Totem Healz

Signing off.

2010-03-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

Visit over at www.bubblewhore.blogspot.com for my shiny, better edited paladin blog that will actually have content on it!

Updates galore.

2010-02-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

I've been neglecting this blog the last month. My posts are badly written, and thrown out there without much thought. Now I might be okay with this if I truly didn't care about blogging, but I do, and I'd like to put out quality work. So, as of half an hour from when this post is published, I will be making a new, shinier, better edited blog, focused more on Paladin tanking, raiding, addons as tools instead of substitutes(I'll explain later), and the view of the Wow universe as seen by a slightly OCD, casual player.
-Also, expect profanity, lots and lots of lots and lots of profanity. I can't help myself.

Now that that tidbit is out of the way, I have a couple thing I'd like to throw out about the upcoming patch, 3.3.3. I'm not going to put links in about the changes, or bore you with details, there are other sites you can go to for that. What I want to put out there, is the opinions that I, as a tank, healer, and raider have about the changes being made.

The first change is the extra 15 minutes added to the Dungeon Deserter debuff, bringing it to a whopping idiotic total of 30 minutes. In case you didn't know, this change is to compensate for the lack of tanks in the LFD system. If we have to wait for 30 minutes to re-que after leaving an instance, we won't ever leave right? Fuck no, wrong. If I have to wait 30 minutes after leaving a group that's been wiping, then I'm just not going to use the LFD. I don't need frost emblems enough to suffer through pugs that warrant me leaving. This 30 minute lock out is like blizzard giving me a slap on the wrist and telling me to go sit in the corner. Fuck you Blizzard, I pay for this game, I should be able to do what I want, when I want, I don't need you telling me that I can't do an instance just because I didn't feel like wiping for an hour on a heroic.

The second, less in-game focused is something I hadn't thought about, but makes perfect sense. Class/Spec specific buffs, such as the shamans Elemental Oath, now functions like a Moonkins aura. Some people might think that this will give the classes effected a dps boost, but geared players of these classes get the proc so often that it won't effect their dps. What it will effect, is server latency. If I'm a shaman, and I proc Elemental Oath every second, or every second and a half, I'm sending that information to the server that often. The server has to recognize that I have the buff, and then it sends it to any addons I might have. By cutting down on the servers work load, it will ultimately reduce lag.

Well that's it for me. I should have the new, shiny blog up and running soon, and once I do, that's where all future posts will go. My last post on this blog will be the name of my other one, and me signing off of this. Shamans are great, but I like bubbles more than totems.

Needing what you want.

2010-02-23T12:47:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to need what you want? What I want is this: A clear, defined place that my guild is in. If we are casual, that's fine, but don't expect me to raid, because we are a "social" not raiding guild. But if we are a raiding guild, I expect to have a set schedule, a raid leader that is willing to really lead, even when people might not want to do what s/he says. Now, I say I want this, but honestly I feel like I need this. I hate being in a guild, expecting to raid, and then not raid. It's fucking annoying. I hate being in a social guild, that wants to raid, but doesn't know the first thing about it, again, fucking annoying.

This is a game, a game I would like to have fun in. A game shouldn't involve anything I don't want to do, because who has fun doing things they don't want to do? So a guild that knows what it wants is a want, but it's a need because if I don't have it, I'm doing something I don't want to do. And if I'm doing something I don't want to do, I'm not having fun, and why would I play Wow if I'm not having fun? Point set and match, I win, my point has been made.

P.S: My point in all of this was, someone needs to make a guild, or tell me about a guild that needs a pally tank and isn't full of idiots, raids at a decent time(EST goddamnit), and is able to kill content without a massive amount of wipes(# see prior statement:Not full of idiots).

Ugh. Just Ugh.

2010-02-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

I want to raid on my paladin. Not a crazy request right? I'm not asking for a lot. I just want to raid. So why the fuck is it so damn hard to find a guild that runs 10m raids, and isn't super balls to the wall hardcore about it? I don't want to raid five days a week, for 4 hours a day. Cut that in half, then sure, but come on. Is a casual 10m guild too much to ask for? Answer me that, because I am honestly confused on all of this.

/ugh
/pull out hair
/fuck 25m guilds

The loss of epicness, the gain of gear.

2010-02-09T08:42:00.000-08:00

Hitting level 80 on my paladin two days ago, I was cnoforonted with a problem of how to gear him up. Do I jump right into heroics without gear, or do I do some regular instances to get gear. My answer came by way of the other newly 80 paladin in our guild. He was running heroics with mainly quest blues, and some BoE epics he had bought. It got me thinking about whether I was more concerned with getting gear, or feeling like I'd accomplished something when I has in an instance. There is really only one answer to that. With the dumbed down style of just AoE killing packs of mobs, epics and badges being thrown at you like candy, you can't really get that epic feeling of killing a boss, or getting a certain piece of loot. I miss that feeling, and I know more than a few people that don't play as often, or at all anymore because of the loss of it. When you got an epic in classic Wow, you were king for a day. You had done you work, killed the boss that other people couldn't kill, and gotten this amazing piece of gear.You could go strut your stuff in some major cities, and just show people how awesome you were. In BC, epics were more available that Classic, but still took work to get. That epic ring you wanted at the end of a heroic? If you plan carefully and have a good group, it might only take you two hours to get there. Along comes wrath, and in some ways I love the new way gear is handled, in others I feel like it takes the fun out of doing heroics. I can go into regular ToC and get epics. I can buy epics, or get them from reputation. I love this because I can easily and quickly get geared for raids, as that is what a heroic is preparing you to do, but do I really feel epic after spamming consecrate and everything is dead? I applaud blizzard for making a way for people like me, that might not have the time to farm for gear, to get into raids without spending a year gearing up. But, I want that epic feeling again, it was what drew people to raiding.

Addon Highlight:TauntMaster and ForteXorcist

2010-01-28T16:52:00.000-08:00

I'm an addon whore. WHORE. I have four separate folders of wow, all with different UI packages/ custom designs, and each has at least 40-60 addons in each. I could go so in-depth into my addons you would think I knew the first thing about making one. So today, as my so apt-ly named shaman blog that is now almost exclusively about paladin tanking, is getting to be a chore, I thought I would start talking about something that could be called an addiction, or possibly a fetish, depending on how much you look into it.

I was recently listening to a little ol', not so known podcast(sarcasm) called "Inside Azeroth", when I discovered this nugget of tanking badassery. Known as TauntMaster, this addon makes you just that, the master of taunts. The way this addon works is thus, it provides a healbot-esqe looking unit frame indicator. Let's say I, as the tank, Initiate a pull. My bar will turn red, the traditional color of "Holy shit you bout to get smacked in the face". When a dps starts to get close to my threat, their bar will turn yellow, and when it attacks them, it will turn red. What this addon allows you to do is left/right click on that players bar to taunt off of them. If A group of mobs aggro the healer because they came up behind us or something, I can right click to AoE taunt them to me. This addon, despite this not really being it's use, has replaced grid as a group-health monitor. The other fantastic thing about this addon, is that it automatically recognizes your class, and the spells you have to use. There are pre-set bindings for my Hand of Protection and Divine Intervention, as well as both taunts.

The other addon I'd like to talk about is one many people know, ForteXorcist. This addon is kinda like a 5-in-1 addon, doing more things than you really need, but damn are those some nice things. It provides a cooldown bar, much like another addon called Coolline, but it is the spell timer that sets this addon apart in my opinion. You can track everything and anything with it. As a healer, I use it to track how many charges of earth shield my tank has, it will track the duration of buffs, like Tidal Force, and power-ups like Art of War on the paladin or redoubt. You can hide certain things, like replenishment, or avengers shield, and have certain things get bigger when they are under a certain time, all kinds on things.

These addons are fucking awesome. Addon are one my passion, I would love to be able to make them, but unfortunately I just can't be bothered to do things that other people benefit from.

Defensive, offensive, and on the fence...ive.

2010-01-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

Fair warning, I'm writing this at midnight on 2 hours of sleep the night before, abandon all hope ye who enter.

A few days ago, I posted about how I felt a tad off when I was tanking, how it didn't mesh like healing, or even dps'ing does. I boiled it down to misplaced bars, and lack of skill bucket then, and it's possible I was right on both fronts.
1.Keybindings: As a Protection Paladin my rotation consists on 5 spells, known as the 969 rotation. Previously, as in 3 days ago, I had all my 9 second CD's right next to each other, and then my 6 seconds would eventually be in the same boat. It's possible that this method works if you use an actual keyboard, but with my n52, it wasn't cutting it. Having 4 skills bound to the D-pad, and one to the little, barely a button button above it was difficult to say the least. So to solve that problem, I just moved things around and changed the actual bindings of my gaming pad. Now Divine Plea is my little pussy button, so it's close at hand, but not important or in the way.
2.Spells: Good God in Heaven, Divine Plea! Before this spell of orgasmic delight, I drank after every fucking pull, no matter the size or how much I actually did. Kill 1 non elite? Drink. AoE tank 4 fast attacking mobs that I blocked and dodged like a bitch? Drink. With Divine Plea, AoE 4 mobs, run to the next pack, accidentaly aggro another pack, who cares, I got all the mana in the world. Do I pull to fast now for you healers? Karma for healing those bumfuck dps that pulled entire rooms because I had to drink. Oh so poo on you mister healer, I could care less.

This just in Rallii, aggro queen extraordinare and super douche tank Will pull entire rooms unless you tell him not to, and if you pull off of him, then you suck. Jump off a cliff and die. That is all.

Raiding, it's like a retarded STD

2010-01-25T09:38:00.000-08:00

Most STD's are smart, they like to fuck your life in ways you would expect all things crotch related to do. Raiding is like that, but instead of your crotch, it likes to take friendships, and the ways things are, flip em onto their back, and rape them repeatedly. Too graphic? Didn't want that in your head when you read a wow blog? Go somewhere else, it's going to get worse. I haven't talked about this much in the last month or two, but I couldn't give two shits less about raiding at the moment. So what just Has to happen right about now? My friends, and fellow non-raiders get an offer from a co-worker on a different realm to come join their guild to raid. I have no problem with this, I really don't, my problem is in what I was asked to do. They wanted to level baby toons, from 1-80 on that server so that we could raid. Now, let me describe to you the feeling I have when I raid. If you've ever seen those horrid, disturbing pictures of tauren male on other race male fucking when looking for a WoW picture for whatever reason, I am the other race, and raiding is the Tauren, raping me over and over again. I said there was little to no chance of that ever happening, and that I'd rather play the level 66 I currently had then start over. They kept on fucking going. I got beat down with why it would be fun, why we should do it, how I was a good raider, blah blah shut the fuck up. Getting hounded like that reminds me of something in WoW, something we all have had done to us. Getting beat down by a virtual dick. Never had that done to you? Guess what, Epeen + PvP = You getting beat by a penis. After all this ranting, I do have a confession to make, my only raid experience if from that of a whack-a-mole, sit and wave my arms like a retarded infant, get blamed for deaths when stupid isn't curable, healing perspective. I might want to raid as a tank, I highly doubt it, but anything is possible. And as my little secret, the server that their friends is on is a pacific, while they are on central, and I'm on eastern. 3 hour time difference can suck my butthole.

Tanking: A loss of power.

2010-01-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

When in a 5-man instance, whether it's a level 80 heroic or maradoun, people often assume the the person with the sword and shield smacking away at mobs is the one in control. Incorrect Sir. As a tank, you have no power in the group, because in all honestly, all you are is a meat shield. Sure, there are some amazing meatshields, and they are great players most of the time, but who do they really control? The real head honcho, numero uno in a group is the healer for one reason only. If they so choose, you will die. I don't mean this as a healer lets you die in order to save someone they view as more important in a raid, this is purely they let you die because they feel like it, and there is nothing you can do. Seeing as I play a healer, and I know all those little things that people do to make me want to track them down and run them over with an SUV several times, I also know what not to do as a tank.

1. Don't Rush- Unless told too, stop after each pull to make sure your healer is okay on mana, or looting, or that their dog didn't just shit on the carpet. The healer of the group holds the power, so be nice, even if you don't like them.

2.Don't Stroke Your E-Peen-Just because you think you can grab the entire cathedral in Scarlet Monestary, don't. Your healer might not be able to handle that, so go slow.

3. Be Aware-Some bosses spawn adds, and while you are engrossed in Omen to see how far ahead of the dps you are on threat the healer could die from adds you failed to pick up.

4.Use Your Experience-If you are like me, and have done some of these instances so many times you could do them in you sleep, use that to help your group. If a boss applies a nasty debuff, spawns adds, or anything like that, if could be the difference between a wipe.

5.Communicate-Talk to your group if you're struggling.Use their names, don't just say,"Hey druid, more heals", because that pisses us off.

I'm going to try and get an addon section in to at least every other post from now on, because addons are awesome, and I'm a whore for awesome.

