Thank you!

Thank you to Raptorbane, for my awesome banner. Shes working on little button pics that are lightning bits. Many happy times for some Kiomi. The pic is so, so awesome! Better then I hoped. Rapa is made of win.

A small update. Its the general opinion of everyone alive that i really should shed some crit for spell damage. I'll try doing it a percent or two at a time, so I can really watch how it effects my already sad mana efficiency. First step, getting some more gems, all Crimson Spinels, to do some regemming. When i get around to pvp'ing for the neck piece (bracers are on ice till I get an arena team with a half decent rating) I'll gem that all damagealicious. More later, its almost bedtime.

Love: Its what makes a Subaru a... Tank?

In all my years (yes, years) of WoWing, theres really nothing I've ever found I love more then a good tank. I've been a little nostalgic lately. Thinking about 'back in the day' moments. What Lucifron was hard and the words Chromagnus, and broze/blue used in the same sentence struck fear into the hears of casters everywhere. When 5 spell damage on a Tier item really was pretty good. In all this, fron my first RFC run (I started as horde) to the last Hyjal run I was in, nothing has stirred my heart to true devotion then a good tank.

Yeah, this might seen to be off from Shamanism, but not so! What are Ele Shammies known most for? Our great, big, steaming crit rating. Crit can be directly liked to threat. big crit, big threat. Lots of crit? You get it. Or so I hope. Enhance shammies aren't spared from this. nothing says aggro like a string of Windfury crits! I've said a few times, a guild is only as good as its main tank. you can interchange 'Guild', with 'Raid', 'Heroic', '5-man'... You live and die by your tank. Crappy tank, crappy run. Period. I was a tank for a year and a half, I know the stress involved. So, ladies and gentlemen of the DPS roles, please, let us take a moment to really think about those badtions of power and defense rating we cower behind. Over whose shoulders we shoot our magic missiles.

A moment of realism. 9 times out of 10, if you died in a fight, its probably your fault. Very few things really can be blamed on 'luck'. Even fewer can be blamed on tanks. It takes alot to prove a bad tank to me. most warriors, but the very best, look like crap in a H. SH run with 1 CC. Paladins never look good in a fight with mana burns. And some bear tanks... well.... I can't name off a specific kind of fight that bears flail in. But I've seen bad bears!

To truely know if your tank sucks would require seeing them in their best light, and they still fail miserably. With tanks in my guild, it takes multiple nights of raiding for me to judge one way or another if they need help.

This is my small, "Dear god I love you... I just crit 9 times in a row" post. I know 5 tanks who I really, fully trust. 2 of them I wouldnt hesitate (and I do) open up my first CL with Elemental Mastery and heroism up, and never worry. G and also G my friends who can sustain 1-1200TPS.

This post was prompted by my scrrenshots folder. I have a few of my favorite warriors doing 1200 TPS+, all on different kinds of fights, including right after busting sheeps. I don't have any with Surania in them, but I dont need screenies. I've had a love/hate relationship with his threat since the day he pulled Fish Boss off me in ZG. Memories =) I hated him that day, but the day I didn't stop DPSing through Leo's whirlwind and really wasn't worried about the pick-up... Mmm. Good tanks my friends, good tanks.

Questions, comments, aches or pains?

Hello again! Hoping this will only turn out to be a quick update, and a question to be posed.

On the glove front, I've got all the mats, including sun motes! I'm a very lucky Shaman, when I announced my primal farming spree, 4 of my guildies pitched in to help farm and even donate primals from their own stocks, I'm more grateful then I can say, that would have been SUCH a long ordeal without them. We did a Sunwell Plateau trash run and got 6 'motes, which the guild bank gave to me, as I was the only one who had all my mats. Swoot! Now I'm just waiting for the tailor who can make it.... the only one Ally side... to log on. Guh. On the gear front, that leaves me to farming honor for the two new S4 pieces I need. Not actual arean gear, mind you, thank god. Just the bracers and neck piece. The bracers need a, i think its 1525 arena rating. I put together a 3v3 that I respec resto for. I'll prolly make some posts on my experience as a pvp-healer. Lets face it, pve healing isnt that involved. More involved then what I do, but I'm not sure I could put together an interesting post about healing in SSC. I've done it, more times then I'd like to admit, as I'm the first person to respec if we're down a healy bit, but I just don't think I can make it interesting.

I mean, I could hell about max heal crits, but thats not as fun as massive 5k chain lightnings.

