Thrall, Heal FFS!

You would think that the guy who brought Shamanism back to the Horde would at least remember to use Lesser Healing Wave when his health got low!


Actually this post is meant to be about Kam's experiences in Karazhan as melee DPS, but after running Kara, Kam popped over to the Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar to see the scourge invasion and awesome uber cool WCW-style fight between Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream. Check it out if you are in the area, the Horde faction leaders are all gathered in front of the arena area and argue a bit before the fight as well. It's a lore moment not to be missed. The only thing I'll say about the fight is that Thrall is down on health but not mana, and we all know for a Shaman you're not dead till the mana runs out. So here is hoping for a conclusion to the fight soon.


So enhancement in Karazhan. As a die hard ranged caster, doing melee DPS was... odd. Shaman could really do with some sort of charge to get in range quickly - those warrior types have one, but we spent a lot of time running around chasing mobs. In the chaos of spells going off, paladin consecrates and other effects, it was sometimes hard to tell which way a mob was facing, making getting behind them quite difficult. Luckily we didn't get to the Prince - I've seen the melee running in and out on that fight and don't really fancy doing it myself.


The fights we did do (Attumen, Moroes, Oz for Opera, Curator, Aran and Illhoof) were fairly standard and involved a fair amount of running around. Given all the running around it was surprising to discover that Kam did decent, competitive damage overall and maybe a shade more than in elemental spec.


In conclusion it was a lot of fun, but noticeably harder than being ranged DPS. There is a lot of running around to get into range of mobs and get positioned correctly for melee. Did I mention there was a whole load of running around? I don't know how the melee do it really.

I Kam haz bat!

What an interesting Karazhan. With an AOE heavy party all the trash pulls were done as packs, no crowd control required. A crazy mage decided to frost nova the last pack of elementals in the Menagerie... right in the path of the Curator. A ninja pull resulted, but we still killed the Curator in his first evocation.


Kam went as Elemental DPS and, despite a lack of spell hit now Blizzard have reduced Shaman hit from talents, managed to do 700-800 dps. Kam went with a 58/3/0 build, taking Thunderstorm just because. Didn't use the thing the entire night though, there were no mana issues because of the raid nerfing, and the knock back looks dangerous in some tightly-packed areas. Kam also didn't take Call of Flame or Lava Flows because there is no Lava Burst spell yet. I'm hoping the promised Elemental AOE improvements come through, because watching Mages and Warlocks annihilate packs of mobs in 5 seconds flat while I get 1 chain lightning off is... depressing.


We also hit the Wrath event boss Prince Tenris Mirkblood, on which Kam did some off-healing because our Shaman healer had a sudden compulsion to bring his Warrior in for some axe or another. The fight was quite fun and the bat pet is pretty nice, it helps toward the pet achievement for a start.


I'm really looking forward to any further world events in the prelude to Wrath.

The Nerfed Karazhan

Thursday night Kam went into Karazhan as healer, with the intention of trying out a 0/0/61 spec, seeing how using a spell rotation as suggested by Jagerbombz would work.


Unfortunately Karazhan is now just plain easy. Before patch 3 we could get almost all the bosses killed in 3 lots of 3.5 hour runs, except maybe Nightbane, over a total of 10 and a half hours. Last night we killed everything except Nightbane, Illhoof and Maiden in 3 and a half hours. I mean really. We even killed the elite packs of party guests! Kam managed to grab the tier 4 gloves and helm and many badges.


An earth shield and riptide was all that was needed to keep the main tank up, and some chain heals to top the raid off. While I agree that Blizzard spending a lot of time balancing stuff at level 70 would be a waste of their time, it seems the only serious healing practise is to be had in Zul'Aman or some new instances come Wrath.

They made me heal middle Karazhan!

What a bunch of ... anyway due to there only being 2 healers signed, Kam was set up to be healer for more Karazhan chaos. Under strict instructions not to skip Aran for Chess, we went into see Medivh's father.

• The Shade of Aran. The trash between the Menagerie and Aran's room hit really hard, particularly the Arcane Protectors, so much so that Kam was spamming lesser healing wave onto the tank and using his entire mana pool for each pull. I was totally not expecting that and got caught out on the first pull. Dead tank oops.
  
