Resto Shaman - One Stop Guide to Mastering the Power of Nature

Morning blog lovers!

I got an email the other day asking me a few questions about healing as a Shaman. So instead of answering those specific questions; I thought I would just make a guide about Shamans and their restoration spec.

So lets get start mmmk?

Ding 80, Now what?

Exciting news and I congratulate you, however, you are now playing with the big boys. That means you have gear up to a respectable stat level in order to heal heroics properly and not get laughed at.

Have no fear because this is done very easily through gear that is BoE (Bind on Equip). Leatherworkers have some gear resto gear, both blue and epic. I highly recommend Revenant's Breastplate and Revenant's Treads. Both are epic and are made by a leatherworker. I spent about an hour and a half farming the mats for the Revenant's Treads and I bought the chest piece for 300g.

While you are in farm mode, go ahead and farm the mats for the Titansteel Guardian. Become friends with a tailor and get yourself a Wispcloak. I farmed the mats for both as RESTO! and it took just under two hours. With the blue items from the AH and the pieces you had crafted, you should now be properly geared to heal heroics without any major issues. First two badge items you want to grab is your shield and your neck piece. After those, its up in the air.

Once you have gotten the two badge items, (don't forget to enchant your gear!) you should be sitting somewhere along the following stats...

Health - 14.5k
Mana - 16k
MP5 - 300 while casting
Spell Power / Healing - 1500 unbuffed
Spell Haste - 285ish
Spell Crit - 15-20%ish

Once you obtained those stats, you are more then ready to start healing Naxxramas.

There is alot of good information out on the interwebs about gearing up a resto shaman. This site won't be blocked at your work place and contains some more good information on the gearing up subject.

Talents

This is pretty much the cookie cutter spec for a resto shaman. Is it perfect? No. Can points be swapped out? Of course they can. Look, we can argue and debate this until the next expansion, but the fact of the matter is to go what works for you.

In any resto build, you have 6 talent points that you can mess around with. Some shamans like the healing wave talent and the spell push back talent. Others like to use the improved reincarnation with enhanced weapons.

I loved instant ghostwolf talent so much while leveling it took me a long time to finally respecing out of it. Some shamans recommend getting the Enhancing totems talent and personally, I do not agree with it at all. Yes, it does give your tank a little bit more agility for dodge and strength for parry / shield block etc. It just isn't worth it considering there are a zillion Death Knights running around in my opinion. (DK's have a similar buff that servery makes our earth totem not as vaild)

Overall, get the basics and play around with those 6 points. That way you can find what works best for you. For Ulduar, I am going to try this spec, 0/13/58, it has points into our healing wave talent and improved reincarnation for less down in between wipes.

Glyphs

PvE restoration shaman glyphs are pretty straight forward. The glyphs that I am using are strictly for pve use. There are better choices if you are more focused on pvp, but I am not going to get involved with that at the moment.

Not that much has changed in the new patch and I have been rocking my glyphs since Wotlk came out back in November.

Major

1. Glyph of Earth Shield: Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%

My Earth Shield is hitting for 3.5k and is criting for 6k. Believe, it is worth the slot.

2. Glyph of Chain Heal: Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.

If you are raid healing or healing heroics, I think this makes your job easier and is worth the spot.

3A. Glyph of Healing Stream: Your Healing Stream Totem heals for an additional 20%

If you don't have any mana issues, I highly recommend this glyph for your last spot and here is why. In 3.1, our mana spring totem is now equal to 91 mp5, 109 mp5 talented, and effects the entire raid. This is the same as Paladin's Blessing of Wisdom. So if you have a Paladin in your raid that has the Improved BoW, (109 mp5), you should use the healing stream totem. Why not make it 20% better?

3B. Glyph of Water Mastery: the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield spell by 30%

That equals to about 30mp5 for the shaman, good stuff in my opinion.

3C. Glyph of Mana Tide Totem: Your Mana Tide Totem grants an additional 1% of each target's maximum mana each group member.

If you have over 20,000 mana, then this equals out to be an additional 67mp5 for your GROUP. I would only get this if your group / raid are having issues with mana. You can only drop it once per fight in 90% of boss fights. That is why I left this as a secondary choice, I would still go with the Water Mastery one if you are having any sort of mana issues....30 mp5 is nice.

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave: +20% more heals when your target has Earth Shield

This is a very popular glyph within the resto shaman community. Just because it is popular doesn't make it the best choice. This glyph actually gives less healing bonus then the first two I mentioned. Surprised? I was surprised too, so surprised I did some further investigating...

