Hexxed!

*Enter shaman spirit dream state* … http://wotlkwiki.info

I’ve been waiting for Hex for like 3 years now. Finally has some potential with WOTLK.

http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1190132

So, this vid demo shows the following casts:

• Hex (magic effect)
• Hex (magic effect)
• Flame Shock
• Lava Burst
• Hex
• Lava Burst
• Hex (yes, dmg does not break Hex)
• Thunder
• Feral Spirit (target drop w/green circle to summon wolves on enemy to pet tank, yes can heal pet too)

Yeah, although all this stuff seems to be *sandbox* ideas at best right now, still interesting to see how <things that class x wants> goes to another class.

Hex: Transforms the enemy into a random critter, reducing the target’s movement speed by 75%.  While moving, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells.  Only one target can be hexed at a time.  Only works on Humanoids and Beasts.

Range: 20 yard
Duration: 8 second duration
Cooldown: 1 minute

Note: does not break when Hex target is damaged, i.e. able to beat on things without them being able to beat back
Note: magic effect, can be dispelled, cleansed, w/e
Note: doesn’t heal the target like Polymorph
Note: there doesn’t seem to be a debuff after being hexed, so I would think a few shaman could chain-hex a target for a good amount of time while damaging it with some mechanism for diminishing returns to increase resistance to Hex
Note: the cooldown is not really giving Shaman an effective CC as  Polymorph lasts a good 45 sec and can be recast without a 1 min cooldown

Updated Weapons Index

Updated weapons index here:

https://enhancementshaman.wordpress.com/best-index/

Updated June 11, 2008 Finally got the 2.4 adjustments:

• Blacksmithing Weaponsmith changes (main-hand to one-hand changed and added to off-hand index below).
• Corrected Talon of the Phoenix Main Hand weapon.
• Weapon speeds adjusted for EP value indexing.

https://enhancementshaman.wordpress.com/best-index/

the Iron Man run | Zul’Aman and Black Temple to Bloodboil

Ok. I haven’t much time to post, so I’ll snag some combat stats and discuss it later. I went to a full Zul’Aman clear and progressed to Bloodboil in Black Temple. He seems to be a hurdle for a lot of raiders, so I might need some help on how to tackle the big Fel Orc.
This is mostly for historical recording than anything. My Iron Man day of raiding stats here. I’m just going to spill the stats here in a WALL_OF_TEXT, hopefully I can come back and re-edit later.

Zoomed through the 1st 4 bosses in Zul’Aman for the Bear Mount and then continued on to Malacrass and Zul’Jin.

Nalorakk

I know I dropped a Searing Totem and Fire Elemental Totem for Nalorakk, I wonder why it’s missing from the WWS. /shrug

Hex Lord Malacrass

I usually put on a fair amount of Stamina gear, but to survive the Spirit Bolts, make sure to get shadow resistance high (i.e. Night’s End cloak + Medallion of Karabor).

Zul’Jin

Wow. I never thought I’d see the day when I would be tops on that Zul’Jin fight. Hunters have it pretty easy throughout this boss encounter.

Supremus

Can I tell you that I don’t like Supremus? I had to completely avoid him for a lot of time for this fight, mostly because there was no one else to take the hurtful strikes near melee range. He absolutely throws melee dps away regularly, ranged just sit back and target a big, big, big guy and sidestep volcanoes. Stormstrike at only 9% of my total damage, that sux. And, we don’t usually have a good tank on both threat and health, so guess who’s next on Supremus Hateful strike list? *Crunch*!

Shade of Akama

Flask ran out and I forgot to reapply for this fight. 😦

Eek. Look at how low the Windfury Crit percentage is: 18 %

That sux too.

Interesting. I’ll have to look at some past Akama fights.

Teron Gorefiend

Stormstrike at only 17% crit rate. Yuck.

Gurtogg Bloodboil

Gurtogg is our progression block right now. Maybe we need 9-10 healers? How do you enhancement shamans run the Fel Rage? Equip shield? Forget shield, just DPS like mad? Pop Shamanistic Rage? Heroism/Bloodlust when?

