Dun dun DUNNNNNNN!

Ladies and gentlemen, queue the orchestra, prepare the steaks and get your damn game face on! Yes, yes. It is possible that, in some form, I may be, hopefully, possibly, god forbid, why the hell am I doing this, back. Since my last broadcast from deep space I’ve accomplished a great many things. Those of you who follow me on twitter (@pheshamanal, get all the post updates straight from there! :D) probably have heard me proselytizing about my achievements but I suppose my ego could be fanned a little more. Since the last time we chatted about shamany things I’ve traveled to the Czech Republic, graduated from college with a Computer Science and an English Creative Writing degree, moved to Tejas where I landed a job in Austin and picked up League of Legends.

I had originally vowed never to touch WoW again. Then I got back from dinner tonight and found that Blizzard had emailed me, notifying me that Imania had 7 free days to see the new patch content. Y? Y U NO PAY MY SUBSCRIPTION BLIZZARD, YYYYYY? Heh. Well anyway. I’ve been thinking for a long time: what do I want to do with my blog? I can’t just let it sit here. It’s depressing to see it getting 5 views every day from search terms that were so last year, like cata water zones. I mean really.. you haven’t seen them yet? Wow. I considered talking about beer. Beer is one of my new favorite things. I then realized I can talk about beer AND video games. I do sorely miss my shaman and my guild Karma Horde, and my raid group Aperture Science, that I never had the chance to lift off from the launchpad. On the other hand, I don’t want to spend money just to play. AND I have League of Legends, which is free. And which I’m decent at playing… (feel free to add me on there and hit me up for a game if you want to play, “robotunicr0n” is my name!) So at this point, I think I may pick up those free 7 days, take a look at the new content, get a feel for how much I want to sink money into the game, and then maybe bow out again and just stick to League of Legends. Or I may pick up WoW again and provide you all with some further shaman entertainment.

I am also open to your opinions. If you think I should stay away from the Woweroine, tweet with the hash tag #stayoffthewows! If you think I should start playing again, tweet with the hash tag #sellyoursoultomalganis! In the end I probably won’t listen either way and maybe just play again, but this could be fun, and I love making up random hash tags. At the very least, I will revive this blog. It may not be about shamans, but I’ll still be here!

Shamantastic: Healer Hootzpah

There’s no qualifying benchmark that indicates you’ve chain healed your way into the pros of healing. How do you know, then, when you’ve got what it takes to raid?

Generally if you’re successfully and easily healing heroics then you are ready to raid. Of course healing raids isn’t as easy as being a heroic farmer; you have to have the skill to react to emergency situations and the situational awareness to stay alive yourself.

Cata heroics are a big step up from Lich King content and serve to teach a lot of raid skills, especially such important principles as don’t stand in the fire. These principles of raiding will come in time with practice.

Another important facet of healing that is folded into being able to heal heroics is smart stat gearing. If you don’t know your class well enough and don’t prioritize the correct stats you can easily fall short of making ends meet. Gemming and enchanting are another important resource to consider that can add some extra breathing room to fights like Admiral Ripsnarl. A good practice is to gem and enchant all 346+ gear and heroic gear as you’ll have those for your first couple weeks of raiding.

Overall you’ll know that you’re ready to heal when you feel that your gear is well put together and that you know your class well enough to comfortably heal hard encounters.

New Feed URL

I’ve made the jump to feedburner so if you’re following me via wordpress’ feed please switch! You can either click the “google” button near the top on the left or if you don’t use reader.google.com then here’s the feed URL for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Pheshamanal

 

I’m interested to know for anyone following the blog through RSS which app you are using to aggregate so that I can add accessible links for the most used services. Either leave a comment or email me (email can be found under “about”).

The Sad State of Restoration Mastery

Sadly this tooltip is a common scene among restoration shamans. Frankly, our mastery sucks. Priests get better absorbs and a HoT, Druids currently get bonus healing on targets who have their HoTs applied and Paladins make shields when they heal that absorb. Shamans get a heal that scales on how low the target’s health is and as far as my experience has gone we get little to no useful bonus from this.