I'll be damn....its true

Minor

Glyph of Water Shield: Increases the number of charges on your Water Shield spell by 1.

The water shield glyph is still worth it even if you do not decide on getting the improved water shield talent in the restoration tree. Of course it would be as effective, but it wouldn't be pointless.

What stats are important to me?

This is a tricky subject. I say that because it really depends on a variety of things. Such as who you are assigned to heal, (healing assignments) and if you are healing in a raid or a heroic 5 man.

Overall its spell power>mp5>intellect>haste>crit

Mp5 and Intellect are VERY close and could easily be swapped. Again, it really depends on your role and what you are doing.

You could also make a good argument that intellect should be first due to this fact:

10 intellect = 6mp5, 3 crit, and 2 spell power. Intellect also gives you mana based on your mana pool, replenishment, mana spring totem, and your improve water shield procs.

I like to keep all my stats balanced and I try to stay away from having one of my stats being outrageous. A good example is that I do not like to have over 25% crit rating and I like to stay around 350-370 mp5 unbuffed. My spell power is currently 2000ish unbuffed and 2200 with earthliving weapon. Once I get around 2150 spell power unbuffed I am going to focus solely on intellect and haste.

This is just my thoughts on this subject though. I am interested in what real resto shaman raiders like Drug and Manchego think.

Gems

Gems are expensive right now due to 3.1 and duel specs....but that is no excuses not to use the blue quality gems! If you are having some money issues you should check out Mr. Gelvon's blog and get on it.

Meta

Insightful Earthsiege Diamond: +21 Intellect and Chance to restore mana on spellcast

This meta gem is ONLY choice for resto shamans unless you have a redonkeyous amount of intellect. (3700!?!) I can't imagine anyone having that much intellect, so this meta gem is the way to go. The math geniuses over at elitist jerks says it averages around 60mp5. So yeah...awesome little gem =P

Red

Runed Scarlet Ruby or Luminous Monarch Topaz

Yellow

Brilliant Autumn's Glow or Luminous Monarch Topaz

Blue
You would only use this kind of gem to meet the requirement of the meta gem. I recommend Dazzling Forest Emerald. I guess you could use the straight +stamina if you are under 16k, but I don't recommend it.

Enchants

Head - Arcanum of Blissful Mending (30sp 8mp5 / The Wyrmrest Accord (revered) ) or Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (30sp 20 crit / Kirin Tor (revered) )

Go with the Wyrmrest rep first. That way you can can pick up a good pair of gloves while you are there.

Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Crag or Greater Inscription of the Storm (Exalted versions). Atleast get the Lesser Inscription of the Crag, they are almost as good and only take honored with the Sons of Hodir. FYI - You have to unlock the dailies.

Cloak - Greater Speed (23 haste rating)

Chest - Powerful Stats (+10 to all stats) or Super Stats (+8 to all stats)

Wrist - Superior Spell Power (+30 sp) or Greater Spell Power (+23 sp) Fur Lining (Leatherworker only / +67 Spell Power)

Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower (+28 sp)

Belt - Eternal Belt Buckle - Extra Gem

Legs - Sapphire Spellthread (+50 sp / +30 stam)

Feet - Greater Vitality (6mp5)

Shield - Greater Intellect (+25 intell)

Weapon - Mighty Spellpower (+63 sp)

Totems

Ahh yes, what makes a shaman a shaman...totems! As a resto shaman though, which ones do you use? That answer isn't as straight forward as you might think and you need to be aware in order to maximize your role as a raid buffer. First, lets go over what totems to drop if another shaman is in the raid.

Other Shamans in raid / group

If the other shaman is enhance, then they should have Enhancing totems talent and should be dropping Windfury, Strength of Earth, and Flametongue totems. As far as which air totem to drop, it is probably better that he drops mana spring and you handle healing stream. This is because of the new change in 3.1 that made our mana spring totem a base 91 mp5 untalented. Even though a resto mana spring totem should be 109 mp5, there is a much larger difference in our healing stream due to the fact that it is based off of spell power. Hopefully you have holy paladin in the raid for his blessing of wisdom, which if talent is the same as the resto shaman, 109 mp5. These do not stack..../sad panda

If the other shaman is elemental, then there is no reason to drop your flametongue totem. Elemental's have Totem of Wrath, which is a larger increase in spell power and will not stack with flametongue. I usually just take over what they do not, meaning that I drop the melee helpful totems along with healing stream.

