Karazhan on Cowboy - Aran, Prince and Illhoof

Warning: this is a huge post. TLDR summary: Karazhan as an Elemental is fun although interrupting Aran is a pain.

As previously mentioned, Kam went to Karazhan on Tuesday as Elemental spec DPS. The raid was starting on the mobs just after the Curator's room, in the library area. So having logged on right in front of my Orgrimmar neighbourhood friendly Shaman trainer, one respec later I was once again an Elemental Shaman, ready to sling some lightning bolts. Luckily I had a stack of spell damage food and some Elixir of Draenic Wisdom, so I wasn't totally unprepared. Only mostly.

The raid consisted of 1 warlock, 2 feral druids (including Medrare), 1 hunter, 1 warrior, 2 shadow priests, 2 healing priests and myself, Elemental Shaman extraordinaire. Excellently the raid leader was paying attention, and I found myself in group 2 with the 2 face-melters and the healers. I was using the following totems pretty much all the time: Totem of Wrath, Wrath of Air Totem and Mana Spring Totem. With two Vampiric Touch spells and the Mana Spring Totem we had our own little mana party going on. Kam also had no threat issues at all, possibly due to Elemental Precision, more likely due to the average amounts of damage Kam was doing.

Shade of Aran

For the tactics for this shady character, see Bosskillers.com and for some nice healing tips, see Jagerbombz's guide to Aran. Which I wasn't using, because I was damaging stuff instead. They are really good though.

During the Aran fight I was given the honour of interrupting his Frostbolt, which required me to watch his spell cast bar like an Earth-shocking hawk. The Quartz mod was most helpful here, putting Aran's cast bar right below my own so I could see at a glance what he was casting. I was using Earth Shock rank 1 to preserve mana, because the interrupt component is the same for any rank.

Still, it was quite tricky to interrupt and DPS; I had to wait before starting a cast to see what Aran was going to cast, and if I was in Flame Wreath I could hardly interrupt a Lightning Bolt cast by moving, so I was generally standing there waiting for Aran to do his Frostbolt.

Was I prepared? Having got down to the thinnest sliver of health, Aran did a polymorph during which all of my health was restored. Great I though, I'm back in the game again once this Polymorph runs out and he does his AOE fire blast for 8k. Then suddenly it occurs to me how much health do I have?. The answer was 7500 health. To survive an 8k fireblast. Oops. Surprisingly I was killed outright - I need to work on my stamina for this fight.

So how much damage does an Elemental Shaman in blues and greens do on Aran, while interrupting? That's me, Ando, languishing at 7. Not so good, but in this fight running away from Blizzard and trying to keep the interrupts up really doesn't help.

Prince Malchezaar

For the tactics for Prince, see Bosskillers.com and for some nice healing tips, see Jagerbombz's guide to Prince.

Our tactics for the Prince fight consist of hiding in front of the door while we hope the Infernals don't land anywhere bad. So I was mostly stood... in front of the door, chain casting Lightning Bolt. In this fight the elemental talent Storm Reach came in very useful; I was able to stand far out of range of Prince's Shadow Nova and didn't worry when the tank moved a bit close to the raid group.

My bloodlust was called for in phase 2, where Prince's damage increases. Other than that it was pretty much a tank and spank type fight. My spell rotation was Lightning Bolt spam in phase 1, due to the need to give our warrior tank a threat lead. In phase 2 where more damage was required I switched to a 3 Lightning Bolt, 1 Chain Lighting rotation and kept that up till the end. The 3 LB 1 CL rotation does more damage per second, but uses more mana. Eventually Prince died and so Kam managed to complete A Demonic Presence, the reward for which is a nice stamina trinket which hopefully might mean Kam has over 8,000 health buffed.

So what sort of damage was an Elemental Shaman doing on Prince? Ando is doing much better here, 577 dps and some pretty competitive damage. The warlock had Curse Of Elements up on Prince the whole time, so that helped. Plus I was mostly standing still so had very little spell casting interruptions.

Terestian Illhoof

Again, for the tactics for Illhoof, see Bosskillers.com and for some nice healing tips, see Jagerbombz's guide to Illhoof.

Not much to say about Illhoof really, it was mostly again just DPS the boss, apart from the Demon Chains which occasionally try to sacrifice someone. Burst damage is needed on the chains, so I kept my Earth Shock ready, followed by a Chain Lightning with Elemental Mastery if it was up. I did get to use the Fire Elemental Totem when the Imps were becoming a little too many for the warlock to kill, but after killing a few Imps the dozy fellow wandered off to have a go at Illhoof! Mixing in Chain Lightning on Illhoof would damage a few Imps too.

DPS wise Ando managed a respectable performance, similar to Prince. Go Ando, go! Ando got The Lightning Capacitor for his efforts, thanks to Zaphria who won the roll but passed it to me, which makes me very happy as Elemental Shaman are all about the lightning, and more lightning is always good.