Joining a party – Get invited as a healer, despite your preference for DPS. Proceed to stare extremely hard at the screen until the Rogue and competing Enhancement Shaman who are both after your mace leave the party.

First Boss – Scream at your thick tank to “PICK UP THE DAMN [Insert race of ranged opponent here]”, because you can’t heal them when you are dead. Twice now that has happened, twice being the sum and total of the times I have healed this instance. Pick.Up.The.Damn.Troll.

Second Boss – Gnash your teeth at your DPS because you don’t give a damn if you can heal through the flashy light, it’s the principle of the thing. Don’t look at the blinding exploding guy is on the same tier as don’t stand in the frickin’ fire.

Third Boss – Cry to [deity/enlightened being of your choice] because why the hell does the final form of the last boss have to be so much of a bitch to heal and OMG DEATH LASERS I just died again rage.

After you win – Mutter to yourself because despite the numerous upgrades that you could have got for your main spec, none of them dropped, indeed, no upgrades for anyone else dropped, and all you got was some flashy healer belt, further putting your off spec gear ahead of your main spec gear in terms of quality.

I don’t like Trial of the Champion. It’s an evil place. Whilst Kazura waltzes around in her nice new gear earned from there, I get my face blown up by the ridiculously difficult to heal final phase of the Black Knight and mourn my lack of shiny maces.

Disclaimer: Screaming and crying not advised. Gnashing and Muttering certainly advised.

We spent most of last night wiping on those damn Jormungar in the new 10 man raid. Gormok was ridiculously easy after a few shots – chasing Snobolds down quickly became routine. We just couldn’t get the Jormungar down. That fight has got to be a prime example of where 10 mans are more difficult than 25 mans – if someone dies, which is very likely to happen, then your entire attempt is pretty much doomed. Guh.

I’ve kind of lost steam on Ilthiran – not really that interested in playing him right now. In fact, I’d say after that brief period of revival, I’m kind of bored of WoW again. –shrug- Anyway, I did manage to get to level 71, and thus, Swift Flight Form;

I also managed to finish the Nexus – we had absolutely zero problems this time, so, ha, suck it, Kyp, it was totally the healers fault last time!

Faulsey received a brief revival as well. He had 26 Emblems of Heroism, which were just sitting there, annoying me, so I ran a few HCs to get up to 40 EoH and 200 SKS, to spend on an heirloom chest and shoulders for my Paladin – he’d previously been using some mail shoulders.

Logging onto said Paladin, I had a case of “hey, I should have read the patch notes” when I noticed that A. My Judgements were returning a flat 8% of my Base Mana when cast, despite there being nothing in the tooltip to suggest they would do so, and B. Hand of Reckoning now does ridiculous damage if used to pull a target. Geez, as if leveling Ret Paladin’s had to be even more powerful! –grin-

And random cool screenshots:

(So Algalon is kind of old news by now – I’d never seen this, and didn’t expect any of the scrubs on my server to have been able to take him out!)

Play this. (No need to watch, just a static image.)

If you try to deny that that is one of the most fantastic pieces of Boss music in gaming history, I… well… there’s just no helping you, ok?

And speaking of Razorscale..!

Popped onto Ellaria tonight, just to check and see of the Razormaw Matriarch was up – I want a raptor for her, too! – and I asked my guild how raiding was going, since I haven’t really been keeping up with their progress (sorry guys!)

Kyp: Actually, we’re one DPS short for Ulduar tonight…
Me: Orly? –whistles nonchalantly-
Kyp invites you to join a group.

Bwahah. Since it was the last night before the reset, they’d already done a number of Bosses in the place. First we did Razorscale, as you can see above, and then moved onto Auriaya, who I’d never fought before. We wiped the first time, but beat her with ease the second time. Unfortunately, the crazy lady didn’t drop the shoulders I’d have liked. Bah!

Now all I’m missing from the Antechamber is the Iron Council… maybe one day. We attempted Freya after that, but, I dunno, Freya is just one massive drug trip. QUICK, HIDE UNDER THE MUSHROOMS, NO, NOT THE SMALL ONES, THE BIG ONES, AND OMG THERE’S A HEALING TREE, KILL IT, NOW A GIANT PLANT AND SOME ELEMENTALS HAVE SPAWNED WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON OH WE’RE DEAD. I believe they’ve downed her before, but a couple of the DPS were having latency issues, plus me and another person had never done the fight, so we were destroyed.