I did a UI post about a month and a half ago, just showing what I used for my healer. That UI was great, but when the author updated it and completely changed the look of it, I switched to my current one. I currently use LUI, a compilation that is in my opinion one of the best out there. I won't put any screenies up because his do it more justice, but I will go over some of the basics with more to come later.

kgpanels-All of the important features have a panel assigned to them. Not a new thing, but what this UI does differently is the alpha effect. With the click of a button, you can choose to hide any of the panels you want. For example, when I'm doing some quests, I don't need recount or Omen showing, so I hide those, giving it a very sleek, clean feel.

Unit Frames-This UI uses Pitbull 3.0, and they are beautiful. The actual frame shows your % health, while you have your actual numerical health and mana before that. The target of target, and the focus frames both have nice effects that makes them look connected to the player/targer frame respectively.

That's all for LUI for now. Check it out, tell the author how cool it is, and if you're like me, use it and never think about switching.

Not solved, just kicked in the pants.

2010-01-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling some severe burnout the last month to month and a half. I've logged onto my shaman all of three times to send gold over to my new alt, so needless to say, I am quite bored with healing. Now, for the past few weeks I've been contemplating shutting this down and going on my merry way as I really have no interest in raiding anymore. I don't have time, something I know much of the Wow community struggles with, and I've been sick the past month as well. Fortunately, or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, I'll be staying on a little longer until someone finally comes to their senses and kicks the shit out of me. So dear readers, the three or four that I have, expect more updates in the coming weeks, but if you want in-depth shaman guides,tips, or anything that really takes a lot of time, go elsewhere. I'll mostly be focusing on healing 5-mans and problems/tips I could see with those, and more importantly for me, because this is my new addiction, the journey of my level 40 paladin tank, going through leveling almost exclusively with the new dungeon tool. Expect addon posts, rants about stupid group members, and how fun it is to re-visit dungeons you haven't actually done with people your level in five years.

(insert funny here)

33 is a magical number according to Dan Brown.

2009-12-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

33. 3.3. I see a connection. I also hear voices and smell sounds, but that is just the caffeine and migraine pills talking.

On to relevant topics!

This is possibly going to be the only semi-serious post I do for the next while, as I have nothing of interest to say besides this.

WotLK and the case of the dead guild.

Everyone that plays WoW, whether they've been in the same guild for the past 4 years, or hop guilds every couple weeks knows that WotLK killed guild longevity. You can PUG the current content and have a high rate of success, and there is no down side to hopping guilds. I know that the new guild system that will be released with Cataclysm will change all this, but I'm not sure if in the right way.

Lets take me for example. I have my select group of people I talk to, and everyone else doesn't really matter to me. Yeah it sounds mean, but there are just certain people I really don't like or care for. Now, lets say that those 3-4 people or however many it is break off to start their own guild, or quit, or whatever floats your boat. These people were the only reason you were still in the guild you are, and now that they are gone, what are you to do? Sure you could quit and go elsewhere, but after all the time you spent with the guild, you would lose too much, so you decide to stay. Several things could happen, some good and others not so much.

1. You stay in the guild, trying to deal with the fact that you don't like most of the members. You raid with them like you used too, but the lack of people to talk to drives you to play less. Now, you only log on to raid, and leave as soon as that is done. After a couple weeks of this, you are confronted by the Guild Master, or an Officer and asked why your attitude is so poor. What are you going to say? Sorry, but I hate most of the people here, I just don't want to lose all the things I've earned with you? That seems like a good solution.

2.You leave the guild, and start to look for a new one, but with little luck. With the new system, guild leaders may be reluctant for new members, as they can't be certain that you weren't kicked for bad behavior. They could easily assume that if you are guild-less even with the new system in place, there is a very good reason for it.

3. You decide you are only playing the game to talk to friends, and leave to play with the people that are still around. You have fun, raid when you feel like it or not at all, and all ends well. Sure, you might not be in a progression guild, but if you don't need that to have fun, then it might not be for you.

4. Seeing as you talk to your group of friends outside of the game, through email or Myspace or whatever your preffered medium is, you decide that you really have no reason to play anymore. You quit, but still keep in contact with your friends, now without the hassle or drama of the game.

5. With your friends rarely on, and no guilds interested in you, you go looking on different realms. Maybe there is a new guild looking for members, and you could be a good fit. After much deliberation and talks with the GM, recruitment officers or others, you make the switch. You join the guild, find people you enjoy to play with, raid with or otherwise, and go on playing with them.

These are just a few things I think of when someone mentions the new guild system. Sure it might makes guilds stronger than BC days, possibly even the days of WoW classic, but is it going to make it better to be in a guild, or punish people too much for leaving one?

NEXT TOPIC!!!

I love healing. It is one of the more rewarding things I've ever done in a video game. To know that I am essentially saving my party members lives in the face of death, I can't help but to feel accomplished. Now, as a healer I have a special relationship with tanks. I have to know that they are competent, and they need to know that of me. I've always wanted to know what it was like to tank, to be the one front and center keeping the bad guys from smacking my party instead of the one patching up the smacks. And at level 30, my protection paladin fulfils the awesomeness I always thought tanking was.

Tanking is vastly different, yet incredibly similar to healing in how you have to play. I can't just run into a room, consecrate and smack the mobs. I have to pay attention, know when a mob is attacking someone other than me, and know how to get them back to me. I have to be able to LoS caster mobs, or taunt them everytime they attack something else if I can't LoS. Things you might not think about if you aren't a tank become blaringly obvious once you strap that shield on and yell at the mobs to attack you instead of the shaman with green glowing hands.

As I have no interest in raiding, and quite frankly in healing idiots that don't know their ass from their thumb, my paladin is now my main. Don't expect a lot of updates, there are so many better sites on all things paladin than this one could ever be.

The joys on the dungeon tool

2009-12-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

Me= Tank
You= Dps

Dps= damage per second
Tank= The person that the creature is supposed to attack.

Dps + Stupidity/Impatience = Tank not tanking= Dps death= Rofltank

Rules to Live by
1:If a dps pulls, don't help because obviously he can do just fine without you.
2:If a dps pulls multiple mobs, see Rule # 1
3: After a dps pulls multiple times without waiting, vote kick him.
4:If new dps does the same as the old, see Rule # 1

Quotes of the week!
H: WTF TANK? DO YOUR JOB!!
T: Oh im sorry, as the rogue has been the one pulling the entire time, I thought he was the tank. My mistake

D:So are you tanking or not?
T:No. I'm going to sit back and let you do that. Rogues are the best tanks in the game and you obviously don't need me to pull the 9 mobs that you grabbed off of you.

D:You arent going to leave T? We've had like 3 T's leave already.
T:Depends, why'd they leave?
D:Well, we're in a hurry so we chain pull, sometimes they weren't ready.
T has left the group.

I would like to use this picture to show how much I care about you if you pull when someone isnt ready.

Curse of the wandering mouse.

2009-12-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

Well hello there. Havent seen you since that incedent with the roofi-oh right, court order and all that, I'll stop talking now.

See? My stupid immature humor isn't dead, Rejoice! However, the computer war of 2009 did claim several victims, namely my interest in raiding, and my confidence as a healer. Oh blah blah my needs...moving on.

When patch 3.3 hit, I told myself that I would get back into raiding and start doing what I do best once more. That lasted all of 4 minutes, and then I went back to playing Left 4 Dead 2. Why don't I want to raid anymore you ask, well I've give you an answer despite your protests and signs of warding against the devil. Raiding takes up too much time, and I don't find it fun anymore.

I have 5 major reasons why I don't find it fun, and I'll bet every raider has felt the same way for at least one of these.
1-"zomg I r raidleader, GET THE FUCK WHERE UR SUPPOSED TO BE! Lol I r not mean. JUST FUCKING DO IT."
2-"lol ima dipshit lol ima pull shit when im not supposed to lol I want all teh loot lol im 12"
3-"hey so um other healers? yeah you guys fucking suck, so ima do this all myself and belittle you the entire raid and just act like a complete ass, mkay?
4- Raid mentality-Lets wipe on a boss for hours on end, and never try and tweak our strat so that we can down this guy. DIS IS PROGRESSION GUYS!!! FUCKING DEAL WITH IT! IMA STICK MY DICK UP MY BUTT AND YELL AT YOU FROM NOW ON!!
5-"lol raiding is easy lol. You guys suck ima go join a real guild so they can deal with me being 12 and having to leave mid raid because my mommy said it was time for a bath."

/end rant
/nod appreciatively at my work

So, thats all I really have to say about that. On to what I actually liked about patch 3.3, which was actually my favorite patch of WotLK.

Dungeon Finder- This is a game changer, plain and ridiculously simple. I, at level 20, can find a group for almost anything, and see all the instances that I might have missed other wise. Or, at level 80, I can take 2 minutes to find a group for a heroic, and most likely do very well.

Integrated Map- This is another game changer. For myself, questing was always the worst part of the game, simply because I could never find anything and it took an ungodly amount of time. So now, instead of taking all my alts into a BG and leveling like that, I can quest and see the game and all its lore like the designers intended you too.

New 5-man dungeons- Are simply fun. Loads of fun. I just pop myself into the new LFG system, and pound away at em. Forge of Souls just has this errie feeling that really gets me into the mood. The boss fights are challenging enough on heroic that I don't play bejewled the whole time. Pit of Saron is my favorite heroic, and for sure my favorite non-raid instance in the game. It just has this open, expansive feel, like you could wander around and find new things that you havent seen before. The boss fights here are not hard, but definetly fun. Halls of Reflection is meh. I thought we would have gotten rid of the x # of waves then a boss mechanic. The bosses are easy, and you don't actually fight Arthas, he just chucks zombies at you.

As for class changes, the new fire nova is a great addition, and I can definitly see this as a staple in dps rotations.

-Meaning of todays title: When a shaman that outgears the 5-man he's in decides to start clicking on all the the cool stuff in there lets his party die because he wasn't paying attention.

Update-rape drug.

2009-12-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

The new and improved form, now with less grogginess after waking.

So I thought I'd give a few updates, as I will be unable, and unwilling to play, blog, or use my computer in general for what looks like quite a while.

Monday night rolls around, and I'm sorta bored, looking for something to do before I head off to the sack, so I log onto WoW and pop open my email. I get a little loading lag from the email, but nothing major, and tab into WoW. I get an invite for a 25m Uld, head in, and realize how much I hate my new set up. Power Aura's isn't showing when my focus doesn't have ES, Skada is flipping me off while it sticks it's thumb up it's butt, and Cool Line is freaking out. I fiddle around with everything in the middle of Kolagarn, nearly getting myself killed to his crazy wacko-man eyes. We down him, the cat lady whose name I can't and will not spell or pronounce and we head to 25m Ony. This is where the fun starts. As I'm in-flight to the little outpost by Ony, I get about 30 error messages. Before I can even try to figure out whats going on,I get punted out of WoW, and all of my open programs get closed. As I sit, gasping at my screen like I just got mind-fucked I get a message asking me if I would like to set all 76 files to the recycle bin. Umm, please don't? I get a pop-up on my start bar reading "13% complete". WTF does that mean? What are you doing to my precious computer! I tried to cancel whatever was being done, but nothing popped up and I had no idea what was going on. I turned my computer off and went to bed hoping I didn't have some virus that wiped my hard-drive. I get home from school tuesday, and sit down to figure out what was going on. I find that nearly all my files that weren't in pre-made folders had been deleted and sent to the recycle bin, luckily I have my entire hard-drive backed up. I look at my start bar, and again it has a % completed showing. I have a feeling that there's a hidden operation or something, leading me to believe I have a virus. I've taken my computer in to my local shop, and will have a diagnosis by friday. So as my old computer is just that, old as hell, I won't be able to blog or play until I get my non-shitty one back.

To War(Craft)!
I'll be blunt, I have no interest right now. Non what-so-ever. I'll be getting back in once my computer is fixed, but honestly I think I might just go play some alts with a couple friends until I find something that I enjoy to do. Which means, in my book, that I probably won't venture into ICC until they release the entire thing because THE GATED SYSTEM IS FUCKING STUPID. Why, after leaving us with a raid with only 5 bosses for months upon months, would you release another raid that will only have 4 bosses for god knows how long? Idiotic is the only word I have to describe it.

-Side note: Have a 46' LCD TV coming on the 14th!!! If I move off my couch once a week It'll be amazing.

