a few times but manged it in the end. It seems good to start with a CC strategy, then just be prepared to go with the flow of the fight. Glance at the party's health every now and again, backup healing can be helpful here. (that means you, Shaman!)

After Delrissa came the seven mob pull that we just couldn't manage. /sigh. Maybe if I had been replaced with another DPS/CC, we could've tied up another mob, but it just didn't work out. We even replaced the Feral Tank with a Protection Paladin, but the seemingly random targeting of the Ethereal Smuggler and his nasty AOE proved too difficult to contend with. I probably spent too much time running after him, should have been dropping more Grounding Totems and interrupting casters, me thinks.

Can't wait to take another shot at this one. :) Bottom line for Enhancement Shaman though, don't be shy, you can be very effective here. Just adjust your tactics a bit. More grounding, more interrupts.

Prince Pwnd

This past week in Karazhan has been unusual for me - unusual in that I was actually able to attend all three nights and "finish" the instance (at least from a quest perspective). Woot! Last night we picked up at Chess, continued on to Prince, then back-tracked for an attempt on Netherspite. Again, some notes from an Enhancement Shaman's perspective:

The Chess Event
I've read strategy notes, seen the videos, but it makes much more sense after having done it once. This is a fun encounter where you basically choose a chess piece to "become," then you do battle against Medivh's pieces. (It reminded me of the quest The Fel and the Furious, where you become a Fel Reaver for a bit and your action bars get replaced with Fel Reaver-specific actions.) I chose a pawn, simply because I didn't really know what to expect - and thankfully it was pretty simple: move or attack. Funny thing is you can move sideways, so don't expect strict chess rules here. My pawn died, so after 30 seconds I ran back to the board and chose another to control. Pretty straightforward, nothing Shaman-specific here.

Prince Malchezaar
Mean Mr. Malchezaar is the objective of A Demonic Presence, so I was pretty excited to get to him and have a chance to finish the quest line. We wiped a few times due to unlucky Infernal drop locations, but in the end got him down. Being a melee DPS'er, the thing to watch for is his Enfeeble ability, which drops you to 1 hit point for seven seconds (during which you are unhealable). The strategy here is to run away from the Prince immediately as he follows up with an AOE (you'll also want to avoid the infernals). I found that facing the direction to run was the best approach while I fought, so I didn't waste any time turning before running.

The 2nd phase is when things get hairy for the tank, as the Prince summons axes increasing his melee damage and applies Sunder Armor's. This is the phase when I chose to pop Heroism and Fire Elemental, for faster heals and increased DPS - getting past this phase ASAP seemed pretty critical. The third and final phase is pretty much a DPS race, as the rate of infernals dropping increases.

Netherspite
Probably the most gadgety of all gadget fights I've seen, this encounter was pretty wild. Netherspite is a big ol' dragon that calls three portals which shoot buffing beams at him. A red beam that tanks should intercept (by simply standing in front of), a blue beam that DPS'ers should interecept and a green beam that pretty much anyone available should intercept PDQ, since it heals Netherspite at some insane rate. We didn't actually get him down, but it was clear that having beam assignments (with backups for each assignment) was the thing to do. More research is warranted, but it seems like any non-mana-dependent class would be good for the green beams since you lose mana while in it - but Enhancement Shaman are also good since we can regain more than half our mana within 15 seconds by using Shamanistic Rage.

Hopefully in some future post I'll be able to report on downing Netherspite and a few other bosses that I've yet to see/finish (Nightbane, Big Bad Wolf), but it's been great to get this far and I'm definitely feeling like any future Kara runs I get to go on will be gravy. :)

Beyond Curator

Tonight was the first chance I've had to participate in the 2nd night of a Karazhan run, thanks to some raiding schedule rearrangements. :) Being able to finally experience Kara content beyond Curator was great: tonight we downed Shade of Aran and Illhoof. These fights seem a little more melee-DPS friendly than others, and here are some notes from the Enhancement perspective:

Shade of Aran
First of all, this guy is just plain tough. He's a caster who does crazy damage if you let him - we actually wiped three times before finally downing him. As a Shaman you'll be on spell interrupt duty for either his fireballs or frost bolts. The funny thing is, it seems like his casting frequency goes up if you interrupt too much, so we actually tried interrupting every other cast on the final attempt. This seemed to go better, but more research is warranted...

