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?

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.

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.

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.

Well, I finally said adios to my trusted PVP cleaver and welcomed in a Netherbane to my off-hand. A fine upgrade and pretty high up there on my list of weapons for an enhancement shaman. 4th overall in value for an enhancement shaman for off-handers currently. This will change come the 2.4 patch, but a darn good off-hand indeed.

Group:

• Hunter (our guild’s best dps’er on 25-person raids, hands down)
• Warrior (long time great player and tankasaur)
• Druid (feral) / Paladin (prot) swapped in for 1 boss Jan’alai
• Rogue
• Shaman (me)

Totems:

• Grace of Air Totem (sometimes twisted with Windfury for the Warrior and Rogue, but 90% GoA)
• Strength of Earth Totem
• Searing Totem
• Healing Stream Totem

Nalorakk

Just dps like mad and don’t pull aggro.

Notes:

• Heroism at about 35% health left on boss
• My miss rate is better this time at about 13%
• Crit rate (white damage): 38%
• Windfury rate: 29%
• Fire resist rate: over 20% (looks like Nalorakk resists fire a fair bit, hmmm if my spell hit was only better)

Akil’zon

I love, love this boss. Very melee friendly! Just dps like mad and don’t pull aggro.

Notes:

• Heroism at about 40% health left on boss
• Nature Resistance Totem used instead of Grace of Air /Windfury. Could have been higher dps!
• My miss rate: 15.6%
• Crit rate (white damage): 35%
• Windfury rate: 30%
• Earth Shock resist rate: over 23% (looks like Akil’zon resists a fair bit of nature damage, hmmm better spell hit will help, but will effect other melee factors)

Halazzi

Still have a few improvements to make on this boss. Seems like the Corrupted Lightning totem does get in my way of making more dps on the boss, but lasting the entire encounter was more important tonight. I even took a sabre-lash or two. Yuck!

Notes:

• Heroism at about 30% health left on boss
• My miss rate: 15%
• Crit rate (white damage): 34%
• Windfury rate: 29%
• Fire resist rate: over 30% (looks like Halazzi resists heaps of fire damage, hmmm)

Jan’alai

My first ever kill of this boss, heck…. it’s my first ever SEEING this boss. He can be a pain, but I just prioritize my targets for bird adds first, Jan’alai 2nd after the bird adds are down.

Notes:

• Stay alive!
• Heroism at about 30% health left on boss
• My miss rate: 20% ouch! Parries ftl!
• Crit rate (white damage): 27%
• Windfury rate: 25% boo!

Hex Lord Malacrass

I pulled on my PVP gear for stamina buffs. All sorts of any kinds of stamina increases so we can all survive the Spirit Bolts (Shadow) ability from the Hex Lord. Made sure I was topped up in health just before the Spirit Bolts came blasting in.

Notes:

• Heroism at about 25% health left on boss
• Group makeup was changed to Rogue, Warrior, Hunter, Hunter & me.
• My miss rate: 15.9%
• Crit rate (white damage): 38%
• Windfury rate: 31%

Add’l details on his abilities on this fight:

We packed up and held Zul’jin for tomorrow.

We were a bit tired and wanted to try Zul’jin with full rested XP, so we’ll try him tomorrow night. Note: this dungeon will reset in 1 day 3 hrs!

After a few silly wipes to warm us up to Kael’thas, we had a couple of good attempts (#7 and #8). Things definitely get better when the weapons are controlled and downed quickly in phase 2.

Group:

• Rogue
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Druid (feral)
• Shaman

Phase 1 Totems:

The only melee damage needed in this phase are vs. Lord Sanguinar and Master Engineer Telonicus.

• Tremor Totem
• Windfury Totem
• Mana Spring Totem
• Searing Totem

Phase 2 Totems:

Melee focus is on the Cosmic Infuser (mace), then Infinity Blades (dagger), Warp Slicer (sword), and finally Phaseshift Bulwark (shield).

• Windfury Totem
• Mana Spring Totem
• Magma Totem / FireElemental
• Strength of Earth Totem

Phase 3 Totems:

Run like heck, the sky is falling!

• Tremor Totem
• Windfury Totem
• Mana Spring Totem
• Searing Totem

Yeah, we made it to phase 4 on both of these good attempts, but didn’t last long with Capernian and Telonicus still running around. Not to mention, Kael’thas was nuking at will too.