You are just going to have to use your best judgement in deciding which totems to drop. Two important things to consider...

1. Compostion of your group / raid. If you are melee heavy or the top 5 dps is all melee classes, you might want to drop windfury over wrath of air.

2. Make sure your totems are not wasted or being overiden. We talked about this in regards to other shamans and holy paladins. Example is Death Knight's Horn of Winter. When this is activated it makes our Strength of the Earth totem pretty useless. Use Stoneskin totem to add some extra armor, plus it makes healing the tanks a little easier.

Can't really go wrong if you follow those two rules.

Macros

Instant big heal aka OH SNAPFIZZLE button

All resto shamans need a "OH SNAPFIZZLE" button. This is when someone in your raid / group needs an instant big heal. Through talents you are going to get the ability called Nature Swiftness. This makes any spell with a cast time under 10 seconds instant. Coupled with another resto talent, Tidal Force, and waa la....now you just have to put a macro to make it a button.

The two talents by itself with a healing wave cast should instantly heal someone for 10-14k (depending on spell power). You can also add trinkets into the mix and it is recommended.

Macro is as follows:

/stopcasting
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Tidal Force

13 is the upper trinket slot and 14 is the lower trinket slot. If you do not have a trinket that has a use, then the macro will just skip over it.

Interupts

This macro is useful for pvp and pve. It also comes in very handy for heroic 5 mans. Remember that less dmg that your group / raid is taking, the better. If you have a badie targeted, it will Earth Shock them. If you have a friendly targeted, it will earth shock its target.

/stopcasting
/cast [harm] Earth Shock; [target=targettarget, harm] Earth Shock

These are the only macros that I use. There are other ones out there that other shamans deem useful, but those two are the most useful in my opinion.

Addons

Addons are a big deal and help you do your job correctly. Even though it is slightly outdated, I wrote an article awhile back of all of my addons. Most of those addons are not necessary, but a few make our job extremely more efficient. I HIGHLY recommend downloading and using Clique for all healers, not just resto shamans.

Clique is very easy to setup and if used correctly, automatically makes you a better healer. Breakdown of the addon is that heals are casted by just moving your mouse over the raid frame or the toon portrait and pressing a certain keybind. You can setup which key you want to bind an ability

Alot of shamas swear by grid or healbot. I used the default UI and I do find. Now If I didn't have clique, I would be in major trouble.

Tips

1. Key bindings. Super important. Besides the key bindings I have setup for Clique, I also use the "~" key for Riptide, the "1" key for LHW, and the "2" key for HW. "G" is my OH SNAPFIZZLE button, and "T" is just Tidal Force.

2. Raid Healing. We have chain heal and because of this we make excellent raid healers. In fights where people are spread out, Chain heal loses its power. Howeer, melee can only spread out so far and because of this we are excellent in keeping that group up while we through a quick LHW to others.

3. Don't forget about your elementals! You might be thinking to yourself...well duh dude! I is no noob mmk? Well I am and I forget about my fire and earth elementals all the time. Blizzard buffed both of them substantially and they are definitely worth dropping during boss fights. Especially for all of the dps races in Ulduar.

4. Don't be afraid to fail. I have let many people die when they shouldn't have. Most of the time it was due to casting a chain heal (long cast) instead of using a Riptide+LHW (quick cast). Other times it has been due to me zoning out or just plain failing. Practice and repetition is key to perfecting anything, just try not to get discouraged and keep at it.

5. We can decurse! So do it! This may be another one of those dumb moments, but I have ran into MANY resto shamans that did not know they can decurse. Even better is setup your cleanse in clique to minimize the time the disease, curse, or poision is on. Very important and recommended.

I know this post is huge, but there was alot of information I wanted to inform the masses few followers about how to play a restoration shaman correctly. If you notice any glaring mistakes please say inform me in the comment section. Thanks for reading and now you should know how to master the power of nature....

....good luck with that shit =P

Referance for most information: http://elitistjerks.com

Death Knight Spec Reviews

3.1 Death Knight Spec Reviews
Now that I have gotten a bit of raid time in with the new content I am here to share with you my impressions of the specs I have tried.

