Logic

People love to min-max things. They love the ability to quantify how much something is worth. I, for one, am okay with cookie cutter.

I hate, however, when someone tries to tell me whats the best usage of "wiggle room" i have outside of my cookie cutter builds.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xxZx0ezIeoxkrIRt:ZcMm This is the most cookie cutter "base" of the resto shaman. I even included minor glyphs for your viewing pleasure.

Now, heres the thing. I intentionally left the glyphs open. Other classes tend to have what I like to call "BiS glyphs" That are without a doubt better than anything else the class offers. Some of them aren't even hard decisions (shadow priest! fire mages!) Resto shamans have what I call the play style oriented glyphs slots available.

25 mans will completely disagree and override you. Chain heal is awesome, they say.

10 man logic will always tell you, no, you hate chain heal. Stop trying to use it, cause there simply is a good time to.

actually my logic will tell you that. I do most of the healing in any attempt now anyways, and it's exactly what I mean. I've glyphed Riptide, Healing Stream, and Healing Wave. I actually intend to get rid of riptide as well, and probably go for water mastery or earth shield.

Here's the thing. I don't notice riptide's extra duration doing anything. If I cast it on the tank, I'll probably be overriding it again anyways. If I cast it on a dps, they'll be at full for most of the ticks. All it allows me is a launching point for chain heal, and I can assure you I rarely have that luxury. I am primarily a tank healer. As I've said before, I do most of the healing on a given attempt.

Let me illustrate a picture of our recent ICC raid.

We have me; Resto shammy. Then Holy paly, tree druid, Prot paly, bear druid, DK, Rogue, Warlock, Hunter, and wild card A. (actually dk should be wild card B, but its always a dk. ALWAYS)

during trash I healed far less than tree and paly. I was still trying to figure out grid, and had it set up as my baby druid. Therefore I had it set to track rejuv, life bloom, and regrowth. I cannot tell you how comfortable I was healing that day. I saw rejuvs on everyone. I never had to wonder "hey, does this person need help?" Never. I pretty much sat there and riptide'd when I got bored, and CH if someone was getting low. I was my most comfortable ever during ICC.

During marrowgar this changed quickly. I'm the raid leader so this is how the group was set up. Ranged away. Melee inside hitbox. Everyone on spike duty (because we're not 25 man, we don't have the fun of "LET THE RANGED GET IT") Tree on raid. Paly on tanks. I'll mop up your mistakes.

Boy did I ever mop. We never got marrow below 50%. I however manged to pull of 70% of the healing, which means my healers are either terrible, or I'm the most cruel heal sniper in the world.

This is literally what I have to deal with. Me essentially single healing any encounter with a gimped healer at best. I had a lovely 60/40 on ony, probably the messiest attempt ever (all ranged but 1 died before phase 2 started. That one ranged got ony down on his own, then proceeded to fall over with my healer partner, It was then a one heal, one dps, two tank affair with me dying MOMENTS before the kill, woo!)

So I have to shift. I originally had glyphs, CH, LHW and Riptide. I did this because I had a great shammy partner, and we 2healed pretty much everything together. It's not so much now. I'm not the "sort of raid heals" guy I used to be, and I can't depend on anyone to keep me alive either, LEAST of all myself. I get to choose who goes where, what groups are around, so I shove tanks and those void zone abusers in my group and hopefully let healing stream take care of them as it can.

Anyways, back to the talents. Elemental weapons are so worth it!....?

That's DISGUSTING. I would rather put enhancing totems, guardian totems, I'd say I might even go with healing focus over them. everyone takes improves shields anyways, I don't even know why anyone wouldn't, but hey, my ex-co healer didn't and she glyphed water mastery too. I don't argue with results. I just hate that people are willing to quantify the wiggle room. They don't much change throughput, and don't effect mana regen, so I've never understood the love for 60ish sp. I like enhancing totems. 23 extra str/agi is nice. 20 sp is also nice. Having it applied RAID WIDE makes it amazing. Plus it lets me override horn of winter, which is always a plus.

Blue posts and the world debates.

Theres a lot of concern for the state of stats for tanks, and healers and changes that will come cataclysm.

I think many people are freaking out about nothing. The gear simplification means there is LESS of a chance to have gear that doesn't match up to what you want. Resto and Ele will want the same pieces, since they'll actually want the same stats. No longer will look at gear with a distaste in your mouth going "ew mp5", you'll be thinking "sweet more hit!"

