Kara This Week

We started on Tuesday and cleared Attumen with no problems,

Moroes we stumbled once and then downed him on the second try.

We moved on to Maiden, we were without our paly, we were heavy on Melee. Made it a challenge.

We had -

Prot Warriors x3
Warlocksx2
Myself
Holy Priest
Rogue
Hunter (Shadow Priest for Moroes)
Mage

The repent sucked and we just weren't pulling it together. We decided to hold off on Maiden and head to Opera. We got Romulo and Julianne - I heard this is the worst one, needless to say we 2 shotted it. We cleared the trash that drops $$$ and called it a night.


-

Last night we had a slightly different group composition

Prot Warx3
Warlock
Hunter
Mage
Ret Paly
Myself
Priest
Rogue (Hunter for Maiden)

It took us many attempts but we finally killed Maiden and moved on to Curator. On the way to Curator our lock had to leave and we subbed in a hunter. We only managed to get 2 attempts in before trash respawned but the usual issue came up again - DPS. We just don't have it, granted our group make up was less than perfect for this fight, but on the inital attempt we did very well. Is getting DPS above 400 for DPS classes when initially doing Kara really that difficult because of gear or is it playstyle / spec?

I honestly don't know.

But as of right now my thoughts are thus - The first four will be on farm but Curator is going to pwn us for a while. I know we stubbed our toe on Maiden, but I think that will change.

Any and all help is appreciated.

WWS Kara 11-29

Updates

Well....





Long story short we downed Curator last week. I'll get to how in a sec, but first a rundown.

We picked up a tank that is friends with our GL and PuG'd an Enhancement Shammy to fill out the last DPS spot.

Attumen - 1 shot

Moroes - 1 shot

Opera (Crone) - 1 shot

Maiden - 1 shot

Curator - 3 shot

Edit: Apparently Curator was a 2-shot. In looking at WWS .

I guess we had the strat down the first time but just didn't execute. So basically lump attempts 1 and 2 together.

So how did we down Curator? Well the Enhancement shammy basically doubled our lowest DPS'r and pretty much counted like an extra person. You wouldn't believe what a difference it made. Also, the main tank was very well geared and has a lot of experience. Our first attempt went poorly because we weren't downing the bolts fast enough, and then DPS'ing Curator enough during evocates. The biggest problem with that is healer mana. Myself and the other healer simply ran out.

So, on the second try we had our paly put on the healing gear he has acquired and would be a supplimental healer. We didn't communicate effectively when he should start focusing on healing duty and we died with him at full mana.

Third attempt we stuck to the same strat and called out when we needed help. At this point people were also more comfortable with the fight and Curator dropped like a rock, or I guess you could say, like a brick.

We started at 9:00 server and finished right at midnight. Not bad for 3 hours work for a guild thats been in Kara for less than a month. We were just too tired to go for Chess and because of the holiday haven't had the numbers to get it done yet. We're going to try tonight. We'll probably have to PuG some people just to clear the trash to get to it.

I don't anticipate us going much farther once thats finished. Aside from getting a look at the encounters there isn't much point as we will be without many core group members.

Random notes - our guildie tank came up with a great new strat for moroes that plays to our strengths. We usually roll with 2 locks, to take advantage of this on Moroes we do the following.

The locks save their SS's for when someone is garroted. Healers keep them alive long enough for them to burn down most/all of their mana. At this point they are allowed to die and come back. We have a dwarf priest, a paly with BoP and 2 soul stones. When 2.3.2 comes out our mage will have iceblock as well. This encounter is officially on farm in my opinion.

Maiden died so fast that I wasn't ready for the repent's to come as quickly as they did. I'll be more prepared in the future.

One of our locks is almost ready to complete his Frozen Shadow set, and the other picked up his T4 gloves and his epic engineering headpiece. Almost everyone else has seen gear upgrades in one way or another as well.

We're implementing SWAPS this week. While not a major one, loot has already started to become an issue. We need a consisitent and fair approach to loot if the guild is going to thrive.

I'll have an update on that, and our Tuesday Kara run wednesday.


Also, I was on the PTR for 2.3.2 and the new watershield rocks. Its 50 Mp5, in addition to the 70 or so Mp5 from mana spring (talented). Which is awesome. The only thing that stinks is that right now on live water shield, manaspring, and paladin Blessing of Wisdom stack. Thats a whole lotta mana.