Unholy dps

I have been enjoying this spec! At first I was not at all interested in having a permanent ghoul to rely on for dps, However with all the unholy talents buffing him, he stays up rather well. The short cooldown on army of the dead also really helps use it for multiple boss attempts. I think this spec is working well for my ilevel 200 gear and should only get better as I get more dps gear. I have not really been having any aggro issues (which is the reason some people prefer 12/0/59).

Tanking Specs & Ulduar

I must say I had high hopes for Frost tanking in 3.1. I knew it was getting a nerf but I thought it still looked strong. Well turns out the nerf really killed the playability of frost for me. This is the spec I took into Ulduar for our first attempts. We downed FL no problem and moved on to Ignis. If you haven't yet been, the trash before Ignis is harder than any boss in Naxx (imho). The bosses trashmobs were hitting me for 12k+ (in a 10 man!) All the extra avoidance and mitigation of frost didn't help me at all. When I had a bad string of avoidance I WOULD go down. In addition to this, my threat was not where it used to be. Maybe its the new rotation. I will admit I don't have the new frost rotation down nearly as well as I had the old one. Still, the whole time I felt fragile AND had aggro problems for the first time this expansion. On a positive note, Acclimation did stay stacked pretty much any time I needed it. The extra resists cause you to basically have 250+ resist in standard tank gear. I was resisting nearly 30% of all magic attacks. That's a big chunk of damage! We never did get any quality attempts at Ignis as things kept falling apart quickly. After probably 7 wipes we decide to move on. The real nail in this specs coffin for me came at Razorscale.

Razorscale as a fight is pretty much all about controlling the adds and avoiding raid damage. During the air phase adds continuously spawn from 3 locations (on the 10 man). So I have 2 spawn points to cover. Frost failed me here with the long cooldown on HB and the longer cooldown on DnD. It really made it hard to hold all the mobs I needed to while still picking up the new ones that spawned. We wiped quite a few times without ever getting Razorscale to the permanently grounded phase. When we finally get him grounded for good. I took a massive breath (and maybe stood in some fire...) and died.

We called the raid here and made another trip later in the week.

For our second trip into Ulduar I went with the blood tanking spec I had talked about. This seemed to work out much better. While I did seem to be taking more overall damage, It was all pretty steady and I did not seem to have as many OH S#%* moments as I did with frost. Blood also impressed me with the ability it has to aoe. It is no Unholy but I felt like a stronger aoe tank as blood than I did as Frost. Heart strike makes tanking two mobs just as easy as tanking one. Don't even have to change your rotation!. Also the blood spec isn't as talent bloated as frost and that allowed me to have the lowest cooldown possible on DnD. I don't know if it was the spec or what. but it only took 1 wipe to down him this time.

(on a somewhat related note: 47khp, thanks cooldowns!)


We moved on to the XT-002 Deconstructor. This so far has been my favorite fight in Ulduar. It really felt finely tuned. we had a few attempts wipe at very low percentage. When we finally killed him it felt like everyone really had to be on their game and work together perfectly.

Podcast!?!?

I have recently gotten into listining to WoW Podcasts (and podcasts in general). There are a few quality wow podcasts (Rawrcast, Warcraft Outsiders), But I really felt with the amount of poeple who play wow there is room for more. TheDoctor and I have been tossing around the idea of making a wtfspaghetti podcast! Is this something that would interest our readers? What type of topics would you most be interested in hearing about? Let us know in the comments section If you have any suggestions on topics or even if you think think its the worst idea you have ever heard of. Let us know!

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - Random Thoughts

Morning blog lovers!

One of the main reason why I have a blog is so I can put down my random thoughts and try to make sense out of them. Sometimes it is completely useless, other times it actually helps me.

So WTF, here we go =D

• Patch 3.1.1 is suppose to come today and that is supposedly why we have extended maintenance. So many bugs to fix. Makes you wonder how many bugs / exploits they already fixed. Man....I would hate to look at that coding..../wrist. I guess the 6 figure salary would be worth it though =P


• Went back into Ulduar with a solid group of guildies. We took down Razorscale and that Big Whinny Robot. Only had 1 attempt on the Iron Council before people had to leave, which pissed me off because we were only in there for a little over an hour, but what can you do?


