Gobble Gobble bitches

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.

" "
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.

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.

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

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.

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.
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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!

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.