On test Mana spring overrides BoW. So my days of having like 300 Mp5 are numbered.

126 Mp5 unbuffed + 8 from food + 50 from water shield (3 globes*200 mana [procs after 60secs]) + 63 Mana Spring (25 mana every 2 secs) + 45 BoW + 25 Flask of mighty restoration = 317 MP5!!

Oh well, 272 is still pretty good. And not having to refresh water shield every minute will be pretty nice.

Savage Eidolon + Curator =

(this is a brick wall btw)

So, before we get ahead of ourselves. Here is our WWS report from last night.

As you can see our DPS is still sub par.

We stumbled on Maiden and got slowed down on the trash. So we needed to re-clear. We got the strat down and on one attempt we had her down to 4000hp when we wiped. It sucked. Regardless we downed her and i think now that everyone is accustomed to the fight (myself included) it will go much much smoother.

So we trudged on, we had a couple more wipes. Those two mech looking guys on the stairs before curator whooped us. And we Died again pulling some of the trash in Curators room.

There were a few other delays but eventually we got a few attempts off.

What did we learn?

We just don't have the DPS to take down Curator right now. The Arcane adds weren't dying fast enough and during evocates we were only doing around 15-20% damage to him. With how mana intensive the fight is, that just isn't going to cut it.

We had 3 locks with us this time, from what I heard I thought this would be a good thing. Apparently Curse of Doom can do some serious damage to him while he's evocating. I thought 3 of those going off at the same time might help give us an edge. It just didn't work out that way.

Unlike previous bosses there were strats we could try and things we could do differently. And while thats also true here, it was obvious that we just didn't have enough of what we needed to take this guy down. No matter how we changed it up.

One thing we did right, we had everyone make a macro to target flares. (Hopefully everyone did) and we were calling out when the flares popped and when to jump back on to Curator.

Things I'm not sure about.

All mana users should have 10 major mana pots on them. Also they should be using them as soon as they are out however much mana a potion restores to get the cooldown going.

We needed to get better timing on Curse of Doom, I don't think that it was going off at the right time.

Also, we probably need to sub out the second tank during this fight for another DPS. We tried this once, but I think its going to have to be the go to strat. If not another DPS, another healer anyway.

Now that we've had WWS up and running for a bit there are a few things I've noticed.

Compared to the mage, the locks have a very high miss rate. Is this common for locks or would it be worthwhile to have them get some +spell hit gear. What is the magic number for this?

Also, I noticed that 2 of the 3 are "hybrid" specs. They don't have any 41 point talents. For a PVE damage build, which is the most viable? Which is least?

The Paly also has a fairly high miss rate which hurts the cause.

So now the plan is basically to hold off on progression for a bit. We're going to farm the bosses we can do (Attumen, Moroes, Opera, Maiden), collect badges, run heroics, recruit tanks and healers, and get people keyed.

We're going to gear up, I don't think it will take too long and then try to move forward again.

Working With What We Got...

Attumen down, Moroes down, Big Bad Wolf down.....

Yeah I'd say we're improving.

Attumen was a one shot.

Got Moroes on the third attempt. First attempt was quality but it didn't come together. Second attempt wasn't a quality attempt it just didn't come together correctly. (We subbed in a Hunter for a Spriest So we had 3 shackles) Third....well he died so its all good.

Big Bad Wolf - 2 shotted. When half the people had never done the encounter before and the MT gets turned in to the little gnome right off the bat. It was a bit of a learning curve. Second time around the same thing happend but we were a smidge more prepared so it all worked out. Basically we should have laid off all DPS that first time around so when the effect wore off the wolf wouldn't rampage through the DPS'ers because the tank didn't have time to gain any aggro.

The Clothies got beat on a bit the second time around too, but not as badly. Mainly just the Dotting locks.

So, things to notice.

Our DPS is still sub par, but we're finding ways to work around it.

Also, none of the kills would be considered "pretty". Attumen took out our mage fairly early on in the fight, so we had a substantial loss in DPS and no one to clear curses, but we just healed through it.