Dragonstriked! Again! | all one-handed epic weaponsmithing weapons will be non-unique as of 2.4.2

[21-May | Edit: woops. the wordpress fudged my image, so I’ve updated the stats spreadsheet pic below for hammering/clawing.]

I haven’t used my trusty blacksmithing skills in a while, but I still had ole faithful, Dragonstrike in my shed back in Shattrath. I upgraded to the Claw of Molten Fury a while back and haven’t looked back for the speed hammer, until the last patch where Blacksmithing plans for Main-Hand only weapons got a buff: One-Hand.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/04/28/epic-weaponsmithing-weapons-no-longer-unique/

That’s right, I picked up the old Dragonstrike and it felt so good. Like an old friend that went away overseas for years and came back, just like you remembered him only now more versatile. I kept my Main-Hander the Claw of Molten Fury and tried out some tests with using Dragonstrike in my Off-Hand and instead of the Netherbane.

A noticeable difference. In fact: 2% more dps. In most combatlogs I was seeing 3% more DPS for each fight.

Here’s some stats from 1 hour of hammering/clawing on a Servant of Razelikh; no buffs, no totems, no Stormstrike, no Shocks, just /autoattack:

The low-down…. I got the following by using Dragonstrike over Netherbane in my off-hand weapon spot:

• 2%+ more DPS
• 1.2 Haste procs per minute (vs. 0 Haste procs with Netherbane)
• 23% more Windfury procs per minute

Now… the only thing to test is dual wielding 2 X Dragonstrikes! Do they share procs or act more like dual Mongoose procs? Hmmmmm… I’ll have to test this theory now.

2 Dragonstrikes cannot proc twice; the 2nd Haste proc will refresh a current Haste proc from an ongoing Haste thus granting more Haste uptime. In general, a 2nd Dragonstrike will grant you 2% more Haste.

I’ll post some numbers.

I love lots of totems

http://www.twentytotems.com/

Enuff Said.

Supremus | Shade of Akama | Teron Gorefiend

Been awhile since last enhancement news.  The Oceanic lag from 2.4 has effected me personally, so I haven’t had a lot of fun playing with 800+ ms of latency when I normally have about 220ms.  Never been this bad before, but hopefully the folks at Blizzard will come up with something.  I cannot imagine healing with this kind of lag.

 

Anywho… we tried out Black Temple and Naj’entus, Supremus, Shade of Akama were relatively fruitful encounters.  We currently are on the learning curve for Teron Gorefiend.  I’m not so bad with the ghost mini-game during Teron’s fight, but I know others are having troubles, so we keep trying him out to get more experience with it.  I think the Grounding Totem helps with the Teron Incinerate attack, so I tried to keep that totem down most of the time.

Any other hints for Teron?

 

The Shade of Akama fight details.

 

The Teron stats for now.

 

 So, next up we con’t to work on Gorefiend, then the real Shadow Resist fights come into play.

 

Hyjal Summit | 1st Look

After months and months of SSC/TK & finally downing Kael’thas, our guild decided to enter Hyjal Summit. I have to say, it is a welcome relief to the drip drip drip of Serpenshrine and the 1-shot wipes of Tempest Keep.

The waves and waves of gauntlets are really fun (even though I love the Horde side with Thrall more than Jaina Proudmoore’s side). We were able to get jiggy with Rage Winterchill and Anetheron. Our first ever kills of these two.

Rage Winterchill

Totems:

• Windfury
• Healing Stream
• Frost Resistance Totem
• Strength of Earth

Still trying to work my way around this boss and learn from some mistakes, 1108 dps and 5th overall.

Anetheron

First time for all of us vs. the Vampric Aura boss. We faired well against the trash wave leading up to him, but when the fight vs. boss came up down we had some new things to learn.

I died 😦 and I had some trouble with Sleep debuf, in fact, I got more sleepy time than anyone else.

All-in-all, I got lots of fun to get some Swings at this boss and we all learned a lot.

I don’t know if this ever happened before in the history of drops: we had both Molten Fury fist drops.

• Claw of Molten Fury Awesome main hander for PVE enhancement shaman.
• Fist of Molten Fury Lousy for PVE enhancement shaman, but great for rogues.

More next week.