• The Big Whinny Robot was a pretty fun fight, it just takes coordination and alot of dps. We had 4 of our dps doing over 3k and the other two were doing about 2.7ish. We made beat the enrage timer by about 25 seconds and got an achievement for not letting any repair bots get to the boss. Win, Win =D


• I still haven't done the new boss in VoA. I would love to get a tier 8 just so I can say I have one lol. In fact, I would even like to have some of the new pvp gear. Have you seen the stamina on those things? Like 150 stam....redonkeyous


• I am in love with Ulduar trash mobs. Face rolling through trash mobs in Naxx for the past 4 months has made me forget that trash mobs used to be difficult. I absolutely love it. Nothing like rolling into a new "quarter" in Ulduar and seeing three normal sized dwarfs and thinking to myself....I bet these dudes are going to F around lol. I have heard horror stories about Mimiron trash...so that should be fun when we get there.


• It seems like my guild doesn't raid the same when I am not leading the raid, its crazy. I dont yell at people and I am not always talking on vent. So I have no idea why it is such a major difference, but there is. Loot drama, people dicking around, wiping, arguing about wiping in raid chat. Kinda sucks, but what can you do? Only thing I can think of is to find someone ASAP that can lead a 25 man raid and do it successfully. Any suggestions?


• I am now eligible to compete in the Argent Tournament. Thats right, Champion SON! lol. You get this vanity pet and I cant help but to feel bad. It calls you master and follows you around where ever you go. You can make it carry a flag lol....plus its this ugly orc / E.T. little bugger. Weirds me out lol


• Not sure why I was so excited about the tournament, there really isn't anything I want. I guess I could get another mount...that would be cool. One good thing is that this "event" is currently Blizzards little toy and I am sure that they will add cooler things to it. Plus you do make a good amount of gold doing the dailies.

Work is almost over, which means I have to stop writing and actually finish up my work. Weaksauce I know! Have fun on this WONDERFUL maintenance day, hopefully it wont turn out like last week.

Until then, I'm WTFout!

Morning Morning Warcraft - Argent Tournament Dailies and Ulduar...

Monday Morning Warcraft is a weekly post that illustrates random thoughts and events that occurred over the weekend in the life of a wowhead. Feel free to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, hate mail, ect... mlange0385 at yahoo dot com

Morning blog lovers!

What a weekend! I got zero playing time on Saturday and Sunday due to a friends wedding and my recovery from that wedding (cleansing . So I missed our guilds 25 man raid, however, I did play an outrageous amount of WoW on Friday.

Ulduar

Oh that is right, we went in there with an under-geared tank, druid healer, and sub-par dps. Of course we are going to melt faces right?!?

haha...anyway =P

The first vehicle fight was pretty cool. I was decided that I was going to be the motobike and skeet tar everywhere. We cleared all of the towers and attempted the boss. First shot we got em to 50%. Second shot we ran into some bad luck and wiped. Third shot we downed him. Took the screenshot and we were on our way.

Woot! It was a good feeling. Too bad it didn't last long lol....

Ignis the furnace master does not F around. His trash mobs are harder then any of the bosses in the four wings of Naxx...maybe even all of Naxxramas. Either way, they suck and we were not prepared for that.

Once we got use to what was going on and the trash's abilities, it wasn't horrible. Ignis is a bad dude and after many attempts and different strats, it just wasn't going to happen.

We head over to Razorscale...pretty fun fight. Pretty healing intensive and we were rocking 3 healers. What really killed us was the our DPS. The under-geared tank and druid healer were doing fine, but the overall dps was just lacking.

After a bunch of attempts, we decided to call it.

Overall thoughts...

Ulduar is a huge step up, which it should be. The only thing I was surprised about was the amount of damage that was pouring out and the trash mobs. Ulduar really makes Naxxramas look like child's play, I mean seriously....they do not even compare lol.

Going back in there today when I get home, should be fun.

Argent Tournament Dailies

If you haven't already, you should check out my earlier post about it and how to get started. Once you have already completed the opening chain, you have the ability to complete 7 dailies. Five of those dailies actually give you marks which you will need to rank up and unlock the next set of dailies.

Confused?

I was too, but after I unlocked the 7 dailys and got my path down. It was only a matter of taking 30 minutes out of my WoW day and actually do them. Due note that the unlocking phase has to due with the mounting combat. Right off the bat you should be able to do 2 of the dailies, A Chip off the old Ulduar Block and Jack Me Some Lumber.

Rankings

When you first unlock the dailies and complete them, you are given a quest to turn in 15 of the marks. When you turn these in you gain a rank. I am only on the second rank, but they do give you extra stuff to do. Such as, upping the ante on two of the quests and adding an additional quest.