  The Aran fight itself was chaos; whoever was targeted by arcane missiles would take damage so quickly that only a lesser healing wave could save them. Often I would try to use a chain heal, but the cast time seemed too slow. After both us healers died, the time came for the DPS to step up and kill the old codger. Which they duly did.
  
• Chess. Without specific instructions not to do Chess, we did. Healing was erm... someone else took control of the healing piece so I had to DPS. The chest contained a nice pair of leggings which are a great upgrade over the PvP healing legs.
  

Rant on.
During all of the trash pulls and probably boss fights, the rogue would insist on standing right in front of the mob, swinging away at its face. Now enough people have already posted that this is a really bad thing, honestly everyone knows rogues do it from behind. Not only does standing in front affect your personal DPS, but the resulting parries make the mob hit faster. Hit the tank faster. The tank who I am trying to keep alive. So please for the sake of the Earthmother, DPS behind the mob.
Rant off.


Perhaps I've discovered why the tank was taking so much damage from Arcane Protectors?

Healing in lower Karazhan

With jagerbombz and Anna's sage words of wisdom ringing in my ears, Kam stepped into Karazhan as healer for the first time. Oh gods.


Luckily Kam was paired with a fairly uber resto druid and had at least seen the fights before, so I knew what to expect. Still, it was a nerve-racking experience.

• Attumen. The approach to Attumen was fine and the fight itself was very straightforward. Kam was assigned to heal the Off Tank and during the mounted phase did pretty much nothing except cancel heals.
  
• Moroes. The trash before Moroes was interesting; the packs required spotting which AOE-capable DPSer would be pulling the threat and tanking (hint: Boomkin), then earthshielding them and keeping up a mixture of healing wave, lesser healing wave when they took lots of damage, and chain heal when others needed a top up. Crazy boomkins.
  
  
  The Moroes fight itself was the stuff of my nightmares - the garrottes do 360 damage per second so frantic chain healing and lesser healing wave was needed to keep everyone alive. The off tank was garrotted but didn't call it out, so he suddenly died. Luckily Moroes was almost dead and was swiftly killed.
  
• Opera: Big Bad Wolf. The trash up to Opera was again fine, the Boomkin had an earth shield and Kam's full attention for the packs. The Wolf fight itself was fairly straightforward - following the guides above Little Red Riding Hood got an earth shield and lesser healing wave spammed onto them. Generally they survived too, which is always nice (sorry Honeydew).
  
• Curator. The approach to Curator was not smooth, more like mildly lumpy. The raid was unable to cope with 3 of the Ghastly Haunts by the back door - a single Haunt does a load of damage, never mind 3. We were also unable to cope with 2 packs of arcane creatures in the Menagerie at once. As you can tell, there was much ninja pulling.
  
  
  The ninja pulling included the Curator himself, who attacked a player who strayed too close, causing us to hastily form a U shape and Ablaze the mage to sling on what arcane resistance gear he could to soak. Healing on the Curator was very mana intensive - DPSers were taking damage from sparks and the melee who were chasing them took the brunt of it. Luckily chain heal is an awesome spell and with druid HoTs on everyone we managed to kill Curator.
  
• Maiden. After the heart-attack that was Curator, the raid moved onto an easier target, most illegally it turns out. Somewhere in our long forgotten raid forum lies a post describing how Maiden is to be left for the second or third raid night, but we erm forgot about that.
  
  
  The trash up to Maiden only became tricky when the Phantom Guardsmen summoned two Phantom Hounds which promptly attacked the healers. Kam still uses a shield so he has a decent amount of armour and can tank a hound for a while, our resto tree druid isn't so lucky and is quite squishie; I had to be alert for her taking damage and be ready with the lesser healing wave to help out.
  
  
  The Maiden fight itself proved tricky; during the Repentance stun we had an earth shield and druid HoT on the tank, but it was not enough to keep him alive, so a few wipes resulted. Eventually we got the tank to drag maiden over to us to break us out of repentance so we could carry on healing and the Maiden was killed.
  

The loots were the Dragon-Quake Shoulderguards, an improvement over Kam's old PvP shoulders, plus some loot no one wanted for off spec. Healing Karazhan is scary!

An open letter to the Kirin Tor

Dear Sirs,

As a deputized agent of the Violet Eye, charged with keeping Karazhan free of the Burning Legion, I wish to complain about the lack of assistance rendered to myself and other agents by the Kirin Tor.

