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.

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

So I was talking with some Draenei in Ironforge the other day about how the Guild was progressing and they laughed at me and said “it’s nawt dat hard, missy, jus dps-a-go-go”. I slinked back to the Outlands to see what was shaking out & low and behold… Tempest Keep tonight. Praise Farseer Nobundo!

Now that I’ve mentioned ‘Farseer’, that got me to thinking about the Hero Class in Wrath of the Lich King expansion. You know the Death Knight will not be the only Hero Class, Blizzard always tries to ‘balance’ things and only 1 or 2 hero classes will just not be equal to all the hardcore altaholics out there, so I wanted to write down my thoughts on Wrath of the Lich King especially focusing on Hero Classes. Since there will be some siege warfare in the next expansion, I’ve tried to give some mass units control to the Hero Classes. Here’s a list of possible Hero Classes derived from the base class (ordered by the most likely to I-really-can’t-decide).

My fear is that too many players will charge into Hero Classes and it will end up as a world wide DOTA.

Now back to raiding. The following week we are back in Tempest Keep, locking down the farmable stuff. Solarian wants to chat with us, but we only manage to excite the mage. I myself like this fight a lot, it’s not hard as long as the healers do their job, the Paladin tanks do theirs and people run away quickly when they get Wrath’d by the Astromancer. Piece of cake.

My party:

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

Totems:

• Windfury Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Fire Nova Totem (for Agents)
• Searing Totem
• Tremor Totem (for last stage of fight vs. Solarian the Voidwalker)
• Fire Elemental Totem (for Agents)

A very respectable #6 on total damage. My Dragonstrike is finally paying off.

Buffs gained in battle:

• Shamanistic Rage (Mana) 10,987
• Judgement of Wisdom (Mana) 7,770
• Water Shield (Mana) 610
• Drums of Restoration (Mana) 600
• Focused 35
• Flurry 25
• Elemental Strength 13
• Unleashed Rage 11
• Haste 6
• Lust for Battle 4
• Lightning Speed 4
• Leader of the Pack 4
• Drums of Battle 2
• Rejuvenation 1
• Lifebloom 1
• Heroism 1
• Greater Blessing of Salvation 1

1st try in Zul’Aman with my guild.  I came late to the party, but they had 1-shotted the birdy boss, bear boss gave troubles but ended up with a dirt nap.  Lynx boss downed too.  Walked to the next event area with the raid only to find heaps of trouble and late night fatigue setting in.

Raiders:

• Prot Warrior
• Feral Druid  / then subbed in Prot Warrior
• Holy Priest
• Holy Paladin
• Holy Paladin
• Mage
• Rogue / then subbed in Shaman (me!)
• Hunter
• Hunter
• Warlock

My 5 player party: Hunter, Hunter, Warrior, Warlock & myself (blue players above are in my group).  So, my buffs were mostly for the hunters.  GoA, Strength totem and Mana Spring totem for the warlock in my party.  No rogues to kick, so I Earth Shocked the Troll mages when their castbars started to fill.

Earth Elemental - I did pop Earth Elemental totem at one point and it did a fine job of holding a loose Troll.  I never saw if the healers were healing my Earth Elemental, but that could have helped too.  I was surprised how well little Rocky did considering the Trolls of Zul’Aman.   

Lots of places to Ghost Wolf around and mount up for.  Sometimes, we’ll just all mount up and charge into a group so we can stun lock/slow the scouts and therefore stop them from calling for backup.  Troll adds are almost as bad as Murlocs.

Troll Scouts - The troll scouts run better than murlocs with an iritable bladder!  Don’t let them run to bang on the drums.  The drums summon more trolls to beat you down with.  Ouch wipe fest!  Frawst-Shawk works pretty well on the troll scouts, but beware of any adds the scout summons because any dps on the scout will bring the adds to you!  Better to have a warrior charge/hammy the scout as well as hunter concussion shot the scout too.  Mages trying to slow the scout will end up with heaps of unwanted aggro when adds come in.

Spell Steal - One nifty trick our mage Druex found out is that the troll fire-mages throw up a buff on themselves for instant casting.  Yes, you guessed it.  Druex the mage stole that buff and made it his own.  Instant casting mage spells are sooooo nifty.

Overall, ZA is about Crowd Control and swift execution.

Drops tonight were:

Pauldrons of Primal Fury

Spaulders of the Advocate

I’d love to post some stats and wws data, but I will get more next time.

To Brageth (fellow enhancement shaman) who wanted to know what to start out with gear wise pre-raiding: 

Gear Selection for Enhancement Shamans:

Try http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=7&l=70&b=0&s=-1&r=7&g=3&i=10&z=5&p=beu2hbfu1.8hecu2hedu1.4heeu1

Lootzor lets you compile lists of gear based on certain stat requirements the above link is from the Elitest Jerks thread and use stats from that assuming you will have Blessing of Kings (so 10 Str is better than 20 Attack Power).

Same as above but changes to ‘Low Raid’ gear, no idea what your gear is like but if the first link isn’t for you this one might be of more help:  http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=7&l=70&b=0&s=-1&r=7&g=3&i=10&z=3&p=beu2hbfu1.8hecu2hedu1.4heeu1  (Oh and ignore the weapons and armor, they’re only based on Stats and not dps)

You can of course refine the search for your own needs.  It’s linked under useful links at
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13297-enhance_shaman_collected_works_theorycraft_vol_i/

Credits: http://leaht.wordpress.com/, http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13297-enhance_shaman_collected_works_theorycraft_vol_i/, http://www.lootzor.com