Bibbity Bobbity Blappity Bliip

2009-11-29T12:54:00.001-08:00

I've never known what it was like to be loved

...Or wanted
...Or needed
...As a healer

And I really wish I'd never learned. Every bumfuck guild on my server is apparently recruiting shamans, and by the number of whispers I get, I'm the only unguilded one. After completely ignoreing what must have been the fifth person to say, "my guild is recruiting shammys r u interested?!?", I learned what it is like to be "needed" by a twelve year old that thinks he can run a raiding guild. If you randomly see me in Dalaran and whisper me about joining your guild out of the blue, I'm going to flat out ignore you. If you just invite me to your guild without any notice or conversation, I won't just ignore you, I'll say mean things and then ignore you. On the same token, if you politetly introduce yourself as the GM or Class lead, or whatever of a guild, and be professional about asking me to apply to your guild, I might give you the time of day. A guild is a place for, in my opinion, two things. Meeting and making new friends and being social, and getting a group of people together that can play professionally to get down content. It isn't a place that you log on for two hours or whatever to raid and then go back to do what you were doing, it's a place to socialize but at the same time play the game at the level you want. Which means that you have to invest time into the guild. Time is something people take seriously, and if some no-name person expects anyone to join their guild after "hey join my guild lol" they are, how should I put this politely, fucking retarded.

-End Rant

Happy Happy Fun Time!!
Now that the rant is over, I just realized that I've never explained why my site is named totem healz. I've gotten, "because ur a shaman and u have totems and your a healer", or even, "cause shamans have totems and they is uber coolz so thats why!". No, that isn't the reason at all. The story takes place in my first "raiding" guild in WotLK, which is where I meet some of the coolest people on the planet. We were in OS 10, coming onto the first dragon guy that you kill, and myself, along with the pally healer of the guild were sorta just chillin, not doing much healing wise. As we are standing infront of the boss, I decide that it's time to go get something to drink without telling anyone. I do however, drop my Healing Stream Totem just to be safe. They go in, start smacking the dragon with their tiny little swords or whatever other weapon tickles your fancy, and they notice that I'm not doing anything. They die because the pally went into the portal to kill the guys in their, and I obviously wasn't there to heal the tank. We wipe, I get back to a very angry vent that is yelling at me for not telling them I was AFK. I, being the complete jackass that I am, say, "Well I dropped my totem, thats all the healing I need to do. Maybe you guys just suck!". We proceed to kill all the bosses and get some phat lootz, and I log for the night. I come back online the next day, which happened to be a Wednesday, and noticed that I couldn't even acces the guild bank to see if we needed any leather. Well WTF is going on? I whisper the Co-GM, one of the coolest people I know, and she laughs and says look at my guild rank. It read, Healz with Totems. I stayed at that rank for about a month before I got put back to my semi-officer position. So that's the less than comical story of a less than comical site written by a person that thinks he's funny, but really probably isn't.

Definition of the Day- Bibbity Bobbity Blappity Bliip: The sound one makes when getting hit over the head with an imaginary penis while passed on a sidewalk in Detroit.

Names to live by

2009-11-28T17:34:00.000-08:00

And now, let your heart relax, and your mind wander as you are serenaded by the sweet sweet lullaby of, Skullfucking gorilla and the pussycats.

Titles have been a part of WoW since almost, if not for sure, the beginning of the game. You had your PvP titles, of which I am a proud owner, and that was basically it. Then with TBC, you got raiding titles, arena titles and all that fun stuff. Through both of those versions of the game, we never saw class specific titles that everyone of a certain class could get. In comes WotLK, and my heart prays for a class specific title. I got shot down like the dude Dick Chaney shot in the face. Not only did we not get class specific titles, we got titles for stupid things. I understand that cooking is a bitch to level, and it isn't fun, but if I learn the cooking skill aren't I already a chef without having to get to a certain level or number of recipes?

I feel like each class should have it's own, unique title that fits the style and lore of the class, so here's my attempts at a few.

Druid- (name), the Ever Nurturing
Deathknight- (name), Nightmare of the Living
Hunter- (name), The Watchful Sentinel
Shaman- (name), The Elemental Protector
Warrior- ,(name) The noble defender
Priest- (name), Cleric of the Faithful
Paladin- (name), Fist of the Holy
Rogue- (name), The whispering death
Mage- (name), Wizard of the First Order
Warlock- (name), Corruption of Mortality

I'm not entiretly happy with some of these, but all in all I think they would fit their class really well, and give people that don't like any of the current titles, or people that can't get the ones they like due to their requirements a nice alternative.

Gobble Gobble bitches

2009-11-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

HAPPY TURKEY COMA DAY!!!

Yeah I know that I'm early, but this was the last chance I had to post anything before I started to help cook for tomorrow. So, deal with me being early.

Also, moar news!
I wanted to post a new picture of my UI because I changed it around a little and I love to new set up. I tried having grid to the side, but I kept missing orbs in ToGC and it just wasn't working out that well. The new set up works great, and I've noticed that I don't get smacked by orbs with it at the bottom.

That is all.

Eat turkey.
Be Happy.

Kick your aunts ass at monopoly for cheating last year.

Eat moar turkey.

Random post is random.

2009-11-23T14:02:00.001-08:00

" "
Random is actually a new word I invented, meaning "crap" and "Stuff you only find interesting after not sleeping for nearly 3 days"
1. According to about 12 online tests, I am partially color blind. Yay for me!
2. Sticking your face into your dogs and blowing air into her face is only good if she isn't part wolf
3. Troll warlocks would be the coolest thing ever created
4. Healing with the D-pad of an N52 te es no bueno
5. Pendulum the band is now also Pendulum the sleeping pill
6. If I meet a person in real life that played a haste stacking shaman I would punch him in the lips

Also, if you slap someone across the face so hard that you break their jaw, is there really any proof you did anything?

P.S. Getting a camera glitch that zooms you in and out really fast is fun yet trippy
P.S.S Talking with a fake accent on ventrilo is fun when a person has the accent you are trying to imitate
P.S.S.S I am going to keep writing P.S's until you go away
P.S.S.S.S K this is the last one.

Bleep Blaap.

2009-11-18T18:25:00.001-08:00

Boredom + OCD + No life= Why I am writing another post.

I've been putsing around the last couple days, getting my ass kicked by work and various other odd named people, and I decided that I needed to do a write up on the state of shamans as a class, and more specifically, as a healer.

Now, a few notes to make before you read this and call your friends to talk about the crazy blogger that apparently notices everything that goes on on his screen without losing his mind. Well, if you make that call, you'd be a dirty little liar, because I was never right in the head in the first place. Moving on...

As a class, I think shamans are one of the most interesting, and fun to play. We have totems, a mechanic that no other class has anything even remotely close too, and we have, in my opinion, the most buffs to bring to a raid. Totems aren't buffs, I don't care, go shove it up your butthole.

As a healer however, shamans are in a seemingly awkward place. When assigned to tank healing, we will usually get beat by our paladin or disc priest counterparts, and the same is true for raid healing, though our competition is now druids and holy priests. What people don't notice, and what even many shaman healers don't realize, is the depth a shaman healer has.

Take one of our most useful, and one of my favorite spells: Earth Shield. Earth shield is like a priest bubble having babies with a druid HoT that was really, really ugly. It doesn't absorb damage, but rather heals on a melee or spell hit. But it also decreases spell pushback, something most healers don't consider when using Earth Shield. In fights like Faction Champs in ToC, I will usually put ES on the other healer to help him out. As I am often running 25's with more that 2 other resto shamans, my ES is better served on another healer.

Near or before the release of WotLK, shamans were given a new weapon enhancement called Earthliving. Earth Shield, Earthliving, Earth shock, apparently shamans are geologists or some crazy earth sexing up freak, IDK. Most shamans view Earthliving as just a spell power boost, which it is, but it is so much more than that. You have a near 100% chance to apply EL when a target is low on health, applying a decent HoT. Most shamans think, "Oh, my EL is always over heal, its so useless", well then your a dip, because it isn't. The way my healing done is displayed, all of my EL hits are grouped up. Is 5000 healing done for a HoT I don't actively apply useless? Sure El won't count for a huge portion of your healing, but it's a nice little buffer on people that were low, or on the tank you're focused on.

On to a shamans role in a raid. I've heard people say we are strictly tank healers, and strictly raid healers. People that say we are "strictly" anything don't honestly understand shamans at all. Glyphed correctly, a shaman can compete aggressively with paladins on tank healing, and druids on raid healing. But more importantly that talents or glyphs to be effective on those two fronts, shamans need to gear slightly differently for those two tasks. Many people will say haste is more important for raid healing, and even tank healing, well I whole-heartidly disagree with that. With 4pc t9 and raid buffs, my CH has nearly a 50% chance to crit. That counts to all of the jumps, not just the initial heal. With TW, my LHW has nearly a 70%, if not higher chance to crit. All of your crits heal an additional 30% of the effective/overheal. If I crit with CH for lets say 22k, my AA proc will hit for 6600. Sure I could make that up if I had a ridiculous amount of haste, but I don't target anyone for AA, and it's another on of those nifty smart heals that shamans are known for. And on the note of tank healing, shamans are extremely effective. Some people think, "no, we r teh needin pally for teh tankz!". Well, learn to speak english, and then look at a shaman without any bias. A HW, will usually hit for ~13k, and crit for nearly 20k. A crit will then proc AA which will hit for ~6k, and when the tank is taking most of the damage, it will go to him. Let's not forget AH procs on crit. 10% damage reduction on a tank, and a large portion of the raid is amazing.

Throughout writing this, I keep thinking that I haven't really talked about CH as much as people expect shamans too. CH is an amazing spell, but Shamans are flexible even with our limited spell pool. So what is the state of the shaman? In my opinion, the state of the shaman is right where it should be. Do we top healing charts? No, but if that really makes you sad you shouldn't be a healer. The state of the shaman is an amazing healer, with more depth than most people give us credit, and the ability to excel at any task given to us as a healer.

This wall o text brought to you by-Trade Chat Spammers: If you would only buy of wares we could feed our families and then piss the shit out of you in raids instead of trade chat.

The not so summer slump.

2009-11-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's just my guild, or maybe just the younger crowd, but I can't count the times I've seen serious raiders miss a raid because they were playing MWF2 or L4D2. The fall slump is sneaky, and it likes to kick you in the pants when you aren't looking. We've lost around 5 or 6 members because we can't get a raid because half of our regulars are playing something else. I can't say that I haven't even been guilty of this, but I know that when I join a guild I'm accepting a responsibility to them, and I don't let the awesomeness of L4D2 get in the way of that. Long and the short of it, I have to start looking for a new guild because of two things: 1) After going to the hospital for staying awake for nearly 70 hours, I am no longer capable of raiding at 2 am two nights in a row 2) We haven't been able to raid in nearly two weeks and I'm sick of it. 3) Seeing t10 on a draenei makes me cry inside... it looks horrible.

This garden fence brought to you by- The GSAA: Because someone needs to be aware when you are being skullfucked by a gorilla.

Gorilla skullfucking awareness association... cmon guys, work with me.

Y=2h

2009-11-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I just slapped some math right in your face, deal with it. That really isn't math, it's how I address what I like to call, "A healers healer". All healers know that tanks have a healer that they always run with, and same goes for healers with a tank they always run with. Now, this could be because they are your friend, your significant other, or even just someone you like and know will perform. But what about who other healers like to have by their side chucking heals at the raid? Well, I know that I for one have people that I like to run with more that some others. The two other main healers in my guild are a druid and a paladin, both great people and great players. When I'm sitting waiting for raid invites to start, I pray that those two will be with me because I know that we won't have any problems. If I get hit by a kobold on the Northrend Beast encounter, I know that when I call out in vent that I'm locked out, the other two healers will cover my assignment until I'm able to cast, and the same goes if they got locked out. Not only do I know that they will perform, I know that we will be able to critique each other if we see something wrong and neither of us will get mad and, "STFU NUB I R 2 ROFLSTOMP U". If you're a healer, or especiallyl a tank, you need to count on the healers around you to do their job so that you don't have to over work and eventually die or run out of mana and all that non fun stuff.

A few ways that I've learned of to help a fellow healer get comfortable with you is to talk to them. Weird right? Talking, this new fangled idea that someone invented! If you joke around on vent, or guild chat or even in whispers the healer in question will be trusting of you, and able to perform better when in a raid situation.

I know for myself, the more healers I can count on, the more relaxed I am in a raid. I don't have to worry about keeping everyone up because someone isn't doing a good job, I can handle my assignment and if another healer needs it, I'm more than willing to help out.

This wall o' text brought to you by:Tanks-Thanks for standing there and getting slapped in the face by a huge ass demon fucker while we chuck fireballs at it, couldn't have done it without you!.

The problem with shamans.

2009-11-07T17:51:00.000-08:00

Shamans have a few problems, just like everybody else. Sure, ours don't include homicidal tendencies(deathknights) or an affinity for shooting things in the face for funnsies(hunters), but we do have our problems. Shamans are, by nature, a very versatile class. We can heal very effectively, and have two methods of dealing massive amounts of damage. However, our problem comes from the way we do all of these things. Shamans, unlike most hybrid classes that heal, dps, or even tank, have a small amount of spells to do each of these tasks. For example, hunters have multiple shots that they use depending on the fight, they have traps, their pets etc. A shamans dps rotation consists of four spells, almost always the same no matter the encounter. A priest has many,many spells to use in different healing encounters. They have instant AoE spells, party only healing spells, and damage mitigation spells. A shaman has four spells for healing, with one of them rarely used these days. As of right now, it sounds like all I am doing is complaining, "Oh boohoo, us poor shamans are so hated". But that isn't the case, I'm merely laying the foundation so that we can explore possible solutions.

