Nagrand Resto quest reward items

I was helping out a couple of guildies in Nagrand yesterday, on a mad trip to try to get all the prerequisites for the Greatmother Chain done. This is a cool epic quest chain with some nice lore at the end, and I love both long convoluted quest chains and lore.

The reward for completing Forge Camp: Annihilated is the Metallic Headband of Simm'onz, which is a very nice upgrade from my previous Of Healing greenie. What's more amusing is that the WoWhead comments seem to think this is a tribute to either Gene Simmons or Richard Simmons. Having investigated richardsimmons.com and genesimmons.com I reckon it's Gene of Kiss (and the recent programme where he makes schoolkids rock) fame, due to his wearing of metallic gear in the 70s. These little unexpected touches contribute to making WoW such a nice game, when you recognise or get a reference its pure magic.

The other interesting thing I learnt last night, from the resto shaman accompanying our party, was that the Engineering Epic Mail healing helm can be used at level 62! It wasn't easy to get one before 2.4, but now the required Primal Nether is Bind on Equip, it is entirely possible to make one and start using it at level 62.

Finally it is possible for Durn the Hungerer to be killed by a party of 1 level 67 feral druid and 2 level 70 resto shaman. We managed it by using both fire elementals for DPS, alternately healing then DPSing and popping Bloodlust one after the other.

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.
  

Erk! Shaman class changes

Excitingly a thread about if people would stay Shaman in Wrath has been commented on by a Blizzard class designer no less. Unfortunately the response was somewhat short, merely stating I think you'll stay. Luckily later on we have a funny parody of Family Guy with some actual information... that Totems are in the physical school now. Seems like this is a useful change for Arenas and PvP, although I'm not convinced for PvE at the level I'm playing (ie fresh 70 level). I'd also be surprised if a Blizzard class designer posted "Actually I'm gonna slack off on this class this time around, I got GTA 4 to play you know" or somesuch thing, so these kind of terse responses are a bit annoying really, revealing only that they are indeed doing their job at the moment and designing some stuff. I just hope Koraa can be lured into revealing more juicy tidbits.

I'm personally hoping for more elementally talents, like control of elementals (an enslaved elemental as a minion would be cool), some more fun with fire and of course more lightning.

A solution to cancelling heals by twitching

On my Ramparts and Blood Furnace runs I was having difficulties cancelling heals when they were not needed. Now I'd got it into my head that I could move around a bit to cancel the heal, all very well apart from making me look a little odd, twitching around at the back of the party. However I was using one hand to guide the mouse around to select people, the other hand was pressing the healing buttons so that left no hands free to move around.

Luckily Wynthea over on world of matticus posted her Super-Secret Macros which include how to create a macro which cancels the currently casting spell and casts a heal. Something like:

#showtooltip Healing Wave(Rank 12) 
/stopcasting 
/cast Healing Wave(Rank 12)

I'll definitely give this a go next time I go healing. On an unrelated note you wouldn't think the infernal above could be frozen would you?

Ramparts and Blood Furnace sandbagging

Finally last night I managed to get a group together to do some instance healing. Unfortunately the instances in question were Ramparts and Blood Furnace, normal mode, in a full level 70 group apart from a level 64 feral druid (who was DPSing). Predictably Ramparts and BF fell without any trouble, apart from a scary moment when the tankadin got bored and decided to pull about 10 mobs onto himself. My emergency heal macro came in very useful in that situation.

Because we had a melee heavy party (Enhancement Shaman, Tankadin, Lock and Cat Durid) I was using Chain heal an awful lot and it really shone. Typically 2 or 3 of the melee units would take some damage, all I had to do was target the most damaged, hit chain heal and the other 2 would magically be restored. Awesome.

I was also practising using the Grid mod which seems to show health a lot clearer than the default UI, especially as I have positioned it near the middle of my screen so I can see it quickly. I am however having funny issues with the using one hand to cast the heals, the other hand to control the mouse to select the healee and finding some way of moving to cancel a heal. Maybe I need a key bound to a /stopcasting macro or something.

Despite the low level of the dungeons, I still managed to get a gear upgrade; the Holy Healing Band from a quest in Blood Furnace. A priest friend of mine says she still uses her band in Karazhan, so I'm quite pleased with it. I also wonder quite what's up with the item distribution in WoW that a ring from a level 63 instance hasn't been replaced by entering a level 70 raid instance. Maybe there is a better ring out there in a higher instance, or maybe the loot really is just all over the place.

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.

Netherstorm Resto quest reward items

Once again I had a short play session today, so any instance action was out of the question. Luckily a few guildies were online and I was able to recruit support for the two group quests Hitting the Motherlode and Dimensius the All-Devouring. I'd spotted the rewards from these quests were very good Resto upgrades for me, courtesy of wow loot, a really excellent gear guide for all classes.

Firstly a large rock giant by the name of Cragskaar had to die, achieved quite easily by myself and a protection paladin. My earthshield managed to keep him topped up without me needing to heal, so I did a little DPS (a guilty pleasure I'm sure) and ended up with a nice Celestial Jewel Ring. From the comments on Wowhead this is a really good healing ring, certainly a great upgrade from my current greens. Unfortunately the alternative was a cloak which is apparently one of the best PvE blue spellcaster cloaks. What a bind, I had to improve my resto set at the expense of the elemental set, but as a primarily resto shaman such is life.

Next up was a large angry void demon called Dimensius. I had the help of a Captain Saeed and his men, but from a previous attempt to solo it, I don't have enough healing power to keep him alive. This time with a warlock, prot paladin and a resto druid I managed it no problems. Unfortunately the resto druid was epicly geared, so my healing was somewhat minimal. One Void Slayer's Tunic makes a very nice upgrade to my previous chestpiece. Now I just need to get it enchanted and research more quests for gear upgrades.

I'm plotting with some fellow guildies and a newly levelled tank to go have a look at Sethekk Halls next week as a training run, for both myself as noob healer and him as noob tank. Should be interesting, and expensive if you know what I mean.