Shamantastic: Ouch, My Mana Hurts…

(EDIT: If you’re looking for a healing guide on Lord Geoffery Tulvan for the Crucible of Carnage event The Earl of Evisceration, check out this link!)

Remember that post I made where I was lamenting the fact that elemental and restoration shamans literally could not run out of mana? Well I was certainly wrong. Now that Cataclysm has actually come and I’ve seen the changes, I’ve eaten my words. However, as far as I’m concerned at this point in time, the fact that I actually have to care about my mana again is a good thing. What does this mean for shamans? Well today’s post is mostly about restoration (one of my first), which is the spec hit hardest by Cata content in terms of mana reduction. Here’s why!

The Shattering

I feel… strange. De elements haven’t been speakin’ to me like dey usually do. I can feel da peace of mind when da water elementals are at harmony, da surge of intensity and de anger when da fire elementals are right in dis world. I feel da winds at my back when da air elementals be unrestricted and I can feel da satisfied rumble under my feet when da earth elementals are at rest.

I feel none of dese tings today. I woke up from my slumba wit da screams of unimaginable pain from uncountable elements and da people of dis world. My people. I was sweatin’ more furious den when in da throes of passion and I had a feva most severe. When I stepped out my front door da world seemed normal. Da sun was yet to rise but da trees outside of my little hut in da stranglethorn vale quivered unnaturally. I had visions… flashes of de elementals becoming uncontained, da horrible misery of deir fires and winds, rocks and water bein’ uncontrollable. What can one shaman be doin’ to save dem from deir pain?

I untied me raptor Dezz’ilish from his harness bar. He usually be da bravest raptor I know but he was squirmin’ an’ trying to hide his head underneath me shoulder. I ran me hand down his neck and he calmed down a bit but he was whining, and when a raptor be whinin’ you best be plugging your ears. Dey loud mon. Me gut twisted and I knew I had ta get out. Somethin’ dangerous was comin’. I ran back into my hut and grabbed everyting that was precious to me. Me necklace dat my grandmotha’ had given to me along wit my gear and my bags. I ran back outside and Dezzi was running around frantically. I didn’t know what had set him off but I ran over and jumped onto his back. A raptor’s intuition is one ta be trusted. No sooner had I cleared da front of me hut, a flamin’ rock flew right into it. I tell ya mon, dat rock was big. At first I was angry dat some interlopin’ gurubashi ancients be attackin’ my hut. I only stole a few of deir shrunken heads and some of deir artifacts. Dat be no reason ta hurl a flamin’ rock into me hut. But den, as we was going down de path towards booty bay, I saw more of dose damn rocks flyin’ around. It was all I could do to move Dezzi out of da way and stay close ta cover.

When we got closa’ to Booty Bay I saw a druid. He was fightin’ some elementals and looked worse for da wear. I jumped off Dezzi and started healin’ ‘im. No point in lettin’ a good druid go ta waste. At dis point I be thinkin’ we be needin’ all da help we can get. After he finished off dem elementals he tanked me and we traveled to Booty Bay togetha’, watchin’ each others backs. Booty Bay was up in arms, dey were a chaotic mess. Da goblins were only lettin’ some people in. I talked ta one of dem and said I was an agent of da Warchief.

“Which warchief you talking about?” I couldn’t quite tell what he wanted to hear.

“Thrall of course, mon. I be insulted dat you tink anyone else could be considered Warchief.”

“What about Garrosh?”

“Mon, he ain’t Warchief yet. Let us in?” It seemed I had found da right bruiser. He let us in and showed us up ta da second floor tavern where da other horde were.  Dis is where we are now. I be writin’ this to da rumble of da earth beneath. Da elements still not be talkin’ to me and it seems da other shamans be feelin’ da same way. I’m just hopin’ dat Booty Bay doesn’t get hit. Den where else am I goin’ ta go?

Shamantastic: On Mana and other things

I’m usually not one to complain when my class and spec has become badass, but I’d love to avoid paladins whining and other classes sobbing over their classes being broken and the lack of delivery on that promised pony… However I suppose this isn’t a complaint but more of a glance at what’s going on with Elemental Shamans. Let me reiterate first that they are badass.