On the Moroes kill, we slacked on re-shackling mobs a bit. Which lead to some unnecessary deaths and taxed the healers trying to keep everyone up. To further illustrate this point - I was the one who got the killing blow on Moroes. We lost a priest, lost some DPS, shackles started breaking and we lost a tank. I managed to get a frost shock on him and he died. A few more seconds and it would have been a different story.

Ways to improve on this.

1 - One of the priests didn't have a focus target macro. That person trying to find their target, re shackle then go back to DPS just wasn't cutting it.

2-We had a hunter this time around in addition to the 3 priests. What we need is better positioning. Once the shackles are set the priests should run away from them and bunch together. The hunter should be standing next to them in between the shackled mobs and the priests and drop an Ice trap in case something breaks.

I think that would help greatly. Also, for the time being this is the setup we should use. Get the 3 priests in there and one shot Moroes. When we start getting better gear and really have the encounter on farm, then we can try to change it up more as far as group composition goes.

For Big Bad Wolf we just need to throttle back DPS until we know who is going to be turned first. If the tank isn't numero uno and he has enough time to get a good amount of threat then its all good. But until we know who it is, we should hold back on DoTs and such.

We stopped there and are going back on Sunday for Curator. If we can get a pally we'll probably go after Maiden as well.

Wish us luck.

Oh btw, here is our WWS report.

Moroes 8 (or so) ... Us 1!!!

So after trying many a different strat we were able to down Moroes.

One thing that I didn't realize would happen was that the adds changed when we went back on Sunday.

They switched to the Ret Paly, Prot Warrior, Shadow Priest, and Holy Priest.

So after one of our tanks neglected to show up entirely (only to log on and /gquit later that night) We had to fill in some spots. We started clearing in the hopes that the tank would log in, or we could find someone and be good to go. It didn't really turn out that way as we ran in to respawn and got delayed for a little more than an hour..

So we switch out one of the locks from Wednesday for his tank. We then PuG another lock. We get a few attempts off, but they weren't quality attempts necessarily. We had some aggro problems and some getting used to the pull again.

We buffed up again and went at it. Our Paly jumped on the Holy priest and feared the shadow . Shackling the other 2. We burned down 1, then moved on to the other. Once done we focused on Moroes. We downed him with only 1 death due to Garrote right at the end.

Here's the thing.

We got lucky.......

Our DPS is still sub par. Luckily Moroes Garroted the 2 tanks, the dwarf priest (stoneform), and myself. (Paly BoP ftw) Had we not gotten that combo, we wouldn't have won, I firmly believe that.

We just don't burn down the adds or Moroes fast enough.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that we got him down. I was able to pick this up:



I lose some stats and I gain some stats. Gain: Int, Stam, Mp5, and AC. Lose: +Healing, spirit, and some sockets.

The thing is, I just don't know if we won't run in to a wall all over again with this guy.

Thanks to BRK I now have WWS up and running and will have a log to view on Thursday. (Because of this, I probably won't have a Wednesday update.)

I'm not exactly sure what it is. It could be the locks not re-applying dots after Moroes Vanishes. It could be not switching / burning down the adds fast enough. Or worst of all, it could just be not enough DPS output. We'll have to see, and I'll keep my fingers crossed.

My one thought is that if we wipe even once on Wednesday will be to sub in another priest. Thanks to the 2.3 patch adding damage to healing we could have an extra shackle to get on to Moroes sooner and some sub par DPS with some back-up healing. The trade-off for giving up a pure DPS might be worth it.

All in all I'm really happy with how we're moving along and learning. After Moroes we made our way to Opera and gave one shot at Dorothy, The Crone, and the lot. We failed fairly quickly. Everyone was tired and no one felt bad calling it then and there.

So we'll see on Wednesday.

In the meantime hopefully we can recruit some......everyone. We basically need all classes. We don't have any Rogues for god sakes. Who would ever have imagined that.

Wish us luck.

Our First Kara...

So the new guild did our firs Kara run on Wednesday.

Group consisted of the following. (At the start anyway)

Prot Warrior x2

Warlock x2

Fire Mage x1

Ice Mage x1

Holy Priest x1

BM Hunter x1

Ret Paly x1

And Me...

Just to make sure everyone is completely clear (Resto Shammy x1)

So our start time was 8:30, invites to go out at 8:15. We didn't start exactly on time, but we were in there by 8:45.

Also, due to some video card issues and people /gquitting earlier in the week for no real reason other than they like purple drops more than the people they play with, we were short 2 people.

