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Crown wrote:Nope. Enh/Resto got nerf'd in 3.0 when the did away with the sexy +hit in resto. Enh/Ele is the way to go now, although not sure if I'd go that far into Elemental to be honest.

I'm full elemental - which really makes me a caster DPS but I've had very good success with it. In addition to being useful in raids, it's also a good choice for leveling, questing, and soloing.

Crown wrote:

Ender wrote:Since far and away most of my damage comes from melee, and I have a very limited mana pool, why on Azeroth would I want to throw that towards spells I rarely use instead of healing me so I can keep beating things over the head? I think I'll stick with enh/resto

Nope. Enh/Resto got nerf'd in 3.0 when the did away with the sexy +hit in resto. Enh/Ele is the way to go now, although not sure if I'd go that far into Elemental to be honest. And you're wrong about one thing; that while yes most of your damage is melee ... it should not be confused with WHITE damage, your auto attacks are pathentic and unless some other things changed in 3.0, a Flame Shock/Earth Shock rotation provided better DPS than auto attack (which is why you should go into Elemental now).

Additionally, in group play, if you need to save your mana pool for healing as a DPS shaman you're doing something wrong.

Broomstick wrote:

Crown wrote:Nope. Enh/Resto got nerf'd in 3.0 when the did away with the sexy +hit in resto. Enh/Ele is the way to go now, although not sure if I'd go that far into Elemental to be honest.

I'm full elemental - which really makes me a caster DPS but I've had very good success with it. In addition to being useful in raids, it's also a good choice for leveling, questing, and soloing.

No you misunderstood. I'm discussing which tree an Enhancement Shaman should put spare points into after picking up the 'must have' talents in Enhancement. Before 3.0 it used to be Restoration as it provided an amazing amount of +hit (around 9% IIRC) which basically meant that an Enhancement Shaman would ignore +hit as a stat in end game and just focus on stacking Strength/Attack Power and it really made them monsters in raids. Now that the +hit got nerfed in 3.0, an Enhancement Shaman would be better off putting his spare points in Elemental to increase his Shock/Spell DPS.

Elemental Shamans are another kettle of fish (and I think need a slight buff to be honest).

GuppyShark wrote:

Crown wrote:Nope. Enh/Resto got nerf'd in 3.0 when the did away with the sexy +hit in resto. Enh/Ele is the way to go now, although not sure if I'd go that far into Elemental to be honest. And you're wrong about one thing; that while yes most of your damage is melee ... it should not be confused with WHITE damage, your auto attacks are pathentic and unless some other things changed in 3.0, a Flame Shock/Earth Shock rotation provided better DPS than auto attack (which is why you should go into Elemental now).

Additionally, in group play, if you need to save your mana pool for healing as a DPS shaman you're doing something wrong.

Or your healers are. Also, you don't need it in solo play either;

• Mental Quickness
• Maelstrom Weapon
• Feral Spirit

All these working together and all the +AP talents/trinkets/racials meant my Enhancemet shammy solo'd all the group quests in Nagrand except Durn, Cho'war & Ring of Blood.

Crown wrote:No you misunderstood. I'm discussing which tree an Enhancement Shaman should put spare points into after picking up the 'must have' talents in Enhancement. Before 3.0 it used to be Restoration as it provided an amazing amount of +hit (around 9% IIRC) which basically meant that an Enhancement Shaman would ignore +hit as a stat in end game and just focus on stacking Strength/Attack Power and it really made them monsters in raids. Now that the +hit got nerfed in 3.0, an Enhancement Shaman would be better off putting his spare points in Elemental to increase his Shock/Spell DPS.

Oh, OK, now I get what you're saying!

Elemental Shamans are another kettle of fish (and I think need a slight buff to be honest).

I'm always willing to be more powerful!

Although we did get a nice boost recently - flame shock/lava burst has now become my most used combo attack and the pushback is nice (if you're careful with it - it can get you into trouble). Mail wearing ranged DPS isn't a bad thing at all. The "spellpower" thing was sort of annoying at first, but it makes it much better for me to back-up heal when called for, or at least that's my opinion. I don't care to play a dedicated healer at all, but I do find being able to throw out a heal is a very handy talent at times.

WOTLK doesn't come with game time? Is Bliz fucking serious? Fourty dollars for content that I even reach yet, and there is no game time included?

I'm really beginning to like raiding, Naxx 10 man is a bit like Kara though, but with some thoroughly hard bosses that'll tax a healer (Patchwerk, Thaddius, Four Horsemen) and some fun fights really. Odd thing is 10man can actually be harder since it calls for a much stricter raid composition and much more attention.