I've seen those. Before the coeficent nerf, when I was only in T5/ZA badge gear, I actually was seeing 4k crits. Then they nerfed me, and in my gear now a 4.5k crit is damn impressive.

Thats all on the gear front, for now. I do have a question to pose, and I REALLY want oppinions. A friend suggested needing only 35% crit, which is even lower then our occasionally misguided friends at Elitist Jerks suggest. My personal philosophy has alway been upwards of 42%. But he made a good point for a lower crit rating. Before the "change" to clearcasting, every crit would put up the buff decreasing the mana cost of your next spell by 100%. It was a beautiful thing, and the crux of our very existence. The whole reason for a massive 50% or even more crit rating. More crit directly meant more clearcasting. Hokay. The talent was changed. On each crit, your next two spells have their mana cost reduced by 40%. Does this mean we need roughly half the crit we needed before? My thought was, fuck it. Keep the huge crit rating. Clearcasting will be up almost constantly. Right? Well, yes. The buff is up almost constantly. My Shaman compadre points out, that second charge of clearcasting is almost always being "wasted".

Spell 1 crits
x2 clearcasting buff
Cast spell 2 (spell uses 1 charge of clearcasting, 1 charge remains.)
Spell 2 crits
x2 clearcasting

Theres our problem, as he puts it. That second clearcasting charge was never used. In reality, does it matter? I don't really think so. Thats not what he's getting at. If, say, you dropped your crit chance to a number where critting twice in a row was not the norm, you would use both charges of clearcasting. Replace all the crit you drop with spell damage. The idea is, you don't lose precious mana efficiency, but gain spell damage. Spell damage that will directly increase your DPS and damage done. Its an interesting idea. I would love to test it out, but I don't have the gold to change all my gems, let alone change them all back if the idea flopped.

So my call for opinions! Please, I'd like to hear what people think about the above crit rating proposition. I'll be more tempted to try it if it isn't just one person poking me to try it. Doesnt even need to be opinions from other shamans. Any decent player could grasp the idea and give me their 2 copper *cough Surania cough*

Cheers!

How Handy! A Glove Issue

Well f*ck me gently with a chainsaw. I thought the Gauntlets of the Ancient Shadowmoon were gunna rest upon my hands till forever and day. I picked them up day before yesterday in a SWP trash farming run and absolutely flipped. Their really good! I was totally ecstatic, got them gemmed and enchanted minutes after the run was over. But being satisfied with -mail- would just be too easy for Blizz. A pair of mages in the guild have gotten the cloth gloves, the Sunfire Handwraps, and after looking... yeah, I want the cloth. Too bad the stupid things need 10 spellcloth, 10 shadowcloth, and of course, 6 sun motes. Which currently run 1500 gold plus on our server. Or an attempt at winning them in a trash run. Guh! But yes, it look like after work today, I'll be farming primals. 20 fire, 10 shadow, and 10 mana... bumming, buying, and whoring for cooldowns. Then the motes. This is gunna be fun. Buth honestly, worth it.

Ding ding! Round 1!

Gauntlets of the Ancient Shadowmoon
Binds when picked up
Hands	Mail
672 Armor
+30 Stamina
+32 Intellect
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +2 Spell Critical Strike Rating
Durability 50 / 50
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 28 (1.3%).
Equip: Improves spell haste rating by 24 (1.5%).
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 43.

VS

Sunfire Handwraps
Binds when equipped
Hands	Cloth
166 Armor
+33 Stamina
+30 Intellect
Red Socket
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Spell Damage and Healing
Durability 35 / 35
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 37 (1.7%).
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 53.
Item Level 159
Cost to make: 15035 Gold 89 Silver
Auction: 15999 Gold
Vendor value: 3 Gold 6 Silver 55 Copper
Source: Recipe

Socketing the reds with Runed Crimson Spinels and the blue in the Mail gloves with a Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst.
(Runed Crimson Spinel+12 Spell Damage)
(Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst+6 Spell Damage and +7 Stamina)

Gives the Sunfire's 20 more spell damage and 7 more crit rating. I'll be doing this farming first, then, the pvp grin! /groan. Time to get going to work, I'll post something about my pvp woes when I get home.

The DPS experiment

I am, as most know, a huge advocate of high crit ratings in Elemental Shammies. With good reason, crits like our blood. Too little crit, mana efficiency goes down the tube. Unfortunately, with any class/spec, there comes a point where you hit a brick wall with crit. Crit stops giving you as much DPS as it did. There is an actual formula someplace out there. I'll find it tomorrow. For right now, lets use this pretend one.

This is fake!! Just an example!! Do not use for actual DPS calculations!