Luckily we had a back-up plan already in place. We picked up a lock and the ice mage from the first guild I belonged to.

The beggining was a total joke. 6 of the 10 had experience in Kara through prince (not me), with a couple of those having substantial 25man raid experience with their other chars. Namely the tanks, which is a great thing.

So we steam through the trash before Attumen. Then proceed to demolish him on the first attempt. The only downside was that Druid and Holy Paly gear dropped. :( Oh well, no biggie. Not that downing Attumen is a terribly huge feat, but it was good to get that first kill under our belts. Especially for the first timers who had never done any kind of content beyond 5-mans. (Pre-BC UBRS doesn't count.)

Moving on to Moroes....

Well, Moroes wasn't the cake walk that Attumen was thats for damn sure.

Our 4 adds were as follows:

Lady Keira Berrybuck – Holy Paladin

Baroness Dorothea Milstipe – Shadow Priest

Lord Robin Daris – Mortal Strike Warrior

Lord Crispin Ference – Sword n’ Board Warrior

So...the word from the more experienced peeps was that this combo kind of sucks. And it certainly did. I'll cut to the chase right now, we didn't down Moroes.

Our first few attempts were mainly getting everyone comfortable with the pull.

2 prot warriors tank Moroes, while 1 picks up The Fury(or arms not sure) Warrior and Moroes.

Shackle the Holy Paly

Ice trap the MS Warrior.

Burn down the Shadow Priest....

At least that was the plan.

Things were moving pretty fast so specifics are a little hazy. Here are my thoughts on what went wrong though.

-Mana was an issue in the beginning as I didn't want people dying and wasn't sure how much time I had to get a heal off. I used a lot of Lesser Healing Waves and subsequently wasted a lot of mana.

-We just weren't picking up the adds fast enough and weren't burning down targets quickly either. Also, when a target would drop time would be lost switching to the next target.

So after a few attempts we switched out the Hunter for a shadow priest.

We tried different combos of shackling off tanking and what not but nothing worked. Our best attempt got moroes down to 9000hp before we wiped totally.

We were able to get about 7 attempts in, and learned something from each one.

In all honesty, a huge problem was lack of DPS. One attempt, myself and the Priest were trying to keep 6 people up that had been garroted. Including myself. Luckily the priest is a dwarf and could use Stoneform when hit with it.

The paly didn't know to use BoP on me, and when we finally got that sorted out we weren't able to get quality attempts on moroes.

We simply needed to burn down targets faster. We tried to have the paladin use turn undead, but with a 20 sec timer and a 30 second cooldown, if we aren't burning the first add down fast enough its kind of a moot point.

This post is all over the place I know. We had so many attempts that now they've all blended with each other and I can't remember what we did each time so doing a well thought out write up is difficult.

We're going back Sunday to try again.

Here are my thoughts.

One thing is that everyone needs vent, prefferably with a mic. I know that 1 person wasn't even able to listen in, and if everyone has a mic its a lot easier to call things out if something unexpected happens.

As far as a revised strat, here's what I've come up with. Provided there aren't any glaring holes in it (probably) and we can focus fire the adds fast enough.

We pull,

Shackle the Holy Paly.

Ret Paly tanks the shadow priest, and uses a /focus target macro to fear the arms warrior.

We shackle the Prot Warrior.

Burn down the Shadow Priest ASAP (god willing before the fear is broken)

Then, the Prot Paly and one of the tanks switches focus on to the Holy Paly. And switching shackles on to the Arms Warrior.

Once the Holy Paly is down, keep both warriors shackled and focus all fire on to moroes.

If I get garroted then the paly will BoP me.

If we have the DPS for it I hope we can burn him down before the garrotes become too much of a problem.

Also, if anyone has a beginner-ish Kara raid group that has downed Moroes and has a WWS report that would be great. I would like to see what the damage output for the raid should be to finish this encounter for those new to raiding.

Any and all advice is of course welcome.

P.S. I know this post sucks.

Added some links

Check out the side bar for the links I read daily...

Kara write up soon to follow...

Guild Recruiting is Tough

So, I joined a new guild. Its a start up with friends/former members of previous guilds.

In the past I've always been the recruitee not the recruiter. I was the unguilded one in the PuG that would get the invite. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, I find it difficult trying to get new members.