Attempt #7 here:

Attempt #8 here:

My basic praises/gripes here are:

• It’s not a melee friendly fight (aren’t they all?).
• Ranged can basically contribute effectively to all phases
• I’m not doing nearly enough dps
• Heroism/Bloodlust on phase 2 is nice, but I would rather have it more towards the end of the fight (Phases 4 & 5). I know I might get Mind Controlled by Kael’thas after phase 3, but I always like to have it late in a fight for the “FINISH HIM!” Bloodlust dps frenzy. If you do get your Bloodlust/Heroism taken via a Mind Control, then Purge it from Kael’thas quickly! And Purge it from any adds from Phase 3.
• I like having melee targets assigned before hand so I don’t have to run around like a mad dog trying to dps something that will only contribute <5% vs. what ranged can do

So, I’m asking all my shaman brothers & sisters out there: what tips can you provide that will help me out vs. Kael’thas? I’m looking for looting weapons help, more dps help and anything ‘weird’ that you do to survive this long phased encounter.

Now that 2.4 patch information is coming out of the woodwork, sprouting flowers and green possibilities everywhere, the mindless farming of badges continues. Karazhan madness, exit stage left. From Moroes to Prince in two hours & with three shaman, it was as easy as training a pigeon.

Moroes

Ayep. Moroes was first up on the hit list. Pulled a respectable 946 dps and 2nd only to our always-raid-leading-hunter & hunter class leader, Wolfus.

Personal details vs. Moroes below. A few parried by Moroes, but not too bad 18.8% miss rate. I love that 50% Windfury crit rate. That rocks.

Attumen the Huntsman

Attumen next up and I pulled a lame 717 dps. #4 on the damage done chart. Must have been tired or something. A raw 20% base miss rate didn’t help either.

My personal details here & a lot of misses by yours truly. That’s crazy to have a melee 26.8% miss rate? I must be doing something wrong, but maybe just bad luck, but I probably need more armor reduction.

Maiden of Virtue

Maiden up next and another lackluster showing by yours truly. Only 754 dps and #3 ranking but it just seemed like I was stunned the whole fight. This and my %miss rate was *gulp* 35%! A 15% parry rate and 8% dodge rate leaves me with only 12% misses. Geez shaman, get behind her for pete’s sake.

Misses were bad enough, but 35.6% miss rate and it didn’t help that our tank can’t seem to stay in one place so I was forced to frontal attacks on Maiden. 15% parried = Yikes! 15% Windfury crit rate? Geez. It IS interesting to see how much Windfury can be parried. 20% parry rate vs. my Windfury plus the 5% dodges sure does limit my damage output.

Nightbane

Nightbane now and yep, I got Charred Earth near me every time except for 1 time Nightbane decided to throw one to the ranged people. I dislike this fight so much. How many ‘Blizzard-Don’t-Like-You-Melee-BURN!’ encounters do we face? Heaps of them, I tell you! Heaps.

Wound up running out of Charred Earth the whole time and guess who’s job it was to slam the skeletons? Yup, Mr. Enhancement Shaman. Why not just get a rogue to do it? Sheeesh. 21.5% miss rate.

Curator

Now! Finally for the fun melee fight. Downing Curator on his first Evocation is such a joy. I remember wiping to this guy a year ago, now he’s just easy-peasy. Yep, you saw it right. 1814 dps and #1 damage done overall.

36% white damage crit rate. A marginally low 19% miss rate. And see that 6506 max hit on a Windfury attack? Niiice.

Shade of Aran

I must have gotten a 2nd wind on that Curator fight, so I blasted up on Shade of Aran too. 1101 dps and #2 on the damage done.

2% parried, 13% miss rate are fantastic. 40% crit rates for white damage & Windfury are super as well.

Prince Malchezaar

Prince was last on our hit list. I was enfeebled a lot so I basically just sat back and watched the ranged dps him down. Pretty boring for melee if you ask me.

We’ve cleared Tempest Keep to Kael’thas. Bring on the wipe fest!

Any tips for an enhancement shaman during Kael’thas encounter? Send em my way via comment or email Asirae AT hotmaIL dot c0m.

Some lackluster presence from the raiders tonight as we downed attempted Lady Vashj. A heavy healer raid (4 x shaman, 5 x priest, 2 x paladin) does not bode well on Lady Vashj. Despite the obvious ‘less than desirable‘ raid mix, we had a few attempts on Lady Vashj, but did not make it anywhere clear in phase 3 so we tucked tail and ran. Ran all the way to Magtheridon.