25mans are quite fun, up to Four Horsemen on that right now, held back by a lack of healers, but my guild has always had that problem, even back into TBC we always had less healers than we needed. Thaddius 25man is probably the most fun fight to do as DPS (as I had to do it, since you can only take 4-5 healers and the rest are all DPS, so i went off and went moonkin as one of the few healers with decent DPS gear). Spanking out 13-15k starfires due to a 120% damage debuff is so fun, I can see why DPS is so much fun (i'm a healer at heart, but its nice to see big numbers sometimes).

Sartharion is quite a challenging fight as well, did it 10man with 1 drake up and that was bloody hard, but we're gonna keep trying to do it that way and add more drakes, trying it with 1 drake up after xmas on 25man to see if we can do it.

Malygos is just insane right now. For a 10man, the only way you're doing it is taking 3 COH priests as healer, maybe 1 resto druid and 2 COH priests. Its just constant aoe damage for most of the fight, and hopefully the coh/wg nerf will make this fight slightly more bearable.

Don't know about the rest of the world, but on European servers we're getting the following log-in message:

We've noticed an increase in the amount of compromised accounts this holiday season.

Guess goldfarming and powerlevelling are on the rise! And there's still enough idiots that give their passwords away!

I just find it sad that, after waiting so long for new content, a lot of people are burning through it (or paying for someone else to do it). What's up with them? Miss being back at the point where they can whine some more about the lack of content?

LordOskuro wrote:Don't know about the rest of the world, but on European servers we're getting the following log-in message:

We've noticed an increase in the amount of compromised accounts this holiday season.

Guess goldfarming and powerlevelling are on the rise! And there's still enough idiots that give their passwords away!

I just find it sad that, after waiting so long for new content, a lot of people are burning through it (or paying for someone else to do it). What's up with them? Miss being back at the point where they can whine some more about the lack of content?

probably those who abbandoned WoW soon after TBC came live but came back for WotLK, I wouldn't be supriced if many of those though getting Gold is still extremly hard.

Naw, I think it's just laziness. And stupidity. Seriously, it's stupid and lazy to buy a game then pay someone else to play it for you!

Broomstick..... what about grinding mats?:D

heh. Had a good duel today against a priest. I usually play a priest. So I have a fine respect for their power and a good idea of the tactics to use when you play one. This guy, not so much, but still not bad. I hit him with a windshock to disrupt his casting, finished getting my totems out, and took a swing at him. I realized I still had windfury as my charm instead of rockbiter and thought I was done. Nope - I one shot the guy hitting for almost 1100 damage. I managed to not only proc the charm, but crit at the same time. So all three were north of 360 points of damage. Against a mid 30s cloth wearer. Proverbial 2 hit fight - I hit you, you hit the ground.

PainRack wrote:Broomstick..... what about grinding mats?:D

How is that different than grinding instances for a piece of armor? Or grinding dailies for gold?

I realize grinding can be a pain, but if it's really ruining the game for you to the point you're paying someone else to play for you maybe you need a different game.

Broomstick wrote:

PainRack wrote:Broomstick..... what about grinding mats?:D

How is that different than grinding instances for a piece of armor? Or grinding dailies for gold?

I realize grinding can be a pain, but if it's really ruining the game for you to the point you're paying someone else to play for you maybe you need a different game.

So you never buy anything off the AH then? Because I guarantee that stuff is the result of someone else's grinding. And you are paying for it.

It's kinda fun to being a tank when all you need is to hold intial aggro and watch decked out DPS rape the mobs. Though doing heroics again and again and again for an alt is a tad boring, especially when you do not see your drop for...the I dunno, after a couple of weeks of seeing every heroic constantly I do not care which it is.

Got enough badges though. Maybe I'll buy an orb or fifty.

Ender wrote:

Broomstick wrote:

PainRack wrote:Broomstick..... what about grinding mats?:D

How is that different than grinding instances for a piece of armor? Or grinding dailies for gold?

I realize grinding can be a pain, but if it's really ruining the game for you to the point you're paying someone else to play for you maybe you need a different game.

So you never buy anything off the AH then? Because I guarantee that stuff is the result of someone else's grinding. And you are paying for it.

I both grind and buy -- the point being I would never pay someone to play the game for me. That's just... stupid. We were talking about buying gold, not grinding for it.

Ender wrote:

Broomstick wrote:

PainRack wrote:Broomstick..... what about grinding mats?:D

How is that different than grinding instances for a piece of armor? Or grinding dailies for gold?

I realize grinding can be a pain, but if it's really ruining the game for you to the point you're paying someone else to play for you maybe you need a different game.

So you never buy anything off the AH then? Because I guarantee that stuff is the result of someone else's grinding. And you are paying for it.