A new context

Time is moving rather slowly in these parts. Classes are clogging the time drain and finals are slowly creepy closer and closer. Days seem to pass by so slowly when you have a date in the near future and so this week seems like it will never end. Couple of weeks ago I got fed up with my server’s low population and terrible progression and decided to move to Malfurion, where I now make my home on horde-side. A couple of friends transferred with me so we created a guild. That puts me in the unique position of being an officer/GM again, despite wishing to never have to do that job.

The recruitment is slow. We’ve added one or two new people since we transferred (apart from the 4 that came with me) but as Cata draws nearer I feel like I’m floundering while trying to build a 10 man team. People who want to join aren’t what we need for the 10 man, but I feel silly not inviting them anyway. Then there’s the issue of being the raid leader. I can do it, I just haven’t had much experience and with that comes a lot of anxiety. Added on top of all of that, I’ll be one of the healers in our raid unless we find a lot of healers, so that adds to the stress level too.

And all this time I’m trying to find interesting topics to blog on. I like sharing bits of my life on here but I also feel like I’m boring anyone who bothers to read it if I’m not grinding out shaman topics and theory. Hopefully when my quarter ends in two weeks and I go home for 6 weeks of break, I’ll have more time to find awesome things to blog about. Hopefully…

In the mean time, if a good idea strikes my fancy, I will blog about it!

Shamantastic: Patch 4.0 and Shaman Talk

"Uh, Jinra, is that you shaking up the place?" "Nope." "Shit."

Finally, I have a little time to play WoW, which means, wabam, I have time to attempt to entertain you all with information you’ve heard a thousand times! I bet you haven’t gotten a sub-max level opinion on the changes though, so I’ll put some of that in this post too. As a short side story, I was in-game earlier and the world shook. My friend genuinely thought that I was using earthquake and he had just gotten back into WoW so he wasn’t aware of the world effects. The caption of the picture says the rest, heh heh. Anyway, aside from daft guild members and loads of ridiculous homework (can you believe I’m on academic alert for failing a midterm because they wouldn’t reschedule the study session to avoid my three hours of meetings and classes? :() let’s get to some meaty, shamany content.

An Update… yay!!

Greetings, those who still follow… I haven’t disappeared, just been bogged down with classes and fighting senioritis. I mentioned in a previous post that I have a new project in the works. I can now announce it! It has nothing to do with WoW sadly, but I’ve been selected to be a fellow at the Euphrates Institute Center for Middle East Understanding at my university. I’m 1 of 6 and my twitter days (@cmuprin) are always on Wednesday. All 6 of us will also be posting to our blog, however either my name or Shadowscale will show up on my posts so you can see the research that I’m doing. This is what has been drawing my attention away from WoW to the point where I couldn’t get my shaman to 75 so that I could get Brewmaster :(. The blog is cmuprin.wordpress.com and it has no data on it right now, but in the next few weeks news analysis and other research will be posted, so if you’re into our goal, which is to seek a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict peacefully, then I invite you to follow the blog and see what we come up with. I may or may not be on board for next quarter (Jan-Mar) so I should be able to devote a little more time to WoW and my blog, however I’ll be doing my senior thesis for English and a class on Practical Criticism which is intense and required to graduate.

If all goes well after that, spring quarter I should be in Prague for 3 months studying. Crazy couple of months coming up! Starting around Nov. 20th I won’t have any responsibilities besides maybe work, and so can become sufficiently addicted to WoW, this blog and the shaman community. Sorry for my absence!! I really tried to keep up to date, but so many responsibilities and dealing with some personal health issues has kept me from being able to focus on it.

Jinra, my shaman, will be 80 in time for Cataclysm, I’m sure, and from there I’m golden! 🙂 Hope all is going well for you all and i look forward to being able to reenter the community. Thanks for your patience and support. I might add a small update about another venture I’m taking on at my school which requires a post on it’s own. It branches out of one of my articles, kind of, but is important nonetheless and won’t be uninteresting to those interested in feminism and human rights.