Due note - You can only earn a maximum of 5 marks a day. Unless I am missing something, which I do not think I am. So just because you have an get an addition quest, Enemy at the Gates, does not mean that you are getting more marks. Weaksauce, I know...

Daily Route

This is my route that I take. I really need to get a better picture editing program other then paint....looks like a kindergartner made that...lol.

Anyway, number 4 is actually random and can be anyone of three quests. Blade Fit for a Champion, Worthy Weapon, and Edge of Winter. All very easy and require very little time involvement.

Overall Thought about Ulduar

Like I was saying before on the topic, we had a tank and a healer that was under-geared. Being so, they still did fine and was able to fill that role for the first four bosses. I think that you can not be under-geared when it comes to the DPS role.

DPS always plays a big role, but I think Naxxramas did not prepare your dpsers skill wise. You really need a minimum of 2.5k-2.8k dps. You dps should be putting out more along the lines of 3k-3.5k in order to be successful in this raid. That also means single target dps, not just aoe'n stuff down.

How did your guild fare in Ulduar? Looking forward to hearing about your situation and your exp in there. Until then though, I'm WTFout!

3.1 Death Knight Tank Spec

With the weekend quickly approaching I can only hope that blizzard fixes the instances servers to give me a chance to check out my tank specs prior to the big show. While it has been fun blowing things up it looks like I will still be needed to tank things.

Last time I gave you my version of a 3.1 Death Knight Dps spec and now I deliver the goods on tanking specs. When designing these specs I really tried to keep in mind what I have read about Ulduar boss fights. So far the consensus seems to be hard hitting bosses with lots of aoe. Magic damage seems to be pretty constant as well. With that in mind I give you 3.1 Tanking specs.

The first spec I give you is frost. I was a frost tank pre-patch and I really liked it. Frost is a bit more of a talent point sink than it used to be and it feels like I don't get points in everything I want. However frost as a spec does offer the most mitigation and avoidance with an extra 2% damage reduction (from all sources) 3% avoidance, and Acclamation for magic resist. A lot of the fights I have read about have periodic sources of magic damage or magic attacks from bosses that should keep this stacked pretty well at all times. If Acclimation doesnt turn out to be very usefull it will be dropped for points in bladed armor or to fill out morbidity. This is my first choice of spec and I think I will only be using blood of the bosses hit so hard in Ulduar that I absolutely need the 6% stam.

The blood spec I have here basically trades the goodies I listed above for 6% str and stam, the ability to parry direct damage spell attacks, and a 15% damage reduction to hits that take you below 35% once every 2 minutes. I have one floating point in the blood spec that could be used in a few different spots depending on the utility you want. Could take Hysteria for some increased dps (or tps if you use it on yourself). Rune Tap works for another healing pot every minute. My personal choice would probably be Mark of blood as it has a variety of cool uses and can heal the entire raid. (at least it used to heal my entire 5 man groups when I used it as leveling.)

Hopefully I get a chance to run Ulduar this weekend so I can give a description of these specs in action!

Full Ulduar Map and Boss list

Short and sweet

Enjoy, I will see you guys tomorrow. I'm WTFout!

3.1 - Argent Tournament and First Impressions

Morning blog lovers!

Well, well, well, here we all are. Overall, Blizzard had most of the realms down all day. My particular realm did not come up until around 8pm, 6 hours later then normal.

Was I upset? Did I feel like the world was ending? Was I tempted to bang my head against the wall multiple times? Unfortunately, all of the answers to those questions are no. I was excited the whole day and I was a little bummed that they were down as long as they were down....

blah blah blah right? Lets get into real reason why you are here, WoW Talk with a little bit of WTF sprinkled on top.....

.....right lol

First Impressions

I upgraded my PC a few weeks after WotLK came out. Everything works perfectly and I run my video settings pretty high. I usually get around 40 frames per second while I was in Dalaran. Today when I logged on my server, Dalaran was as packed as I have ever seen it. You couldn't even see that damn ground there were so many people.

So I bounced out of there with the quickness and headed to the place I thought would have the least amount of people, Thunder Bluff. Ahh yes, it was much better here.....but it was still pretty packed. Usually that place is a ghost town, completely opposite on this night lol.

Anywho...

I spent the 1k gold and got my duel spec. Put my talents where I wanted them and then setup my bars the way I wanted it for both of my chosen specs, elemental and resto.