Despite the dangers, I and many others selflessly keep the tower clear of Demonic Presences, we continuously Assess the Situation and have retrieved several ancient artifacts, among them Keanna's Log. This we do because we believe in the great responsibility bestowed upon us to stop the Burning Legion.

There is however a growing dissatisfaction among my fellow agents over the lack of assistance given to us when we travel to Karazhan to bravely defend Azeroth. The remote location of Deadwind Pass discourages casual visits, the route from the Outlands is quite arduous, even though we must fight the Burning Legion in the Outlands.

Other factions are more willing to assist their agents; the Bronze Dragonflight have recently stationed a representative in the World's End Tavern, who will teleport those in good standing to the Caverns of Time. The Shattered Sun Offensive faction Maintain a Sunwell Portal in Shattrath city for quick travel to the Isle of Quel'Danas.

Your own Supreme Commander of the Alliance Expedition, Archmage Khadgar, has opened portals in Shattrath city to major cities. Perhaps he is not aware of The New Directive which sends many agents into the accursed tower time and time again, otherwise I feel sure he would open a portal to Deadwind Pass.

There are rumours that the Greatstaff of the Guardian Medivh, Atiesh, still survives and can be used to teleport a group of agents to Karazhan. However relying on rumour and supposed legend is folly.

Already interest in fighting the Burning Legion in Karazhan is waning, I urge you to act before the agents of the Violet Eye turn their attention to fighting other threats, and the Burning Legion renews its attacks while you stand powerless in the sidelines.

Yours,

Kam

Image courtesy of Lainey Powell.

Nightbane - summoning an undead dragon

Once again the brave forces of the Violet Eye ventured forth into Karazhan, this time to summon the undead remains of Arcanagos, now named Nightbane, in an attempt to recover a Faint Arcane Essence of Medivh himself. Well, those of us with the quest did.

Typically Kam was there as Elemental DPS, so some standing at the back throwing Lightning Bolts was the order of the day. Things I discovered were:

• Totems are immune to charred earth effect Nightbane puts on the ground. This is very handy because generally I had to run around to get out of charred earth, if the totems were affected they would be burnt within about a second.
  
• One Tremor Totem per group is very good here to stop those fears dead.
  
• This is a long fight, 9 minutes, so Lightning Bolt spam is the most mana efficient "rotation" to use if mana is an issue. Can you rotate between the same spell? Probably not...
  

The fight ended with Nightbane dead and those mysterious Violet Eye types with more Medivh residue, whatever they are doing with it in that purple bubble of theirs. Growing a new Guardian of Tirisfal is my bet.

Testing WeGame.com video capture

Kam went on another Karazhan run last night, but let's not talk about that now. I've recently discovered the WeGame.com website, which appears to be a YouTube but for video games. They host vids, but what's more interesting is they provide a free client for Windows which records game videos. So I gave it a spin last night, just briefly.

The quality is reasonable and it was very easy to use; when the client was running a little square appeared in the WoW window, a single hotkey started and stopped recording. It did slow the creaky old PC down a little bit, so I didn't try it on boss fights.

Without further ado, I present (although not really proudly as such) my awesome test footage:

Kam's guide to Opera: Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz event - the only Opera we ever see in Karazhan with any regularity. Below I present my guide to it, the only reason I'm writing this is because I got my hands on the perfect illustrations for each boss. You'll see what I mean.

The Oz event starts with you facing off against 4 bosses; Strawman, Dorothee, Roar and Tinhead. These bosses activate in the order: Dorothee, Roar, Strawman, Tinhead, and Dorothee will summon her dog Tito at some point. Basically this fight is about following the kill order and certain classes get to do some specific things to help out. Let's look at each boss.

Dorothee

Dorothee has no aggro table, so she attacks whoever she fancies with Icebolts. After a while she will summon her dog Tito. Basically we nuke Dorothee as fast as possible and don't tank her; when Tito spawns, a hunter will put their pet onto him to tank him - Tito is the next to die. Having a somewhat tough pet helps her, as does keeping Mend Pet up and using Intimidation to stun, if you have it.

Roar

Roar is a cowardly lion who hits quite hard on cloth. Because he is cowardly, he can be feared easily, so we generally will get a tank to hit him a couple of times to build some threat, then get a warlock to chain fear Roar around the place. Roar spends most of the fight being feared and is killed after Strawman. A hunter can also use Scare Beast in case the Warlock's fear is resisted and Roar is massacring the clothies.

