Welcome, Tank Shaman!

There was no reason to hesitate and I don't know why I ever did, but now it is here - my very own tank shaman.

If you read my previous post on the subject, I debated whether to reroll an entirely new shaman or just respec the one I had. In the end I opted for the latter, because the prospect of having to redo the totem quests really didn't entice me, also it would've taken a lot longer to get into the real action of tanking with a new character anyway.

Things get trickier if your enemy is resistant to nature damage though.

Respecing my resto shaman into enhancement and gearing her, as much as I could, cost me about 15g. It might sound as little, but it's really not. It's worth every penny though. I wasn't lucky enough to find decent, or decently priced, gear at the Auction House for every gear slot immediately though and had to run with some caster gear. I figured it wasn't too bad since the intellect and stamina on those gear pieces would be handy on a tank as well. Fortunately I ran with few spirit items, for some reason.

My first ever dungeon as a tank shaman was a real trial by fire too - Gnomeregan. Definitely not a good starting dungeon for someone who has never tanked before, but I have, just never as a shaman. How hard can it be, I thought?

Not overly, it turns out. Tank shaman is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. Really fun! So to elaborate on that thought, how is it going?

As always you need be smart with your totem placements.

Well firstly I really expected there to be a lot more questions, or should I say hesitations, about being tanked by a shaman. But after having tanked 5-6 dungeons I have not heard one peep of doubt as to whether I can pull it off. I guess it helps that I am in my mid-30s, and dungeons still allow you to get away with most things. It probably also helps that tanks are damn scarce, and "tanking" means less of "being the one who takes all the damage" and more of "being the one who takes charge". In fact I always find it interesting when people will ask for a tank for an hour and then still do all the pulling (dps warriors, I am looking at you).

As a tank there are a couple of scenarios you need to handle in an instance, stuff that requires you to keep aggro on one or more targets, interrupt, get ranged threat and of course take a lot of damage. Warrior tanks are usually the prototype around which the other tank-able classes have been designed, or so I like to think, and a tank warrior in Classic has no ranged or aoe threat (I don't really count Demo Shout). What it does have is good single target aggro and damage reduction skills. Tanking 1-3 mobs is usually still not an issue as a warrior as long as you keep retargeting and dishing out your threat fairly evenly. So how does the tank shaman differ?

Well the tank shaman has excellent ranged threat and decent aoe threat. With Chain Lighting you can do a ranged-aoe threat pull which is so handy in low level instances. Earth Shock not only works as a high threat skill, but also as an interrupt with only 6 sec cd. As a shaman you don't have a taunt, but that is very rarely an issue in low level dungeons (I can't say for higher dungeons yet). It only actually becomes problematic if you lose aggro on a boss and that probably only happens if you're unlucky with some resists and misses. 

I can't say for sure if my shaman takes more damage than a "regular" tank.

The tank shaman also lacks any kind of decent damage reduction skills. Improved Stoneskin totem should only really be considered as making up for the lack in armor, but the warrior has both Last Stand (talent) or Shield Wall (skill), which can make a huge difference when shit hits the fan and you overpull. While I've never heard a healer complain, I do find that I miss these skills on my shaman (paladins have things like Lay on Hands. As far as I know druids also lack tanking cooldowns which for some time was considered one of their greatest weaknesses if I recall correctly). 

Totems are also definitely a lot less convenient than shouts or auras. An aura goes along with you, doesn't have to be recast and can't be targeted and destroyed by enemies. On the other hand a paladin/warrior only has the one buff, whereas the shaman can use four different ones at once. As a shaman you have a huge arsenal of really useful totems i.e buffs to drop in very varying situations, things like Tremor Totem, Earthbind Totem or Stoneclaw Totem (which I often use to aid me in multi-pulls). In the end I think the trade-off is pretty balanced, though Stoneskin Totem usually is the only one I use for every fight for mana preserving reasons. And on that note...

Just as with paladins, tanking shamans have one feature that is both one of the best things and the worst things about it - the mana pool. It is easy to burn through in one fight, requiring you to drink often, but I find that you get a feeling for how many Earth Shocks you need to use on an enemy to have it securely at your side. While you could burn five into its face, it's probably enough with two. And maybe not every group-pull needs to be done with a Chain Lightning, just because it is handy. If there are only two targets, a regular pull will probably work just as well and save you a lot of mana. I almost never use Lightning Shield, because it's too expensive. With some mana management I find I don't have to drink more than between every 4-5 pulls, but that is still a lot of drinking. Whether you prefer to have all your threat skills available up-front or have to work it up like warriors and druids do is probably a matter of taste. I do find though that with a good group I can do one long continuous pull through an instance as a warrior, and that would never be possible as a shaman.

Earth Shock is very handy as a tanking skill.

Throughout the handful of instance I've had time to do so far on my shaman it has been a delight though. I have definitely not struggled more than I have with other tank classes, just with different things. And I think that's a great thing. Shaman tanking and warrior tanking are different enough to be quite their own experience. While the essence of pulling and handling mobs is the same, the way you can go about it differs a lot. Which one is easier? I would definitely have to say shaman. Rage management is not for the faint of hearted, and the fact of having all your threat skills available on pull, with good interruptability and ranged threat just makes a lot of the things I think a newbie tank would struggle with a lot easier. Which is more fun? Right now I am enjoying both equally because they are different enough. I've personally always had a soft heart for warrior tanking though, so I doubt shaman tanking will knock it down, but as a kind of odd alternative it is great.

At level 40 I get Stormstrike and I am really looking forward to see how that is going to change my tanking experience, the same way I feel Shield Slam has improved my tanking experience on my warrior. It will change the way I go about it though, since now I pull with an Earth Shock, but with Stormstrike I will want to get that in first (for the damage bonus), meaning my pulls will presumably become more like on my warrior. Changing gear to mail and getting to some more challenging instances will also be interesting, though I did have a shaman tank me in Sunken Temple the other day without any trouble. I am sure it'll be fine.

Rise of the Tank Shaman?

Shaman tanking in WoW is something I have been pondering many times over the years. I wrote about it in my post on "Top 5 Class Roles That Nearly Existed" 9,5 years ago and even wrote a guide on how to play one 11 years ago. For whatever reason though I never got around to, you know, actually play one myself. Was I too chicken? Did I not believe in the concept myself? I'm not sure, but I think the simple answer is that I didn't actually play any tank class back in Vanilla, let alone a half-viable one, and once I got around to loving tanking, shaman tanking wasn't actually a thing anymore. I just missed the window of opportunity the last time around.

If you need any convincing or proof that Blizzard actually thought about this as a possibility, just read any or both of the above posts. Too lazy? Well to quote myself (hey I can be lazy too);

"Shamans actually have a taunt. They have a totem that does nothing but tank. Enhancement shamans prefer two one handers, but can wield shields if they want to, and enhancement shamans used to have a talent that gave them parry and a talent called Shield Specialization which increased their block chance by up to 5%. They have a skill that reduces damage done to them by 30%. And they have a weapon buff that increases their threat by 30% and reduces their damage taken by 5%. Need more proof?"

I have been playing WoW Classic for 1,5 year now though and still no tanking shaman in my roster, what gives! I know, this time I can only blame good old faulty memory. I had completely forgotten these were a thing! Until I stumbled across one, which in fact I have never done in the wild before.

Maybe something like this?

I saw someone looking for a group to some low-level instance, calling themselves a tank. I noticed that their name alluded to being a shaman and a flickering light of an old memory shone up in my brain. It couldn't be? But it was, a real, in the flesh (well not really, but you know what I mean) tanking shaman. I immediately whispered them, asking for details on usefulness and especially how skeptical potential group members were about having a shaman tanking them. According to them, there wasn't really an issue.

This shaman was in their mid-20s, so hadn't really been at it long. Back in the day I mused that tanking as a shaman was only really viable up until level 40. But with how Classic WoW has turned out to be more lenient and easier than Vanilla WoW, and even "real" tanks can play as dps-specs and with dps gear up until 60 without any issues, I think shaman tanking could actually work all the way til end game. Maybe Blizzard wanted it to be an option to sort of bolster out the mid-level availability of tanks? Who knows, either way my fire was re-kindled.

I immediately started making plans for actually creating a tank shaman. Time is dire though, rumour has it that BC is on its way and while I am intensely hype for it, it would also kill my beloved tank shaman once again, just like it did all those years ago. EDIT: I was actually thinking of Wotlk so guess I still have some time.

The only thing keeping me from rolling a tank shaman this time around is having to do those pesky totem quests again. Some are not so bad, but some are horrendous. Thing is, I already have a shaman at level 35 who has done all the annoying totem quests, but she is resto specced. But I mean, all that is required is throwing some money at her and she would be set, right? I haven't decided just yet but I am very tempted... Maybe soon I can finally play my beloved tank shaman.

