Almost Done Before Restarting

Still a little rough downing Heroic Sindragosa 25 but we got her on the third attempt. Picked up the Heroic Phylactery of the Nameless Lich. (Yay!) Excepting three Heroic Vanquisher's Marks of Sanctification and the ultra-elusive Professor's Bloodied Smock, Aenara now has all of the gear she's been eying. For now.

Surprise! Heroic Sindragosa

Was pleasantly surprised to get Heroic: The Frostwing Halls (10 player) done tonight. Faerune is in a casual guild that has few hardcore people in it, so our progress through Heroic encounters has been pretty difficult. Yet after an hour-and-a-half of face grinding we managed to down her on our last attempt for the night. If we can somehow pull the Heroic Putricide rabbit out of our collective hats, we might get some Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquishers before the expansion.

Having both raiding experiences does help me not take Aenara's progress for granted. For instance… tonight she cleared 10/12 of the heroic 25 encounters in two hours—all one-shots. The officers actually called it early to do the weekly raid so we'd have something to do tomorrow. Heh.

On a completely unrelated vanity note, I really love the Ninja DK on a Horseman's mount. Here she is waiting with Sindragosa circling and Peddlefeet keeping everyone company.

LFG Tool Success!

I have Aenara running around doing dailies when I get a whisper from someone named Rhialla asking if I wanted to do the Weekly. Took me completely by surprise because I'd queue'd up in the Raid Finder over two hours earlier. *snicker* Sadly I forgot to mark the Healer checkbox so I suppose I was lucky to get an invite at all. Was a bit rough as I out-geared the tank, Svennorsky, by a great deal and started pulling aggro around 80%.

It really isn't worth sitting in a city and enduring trade chat to find a raid yet I'm glad we got Anub'Rekhan Must Die! done. Aenara had 434 Frost Emblems and 188 Triumph Emblems so she doesn't really need any, but she only had 2304 emblems towards 2500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems. Sadly, when the quest was turned in, it didn't increment the count. Turns out rewards don't count as it's not looted. *sigh* Not sure I'll get that achievement since emblems will be going away next patch.

Wasn't So Dark

Finished up the Ulduar achievement run from two weeks ago. We only had to drop Yogg-Saron left—who I'd never seen let alone killed. Went through the exhaustive tactics writeup on the Wiki so I felt confident, though I still watched Cassette's and TankSpots ten-man videos. Took four attempts with twenty-two people yet it felt a lot smoother than General Vezax.

Since Aenara hasn't done much Ulduar there was quite a number of achievements that scrolled by:

• Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player)
• One Light in the Darkness (25 player)
• Two Lights in the Darkness (25 player)
• Three Lights in the Darkness (25 player)
• The Descent into Madness (25 player)
• The Secrets of Ulduar (25 player)

Actually would have used Show of Faith for healing yet a pally beat me out. Took home Soulscribe as a memento. Of course the real pay off was the Ironbound Proto-Drake. I'm finding I like it more than the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher.

Meow Someday

Aenara continues to gather Feral gear. In this lockout she picked up Frostbitten Fur Boots along with Aldriana's Gloves of Secrecy. With Cataclysm so close I'm not sure I'll really get a chance to use any of it. *sigh*

More Heroic 10'ing

Martini had a fairly good night in Heroic ICC10. Got through the lower citadel without much trouble. We decided to head over to The Plagueworks where both Festergut and Rotface went down on our first attempts. The Malleable Goo on Fester was only an annoyance with proper positioning and raid awareness. The Vile Gas addition to Rotface was dealt with relatively easy. At least it seemed since I wasn't healing. *snicker*

Spent over an hour on Blood Prince Council to no avail. Took a while to get fucking Kinetic Bombs under control then we still had positioning problems. There's more to do this week for sure.

Picked up a few things this run: Shawl of Nerubian Silk, Abracadaver, and Taldron's Short-Sighted Helm. The cloak and the helm are offspec "in-case" side grades, but it appears I'll actually be using the Heroic Abracadaver. The fucking Spirit on Frozen Bonespike itemizes poorly enough for me to not use it with Bulwark of Smouldering Steel—for now. Shaman using a staff—horrible. Really ready for a Royal Scepter of Terenas II or a Tel'thas, Dagger of the Blood King. *sigh*

Back Into the Thick of It

So Martini's GM informed me last night that he needs me back in Enhancement since our regular Death Knight population has dwindled to zero. It always annoys me how he prioritizes melee DPS over the casters. Currently we don't have a Demonology Warlock for Demonic Pact, yet he hasn't asked our sole regular Lock to change from Destruction.