Our best attempt on Lady Vashj. Overall, I was #2 on damage done to Lady Vashj, so that should tell you something was lacking from our hunters/rogues/dps’ers.

Group:

• Warrior (main tank)
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Warrior (fury)
• Shaman (me)

Totems:

• Grounding Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Searing Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

My details during the Vashj fight here:

We turned to Matheridon and turned the pit lord over on a BBQ spit. Not a bad turnout from yours truly with #3 damage done spot to the enhancement shaman!

Group:

• Warrior (main tank)
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Warrior (fury)
• Shaman (me)

Totems:

• Windfury Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Searing Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

My details here:

So, #2 dps on Vashj, and #3 dps on Magtheridon. Hmm!

More next week! Stay tuned.

Updated Feb 21, 2008 Added in more Patch 2.4 items including:

• Blade of Serration
• Shiv of Exsanguination

Exsanguination (also known colloquially as bleeding out) is the fatal process of total hypovolemia (blood loss). It is most commonly known as “bleeding to death”. The word itself originated from Latin: ex (“out of”) and sanguis (“blood”). Therefore the word literally means “out of blood”.

• Swift Blade of Uncertainty
• The Mutilator
• Vanir’s Left Fist of Brutality
• Vanir’s Left Fist of Savagery
• Bombardier’s Blade
• Vanir’s Right Fist of Brutality

Click here for the index.

As we fumbled around with Al’ar for a day or so, we got our act together for another lead up to Kael’thas Sunstrider. We’re working on him now, and boy-o-boy is that phase 3 a tough one. Here’s a review of my battle with Al’ar.
Group:

• Warrior (protection)
• Druid (feral)
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Shaman

Totems:

• Windfury & Grace of Air Totems
• Mana Spring Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

I also dropped Wrath of Air for the beginning of the fight so I could hurl better bolts of lightning at Al’ar. Before the Embers of Al’ar adds start coming, I just try to range damage the boss for a few moments before the melee hilarity begins. When the adds get to about 30% health, I run away from them and do more range lightning bolts so I don’t get punted from the death of the Embers by standing close to the adds.

This Al’ar battle I decided to use both Windfury & Grace of Air totems to show what happens when you twist totems. It’s easy and as long as you have plenty of mana regeneration (through Shamanistic Rage or Water Shield or both), it can be done during a long 10 minute fight. I do twist totems from time to time, but I wanted to record this fight and show you how it worked.

How to twist totems?

• Step 1: macro this and click it once at the beginning of the fight.

/castsequence reset=8 [combat] Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem

• Step 2: wait for a pulse so all the weapons of your party members get the weapon imbue (Windfury 5).
• Step 3: macro again to drop Grace of Air
• Step 4: count to 8 (repeat w/Step 1)

If you have Deadly Boss Mods addon, there is a nice timer to remind you to re-apply the Twist.

/castsequence reset=8 Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem
/dbm timer 00:08 Twist 

I managed to get 700 dps and ranked 8th in damage output. I need to find out what I can improve for next time.  So I read the stats report.

My summary of the fight stats below:

Post combat analysis key indicators:

• White damage: 39%
• White damage crit: 38%
• Windfury: 29%
• Windfury crit: 37%
• White Damage Miss rate: 22.7%

Overall, my output was mediocre and now I see that my miss rate was well above what I would normally like: 22.7% is a lot of misses. My +hit was a little over 100, so I can bump that up to +190 for the next round with Al’ar. Also, it seems my crit% is good, but I need more Attack Power. I hover around 2000 attack power, but I’ll need to gain more AP and less crit as we move into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.

And thanks to Ashuna for this clarification on my Miss %. There were some parried attacks from Al’ar, mostly because the Flame Patches were just behind the big bird, so I could only melee from the front area near his beak.  I was forced to fight this way until either the Flame Patches subsided or the tank re-positioned Al’ar to move so melee could attack from behind the tail-feathers.

See this pic below for the Overall miss % | Block % | Parry % | Dodge % rates.

Overall miss: 22.7%
Miss: 12%
Block: 0 %
Parry: 4%
Dodge: 5%

Judgement of Wisdom helped me get mana back so I could keep twisting totems for Windfury and Grace of Air.   Ok.  Fair enough, JoW 814 mana ain’t all that much, but it’s better than nothing.  Shamanistic Rage gave back the most w/ 9,920 mana, Mana Spring Totem next with 4,380 mana.