Classic WoW - I Just Want It To Be There For Me

I'm sure most people are just like me in that there are certain pieces of entertainment, be it movies, games or books (most likely all of them), that you just want lying around. Either you have them on display or not, you want them close by. Even if you know you won't get around to reading/playing/watching it even once this year, there is something that makes you want it nice and handy, just in case you feel the urge. To me it can be a book like The Count of Monte Cristo, a game like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or a movie like Seven Samuari. These are items I get back to every know and then and there is something... calming... about knowing that I can do that whenever I feel like it. Even if I never feel like it again, I want to have that option.

This is what I want to do and can't do with Classic WoW.

After having played it since (re)launch last year I have been having a swell time. Most things about it are so nostalgic I love them exactly because they're tedious or not entirely well-designed. Many things I find are actually a lot better than I remember them, dungeoning being one of those things. I have been going at it very slowly too, my highest character at the moment still being only level 40.

In many ways I am so conflicted when it comes to Classic WoW and in some ways I am not at all. I love it, to bits. It has such a huge part of my life (along with the first couple of expansions) I can not state enough what an important game this has been to me, and still is because of that. Every time I log on, every time I do something I've done a thousand times before I get that nostalgic twang in my heart of pure happiness.

But I have done these things a thousand times before. There is pretty much nothing in Classic WoW that I do not know inside and out already (I didn't do a whole lot of raiding in current Classic so that would be the one exception). Whenever I log on it is solely for the nostalgic feeling and pretty much nothing else. I don't feel like there is any wonder of learning or discovery left for me in this game.

And in many ways that is absolutely ok. When I re-read the Count of Monte Cristo for the umpteenth time I obviously know exactly what is going to happen. Rewatching Seven Samuari I am not entertained by the elements of surprise anymore. Now instead I am entertained by the fine craftmanship and the memory of the first time I experienced it and how blown away I was at that point.

But even though I find the Count of Monte Cristo and Seven Samurai to be absolute masterpieces I don't want to re-visit them too often. I want them close and handy in case I do want to experience them again, but often there are a few years in-between each time nowadays. Often it is just enough to look at them to get a good feeling, and it isn't until a few years have passed before you need to refill that nostalgia-well.

Read it, the movies are not worth your time. There is an interesting anime though - "Gankutsuo".

The same thing goes with WoW Classic, but unlike pretty much everything else I can't really own my own copy of Classic WoW to put in my shelf knowing that if I ever, like 40 years from now, want to play that game it is just to pop it into my computer and go (ok, this is an issue facing a lot of computer games, but mmo's have an even shorter expiration date).

MMO's are experiences you only get to borrow for a short time. Once you start playing it you never know how long you're going to be allowed to stick around and World of Warcraft has proven to be one of the longest runners in the genre. In fact we should probably consider us damn lucky we even got a remake the way we have.

And I am. I am so grateful. I don't take it for granted at all. That is why I am afraid that if I don't keep it around it will go away again. It will only stick around for as long as people pay obviously, but can I really justify paying the monthly fee just to have it sticking around because I don't want it to ever go away? It is going to go away eventually anyway.

There are so many things they got right with Classic WoW. While I haven't played retail since a short foray in Warlords of Draenor or whatever expansion it might have been, I personally feel like Classic really entices you into playing with other people in a way that has been removed in many ways from later expansions. You could say Classic even forces you to, because there are so many situations, even early on in the game, where you will find yourself struggling even with a regular quest if you don't find someone to back you up, this is definitely a lot more true for some classes than others.

It's so good you don't even notice how long it is.

And overall people have been so damn nice. Maybe it's because I'm not on a pvp server like I used to be back in the day, so of course there is a lot less opportunity for people to be asshats, but in instances and during questing I find that generally people are generous and friendly to each other.
But I mentioned the quality of different classes and I find this is where WoW probably has done a lot of improvements, though my personal point of view is that they've taken it a bit far in the more recent expansions (this based solely on what I've read since I haven't actually played it myself).

When I play Classic WoW now, and I have rolled pretty much every class so far except druid, I find that each class is very differently equipped for how well it handles itself in different situations but a lot of the fun comes down to something as simple as agency. When shit hits the fan, it is so much more fun to play a class where you feel like you have three more tricks up your sleeve to solve the situation than one where you feel all you can do is throw your hands up in the air and hope for some lucky crits.

This is true for solo-questing and grouping alike as the more useful you feel like you are, the more fun you are going to have. Some classes are more useful to themselves, some more useful to a group. Either way, in the end you want to feel like you have choices even when things go bad. A class like warlock has the usefulness of Healthstones, Summons, Soulstones, pet buffs, cc and self-healing abilities. A class like warrior has the usefulness of barely being able to tank and yeah that is pretty much it... Druids can jump between tanking, healing and dpsing when necessary, which becomes fairly obsolete at end game unfortunately but is actually really cool in mid-game. A resto shaman is pretty much just a glorified totem-mover… I could probably write a whole post on this and might even do that.

Blizzard get so much better later on at giving all the classes different tools for feeling like they have agency and something to bring to the board. I feel like if I had one complaint about woW Classic right now it wouldn't be about the difficulties in getting money or how much running around there is but that some classes get extremely repetative very quickly.

And right now it's like I get to around 35 ish with a class and I sort of don't feel like going further. Which isn't true, because I definitely want to see instances like Sunken Temple and Zul Farrak, and areas like Western Plaguelands and Hinterlands before I feel like I am done with this game this time around.

So now I am stuck in this limbo of wanting the game to be around for me to play, but without actually wanting to put very much game time into it. I just need it for a quick refill of nostalgia every now and then, and I am not sure the game can be played that way...

Images from Barnesandnoble.com, bbc.com.

Field Report #26 - The Shamanistic Ordeal

I got the closest I've ever been to a dungeon run that was not great the other night. After having done some tanking and dpsing I also got the urge to do some healing. I pondered the different classes and decided on a shaman. I pondered levelling as a dps and healing in dungeons, similarly to what I am doing with my tank, but felt like I wanted to try actually being resto. So then I decided against questing because questing as a resto shaman just seemed too horrible.

So there we have set the stage for my run in Wailing Caverns. I had turned 18 and done several very successful runs in RFC. I thought I would be able to heal a group through WC without too much trouble. I was only partially correct.

Happy Halloween by the way.

We got there and I immediately notice that the (level 20 warrior) tank didn't pull back with the raptors. Anyone who has done a run in WC knows that it is usually a bad idea not to, but I didn't really have time to react to before we suddenly had several more mobs on us. And when I say "us" I really mean "me".

I don't blame the tank for anything but failing to pull the mobs back, and maybe he was new to the instance, so that's fine.  In the end it didn't matter because we made it through the overpull anyway.
Then the rogue speaks up. "Ey healer. Stop pulling all those extra mobs".

Eh, I'm sorry?

Ok, so we have another person who has never been to Wailing Caverns before apparently. It was true that I was low level (though not even the lowest level in the group). And because the mobs come running from afar they run to me first since I get aggro through my healing. I can see how the rogue put two and two together and assumed I was the problem. No biggie, let's just set the record straight.

I pointed out the emote in the chat and explained the mechanic. But the rogue refused to believe me. He claimed he had already done several runs without any issue. I didn't want to throw blame on the tank so I just said "fine, I'll stay all the way back here and we'll see what happens".

To no surprise, the raptors still came running. And they didn't just attack me. What was a surprise though, after I pointed it out the rogue actually responded with "I might have been wrong". Someone admitting they were wrong on the interwebs? That's as rare as a unicorn. But that is now the closest I have been to what could've turned into an angry run, and it wasn't very close at all. Classic is still showing itself at its best side, and the players playing it as well.

Speaking of shaman healing though...

Before level 20 when I get Lesser Healing Wave it is a whole lot of spamming Healing Wave! And unless you count throwing out the occasional Stoneskin/Strength of Earth totem that is literally the only thing I am doing (I interrupt some times too I guess). And since someone (yeah, me) decided levelling solely through instances was a good idea it's just been Healing Waves all over this place for the last four levels. Level 14-18 doesn't sound like it should take that long, but when all you do is press one button over and over it's unsurprisingly quite dull.

So why not just go quest? Good question. I've levelled my orc warrior and undead warlock pretty simultaneously, meaning I've done a quest on the one character and then gone and done the same quest on the other character (for the most part, the warlock did Stonetalon Mountains which the warrior has not). The thought of doing all those quests again on my troll shaman really didn't appeal to me. And especially not since I was going to go all resto.

For a short moment I thought about doing the quests in Tirisfal and Silverpine because I love those areas so much, but then I remembered that there is no shaman trainer over there so then the prospect of going back and forth every two levels to train didn't sound particularly fun either.

I am level 19 now. Next up is the horrendous Water Totem Quest at level 20 (if I remember correctly) and I'll get both Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Stream Totem. That's not bad. It'll give me a few more tools to work with.

Interestingly enough though, my ordeal with my resto shaman has made me come through whatever blockage I had regarding playing a healing priest (Heal! Shields! Renews! Lesser Heals! So many fun things!). So yeah, I am also leveling one of those now - a dwarf, because for now I've had enough of the horde areas for a while.