At the moment I can't make a compelling argument to retain my favored spec since another Elemental Shaman joined. He appears to know what he's doing plus attends regularly. Though I am doing more DPS, it's only a gear thing. Plus my Enhancement offset is nearly as good as my Elemental. So it looks like I'll be at Rogue and DK elbows again with Spirit Wolves howling.

It's been months since I've dusted off the melee gear or even thought about the Enhancement rotation… errr, priority system. Figured I needed to visit Elitist Jerks for some review. I'd noticed an Enhancement Shaman in the Druid's guild, Jinnä, do some impressive DPS that involved a lot more Fire Nova than I remembered mine ever showing.

Instead of heading directly to the Think Tank summary I started in the Class Mechanics forum where I found an interesting thread, [Enhancement] BiS gear and set-up discussion (3.3 and onward). The first thing that startled me was seeing this ability priority order:

1. Maelstrom Weapon x 5 stacks - Lightning Bolt
2. Flame Shock
3. Stormstrike if debuff not active
4. Lightning Shield if not active
5. Fire Elemental
6. Magma Totem if not active
7. Spirit Wolves
8. Shamanistic Rage
9. Earthshock
10. Stormstrike
11. Lava Lash
12. Fire Nova
13. Magma Totem
14. Lightning Shield

Good God. I have to state for the record that this kind of shit is what makes me hate Enhancement. Look at all of these fucking abilities to monitor—busy, busy, busy! Further, they have to be kept readily accessible on your bars since you have to maximize your GCD use. And naturally all this has to be done while maintaining raid awareness so you are not dying from standing in the proverbial fire. *sigh*

Whining aside, I was very surprised to see Flame Shock at the number two spot. Then I noticed that the gear list included the "caster" trinket (Bizuri's Totem of Shattered Ice). I'd heard of this relic being used by healers but for some reason it surprised me to see it on melee. Haste seems to be the sweet stat on all upper-geared classes regardless of role or talent specialization anymore. While I really like have my attack power break 11k with Totem of the Avalanche, I suppose I could give this a shot.

The talent build on this thread was also a little disconcerting. Glyph of Feral Spirit and Glyph of Stormstrike were familiar. I'd laughed the Glyph of Flame Shock out of Elemental use many patches ago so seeing it here made me laugh out loud. Jinnä is using Glyph of Fire Nova so I'm going to have to keep an eye on this choice. I may try to sneak in Glyph of Lava Lash or Glyph of Windfury Weapon for old time's sake.

As for the actual talents, I see extreme pains were taken at avoiding any mana conservation. Namely Elemental Focus, Shamanistic Focus, and Improved Stormstrike were not chosen. This is where I see reality clashing with theory. While Shamanistic Rage makes filling up a mana bar trivial at my gear level, it does still require something to smack for seven to ten seconds. Boss encounters don't always allow that. Yet the above priority list will be making damn sure I'm using my mana.

So while I agree with all three points in Improved Shields, I don't feel that a human dealing with latency can really make use of one point in Reverberation. Where to put this stray point? Elemental Focus and Shamanistic Focus are too specific. I considered Ancestral Knowledge for extra mana, Elemental Warding for slight damage reduction, or Totemic Focus since I'm always dropping totems. But Initially I'm going with Improved Stormstrike because it will have the most consistent use and provides the most generalized return.

I would like to peruse the standard summary in the Think Tank, but I'm currently getting a "502 Bad Gateway" error trying to access it. That's fine. It's going to take me an hour just to respec and figure out my bag space. Carrying around three entire sets of gear is difficult for a pack-rat like me. *snicker* Probably going to have to re-gem everything once I get Rawr to review things. *sigh*

Heroically Forward

It's one week since Martini got Kingslayer and tonight she got Heroic: Storming the Citadel (10 player) out of the way. Lord Marrowgar was downed second attempt and Lady Deathwhisper died first time. Lootship we'd all done before but Deathbringer Saurfang proved more challenging. We downed him on our third attempt but it took some discussion and finesse. Good times!

About Damn Time

Martini is finally a Kingslayer!