DPS Solution #1- This solution is actually already in the making, with the introduction of the new Fire Nova spell coming in patch 3.3. The solution is this: Provide shamans more variety and freedom with the spells they are using by taking off the element specific nature of enhancement dps. Stormstrike is arguably the most important spell in a shamans rotation. If provides a significant buff to our nature spells, and hits relatively hard. Unfortunately, this nature specific buff pigeon holes enhancement shamans into use Earth Shock, and not being able to pursue other styles of dps. It would also be a welcome change in tactics if the Maelstrom Weapon effect actually affected Lava Burst. To make this solution viable, a good amount of re-working would have to go in to ensure that shamans dps did not dip, or skyrocket to the point of unfairness.

Healing Solution #1- A good way to remedy the problem at hand, would be to add new spells to a shamans healing repertoire. With the other healing classes with their own, very class defining spells, this solution runs the risk of further homogenization. However, I think that blizzard has put shamans the on right track to a specific, different style of healing. With the way shamans heal, targets have to be bunched up to receive a Chain Heal, and our other spells have a high enough mana cost that it sometimes isn't wise to use anything else other than Chain Heal. One remedy that I thought of was something on the lines of a hybrid of a priest lightwell and a druids tranquility. An on cooldown, placeable totem that would heal the targets party members for X% over lets say six seconds. So to clarify, if I was in group two, and my target was in group one, I would place a totem either on the ground, on the targets back or something along those lines and it would heal the target and this party members for a set amount of healing as a HoT.

Those are only two of the various possible solutions that blizzard could introduce to provide shamans with more variety in all aspects of the game. Of course, most other classes would need a rework of there spells, as pigeon-holing and lack of variety is a plague effecting almost every class.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok so this has nothing to do with what I said above, but it needs to be said for all shamans out there. When in a raid, during a boss battle, in the heat of combat, WE DONT FUCKING LOOK AT OUR RAID CHAT TO SEE YOU CRYING FOR HEROISM!!!!!!!!! For fucks sakes, if I have to see, "lol we didn't even use hero... fail shaman nub" one more time I might just have a psychotic break and go on a killing spree. It isn't even the fact that you asked for heroism or that we might have killed the boss with it, it's the fact that you expect me, the person making sure you live through the encounter, TO BE LOOKING AT A LITTLE BOX OF TEXT WHILE PEOPLE ARE DYING. My solution to these problem is to design a program that comes with every chat addon, that will give someone a 50,000 volt shock through their keyboard every time, "AMAGAWD HERO" or something stupid like that is said in raid chat. Or you could just say that if hero isn't called for in vent you won't pop it, but I like my idea better.

Dun dun DUN!

2009-11-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

Today, we are going to talk a short hop away from restoration, and a quick drop to SRZ TOWN.

I've discovered something so annoying, so fucking stupid and idiotic, that I am at a lose for words.
-"Then how are you writing this?"
For one, fuck you its a figure of speech, and two, I'm writing this because I have anger problems and I like to use my weak, unknown blog to whine about it.

The problem I have has nothing to do with WoW, or any game for that matter, it has to do with the system you play it on. My problem, is programs not having an option to either wide pop-ups, not minimize the current program on pop-ups, or get rid of them all together. I was raiding yesterday night, having a good time, destroying the other resto shaman in the raid and just fucking around. As we pull trash, I get kicked out of WoW by my spysweeper program. /oh noes! Right? No, not oh noes, it wanted my to run a sweep because I hadn't in a week. Could you not wait like an hour? I hope back into WoW, and completely forget about it. Until... It asks me to do it again, in the middle of Onyxia 25. I disable the program and hop back into WoW, dead of course, and start muttering curses under my breath. I get out of Ony, 2 badges richer, and head to AV to get some honor. And then what happens? My firewall program pops up to tell me an update is ready. MOTHER FUCKER I DON'T CARE. I disable all firewalls, virus scans, browsers, and pretty much every program not WoW, and keep on playing. I kid you not, my printer is the devil and it just knew, it fucking knew, just when to pop up telling me I had no ink. I don't think I've ever been that pissed off over something so small in my life. I plug pulled, took my printer downstairs and and put it in our den.

Does this post have any real value to read? No. But if you've ever seen the classic freak-out video, that was me nerd raging in my room about how incredible fucking stupid and annoying pop ups really are. I didn't happen to stick a remote up my ass, but I was pacing my room and throwing things. Also, I'm not a fifteen year-old kid with extreme emotional distress.

Double post. Double stu.... Oh wait.

2009-11-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Double post time! Zomg lol roflmao nub.
Acronyms= Bad mkay?
I was talking to one of my friends on her vent channel, and as we were talking, we began using acronyms for our healing spells(she also plays a resto shaman). This is all well and good, allowing us to talk faster, and because it is just a habit we both have. The real problem came up when another good friend of ours joined the channel and popped in to chat with us. He play's a resto druid, and obviously doesn't share the same acronyms that we do. As the conversation goes on, he starts to get really quiet. We have to ask him a question directly to get an answer. I ask him whats wrong, and I get one of those responses that you get when the person isn't really listening to you. He was sort of distant, rude almost and then wouldn't talk again. So, being the jerk that I am, I completely ignore him, and keep on talking. What happened over the next two minutes follows.

"No no no. You focus the tank, ES him, RT him for TW and spam lesser or chain depending."-Me
"That's what I try to do, but I have to weave lesser's in between chains and I use TW way to fast to notice. I probably need to track those lol"-Her
"Are you doing most AoE healing or a lot of tank? Cause that's what I do for tank but I do weave lesser's in between chains on like twins and stuff.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO TALKING ABOUT!? Fuck this, im going to go talk to people that fucking speak with words."-Him

He blew up. And I mean he flipped a lid and ranted for a good minute until we could get a word in. And honestly, I completely understand why he did it. How annoying is it to be in a conversation and have no idea what is going on? So we started talking with actual words, and he joined back in to awe us with the massive numbers of HPS he can do on twins 25 man.

Moral for today: No one knows the acronyms for other classes(or maybe I just don't pay attention enough, I don't care). So talk with words, you know, those things you've been using since the age of two.

I hate other people.
I do, I honestly really hate other people. I ran into something that bothered me so much, that I considered reporting at least twenty people for it. There was a conversation in trade chat on a realm I have a few alts on. I was chilling in Org, fiddling with a spec, and what do I see? A conversation on why black people, women, handicapped(physical I'm assuming) people and anyone else that was "different" should have to have a label on their character names so that guild/players could do whatever it is egotistical pricks do. I nearly flipped my lid. I was on vent with the afore mentioned people, and I say to them, "racist fucks like this are the reason I hate other people". How horrible of a person do you have to be to degrade and belittle people in a game? Do you get off on it or maybe you are just too stupid to realize what you're saying? I'm happy to say that I didn't get involved with it, calmly walked away and nearly broke vent because I was swearing so much.

Triple post...Suck it.
Yeah...suck it go-- Oh wait right, yeah sorry.
So I just quick wanted to trow in another UI post, just to go over something that I recently started to do, and have found in extremely useful.
If you can see, which you might not be able to as the alpha is set to about 10%, I have my condensed action bars devoid of any non-macro'd spells. I have everything set up to my mouse and modifier keys, and the buttons I do have on my bars are keys near enough to the WASD pad, that I can access them easily. I used to have all my cooldowns on my bars, and all my CC/damage spells on my vars too. Recently, I've mapped them all to my mouse. I've already gotten feedback that I do better when I play like these. Better use of cooldowns and trinkets, faster movement, and somehow, faster reaction times(I don't know about this last one, but I'll take whatever compliment I get). But, I did move my bar so that whatever spells are on there, are a quick twitch of the mouse away.

So that's it for today, I bet you are so glad that you spent a shit ton of time reading stuff that had nothing to do with anything! Leave now, I have stuffing to do, and some sucking.

Because originality is what I do best.

2009-11-02T17:16:00.000-08:00

Nearly every healing blogger has seen, done, or read the meme that isn't a meme, and as I love to be original and do new things, I thought I would join the wagon. And, as no one knows about this blog and I don't have the energy to try and get people to, I'll just pretend that I got tagged.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Martik, restoration shaman.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Almost strictly 10 mans with a smattering of 25 man pugs.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Riptide. Oh blah blah Chain Heal, yeah I know it's a good spell, but riptide is by far my favorite due to the HoT and the increase to Chain Heal.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Healing Wave. Don't get me wrong, this is an intense spell, but I usually forget to use it. /oh noes!

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Oh good lord could I get controversial with this one.Raid healing. Tank healing. Shamans are sort of the gimpy cousin of priests. We can raid heal and tank heal, but with Chain Heal, I would say raid healing is our strength.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
Ugh. I really don't know.If I had to, I would say the fact that we have one HoT that usually gets removed by Chain Heal.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Raid healing. With Chain Heal being a smart heal with a large range and AA procs from crits, shamans can do some intense raid healing(druids need to stop beating me so I can feel good about myself, gawd).

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Discipline priests. Even when on the tank/off-tank, they have more utility than paladins and the damage mitigation really takes the stress off of the other healers.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Well, I can't really answer this one. I love all healing classes, and it comes down to the person. If you play a class that could single heal a raid, but die in fires or stuff like that, I would hate you. If you played a class that needed two other healers to be effective but you were an amazing player I would love you.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
Not healing myself. I always seem to die because I am throwing heals on the raid like a madman but never on my self.

Using my cooldowns. In the heat of the moment, it's hard to remember that I have that spell that increases my crit chance by 60%.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Other healers blaming a healer for a wipe or a death. If you saw that player going down and not getting healed, why didn't you try to help? Well Johny, I'm glad that you were first on the healing meters but if the raid wipes because you didn't want to help out a fellow healer that was stunned/oom/got disconnected, then I suggest you go die in a literal fire.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Well.... Honestly, I think that shamans are slightly over-powered. A shaman that is skilled at rolling riptide on the maximum number of people and planning on when to use Chain Heal for the increased effect can cast a Chain Heal that will hit, with one or more crits for 25k effective healing done(I've seen it happen on twins 25).

We have so many talents to return mana or improve crit that we have near limitless mana and in my opinion, the second most versatile set of spells next to a priest.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Recount. Specifically the healing done, over-healing done and mana return sections. I am usually near/at the top of the healing chart, bottom to middle of over healing, and somewhere in between on the mana gains.

I also look at what cooldowns I had to use or ask for. If I had to pop NS and Tidal Force than maybe I was lagging behind at one point. If I had to ask for Innervate than maybe I wasn't using the proper spells for the situation.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That all we do is spam Chain heal. I weave as many LHW's in between Chain Heal casts as possible and riptide is use on every cooldown. Is chain heal a good spell? Yes. Is it the only spell? No.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
When to use the right spell for the damage taken. Many new shaman healers spam Chain Heal and get away with it until they raid and suddenly are like a fish out of water.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
As I said above, high to mid healing output, low to mid over-healing and a decent amount of mana gained. To be honest, recount isn't a good way to evaluate a healer. We don't have rotations, we are almost purely reactive players, and what we do changes minute to minute. If someone said I fail because of HPS on recount, I would probably laugh in their face.

Haste or Crit and why?\
Crit. Crit Crit and MOAR CRIT. I don't care what any other shaman says, but crit capitalizes on more talents and abilities than haste. I've tried haste stacking, and while I was at around 830, it felt wrong. I barely got mana returns and I seemed to always need an innervate. Once I switched to crit, my mana was always solid, my effective heals when through the roof and it was just a better play style for me.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Priests. If I had almost ten spells to juggle my brain would explode. And even if they had fewer spells, I couldn't tell you what half of them do.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
I have all my healing spells bound to my mouse, with some needing modifier keys. I use clique and grid for healing, and I have several macro's for ES, riptide and the like.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
As of right now, I stack primarily crit because it increases my throughput more than anything else. I try to balance it our with haste and spell power so that I don't fall too far behind in those, but it isn't a priority.

This wall o' text brought to you by: Egotistical Maniacs United- Because we're better than you and our moms can prove it.

Homesick.

2009-11-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

It may just be me and my weirdness, but I miss the realm I started playing WoW on. December of '05 is when I rolled my first character, a dwarf hunter that never got above level 25. I started with a few friends on the Lothar server, and I'm happy to say that I still know people that play there. When BC was announced, Lothar was offered a free realm transfer to Drenden and I took it. Drenden was my real home, the place I got my first 70, the place I started my shaman, and the place I made some amazing friends. I know that there essentialy there is no difference in realms, and that if I wanted to, I could ask some friends to join my on Medivh, but I really do miss Drenden. As my guild begins to become stagnant, and my desire to raid increases, I keep thinking about Drenden and the time I spent on it. I have a feeling that Martik(name of my shaman) will be taking a trip home soon, hopefully meeting up with old friends and making new ones.

