He Came from Shattrat

Till this last Friday, I was still worried that I wouldn’t make to “Undercity Under Siege” (or “The Battle For Undercity”) I decided to Ask wowdit (The reddit section for WoW) if it was possible without the help of heirlooms or Recruit-A-Friend.

Well, lots of answers saying that yes, it is possible, but also people pointing that heirlooms can be transferred cross-fraction. You know I tried to send money without much success, but… what the heck, why not try it if someone says it is possible?

Guess what? It is possible to send heirlooms cross-faction! And thanks for the extra badges I have with my tank and the few I was collecting for my warlock, I managed to get the chest and the shoulders. I had the melee heirloom mace with my DK (and the heirloom sword, although I learnt a bit late that shamans can’t use swords) so now all I need is a second mace (for when I hit level 39 and can finally dual wield) and the trinket. I believe in a weekend I can get enough emblems with my tank to buy both.

And, with that, my shaman leveling just got a nice boost.

This weekend I had two completely different experiences with people and their gear scores.

First one was in Dark’Tharon Keep. We had a pally healer that could heal me with Flash of Light for about 10k. He said “Skip” (just that) at Novos. I never skipped a boss, so I thought all I had to do was not attack it and kept my line behind his back, but the distance triggered the event. When I realized what I did, I said “sorry” and he called me a prick. I never contemplated the “Vote for Kick” option before.

Later, in Azjol-Nerub, with a completely different group (thankfully), one warrior said “I’m just happy you guys didn’t kick me for my gearscore”. I mean, come on, it’s a dungeon. It’s not your work, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want and you can expect that you’ll have to carry someone at some point. I really don’t mind undergeared DPS or undergeared healers, I can get my way through it. Heck, because my gear is enough to even do ToC25, I really like to carry someone from time to time. But being a douche about it and calling people “pricks” really is not the spirit of an online, multi-player, game.

Seriously, if you don’t have to mood to do dungeons, don’t do it. Go run around in circle in Dalaran or do some PvP, but don’t come to a dungeon just to be a douche about it.

Everybody hates gold farmers. Everybody loves the easy gold the provide, though. Me, I don’t care.

When I decided to get my epic flying mount, I farmed my way into into, using nothing more than my mining, Auctioneer, a bunch of white items and the Northrend dailies. I also did the same thing for my hog. But are things that different from a level 80 compared to a lowly level 23?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: My shaman, in her level 23, already have 150g. One can say “Oh, you can’t buy anything with 150g these days, not even a good piece of gear!” Well sir, as a matter of fact, I’m always searching for better gear for my shaman in the Auction House, I have riding and a mount and all my abilities for the current level. So it’s not a matter of “having” 150g, the fact is that I have a profit of 150g so far. And, for a level 23, I could buy a few runs in some dungeon just for some gear or leveling.

And how the hell I did get 150g? Well, again: some white items and Auctioneer. The low level “fish” meat you get (like clam meat) can sell pretty high. I’m a herbalist but I stop for any type of flower. The ones I can’t use to level my alchemy, I put on the AH. I just sold two packs of Swiftthistle for about 10g each.

So yes, we don’t need gold sellers ’cause it’s pretty easy to make money in the game these days.

For a while, I’m looking to try the new dungeons to get some updates, the weapon being the bane of my tanking existence but, for some reason, the RNG Gods didn’t want me to do it as a tank.

When I was gearing my warlock, I decided to do random dungeons a whole day non-stop. In those runs, I got into Forge of Souls and got a necklace as upgrade, which was pretty good. So, even taking the full advantage of the no-wait-queue for tanks, I never managed to get into it.

Today, out of nowhere, I got into it the Forge. And I was scared. Not because it’s a scary place, but because I didn’t want to mess with the game for the others. But I took the little knowledge I got with the warlock and her awesome group which gave me enough hints to not die in some stupid way and took my group to the end. When the achievement popped, I say in party “I think it’s a good time to tell you guys this is my first time here”. The only response was from a DK saying that “it was a weird tanking on the last boss”. Unfortunately, no good drops.

