What is the pace for a heroic?

I don't generally like tanking all that often. It's fun to do every once in a while, and I'm pretty decent at it now, but i'm never quite sure how fast to go. Honestly, healer's mana and rune cool downs provided I'd chain pull instances without skipping a beat but that's stressful for no reason. I methodically pull. Maybe I wait a little too long between pulls (I feel like it's maybe a solid 4 or 5 seconds after a pull finishes before I even start moving again). What I'm trying to say, is that I treat each pull as an encounter, and make sure everyones mentally ready for it, but it's kind of at a walkers pace when I could easily jog.

As a side note, most of my waiting time after pulls is to allowed death and decay to come off cool down, or to refresh bone shield and then wait for rune to pop up again. I think I might fair better with another class who is more instanteous. Runes and staggered enemies are infuriating. Only thing I REALLY like about tanking with my death knight, is that positioning and caster aggro is a breeze to manage.

How has life affected this little shaman?

So, now being a part of a 25 man guild, that tends to raid on days I'm not available, with everything till festergut being "farm" content, loot is spreading quickly. Black Bruise dropped and my computer problem froze from excitement. I'm not kidding. If I hadn't been shouting in vent all day "man I want black bruise! I need a new weapon. It's so annoying the first viable weapon for me drops from festergut" I would have missed the roll. A rogue rolled for it offset (we have two muta rogues! weird right?), but the guild is pretty tightknit, so they're very aware of gear discrepancies. They waited for me to unfreeze, and gave me the SHINY NEW WEAPON YAY!

On top of that I got a helmet I'm probably not going to wear, and some shoulders I probably won't wear either. I was the only one that even rolled for them, so at least they're not being shared. I think I'm coming up on the day where I have to actually sim something, for the first time in my life and see if 2 piece tier bonus and 2 264 pieces are better than straight 4 piece tier bonus.

Oh and I want to kill myself, hitting the 4 piece bonus means i have to COMPLETELY change how I gem now. So suddenly AP dies in a fire and haste is the best thing in the world ever. I bought 9 gems. I gotta go and fix my gear I guess.

It's good to be swimming in options.

25 mans!... and lag!

So my guild and a few others decided to do this "cooperation" thing, and we went to do icc 25. The only remaining person from my old guild went with me, and we whispered as it went on. He got a delicious staff, despite being the low roller. He was the ONLY person in the raid that claimed he was rolling on offspec beforehand (he is shadow, but he healed today). It's nice cause he didn't have the option of rolling on anything all of ICC 10 (NOTHING caster dropped)

I, on the other hand got the exact opposite deal. There was only one agi item, (a ring! so you know everyone wanted it) and I had lowest roll. Otherwise no chance to roll on anything. No mail even dropped. It's okay because we got a TON of frosts (6+5 for the frost giant raid weekly) so I can afford another tier piece when I feel like it. It's actually a difficult decision now, and I think I'm going to go with the chest piece because the legs can drop in VoA. Mostly I'm enjoying the greatness of being able to rocket through ICC whenever I want. I hope in 25 man the token drops and I can get me a delicious 25 man version of the gear. I will be tons happy then.

psych!

>_>

I got recruited by a guild that knows what they're freaking doing. Although it consist of some of the most vocal and annoying people on my realm, progress with mild irritances > banging my head against a wall and being happy.

It's not so much that I don't like my guild or anything, it's just its finally a chance for me to do what I originally specced to do. I was recruited based on my performance as a DPS. I was recruited based on my Enhancement. Heres the best part, I was recruited because they WANTED MY BUFF.

Holy christ on a stick. When the rogue got to morrowgar and said "I love that we have an enhancement shaman here" I just smiled ear to ear. People that know how valuable I am, is amazing.

I'm bailing on my server.

I don't like not having progression. However I'm not going to transfer with money or anything. I just up and started a Hunter on a different realm. Right now it's pretty fun like it always is. Hunters have been a class that appealed to me without me being able to get into them. I like the customization of having select pets, and man I can't wait to join a 25 or 10 man group that I can weigh my pet benefits for the good of the group. Wolf? fuck no, I'm bringing a wasp!... or a worm...

Also does it seem weird to anyone that worms are exotic? Really? worms? is seeing a creature burrow from the soil that strange to these guys?

Anyways I'm starting survival, although I don't know if I'm going to stay that way. Mostly I'm doing it cause I'm a leatherworker, and I'm the guy that whenever they see passive effects all I see is "delicious talent points, use them here". So improved tracking was nice for me.

Blizzard seems to hate that about myself. I love passive talents. I'm that guy that played Naix in DotA because managing anything more than clicking was painful. Then again I love sub rogues, and its useless talents, scattered all around the tree.

I hate arcane mages

At some point, somewhere blizzard decided to make classes more dynamic. For instance, though I never played back in burning crusade, enhancement shaman was very much a strength based dps, with as far as I can tell, no access to wolves, no maelstrom weapon, and shields that costed mana. Basically they were a "hit storm strike" class.

Blizzard has done a fantastic job of keeping most classes dynamic, having a FCFS system, or a fairly length rotation (unholy and blood DK's tend to be rotational, but since the cool downs come at different times it really feels FCFS)

This has not happend with arcane mages. I've said I loathe elemental as a valid dpsing spec. It's essentially "spam 1, dont let 2 drop too long, and hit 3 when it comes up"

Arcane mages are worse. "hit 1 four times. hit 2. repeat"

I hope arcane gets nerfed into the ground. There is no reason to be proud of your "fantastic deeps" if you're not even struggling to do the said rotation. "But what if I have to stop casting!" oh no! what if everyone else does? Either this, or it needs to be reworked heavily.

I like how DK's function. I like how enhancement functions. I've toyed with destruction and affliction, and they're VERY hard for me to get used to which is unbelievably great. Most caster classes are very lucky, in that for the most part their rotation is unfettered by positioning but man, I can't get used to that. On my affliction lock I end up standing about 10 feet from a monsters face, just because I'm so very used to melee.

My problem is still not with casters as they have their own issues over melee, its with simple rotations. Arcane is the newest of my hatred.

Is everyone on my server miserable or am I awesome?

No seriously! Enhancement is not a particularly strong spec, granted it's one of the few classes that scales from pretty much every buff in the game, except divine spirit I believe.

However it's not a top preforming spec. It's the better than elemental, but everything is. I don't actually know exactly where we stand but I'd assume out of 23 dps specs, I'd say enhancement is around 13-15th best or something. So while I am in generally middle of the line gear, and I'm doing the second best in terms of damage.

I'm sure I'm doing my share of skilled damage. I know my class inside and out (although I just realized I should gem expertise instead of enchanting it, how fun is it to realize that? Yay math.) I know my rotation, I know my gear, I know what classes benefit most from me. Could it be everyone lags? Are people just sandbagging and expecting to be carried? I honestly don't understand it.

At least VoA pug was completed. Success. 25 people with 2 more frost emblems.

DK tank is starting to fall into welled oiled machine territory. If I get an over-geared healer, it's not even worrisome. However I have really fun stories, consisting of forgetting minor details, or luck based pulls where crazy things happened (getting punched down stairs, floating slowly woo)

Ran naxx because I picked up an older weekly. Started with 5 people and it did not work. I had 34 stacks from the add before I finally kicked the bucket. picked up another 2 guildies, and bam completed with no ill consequence. I don't think I'll ever be a very good tank, but hey

melting faces is cool.