This very short wall 'o text brought to you by: Boring- because you had no reason to read this.

Get some dips.

2009-11-01T07:02:00.001-08:00

On Friday night, with no prospect of raiding as a guild, our amazing hunter and I decided it was time we took a dip into TogC. We got invited to the same group, and decided we should both read up on the differences from non-heroic to heroic. As I'm reading, I can't help but say to him over vent that this is a little intimidating. Now as a dps, I don't think he really knew why I thought it was intimidating but I won't hold that against him. So we get onto the pugs ventrilo, and I prepare myself for utter failure on my part. To my surprise and delight, the Rl was polite, patient, and down right nice. He said we were going to take it slow, if we wiped so be it, and that if we made it two bosses in he was happy. On to the bosses.
Northrend Beasts
Gormok:
Impales hit harder and last longer. The fire applies a DoT that will kill you.
Worms:
Acid pools expand faster, toxin slows you down faster, bile can wipe a group if you aren't spread out.
Icehowl:No run-speed increase on his crashes.(hold down your strafe keys and don't be like me and enrage the boss)

Lord Jaraxxus
The only real difference is the you must kill the portal and the volcano when they spawn.

Faction Champions
You cannot taunt the nps's in this mode, which means that your lovely shaman healer will get destroyed by the death knight, the priest, the hunter, and the rogue(Yeah, I died in 1.32 seconds. Fun stuff). Other than systematically destroying people, this fight is exactly the same.

Twins
A de-buff is applied that will basically blow up people of opposite aura to the target of the de-buff. The orbs hit for more, and for some reason they seemed to float faster, but that may have been me.

That's as far as we got. Well actually we only got past champs, but I know the twins fight front and back, so I wrote about that one too. From what I hear, Anub is quite difficult in Heroic, and I am quite happy we didn't get to him because I had already had my fair share of "Oh shit" moments. Once the guild gets into TogC, I should have the full strats up and all that fun stuff.

This wall o' text brought to you by: I have nothing witty to say. You can leave now.

More In Depth:Haste

2009-10-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

Haste: Increases the speed at which you cast.

Haste, when balanced, is an incedibly powerful stat for a resto shaman. The goal of stacking haste is two fold, to reduce you GCD and increase your cast speed. Shamans are not as worried about the first, so I'm going to ignore that aspect of it for now. A shaman stacking haste can, if they stack pure haste gems, get an upwards of 35% cast time reductions. Shaman only have one talent that truly plays off of or has an effect dealing with haste.

Tidal Waves- When proc'ed by either Chain Heal or Riptide, this talent provides several effects for Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave repectivaly. It increases the bonus healing effects your Healing Wave spell gets by 20%, and a 10% bonus for Lesser Healing Wave. It also increase the cast speed of Healing Wave by 30%.

This talent, while one of the most useful in the Restoration tree, can't be considered a "haste" talent. This talent doesn't provide a set percentage of haste, nor does it have an effect that benefits from haste. It only increases the cast speed of one spell, and only for a short time.

In order to understand the pro's and cons of haste, we need a scenario to use.

Location:Trial of the Crusader
Difficulty:10 man Regular

You are healing along side a holy paladin and a restoration druid. You have a haste rating that increases you cast speed by 30%. Lesser healing wave has a cast time of 1.05 seconds, Healing wave of 1.75 seconds(w/o Tidal Waves) as will Chain Heal.

In order to get such a large amount of haste, several other stats suffered. You only have a buffed mana pool of 23k, along with a 28% crit and 450 Mp5 while casting.

By the time you get to the Icehowl portion of the Northrend Beast encounter, you are at 30% mana and have already used Mana Tide Totem. After his second crash, you don't have enough mana to cast any spells and the tank dies while the other two healers are frozen in his breath.

From this scenario, you can see the downfall of an unbalanced haste stack.

This wall o' text brought to you by: Earth Shock-Sticking earth up your butt and shocking you since 2004.

More in-depth: Critical Strike Rating.

2009-10-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

Critical Strike Rating: Increases the chance for your spells to critically hit.

This is an amazing stat for shamans, a fact some don't readily agree with. The purpose of this posts and several to follow is to explain stat choices and how they actually benefit you are a healer.

There are a slew of talents in the Restoration tree that deal directly with crit, the following are just the ones that provide a proc/buff/additional heal from critical heals.

Improved Water Shield-This talent is a staple in shaman mana conservation and regeneration. It allows the amount of mana returned from a destroyed Water Shield orb to be returned on a critical heal without destroying the orb. With a high amount of crit, this talent can proc on one out of every two heals cast depending on the spell.

Ancestral Healing-This talent is a shamans version of a disc priest bubble, albeit a comparatively weak one. In essence, this gives a base, 10% damage reduction on targets hit with a critical heal. In several 10m settings, it is possible for a crit geared shaman to have this effect on all members of the raid and one time, though this is not an often occurrence.

Ancestral Awakening-This talent is for all intensive purposes, an additional heal costing no mana after a critical heal. Consider this, a Lesser Healing Wave crits a raid member for an 8000 crit- this talent will provide an additional 2400 healing for no mana on the lowest % HP raid member.

So these talents deal directly with the benefits of having a large amount of crit, but the Restoration tree provides multiple talents that flat out increase our crit %.

Tidal Mastery-A flat 5% crit increase on all spells. A guarantee in all Restoration shamans.

Blessing of the Eternals-A flat 4% crit increase on all spells. Also as an added bonus an addition to Earthliving procs which is always helpful. This is a guarantee in a healing shamans build also.

Thundering Strikes-Though not actually in the Restoration tree, this is a talent taken by all Restoration shamans. Another flat 5% crit increase to all spells.

With so many talents effecting, and effected by crit, I'm always surprised that so many people don't know the true value of crit. Critical heals provide a restoration shaman with a mana return, damage mitigation and an additional free heal for 30% of the original crit. Would I say that crit is the most important stat for a resto shaman? I couldn't really say that because all healers have a different style of playing. I know some shamans the never use riptide but still are able to heal effectively. I know some that stack so much haste they have a Lesser Healing Wave that is under 1 second. Some stack so much Mp5 and Int that it is almost impossible for them to go below 80% mana. These are all different ways of capitalizing on the versatility of the restoration shaman, and all have their merit(except haste stacker's without Mp5 trinkets, faster spells means "SHIT no mana!" comes sooner).

Critical strike is the most prevalent, and in my opinion ignored stat for resto shamans. With the raid make-up I usually run with, I have nearly a 45% critical strike chance. This is an incredibly high amount, and I only wish I could get more. I know their are benefits to Haste, Mp5 and even Int stacking, but flat out Crit is usually how I go, because with so many talents that increase it and benefit from it, why wouldn't you want a lot?

This wall o' text brought to you by: "CRITICAL HEAL MUTHA FUCKER!!!!!!!" Also, the Shamans Association for voice-box replacement.

O Mai Freaking Gord.

2009-10-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

Pet Peeve of Raiding #1: People that tell me how to play my class when they themselves don't play that class. Seriously? Fuck off and deal with whatever it is you do and leave me be.

Pet Peeve of Raiding #2: People of the same class/spec telling me how to do my job when I am doing better than they are. If I needed your help, I'd fucking ask for it.

Pet Peeve of Raiding #3:People I don't know sending me whispers asking for stuff while I'm raiding. Fuck off and die. That is all.

Pet Peeve of Raiding #4: People playing music over vent. If I wanted to hear Brittany spears distorted and garbled I would just go to my sisters CD rank and pop one of her many albums into the stereo.

Pet Peeve of Raiding #5: People that say, "Hey man are you rolling on ?". I might be. It hasn't dropped yet so why do you even care? Shut up and worry about the fact your dps is the lowest out of everyone including me. A fucking healer.

So that pretty much covers the major ones I have. I encountered all of these plus many more in a ToC pug I was in a couple days ago, and I nearly flipped out. I understand if you have a suggestion for me to increase my longevity or HPS, I welcome it even. Maybe you're on an alt and your main is the class I'm currently playing. Those situations are fine, you could even give me a really good tip to increase my effectiveness as a healer. But, please for the love of all that is good, have some common courtesy. I know for some of you elitists and twelve year olds that Ebay'ed and think you know everything this is hard, but it will prevent people like me, the ones with anger problems, from verbally cutting your balls off in vent.

This wall o' text brought to you by: Spiked Deathdealers-Roflstomping the throats of noobs and asshats alike since murder in a video game became legal.

Stats: A shamans best friend.

2009-10-25T18:30:00.001-07:00

Many a shaman will argue that haste is the new it stat for restoration shamans. Sure we get to cast faster which adds up to more HPS, but what we sacrifice is much more important than haste.

As I am currently geared, I have the following stats.
Spell power-Healing:2509
Crit:32.35%
Haste:411-12.53%
Mana while casting:588

These stats are un-buffed, with the exception of totems which I consider a 100% up-time self buff. I've often gotten remarks from raid leaders that my crit is high, my haste low, and my mana regeneration at a good spot. I may never say anything, but I've never agreed with that statement. The reason my crit is so high is because the gear I wear is heavily stacked with crit, so nothing I can do about that. And honestly, crit is an amazing stat for shamans. We get mana back on critical heals, improving out longevity, and a crit heal can be the difference between a dead tank and a live one. My haste isn't low because shamans only need haste in one scenario: Heavy raid damage and Chain Heal spam. My guild runs with three healers, which means I am not overly taxed in AoE heavy fights. And as for my mp5, I would like to have it higher, but it isn't something that effects me unless I am spamming constantly.

I know several shaman healers that have an upwards of 800 haste, a number that to me is incredibly, and abnormally high. These shamans are great healers in their own right, easily out gearing me and out playing in my opinion. But I can't help but think that the 5% crit that they are missing compared to me would greatly help their healing. More often than not, my mp5 is also much higher,(The shamans in question have Solace of the Fallen/Defeated, so this really doesn't apply as it is a mp5 trinket).

For any starting restoration shaman, I would highly recommend gemming for spell power and Int as these are the most important stats for healing heroics/Naxx. Once on to harder content like Ulduar, I would suggest Int/mp5 gems,Int/SP or Int/haste. Once you know your class inside and out, and have a firm grasp on where most of your healing comes from, you can change your gems and enchants accordingly to fit the play style that you enjoy and are best at. Never let someone force you to play in a way that you feel is inferior or wrong. If someone tries, explain why you chose to gear as you did, and if they don't like it, so what, it isn't their character to screw around with. If this person happens to be a raid leader and doesn't want to listen to what you are telling him, I would suggest moving on as the atmosphere is obviously wrong for you.

This informative delve into the art of shamans is brought to you by: Shamans- WE GOT MUTHA FUCKIN HEALIN LAZAHZ.
Also, the Association of Moonkin Haters-Purple vertical lasers are offensive to shamans everywhere.

A guild and its' officers.

2009-10-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

A guild is a community within a community. A group of people with common goals or values that want to work together to achieve feats not doable alone. A guild cannot just be thrown together with no planning and be expected to succeed. A guild needs a leader, and a leader needs others, others that s/he trusts to advise him/her in doing what is best for the guild. When someone up to the task takes the reigns of a guild, it will usually go well, with member numbers swelling as others learn of the success of . Now, more so than the people in charge, the regular members give the guild it's public image, and really holds it together. A guild master and it's officers make up a small percentage of the membership, and when push comes to shove, are only able to do what the members allow them too.

Many believe that a guild should only have a small number of officers. People that are close and will do what is best for the guild as a whole. On general principles this is very true, but taken too far, this can lead to problems within the guild. If a guild has only officers that are close, they can lose sight of what the members as a whole want or need. An easy method of fixing this is to have what I like to call sub-officers. People that are not full officers, but still have a say in what happens to the guild as a whole. These people should be chosen from the most trustworthy raiders, or even just general members that log in a great deal of time with the guild and it's members. These players can be what many guilds chose, Class/Role Leaders. A Class leader will be the person that other players of the same class turn to for help, with questions for the GM or problems they have with the guild or specific members. A Role Leader will be someone that is more knowledgeable, or willing to learn about the aspects of all classes that can fill the role s/he is responsible for. As with Class Leaders, a Role Leader will help, answer questions or forward them to the GM, and help with intra-guild problems. These players, often times raiders are much more involved with the day to day problems and moods of other guild members, and thus can greatly help a GM with solving problems.

Seniority
In many cases, an officer is chosen for his/her seniority with the guild. This practice can lead to guild drama, lose of members, and worse. Now, many times, a member has his/her seniority because s/he is an exceptional contributor, enjoys playing with the guild, or is just an all around good person. It can't be said however, that all senior members are the best choice. If a member of the guild goes above and beyond what s/he is required, helps others without hesitating, and does his/her job well, you would think s/he would be given a position that could help other guild members. However, what if this member had only been in the guild for a short time, or just came back from extended leave? In most cases, this person won't even be considered for promotion until a very later date.