After that, I queued for a random BG, to get the daily arena points. While waiting for the long queue, someone was asking for everything for the weekly raid. Well, since I was waiting and now I was even closer to get my damn helm, I thought “Why not?”

So I joined the group and helped summon people at Ulduar (weekly was XT-002). At the entrance, the other tank asked me my defense rating. It was a normal question, probably to check who should be the main tank and off tank. So I opened my character sheet and my defense rating was, exactly… 534. What. The. HELL?!? I was surely under the rating for raids and I had no idea why, since the last thing I remember was setting my defense to 550. Damn. Damn. Damn.

So I left the raid, said “sorry” a lot and regemmed my gear and then finally got to 540. But I guess it was too late to ask to return to the raid. And, suddenly, no more requests for tanks for anything. That will teach me to check my gear more often.

When I decided to level a shaman, I did for pure “let’s learn how this thing works”. I think things are finally clicking in the right places, but it was not an easy road.

When you start as a shaman, you have two spells: Earth Shock and Lightning Bolt. So, what I did: At max range, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt (if possible), earth shock (to reduce attack speed) and then melee. Later you get Lightning Shield that, besides its name, it’s not a shield, as it doesn’t absorbs any damage, it just returns damage when you’re hit. My problem with Lightning Shield was the fact that it doesn’t affect your global cooldown and costs no mana, so I ended hitting it all the time. Just a long time after I got it I learnt to look at the charges and only charge it up when there is only one charge.

At first, I was dropping totems (Stoneskin at first) all the time, but the mana costs of it, coupled with my caster spam opening, was really making me dry. So I dropped the totem in favour of more DPS. Alchemy, which I chose to be secondary profession (along with Herbalism) helped a lot with mana potions, but it was not enough to keep dropping totems, a problem that I would only solve at level 20 (I will explain how later.)

Then I got Flame Shock, which does a good starting damage and puts a DoT on the target. Because Flame Shock shares the same cooldown as Earth Shock (and probably Lightning Bolt, but I’m not quite sure about it), I decided to open with Flame Shock. This took my other spells in cooldown and with enough time for the target to reach me but, at the same time, once we were in melee distance, I could do an Earth Shock and then reduce their attack speed. All was kinda fine, but still had mana problems.

Also, for weapon spells, I was using Rockbitter till I got Flametongue. I’m not sure if the damage increase was good enough for the change, but it was something that make me felt more “alive” while playing. Also, I switched from maces to a fast dagger, so I kept getting those small explosions when Flametongue hit the target. Again, not sure if that is surely a damage increase, but it surely made me feel more like hitting those guys.

Wind Shear was the first “oh, thank you for that” spell I got. I surely hate casters (’cause I’m melee) and that surely helped stop does damn guys.

And then I reached level 20 and things finally changed, thanks to Water Shield. As Lightning Shield, it’s not a shield per-se, but it gives you mana when you’re hit. My rotation is still the same (Flame Shock, Earth Shock, rinse, repeat), but thanks to the shield, I can finally drop all 3 totems and still shock without worrying too much about mana. I even have mana to heal myself instead of using Gift of the Naaru or Lifeblood.

For talents, I’m using this spec, which I found in a Gotwarcraft article about shamans. The only problem is that, because I don’t want to keep looking at it at every level, I keep distributing the points evenly, only checking Wowhead again when I got a new tier.

I’m still taking a shitload of damage and I still not doing a shitload of damage either, which is kinda sad. The fact that I still carry a shield around for a pure DPS class makes me sad and I really can’t wait till I get dual wielding.

Since I now have an alliance shaman, I thought it would be helpful to get some gold from my powerhouses: My tank, which can get into random dungeons stupidly quick, get a shitload of emblems, change them for gems, cut, put in the AH; and my warlock, which enchants and sells whatever enchant I can get into a vellum, using the mats I get with the tank.