And for Stop – Look! It’s a genuine, honest to Eonar, Female Dwarf!

After that, I gave the new 5 man instance a try for the first time – me and Kazura had actually joined a party for it a few nights ago, but it didn’t go anywhere at all. We tried again tonight, and I was healing… Man, that place is rather hard to heal. The last boss is insane. He ate our faces first attempt, and second attempt it was very close. I kind of just hit chain heal over and over, hoping people wouldn’t die. For a 5 man, that is absolutely ridiculous. (Still not as bad as HC Old Kingdom. HATEHATEHATE.)

Mostly thanks to the free emblems on the mini-bosses before Freya, I had enough to get a delicious set of leg armour. Mmm, finally “naturally” at the spell hit cap. Course, I don’t raid much, but damnit, it’s the principle of the thing.

And why yes, yes I am totally on a WoW kick again now that I’ve got plenty of free time and nothing to do with it. What’s your point?

Level 70 Druid! Now that I’m in Northrend, I’m actually able to start tanking instances! Yaaay!

Firstly, tried my hand at tanking Utgarde Keep. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, either. I think tanking is the hardest of the three roles, by far. Target switching to maintain aggro when you have Death and Decay happy Death Knights is a right pain in the neck, and I’m still not sure of all my abilities, nor have I developed any sort of faith in healers – Barkskin and Survival Instincts are used liberally.

(Note to self: Must sort out Omen’s Aggro warning – not really needed as a tank. And it obstructs screen something awful.)

Shortly after that, I tried Nexus. Whilst trash was generally better than it had been in UK (though there are a couple of pulls that aren’t there in HC Nexus, which confused me greatly), we didn’t get Keri down. We wiped twice, and our healer had to go. I did my best, I really did, and we had her at 8k the last time – I swear I didn’t get a single heal the last 10 seconds before I died, so I’m blaming it on the healer. Bah!

Whilst we’re on the topic of the Nexus, I ran it last night with Kazura and Yuanjia for some emblems. I’ve run it something like 25 times now (20 of those actively looking for the stupid mace) and I never saw it, not once. Kazura had a similar record. We’ve both found other maces – I have a similar quality one from Naxx, and she has a nice one from the new 5-man. And do you know what happened when we looted Keri?

NOWAI!

That slimy harpy bitch! D:<

On the upside, I did get this that run.

I’ve also been on a bit of a baby Hordie kick recently. Spurred on by a desire to do Mulgore again – I love Mulgore – I made a little Tauren Warrior, another in a long line of Faulsey’s, who became the first of that class to reach 10… Compared with at least 5 Hunters and 3 each Shaman and Druid. Only thing I haven’t gotten to at least 10 now is Rogue.

Another baby Hordie, this time created due to a desire to get a Raptor on a character (without lots of rep grinding on some higher level Hordies, or grinding ZG on Ellaria), is a Troll Shaman on my PvP realm.

As much as I love Draenei, I feel the Troll Totem quests are a little bit better – maybe because you do get some nice views doing them. Did you know that at level 1 you could quite easily get to Ratchet from the Valley of Trials within 5 minutes?

I reckon I’ll probably play this gal a decent bit the next few days, to get me a raptor!

I’m finished at my little job now – seriously, the management was farcical, I had to get out of there – and am totally free for the next two weeks before I start university. Well, kind of free. I need an eye test and new glasses, amongst other expensive things. Guh. But in any case, interest in WoW has returned somewhat recently, so I should be playing a fair bit.

Yes, t’is true! This is a post! It’s about WoW! And something I did in it! EGADS!

Logged on tonight, about half 12, just to check my Emblem count, to see if I would be set just to pop on and grab the Heirloom chest piece when the patch goes live on EU servers tomorrow. I’m immediately asked by a guildy if I want to do Flame Leviathan.