The moral of this story is this: A guild must chose officers by performance, attitude, and contribution over anything else or the guild will suffer. A guild must stay in touch with what the guild as a whole needs or it will suffer. More importantly, a guild must remember that they play a game with real people. A Game, that other people invest time in to have fun, a guild has no right to force this game to be a chore, and guilds that do are not worth the time or effort people put into them.

-This wall o' text brought to you by: Advocates for non-asshat guilds-Fuck with us and we'll cut you!!

(This is in no way reflective of my guild right now. This was a pre-write that I did about two months ago)

The sack is empty. And a lie.

2009-10-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Empty. Dried out. Nothings inside.

The "sack" refers to the wealth of knowledge I collect during PTR periods. As of right now, 3.3 has provided me with absolutely nothing of interest or worth. Oh cool, shamans get a weird AoE spell that I don't really care about. Look at that, haste affects HoT's which I have a total of one of. The ugly t10 gear previews just cements the fact that I will never make an alt to 80, and that I will most likely need to stock up on Noggenfogger Elixir's. The fights from Icecrown so far don't excite me, but in this regard I feel like once the PTR hits, I will find them fun and interesting.

Why healing isn't fun to face-roll.
One a completely different note, I finally discovered why I heal instead of DPS or tank (other than the fact I fail at both). Healing forces you to interact with your fellow players, plain and simple. There is no set rotation that you can macro to two keys and say "I win". You are forced to be aware, and more than that, flexible in how you interact. As a tank or dps, your job is to smack the bad guy till he dies, a task that lends itself to you sitting there and going down your keyboard to cast your spells. As a healer, I must, and I stress must be aware of where people are, what they are doing, and how much damage they are taking. This means that before a fight I might need to ask the tank to do a certain thing to decrease the damage he takes, a talent or trinket for instance. I might tell the dps to bunch up as much as is safe so my Chain Heal hits all of them. Healing is a reactive job, less so for druids and possibly priests but not by much. I need to know within a second whether to cast Healing Wave, or Lesser Healing Wave. I have to watch what player has Riptide so I can cast Chain Heal through him/her for a better effective number. If a boss fears or drops a poison, I need to drop my respective totems. All of these aspects make healing stressful, yet fun and incredibly rewarding. It doesn't matter how long you've been playing, or what gear you're in, when someone says to you, "Great job healing dude", you feel proud of yourself. If healing just involved going down a list of spells and hitting them when off cool down would I do it? Would you?

This informative post brought to you by: Mana Tide Totem-It's like the fountain of youth but you'll still grow old and die! And no one will care!

Shamans: A story of straightforward badassness.

2009-10-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

Shamans have always been a great class to play, whether it was in classic and you spammed Chain Heal in ZG or BC where you did the same thing in a different zone. Well the zones weren't all that different but that is a conversation for a another time. And in WotLK, Chain Heal spam is still prevalent, but it is mixed in with so many other powerful spells it isn't mindless. With riptide, Tidal waves, and even Lesser/Healing Wave shamans have a variety(though not as large as priests) of spells to use. However, unlike some classes, shamans spell are extremely straightforward.

Take paladins for example, I had no idea what Beacon actually did until a few days ago. Now maybe I'm just stupid but it honestly confused me. Even priests, with nearly ten spells to choose from at any given time would confuse and annoy me. The way shamans heal is by large direct heals that can be spread out over large distances. I could possibly have Riptide rolling on four people at a time, and with the improved distance Chain Heal jumps I can sometimes hit ranged when the melee was my target. It is, in my opinion, still the paladin that will come out on top in fights with minimal raid/large tank damage, and holy priests with the opposite. Shamans, however, can compete with the best of them.

Take ToC 25m. Many of the fights in it have AoE damage, well all of them do to varying degrees but it is in the high AoE fights that a shaman will excel. Take the Twins fight for example, a fight easily lost if people don't pay attention. I can hit over 5-5.5k hps on this fight. Granted so can druids and even priests if they are holy, but it used to be that shamans were brought for Heroism/Bloodlust and whatever else they brought was just extra. With high mana regeneration rates as well, a shaman is one of the longest lasting healers as well.

As I've been tooting my own horn this whole time, I'd like to point out something I dislike about shamans. It seems to me, that a shaman is much less dependent on gear that other classes. I'm not even close to being as geared as our main pally healer, yet I can easily beat him on many fights. Our heals scale with gear more than is fair to other classes.

-This wall o' text brought to you by: Earth Shield-Its a hunk of flying shit that doesn't smell or give you sars.

Tank Love.

2009-10-10T19:30:00.001-07:00

Now this is something that I've noticed throughout my career in WoW as a healer. When you, as a healer are assigned to a specific tank over a long period of time, you become attached to each other. You begin to talk to that person more readily and regularly, and you have a certain type of relationship that allows you to play together as you do.

The Playful Tank/Healer.
This is a combo you don't see often as many a healer isn't assigned to one specific tank long enough for the relationship to advance this far. This is a relationship in which the tank and his/her respective healers joke about letting the other die, or dpsing when they are supposed to do something else. You get sarcastic remarks flung back and forth with these two, but it is always in fun. In these cases, the two involved are either social and thus the relationship advanced faster or have been playing together long enough to know each other and how they play. This team is usually your best healer/tank skill wise, though sometimes this is not the case.

The Serious Tank/Healer.
This combo is one that many people hate having. With this team, either the tank or the healer, or both is very serious about what they do and almost never do anything else. With this team the relationship is less social and more like a business, with one or both of the people trying to min/max the other and make sure they are performing to the best of their abilities. With this team, it is likely two players that do not participate in the guild as much as others and feel that they are not up to par with the rest of the guild.

The Disconnect Tank/Healer.
As the name implies, these two individuals have a disconnect between raiding as a tank/healer team, and just being in the same guild. With this combo, the two respective tank/healers don't interact that much with each other outside of raids. Now, in raids, these two perform well together and actively try and make the others job easier. This is also a team that will be very social, but polite with each other, as they do not have a strong relationship.

These are only the basic combo's that I've encountered, and there are many people that can't be dropped into these categories. Many people fall in between Playful and Serious, with some being at the extremes and others not. As long as your tanks and healers can work together though, they are doing their jobs.

-Brought to you by *HEROISM!* "Look at me! I'm casting so fast it's like I'm on roids or meth but really I'm just fucking huge and really goddamn fast!"

Bleargh.

2009-10-09T14:05:00.001-07:00

Bleargh!! That's the sound I make when I do something that bores me, a sound I've been making a lot lately. The weekend and patch 3.3 should remedy that hopefully.

Speaking of the weekend, The guild is heading into Uld/ToC tonight(I'm full raider!!! ZOMG) and as I like to pile work onto myself I decided to record out boss fights. I really had the idea because of a certain amazing shaman named Hardwired and his healing video's. My hope is that these videos(that I make) will help the guild learn where mistakes are made or come up with new ways of doing an encounter. So there's that, what else should I talk about?

Oh yeah, I finally learned to do something that I'd been struggling with for a while. Heal Well. As MUSED takes 3 healers into our raids most times, I'm never able to even get near the top of the healing chart, and when your 20-60k below the other healers in healing done you get sad. Last weekend we took a stroll into 10m ToGC. Now the week or two earlier we downed ToC 10 for the first time, needless to say not everyone was geared enough. However, it was extremely fun and I kicked ass healing wise. When you get a compliment from a paladin that you consider godly at healing you know you did damn good. Once I get more time I'm going to post on an interesting occurence I've noticed with healers and the tank they are assigned to heal.

-Brought to you by the loving embrace of FIRE ELEMENTAL TOTEM. Warming you up with fire since a long ass time ago.

I cancer and u!-Contradictions are my speciality.

2009-10-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

A while ago I posted on why I dislike addon packages, and preloaded UI's. They aren't your UI, they're someone elses that you just happen to be able to use. I was always of the feeling that a serious UI should be made by you, and carefully constructed to fit your needs. Here's where I must contradict myself.BeneaUI is possibly the best UI I've ever seen. Made by a serious raiding priest, it basically says, "Healers, I know what you need, here it is". The UI is clean, not overly flashy or in your face, but it provides everything that I, as a healer need to know.

Features
This UI consists of quite a few addons, so many in fact that I won't list them all. A few major addons are Domino's, Stuf unitframes, my much beloved coolLine cooldown tracker, and many many more. What I enjoy most about this UI is the low impact feel it gives you without losing essential addons. With faded bars, minimalist unitframes and no background/border colors on several things it gives the feel of being minimalist, something I greatly enjoy. I would also like to point out the sheer amount of work that Benea must have put into this. Grid is configured up to Twins in ToC, Priest and Druid buffs are included, all manually added. Different textures for addons that don't come with them, stuff like that. In all honesty, I don't have any gripe with the UI that isn't purely aesthetic and I recommend it to any healer struggling to perfect their UI.

New- By definition, New, means new if you didn't know

2009-09-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

As the title implies, a lot of new stuff has gone on in the last week since I posted. Of all that stuff I'll only include the stuff that involves WoW, because no one cares about real life.
MUSED
Yes folks, I found a guild. And if I do say so myself, a damn good one at that. I transferred servers after finding one that was in my time-zone and looked to have a good number of weekend raiding guilds. I popped onto the realm forums and started scouting for what I wanted. I needed a weekend guild due to my heavy weekday schedule, and I wanted one that was decently progressed into Uld. Lo and behold, MUSED, was the answer. I read up on them, looked at a few armory profiles, all the stuff I do because according to a professor I have a superiority complex(I'm anal about guilds, not a prick). I dropped an app and waited...for like 8 hours, maybe. The quick response immediatly impressed me. I was asked into their vent, with a little trouble on my part seeing as I don't have the common sense to know a lower-case L when I see it >.< I was immediatly invited into uld, which excited the hell outta me. We blew through Thorim, Freya+1, Mimiron and even general V after a few attempts. I was impressed that I didn't cause like six wipes by being stupid but I didn't and it was awesome.

ToC
That's right. We did a 10m ToC on my second day of being in the guild. We blew though Northrend Beasts and Lord J with ease. Faction champs was a slight hiccup with all of my hex's being resisted and some crazy burst on the dps. We came back together and downed them on our second attempt. Onto the Twins. After a brief description of the fight we went in. And being the idiot that I am, I let the tank die while I tried to get the orbs. Our amazing GM and druid healer came over to help me out and we downed the Twins on our second attempt. We had maybe 5 minutes left on our two hour raid schedule. And with that we went onto Anub to see what he was like. Phase one and two are pretty much face roll, with phase three just being really annoying. I think I had a mini-stroke when I saw people below 45%. We downed Anub on our first attempt, and that was ToC. Guild first ToC, something I participated in. Amazing.

I enjoy raiding with this guild and these people more than I've enjoyed raiding in a long time and I see great things coming from my hopefully long career with them. As maybe four people read this blog, there isn't much point to what I'm about to do but that's how I roll.

Mused is recruiting!
12/14 Uld-10
5/5 ToC-10
Raid times are 10-2am Friday/Saturday, Sunday(optional) 10-12m

This wall o' text brought to you by The Healers Association of HOLY SHIT PEOPLE ARE DYING HOLY SHIT. Thank you for your time.

Un-noticable-itating

2009-09-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

The title says it all, somewhat. For the past two or three weeks I've played about 2-5 hours a week, mostly on the weekends. This caused me to miss a very important detail about my server that I'd apparently not known for well over nine months. There are french people EVERYWHERE!. Do I have a problem with this? No I do not. However, I do have a problem with the fact that nearly all of the top guilds on my server are french.I don't speak french. I would love if I could, but I don't, and it makes for a sad lemur. I know enough of languages in general to get the gist of what their saying.
"If your a shaman and you write a blog we will give you phat lewtz. We raid at the perfect times for you, also, phat lewtz. Come join our guild and I'll give you a blow-job" Wait whut?

I mean c'mon, it's annoying to know that the only guild you'd want to join speaks a different language than you. Adding to the stupid-ness of the situation, I just found out what time-zone I'm in(something you'd think is obvious). So now I have to look for a guild and A) Speaks English, or Engrish as I say when I'm feeling racist, and B) Are in the same time-zone as I am(Eastern Standard by the way). It's a big task, especially the time zone seeing as most EST realms are PvE and I like me some PvP realm action. Sorta sucks, really blows, and tastes slightly of anus.

Staying and Sucking, the truth is in the name.