Sultans of Swing | Wowwebstats for 2.4 Patch | The enhancement shaman shock cycle

The new version of WWS supporting WoW 2.4 is out and even though it’s got a few minor bugs, it’s heaps better based on the accuracy of the new fangled /combatlog mechanics.

New WWS is easy as pie, just point to a /combatlog file and upload with your WWS login.

No “Actors” to sort out, no pets with the same names giving credit to only one player.

The “Melee” ability has been renamed to “Swing” for white damage. Sultans of Swing! Cue up Dire Straits music. Go go Mark Knopfler!

Tested the mechanics with a simple Servant of Razelikh test under the following:

Test A: the standard dps shock cycle for enhancement shaman

• Drop Mana Spring Totem
• Drop Strength of Earth Totem
• Drop Grace of Air Totem
• Drop Searing Totem
• Engage Servant of Razelikh
• Cycle dps through this rotation: Stormstrike, Activate Bloodlust Brooch whenever available, Flame Shock, Earth Shock, <repeat for 2 minutes>

Test B: the Earth Shock only dps cycle for enhancement shaman

• Drop Mana Spring Totem
• Drop Strength of Earth Totem
• Drop Grace of Air Totem
• Drop Searing Totem
• Engage Servant of Razelikh
• Cycle dps through this rotation: Stormstrike, Activate Bloodlust Brooch whenever available, Flame Shock, Earth Shock, <repeat for 2 minutes>

Test C: Fully buffed with Elixir of Major Agility

• Eat Roasted Clefthoof (+20 Strength, +20 Spirit for 30 minutes)
• Quaff Elixir of Major Agility (+35 Agility, +20 Crit rating for 1 hour)
• Read Scroll of Agility V (+20 Agility for 30 mintues)
• Read Scroll of Strength V (+20 Strength for 30 mintues)
• Drop Mana Spring Totem
• Drop Strength of Earth Totem
• Drop Grace of Air Totem
• Drop Searing Totem
• Engage Servant of Razelikh
• Cycle dps through this rotation: Stormstrike, Activate Bloodlust Brooch whenever available, Flame Shock, Earth Shock, <repeat for 2 minutes>

Test D: Bloodlust/Heroism

• Drop Mana Spring Totem
• Drop Strength of Earth Totem
• Drop Grace of Air Totem
• Drop Searing Totem
• Engage Servant of Razelikh
• Cycle dps through this rotation: Stormstrike, Activate Bloodlust Brooch whenever available, Flame Shock, Earth Shock, <repeat for 2 minutes>

And just so you know where the buffs are going and the procs are for each test cycle.

Maybe I need to rethink my dps cycle a bit. Any thoughts?

Summary:

• Stormstrike, Flame Shock, Earth Shock still beats any other cycles for a simple damage output on low level targets. Use all your shocks when possible to keep your dps high.
• I don’t know why /combatlog or WWS 2.4 is reporting “Swing” as a debuf, but it’ll probably get fixed soon enough.
• All pets are accurately tied to their real masters now, unlike the behavior of the old /combatlog.
• When totems are called up or dismissed, the /combatlog actually registers this as a “unit death”, but WWS interprets it correctly.
• Procs matter: even with a fully buffed and elixir quaffed player, a lucky proc or two can put an unbuffed player shoulders above the buffed player.

Bloodlust – Heroism impacts:

Bloodlust/Heroism gained the following over the standard shock cycle based on my simple 2-minute tests:

• 200% more Flurry uptime
• 300% more Haste procs
• 10% more Windfury procs
• 50% more average Windfury damage output
• 113% more average Stormstrike damage output, probably because of 50% more Stormstrike crits
• 37% less Lightning Speed procs (I have Mongoose Enchant on both weapons at the moment).  Weird, I’ll have a look at this some more.  Faster attack speed relates to less Mongoose procs?  Hmm.
• 29% less Swing crits.  Bad luck?  Seems like bad luck and I just need to perform longer test session (1 hour or so) because I see that tests A and C were both 45% crit rate, but the tests B and D were 32% and 38%.  Hmmm.

I really need to get some Ignore Armor gear. Or Expertise. Or both! Until then, back to the new daily quests to help the Shattered Sun Offensive.