I think, eh, what’s the harm. I may be a bit rusty, but it’s only Flame Leviathan. So we trundle on through the gauntlet, and reduce Leviathan to a glorified heap of scrap metal, without even overloading him. Easy!

Then we all think, hey, sure, it’s just Levi, but this is a PUG! PUGs just do not work on our server. And we actually downed a boss! Let’s do another! How about XT?

We work out we have three tanks, one healer, and six DPS. Hmm, hardly optimal. Against my better judgement I tell them I can switch to offspec and heal. Bear in mind my only raid healing experience is less than an entire Wing in Naxx, so I’m not exactly confident in my abilities, especially not when there’s only two healers, I’m undergeared, and the other hasn’t done the boss.

Much to my (pleasant) surprise, aside from a couple of deaths to Bombs and Tantrums, we actually down XT! I was drier than the Sahara by the end of it (even with potting and using Mana Tide twice in the fight), but we did it!

He kindly drops me a little surprise – a snazzy helmet. Not a fantastic piece for Resto, due to lack of MP5, but certainly a nice ugprade over my goggles. Which is a shame really – them gogs are stylish.

By this point, we’re pretty chuffed with ourselves. We’ve got about 40 minutes till the server goes down to apply the patch. Let’s give Razorscale a shot!

It takes us four groundings to make her land permanently. There’s about a minute left on the enrage timer at this point. We’re never going to make it, no way. I dunno what she was at, but it was a fair chunk of health, when she enrages. But we press on. Spam heals. One tank goes down. Keep up the spam. Another tank goes down. She’s not got much health left. A third tank is still up. Spamspam OMGHE’SOUTOFRANGEWHATISHEDOING?!? spamspam VICTORY.

Squee! We made an attempt to get to Kologarn in the 20 minutes before servers went down, but we wiped on trash – can’t blame us, really, two stressful fights, and it being nearly 2AM.

Yeah, there’s a new patch out tomorrow. Normal mode 10 Man Ulduar is hardly impressive anymore, is it? Yes, actually, it is. I haven’t healed a raid in over a month. I’m undergeared. The other healer hadn’t done Ulduar before. We were the only two healers! My guild wiped endlessly on some bosses with three healers, much better than me! I’m so proud of myself, and of our rag tag little PUG, for achieving so much tonight.

It was an absolute blast, and it really made me miss getting to raid with my guild. There’s no real chance of me actually getting back into raiding, not with just over a month to go till Uni, and getting plenty of overtime at work. Sucks, kinda, but that’s life, eh?

Anyway, patch hits EU tomorrow, I’ve got the day off work (I was actually off today, too! I haven’t had two days off in a row for a few weeks now!), and I intend on making a start on my freshly re-furred Feral druid, currently sitting at level 53. Heirloom chest and epic ground mount should speed leveling right up, eh?

This blog ain’t dead yet, my friends!

(Apologies for slightly incoherent nature of this post. It’s now 2:15 AM. I’m ever so slightly tired.)

Due to my recent hiatus from WoW, I’d not really been keeping up with the changes due in 3.2, beyond the big stuff like omgdruidforms and omgmountchanges. I’ve only just taken a proper look at the details. I don’t want to just regurgitate patch notes, but I’m gonna give my opinion on some of the things that look to be going into the PTR. Certainly not an exhaustive list, even of Shaman changes, because there’s not much exciting to be said about combining Cure Poison and Cure Disease, for example.

Emblems:

• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.

This has been divisive. From “amagad nubs can get teh gud gear!” to “Oh, this’ll make it so much easier for late comers to catch up,” there’s been a wide range of reactions to this change.

Personally, I think they might have went a bit far. Instead of bumping everything up to Conquest, I think they could instead bump everything up a level – Heroics and Naxx10 dropping Valor, Naxx25 and Uld10 dropping Conquest, etc. Allows people to progress through content quicker, but without allowing people to almost skip straight through tiers. But hey, whatever.

Also, Heroic daily is meant to give two of the new Emblems coming in 3.2. Now, Blizzard, if you’d kindly make a Totem available with those emblems, instead of insisting on making us rely on one damn drop, that would be greatly appreciated. If you can give axes to Rogues (see later) because previously that had made drop tables so unfair, then you can bloody well cut Relics out of drop tables and make them Emblem only, since Relic drops are ridiculously specific.