Patch 5.0.5 - Not about priests this time

I remember my initial thought when I read about the new talent changes was something along the lines of "wee, new changes to get comfortable with, it's going to be totally fun trying to figure out how to heal again". My second thought, when I remembered the amount of alts I tend to play on a regular basis was "omg, new changes to get comfortable with, I am going to suck ass for ages".

I normally enjoy changes like these ones in WoW, I think a game that has been around for so long needs to revamp itself every now and then. Because of this I haven't really minded any of the bigger changes made, whether it was introducing new stats like heal power and spell power, turning heal power into spell power, making intellect count as spell power, mana and crit (and some other things) and then fixing the mana pools. It's all totally ok with me as long as everyone is playing by the same rules. So what if we have fixed mana pools now? I don't mind, since every caster has to abide by that same rule.

But change means re-learning, at least to some extent. And every big overhaul means I need to check and re-understand (if that's a word) every alt I happen to play (and they are many). That is time I don't always have the motivation to put into the game straight away, and an alt I don't play very often can easily be completely forgotten for another one during times like these. This time around my recently dinged level 85 paladin has gotten the temporary ignore button. I was already losing interest in her simply because she is freshly dinged right before a new expansion, and gearing her up felt kind of pointless at this time. But for some reason, the mere thought of having to re-learn holydin made me want to go back to prot, don't ask me why. We'll see about that.

I have checked out a couple of other alts however, all of which are not max-leveled should be noted and I have noticed one thing, the amount of change has varied quite a lot from class to class. Healing priests for instance have not changed overly much, while a class like warlock has changed completely. I'm wondering if this is due to me being the most comfortable with the priest class, making any change less of an obstacle to be than it is on a class like warlock, that I understand and master a lot less, I don't know. Here are some thoughts on the changes made to a couple of classes.

Warrior
My first thought logging in to and trying to tank on my warrior was "oh lord, they have ruined my rotation, how will I ever be able to tank again?". Of course I hadn't really looked anything up, but just jumped straight into an lfd hoping for the best. Things got really confusing when I was lacking Rend and using Cleave soaked up all my hard earned rage. And what is this, most of my skills don't even use rage anymore? HOW OP IS THAT?! I don't know about dps warriors, but for a prot warrior I love this change. Rather than having almost every skill use rage, only a couple of key skills like Shield Block and Enraged Regeneration (if you have that talent) use rage. This means a lot of things. First of all, it removes that horrible moment 22 warriors were suffering from that occurred when someone pulled a pack of mob and you needed rage to get aggro but without aggro you got no rage. Even Challenging Shout required rage! Admittedly, with some practice you knew how to solve those situations without too much trouble, but it did turn into chaos-fest every now and then, especially when every dps in the group decided to dps a different target. Now I can Devastate something in the face at any time and I can see this making tanking a lot easier for newbie tanks.

Lightning bitches!

So they removed Rend and pretty much Cleave for me. My old rotation used to be; charge in, Rend and Cleave at the same time and Thunderclap. Worked like a charm, spreading Rend around the group for that extra aoe damage. Now we've got Deep Wounds baseline instead to replace Rend, triggering off of any of your damaging skills. Cleave is one of the few skills that use rage, and because of this I tend not to use it at all since I prefer to use my rage on damage reducing cooldowns such as Shield Block. I like this change though, giving me a real and important choice between using rage on dps or damage reduction.

One part of me thinks they might've oversimplified warrior tanking a little too much, removing a lot of fun skills I enjoyed using in my regular rotation, but on the other hand I am glad they've finally made mitigation vs damage a real choice for us not just while choosing gear, but also while fighting. And now I can Bladestorm while tanking, how awesome is that! (I will go for Shockwave however, but Bladestorm is tempting just for the lulz).

Warlock
I've had a very on and off relationship with warlocking, going from having mained one briefly in BC (!) to pretty much not looking at it all through Cata. I love the complexity of warlock in BC, lost interest in Wrath when I thought they were too much like mages (ignoring the fact they have pets, shapeshifts and shitloads of cc) and when I tried it again in Cata I found what looked like an sb-spamming spec (demo) and what probably is the most complex rotation I have ever tried to master (destro). I slowly found my way back to warlocking, but it was definitely not one of my favorite alts.

Having played destro the last couple of months (mostly because I thought the other two specs were so boring), I was shocked at the level of change that it had gone through in 5.0.4. Umm, where are my dots? Where is the rotation from hell? My first impression was that destro had just lost two thirds of its skills, but remember that I am playing a lowbie warlock and that a lot of good stuff good just be lying around the corner. At the disappointment of the changes made to destro (which basically meant spamming a dreadfully slow shadow bolt and some chaos bolt) I decided to try out demo - hopefully it would've undergone as much change and hopefully for the better. All I can say is

EHRMAGEHRD METAMERPHERSERHS! That's metamorphosis for you who have trouble reading that. It's like Blizzard just had an epiphany and realized that people play demonology because they want to be really cool looking demons (which totally is the case) and made it possible to be in metamorphosis like all the f*cking time! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

After the initial glee had settled down and I was getting kind of bored of just going into metamorphosis, press Hellfire and sit back and wait, I decided to actually see if I could understand what this new change was all about (except looking really cool and doing aoe all the time). Of course Metamorphosis (which I hate spelling btw) is supposed to be some sort of powerful cooldown, but it does limit your choice in spells which means you have to think about when to use it. You can't just press the button and expect to do awesome damage, as far as I've understood it you need to alternate between forms to get the most out of it. If that is the case, I definitely love the idea. Unfortunately I don't really have the opportunity to test it to the max just doing lowbie instances (where your ability to aoe is what is really valued). Because of this I am curious about re-testing destro again and see if I can figure out how to play that, I feel I didn't really give it a proper chance the first time around. (If you're curious I'm not seeing affliction as an option it's simply because I've never liked that spec). (Ever.)

Mage
Another "ehrmagehrd" is really in place here, but I feel like one per post is probably one too many. Suffice to say, I feel like a flame wielding murder machine on my fire mage and I am completely loving it. Fire has always been my preferred spec on mage. I probably don't have to explain why I don't like arcane (hint, it's always been extremely boring) and although I've never had a problem with frost I just felt like there was a little more oomph in fire (not just damage wise, but visually and esthetically as well).

Fire has had many problems however, being heavily reliant on gear and sometimes what felt like pure damn luck. I could easily sway between awesome dps and shit dps just based on my crit streak, and my frustration would follow suite. Fire mage was so good when it was good and so bad when it was bad. Blizzard have realized this and basically, but not completely, given you control over your own Hot Streaks (that is the magic we need for firey mayhem fun) in a way I think is genius. By giving us a skill that is guaranteed to crit, we're able to get that double crit streak as soon as we get at least crit, simply by using our crit-skill, allowing us to fling out the rest of the arsenal (ie Pyroblast and Combustion). Oh and Combustion is on a way lower cooldown, making it more of a part of our rotation than just that extra bang every now and then. But our crit-skill is also used to spread our dots onto other targets, and with a cooldown on it we need to really think about when and how to use it. To get the most dps out of my fire mage now means having fast thinking and fast reflexes and I am loving it. When my dps goes down the drain I don't feel like I can blame anyone but myself, and the rotation and skill usage is just complex enough to feel rewarding when I get it right and motivate me to get better when I get it wrong. I am totally loving it.

Shaman
So, what happened to my totems? (I wanted to write "Dude, where's my totems?" but I just couldn't) I was pretty bummed when I noticed that the majority of them were gone, but after having calmed down over that fact I realized that I never was a huge fan of totems in all honesty. I've probably had pretty much the same thoughts about them as the rest of the shaman community - they have so much potential, but they just felt like bad versions of other classes buffs. Blizzard have listened and removed, altered and introduced new totems into our arsenal. Some oldies but goldies remain the same, like Searing Totem, some work differently like Healing Stream totem (which works more like a healing cooldown now) and some are completely new like Lightning Capacitor Totem.

With the risk of sounding repetative, I like these changes. I miss my totems in a way (as a lowbie I barely have any) but that is only because they have been with me for so very long. I still remember having to do the totem quests to get them, how you had to carry them around in your bags to be able to use them... Totems now are more like cooldowns or special shaman buffs but it is a change that was needed and a good one. I will gladly vote the totem relocator skill to Best Skill of the Year award right here and now.

Fugly? Or fute...

What about the other changes to shaman? I've only tried resto, since my enhancement shaman is abandoned on another server at the moment, and besides the fact that it is impossible to oom at lower levels healing is very much the same. I have access to skills I didn't have before, like Riptide, but otherwise I don't feel like shaman healing has changed much at all and that's ok - I've got enough to wrap my head around as it is already.

Druid
As a tanking druid I have noticed the same move towards dps vs mitigation change that prot warrior got, only it took me so much longer to get. On my warrior I was used to using Shield Block on a regular basis and quickly figured out how the new Shield Block was meant to be handled. On my druid however it first took me a while to notice Savage Defense was no longer present and then even longer to realize that it had been turned into a mitigation skill like Shield Block (only it gives dodge instead obviously). No wonder I was taking so much damage!