I'm pretty positive after the clunkiness of the few seconds of having less than ideal gear, questing, and getting better optimized gear. We'll all be screaming to the blizzard gods, thanks for the gear simplification.

Runeforging worries me however. That's spreadsheets waiting to happen. Mastery however excites me. Maybe I'll be able to get a rogue with a delicious high energy regen rate, thats individual abilities don't do much damage.

Mostly I'm just excited about the simplifications. Every change makes sense to me, and I see the reasons for them.

I have jumped on the pvp bandwagon

and I am loving not playing my main specs.

I've hated elemental for a long time. Simplicity isn't something I particularly like. The ease of keep flame shock up, and spam lightning bolt until lava burst comes off cool down, is as far as i know, the easiest rotation in the game. Enhancement is far more complicated and its great to preform your rotation well, to get applause from simply being your spec.

However pvp doesn't reward complicated. Trying to maintain a decent rotation while improv-ing based on posititioning is AWFUL. So I went with elemental, and I like the simplicity. It's very cat and mouse. If someone closes in, you create gaps, and get back to range. Charge? TS. Intercept? Root with earthbind. Hamstringed and they trinket out of earthbind? Frost shock and wolf away.

I love that kind of thinking. Enhancement isn't conducive to my style of thinking in that respect (although I'm having a hell of time staffing warriors to death by accident on occasion. Imagine how it makes them feel)

Also just as a note, I do not dislike warriors by any measure. I just seem to have a lot that pick on me.

However its very difficult to get pvp gear. As of now I've only got a necklace, a cloak and a totem. The totem is neglible from any elemental totem, thankfully the necklace and cloak DO make a sizable difference as I already don't die from a rogue deciding to hit me till i die.

Oh and this goes without saying, but a PVP spec helps SOOOOOOO much. :P

Raid leading, and destruction.

I am a core raider in my guild. Everyone knows this. There are a total of two good healers. One is me, the other has been here forever. She decided to transfer because she was probably tired of being limited by the rest of the group. She re-rolled her character same name, same class and all, for what appears to be 3 reasons to me. Guilt, Friendship and Community. I know she enjoys healing and enjoys us.

This brings me into a difficult position because currently, I have no viable healer other than myself. Our lead dps has a heal alt, but he stepped down as raid leading, probably because of said difficult.

Oh yeah ps: I got drafted into leading raids, because I said I wanted to do ulduar? So apparently, because of my good job at explaining and taking feelings into consideration, thats my job now. Sucks!

Basically my guild is dwindling. There are transfers from the younger players out. Older members are throwing the towel in. we have a revolving door of genuinely bad players, its very disappointing. It's not an issue of gear, because in general my gear isn't particularly good but I show very decent numbers, but some of our most geared players floating around 5.2kgs aren't able to pull 4k dps single target patchwerk. I don't like basically single healing anything with other healers.

Should I jump ship too? hmm

Being the odd one out

My guild is not a group of active raiders. We have members consisting mostly of their 30s and onward. Heck, one of our officers is 59, if I'm remembering right. That is not to say, we don't raid, but it is to say, our raiding time is a bit more limited than most, and getting scheduling down

I'm still pretty young (I guess?) so I have loftier expectations of raiding. I want to push icc content, and thankfully we downed anub'arak this week, so in the future, icc looks doable.

However, this week I still wanted to persue ICC goals. I preform to the best of my abilities while dpsing in a PUG 100% of the time, for exactly what I'm going to describe to you. I ran a mostly guild rep run a while back with another guild, one that I hadn't had much interaction with at all. Theres about 7 or so guilds that raid, and 2 or 3 of them are pretty elitist/cliquey. This group saw I preformed my role to the best of my ability, and their raid leader, asked if he could jot down my name.

I LOVE getting asked for friend request, not because I want friends, but because it shows me that people are willing to rely on me, if they find themselves short a person on random day.

So today I get a whisper, from said raid leader, asking "hey your enhance right?" and my immediate reaction knowing he was in ICC, was "and resto, if you need it" because healers are NON-existent, so any shot for a raid, is one I want. Apparently they run a VERY range heavy group full of mostly younger members who knew each other on a first name basis, and were on lady deathwhisper. It's a completely different dynamic than my own guild, which is incredibly melee heavy, old, and we all refer to each other by our characters name at the time, for the sake of ease of anyone not completely in tune with us.