Mounts:

Basically:

• Travel Form, Ghost Wolf, Aspect of the Cheetah at 16.
• Ground mount at 20.
• Epic ground mount at 40.
• Flight at 60, and also boosted to 150% speed.
• Past that, same as previously.

Again, there was uproar. “Great, now we’re going to have people not knowing how to play their class.”

I’d like to quote Jezriyah’s response to that statement on twitter. “Since when was running a class skill?” Seriously people. As far as player skill is concerned, you will be doing exactly the same amount of quests and mob killing as before, it’s just easier to move between quests and mobs. This will have no effect on people learning to play a class – learning when to use CC is almost an exception, but you’ll still learn than from the inevitable adds you’ll still get.

Shaman Stuff:

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

Ok, that’s not just for Shaman, but Restoration Shaman piles on the most MP5 out of any caster, so this is totally awesome for them. I really can’t see myself going OOM as a Resto when this change goes through.

• After much quiet contemplation, rogues now possess the ability to learn how to use one-handed axes.

Nothing directly to do with Shaman, but fucking what?! Putting aside the fact that Axes just don’t scream “Rogue!” to me, this is just taking the idea of making sure as many classes as possible can use items too far. There has to be some sort of distinction. I tell you this now, if I ever get to Yogg-Saron, and a Rogue ever rolls on this, there will be blood. Unless I’ve missed something, Shaman aren’t getting the ability to use Swords, so this is just totally unfair, in my opinion.

Of course, I’m just irritated with Ulduar 10 weapon itemisation anyway. Would you believe that axe is the only normal mode weapon that’s actually perfectly suited to an Enhancement Shaman, and we’d need two of them? I’m pretty sure Rogues have at least a couple of items they can get before the last boss, depending on spec. Urgh.

• A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.

Yes yes yes yes YES YES YES.

It’s hardly revolutionary – none of this totem pole nonsense for transporting totems, but it makes dropping them at the start of fights, refreshing them, or moving them into much less of a chore. Finally!

By 80, we’ll have three abilities that will place a different set of totems per ability – Call of Fire, Water and Wind – giving us much faster, easier totem placement, and the ability to keep the quick placement flexible. For example, I can have Call of Fire set to drop Strength of Earth, Windfury, Mana Spring and Magma Totem. But, if there’s a DK in the group with Improved Icy Talons, I can use Call of Water to drop a Wrath of Air totem instead, whilst keeping the other totems the same! Very handy.

Also, for leveling Enhancement Shaman, this ability, combined with use of Water Shield and Improved Stormstrike should make placing totems more viable. I actually stopped dropping totems by around 60 – dropping even one generally wasn’t worth it, as they really sucked up mana.

• Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.

Hmm. They’ve given similar treatment to a Druids Innervate – halved both the effect and the cooldown. It’s just a case of training myself to use this earlier than I do now, which is when I’m running almost totally dry.

In PvE, this is used mainly for the mana regen aspect, but now that it’s on a much shorter cooldown, the damage reduction aspect could be taken advantage of, without fear of having wasted a cooldown.

Druid Forms:

I’m basically refusing to play my Druid until 3.2 hits. Firstly, knowing that I’m going to be able to travel faster in 3.2 has just put me off him, as the normal mount seems unbearably slow with that in mind. Second, I really, really want to level with the new forms.

Pretty darn snazzy, I think. Admittedly, I think the Tauren Bear Form is twice as awesome as the Night Elf form, and I’ll have a kind of silly pink hairdo as a Cat, but a vast improvement over what’s currently available. First port of call after the patch will be the barbers, get that unruly blue mop of my Druids turned white.

Edit: Oh, I didn’t notice this was my 200th post. Geez, I could have done something vaguely interesting if I’d realised. Oh well. Yay, 200 posts!

Low moan – Whu? … No.. go away. Head splitting… want… sleep… shouldn’t have… guh… too much Fiery Festival Brew…

Whu-wha? Oh no… Kiaara’s gonna kill me. –groan- Actually, could you, please… really… not feeling so good… I… I’m gonna crawl back into bed now…

-

As you may have noticed, I don’t really do Holiday events. I’m really not someone who goes out of their way to get Achievements – especially not the holiday ones, which tend to be boring and grindy. But I really wanted the title from this one. Flame Warden. Isn’t that just perfect for a Shaman? I think so!