In fact, my druid has suddenly got a whole handful of new mitigation and dps cooldowns (to some part depending on which talent skills you choose) that I barely know what to do with. I press one out of the many every bigger pull, hoping to make the healer a little happier. Most of the time I just feel confused, but I think I am slowly getting the hang of this.

One of the things that kind of disappointed me were the skill choices, where few seemed as interesting or good as they did on other classes. I suppose one of the problems could be that most of the skills are usable in all shapeshifts, so that eventhough they're tweaked to work better for some shapeshifts they do work in all and that makes it difficult for me to find one that I think is useful for tanking. I tried the treants, but they didn't really seem to do anything worthwhile. I tried the Typhoon, but that turned out to be mostly annoying (as I had already suspected it would). It's too many choices but because they all feel pretty meh rather than all seeming so good. That could just be me not grasping the idea completely yet, but I'll get there.

Druid tanking has changed about as much was warrior tanking, and overall I think the changes are ok. It annoys me that I need to spec for the charge, but fine - paladins and dks don't have a charge either (they do have ranged aoe threat skills to compensate for that however!). Druids still don't have a ranged silence which is a quality of life change I think we deserved. Druids feel weird, but not necessarily bad and I think I might just have to get comfortable in these new druid shoes first. It's just proving to take a little longer than for the other classes I've tried so far.

On a closing note (omg, finally) I feel like Blizzard have really tried to bring forward the essence of the different classes and specs, making them feel more separated and special and like you're actually achieving something differently from the next guy. Since I've only tried these new classes on low levels (around 50 and druid on 83) I know there is still a lot more to discover and understand before the day is over. I am definitely liking what I have been seing so far however, and can only hope these classes progress on in this direction. Good job Blizzard, thumbs up from me.

The 5x2 Project for Healing Priests (and Paladins, Shamans and Druids)

Some week ago I read a really interesting post about something called the 5x2 project. When I read that post (and I have of course forgotten who had written it /derp), I didn't realize that it was part of a bigger project, but just thought it was an interesting post by that particular blogger. Then, some day later I stumbled across the name again however, when I was randomly browsing WoWInsider. I decided to dig a little deeper and have since read some other good posts on the subject. I am sure many of you have heard of this already, but here's a run down just in case. Possibly spurred by a post made by ghostcrawler which discusses the nature of spells and when the amount of spells used by a class can become overwhelming, Mathew MacCurley from WoWInsider decided to challenge fellow Twitterers by asking them to map down their class on as few keys as possible. The aim was 5 keys, plus one modifier key, plus middle mouse button, which makes a total of 11 keys (I am also assuming that RMB/LMB and WASD are included) (thanks to Cynwise for helping me out with this). The original idea was mainly aimed at trying to make the game more accessible to disabled players, people who might not be able to reach all across the keyboard or for other reasons are rather limited in their choice of keys. But you don't have to be disabled to see the greatness in exploring this concept, any person basically can benefit from trying to figure out just which keys are the most important and how you can simplify your keying process. Me being one with relatively small hands have always tried to avoid any key beyond the 5th since I started playing. Getting there would actually mean I have to lift my hand and press that key, something that isn't always the best thing to do. A couple of months ago I discussed the problem that I had mapped Prayer of Healing, one of my most important spells, to the 6th key, which really turned into a problem when raiding. Lifting my hand to reach that key meant I couldn't simultaenously move my character, which was bad.

As a healer I happen to have one great advantage over other classes - I target friendly targets rather than hostile ones and that makes a load of difference. Because of game mechanics, Blizzard has allowed us to interact with friendly players without actually having to target them. For some reason (probably counter-bot ones) this isn't possible for most skills used on hostile targets. And even if it was possible, there is no UI (that I know off) that collects all hostile targets into a nice little grid like you can do with your party and raid frames. Come to think of it, that would really be handy for some multi dotting action, but alas. Being able to interact with friendly targets through your party interface means you can use your mouse to do most of the healing by binding a mouse click (left or right) with a modifier key. As a healer, you rarely keep a target up and the press a key, rather you want to execute the skill and press the target at the same time. Because healers have to interact with 5-25 different targets, rather than just a few like a dpser has, it would be extremely time ineffecient to first select your target, and then cast your skill. Doing both at the same time will save you loads of time and work. The only drawback of this system is that you either need an addon or know how to write mouse-over macros to do this. Since I am daft when it comes to writing macros, this post will be around how to bind your keys like this when using an addon. I have used Clique+Grid combo, and currently use Vuhdo which basically is Clique and Grid combined. Clique and Vuhdo work exactly like mouse-over macros, but without you actually having to do anything but tell the addon how you want to map your keys.

Being able to map skills to a modifier + RMB/LMB gives you a lot of "free" space on the keyboard. If you count Shift, Alt and Ctrl as three keys, adding RMB and LMB to those gives 6 possible skills, plus one for unmodified LMB and/or RMB. 7 skills on three keys! The question is really if the mouse should count as a key or not? For this post I have tried not to use more keys than the suggested (aka 5  keys plus modifier plus MMB), assuming that WASD and LMB/RMB are already accounted. But there is of course a huge difference between having a problem say reaching for keys, and therefor wanting to keep it to a minimal, or having a problem with remembering different key setups and therefor wanting to keep it to a minimum. If reach is the only issue (something with which I struggle myself), you could still probably be able to use forward and backward key on your mouse, for example. You could also use keys that are really close to the WASD, like R, F, G, Q and E to mention a few.

The original idea aimed at only using one modifier key, and I definitely see the point. Reaching from Ctrl or Alt to another key on the keyboard isn't easy, and I don't do that myself either. But when using LMB and RMB with a modifier you're actually just pressing one key, which is a lot easier. Because of this I have argued that you could use three modifier keys with RMB and LMB, eventhough you'd maybe only want to use one modifier key for combination pressings, such as Shift + 1. Because of this many could probably use Ctrl, Alt and Shift with the mouse, and then use an added 5 and 5 + mod key skills. But for this particular project that would be bending the rules. That would in fact mean using more keys than allowed! I have therefore decided to use MMB instead, to add an additional 3 skills to the mouse, and I won't add Alt + key/ Ctrl + key because I don't personally think they're good keybinds. To stay within the limit of 6 keys however (5 keys + one modifier = 6 keys), that means I can only use 1, 2 and 3, since the other three is used by Alt, Shift and Ctrl.

As a priest I have two specs to choose from, and personally I love both. Fortunately, most unique heals in one spec has a counter-part in the other which means you can use the same key to use both spells, saving you brain power from having to remember different bindings between the specs. All you have to do is tell your Clique/Vuhdo/other similar addon to do one thing when in Holy and the other when in Disc. For mouse-over macros I think you can just put both spells into the macro, as the macro will only use the one that is available in any case. Here is my suggestion for how to map your keys as a healing priest (and this is actually how I have currently mapped most of my keys).

NOTES!

• My suggestion does not include an Archangel/Atonement spec unfortunately!
• You can actually heal by using MMB to scroll up and down on your target. I don't do this, but it does open up the access to two extra skills for those who like.
• I personally think it's a lot easier to reach keys like F, G and R than say 5 or even Shift+3, but there are other reasons you might want to keep the bindings simple and easy to remember. For this I have preferred consistency over efficiency, which isn't the same to say that you'll be a bad healer for using this setup, but that there in some cases could be slightly better mappings. But again, it all depends on what the goal should be, this time I have tried mainly to stay within the limits of the project.

RMB (unmodified) = Renew (Holy) or Power Word: Shield (Disc)
Alt + LMB = Heal
Alt + RMB = Power Word: Shield (Holy) or Renew (Disc)
Alt + MMB = Flash Heal
Ctrl + LMB = Circle of Healing (Holy) or Penance (Disc)
Ctrl + RMB = Greater Heal
Ctrl + MMB = Prayer of Healing
Shift + LMB = Dispel
Shift + RMB = Prayer of Mending
Shift + MMB = Guardian Spirit (Holy) or Pain Supression (Disc)
1 = Holy Word (Holy) or Power Word: Barrier (Disc)
2 = Binding Heal
3 = Leap of Faith
Shift + 1 = Macro to switch between Inner Fire and Inner Will
Shift + 2 = Race Specific skill if you have a useful one (Rocket Jump, Berserker, Stoneform, Arcane Torrent to mention a few) otherwise Mass Dispel
Shift + 3 = Pot/Healthstone

Comments
Various dps skills: Unless your Raid leader shouts "EVERYBODY DPS THEIR PANTS OFF!" because you're dang close to the bosses berserking timer, or you're in p2 of Chimaeron, there is very rarely a reason to dps as a healing priest. My suggestion does unfortunately not include Archangel/atonement (as I already mentioned) or how to proceed if you want to be a questing healing priest (but that's torture, so don't try it).
Out of combat skills like Fortitude, Shadow Protection and Resurrection: Are very rarely used in combat and don't need to be keyd. Resurrection can't even be used in combat, and although you might have to rebuff mid-fight, it doesn't happen often.
Fear Ward: Is actually barely being used in current content, and can also usually be placed well ahead of when it is actually needed, which means it's one of those keys that's safe to keep as a "clicker".
Cure Disease: As Fear Ward, this is barely used in current content (I can't think of a single mob in current raids and heroics that puts up a disease, but I am sure there are some).
Hymn of Hope and Divine Hymn: Because of their long cooldowns they're usually only used once per fight, and don't really deserve their own key unless you have loads to spare.
Trinkets: There aren't that many trinkets with uses, but they do exist and they should be used. Fortunately, you can macro a trinket to be used with a certain skill, and that is by far the best way to make sure it is properly used and never forgotten. The same can go for something like Lifeblood.
Mass Dispel: Most races have a good race specific skill to which they can bind Shift + 2, which means you'll have to click Mass Dispel. The only fight where you'll need to use Mass Dispel regularly currently is Argaloth in Baradin Hold, otherwise it is nearly always to use regular Dispel since you need 4+ targets for Mass Dispel to be mana effective.

BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE!
Just because I am such a generous person, I will throw in a suggestion on how to map your resto shaman, holy paladin and resto druid (all of which I currently also play). I will basically use the same setup as above, and just change the skills.

Holy Paladin
RMB (unmodified) = Word of Glory
Alt + LMB = Holy Light
Alt + RMB = Divine Light
Alt + MMB = Flash of Light
Ctrl + LMB = Hand of Sacrifice
Ctrl + RMB = Hand of Salvation
Ctrl + MMB = Hand of Protecion
Shift + LMB = Cleanse
Shift + RMB = Holy Shock
Shift + MMB = Lay on Hands
1 = Holy Radiance
2 = Light of Dawn
3 = Judgement
Shift + 1 = Divine Shield
Shift + 2 = Potion
Shift + 3 = Divine Protection

Comments
The above setup does leave out some really important skills. I could use my Alt and Ctrl for some of these bindings, but as I mentioned I don't like those combinations myself. Is it better than clicking? Depends on how comfortable you are with the combination bind, to me it's like doing Twister with my fingers. The "problem" about holydins are that they have a lot of self targetted skills, which isn't something you'd want to map to your mouse. I've tried to map the ones I think are the most important to have quick access to during a fight. This is why I've mapped Divine Protection over a skill like Guardian of Ancient Kings, because I feel like eventhough GoAK is a really great spell, I'd rather click that over Divine Protection in a pinch. The same goes with the skills I have left out compared to the skills I've decided to map. Another drawback of this setup is that it doesn't allow you to bind your Rebuke to be able to be a back up interrupter. The same goes with Hammer of the Righteous. On the bright side, most people don't want a healer to focus on much else than healing.
Beacon of Light: Since it has a 5 minute duration, it's hardly necessary to keep on a key bind.
Seal of Insight: Definitely not necessary to keybind.
Divine Plea: Is something I'd ideally bind, but definitely less necessary than the ones I chose instead.
Trinkets and Raid buffs: See priest section above.

Resto Shaman
RMB (unmodified) = Healing Wave
Alt + LMB = Chain Heal
Alt + RMB = Greater Healing Wave
Alt + MMB = Healing Surge
Shift + LMB = Cleanse Spirit
Shift + RMB = Riptide
Shift + MMB = Earth Shield
1 = Healing Rain
2 = Unleash Elements
3 = Spirit Link Totem
4 = Nature's Swiftness
Shift + 1 = Spiritwalker's Grace
Shift + 2 = Potion
Shift + 3 = Ghost Wolf
Shift + 4 = Water Shield

Comments
As you might have noticed, I switched out the ctrl modifier to a fourth key instead, because shamans don't have as many friendly targetted skills as the other healers. Because of this, it's not as needed to use many mouse keys. Again, interrupt has been left out, simply because eventhough it is a good skill, if you aim at being a good healer, the mapped keys are probably more important. Same goes with Hex, Tremor Totem and Earthbinding Totem. Shamans are arguably the healing class that has the most benefit from occasionally dpsing, but I personally do this very seldom and have therefor decided to leave them out of the mapping.
Totems: Can usually be placed before a fight, and for longer boss fights they only need to be re-cast occasionally.
Longer cooldowns like Earth and Fire elemental, Bloodlust and even Mana Tide won't be used that often in a fight and I have therefor prioritized other skills.

Resto Druid
RMB (unmodified) = Lifebloom
Alt + LMB = Rejuvenation
Alt + RMB = Nourish
Alt + MMB = Regrowth
Ctrl + LMB = Wild Growth
Ctrl + RMB = Healing Touch
Ctrl + MMB = Innervate
Shift + LMB = Remove Corruption
Shift + RMB = Swiftmend
Shift + MMB = Rebirth
1 = Nature's Swiftness
2 = Tree of Life
3 = Racial
Shift + 1 = Tranquility
Shift + 2 = Potion
Shift + 3 = Barkskin

Comments
Druids is possibly the best class to play if you want to have to map as few keys as possible (paladins probably the least good). Even when mapping all the necessary skills I've got room for things like Racials and Potions. What you might want to map that I haven't included is cat form + dash, because it is a good way to get out of trouble fast, but for most fights and most situations that won't be necessary (unless you're into progress raiding).

Patch 4.0.6 - Wait, there was more

As soon as I get around to posting a post on the patch notes, they update them and I have to start all over again! Actually even for my last post they had managed to update them after I had finished it, so I had to implement the new changes before I posted it. I shouldn't complain, the changes are interesting and most of them well needed (yes, even the nerfs). I'll comment a little on other things than just the priest stuff this time though, I'll just pick a little here and there.

Heroic Nerf
Blizzard are bringing the nerf-bat down on most heroics. They are buffing some areas, but overall every heroic has become alot easier, and even if most heroics still are tricky I think you wouldn't have to be a psychic to predict more nerfs around the corner. Maybe we all knew it was coming, question is, do we want it to? I'm not sure if the difficulty of the instances was what was bugging me, on the other hand like I've mentioned before I have been running heroics mostly with guildies and I can imagine the general pug isn't doing as well. Come to think of it, a friend of mine had to do some 4-5 pug runs before he ever got passed Ozruk in Stonecore. So yeah, maybe the difficulty level was a tad too high. I suppose people could be divided into two faction about this nerf. The ones that think "well, just let it be difficult, otherwise the bad players won't ever learn to shape up. Or even better, the bad players might stop playing totally. Survival of the fittest". And the other one goes "there's no hope, there will always be bad players and right now they're just making it impossible to complete most heroics because they won't ever learn to cope with the difficulty level". I'm not sure which one of these I stand in, maybe one foot in both. In one way I do feel like stuff should be difficult, that is how we learn. But on the other hand, we can't expect miracles from everyone either. We have to realize that the bad player always will be a part of WoW and we have to adapt to that - just like we always have to adapt to the pvpers (do they ever adapt to us). It's a compromise of epic proportions, and these are the consequences of trying to fit so many different people together.

Priest Changes
Improved Power Word: Shield change reverted
I did feel like this was an odd change to begin with (it made the shield absorb 30% more when cast on yourself), so I'm not suprised they are removing it. It does seem odd that they invent a change, think it is good enough to implement and then suddenly decide that it wasn't (or that it was too good) and remove it again. Ah well, don't see that this will make much of a difference for us pve priests, it was probably just a little too good in pvp in combination with the other buffs to the shield they were making. Makes me yet again suspect that Blizzard are using several development teams that don't communicate much between eachother before they announce changes. "Hey, we're already buffing the shield over here, your change will make it op", "no your change will, ours is fine", "no yours, "no yours" and so on, until someone has to give in.

Strength of Soul now also causes the priest to become immune to silence, interrupt, and dispel effects for 2/4 seconds after using Inner Focus.
Yet another pretty synergy effect for the disc priest. It's interesting that Blizzard clearly thought that this talent wasn't very good when they implement such a heavy buff to the talent. How good will this be for the pve priest? Well silences and interrupts aren't a big problem in raids fortunately, and in any case probably not something we'd want to time with our inner focus anyway (since we want to use it with PoH and GH). I bet the pvping disc priests are happy though.

Prayer of Healing effectiveness has been reduced by 15%.
Let me just say I am not suprised. I don't know if I mentioned it before but I always thought of PoH as the best aoe healing in the game right now, especially when combined with the PoH glyph. Add to that Lightwell, Sanctuary, CoH and PoM and holy priests were pretty dang good. So good in fact that some guilds preferred to bring them for aoe heavy raid fights. I know those guilds weren't many and probably fighting heroic content, but that is always a sign that Blizzard will take notice of and probably act upon. Just as they did with dk tanks in Ulduar.

Binding Heal and Holy Word: Serenity now refresh the duration of Renew on the target, in addition to the other direct heals.
Binding Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal can now trigger Chakra: Serenity.
Thank you! I thought the only drawback of Chakra: Serenity really was that it had to be activated and maintained through Heal, which you don't always want to use. On heavy tank damage you don't want to have to through the occasional Heal just to maintain this stance. Great change this. But it makes State of Mind even less useful since the only thing that made it worth having was to make it easier to maintain the stance through Heals.