Strawman

Strawman, being made of straw, is very susceptible to fire damage. We usually assign a tank to Strawman who will drag him somewhere and keep him busy. However, when we have been short a warlock, we have put our 2nd tank onto Roar, so a mage has had the awesome task of keeping Strawman under control. Because any fire damage has a good chance to disorient Strawman for 6 seconds, a mage can keep him locked down permanently with Fire Blast and Fireball. Usually Strawman is the third to die, right after Dorothee and Tito.

Tinhead

Tinhead hits very hard and so is tanked by the main tank. After a while he rusts and so the tank can actually kite him around the back of the stage, resulting in the tank not taking too much damage. We usually therefore put the Bear onto tanking Tinhead and Tinhead is the last to die. I say last but actually what I mean is....

The Crone

Once all the travelling companions are dead (killed by some evil loot-seeking raiders), The Crone appears after a short break, short enough for us to start drinking to restore mana. This is a tank-and-spank fight, apart from the large cyclone which whirls around the stage. The tank and the raid need to move around to keep themselves out of the cyclone - anyone in the cyclone is whipped into the air and takes fall damage. The Crone has also learnt some Shaman tricks - she periodically does a chain lightning attack which can be mitigated by a Nature Resistance Totem or a hunter Aspect of the Wild.

Once The Crone is dead the raid can collect their loot and badgers. Loot of note is the Ribbon of Sacrifice, and Legacy only because every Kara-raiding hunter wants it.

Healing stuff

Having not actually healed this I can't give any massively useful tips. Dorothee will damage anyone so I would expect to be on the look out for random people taking damage. Roar is nasty if he gets lose into the clothies. Tinhead hits hard initially but after a while his tank should be taking little damage. Strawman, if tanked by a mage, should be locked down but the mage might appreciate a watchful eye just in case he gets to them. The pet tanking Tito is most likely in need of a heal; Mend Pet just isn't enough to keep a normal DPS pet (such as a cat) tanking Tito with its face, however if this isn't possible a pet will keep Tito busy for long enough that the raid should be able to kill Dorothee and then focus fire on Tito. The hunter won't be happy with you tho :) The Crone does that chain lightning which hits multiple people so more raid damage, although any nature resistance buff seems to mitigate a lot of it. Finally if anyone is silly enough to get caught in the Cyclone they will probably take fall damage, so again more multi-person damage. Really see the Hoof n'Healz guide to Oz for a good guide.

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.

Pew Pew LB McGrew, Chess Prince Illhoof

Or the One where Kam goes Elemental in Karazhan

I got into Karazhan last night as ranged DPS, so off to the trainer I went to respec. Why DPS? As BigRedKitty mentioned in the past, a DPSer does not need a minimum level of gear in order to enter Karazhan - you have 5 other DPS buddies to help out, whereas a tank or healer definitely does need a certain level of tankage or healing in order to not die horribly. Although my healing gear is probably good enough for entry level Kara (and I do intend to try it out one day), I don't think its up to bosses like Aran or Prince. So DPS it is.

Because I have just so much to say about the experience, I'll be splitting it across several posts, coming soon. Including loots, personal lessons, spec discussion, gear, etc. So, erm, stay posted.

Image by Axel Rouvin courtesy of Wikimedia.

Raid cancelled due to low turn out

Oh dear. I was signed for the Karazhan raid on Thursday which was due to start at Attumen, as healer-specced, but because we only had 9 signups, the raid was cancelled. The Bear, our venerated raid leader, has made the ruling that if we don't have enough sign ups by the time the raid list goes up, the raid gets cancelled. This is to avoid pestering people in guild chat to fill slots; we aren't a raiding guild so we don't pressure anyone to raid and it was felt that such pestering was causing pressure and potentially problems. That and the Bear was pestered solidly during work to cancel raids and finally relented and made such a rule.

Only having 9 sign ups on the first night of Karazhan is an unusual situation. A few months ago we would have 12-14 people signed up and the headache would be fitting them all in across the week. However, the summer has hit and although we don't have many students in the guild, we do have a lot of parents.

Because children don't need to get up early to go to school, during the summer holidays their bed times tend to slip later and later; no parent would pass up the chance to have a bit of a lie in after all. This means that a previously-attainable raid start time of 8:30 suddenly is slap bang in the middle of putting the kids to bed. The result is parents can't sign up for raids any more and have to log in later and do dailies and other grindy stuff.