Thus, I dragged myself all around Azeroth and Outlands to both Honour and Desecrate bonfires. Kalimdor resulted in some frustration when I was ganked by no less than three Hordies when I was desecrating the Mulgore flame. Seriously, come on. Three on one! /golfclap. Of course, I was destroyed by far bigger groups than that when going for City Fires, but that’s understandable, what with invading the heart of their nation.

A few of us from Soul Haven also put Ahune in his place – four times. We were quite lucky with drops – apparently, on normal mode, the Enchantment and the Scythe are 3% drop rate, but we got both over the course of four fights. Yours truly snagged the Scythe!

Looks snazzy, eh? It’s also pretty strange in that it gives “Spell Critical Hit Rating” despite the merging of Physical and Spell Critical into one stat back in October! Also, I now actually have the tabard I’m depicted with in the avatar that Pike did for me.*

After splurging all my blossoms on the outfit, I spun round one of those poles, and earned my title!

Edit: There we go, added a much better “Flame Warden” picture, as promised!

Unfortunately, since this is the last event till Brewfest, I can see a lot of people sticking with Flame Warden and the Horde equivalent for quite some time, so I won’t be a unique snowflake. But I’m extremely pleased that I now have a title that I feel truly fits my character.

-

*If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll have seen this quite a lot for the past couple weeks. Snazzy, eh?

Edit: Ohh, and I have to put this in. Yimi is awesome.

I raided tonight!

Shocking, Iknorite?

As you may have noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus. Still sort of am – no other raids this week that I can make, but I did join an Ulduar raid tonight.

Bosses were relatively uneventful – took Razorscale down, wiped over and over on Ignis, gave up and exploded Kologarn, got some healing boots. Good stuff. Not particularly exciting, but not bad.

What was fun was the banter. The guild mage, Yimi, (also known as HMS Battleship Yimi –cower-) always has something interesting/disturbing to say, be it over vent or in chat, such as:

Randomly shouted over vent: “Stop humping my frog!”

Philosophical: “It’s not fair – I just can’t multitask, even though I have these boobs”!”

In addition, she helped spawn a new guild meme.

Explaining Kologarn to someone who’d never seen him before:

“He’ll stare at you very intently, and you have to run away.”

“Stare at you WITH LASERS.”

Lasers are now the guild answer to everything. “How did you die?” “Lasers.” “Wow, your DPS is so high!” “I have laser gloves.” Apparently, she likes how I say the word “laser”, too.

Yes, yes, silly guild is silly, but it was nice to raid with ‘em again.

(We were killed – with lasers.)

The original Laser Heal – none of yer wannabe Energy Ball Heals.

At the limits of my patience with Keristrasza and her stupid mace, I decided I wanted to try and heal Naxxramas, with or without it.

As luck would have it, Kiaara was putting together a group for Naxx10, so I joined up with them to put my lazurz to the test. Patchwerk was already down, so we started with Grobbulus. It was kind of a sloppy kill, but we downed his fat ass, and as a reward for not destroying WoW due to Keri’s stinginess, he dropped a shiny Infection Repulser. Hurrah! –strokes his lovely mace-

Due to raid makeup, we decided not to try Gluth, and instead doubled back to Spider. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you will know that PUG + Me + Anub’Rekhan = fail. We failed twice, then we had success! For the “easiest” boss in the place, he’s always given me the most trouble!

Faerlina was totally uneventful. We wiped once on Maexxna – at 2% no less! We had four druids, and I swear not a one was using Abolish Poison! (Kia, you are allowed to not due to being Feral, but what was the tree’s excuse?!) I wasn’t in the main tanks group, so my Cleansing Totem wouldn’t affect him. We squished her the second time, though.

Moved onto Noth, and despite copious amounts of decursers, you betcha, I was the only person decursing. I was technically the raider healer, so I had the most time to do it, but still. Mneh.