Circle of Healing effectiveness has been increased by 30%.
This is to counteract the nerf on PoH, and welcome of course. Last time I wrote something on CoH I said something along the lines of "this spell doesn't feel like it does much difference, I use it more like a spell to top people up than to actually help me with healing". This will hopefully make CoH a little more worth casting, although I already liked it for when moving around (which we do alot in raids).

Penance mana cost has been increased by 7%, but healing has been increased by 20%.
I don't see why they think like we have the mana to manage the extra mana costs, I've always felt like mana is rather tough when healing as a disc. On the other hand we really must be happy about the great buffs in throughput. Does make you wonder how Blizzard could let us run around and (clearly) suck so much until now. I mean... 20% extra is alot.

Shadow Orbs benefit from mastery has been increased by approximately 16%
I don't like shadow priesting and I don't know much about it. Something I did notice when playing shadow priest briefly however was that mastery didn't seem to be very good for spriests. When asking around about it it seemed I was right. Wonder if this buff will be enough? As reader Deception pointed out; "The short answer is yes".

Shaman Changes
Now that I actually have a level 85 shaman these changes interest me!

    Flametongue Weapon procs now deal roughly 20% less damage.
    The Windfury Weapon proc can now trigger 3 additional attacks, up from 2.
I am writing these two changes off at the same time since they ultimately affect eachother. Nerfing the one and buffing the other will have us ask which ones we should use. I am currently using Flametongue on OH and Windfury on MH but with these changes (basically 30% extra damage to windfury) we might want to use doubly windfury again? Testing and time will tell. It would be sad, because then it feels like Lava Lash would be the pathetic filler skill it was back in Wrath again. But if we look at another change we might get the explanation;

Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).
I didn't know that it scaled from spell power, silly me thought that Blizzard had already thought about the problems with this and changed that a long time ago. It could be that the damage on Flametongue Weapon procs will skyrocket now due to this change (for enhancement shamans) and maybe increase the damage by about... 20%? That would explain why they are nerfing the damage, to bring it back to where it is right now.

Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman's Spirit, exclusive of short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped. In addition, its effects are now raid-wide.
It's funny how Blizzard repeat their mistakes. They redesigned Innervate because it was favoring some classes over others, since it too increased mana regen based on the targets spirit initially. Then they go and make the exact same damn mistake with Mana Tide. And realize all over again that it was a bad idea. The old way Mana Tide heavily favored holy priests, since we have the biggest gain from any spirit increase. I could easily gain some 40-50% total mana from a mana tide, imagine having some three resto shamans in a raid and that the thing only has 2 min cd. Crazy. So this change was definitely needed.

Deep Healing (Mastery) has been increased to 3% per point, up from 2.5%.
Yeah I felt like this was needed. Mastery for resto shamans wasn't as good as it is for some other healing classes, maybe not very good at all. I can't say with my limited testing, but from what I've heard from "real" resto shamans that seemed to be the case.

Greater Healing Wave mana cost has been increased by 10%; healing done has been increased by 20%.
I already felt like GHW was the best option when healing heroics, combined with Healing Rain (and Riptide and ES of course). That doesn't mean that I felt like it was all that, just the alternatives were even less good (HW and CH). So I really welcome this change.

Chain Heal's effectiveness has been increased by approximately 10%.
Yes please! Like I wrote about in my short post on my experiences with healing as a shaman, it felt like Chain Heal was way to weak right now. Just as with CoH for priests I don't feel like its worth using much more as to top people off between fights. I wonder of 10% is enough to make it good, but I know Blizzard don't want us to turn into chain heal spamming the way we did back in Wrath.

Unrelated, but interesting. One circle is evil. Can you tell which one? Most of our raid can't ;) (Except on this picture actually!)

Druid Changes
Shapeshifts: Entering or leaving a shapeshift no longer cancels root effects. It continues to cancel movement slowing effects.
I'm not really sure what to say about it. Maybe it is sufficient to say that it looked like Loves heart stopped beating for a moment when he read about this change. Another druid in my guild posted a forum post on the matter called "Druid Curse-Whine-Rant". Druids won't be druids any more... (but I heard at least restos were getting this as a talent instead).

Typhoon mana cost has been reduced by 50%.
This is great, we had a couple of boomkins who used it for cc in raids and they always had mana issues. I bet they're happy now. Will make boomkins a more viable option as cc:er overall.

Enchanting
Enchant Off-Handed - Superior Intellect now increases Intellect by 40, down from 100.
Good! It was silly that they had an enchant that made two semi-good blue weapons as good as an epic staff.

Alchemy
Alchemist's Stones for Agility, Strength, and Intellect have been added.
When I first noticed that the only alchemist stone there was seemed to be for tanking I was confused. I still don't know why Blizzard seemed to have forgotten about all the other classes but I am glad they are implementing them. Better late than never. Intellect and haste are good stats for priests, although I would've preferred to see Intellect and Mastery. It could've been worse, it could've been crit.

The number of herbs required to create flasks has been reduced, while the Volatile Life needed has been increased slightly.
I think I wrote a comment somewhere on the current issues with flasks being way too costly to craft, that the amount of herbs needed to craft one flask that lasted one hour were just silly. I am glad Blizzard have realized this and now maybe we can hope flask prices will drop from the 300-400g each range to more reasonable prices.

Shaman at level 85

My second char to make it to level 85 turned out to be my enchancement/resto shaman. When I began leveling my alts I wasn't sure which one was going to get there first, it all depends on my mood for the day. Enchancement shaman turned out to be loads of fun, and the levels basically just flew by. Maybe because I didn't go to Vashj'ir, something I decided not to do on any of my alts later on. It's a great zone, but it's a little tedious the third time around.

People around me have already started asking "how many alts have you dinged 85 yet?", and are totally shocked when I tell them that it's only one so far. I've never been one to grind stuff, I'll level them when I feel like it! Currently I am waiting on rested on a couple and Settlers 2 and Final Fantasy 3 are stealing alot of time from WoW as well.

I leveled my shaman enhancement all the way (80-85). My history with shamans is an interesting one (well so I think anyway). If someone would ask me what character I'd play if I couldn't play priest, I'd probably say shaman. I know I go on and on about how much fun prot warriors are, but they're dull in raids. So if I wanted to play a character that I knew would stick with me, it'd definitely be a shaman. Shaman is also the char I have played the most times passed level 70, four times to date (prot warrior only 3 so far). Leveling a shaman is just loads of fun since you can be melee dps, caster dps or healer based on what you feel like in that particular moment. Before dual specs I simply leveled one shaman of each spec (plus an extra elemental shaman) to get access to them all, but now that there are dualspecs I have focused one shaman into my two favorites - resto and enhancement.

My very first shaman, the one I just leveled to 85 actually, initially leveled as elemental. This was several years ago when casters still sucked badly at low levels compared to melee. They still do, so imagine how bad it was at those times. As soon as she dinged 40 (because she was female then) I respecced into enhancement, and I think I liked enhancement better ever since. I eventually tried out resto, and being the healing freak as I am it stuck with me too. It was different enough but still resembled priest healing enough to entertain me alot. Holydin healing felt to one-spell spammy and I didn't like all the hot-management of resto druids, so resto shamans was juuuust right (ala Goldilocks). The healing role kinda stuck on him (because he switched sexes eventually), the way it usually does because everyone needs a healer and no one needs a dps. Overall I always really enjoyed enhancement, although in Wrath I felt it had become too advanced but not enough rewarding. You had to keep track of and think of alot, which I enjoyed, but it definitely lacked the oomph of most other dps classes. Come on, how many good enhancement shamans have you known? I've never seen one top dps meters in any of my ICC raids I think. Admittedly enhancement shamans weren't that common either. Enhancement shamans suffered from the same problems as retridins have for a very long time. Because they use mana as a resource they either will have issues with always ooming, or never ooming. In wrath Blizzard made it so that retridins and enhancement shamans worked with a basically limitless resourcepool. Getting out of mana just didn't happen. To limit damage output they have enhancement shamans (and retridins) basically work with cooldowns as a resource instead. Because of this neither enhancement shamans nor retridins have a spammable skill like Slam, Mangle or Sinister Strike. This also lead to alot of "breaks" during the rotation, where everything simply was on cooldown and you could just stand there, swinging idly while waiting for the next skill to come off cooldown. This is still how enhancement shamans work and you gotta love it or leave it.

I healed alot on my resto shaman. Everyone liked him because of Bloodlust so he got to get to places not even Zinn had been. I did Starcaller on him and healed most of ICC with him. He probably had the second best gear of all my characters and I don't know how many thousands of G i spent on buying gear to him in the gdkp runs we did towards the end of Wrath. Maybe him being second to level 85 isn't so odd in the end.

My shaman also made me discover another flaw with the current item level system. As soon as I had got the 329 item score I needed to join heroics with one gear, it also meant I had the possibility to join heroics with my other gear, since the system couldn't distinguish between the two. So if my enhancement gear had the score of 330 and my resto gear a score 270 I could still join heroics as resto, as long as the enhancement gear was in my bags.