2009-09-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Innuendos are fun! So, quick update on stuff that has to do with stuff. I have re-activated my account at the urging of several friends and former guild-mates, so you won't be rid of me just yet. As for sucking.... well lets just say there was a cop, a speeding ticket, and a certain someones [Going Down?] achievement popped. In less offensive news, the new, or old if you're that kind of person, revamped Onyxia is not very fun in 25m. Why, you ask? Well I'll tell you... In the form of song!!! Not really but I will tell you what to watch out for. There are a lot of whelps, I counted nearly 30 and they have a relatively large health pool for AoE adds. The big elites hit hard and are some how invisible to all dps, seeing as we had about 5 alive at one time. The deep breaths are not all that hard to avoid if you aim your camera up a little and watch for where Onyxia is facing. As she descends into Phase 3, she immediately fears, and the lava immediately 'splodes, providing a double helper of up the pooper action. All in all, a very movement heavy fight, a fight full of oh shit moments, and HOLY SHIT WHELPS FUCK GET 'EM OFFA ME SHIT IM DEAD SHIT REINCARNATE. It'll probably be a few weeks until pugs can get her down with one attempt but it's a really fun fight.

It makes me heart hurt.

2009-09-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

So here's a little update for those who actually read this(maybe three people at the most). I'm gonna be playing off and on for the next eleven days until my account is done with it's active payment, hopefully I can spark some interest and start it back up again, who knows.

I would like to take a second and say thank you to a couple people on my server(you know who you are. Maybe). You three are amazing. That's the only way to say it. With putting up with my bullshit and just being the incredibly nice people that you are, I can honestly say you are some of my closest friends that I've never meet. One of you in particular has a special place. I don't think I've ever meet someone so nice, so incredibly self-sacrificing that they would consider giving away something they spent months and months of time on in a moments notice to help someone they've never even seen before. So whatever happens with my WoW career, whether I press on or call it quits, I want all of you to know how much I appreciate you three.

I promise no more sappiness from now on but it needed to be said, for my benefit as much as theirs.

/sigh for the 5th time.

2009-09-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

So here's and update for anyone that cares.
I've gotten my account back, I can officially log on and play and all that good stuff. Unfortunately, as is par for the course I've gotten all my gear that can be sold, sold. The account is currently canceled, all addons are gone and I don't even have the shortcut on my desktop. As of now I haven't decided if I'll re-activate it because of my heavy school load, but if I do I'll only be playing on a casual basis. We'll see what happens, I've been thinking about making a new account and starting over so these bastards don't find me again but I don't have that kind of patience. I'll give another update in a week or two, or not, who knows at this point. I would just like to point out how ironic the timing is. I sent an application in to a hardcore raiding guild on a different server about 12 hours before I found out I'd been hacked. Whatever, thanks to anyone who reads the blog and rest assured the permanent deletion of all things WoW won't be final.

fuck it

2009-09-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

For the 5th time my accounts gotten hacked. Even with battle.net. Im currently uninstalling Wow, all things pertaining to it and attempting to cancel this blog. I don't fucking care anymore. If I dont have the security to go even 2 months without something happening why the fuck should I play. So peace out and make sure you secure your shit or some piece of shit will take your account and sell it, just like all of mine have been.

Ya so.. ok? umm wtf..

2009-09-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

I recently experienced something that I never would've thought to happen to me. I freaked the fuck out while raiding. It was that last 15% in 25m XT, and I was the only healer alive. Before I was the last one left, things were a little tight, but not bad. And by not bad I mean I was basically thinking the following, "HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT EVERYONES DYING HOLY SHIT TANKS DEAD FUCK THIS HOLY SHIT". A normal occurrence for me, no big deal. And then with some horribly placed and timed bombs followed by tantrum the other healers went down. I yell out in vent, "STACK THE FUCK UP" and started my chain heal spamming. I used both nature's swiftness and tidal force, mana tide totem, a health potion, gift of the narru and my fire elemental totem. And holy freaking shit did we almost not make it. I had 1563 health left, only 1 tank was alive, and he was at 13% health, 6 dps was alive but we made it. Of course as the only healer alive it was preceived that I hadnt been doing my job correctly, because if I had been, I'd have died also. (thats why the post is named what it is). I was denied loot because of, "poor raiding attitude" and put on probation for a week. Yeah fuck that, I left the guild and ninja'd all the money I could. (26g)

The raiding guild's mistake. Sorta.

2009-09-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

This has got to be one of my biggest pet peeves ever. EVER. When you're applying to a raiding guild, going through the application and all's well and good. Then you see it, the dreaded addon question. "Do you use all of our required addons? omen, dbm and decursive?" This bothers me to no end, and I really don't know why. Forcing raiders to have addons that are raid specific, and help in raids is fine, and I agree that you shouldn't accept a raider that doesn't, or is unwilling to use addons. But I swear to god, when ever I see that question my response is always yes, even though I don't use decursive. I really could care less about a guild if that's a deciding factor. My problem stems from the fact that I dont view addons as something to make gameplay easier, but just enchance it. Take Grid for example, Grid is just a better version of something blizzard already had. Healing is still difficult, but grid enchances my gameplay by making the raid frames smaller and more in-depth. Decursive on the other hand, is one of those game modifiers. Sure it doesn't change gameplay, but god it makes it feel easier. Cleansing is something that I like to do on my own, via grid. I don't like the fact that decursive makes that aspect of the game mindless. I've been kicked out of many a guild from a conversation like this one.

RL: What killed everyone?

ME: Couldn't get debuff off fast enough, sorry.

RL: Don't you have decursive? It makes life so much easier.

ME: Nope, never saw a need to use decursive.

RL: Well our wipe proves that you do nub.

Yeah so that's not exactly how they go but my point is this: Requiring addons is fine to a point, but once that point is crossed it hinders gameplay and make unhappy players.

From voodoo to borscht

2009-09-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

At last! The time has come for me to shed my trollishness for hooves. No longer will I be a raptor riding, voodoo doing, spin kicking troll. For I shall become... A Space Goat!!!. An elephant riding, Russian speaking, borscht eating space goat! Since Tbc was announced, I'd always wanted to plat a space goat, but really didn't want to start over from level 1. After I hit 80, I really wanted to play alliance, the horde on my server are worse than any one else from any server I've ever encountered. So I'm making the switch, and now instead of having to talk to a cowadin in the near future, I can kill them and laugh about it. My troll is laughing at that, and my space goat would be, but he's eating borscht.

AwEsoMe.

2009-09-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

Awesome is the only word to use for it. The new boss in VoA is a restoration shamans wet dream. Massive raid damage is where Chain heal shines, and this fight is purely raid damage. This guy gives himself as 5% damage increase every 20-30 seconds which if the fight lasts too long will one shot the tank. He lays down patches of fire that you MUST get out of. He also does a fire spin that hits everyone in the raid over about 3-4 seconds, killing you if you don't throw up a riptide on yourself. This fight was extremely fun, and actually quite easy if you have a good group. The group I was in for 25m had people die in first 20 seconds to the fire patches and he ended up hitting the tank for around 50k. I also saw holy paladins shine in this fight, with the number one healer a paladin with 5.3k HPS, and me at 4.9k HPS. the next people on the list were another resto shaman, a holy priest and a druid with all but the druid hovering 2-5oo HPS under me. Also, got me some t9 gloves to upgrade my crappy t7.5 ones, I'm quite happy.

Edit: We did have more than 5 healers, but they either died early or weren't very good so I didn't really think about them :)

Class angst

2009-09-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Not sure if that's a proper way to use the word, but I don't care. I'm having it.

My problem comes from the fact that I feel like I'm being pigeonholed into using Chain Heal all the time, when most encounters don't warrant the use of Chain Heal. Sure fights like Auriya where there is a decent amount of raid damage or Mimiron where people get bent over on a regular basis I'll use it, and it shines, but most fights really don't need Chain Heal spamming. So on fights that I don't Chain Heal spam my healing done is basically non-existent and when I do Chain Heal spam my over-healing is through the roof. Some other shamans that I've talked to about this have the same problem. We've come to the conclusion that in 25m's Chain Heal is great, but not as much in 10's. The reason for this is because apparently Chain Heal isn't where blizzard wants it to be as an AoE healing spell. I guess it's just not my play style(Give me a holy pally and I'll probably be fine).

This post of whining and being a little baby brought to you by: Shamans for the fair treatment of totems.

-When you abuse a totem, troll babies get beat by their parents.

HW vs LHW- the actual numbers.

2009-08-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

So I did some number crunching to find the real benefits(or not) of using Healing Wave as opposed to Lesser Healing Wave. I won't bore you with all the actual math, mostly because I don't want to type it out and partly because it is very basic math. The only thing to take into account when looking at numbers like these is that they change with totems, trinkets and buffs, so my numbers will be vastly different from yours.

HW-LHW
+343 in mana use
+5636 in healing done unbuffed-2.25 second cast w/o Tidal Waves
- 1.57 second cast w/ Tidal Waves

+6182 in healing done w/ Totems-2.14 second cast w/o Tidal Waves
-1.5 second cast w/ Tidal Waves
+9362 in healing done with Crit

LHW-HW
-343 in mana use
-5636 in healing done unbuffed- 1.35 second cast

-6182 in healing done w/ Totems- 1.3 second cast

-9362 in healing done with Crit

And there it is, the real numbers between Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave. Please take into account buffs, totems, trinkets and the like before saying I'm incorrect.

I myself use the riptide + Healing Wave combo, with Lesser Healing Wave and Chain Heals thrown in if needed. I find myself at around 60-70% mana at the end of a fight unless it was raid damage heavy or just very intense. This method has a very high healing output when you add Glyph of Healing Wave and Ancestral Awakening, and a higher mana return, in most cases, with Improved Water Shield.

Icancer and u!- Cleanliness is key

2009-08-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

Icancer and u is a addon specific column that will go over everything from UI's to specific addons to specific features of addons.

When you ask a WoW player what he/she looks at the most, the answer your most likey going to get in, "My screen u nub". What they really mean, is their UI- user interface. There are many addons that modify your UI, and some that are complete replacements to the standard blizzard UI. However, there is a very important problem with some of these addons. People dont know how to organize them on the screen!!!! I've seen some ui's that show raid frames multiple times, have action bars that are huge and in the way, to even having blocks of addons in their main field of vision!

A players ui is supposed to enhance game play, not make it more cumbersome. Take my ui for example. Nothing is my line of sight, my action bars are small but useable, my raid frames are large and easily readable. This is an example of a clean ui. Now i know this isnt perfect, and this is only an example of what a clean ui can be i feel that it shows my point nicely.
There is no information displayed that i dont need, and none of it overtakes anything else, it is small, but big enough that i can easily read everything that i need to. This is a raiders ui, built upon the idea that i need to know who's hurt, whats hurting them, what size heal they need etc. But paralelle to that, it is built upon the idea that i have too look at it for hours on end so it must look nice. I consider myself a minimalist, but i know and even enjoy seeing nice ui's that have a little flare. but honestly, for your sake and the sake of your party, keep it clean, keep it simple, and keep it working.

Why you shouldnt download addon packages.

2009-08-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

Addon packages are pre-loaded, pre-configured packages filled with multiple addons. The problem with that is that often times it is hard to configure them to your liking without messing something up or even making the package unusable. More often than not, the package is configured to a specific resolution and screensize, and looks terrible or has wonky errors if you dont have that size screen or resolution. Whats the solution to this problem? Just do it yourself. Its easy. Maybe you like a few specific addons in a package. Just download those and your free to do with them what you will. Dont like an addons once you get it? Toss it out, no worries for the rest of your addons. Take me for example, i used to use a specific UI package( whos name escapes me) for the longest time. I had loads of problems with it. If i changed the setting on one addon, others would change with it or stop working. It wouldnt get updated and when i updated individual addons they no longer worked with the rest of the package. And then, finally, I discovered that in order to make a UI that fit me and how I play, I had to be the one to make it!. Now I have a UI that I love, that shows me everything I need to know, and looks great at the same time. Addon packages dont work, they dont look nice, and they dont account for individuality. Dont use them.

If you want to see my UI, follow the link : My UI, 25m group layout

-10[...WTF does that even mean]

2009-08-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

This years blizzcon held many a bombshell for the WoW gamers world(of warcraft) and how he/she sees it. And honestly, i think the effect from that bombshell is going to last a while. With all the changes to SP, AP and the like, changes to things that most people didnt view as broken, people are concerned that stats will drop, and classes changed so much that it will feel like playing a different game. Not so sure this is a good idea. Im sure blizzard has a plan to make it so how we play is the same, and the changes are just so they have less code to write and (possibly) less bitching to hear, but i really am skeptical about all this. On the plus side i think the new races will bring some new experiences to the game and Im looking forward to some level 80 VC and SFK. The one thing i really dont like is the changes to the new zones. I understand that Deathwing is back and causing all kinds of problems, but really? Lava in nearly every zone? I guess when i heard we could go back to the classic zones we leveled it i thought it would be as 80's and there would be a point. Im a little confused on why blizzard is going the way they are (hence the title) but we have at least nine months (probably a lot more) until the expanstion is released and Im surethings will change, but all in all, Im concerned for the future of the world (of warcraft.. lol)

I may have made a mistake.