Heigan was hilarious fail. Everyone but me (who was cheating and had my Enhancement boots with a run speed enchant equipped) and the tank died on the first dance phase. I was so tempted just to keep on going till Heigan was dead, but figured that might take quite some time, and the tank wanted to die, so we wiped and called it.

For my first raid healing experience, I’d say it was fairly successful. When I finally looked at the meters at the end of the raid (I’m a strong believer in basing your healers performance on “Did anyone die that you could have saved?” rather than LULZGAIZIDIDTHEMOSTHEALZ!) I had done the most overall healing, with (surprisingly) the least overheal (still like 28% or something).

On the other hand, healing assignments were kind of… loose. Whilst we had said that the Priest was on Main Tank, Druid on Off Tank, and me on raid, the other two were doing a lot of raid healing (probably why they were ending up sucked dry of mana when I still had 60%), and for my part I was doing a lot of panic heals on the tanks.

Contrary to somewhat popular belief re: shaman healing, no, chain heal was not all I used. There were some chain heal-tastic times, such as when a whole group of people were impaled on Anub’Rekhan, but most of my healing was actually in the form of Healing Wave (kinda surprised at that myself), though Chain Heal was very close behind.

Things I think I need to improve upon:

1. Clever use of Riptide. Riptide is a decent instant heal with a snazzy HoT component, and it will boost the next chain heal on that target by 25% (if they are the first target), consuming the HoT. I rarely used Riptide for this – it was used mostly for the HoT component (particularly on Maexxna, where every little HoT helps!) or as a quick heal if I had to keep moving (on myself at Heigan )
2. More use of Lesser Healing Wave. I love the Riptide animation and sound so much that I used it as my quick patch-up spell in Heroics. Raids do not really allow for it to be used like this, so I tried to use LHW more, but wasn’t really successful.
3. Sticking to my assigned role. The other two healers weren’t great about this either, but I found myself throwing panic heals at the tank far too often, possibly sniping other heals (though I would interrupt casting if I saw another heal going through)

Overall, it was pretty fun for my first attempt at healing in a Raid. I’d much rather be up there doing the pewpew, but still, I won’t be too miffed to switch over to healing on the rare occasions that I need to.

-

S’been a while since my last update, so here’s some random stuff.

Little montage of my recent achievements (pre that Naxx run). Basically all self explanatory, except Orbital Bombardment. We left the Flame Tower up, which was kinda fun in an “omg I can’t move I’m surrounded by walls of fire eeek” way. It may have been a better idea to do something else – perhaps Storm tower? –shrugs- In any case, I got to be a chopper driver!

Hells yeah. Unfortunately, I was somewhat limited by game mechanics, but in my head, Ella was firing off lightning bolts and bursts of lava as she weaved in between dwarves and the legs of iron giants. She also tried to hook an iron dwarf on her claw as she drove by, but being made of metal, all that achieved was a nasty bend on her claw.

I’ve been putting together a wish list of what I want from there, and I realised, hey, I might as well put it into a blog post, so I can easily find it, and it might help others.

It’s worth pointing out, for any Hunters that may be reading this (if I didn’t make you all run off in disgust when I turned traitor and mained my Shaman!) most of the gear is good for you guys, too. Exceptions are Weapons, Tier Gear (No, Duh?) and anything that has Expertise on it. Expertise is not for Hunters! –shakes fist-

This list is –not- going to tell you what is “best in slot” for this content, as I find that a rather ephemeral concept. It’s all well and good to say “Oh, those boots are best in slot!” – but what if they are loaded with crit, and are replacing some boots with expertise on them? Then the issue gets murky. Use your own judgement here – if you need the Hit Rating, grab some hit rating gear. If your hit is fine, feel free to roll on that haste-ilicious pair of gloves!

This list also assumes you are doing 10 Man Progression – not that you are going into 10 man Ulduar from 25 man Naxx.

A quick note on stats:

So that you know what you are aiming for, here are some caps:

Melee Special Hit Cap: 8% total. 2% hit from gear, or 1% for a Draenei Shaman. 6% will come from your Dual Wield Specialisation talent. This will ensure that Stormstrike, Lava Lash and Windfury procs will never miss the target. There is no reason you should not be able to reach this cap.