Enhancement
I didn't have a clue about shamans when I started leveling him, and basically placed talents a little bit all over the place. I thought most of them felt pretty self explanatory and there weren't that many difficult choices. I have no idea if I've specced him the right way, but it's worked fairly well so far. Actually not having a clue about a character is a funny thing. I've really had to think when trying to figure out a good rotation and what stats would work best? I could just go read through EJ or some other shaman place on the matter (where are all the enhancement shaman bloggers btw) but that's not my style. I want to find my way first, and then see if I was right, and if I was wrong I have to see why.

Some issues regard which weapon enchants to use. Double windfury as have long been the case? Or should I go with windfury on mh and flametongue on oh to boost Lava Lash damage? I really didn't like Lava Lash back in Wrath, but it has become somewhat better now. With flametongue on my oh it actually deals a really nice amount of damage. It also allows me to gain two buffs when I use my Unleash Elements. Here is how I do a regular fight in an instance now, and I have no idea if that is the right way to go about it or not, but I usually deal more damage than the rest of a group which at least is a hint that I'm not doing it completely wrong;

1. Unleash Elements while running toward target
2. Flame Shock while running toward target
3. Drop totems while running toward target
4. Stormstrike
5. Lava Lash
6. Earthshock

And from there I pretty much go on what's off cooldown with prio on Maelstrom procs (which I often use on Healing Rain).

I have really no idea whatsoever in regards to what stats are the most useful. Here are some of my thoughts on that matter;

• I can imagine haste being decent since that would proc alot of Maelstrom, on the other hand we already have alot of haste from Windfury Weapon, so how much more would we really need?
• Crit seems nice because it will proc Elemental Devastation more often, which allows us to crit more often with our melee attacks.
• Hit/Expertise probably work pretty much the way they did in Wrath, which means we want a minimum before we even look at other stats. How much that is? Well as far as hit is concerned I'd at least get hit cap for special attacks. Hit also affects our spells, but expertise won't which means we don't need expertise as much as other melee classes.
• I'm really out on a whim when it comes to mastery. Mastery to enhancement reads; 

"Increases all Fire, Frost, and Nature damage done by 20%.  Each point of Mastery increases damage by an additional 2.5%". Alot of our damage is elemental damage, so it does sound like mastery is a good stat. Probably better than haste, but maybe not better than crit.

• As for base stats I'm going all out on agility, just as in Wrath.

Remember I am really just guessing here, based on what little testing and knowledge I've been able to gather through questing and some instancing. If you happen to know alot about shamans and read this, any pointers are most welcome ;)

Restoration
Resto shaman and me had a nasty break up when 4.0 hit. I had really enjoyed healing in ICC, and other places, before that but suddenly the resto shaman seemed so... dull. So 2009. While holdyins and resto druids went through major changes, and priests too but to a lesser extent (our changes didn't really notice until Cata came) the shaman was just exactly the same. Some of the things I had really been looking forward to, like Healing Rain and Spiritwalker Grace didn't show and I was deeply disappointed. I told my fellow raiders that I had lost all love to the resto shaman and was going to focus on enhancement. Why stick with old and boring when there was so much new things to explore?

Because of this I didn't have much of a clue about resto shamans either when Cata came. Since I read up on healing in general now and then I probably had a better clue than I did with enhancement, but after having done the instances with Zinn and realized what a tough cookie healing had become, my resto shaman scared me. I didn't dare to venture into an instance full with random people and make an arse of myself. Which is what I would've done. My shaman is still in my old guild, which is rather small, so finding enough guildies for a guildrun doesn't happen often. So I quested on as enhancement and only joined instances as dps. Ah, no responsibility (most people don't use cc in normals). But then I dinged 85 and thought I'd write this post and thought that I really couldn't until I had at least tried resto in an instance.

Fortunately I had been sane enough to save all the caster gear I could find, so I had a decent gear. I still had 2 set tier 10, so my gear definitely wasn't all that, but probably not worse than the average normal puggers. When I get into the instance (HoO) the first thing the dps warrior tells me is to go get better gear. Yeah duh, I wonder what he thinks I was doing in there. The run was interesting, because I hadn't set up my ui to work with healing at all. I currently use Vuhdo, and I had only briefly checked through the healing bindings in case I wanted to use them when dpsing. I quickly noticed that my ui didn't show the Earth Shield buff, and I just couldn't find the setting for it. That was pretty annoying since I had no good way of telling when my ES dropped off, except you know, targetting the tank now and then (old school style).

While healing I also noticed that I hadn't placed all my heals on my action bars. Healing Rain and Spiritwalkers Grace where two. Oh and Unleash Elements too, just remembered it now while writing. Didn't use that even once in the instance. I hadn't placed all my skills where I wanted them either. That wasn't a big problem since the majority of my skills were bound to my mouse buttons, but skills like Mana Tide Totem, Earth Shock and Water Shield - where was I going to put them? So while running after the tank, trying to keep him and the crazy dps warrior alive, I reconfigured my actionbars and keys till I thought they worked. Then I remembered I didn't have all the glyphs needed, but that would have to wait until after the instance.

Which rotation to use? I experimented with shocking to increase the effect and lower the mana cost of my next healing spell through Focused Insight. I noticed that it only felt worth using when I was going to cast a big heal like Healing Rain, otherwise the extra mana cost of using the shock pretty much negated the mana reduction on the heal, when you use low mana cost heals like Healing Wave. I thought since Heal worked well when healing as holy and Greater Heal worked well when healing as disc so I varied a little between Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave to find out which seemed to work better. Overall I felt like it depended on the healing situation. I spammed Healing Wave when damage was low or moderate and used Greater Healing Wave (with Riptide) when damage was heavier. Keeping a Healing Rain in the melee group seemed pretty effective as well. I tried some Chain Heal but that felt pretty sucky. I am glad they're going to buff it.

We made it without any wipes and with only the lock who stood in void zone dying. I think it was mostly due to the fact that we had a blood dk tank, and they're pretty op at the moment. I've even had dk blood tanks who've solo healed themselves through heroic bosses. Balanced? Not so sure.

What stats should I use? Knowing what I know of healers I'd say intellect and spirit are two sure stats to go for as resto shaman. But then it might differ a little from priests. Crit is probably alot better stat for resto shamans than it is for priests, thanks to the Improved Water Shield talent which makes crit give us extra mana regen. Haste might be less important since we get haste through totems if we like and a little through Riptide (on some spells). Mastery is kickass for priests, and seems it might be pretty decent for resto shamans too but maybe not as good as crit?

I'm currently focusing on getting my enhancement gear up and running, and will eventually do the same with restoration. I wonder which alt to level next?

Impressions on healing so far

Blizzard is working against me. Server downtimes and random instance/raid crashes has effectively kept me from doing any kind of constructed research on the different healing classes. But I have managed to get a general idea so far, and this is it.

First of all I'd like to really commend Blizzard on their effort to reinvent healing for us healers. I kind of feel it like a special little gift just for us. And they have done a tremendous job in coming up with things that have turned our way of healing upside down without alienating us from our favorite thing to do. So although there will be some whining in this post, I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'd want to go back to how things were before. I don't think any healer is worse off than before, well not really anyway. Well let's get to it and maybe you understand what I mean.

They've made some changes that have affected all healers. For instance they've tried to give all the healers three different kind of heals as a base;

• Fast, expensive, small heal - like Flash Heal, Regrowth, Healing Surge and Flash of Light.
• Slow, cheap, small heal - like Heal, Healing Wave, Holy Light and Nourish.
• Slow, expensive, big heal - like Greater Heal, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Touch or Divine Light.

This way each heal only has one benefit and two drawbacks. It is either cheap, fast or big. And then each healing class has some individual heals to fill the inbetweens like Chain Heal, Rejuvenation and Word of Glory. And then some cooldown based heals like Shields, Penance, Swiftmend, Riptide and Holy Shock.

Holy Priest
Why not start from the top, with the healing class I have got the most experience of. I haven't played holy priest actively for a couple of months, maybe even half a year or so. But holy priest has been a part of my core WoW gaming for several years and will most likely stay that way unless Blizzard seriously do something weird to this class. Because that's just it. All the way from Vanilla I feel like holy priest has been the pillar of healing. Bringing a holy priest to a raid you always know what to expect. Healing as a holy priest you'll always feel at home with your role. Holy priest has developed over the years of course, it isn't much like it was 4 years ago. But it has kept its identity more than any other healing class.

Holy healing has always been fun. I can't ever remember playing holy priest and thinking "Wow this sure is dull". They've never had any real lows. Holy priests have been insanely powerful, but had lost some of that in late Wotlk. That never meant holy healing was bad. But the way resto druid hotting, disc priest shielding and holydin Holy Light spam worked usually made those classes outperform holy priests when it came to straight out healing done. Holy priests had a little bit of everything and weren't best on any of them, except maybe heavy aoe healing. But they did their job well.