Lets say, below 40% crit, 1 point of crit rating gave you 10 dps. 1 point of spell damage gives you 5 dps. Once you "top out" at 40% crit, it starts to take more and more crit to give you that same added 10 dps. Now 1 crit is only giving you 5 dps, and that same 1 spell damage is giving you the same 5 dps. 43%? Maybe that point of crit is only 2 dps. 1 spell damage is still 5. Suddenly spell damage has out valued crit for pure DPS. And the ele shammy hits our problem. That crit is still making you mildly more mana efficient. We're mana whores, simple enough. Every smidgen of crit is valuable. But we're also expected to put out alot of DPS. What to do, what to do...

This has been my problem for the last couple weeks. I've been blessed with amazing tanks, so aggro isn't even an issue to consider. All I have to worry about is maxing my DPS.

The simplest solution looks like, lose a certain percent of crit. Just throw it away. replace it with spell damage. Victory. But like I've been whining about on my guild forums, I'm still having some mana issues. At 43% crit! My first though is my mana pool. Its a little wee, about 9200 mana unbuffed. That brings me to just over 10k mana in a raid. Maybe I need more? Int is a wonderful solution to my problems. Int can makes my kiddy pool sized mana bar into an Olympic sized body of wet casting goodness. Int is mana per 5.

Elemental Shamans with Unrelenting Storm get .02MP5 per point of int.
80 Int = 1% crit
1 Int = 15 Mana
~3 Int = 1 spell crit rating
1 Int = .0125% crit


The above number are true. 100% I promise. So yeah! Int looks like a great solution! More mana, mp5, some crit to keep clear casting up. If int didn't seem to be balls hard to find! Other then my next belt upgrade (from the Belt of Blasting to Anetheron's Noose), I can't seem to find any major int upgrades. I got a small upgrade, int wise, today in gloves. The Gauntlets of the Ancient Shadowmoon dropped for me off Sunwell trash. 5 more int, 5 less crit, but a 8 or 10 spell damage, if I remember right. They'll be more dps for sure. I don't think I'll notice the crit.

Speaking of, I tried a few other things today. I switched some of my gems. Mainly, the 2 green Spell Crit/Spell Pen gems I had smashed into my belt and hat were replaces with spell damage/stam gems. The old green colored ones had dropped in heroics, but it was time to move on. I replaced a potent pyrestone in my hat with a runed crimson spinel, replaced the gleaming lionseye in my shoulders with a potent pyrestone, and gemmed the new gloves for a runed and a glowing (spell damage and a dam/stam). overall I gained about 30 spell damage, and lost ~.75% crit. We'll see once I can get my hands on a boss fight if I notice the crit loss or see the damage gain.

A friend suggested 35% crit today, due to the mechanics of clear casting. Blizz was "kind" enough to make it 40% off the next 2 spells, rather then 100%, or even 50%, off the next spell, in hopes of culling down the need for crit in ele shammies. It didn't work, we're still the mana guzzling SUV's of the caster word, only to be surpassed by the four door extended cab heavy duty duely truck, the Arcane Mage. 35% crit would see the most use of both charges of clear casting. More crit (like my happy 42%) Sees less use of the actual second charge, but sees clear casting up more of the time. the idea is rolling around in my head. Using the spell more efficiently, by making sure to use every charge, or ensuring the spell is up 100% of the time to be used?

Coming full circle, the question still is not what came first, the chicken or the egg? to be, or not to be? Or even how much wood could the woodchuck really chuck? DPM. Damage Per Mana. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

BTW. I found myself running about 1200 DPS today on Al'ar (my favorite DPS test fight). I was spiking up to 1600 dps for short bursts when i was using CL to good effect, but down to 1100 when my mana was low and I was LBing it back to full (Kiomi fact, I can regen more mana then i use spamming only LB. I'll most on the phenomenon soon.) during Phase 1. Phase 2 is balls for ranged dips, evening my out to a median of about 1250 dps for the fight. Whic, oddly enough, landed my first in Damage Done for Al'ar. Third in overall damage done for the night after FLK went down, 4 bosses later. I can do better. If I could sustain even those 1400 DPS 2 minute long bursts, or the 30 second 1600 dps bursts for longer, it would show aLOT. Fecking mana...

It takes two baby

I'm home from work! 11:49pm. While the oven is preheating, I figured I'd get to some real Shaman stuff.