Expertise Cap: 26 Expertise total. 9 Expertise will come from Unleashed Rage, leaving you to make up the remaining 17 Expertise – which is roughly 140 Expertise Rating. Reaching this means that when attacking the boss from behind (as you should be) they will be unable to dodge any of your attacks.

Spell Hit Cap: 17% (446 Rating) total, or 16% (420) for a Draenei. Unfortunately, the Dual Wield talent only affects melee hit, so you need to make this number up entirely from gear, unless you have a Moonkin Druid with Improved Faerie Fire or a Shadow Priest with Misery in your raid group.

Weapons:

I’d like to point something out here – There are far, far more Ranged Weapons available in Ulduar than there are Enhancement Shaman itemised weapons*. I counted four Normal Mode Ranged weapons suited to Hunters – two bows, a crossbow, and a gun. You want to know how many Enhancement Shaman weapons I found from normal modes? One. An axe from Yogg-Saron. I’m sorry, but what the hell, Blizzard? At the very least, we get an iLevel 213 Main Hand from Kel’Thuzad, but we’re left high and dry in terms of off hands unless we get two items from Yoggy!

* The ideal Enhancement weapon should have a speed no lower than 2.5. This is because Windfury + Flametongue do more damage with slower weapons, and slow weapons have a greater chance of proccing Maelstrom Weapon (An Enhancement Shaman should have a lot of melee haste from Windfury Totem, so slow weapons will proc Maelstrom rather quicker than you might expect)

That aside, let’s look at our slim pickings;

Kinetic Ripper – Off Hand Fist, Flame Leviathan (Normal)

This is not a great weapon for an Enhancer, due to the extremely fast attack speed. However, you may find the white DPS boost over Greed or The Stray pulls it ahead. If I get a hold of this, I’ll test it and let you know how it compares. It’s basically your only 10 man Off Hand option with an iLevel higher than 200 until…

Touch of Madness – One Hand Axe, Yogg-Saron (Normal)

Orc Shamans everywhere – rejoice! Everyone else, you are allowed a woot. This fine edge is not just our only decent 10 man Ulduar off hand choice, it’s also one handed and not unique-equipped, allowing you to potentially have two of these babies! For normal modes only, this’ll be your only real option.

The Masticator – Main Hand Fist, Iron Council (Hard)

Ah, another beauty. Aside from the fun name, this is simply amazing weapon for us Enhancers. If you can do IC10 on Hard Mode for this, it’ll be well worth the effort.

Headgear:

Circlet of True Sight – Iron Council (Normal)

If you are lacking on hit, look no further than this piece of forehead finery and its lovely red LED.

Valorous Worldbreaker Faceguard – Mimiron (Token Drop, Normal)

If, however, you aren’t in need of hit, here’s a tasty piece of Tier-8 gear, complete with added lolwut laser gem! C’mon, Blizzard, what’s up with the slightly ridiculous Shaman headgear, eh?

Neck:

Choker of the Abyss – General Vezax (Normal)

Seed of  Budding Carnage – Freya (Hard Mode)

A hard mode drop that may be quite difficult to get, but certainly worth it. Ridiculous stats and a gem slot perfect for some Expertise or Agility.

Shoulders:

Ironaya’s Discarded Mantle – Auriaya (Normal)

Ol’ Ironaya had some good stuff back in the day, eh? Must have left it in Ulduar before she got herself locked in that tiny room in Uldaman!

Valorous Worldbreaker Shoulderguards – (Token Drop, Thorim)

Tier gear – one of the few places you’ll be seeing Expertise on your gear. I’d definitely try and grab these, even if you have Ironaya’s Mantle.

Cloaks:

Shawl of the Shattered Giant – Kologarn (Normal)

Cloak of Mastery’s more refined older brother. Abandons the awesome skull motif for some bizarre modern art.

Winter’s Frigid Embrace – Thorim (Normal)

If you don’t need the hit, the haste on this will do you good.

Chest:

Chestguard of the Lasher – Freya (Normal)

For hitting hard, fast and accurately!

Valorous Worldbreaker Chestguard – Yogg-Saron (Token Drop, Normal)

If you could possibly need any more hit rating on one piece of gear, along comes this with the potential for a whopping 92 Hit rating, if you need that much!