Totem Twisting & Buffs Summary

Unfortunately, one rogue in my group died a bit early on (49% presence during fight). Warriors just love Windfury. See the warrior here got heaps of extra Windfury attacks: 29! The feral druid only gained additional Agility and Unleashed Rage, but nothing from Windfury Totem.

All group members details in pic below:

Next up: more Kael’thas attempts. We are working on perfecting each phase, so it may take another week or two to get it right.

3 weeks and finally got her down. Phase 3 is *jump*, *hit*, *jump*, *hit*, *jump*, *hit*, *jump*, *hit*, *jump*, *hit*, … <repeat>.

Overall, the many wipes in the last 2 weeks we worked on Vashj prepared us for the survival in phase 3. My job was fairly simple, dps Vashj on phase 1, dps Naga in phase 2, dps Vashj in phase 3.

Group:

• Druid (feral) and main tank
• Warrior (fury)
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Shaman (me)

Totems (phase 1):

• Grounding Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Searing Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

Totems (phase 2):

• Windfury Totem
• Healing Stream Totem / Poison Cleansing Totem
• Searing Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

Totems (phase 3):

• Grounding Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Searing Totem / Fire Elemental
• Strength of Earth Totem

Ignoring the WWS/Combatlog bug of including Static Charge (I was tops with 4 Static Charges during the fight) with players dps, a quick summary:

• White melee miss rate: 15.4% (not bad)
• White melee crit rate: 31 % (it’s my own enhance shaman goal of 30% or better vs. Vashj)
• Windfury procs: 30% (WF crits 26%)
• Living Free Action potions saved me (and my close rooted neighbors)
• Heroism/Bloodlust at Vashj 20% life

Total totems dropped, buffs and debuffs listed here:

Loots:

• Helm of the Vanquished Hero
• Helm of the Vanquished Hero
• Runetotem’s Mantle
• Serpent Spine Longbow
• Vashj’s Vial Remnant

All in all, a notable event has passed us. Now, for the guild-breaker Kael’thas Sunstrider. Wish us luck!

Your friendly neighborhood enhancement shaman,

- Asirae

We are just on the verdge of getting Mount Hyjal attuned, and the patch 2.4 notes show us that Blizzard has used the nerf bat on attunement again.  No Eye attunement, you just get “Champion of the Naaru”.  No Black Temple attunement, you get the “Hand of A’dal” title.  A giant big “ha ha!” to all the people with the title.   Now anyone can run into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, so gather up your 25-pugs and get ready to wipe!

Getting less and less turnout from our raid healers, so we farmed up some content from both SSC and Zul’aman tonight.  In hopes of getting our great healers back into the swing of raiding, we downed bosses from Lurker Below to Morogrim in Serpentshrine Cavern then turned out and downed three bosses in Zul’Aman.

• Hydross @ 6th for total damage.  646 dps. blah!

• Morogrim @ 10th overall damage for 919 dps.  Mucho good, but AoE damage rules in this fight.

• Nalorakk  @ 2nd for damage output and 831 dps.

• Akil’zon @ #1 in damage output and 797 dps.

We’re going heavy on Lady Vashj and Kael’thas this week.  Stay tuned for more.

We traversed the endless drip of Serpentshrine Cavern in hopes of our 1st guild snake in a bag. Overall, this friendly neighborhood Shaman did ok with 7th on damage output & 784 dps*.

Group:

• Druid feral (MT) 21k health!
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Warrior (fury)
• Shaman (me)

Phase 1

During phase 1 I went crazy dps on Vashj and planted Grounding Totems in order to absorb the Phase 1 Totems targeting our main tank, a big butt bear druid with 21,400 health.

Phase 1 Totems:

• Grounding Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Searing Totem / Fire Elemental Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

Phase 2

I was on Naga dps duty during phase 2. Don’t be afraid to burn Heroism/Bloodlust during phase 2 as this is the diciest phase for the Vashj encounter. If your party gets any poisons from the Elementals, drop a Poison Cleansing Totem to counter it.

Phase 2 Totems:

• Grace of Air Totem \ Windfury
• Poison Cleansing Totem \ Healing Stream Totem
• Searing Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

Phase 3 

Phase 3 is similar to Phase 1, so return to Grounding Totems to eat the Shock Blasts. I’m really torn on Phase 3 because I want to drop a Nature Resistance Totem to counter the 99% of attacks that are Nature based in this phase, but the Grounding Totem is direly needed to survive the Shock Blasts. Possible Totem Twist needed here.