We're trying to focus on Kara, but we barely have the numbers for that at the moment. Because of this, its a tough sell to prospective members. The two things go hand in hand. We need new members to get Kara up and running on a consistent basis, but people don't want to join usually unless Kara IS being run on a consistent basis.

Long story short, I don't know what to do.

We are recruiting all levels 15 and up to put us in a good position long term.

We are being careful about getting Tanks and Healers first - simply because if we invite too many DPS first, thats a lot of people that need to sit out if we don't have the classes that are required (i.e. tanks/healers) to run the raid.

We are focusing on starting earlier and ending earlier - trying to appeal less to the hardcore college types and more towards the working folks.


I think I might run some PuGs this weekend and see if I can't find some cool people that might be prospective members.

If any of the 5 of you have thoughts on this, please help me out here. (We're back down to 5, I think I lost a few of you while I was gone.)

Whats a good way to recruit new guild members? Should we just focus on lower level players and put Kara on hold for the most part or is there a way to recruit those who are ready to do Kara immediately? We don't want to steal members from other guilds, but at the same time I know I've been in guilds that weren't progressing towards the things I wanted to do but I stayed simply because I didn't want to be unguilded or have to search for a new guild.


BTW SavageEidolon.guildportal.com - That'd be the guild thar.

We're doing Kara Wednesday. Expect that to be the Friday update.

I've Got Mail!

Ladies and Gents, a momentous day.

My first Question and Answer.

So here goes.

Don't play a Shaman, but I love your blog. I learned a lot about the capabilities of the resto-shaman I was running with at the time from reading your stuff.

Question for you: we're a guild of what I would call social players with some pretty good players who enjoy running together. Trying to get a critical mass of people through kara to be able to run the 25mans a bit more often. We don't have many shaman. And we have a whopping *one* enhancement shaman who we are trying to gear up with some early Kara bosses. I'm a big fan of letting people run with whatever spec they want, as long as they have put some thought into it. This is about having fun, after all. Unfortunately, our enhancement shaman seems a bit, um, ineffective (dps running about half of my slightly better geared BM hunter). And I just don't know enough about the class to make useful suggestions. There are some obvious points - his gear is simply not up to snuff. I also suspect his gameplay could use some major tweaks, and just from a cursory look he has the wrong gems. And more than a few wasted spec points.Not to mention the fact that he's skimping on enchants, inscriptions... (doubtless holding out for better gear). BUT... since there is no benchmark, I really don't have a tangible way to make it clear that his gameplay is subpar, and that at some point he will be holding us back until he improves. Nor do I know how to suggest he improve. We have great class leaders for every other class, but lacking greatly at shaman. (He has been fairly openly critical of some subpar hunter and mage play, where there are some high standards to measure against. Hard for some people to internalize a need to improve without some kind of tangible evidence).

So, after that long winded explanation, I guess the actual question is this: what kind of dps should we expect from a well-played shaman with early or pre-kara gear? And how should I/we suggest that he go about gameplay? I can read EJ until my eyes bleed, but most of it assumes some basic knowledge about where an enhancement shaman's damage really comes from. And I just don't have it.

So... assuming strength, AP, agi, stam... kind of in that order for stat preference? 2H vs dual wield? What kind of totems? Fight positioning... I just don't know where to start.

-Chuck of Unknown Server (Names changed just in case)

There is other relevant info between myself and Chuck that I will paraphrase below.

-Our Struggling Enh Shammy has DPS averaging around 350

- Here is his talent spec: Yowza

- He is using A 2.5 speed MH and a 2.6 OH (This is a good thing)


Now that we know what we're dealing with, here were my thoughts. Now granted I know I'm a Restoration Shaman, but I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on Enhancement as well. By no mean am I an expert. That being said, some (hell, all) of what I wrote may be inaccurate. If one of you guys sees something amiss, please call me out on it.

So here goes...

It is good for Enhancement Shaman to have a main hand weapon that is equal to or faster than your offhand. This helps it so that when Windfury proc's it doesn't do it from the offhand and suffer the dual wielding damage penalty.