I have to agree with broomstick here, even when I played Holy Pally (worse class/spec for grinding bar none)
I never thought of actually buying gold for anything (and yes I've used AH (I actually spent something like 3k gold for an epic mace when TBC came (both for mat to lvl my BS and to get mats for the mace) and I still had to call for a favor from a friend (who has happy to help me though))).

oh being miner I tended to get loads of primal earth (and now crystalized earth) which I put either to Guild Bank or AH.

I've always been kinda lucky in having a few high level characters with crafting professions, since it means that when an arena season rolls around, or when a new expansion comes out and everyone is gearing up I can really make some money.

For example with Season 5 just come out, i've been selling the epic threads from tailoring for 300-400 gold a pop, leatherworking leg patchs for about the same.

But the real money maker has been Inscription. God bless Blizzard for bringing in the Nobles Deck. 1300-1400 gold, per card on the AH, and thanks to people not being stupid and undercutting its stayed up there.

Been grinding away the heroics as well. 9 more emblems until I get a chest piece.

Is it just me ( or the bad pulls done by the tank), or is H AN a lot more difficult than most other heroics? It's always the mobs right before the 1st boss that slows us down. We go after the one spider that charges the cloth guys first, but somehow they end up dying. On bad days, its a total wipe.

Minischoles wrote:I've always been kinda lucky in having a few high level characters with crafting professions, since it means that when an arena season rolls around, or when a new expansion comes out and everyone is gearing up I can really make some money.

For example with Season 5 just come out, i've been selling the epic threads from tailoring for 300-400 gold a pop, leatherworking leg patchs for about the same.

But the real money maker has been Inscription. God bless Blizzard for bringing in the Nobles Deck. 1300-1400 gold, per card on the AH, and thanks to people not being stupid and undercutting its stayed up there.

meh, I just went skinning/mining. It is a license to print gold. Frankly I consider anyone who is leveling who has not taken skinning to be stupid - you are killing the mobs anyway, just skin them afterwards and sell it for way more cash.

SpacedTeddyBear wrote:Been grinding away the heroics as well. 9 more emblems until I get a chest piece.

Is it just me ( or the bad pulls done by the tank), or is H AN a lot more difficult than most other heroics? It's always the mobs right before the 1st boss that slows us down. We go after the one spider that charges the cloth guys first, but somehow they end up dying. On bad days, its a total wipe.

The mobs just before the first boss are buggy as hell, something to do with the way they were designed to fit inside an achievement can make that first set of pulls a massive wipefest that just nukes through healers like theres no tomorrow. Very annoying

meh, I just went skinning/mining. It is a license to print gold. Frankly I consider anyone who is leveling who has not taken skinning to be stupid - you are killing the mobs anyway, just skin them afterwards and sell it for way more cash.

Yeah i always take skinning on my leveling chars, as you said a lot of quests and grinding your doing is on mobs that you can skin anyways, you may as well take a profession that can compliment that. I generally start to go towards crafting professions towards level 60 (now level 70) when the crafted gear is really useful for leveling with and you can start to get some nice stuff.

SpacedTeddyBear wrote:Been grinding away the heroics as well. 9 more emblems until I get a chest piece.

Is it just me ( or the bad pulls done by the tank), or is H AN a lot more difficult than most other heroics? It's always the mobs right before the 1st boss that slows us down. We go after the one spider that charges the cloth guys first, but somehow they end up dying. On bad days, its a total wipe.

It's because it's a scripted event, and a lot of people don't realise this. Once you start the first pull, the other 3 packs follow on a timer, and you can't choose which ones, but because they usually all start from the left people think they're pulling the mobs. This is nonsense.

Also - completely randomly - there will be 'Skirmisher' mobs in the packs. Sometimes you'll have 1 in 4 packs and other times 3 in 4 packs, it's a complete random spawn, and the annoying thing is; after 10secs of them being aggroed they enrage, target a party member at random and go to town on them, being immune to everything and anything including taunt and they can literally 1 shot cloth. A lot of tanks don't know this yet, so they don't think to put them as number 1 kill target in a pull/wave and this will lead to many, many, wipes.

Overall, I avoid it on Heroics. The AoE poison ticks for +1.5K and frankly only a Shaman healer is really equiped to deal with it without blowing a stack of mana and precious GCDs.

Ender wrote:heh. Had a good duel today against a priest. I usually play a priest. So I have a fine respect for their power and a good idea of the tactics to use when you play one. This guy, not so much, but still not bad. I hit him with a windshock to disrupt his casting, finished getting my totems out, and took a swing at him. I realized I still had windfury as my charm instead of rockbiter and thought I was done. Nope - I one shot the guy hitting for almost 1100 damage. I managed to not only proc the charm, but crit at the same time. So all three were north of 360 points of damage. Against a mid 30s cloth wearer. Proverbial 2 hit fight - I hit you, you hit the ground.