2009-08-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This is by no means a rip on shamans, I still love them, but I've found a new love as well.
Most people know about the discipline priest and how great of a healer they are. I personally love having one in my group, and love playing with them. I'll admit I dont know all that much about them but what i do know really impresses me. I was recently in Naxx 25, assigned to tank healing by my guild master because he trusts me (I had the most SP!). I really didnt have much to do, the other main healer we had was a disc priest from the guild. I was stareing at my combat log after fights, just looking at all the number that got absorbed. I love my shaman, but I am now in love with the discipline priest.

Not by choice however.

2009-08-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

Chain heal is the iconic shaman spell. With smart jumps it chooses the person that needs the heal the most. It is, by all means a fantastic spell. However, its not the spell. Many resto shamans use chain heal as their primary healing spell, with Riptide and LHW thrown in as needed. I however, have a different approach. With a constant Riptide uptime on the tank along with Earth Shield as well, I am free to use the immense healing power of HW as my primary healing spell. Able to top off a tank, dps, or anyone else with one spell is great, and with High crit AA is proccing all the time, increaseing the healing done. Im not saying that this is the best approach, or even a good one, but its how i play. With more shamans turning aside from CH spamming, you would think that Blizzard would include some totems or set bonuses the dont buff just CH.

Take the new restoration totem, chance on CH to increase spell power by 243. Not a bad totem, and i'll probably get it eventually. But wait, theres more!

The 4 piece set bonus of the Conquerors is a 0.2 second cast reduction on CH. Alright, not great, but not bad either. Still, I havent finished yet.

The 4 piece set bonus of the new t9 restoration set increases the critical strike chance of CH by 5%. That is quite hefty. Right now, as I'm geared I have 30% crit chance. 5% on CH is really quite nice.

My point, in all of this, is that it seems that blizzard really wants shamans to use CH as a main staple in their rotation. And I do, not by choice however.

Back with a vengence

2009-08-10T04:37:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, back to business. I have gotten my account back, (all hail the Blizzard Administration Team) and I'm back to do what I did best. After trying out all the new content, and by *new* I mean the new 5 and 10 man instances I have to say, good job blizzard. The patch wasn't extensively broken, realms were playable and most of all, the new shaman bar is godly. As for the changes to restoration shamans, definetly a huge buff. Healing wave is now getting 16-17k crits (thank you H ToC gear) without having to get a measly 9k heal beforehand. CH is now efficent, which means a lot of people will go back to mindless spamming of it (For Shame!) Now I was skeptical at first about to new instances, as were many raiders. "No trash, just bosses?" However, only partly true. There is a semblence of trash in the new 5 player dungeon, and the 10 player is unique enough that I felt it wasnt neccesary. All in all, a great patch. (Loving the fact I can farm about 30 emblems of Conq. a day also, makes me a happy lemur {I like lemurs, deal with it})

Huzzah!!

2009-07-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

Huzzah! My account got stolen! The second time in as many months! I'm so happy!!

Its like a discovery

2009-07-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

I have made a personal discovery! Clap for me! Well it isnt really a discovery but im going with it. I've been leveling a deathknight recently and decided that i would be a tank. Now as a healer I'm used to a bunch of crazy stuff happening and having to deal with it. Big shocker, not so much as a 64 DK. The gameplay is almost mindless compared to Northrend instances and you dont need any sort of coordination to survive. Some people say that just being a DK is mindless, that they are overpowered. But if you know how to play your class well that in itself makes you a force to be reckoned with. So what was my real discovery? I finally realized why tanks hate it so much when a dps pulls a group or a hunter(warlocks and DK's too) has his pet on growl. So like I said, its like a discovery but much less shiny, and important.

The prowess of the Ninja.

2009-07-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

You whisper me before we start the boss fight, "If any resto gear drops do you need it?" i respond to you, "Of course, but we're rolling on it so..." You say nothing in return.
We begin the fight, with you on raid healing and myself on the tank. You stand in a flame wall, and die, and raid members die because of it. We down Sartharion with ease, and all run to his corpse to look at the loot. Tier 7.5 gloves, ones that I could use drop. I roll, as do you. While i look at the numbers to see if i won, i see something strange. You did not roll 1-100. Your roll states 100 (100-100).
The raid leader is too impatient to notice this, and when I call foul he says I just wanted to token for myself. You have succeeded in ninjaing where many have failed. I congradulate you and wish you the best of luck. I reported you to your GM and he said he wouldn't accept the type of behavior in a raiding member of his guild. Once again, best of luck.

Fresh?

2009-07-13T12:14:00.001-07:00

We've all been invited to raids that were already in progress, it's a fact of life. Someone says in trade that they need a healer for 10m ulduar, and you send him or her a message, "Fresh?". The reply is almost always "Yup" or "No but only 2 bosses down". This is perfectly acceptable in my opinion. What is not acceptable is what happened to me a few days ago. I got invited to a 10m ulduar, having been told only a few bosses were down. A few to me means like 2 or 3. 8. 8 bosses had been killed, and i didnt find out until i saved myself. That is unacceptable, and down right mean. If someone asks you how many bosses you've killed, be specific, please.

The Perfect Patch

2009-07-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

With 3.2 (hopefully) just around the corner, I've been looking over the patch notes, with a unique sense of satisfaction. I'm lovin' the class changes, and most of all, the emblem system. I'm more of a heroic kind of guy, the five-man team feels just right to me. Being able to get Emblems of Conquest from heroics and Emblems of Triumph from the dailies is going to be a blessing. Sure, t9 wont be gotten as fast, but if I can save my self the stress of raids? That seems perfect in my book. So is 3.2 going to be a perfect patch? Lets hope so.

Minimizing overhealing with addons

2009-07-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

Over-healing is something a lot of healers look at to determine how well they do their job. Too much and it shows that you are very mana inefficient, and you dont really know really know what you are doing. For some classes (i.e paladins) over-healing isnt something too look at that much, but for other classes, like shamans it is very important. Now most of the time over-healing is the result of having a massive amount of incoming heals from other players (25m raids). With shamans having slow, but powerful heals, over-healing really hurts us. A tank might need your HW when you start to cast it, but by the time its finished they dont. Often times people dont know how to fix this. One solution that I've found is using a combat text addon that will show you how much of the heal gets wasted( I use MikScrollingBattleText). Lets say that I CH the tank, the effective heal is for 3500, with an over-heal of 10,000. This means that the tank and melee dps are getting heavy incoming heals. To minimize mana use and over-healing, use CH on the caster dps, often times they take damage as well and are ignored to keep the tank(s) alive. Another option is looking at the over-healing window in recount, however, I feel this isnt a good method unless you have time to look at the numbers and the technical crap it gives you.

- this wall o' text brought to you by: Shamans for the betterment of shamans and other shamany stuff about shamans

Well this is fun...

2009-07-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

Isnt this great! I love summer, all your friends from WoW suddenly have "real lives" so you never do anything together, your guild falls apart because people are "busy". I hate to say it, but i love summer. Being reduced to sitting in org with a shaman budy, dancing in a ring of totems and swearing at people in guild chat is really what i want to do with my time..... Fucking real-life having, out of house going bastards. All the worlds problems are your fault! Jackasses....

Droodz

2009-06-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

Now i know that this is a resto shaman blog, but I've always felt that variety can be a good thing. Doing a complete 180 from a healer, I'm currently trying my hand at tanking. Or leveling a character that I plan on tanking with. Now c'mon, what sounds more frightening, a tiny human with a sword and shield, or a giant bear about to maul you.... I vote for the bear. Druid tanking has always been something I've wanted to do, and now that i am in a healing slump, this is the perfect time. I'm sure I wont actually get him to 80, or even close to it, but I'll post about what i learn as I go along, just to assert my complete lack of understanding of the class.

I take a dip in ulduar

2009-06-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

So today i got an invite to ulduar 10m. I wasnt really looking forward to it, but hey, why not right?
We ended up only downing Razorscale and XT, with a few problems on Ignis. Mostly him dropping ppl in flame right after his fireballs and then jets. Not a good combo. I have to say, it was more fun than I thought it would be. Razor is really quite fun from a healing prospective, and XT? Well he is just a bitch. Not because of anything he does really, but instead because ppl dont realize the you HAVE TO MOVE on both bombs. We nearly wiped a few times because ppl wouldnt move on the gravity bombs. All in all I really liked it and am looking forward to going back tomorrow.

3.2 = FUCKING AWESOME

2009-06-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

So the official patch notes for 3.2 came out, and if you haven't seen them, they are awesome. I dont play as Enh, and Ele is my pvp spec so I'm going to skip those entirely. But oh boy, the changes for resto are much needed(wanted) and I cant wait.

Restoration

Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.

WHAA ??? HOLY SHIT!!! 10% dmg recuc is amazing, and in progression raids? I am simply amazed.

Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.

Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.

Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.

HOLY SHIT!!! Okay, lets say your HW hits for 8k untalented, add 2k to that and what do you get?
awesomeness.

Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30 second internal cooldown, and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.

This was unexpected but nice non-the less. I wasnt one to use LHW all that much, but just think, a properly item
-ized shaman has about 25% crit, add another 25% and for every 2 LHW's you cast, 1 will crit. Awesome.

Combine the new healing way with this and i see more shamans useing HW than spamming LHW. A play stlye Imyself try and use.

Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

This excites me. It has been long complained about that CH didnt proc IWS. With this update CH will be used
more often(is that possible?) because it wil be less of a mana drain.

Btw, not comsuming charges is awesome. plain and simple.

Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

This is just epic. All there is to it. 25% more mp5 makes me jump for joy. I will never again have to say "No mana,
sorry u died."(hopefully!)

HW v LHW v CH

2009-06-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

So here it is, the big debate between all resto shamans. Im not going to give you long complicated numbers or anything like that because i dont really understand them, this is just going to be how i see it.

HW v LHW
HW: 1044 mana for 8000 base heal.
LHW:626 mana for 4000 base heal.
Now already I can see that you get double base heals for less than double mana with HW. Now we can take into account talents. Healing Way: Increases healing power of next heaing wave on target by 18%, 18% of 8000 works out to be about 1500. If we take into account tidal waves as well, mostly from riptide, you can cast a 1.6 sec HW for around 9.5k heals.

HW beats LHW

HW v CH
HW: 1044 mana for 8000 base heal.
CH: 793 mana for 5300 base heal.
This is a more situalional comparison. For certain situations you are going to need to use CH, it's just neccesary. However, I have seen some shamans use CH no matter what, and this is just wrong. You will get 9.5k on a HW, and only 5.3k on a CH, so for single target healing HW is better.

HW beats CH (situational)

LHW v CH
LHW:626 mana for 4000 base heal.
CH: 793 mana for 5300 base heal.
Once again, this is situational. However, in my opinion, in this case you are going to want to use CH, because it allows you to pass the GCD, and if you have tidal waves you cannot do this with LHW.

CH beats LHW (situational)

Now I know that this seems a little be funky, with me telling you that CH spamming is wrong and then saying that it beats LHW, but bear with, im getting there!. For all single target healing you should use HW, it is more efficent, and allows you to top off a tank faster. For healing a larger group, like melee classes that are close together, CH will be your best bet, and should be what you use. Sure there are going to be times when you should use LHW, like if someone is only down slightly and you dont need a big heal, but other than that, HW is how you should go.

So there it is, my take on one of the bigger issues resto shamans deal with, I dont really care if you dont like it, but if you agree that im happy i could help.
( I didnt take into account any tier bonuses or totems that reduce mana cost, numbers will vary when you take those into consideration.)

My UI and why it works.

2009-06-16T20:11:00.001-07:00

I really like my UI. I use Bartender for my bars. Chatter for my chat, And if you can see it i have IceHud as well. I use Mbst for my combat text. This is probably my favorite variation of the UI that i always use. It has grid the help with healing, although I do use raid frames more often( thats what big gap in center is for). This UI allows me a great central view and allows me to track my parties health without looking in the corner of my screen. I'll post a SS of my in a 10m and 25m just so you know what it will look like.

OH HAI....U WAN TOTUMZ???

2009-06-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

Look at my shiny new blog!!! Its so shiny....and shiny and new. I play a restoration shaman on the server drenden, and im awesome, not to toot my own horn. I know im not the best, most knowledgeable or experienced healer in the game but i've done my fare share. This blog is something I've wanted to make for a while now, basically since I really got into healing. Im not going to bring you the latest big ass equation on which spells to use, or how you should play, because i dont know what im doing, i just act like i do :) This blog is really for entertainment, because I've done or seen some pretty hilarious things. I might bring some semi informational stuff now and again, but seeing as most of my time outside of a raid is sitting in dalaran with some guildies dancing with my totems i wont be much help. If you like the blog, and what i post than my job is done, if you dont, well then im still going to blog because i enjoy it so suck it!!