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.

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.

Kael’thas Sunstrider | Woes of Phase 1 through 3

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.

Back to the Master’s Lair | Karazhan

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.