Classes Archive

While I was at the Dark Portal last night, I grabbed a few new friends.

    

The Portal Hound is like a mini Beast, and the Lieutenant is like the Felguard, but, much bigger. I sacrificed my Felguard and just used these two the rest of the night. I will be going back to grab one of the large Doom Guards next, maybe an Infernal while I am at it. Fun Times.

Aloha

After running Scholomance, Malgash, the almighty and powerful Dark Lord of Hellfire Club… /ahem uh… obtained the final few materials necessary to craft the epic Warlock robes: [Robe of the Void].

• [Windreaver Greaves] disenchanted for Paed.
• [Stoneform Shoulders] disenchanted for Malgash.
• [Magister’s Belt] went to Necromage.
• [Deadwalker Mantle] needed by Malgash.
• [Magister’s Belt] went to Necromage.
• [Intricately Runed Shield] disenchanted for Paed.
• [Boneclenched Gauntlets] disenchanted for Bomosnipah.
• [Dreadmist Wraps] went to Paed.
• [Necropile Leggings] needed by Malgash.
• [Wildheart Bracers] went to Necromage.
• [Magister’s Gloves] went to Malgash.
• [Vigorsteel Vambraces] disenchanted for Necromage.
• [Devout Crown] disenchanted for Bomosnipah.
• Skykomish got shafted.

The Loot List has been updated.

Patch 2.0: Windfury and rockbiter at the same time? Maybe the enhancement tree isn’t as pointless as I thought….

Okay, let me dispense with my personal bias and own up to my own whiney behavior as related to the enhancement tree for shaman talents… I thought it was going to be the most awesome thing ever to be able to run into a fight with a 2H weapon sporting a healthy windfury buff and lots of strength/agility gear. For a short while there it was but as other players gained more power from their own talent trees I couldn’t blindly fly into a melee situation and hope to prevail (or even live). I think this is a good thing because you have to learn how to use your talents and spells rather than simply click and auto-strike, dropping a shock every once in awhile. But to me, the enhancement tree seemed to cost too many talent points and provide too little reward or leave too few talent points left over for totem and spell talents. But still, melee is fun.

The new classes of shamans in the guild seemed to have learned this much sooner than I and are currently having fun with their ‘toons in dungeons and on quests, showing admirable maturity and understanding of the class. It won’t be long before I’ll be asking Maanae, for example, how to get some part of the class tweaked for certain effects. The mere fact that I’ve spent over 200gold all told to re-spec Ungulataur over and again tells you that I love the shaman but I’m never truly comfortable with my build.

Well, all bets are off with the next patch and I don’t mean the BC expansion pack. Guess what, dual-wielding is on the test realms right now. Yes. Dual-Wielding. For shamans. It will only be available as a talent point in the restructured talent trees (no, I doubt it will be on the Restoration tree ) but I have the feeling that I will need to reconsider my recent scoffing at the enhancement tree as this seems like a part of Blizzard’s overhaul of player balance in PVP. So to those considering the Enhancement tree, please do it and have fun with it and ignore my bitterness about the whole utility of it. Changes are coming that will make me eat my words (at least I hope so) but most importantly, we’re not a guild that tells people how they need to play their character. I feel like I’ve crossed that line a few times between advice and condescention. Spec the way YOU want to play and teach me, the old stuck-up battlecow, a thing or three about how to play the class. What weapon type and buff works best in the main hand? What off-hand weapon buff is better in what situation? These are just a few things that we get to figure out when the patch drops. With two 1H epic weapons in my inventory, I’m sure glad I held off on spending the big Gs to enchant them.

Congrats to everyone involved with downing Drakk. Even though we didn’t get to play with our new kiting strategy, the quick-thinking and fast reactions of the hunters kept him busy long enough for the rest of us to take out his guards before focusing on the big conflag-spamming pussycat himself. Greater fire resist and smart players saved the day. I think we also found that even shamans that aren’t full Resto-spec can be useful. It was a helluva fun way to get some pretty decent drops, complete some quests, and spend some quality raid time with a great guild.

So if Patch 2.0 hands shamans an undeserved but completely welcome cookie for their enhancement-tree loving selves, I may have to come full-circle back to the tree that started it all. I for one, having eaten my words, can’t wait.

It was an incredibly late night in Scholomance, October 30th… As a guild, we have gotten very very good at utterly destroying the school of magic, such that there are rarely any deaths. Well, all that changed last night.

In the wake of Jalo’s acquisition of the [Beaststalker’s Cap], Bomosnipah wants nothing more than to acquire the helm himself. Additionally, Ungulataur is chomping at the bit to complete the epic shammy quest to recieve his [Skyfury Helm]. Helms for everyone… well, at least those two (and later Paed). So, Necromage, Skykomish, and Paed join the adventure.

Normally when we face Rattlegore, we only pull 3 or 4 of his peeps before yanking him from the room and shattering his bones all over the stairway. Last night was no exception. What was different, was that then we continued to clear the room. Then, in the center, Ungulataur dropped a little beacon thing, and wave after wave of spirit came from the bones to attack us. This is the first time Necromage died.

The waves continued until finally Death Knight Darkreaver came on what has to be the ghostly version of the Blood Elf Paladin’s epic mount. He died. Easily. In fact, the waves and boss were almost disappointing. The adrenaline and fear of finally wiping in this all-too-familiar instance started to drain, but left the group quite awake.

To save time getting to Darkmaster Gandling, the group skipped Ras Frostwhisper and Kirontos, as they add a good 15 minutes to the instance. Both drop guaranteed blues, but we would have only sharded them… In the first instructor’s room (Lorekeeper Polkelt), Necromage died on every pull. Every pull. It was literally hilarious after the endurance run of spirits in Rattlegore’s room.

The rest of the instance, including the dropping of Gandling was without incident. The interesting thing was that normally on a Scholomance visit, there are roughly 12 rare items, most, if not all, are disenchanted. On this run there were 9 items, and only 2 were sharded…

• [Rattlecage Buckler] disenchanted for Necromage.
• [Malicious Axe] disenchanted for Necromage.
• [Dreadmist Wraps] went to Bomosnipah.
• [Wildheart Bracers] went to Paed.
• [Burial Shawl] needed by Paed.
• [Bloodmail Gauntlets] needed by Ungulataur.
• [Bloodmail Boots] needed by Ungulataur.
• [Bonecreeper Stylus] needed by Necromage, shafting Paed.
• [Dreadmist Mask] needed by Paed.

Here it is folks:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GZVV0zZEfcxVfqo

I’m hoping to make this my last since it does manage to start costing too much to continue my experiments in researching the perfect non-pvp shaman spec. This one hopefully gives me the best of the Restoration tree with a few fun bonuses from the Enhancement tree (gotta keep 2H-maces/axes if I spent all that time in Alterac Valley trying to get the Unstoppable Force, right?).