This just in...

...Shaman to remain awesome and over-powered in WotLK.

Huge announcements coming in from Blizzards Invitational event in Paris, not the least of which involve Shamantic love in the forms of:

- raid-wide totem effects
- hex, a short-duration but very-needed CC
- windfury to affect sum bare durids
- rockbiter replaced(?) with earthliving, a +heal buff
- strength and agility totems to be combined into a single totem

ZOMG!

18k Honor, 20 EotS Marks

PvP here I come again? With the start of Season 4 Arena, Season 2's armor and weapons are now up for sale for honor and marks. I swore I'd never go to Eye of the Storm again, but looks like Merciless Gladiator's Right Ripper is the next best (easily achievable) weapon upgrade. -_-

That is, once I get my computer back. Waaah.

Gruul'd

So even though I missed our guild's run on Gruul yesterday (boo busted 'puter), a few days prior I managed to get a raid spot with an allied guild at the last minute. It was to be my first time, and I didn't even have my unstable flasks yet. >.<

I had seen some videos, read some strats, but of course nothing prepares you like the real thing. There are very few trash pulls, thankfully, fairly straightforward stuff there. Bunch up on the Brutes, interrupt the casters.

First major encounter of course is High King Maulgar and his Pals. There's a lot more coordination that needs to happen here than your average instance. Hunter misdirects, Mage tanks, even a Hunter tank in our case. Lots of weirdness and folks scrambling into position. Luckily for me, it was just following Blindeye's tank in and melee'ing from behind, watching Omen and Earth Shock'ing to interrupt the heals. From there it's just following kill order, watching threat, etc. Ahh, the life of a no-pressure DPS'er. :P

The first attempt was almost insta-wipe as we had our positioning wrong, but the 2nd shot was much smoother. Unfortunately I hit the dirt at some point, popped Reincarnation, then promptly died again. It's not a party until a Shammy goes down! We managed it on either the 2nd or 3rd try (can't remember), but it was all sorts of fun, total chaos as folks scrambled from one mini-boss to the other. I seem to recall a near-wipe on the successful downing, with backup tanks picking up HKM, only a few healers left and ONE DPS'er around to finish off at ~2%.

After HKM comes some more minor trash (bunch up on the Brute, LOS the casters around the corner), then its on to Gruul The Dragonkiller hisself. He's actually not a terribly complicated fight, basically tank/spank with some tricks in-between... Like rocks falling on your head and flinging you into the air before shattering the ground under you. Good stuff. With some helpful mods (DBM FTW) and paying attention, though, it's definitely do-able. Just don't get frozen next to a healer! We had all healers marked with raid symbols just to be able to spot them easier.

I personally seemed to do better on Gruul than HKM, although I think I did die on try 2 of 3, but overall not bad. Average damage for the whole instance was reported at 733 DPS, number 5 on the damage meters. <3 those raid buffs! Probably coulda been higher if I didn't spend so much time AFK'ing during large portions of HKM (squished blueberry).

Sounds like our own guild is going to take another shot at Gruuls in a few weeks, hopefully the computer will be back in action by then!

In other news, I'm now wearing a goofy Mardi Gras decoration in the offhand... yup, I broke down and got Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality, and slapped on Mongoose.

I look ridiculous.

Oy.

Hosed

I'm typing this on my iPhone. The Macbook Pro is in the shop with a bad "logic board." Sounds like a Johnson Rod explanation if u ask me.

Late last night the darn thing booted with no video. Not on the built-in screen, not on the external monitor. Apparently its a semi common issue, there's a fair amount of noise about it on the apple forums. Also its being fixed for free even though I'm three weeks out of warranty. Hmm, class-action prevention?

So besides being computerless for possibly a week, I missed tonights Gruuls run. Doh. Hopefully me guildies came away with a good time and phat loots. Lame thing is GuildPortal won't run propers with mobile safari, so I can't even check the loot list to see what dropped! Boo.

WTB working puter plskthx.

Chosen

Yesterday I got an email from the folks at FigurePrints, the outfit that "prints" 4-inch tall 3D models of your WoW character. Several months ago, I had signed up to be part of their lottery system as apparently the demand is greater than their current output. Last night's email was a congratulatory message. :)

It looks like their prices have gone up from $99 to $129, but I'll still be placing an order this weekend. I realize that to some, that amount may seem expensive, but the chance to have a physical representation of a virtual character that I've spent so much time on is, IMO, awesome. Someday the WoW chapter will close and I'll be busy leveling my Protoss Archon in UoS (Universe of Starcraft!), so it'll be great to have Exelus sitting on my bookshelf, dual S1 axes at-the-ready.

Now is pretty good timing too, as Exelus currrently has a relatively-matching set of armor and weapons. Most likely I'll be decking him out in PvP gear rather than the mixed PvE/PvP leather gear you see pictured, as it matches a little better. (a Shaman in a skirt seems more fitting to me anyway - but maybe that's just the cross-dresser in me)

Umm wut?

I'll post pictures as soon as it arrives, of course. :)

Mounts at 30

So apparently the new patch is on the PTR, lots of bug fixes and whatnots, but the biggest news for us altaholics is basic riding skill now purchasable at 30! (For 35g!) Pallys and Warlocks can learn their summonable mounts at 30 as well.

Zones like Darkshire and STV should be a little more tolerable now.

WTB bear mount, though. Rawr.

Future's Looking Bright

I've accidentally stumbled across some info relating to upcoming Shaman talents, both tweaks to existing ones as well as insights into new ones, and zomg things are looking pretty interesting. :)

Of course none of this stuff is set in stone, much of what we'll see will evolve between now and release (and even after release), but I'm looking forward to maintaining our OP status after the expansion.

GG to Blizz for making (what appears to be) further needed changes to even our lower end talent trees, as well as (possibly) adding a few tricks that bring us closer to the Shaman we saw in Warcraft 3.

That is all.

Also, WTB moar Badges of Justice.