Speaking of mods, I was super excited that my bar mod, domino's, was unfazed from the new patch. In fact all of the mods that I use actually worked with the new patch. I totally thought I was going to have to spend some time and mess with it. Pleasant surprise it was indeed.

New interfaces

I am not sure if you realized it our not, but the "LFG" (Looking for Group) interface has changed dramatically. It now shows what roles you can do, such as healer, dps, or meat head(tank =P). While this is kinda nice, I do not like it at all. I was a big fan of the old interface and I am not liking this change. Hopefully my opinion will change once I get used to the new interface. Yeah, keyword being "hopefully"....I am going with the positive outlook with this one lol.

Talent interface

I like it. It is very simply and user friendly. I also like how it saves your bar setup. It saved the way I had my resto bar setup when I switched to elemental and vice a versa. Pretty neat.

Argent Tournament


This place is wild! Nothing funnier then a cow rolling around on top of a over-sized chicken lol. I know I was confused when it came to this so I am going to shead a little light and try to answer the questions I had. Hopefully it will help you out.

First, where is this place and how do I get there?














Take a look at this map. The tournament is at the NE corner of Icecrown, an area in Northrend. Right when you first roll into the camp, you will see two quest givers. These are daily quests that that send you to different places around Northrend to collect stones and lumber. I will get into these later.

If you are entering the camp from the main path, go to the left (west) and follow it around and you will see a big tent. It is here that you will get a quest. That quest is the first in the chain to unlocking the new dailies. It wants you to go to your factions tent, located on the eastern side of the place.

It is here where you get 3 additional quests for the mounted combat. Once you get those quests, go outside and you should see a bunch of mounts. You need to equip your pole and jump on one of these mounts.














From there, go to the location I pointed on the map using my awesome paint skills. It is there where you will find Jeran Lockwood, Rugan Steelbelly, and Valis Windchaser. You will use your new skills on the target dummies. After you complete those 3, you unlock a daily and also unlock a new quest chain.

And then??

I wasn't able to do anymore because I had to come into work....weaksauce right? I know! There is so much more I could talk about but sadly, I am too busy at work to continue. I guess I will just wrap it up and save it for another post....

/sniffle

Before I finish, I want to leave you with something to chuckle at...(that is what she said lol)

Anyway...I bring to you...

WTFspahgetti's Weekly Dumb!

I think everyone knows someone like this guy....poor bastard is just way to stupid for his own good. Enjoy and as always, it is work safe.

Have fun trying to fish up the turtle mount and enjoy the rest of what the new patch has to offer. I am WTFout of here.

Tuesday Maintenance Boredom - 3.1 DK Spec, Glyphs, Rotation

3.1 is upon us!

I'm having an identity crisis! I am feeling the need to put up big numbers and try and top damage meters. Maybe I am growing gun shy from to many hits to the face while tanking. (You try it without a shield!) Whatever the reason is I have been dieing to try out dps.

Unholy Dps Spec

With dual spec and a new raid instance on the way, I figure maybe some of you aspiring death knights would like to know a decent talent specialization for PvE Dps. Well look no further, after much research and a bit of personal insight I give you my dps spec of choice. Pretty standard really. I do forgo improved unholy presence in favor of filling out necrosis.

Rotation

Rotation for this spec is pretty simple really. You apply your diseases and use Blood Strike x2 and Scourge Strike.
Your next rotation you can fire off Scourge Strike x3. Then you hope that your glyph of Scourge strike procs your diseases. Ideally you end up coming up with a rotation that looks a lot like Scourge Strike, Blood Strike x2, Scourge Strike. The next time your runes come off cooldown we are back to Scourge Strike x3. Whenever your scourge strike glyph does not keep diseases refreshed you have to reapply your diseases. This whole time you are dumping runic power so that it does not cap.

A priority list for the rotation would look something like this:

1. Keep Diseases up.
2. Do Not cap runic power. (If unholy blight is up, deathcoil)
3. Scourge Strike
4. Bloodstrike

Another important bit of knowledge to have is that you will want to use your gargoyle cooldown as often as possible for max dps. At the same time, It is best to pop Gargoyle when you have as many buffs as possible. (pro tip: Use it AFTER bloodlust, while you still have the actuall buff)

Glyphs

As you can see I went with Glyph of the Ghoul, Dark Death, and Scourge Strike.
If you do not have 4 piece t7 then you may want to use the Unholy Blight glyph instead of Dark Death.


Well, Blizzard said they would provide an update 15 minutes ago. Time to check that out!