Phase 3 Totems:

• Grounding Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Searing Totem / Fire Elemental Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

We have consistently reached 13% health on Vashj on more than 2 attempts, so I am sure it will happen soon: Vashj will die.

*  One note on the Static Charge: Vashj you evil, evil water snake. How dare you root all melee and then Static Charge them all right after rooting? That’s just diabolical. I got 2 of those root-and-static-charge fiascos last night and it was not fun to blamed for 26% of the damage to the melee!

I like playing a shaman because ….

1. I’m not a rogue, not a paladin, not a warrior, not a druid, not a mage, not a hunter, not a warlock, and not a priest.  I played a hunter, a rogue and a priest in the pre-BC days, but I loved the Horde shaman most. Truly a Warcraft specifc class, not matched in other genres.
2. Despite nerf after nerf after nerf, the Shaman was still fun to play. Orc shamans were so….. so…. awesome! /y <<BLOODLUST>>!
3. Fast forward to Burning Crusade and I drifted to Alliance to experience Draenei and Nobundo’s teachings. Asirae was born and leveled up as enhancement, PVPing a lot and taking huge swings with Deep Thunder to one-shot most enemies.
4. After raiding started, quickly ramped up Resto healing role through Karazhan and got a bit bored with healing. Burning Crusade nerfed Priest class a bit especially with Healing Meters and slight bugs so many priests turned to Shaman for Chain Healing superiority especially 25 person raid healing. I lacked the desire to travel down this easy healing path despite how powerful it would make me & it would haunt my lust for battle in ways I cannot begin to imagine. I returned to the melee enhancement choice with wide grins of our rogues and warriors and have been enjoying WoW ever since.
5. My record dps on a TK boss: 1626 vs. Solarian.
6. My record Windfury triple-crit vs. PVP player: 8172 damage vs. Undead Rogue. Stormherald and triple Windfury crits = rare damage spikes of merriment. He must have been extremely unlucky or no resilience gear; or both.
7. I love the damage dealing facets of this Horde class. As my brother in real life plays an awesome, gritty Paladin complete with tanking and healing skills, I come into play with melee dps and some healing too. We compliment each other pretty well, but haven’t had too much time in-game together lately (mostly because I currently live in an opposite timezone).
8. As rogues and fury warriors die around me, I can still heal myself or reincarnate and continue to fight on!
9. The addon Comix that throws up a “SPLAT!”, “Boom!”, or other Batman related combat splash gets crazy when my 45% crit rate starts kicking in. Wham! Swaap! Swish! Chop! Kapow! Klang! Krack!
10. Water walking
11. Ghost wolf dancing
12. Ghost wolf summons w/Summoning Stone
13. Frost Shock lvl 1
14. Totems

The endless drip of the Naga infested underground Serpentshrine Cavern.

Group:

• Rogue
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Warrior (fury)
• Shaman (me)

Totems:

• Windfury
• Healing Stream
• Strength of Earth
• Searing

We dove hard into SSC last night with the full intention of clearing all but Vashj.  We came up 1 boss short of our goal.  Three hours to clear all bosses except Morogrim Tidewalker and of course the cursed fembot, Vashj.

1st up: Hydross.  681 dps here for yours truly, it’s ok but I just don’t enjoy Hydross anymore.

2nd up: Lurker Below (even though I’ve lobbied hard to skip this boss because we just waste too much time killing him for less than legendary loot).  I just blast through the adds and /tickle Lurker when I get the chance. 713 dps.

Next up: Leotheras the Blind

With only 1 mage in our raid for polymorph duty, it was tricky to cc any groups with confidence.  Our one warlock did a fine job as usual to Seduce and cc other mobs as we worked our way to Leotheras.  934 dps. 

Last boss before the end of our 3 hour raid to SSC, the crowd pleasing Fathom-Lord Karathress. 

My job tonight ended as a pure dps class, because Fathom-Lord demands healing interruption duty by yours truly, so I didn’t get to dps a-go-go on the Fathom-Lord fight.  I only get to dps on the last part of the fight where it’s Fathom-Lord solo vs. 25 person raid.

 I went to Karazhan after the SSC raid to down 4 bosses and then I went to sleep, hard!

Pauldrons of Primal Fury

On a side note: I got my picture approved for Pauldrons of Primal Fury, I’m the 5th picture in the screenshots list of the shoulders.