Well I was brought in to physical dps, which was a bad decision for them, but fine nonetheless as I'm sure said raid leader considered this when inviting me along, rather a good dps, than another facerolling dk.

I've never done the deathwhisper fight from the perspective of picking up adds (normally they'll stick me on a shield) but hey, when you have no physical, you got no physical. I did ABYSMALLY, but we one shotted the fight. I did my said role of killing the specific add.

Now when I say I did abysmally I'll try to paint you a picture, this morning I went to the doctor, to treat a huge swelling in my neck, which as far I know, may be mono. I'm am not in the best state of mind, and it may show in my writing, I don't know, but I'll tell you what, when I died, for seemingly no reason, then ankh'd into a death and decay, I felt outright embarrassed. They called for a battle rez on me (their tank, no less. I felt horrible). Sure the rest of the encounter I preformed fine, but I felt like everyone was judging me, although it was far from the truth. They were all ecstatic that they finished the fight the second I joined. Trash occurred, and I tried my best to make amends by pushing out as much dps as my tiny little shammy body could, and it happend until we got to the stupid dragon.

I HATE dragons. There's something about their hit boxes that are misleading to me, I always end up standing in front of them and going splat. (I do the same thing every time I get to dps ony, I'm surprised it hasn't become a running joke yet).

Of course I'm the only one who died on all of trash, and again, I feel the sting of guilt. I hugged my rezzer, and mana/healed up on my own. I don't like wasting resources.

The gunship battle was next and while it was everyones first time there I was the on the boarding party, and through some combination of luck and awful, the entire front side of the ship decided to aggro me and kill me. That attempt was THANKFULLY a wipe, and I saved face a bit.

The second attempt was a lot smoother. I died again, except through no fault of my own. The pilot the tank was supposed to tank, decided to ignore his taunts and attacking and eat my face off, despite none of my dps being on him. It was like my mere presence in ICC that day was a mistake. I'm glad the tank noticed that was the problem too, or I'd probably have to deal with a grumpy raid leader about how I couldn't manage to stay alive.

Loot dropped, and I asked If I was allowed to roll. I beat out the hunter, which again made me feel terrible, as he/she was sporting 232 bracers, and was generally topping the dps meter. I've made it a point to save for some crafted 245 bracers for him/her and give them to her in good faith. My leatherworker tends to depend on me for mats anyways, so I'm excited to help out another guild.

We got to saurfang naturally, accidently started the battle and took it as a "well lets learn on the go" attempt. I made observations while we trucked along, barely getting anywhere but it provided them with insight into how the fight works. They took a break to "video watch" and then came back. I knew my roll was that of patchwerk dps so when I loudly proclaimed "FINALLY A FIGHT I WONT DIE ON FIRST THAT I'M THE ONLY ONE THATS ALLOWED TO FACEROLL" the entire group snapped into laughter and had a good time of it. We didn't down it as our healer fell asleep on us (quite literally, 8 minutes into the fight she greyed out to afk) but it was a good attempt and it was fun.

I still very sorry to that guild, that I wasn't preforming to the standard I normally hold myself to when dpsing but alls well that ends well. That hunter will possibly see a neat wrist replacement in their mailbox, and I walked away with a shiny bracer myself. It's an odd situation though, being that one person, pugged in, failing. I don't much like it, but they were good sports about it.

Gearing up in 3.3

I started writing this article, thinking I would eliminate item pieces from which you couldn't get an equivalent emblem piece. This left me with basically feet items, and weapons. due to a simple overlook, I also realized even feet items and weapons could be bought. Silly me, however I do believe those pieces and trinkets and rings, and even back pieces tends to be some of the hardest to come by. This is due to no small part that the valor and heroism vendors give very lame pieces for their cost, especially that shifty valor vendor.

Instead of telling you what pieces to get, I'm going to guide recommendations. In general every class of every spec is going to want to hit the tier 9 four piece, and then get either a 245 helmet or 245 shoulder. I'll let you use your best judgment. Personally I went with the 245 shoulders, because the tier 10 shoulders are cheap, and gets you half way to that tier 10 2 piece bonus if you so wish. You should also pick up the "ranged" slot piece and a single ring from that triumph vendor.

