Shamans: A story of straightforward badassness.

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.

Bleargh.

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.

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

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.