So it's school holidays which seem to be having an impact on our raiding schedule; people have a load of alts they want to take into Karazhan so we are not short of signups, just those critical last few. For me, it may be some time before I can get into Karazhan healing, so I've signed up for the end-of-kara tuesday run as DPS. I'll find out tuesday lunchtime whether I'm successful or not.

DPSing The Black Morass

Because our raid leader has dictated that we must be Karazhan keyed in order to raid, I have been on the key chain for a month or so. Having got key fragments 2 and 3, wednesday was the big push to get through The Black Morass and get the Master's Key. Unfortunately we had a Resto Druid along for the keying, so I strapped on my rusty Elemental DPS gear and tried to keep up with the Hunter and Mage, while Medrare tanked.

I've seen Elemental Shaman do this thing before, so a quick rewrite of my totem macro later, I'm running Wrath Of Air, Strength Of Earth and Mana Spring Totem, for the spell damage, extra mana and, erm, well the Earth totem school is somewhat underwhelming so extra strength for the druid. Occasionally Tremor Totem for the fearing adds. From what I've read on Elitist Jerks, Lightning Bolt spam with a Chain Lightning thrown in when its off cooldown is the way to go, so that was my spell rotation. Finally, because we were not crowd controlling anything, I liberally sprinkled the swamp with some Searing Totems.

The result was indeed a dead Black Morass, Medivh was saved and ... the Orcs invaded enabling them to raze much of Azeroth. Although apparently this causes the unification of the humans into the Alliance, enabling Azeroth to withstand the Burning Legion invasion. So that's ok then. In a strangely Brannon-Bragga-esque twist, I gave Khadgar's key to Medivh who kept it to give to Khadgar in the future, whereas I was given Medivh's personal key.

Unfortunately a Resto Shaman masquerading as an Enhancement Shaman with some reasonable gear did less damage than the tank. Oops. Oh well, now Kam is keyed for Karazhan and can get started healing in some of the lower (and easier) parts.

Badge Fever and loot moaning

Badge Fever is a big issue in our guild. Normally demure, quiet members of the guild will come close to some monstrous Badge of Justice reward and suddenly become the mother of all badge whores. Badge Fever can be diagnosed using the following symptoms:

• Constant updates of how many badges they need ("Only 10 badges to go")
  
• Pestering for daily heroic runs ("Anyone up for the daily heroic? Please?")
  
• Moaning about slow clears of Karazhan or the nights where less than the maximum number of badges are obtained ("2 wipes on Aran? WTH...")
  
• Constant updates of how many badges they need ("Only 9 badges to go")
  

Equally vexing are those crazy people who hang out for certain loot drops, stoically attending each and every kill of a boss just to have the chance to roll on non-dropping loot. Something I am guilty of myself, having camped Attumen for 3 months.

Similar to the "loot" meme, ala "Loot-reaver", we now have a new one operating in our little guild, where we rename certain loot items people are after:

• Staff Of Infinite Complaining (Mysteries) - Most clothies would kill for this, but sadly it has only dropped twice.
  
• Crossbow of Relentless Moaning (Strikes) - All the hunters want this thing, despite it looking like you have your hand up a chicken!
  
• Sobber's Blade of Focus (Scryers) - The clothies are now after this one, their staff of infinite complaining discarded like so much flotsum.
  
• Whining Claw Necklace (Worgen) - Yes, I ground Attumen for 3 months for this thing and even changed my signature complaining that he didn't seem to carry it. Now I finally have it I've since swapped it out for a SSO Pendant, how ungrateful.
  

Who can tell what the next wave of craziness will be in our little guild. Stay posted is all I can say.

Karazhan key fragments number 2 and 3

Last night I got a group together specifically to grab the Second and Third Karazhan key fragments. Our little group of adventurers was Feral Druid tank, 2 mages and a boomkin, with myself Resto shaman extraordinaire healing. Healing a proper level 70 instance. Oh deary me.