This has, in my opinion, the unfortunate attribute of being a robe. Wha-what? Our War Kilt (see Legs section) is a pair of Trousers, and our Chestguard provides the actual kilt? Lern2notfail at armour design, Blizzard!

Bracers:

Bracers of the Smothering Inferno – Razorscale (Normal)

More of that delicious hit rating, with a side helping of Armor Penetration. These are BoE, so if you are having awful luck getting Razorscale to drop them, you could buy them from the AH for an arm and a leg – and then you’re gonna have an excess bracer!

Hands:

Gloves of the Taut Grip – XT-002 Deconstructor (Normal)

I wouldn’t say no to these, but I’d much rather have these…

Valorous Worldbreaker Grips – Freya (Token drop, Normal)

Precious expertise and more attack power, though less Mana and Armor Penetration. You can’t really go wrong with either.

Waist:

Belt of the Blood Pit – Thorim (Normal)

Legs:

Leggings of the Insatiable – Yogg-Saron (Normal)

Hit rating and haste galore, with a generous helping of raw attack power. Toss up between this and…

Valorous Worldbreaker’s War-Kilt – Hodir (Token Drop, Normal)

More hit and haste, plus gem slots for your Expertise needs, or just plain Agility gems. However, these have a lot less raw attack power, less crit from Agility, and less mana. If you are aiming for the Tier Bonus, or maybe need some extra expertise, go for these.

Feet:

Boots of Unsettled Prey – Trash Drop!

These are our only iLevel 219 option – may be somewhat a pain to get to drop. These are BoP, too, so you can’t even buy them up from another guild! Good luck!

If you can’t get these, the Pack-Ice Striders (iLevel 213) for 40 Emblems of Valor are pretty good too, especially if you are still in need of extra hit rating.

Rings:

Band of Draconic Guile – Razorscale (Normal)

Pretty decent ring for pure damage – but I personally find Ring slots a good place to grab some Hit or Expertise.

Loop of the Agile – Iron Council (Hard)

While this has the same lack of Hit/Expertise as the Band, as this is from a hard mode, it’s an iLevel 226, and comes with a gem slot. Certainly wouldn’t say no to this!

Trinkets:

Pyrite Infuser – Flame Leviathan (Normal)

An insane amount of hit rating, combined with a Mirror of Truth-esque proc (which will stack with your mirror!) make this a nice Enhancement Trinket.

Elemental Focus Stone – Auriaya (Normal)

Kinda interesting item – while Enhancement is a “Melee” class, we are not a purely “physical” class – we’re close combat, physical/caster hybrids – Earth Shocks and Lightning Bolts make up a lot of our damage output. We’ll have quite a good chance at proccing this, and haste is one of the better stats for an Enhancer.

Given it is a “caster” item, I’d suggest you let typical ranged casters have this. If none of them want/need it, or you just have none with you, I’d snap this one up.

Totems:

There aren’t actually any totems (or other relics) available from bosses in 10 man Ulduar – instead, the 25 Man Naxx relics have been made available for 25 Emblems of Valor.

Totem of Dueling

This is the actual Enhancement totem. Since haste was boosted a bit for us in 3.1, this is looking pretty good these days. However…

Totem of Hex

It was suggested that the Elemental Totem was actually better for us in 3.0, so this may also be a worthwhile investment. I’m really not very sure on this matter – but you can’t go far wrong with either of these.

Totem of Splintering

This is actually the 15 Emblems of Heroism totem. I’m mentioning it here because, despite my having it equipped (I haven’t go another Totem at the moment, thanks to not doing my research before I bought this one) this totem does not work. It’s not worth the Emblems. The comments on Wowhead for the Dueling totem suggest that this was a 400 DPS boost over that totem.

I have no idea where they got that number from, because in my tests, there was a miniscule difference between having the totem equipped and having nothing there. I’m talking about a 5 damage difference.

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Hopefully, this list will help give you an idea of what you’re looking for in U10. If I’ve missed anything (I have a feeling I might be missing some hard mode drops), just leave me a comment and I’ll be sure to include it.