First, spell damage coefficients. Important... ish. Each spell has a coefficient of how much of your spell damage is used to modify it. Thats a weird, round about definition, but thats how I remember it. Very few spells, if any, have a 100% spell damage coefficient. It wouldn't make sense if they did. Think about it. I have 1400 nature damage. That doesn't add 1400 damage to my Lightning Bolts. LB actually has a 79.4% coefficient. 79.4% of your spell damage is added to your LBs. A friend of mine on SwC (Esoth) posted the math to figure this out: "As a general rule, spell coefficients are normalized to a 3.5 second speed. So you determine the coefficient as speed/3.5. The speed is the speed before talents or haste - so for chain lightning it would be 2.5/3.5 ~= .71." Lightning Bolt got band-aid'ed (or had an axe taken to it, either way) a few patches ago. It doesn't follow the rule, but 79.4% is correct. For those of us who don't like doing huge equations, like myself, heres the list:

Ability Name	Spell Damage/Healing Coefficient
Healing Abilities
Chain Heal	125.0% (71.43% + 35.71% + 17.86% on each "jump", respectively)
Earth Shield	285.7%
Healing Stream Totem (per tick)	4.5%
Healing Wave	85.71%
Lesser Healing Wave	42.86%
Offensive Abilities
Chain Lightning	125.0% (71.43% + 35.71% + 17.86% on each "jump", respectively)
Earth Shock	42.86%
Fire Nova Totem	21.4% (untested)
Flame ShockDD	15%
Flame ShockDoT	52%
Flametongue Weapon (per hit)	10%
Frost Shock	42.86%
Frostbrand Weapon (per hit)	10%
Lightning Bolt	79.4%
Lightning Shield	100%
Magma Totem	66.7% (untested)
Searing Totem	16.67% per shot and randomly +1 damage

Hokay. Neat bits to know. In general game play, you won't use them much. I have the list saved to a word document, so I can plug the numbers into a calculator if I wanna know how much a difference in spell damage will actually increase the damage of my spells. OR! You can go to http://www.warcrafter.net/
It;s a really neat site. You can change your gear/gems/enchants/buffs and see how it would effect the DPS of your spells.

I'll post something new, prolly tomorrow after work. Till then, my chicks!

Enter, stage right.

So, I've never had a real blog before. Unless you count those two blog posts on our guild forums? I don't, I don't think anyone read them. But me. Thats ok. Everyone is new at breathing sometime in their life. So blogging isn't such a big deal.

For this blog, my name is Brittany. I play an Elemental Shaman. I rather say, I am an Elemental shammy. I've been one since before BWL took wing (ba dum, chi! Dragon humor?). I've had three main to my name in all my years of WoW'ing. A Shaman, a Warrior, a Hunter, and a Shaman. My first toon was, of course, a Hordie. A Troll. I couldn't play a cow and still feel sexy =P I playe don a pvp server and hated it. I'm not a big pvp'er. Not even a mild pvp'er. Sometimes my friends can get me to BG for a night and its fun. But thats the extent of it. I'll slog through any amount fo anything for 3 spell damage. Hence the PVP neck/bracers and having both epic pvp gems before buying them was possible. So I rolled an "alt" on SWC. I'd never Role Played before. I had done a table top Orc RPG with my brothers when I was maybe 14. But it was for 2 hours. We wont count it. SWC became my home. I've tanked, DPS'd, Hybrided and healed. And I love dips. Tanking makes me an angry bitch. I yell at people who pull aggro. Put high, vicious standards on healers, cuss out overzealous DPS and -detest- off tanks. To this day, I don't know why Surania still speaks to me. Except on multi-mob fights, I really got pissy with my OTs. Anyhow. Now I'm a Shaman again.

I'm once again what I was meant to be. Only I have a tail and hooves instead of 2 toes. Go figure.

Quick facts! (read as fastaspossiblegogogog)
41-0-20 Elemental with ToW (NS is for sissies and pvpers)
Over 1400 Nature Damage and 50% crit buffed.
I really love hohos.

In all srsness. I love WoW. I'm in a pretty glum mood of late. I started a new job last week. I've only missed one week of raiding, but still... I work that funky, "I have no life shift" form late afternoon to night time. Today I work from 5:45 to 10:45. But with a 35 minute drive home, I'm going to be back around 11. Doesnt give me much WoW time. In fact, I've been on once since starting this job last week Wednesday. And it sucks. I miss my guild, my friends, my toons. I even miss dropping totems every 2 minutes and/or every time I stray a few feet =P

I'll prolly update quite a bit. I usually get a few hours before and after work when I'm not sleeping, eating, or bathing. More real Shaman stuff to come!

/exit stage... some other place.