(Edit: After re-looking at Elitist Jerks, the reason why a slower offhand is preferred is due to scaling and cooldown timing. Windfury is not "normalized". So slower weaps = higher damage. Also, Windfury is on a 3 second cooldown. So having a slower weapon prevents "missed" procs. Procs that couldn't go off because the cooldown on the attack wasn't ready due to a fast weapon.)

When gearing up, he shouldn't focus on the socket bonus that gear can provide. Often times the bonus does not equal the usefulness of using other more powerful gems (Str, Agil, Crit, Hit) and forgetting about the bonus altogether.

Make sure that eventhough he may be wearing "Shaman" gear that it is Enhancement Shaman gear. To that end, Tidefury sucks the big one for Enhancement Shaman. Just because its meant for a shaman, doesn't mean its meant for his spec. Specifically the Shoulders, some random green "of the bandit" with the Aldor/Scryer enchant would help more with his melee damage.

Getting revered with Cenarion for the DPS glyph (helm) you can buy from the quartermaster is a step in the right direction.

Weaps should have +15 / +20 agility or +15 str enchants on them. Until you have epic items, thats about as much as you need to think about it. I mention Str because Shaman AP is derived from the same formula as that of a warrior[ (Strength x 2) + (Character Level x 2) - 20]
No agility in that formula to be found...

However I still value the agility on the weaps more than Str for this simple reason. At level 70, 25 points of agility = 1% crit chance for a Shaman. This as opposed to a Rogue or Hunter that Require 40 points of agility =1% crit. Enhancment Shaman are crit animals, this is actually their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.

Many abilities like flurry (as well as a new one on the PTR) are triggered when a shaman crits, not to mention the unpredictable devastation that is windfury. These abilities can dish some serious damage but can also draw some serious aggro. Currently this unpredictability means that a Shaman either has to play it very conservative, especially at the beginning of the fight (i.e. not do anything) or throw caution to the wind and hope he or she doesn't go crit happy and get himself/herself obliterated.

The innate threat reduction that the spirit weapons provide is being beefed up in 2.3 to combat this problem.

Per Eyonix:
"It never applied to only white damage. I personally had this tested extensively. It's going to be 30% damage reduction from white damage, plus stormstrike, plus windfury procs. 15% was simply too low, so the additional 15% should help quite a bit."

Link



His spec, its OK but it has a few glaring holes.

Re-link of spec


1 - Improved lighting shield? He shouldn't be getting hit anyway, and it adds a huge amount of threat if a mob hits him. Making it damn near impossible to get the mob off. In short, wasted points.

2 - Which brings us to...toughness 5/5 ?! This is widely regarded as one of the worst talents in all of the shaman trees. Even with 10% more armor a raid mob is still going to beat the bag out of him in no time flat. I mean maybe if it was 10% more stamina that would be one thing, but as is he shouldn't be getting hit anyway and 10% more AC isn't going to do a whole heck of a lot.

3. Anticipation 5/5 ...Increases dodge by 5%. I haven't played melee aside from PTR in a while. But I'm pretty sure that if you stand behind a mob, you can negate cleave type of effects and going back to point numero 2, he shouldn't be getting hit anyway aside from spell damage so its kind of a wasted use of talent points. At least for PVE.

So now that we have 13 points wasted. Where should they be going? Well for one, they should be going in to 2/2 improved weapon totems.





This increases the damage done by windfury proc's for the rest of the raid. Thereby increasing threat generation by the tank and allowing everyone including him to let loose sooner.

That leaves us with 11 more points.

We'll move to the resto tree, this is where the glaring error in his build lies. First he should put 3 points in to either ancestral healing or totemic focus. I have it in ancestral healing because I have 2 sets of gear and if I need to be a 3rd healer, having a crit heal on a tank that increases his armor by 25% is nothing to sneeze at, but its up to him. Its mainly to get to the next tier of talents.

Here is where he has a big problem. He should have 3/3 in natures guidance. Maxed, it is a 3% to hit with spells and with melee weaps. Combine that with the dual wield specialization in the talent tree (6% to hit while dual wielding) and his Hit rating from gear ( 5.26) and his hit rating is roughly 14%. Yowza! but here's the thing. Shaman do OK white damage, but our main sources of DPS come from windfury, stormstrike, and spells. (AKA yellow damage) the hit rating for these attacks cap out at around 9%. Basically he could swap out his gear that has hit rating for other stats if he wanted to. (agility, AP, stamina, Str)

So we now have 5 points left. I would place 2 in to guardian totems (enhancement). The talent sucks for the most part, but it lessens the cooldown of grounding totem. Key for fights like maiden, and handy in PVP.