Now in 4.0 Blizzard have given Chakra to holy priests. What has that done for us? Chakra is probably among the best working new healing skills currently. It perfectly examples the old saying "easy to use, difficult to master". Like I've been going on about Chakra before, I am sure this will set the casual and the hardcore priest healer apart. The lovely thing about Chakra is that you don't have to know much about it, or even use it at all to do decent healing. But it is an extremely powerful tool when used properly and will be necessary to fully master for the most difficult content. So Blizzard have succesfully implemented a tool that is just tricky enough to not scare the casual player away all the while giving the more dedicated healers something really interesting to put their teeth in.

As you might have noticed I am very pleased with the way Chakra is working. As with every other class I've only had limited possibilities for testing so far, but I did some tries on LK and had tons of fun trying to figure out the best way to use Chakra and Revelations. I really can't find any downside about it. The only thing, maybe, would be that some Chakra forms are better than others, but I think that is more due to Renew still being among holy priests best heal while Prayer of Healing and Heal are a little more situational.

Speaking of Heal, here I'd actually be able to open up a casket of whine. This affects Discipline more than Holy however so I'll go at it there instead.

Discipline Priest
Discipline priests across the bloggosphere are not really sure what to think of discipline healing right now. The only time I've managed to try it in a raid was when Atonement was still bugged, making all my healing efforts pretty uneffective. I have tried some in heroics though and I can just say that it isn't really what I wanted it to be.

I think I speak for many discipline priests when I say that I was really looking forward to the changes made to Discipline priests. I was overjoyed that Blizzard actually dared to make dpsing part of our healing rotation. I think most of us actually have thought Blizzard would put way more emphasis on the Evangelism-Archangel-Atonement combo than it actually seems like they have. I think many of us went in guns ablazing and started to smite frantically all around us thinking our smites would now cure cancer. Well that isn't really how it turned out to be. Setting aside the first disappointment for noticing that Atonement didn't heal at all, I quickly noticed that even when it did heal it was far too unreliable to put too much trust in. 8 yards is no distance at all. In many heroics the tank is thrown away from the boss and might die by standing 10 yards away from your target while you're frantically smiting. Also, trying to keep track of your target, Holy Fire debuff and the right time to pop Archangel kinda gave me a tunnel vision that proved lethal for my friendly vicinity.

No fellow disc priests, I think we have to come to terms with that Blizzard apparently didn't actually intend for us to become pewpew-smite healers. What they wanted was to give us a tool that we could use occasionally to boost our regular healing. By regular I mean it works basically like it always has. You're not supposed to smite like there is no tomorrow, you do the occasional smite while healing, and once you've got your full stack you pop Archangel for some extra healing bonus.

There are several issues with this however. Blizzard removed Flash Heal as a viable heal-filler, and it has now become an "oh shit" heal instead. We've gotten two new heals to fill the spot of Flash Heal, but none of these work very well. I've already mentioned Atonement. It just doesn't heal good enough for current raid content, not even on non-heroic mode. The other is either Heal or Greater Heal. Let me just dismiss Heal right here and now. Not only is it abysmally slow (nearly 2 sec with 40% haste), it is way too small (some 6k). What am I to do with that? There is no place for such a heal in the current content and hasn't been for a long time. Greater Heal heals enough (15k uncritted), but is also very slow. When doing instances or 10mans this is less of a problem. In 25mans Greater Heal is generally a waste of time and mana. And always has been.

This means they took away Flash Heal, but didn't give us any proper replacement. I notice myself not actually knowing what to do when I've shielded and PoMed my target. I can always use Penance, but only on one target at a time. For the first time ever I have to wait for cooldowns as a healer, just because I don't have many good enough to use.

Another thing, I read that it seems like the 10% healing buff from Archangel doesn't even affect our shields. Excuse me? Then what is it good for? The occasional PoMs and Penances that I throw? Sounds like Archangel is barely worth using in that case, since mana really isn't an issue either. Maybe we should start spamming Flash Heals just so we oom and get some use from Archangel...

I think we have to re-evaluate the plan we thought Blizzard had for disc. Clearly it wasn't in line with whatever we thought they were up to. Maybe once we've realized this, we'll find out how to really heal as a disc priest. Right now I'm not sure.

Shaman
I am disappoint. And I'm not alone. Until level 81 shaman healing is basically exactly the same as it used to, and that really makes me sad panda. I was hoping so for the interesting resto shaman changes, like an aoe heal and healing while running cooldown. But none of this is available now at 80. Instead we've gotten some tools to help us with mana management, the one thing that always really been a problem for resto shamans, especially when compared to the other classes. With lightning bolts we can regenerate mana and with shocks we can reduce mana cost and increase the effectiviness of our heals. Sure, it gives an edge to shaman healing, but it's definitely not enough to keep me interested when there are other heal classes that have actually become fun-to-heal-with tools.

Also they nerfed Chain Heal so that we would spam it less. And just as with disc priest they've tried to make us use Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave instead. But it's the same problem here. It's too dang slow. So we keep on spamming Chain Heals, they're just not as good anymore. Basically shaman healers just became a little less good and alot less fun. I think I will take a break from resto shaman healing until Cata comes. I am disappoint.

Holydin
Holydin are among the healers that have become the greatest changes. Part of our healing rotation now is Holy Power. With Holy Power we can use one of our new skills, Word of Glory for an instant and big heal. I've heard that holydin healing output has been considerably lowered since pre-patch. I'm not entirely sure this is solely due to an actual nerf in healing output or due to the fact that holydins are supposed to manage more than one spell nowadays. Since Vanilla holydins have basically only ever had to worry about using a couple of spells on no more than one target. Place Beacon on one tank, spam the other. Keep Beacon up and shield up and you're set. The only difficult thing about holydin healing was to time your Divine Plea well. Which didn't seem particularly difficult.

Now on the other hand FoL is out of the standard rotation. In comes Holy Shock, Word of Glory, Divine Light and Holy Light. Holy Light has the same issue as Heal, it is way too slow and too small to be used in a raid setting. But Holy Shock has a cooldown and Word of Glory needs Holy Power to be used. Divine Light suffers from the same issues as Greater Heal. Slow, expensive and will probably mostly be overheals. Yepp well you better like it paladins. The only alternative to using Holy Shock and Holy Lights/Divine Lights to gather Holy Power is that holydins start using Crusader Strike in melee. Exactly, that probably won't work very well either.

As with Disc priests and shamans there is a gap here. Holy Light and Divine Light just aren't designed for current content and we really have nothing else to use. Holydins have less issues with the slow-ness of Holy Light and Divine Light however due to talents like Speed of Light that increase haste by 30% after using Holy Shock. Priests and shamans could use something like this. Holydin healing has been stumped, but a combination of a lot of instant and fastened heals still make them work ok.

Druids
The healer I know the least of are resto druids. That's ok I suppose since 85% of the wow-bloggers seem to play resto-druids ;) I know alot of resto druids are sad about Tree of Life going away as a shapeshift. I can understand them since I suppose the other shapeshifts (cat, bear, boomkin) would be pretty upset if their shapeshifts went away, even if you accounted for the fact that cats and bears can't use their skills in caster form. (Love never liked the shapeshifts however since they always been rather buggy. He suggests a minor transformation rather than a full shapwshift instead). As someone who doesn't main a resto druid however I am glad. The cooldown is a good one, using it at the right time will give good resto druids an edge to the casual player. Also it always annoyed me that the Tree of Lifeses (nice one) looked exactly the same. I hated trying to keep three-four trees apart in my 25mans. If they at least could have different skins?

Resto druids would be in the same position disc priests, shamans and paladins are in if it wasn't for one thing - their hots. The same thing that makes holy priests work better than the other healers in current content is what seems to make resto druids work even better. Sure their Nourish and Healing Touches suck too. But who cares, they never used those anyway apart from under extreme conditions. No, resto druids have rejuvenation, swiftmend (and efflorence), wild growth and lifebloom to play with as well. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what an upper hand resto druids are sitting with at the moment. Hots are the new black. Without them you just won't be able to perform as well, because the alternatives are just too sucky at the moment.

Conclusion
It seems like all the healers have gotten into healing issues with the current content. The way our healing works doesn't rhyme with how damage works. None of us are especially well adapted at dealing with heavy blows anymore, something that unfortunately is a part of how tanks take damage in raids like ICC. I also read that armor has been nerfed, making most tanks even more vulnerable to taking big hits. We no longer have a given healer to heal tanks. I noticed when raid healing that most of us healers probably thought "darn, the tank went low... well, do they want me to cast my extremely slow and expensive heal now or what? Surely there must be a better way?". A combination of Holy Shocks, Swiftmends, Riptides, Penances and Holy Words might work for a while. But it feels like a panic substitute. Priests (both disc and holy) and resto druids still have their aoe-heals, but shamans and paladins are left in the dust.

Holy Priest = :)
Resto Druid = :)
Discipline Priest = :S
Holydin = :S
Shaman = :(

I can only hope things will work better in Cataclysm.