The Arcatraz

This went well apart from when we chose to tackle Zereketh the Unbound. This nasty puts void circles underneath you, which if you don't spot them you take lots of damage and generally die. Spotting these void circles when I was staring intently at Grid was quite difficult. However when the tank backed into a small alcove on the left hand wall, he went out of line of sight. This meant I had to run forward into range of the nasty Shadow Nova... which promptly knocked me back before my heal had finished casting. Result, dead tank very shortly followed by dead healer when he spotted a void circle too late. The boomkin died at the beginning to a void circle anyway, but luckily our two mages were on the ball and finished Zereketh off. Who promptly dropped plate loot anyway. Grrr. I had Zereketh as my focus so I could tell when to pop Bloodlust, but in the heat of the battle I totally forgot.

The key fragment was easy to get after that and we wisely decided not to try to finish the instance and instead head on over to all druids' favourite instance, the Steamvault.

The Steamvault

Ah the Steamvault, SV, place of many many Cenarion Expedition rep runs so Druid B could get his Earthwarden. We have a saying in our guild now - "No more Steamvaults". Sometimes though you have to make an exception.

The run went well, clearing a couple of Bog Lords with the greatest of ease. The only sticky point was when the tank pulled an Ice Elemental pack and a group of Naga. Despite the best efforts of our AOEers, we didn't survive that one. Finally the last key fragment was mine and... we had a crack at the nearby boss, Hydromancer Thespia. I was dreading this after what happened in The Arcatraz, but oddly enough one Nature Resistance Totem and some serious elemental nuking later, she was dead. I even managed to pop Bloodlust at the end this time.

It now occurs to me that because the two mages had to nuke the elementals quick, it would have been more useful for me to pop Bloodlust at the beginning of the fight.

The Black Morass awaits

Kam is now ready for The Black Morass, from the point of view of the Karazhan key chain. Whether he is ready healer-wise, only an attempt on the Black Morass will tell.

Gear lists for Resto Shaman stepping into Karazhan

Because lists of gear are very useful, I've been keeping my eye on several places to get a good list of places to go, quests to do and crafters to hassle for resto gear. So in no particular order here they are:

• WoW Loot Kaliban's Shaman list. This is a nice list of good Shaman items which can be gotten from TBC 5 man instances and quests, broken down into Elemental, Enhancement and Resto. I usually go from the bottom up, starting with quests in Netherstorm, comparing to my gear and noting the quests to do. I would advise not to stop too soon either; initially I only looked up to BEM and then last night was surprised to receive Metallic Headband of Simm'onz as a quest reward in Nagrand.
  
• Matticus' recommended pre-raiding checklist for the Restoration Shaman. I have previously found several of the items from this list by checking WoW loot, but thanks to Matticus I've discovered I don't have the crafted White Remedy Cape and moreover someone in the guild can make it. There is a good discussion about which gems to use as well, whereas WoW loot doesn't really make any recommendations about specific gems.
  
• WoW Insider's Totem Talk Column: Stuff to wear to kill stuff in Karazhan Pt. 2. Despite the huge title, this is another good list of Resto, Enhancement and Elemental gear items to get pre-kara. There is a Part 1 and should be future parts. The article doesn't go into a lot of detail about where some of the items drop, but wowhead links are provided so you can find out yourself.
  

Shadow Labs, lies and videotape

Our venerable Raid Leader has dictated that people must be Karazhan keyed in order to raid in there, even though the requirement has now been removed. His reasoning is that by doing the instances on the quest chain you might pick up some gear, get experience of instancing, and of course get access to the upgradeable ring for Violet Eye reputation.

So last night I was in the Shadow Labyrinth attempting to get my first key fragment. Which was very easy due to the instance group I was part of on my hunter clearing the whole place first. We were helping out a level 69 Resto Shaman in the guild to get some badly needed XP, so I went DPS with a little bit of crowd control. I was watching the resto shaman to pick up some tips; he had the Tremor Totem down for the mobs which feared and seemed to be using Wrath of Air, Strength of Earth and I think Healing Stream Totem.

So 1/4 of the Karazhan chain complete, no loot and no instance healing experience. If the key fragment containers were somehow tied to the players in the instance then this sort of thing would not be possible, much like how the Chess event in Karazhan was changed so only those who did Chess could loot the chest reward. I'm not complaining because it worked in my favour in this instance, but I know a lot of this sort of thing went on before the Karazhan attunement was optional, so it did trivialise the attunement process for alts quite a bit.

Anyway I have plans to heal a Sethekk Halls run tonight so hopefully some healing experience in a real (virtual) world setting will be forthcoming.