Next I would slap a point in totemic mastery (restoration) It increases the range of his totems and therefore increases his utility.



The final 2 points are his call. He can put them anywhere besides improved lightning shield. Toughness is marginally less bad, but at least that talent doesn't create aggro havoc.

So there you have it. That's my assessment.

My suggested build

With regards to weapon types. I prefer dual wield for the +6% to hit. You get bigger / more frequent windfury hits with a 2H, but the trade off isn't worth it IMO.

- Totems -

Windfury, unless in an all caster group. Then Wrath of air.

Mana spring - Its a crappy amount of mana per 5 right now (getting fixed on test) but its better than nothing and his healing stream won't do a whole lot.

Strength of Earth - + str is good for him and all melee.

The flame tongue totem ( puts a fire attack on group melee hits) screws up windfury and shouldn't be used. And the totem that shoots fire is only going to boost his damage marginally

(Edit: Apparently - raid buffed Searing totem can add between 50 - 70dps. This is more significant than I had thought. If CC or mana isn't an issue and your Shammy can remember to keep it up in addition to his other duties this is a viable DPS booster.)

and might not be worth the effort trying to remember to drop it. Besides if it shoots a CC'd mob that isn't going to be pretty.

So for the most part, no need for a fire totem.

Make sure he has the totem timers mod.

It shows time left on all totems being used and gives warnings when they are almost up.

Why his overally DPS is so low could be attributed to the following:

He might be saving his shocks instead of using them to DPS.

We have earthshock which is the equivalent of the rogue's kick. However if you use any shock (Frost / Fire/ etc) it triggers the cooldown on all shocks, Earthshock included. Check out WWS when you get it up an running, it is a possibility that he's not using his shocks because he doesn't want to risk not being able to throw an interrupt in.

If that turns out to be the case, tell him not to worry about that and to focus on DPS until something arises where he should be on interrupt duty, and when that happens you'll let him know.

For Enh Shaman its pretty simple. Windfury on both weaps, use stormstrike when you can, and Make sure to always have the Fireshock effect up. Its a DoT that lasts through the Shock cooldown, so you can alternate Fire shock / Ice shock or Fire / Earthshock.

I went on the PTR last night and in my crap Enh gear I killed some Ogre's in the barrier hills (lvl70 - 72mobs) and my average DPS was over 500. Granted thats with the new Enh Shaman changes, but just the same, those changes aren't going to jump your DPS over 150 points so something is amiss.

The only thing I could come up with is that he's saving his shocks to 1: Manage his aggro in case of windfury crits or 2: Is saving his shocks in case something bad happens and needs to interrupt a caster.

One last thing when it comes to gear. Unless he's a loyalist he should feel free to look at leather gear in addition to mail. Not for every piece, but if there is a specific slot that just doesn't have what he needs that is mail, leather is a good option. Its not like the difference of 200 AC or so is going to be the deciding factor on whether or not he croaks.

A good way to find gear (not proven - just what I use) is to look at the Black temple armor set for enhancement shaman. This is the most uber gear in the game. Find the stats that are important in those sets, and check out the overall numbers for each stat. Which is highest, which is lowest. Then try to find less uber gear that fills those needs. Its not the most statistical or proven method, but I'm not elitist jerks and I would never try.



Skyshatter Harness

Notice on the Skyshatter Harness agility is omitted completely. I believe this is done with the notion that that agility is made up through other gear and/or at that level the need for agility is compensated through other stats (i.e. hit and crit). Regardless, I view agility as an important stat in the early stages of raiding.

So thats my take on it. I would get WWS up and running and crunch some hard numbers to see whats going on. Talk to him and let him know his DPS needs to improve. Open a dialogue with him that lets him know you want him to succeed as much as he does and that you are all in it together. Hopefully he is receptive to what you have to say.

My Update Schedule

Quick note -

My schedule for updates/posts will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

These probably won't show up until after 4:30 Eastern.

I'll have shorter posts sprinkled throughout but you can count on MWF.

And no, this does not count as my Friday post. That should be up by 5:30 Eastern.

-Ash