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?

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.

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.

Twisting Totems

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.

Vashj swims w/the fishes

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

SSC & Zul’Aman

 

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.

Vashj 13%

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.

12:26’24.968 Lady Vashj’s Shock Blast hits Grounding Totem for 8330 Nature damage

12:27’20.218 Lady Vashj’s Shock Blast hits Grounding Totem for 8385 Nature damage

12:33’15.203 Lady Vashj’s Shock Blast hits Grounding Totem for 10303 Nature damage

12:34’20.140 Lady Vashj’s Shock Blast hits Grounding Totem for 11525 Nature damage

12:34’50.343 Lady Vashj’s Shock Blast hits Grounding Totem for 11406 Nature damage

12:35’05.125 Lady Vashj’s Shock Blast hits Grounding Totem for 10504 Nature damage

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!

What I Like About Playing a Shaman

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