So, attempt one: Open the mailbox, type character name, put some random subject, add 10g to the mail and press send. Result: “Target is unfriendly”. Ok, I can’t use the in-system mail system, as expected. Time for another idea.

I pick the shaman from Exodar, take the boat to Dark Shore, then the boat to Stormwind, then walk all the way to Westfall, then cross all Westfall to the ocean and then swim all the way to Booty Bay. Yes, swim. In Booty Bay, I take the 10 Linen Cloth I had, put in the Neutral Auction House for 10g and log out.

Since at the moment my Warlock have more gold (’cause I used another shitload to buy “Pillars of the Might” for my tank), I took her to buy the linen cloth there. From Dalaran I took the portal to Orgrimmar (What? That’s the first place that came to my mind when I thought “Take the zeppelin to Stranglethorn”!), cross Org to the zep tower only to see the zeppelin that goes to Grom’gol departing. The zeppelin to Undercity was still there, so I took a leap of faith and took the zep to Undercity, luckily finding the zep to Grom’gol there. Quick run, took the other zep and, finally, arrived on Stranglethorn. Then, a short flight path later, I was in Booty Bay, falling all the way to the lowest level, running into the AH, finding my auction of 10 Linen Cloth for 10g clicking bid and…

“You can’t bid on your own auctions”

EARGH!

I was away from WoW for about 7 months, but one thing kept bugging me: Cataclysm will change all quests in the old world and I had only 30 quests in Kalimdor to get my Loremaster title. So, after that long, I returned to the game (and got my Loremaster title, anyway.)

And, with that finished, I looked at my HK count and I had only about 5k to get my 100k achievement and get my “of the Horde” title. Well, since I was back in the game, maybe I should try to get that. And there I go…

And then, I read something about Jaina in the “Undercity Under Siege” quest and I thought “I saw that quest twice in the Horde side, but never in the Alliance side”. And, thus, since it’s going to be removed, I’m leveling a shaman to see how the quest goes. And yes, I could’ve rolled a DK in another server, since I already have one in the current server and he’s my little miner bitch, but… Meh, since I’m going to see things in the alliance perspective, why not finally learn how to play a shaman?

So, list is:
✔ – Loremaster
✕ – Of The Horde
✕ – Shaman
✕ – Undercity Under Siege with the Alliance

Recently, I finally found The Cynical Brit, which is an awesome podcast about WoW. And yes, I’m completely ashamed for not knowing it before.

Anyway, one constant he’s pointing is the complete lackluster about the new talents in the Cataclysm. And I completely agree with him. The current talents are so boring you spend most of the time taking fillers just because 2 or 3 talents are really interesting. Everything else is just meh.

The biggest problem is that a solution is not that far away. Blizzard have another game where talents are a component and they are not boring: Diablo. Diablo offers a LOT of talents to be taken and lots of points to be used. And it provides a lot of customization.

The solution Diablo 2 offers is the “spec inside the spec”. For example, take the necromancer class. On a single class, 3 trees and 7 different specs.

Such thing existed for one class at least once: At one point, there were two viable ret paladins spec: The normal sec and the Shockadin spec, which took elements from the holy tree to get holy shock. And now, the talents got to the point that you basically have only one spec that really works for each tree, and the only points that you can really chose to differentiate yourself don’t really matter in the end.

Today, playing a bit with the Warlock talents in Cataclysm (for one of my alts), I decided to check Paladin talents again. My surprise was the Tier-1 protection talent “Protector of the Innocent”:

Increases your healing by 1/2/3% on all allies affected by Devotion Aura and increases the damage of your Retribution Aura by 20/40/60%.

Now, let’s take a step back and check one thing: Do protection paladins need to heal? No. Do we use Retribution Aura? No. So what the hell is that talent doing there?

Seriously Blizzard, that’s absolutely not a Protection paladin talent.