Get that trinket too, unless you're a healer. If you're a healer you should heavily debate the merit of the trinket. Use trinkets I find to be too cool down oriented, and healing I've always found to be too reactive, to make significant use of. If you're the kind of healer that has multiple "oh crap" buttons, you might like it. I tend to rely on pure and simple skill, and forget I even have cool downs until I see single digit percentages.

Now trinkets are your first goal for gearing, since there aren't a ton of them. I will from this point call trial of the champion, pit of saron, forge of souls, and halls of reflections "the new places". These places have very few trinkets for classes, but for the few they do, they're some of the best stuff you'll find. Weapons are good here too. Really anything you find in these instances will outclasses anything you'll find if you haven't been raiding. Don't assume the good stuff is in the heroic mode only either. Regular modes of the new places have been jammed full of loot that while not quite as good as heroic mode, will be the only place you'll be finding stuff. Me personally? I've run regular HoR a crap ton to get "muddied boots of brill" because there simply isn't as good a boot elsewhere.

Like I've said, keep a special eye out for rings, boots, cloaks, trinkets and your weapons (or shields and off hands, you know). Doing this, along with triumph and conquest gear will mean you'll keep your ilvl average at a minimum of 219 (stuff from heroic toc) all the way up to 245 (stuff you actually get from triumph guy, love you triumph guy!)

Now trinkets, once again, are a tricky bunch. You have to get two of them, and the ones from the instances might not be good for you. This is the only time I endorse heroism vendor guy. His trinkets are solid until you find something else you may prefer more. Once again, personally I have the mark of supremacy from triumph guy, and mirror of truth from heroism guy. I could have gotten the needle encrusted scorpion, but armor pen ain't such a hot stat for enhancement shaman, so I passed on it.

Try and research your class about trinkets, and don't trust item levels for them at all. Darkmoon cards are amongst the best trinkets you can find, for instance, but their ilvl 200 is very deceptive.

Don't you just hate trinkets? Yeah me too.

Low population server

I wake up most mornings, and log onto wow, not having a particularly hectic job, and a great deal of time to waste. One of the most disappointing things I deal with is not being able to see content due to my realm choice. When I started wow, I picked mal'ganis. This was the server my significant other was on, having a mid-level warlock. It was a high to locked population server. I had lots of alts and I have about 8 characters hanging around level 50 there right now.

Trade chat was just terrible there, I couldn't stay. There was an elitism there that just angered me. Everyone required gear scores, and achievements for content. I never reached 80, but I knew I wasn't going to like it if I did.

Sweet relief came when said significant other had a friend that played on a "recommended/new players" realm. We were very much for the prospect of synchronized leveling. While I eventually would outpace (I'm floating around in t9/t10 and shes still in tanaris). Said friend was originally one of the top alliance guilds. Literally number one in the server. Given that alliance was the unpopulated side, it didn't mean much, but it was neat being the only lv20 in a guild of several 80s with no alts visible. Drama occured, guild split, faction transfers happend. Now I'm in some random algamation of the original guild, which I enjoy very much other than their distaste for my pronouncation of the most common resource in the game (mana)

Now while very much my own fault for sticking with this server, theres a ton of downsides. There are literally 5 or 6 guilds taking on higher level content and by higher level, I mean naxx and up, not icc. There is a gross imbalance in the H:A ratio with my last informal records being about 8:1. There's simply not a lot of options for guilds. Our guild is probably 3rd for our faction, and the problem we face is getting enough players for a ten man. Doing a quick scan for main specced healers there were literally only about 160 or so who were even in heroic gear. Now granted these numbers may be skewed. Maybe some of those healers are dps specced primarly, maybe some pvp. I know I myself get shoehorned into heal due to the general lack of healing avaible (but hey, if we get a lolret, he'll be forced to spec holy, as I put out just disgustinly good dps as a shaman being the only one who seems to care about his terrible hybrid specced class. ;])

I don't really know where to turn at this. I would faction transfer to once again join the guild that split off from me original, but I don't consider it of vital importance, plus my guild is just a good set of people, and I don't want to further halt progress (apperently ktang! of heroism is that important?) My only problem is specifically I'd like to play my spec. I don't like healing, (if my first post didnt make that clear) and I'm one who strives for perfection within reason. When I heal and I see only one melee dps hitting marrowgars spikes I cry a little. Especially when we only have one ranged dps...

Oh limited options, how you pound me in the face. Maybe I should rerollon a medium-high pop server...