Not to be a stick-in-the-mud, but congratulations! You've just mastered Enhancement PvP! Attack and pray for a WF proc. It's such a strong ability that Blizzard have given up on even attempting to balance Enhancement PvP. And the sad part is; outside of one shotting a Warlock, you'll only really be able to steam roll Priests. Every other class has a million and one ways to keep you either locked down with CC, or snared and way out of reach.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my Shaman I really do, and when WF procs and crits, PLATE buckles under my onslaught, but when it doesn't ...

Crown wrote:Also - completely randomly - there will be 'Skirmisher' mobs in the packs. Sometimes you'll have 1 in 4 packs and other times 3 in 4 packs, it's a complete random spawn, and the annoying thing is; after 10secs of them being aggroed they enrage, target a party member at random and go to town on them, being immune to everything and anything including taunt and they can literally 1 shot cloth. A lot of tanks don't know this yet, so they don't think to put them as number 1 kill target in a pull/wave and this will lead to many, many, wipes.

Enrages can be removed. I have used Shiv and Anaesthetic Poison to remove it on these pulls.

Broomstick wrote:

PainRack wrote:Broomstick..... what about grinding mats?:D

How is that different than grinding instances for a piece of armor? Or grinding dailies for gold?

I realize grinding can be a pain, but if it's really ruining the game for you to the point you're paying someone else to play for you maybe you need a different game.

To be honest... I gladly pay someone to play for me if it means he can grind up 100 Primal Earth and etc.

Crown wrote:Also - completely randomly - there will be 'Skirmisher' mobs in the packs. Sometimes you'll have 1 in 4 packs and other times 3 in 4 packs, it's a complete random spawn, and the annoying thing is; after 10secs of them being aggroed they enrage, target a party member at random and go to town on them, being immune to everything and anything including taunt and they can literally 1 shot cloth. A lot of tanks don't know this yet, so they don't think to put them as number 1 kill target in a pull/wave and this will lead to many, many, wipes.

I tell every PuG I am in, kill them first. I can hold the others .

In Guild runs they already know. Last thing I need is my healer die as I'm getting 2-3K hits wailing upon me.

Overall, I avoid it on Heroics. The AoE poison ticks for +1.5K and frankly only a Shaman healer is really equiped to deal with it without blowing a stack of mana and precious GCDs.

It's nasty, but the tank needs to learn to move. I've run with every type of healer, and the tank needs to use their happy "oh shit" buttons if too much poison and not running. That and it offers one of the BEST tanking trinkets until end game, and then some.

Crown wrote:

Ender wrote:heh. Had a good duel today against a priest. I usually play a priest. So I have a fine respect for their power and a good idea of the tactics to use when you play one. This guy, not so much, but still not bad. I hit him with a windshock to disrupt his casting, finished getting my totems out, and took a swing at him. I realized I still had windfury as my charm instead of rockbiter and thought I was done. Nope - I one shot the guy hitting for almost 1100 damage. I managed to not only proc the charm, but crit at the same time. So all three were north of 360 points of damage. Against a mid 30s cloth wearer. Proverbial 2 hit fight - I hit you, you hit the ground.

Not to be a stick-in-the-mud, but congratulations! You've just mastered Enhancement PvP! Attack and pray for a WF proc. It's such a strong ability that Blizzard have given up on even attempting to balance Enhancement PvP. And the sad part is; outside of one shotting a Warlock, you'll only really be able to steam roll Priests. Every other class has a million and one ways to keep you either locked down with CC, or snared and way out of reach.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my Shaman I really do, and when WF procs and crits, PLATE buckles under my onslaught, but when it doesn't ...

Yeah, it's sad for the Enchancement Shammy. Before twinking(and then the Shadow Priest or Rogue is supreme...a fully geared either is a monstrous force in the 29/39 bracket, with Rogues being 19 bracket) the enchancement is nice only when procced. And later on? Oh I still laugh when I take my DK and see a Shammy BG or arena. Only Warlock these days are a funnier sight.

Somewhere Blizz needs to give the Shaman some form of real CC or slowing(other then Frost Shock, which the range is pitiful). I mean Shamans fall before solo warriors, let alone a retadin or DK.

I must say that Wintergrasp is the first bit of PvP that I found enjoyable for it's own sake, rather than something I tolerate to get to something I want. I run the other BGs for tokens so I can get those PvP racial mounts (not sure out SotA yet, my only experience with them so far has been "You have joined the battle!" 2 seconds later "Alliance wins!"), but the pitched madness of the battle for the keep, both attacking and defending, has been fantastic. I think I will continue to play that one, even tho I will likely never buy a scrap of PvP gear.