Flame Wreath seems to have the potential for being the biggest wiper, but with DeadlyBossMods you'll get plenty of warning beforehand. As melee DPS, you need to make sure you're in range of Aran before FW lands - afterwards everyone must temporarily stay put or very bad things will happen. If you get stuck out of melee range, throw a few heals or lightning bolts in the meantime. Take your hand off the keyboard so you don't accidentally move.

Another nasty trick is the pull-in followed by a huge AOE blast. You must run immediately to a wall after being pulled-in and wait for the AOE to go off (similar to Murmur's sonic blast). If you don't make it and die, just make sure you don't attempt to reincarnate in the middle of his blizzard spell... wait until it passes. -_-

I'd also recommend waiting to pop Heroism and Fire Elemental until at least 1/3 the way into the fight - just to make sure things are going pretty well before blowing your long-cooldown abilities.

In summary: interrupt spells, stay in melee range, avoid the nasty AOE, reincarnate wisely.

Illhoof
This satyr boss and his imp have some interesting dynamics, as you'll be switching targets often. The best scenario for melee DPS seems to be tanking them just on the edge of the green circle, so you can minimize running around between targets.

First, it's important to have a "/target Demon" macro hotkeyed to your keyboard (do I sound like Cartman?). I used the letter V as it's very easy to hit during a hectic fight. Periodically Illy will target a random raid member and shackle them in Demonic Chains, rapidly draining their health. ALL DPS must burn down the shackle ASAP or the shacklee will die (exceptions are Paladins and Mages who can bubble/ice block to escape). It's reminiscent of the final boss in Steamvault where you have to burn down the water tanks as soon as they're attackable. Melee DPS is made for stuff like this, so make sure you're in range for a quick re-target, use that macro and Stormstrike/Earth Shock for burst DPS.

Other than that, hopefully you have a kickass raid leader who will call out the current focus, as it changes frequently between the Imp, Illhoof and the shackled person. We two-shotted this fight, a nice change after Aran's beating. :) Hopefully I can finagle my way into a 3rd followup night, as I believe Chess is up next!

In other news, I tried Recount as a replacement for DamageMeters tonight. Way more options than DM had, and it reported an astonishing 1,000 ZOMGDPS for our first-place Warlock. My DPS seemed to be neck-and-neck with the mage, around 600 DPS. Fun stuffs. :)

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?!?!

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. :)

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? :)

Keyed

Over the weekend I finished the Karazahn attunement, and now possess The Master's Key. Woot. I can haz raid?

Nope, not quite yet - the next big challenge is logistics. Being a relatively casual player, I usually can't really participate in my guild's regular Friday/Saturday night runs. Next quest: find a Kara group that can run Tues/Thurs nights. Hmm...

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.

Maraudon

In my rush to level Exelus, I missed out on a bunch of instances, so when a plea went up in guild chat to help clear the end of Mara yesterday, I was happy to oblige. (The carebear in me likes to visit lower level instances and show the lowbies what Shaman tanking is all about...) Kidding, we shouldn't tank. Evar. We have a lovely Earth Elemental to do that for us.

Anywho, seeing the inside of Maraudon was neat, but are you kidding me that place is fricken huge! Who's got 2 hours to sludge through that place with all level 40-somethings? Can you imagine the corpse run if your group wiped? Ugh.

Blizzard: LF shorter instances plskthx.

On the upside, I gots 1.5 gold and 1,005 XP by accepting that quest at the end, turning in at Remulos in Moonglade. Lawl.