Enhancement BoE and crafted upgrades

After the post at World of Matticus, and Kam putting in around 1500 dps maximum last Naxxramas visit, I felt some upgrades were needed.

The following scored highly on my current enhancement scale. They are craftable BoE stuff so I can get them from guild crafters.

Titanium Impact Choker. I'll probably stick a hit gem in the socket as Kam is very under the hit cap (200 currently vs the cap of 367 iirc).

Ice Striker's Cloak. Kam's current cloak has 31 hit rating, whereas this has none, but is better otherwise.

Giantmaim Legguards. No hit rating but my current ones don't have any either.

Titanium Impact Band. This is a pretty nice ring, with a hit gem in it. But not as nice as...

Ring of Scarlet Shadows. Second only to this one in the places I can go, this blue ring is awesome. A big wodge of hit rating, a socket I can put a hit gem in, crit and AP the only problem here is that it is Unique-Equipped, otherwise I'd get two!

Titansteel Bonecrusher. Well obviously I want Kel'Thuzad's Reach but for now the Bonecrusher is very close.

Now one thing that is odd is that with these crafted items, the equivalent spellpower ones seem to score higher, for instance the Titanium Impact Band is lower than Titanium Spellshock Ring. I guess because I am using Flametongue and shocks, spell power is useful. Still, I steadfastly refuse to grab spellpower items so am stubbornly getting the melee ones instead.

Also the spellpower weapons such as Titansteel Guardian rate higher because of their stats. But again I'm not taking spell power weapons. It would be interesting to equip an epic spellpower weapon to test the DPS difference, if I got one off-spec for my healing set.

Other crafted gear Kam is currently wearing includes:
Swiftarrow Helm
Razorstrike Breastplate
Eaglebane Bracers
Leggings of Visceral Strikes
Along with BoE drops of:
Spored Tendrils Spaulders
Belt of Tasseled Lanterns
Boots of the Terrestrial Guardian

My off hand could do with some upgrading too, I have an eye on Pride but before I get the required 50 emblems I'll probably pick up the Crimson Cranium Crusher or Unholy Persuader. Confusingly the scale seems to suggest that Kam's current dagger is better than the Persuader by 170 points, but when I ran an Enhsim with the values for the Unholy Persuader put in, Kam gets 30 extra DPS with the Persuader. Most odd, but I trust the sim rather than the scales it generates. When Kam gets a different, slow off hand, I shall do some dummy tests to see if the dagger really is better as the scale claims. This is without even thinking about dual wielding the Brunnhildar Axe with FB/FT. Ye gods.

In conclusion I'd say deciding on a weapon upgrade is difficult, but at least the rest of Kam's gear can be upgraded without (too much) confusion.

Soloed: A Hero's Burden

In order to do dailies for The Oracles faction, one must complete a long and fun quest chain for both Frenzyheart and The Oracles, cumulating in A Hero's Burden. This group quest requires you to kill an elite Lich who will summon two adds at 30%, the twist being that one is a Frenzyheart and one an Oracle - the one you don't kill will help you with the Lich and then offer a quest to become aligned with their faction.

So lacking a group Kam tried it alone. The Lich does frost bolts, so a frost resistance totem was the first order of business. He is also elite, so the Earth Elemental seemed a good idea. I saved the wolves for when the adds came, they could offtank one in a pinch I thought.

A bad pull was the first mistake. Usually happy to run across half the zone to aggro something, this time Earl the Earth Elemental sat still and refused to engage. Sigh. So desperately trying to kill the Lich, I summoned the wolves to help with some heals. Finally I kited the lich onto Earl and some tankage happened. The lich was annoyingly immune to Earthshock - it wouldn't interrupt his frostbolts at all. In hindsight I should have used Grounding Totem to absorb some of those bolts. He also had a habit of freezing Kam to the ground and backing off out of melee range, but this was a great opportunity to self-heal.

The Earth Elemental lasted until the Lich was at 30%, then he died. No problem. At 30% mr undead turns into an Ice Cube Of Shame* (tm) and summons the aforementioned adds. Now I'd used the wolves already, so a Fire Elemental was called to deal with the gurloc while Kam went to kill off the puppy. In hindsight maybe I should have used Hex on the gurloc... hindsight is a wonderful thing really. Anyhow the fire elemental doesn't do enough damage to kill the gurloc, so he is an adequate off-tank for this bit. The puppy is a ranged type so keeps on running off to get range, which is quite annoying for a melee DPS type like Kam, but eventually he was nuked down and killed.

Finally the gurloc add became friendly, mr Lich came out of his Ice Cube Of Shame and Kam tanked him. Well ok, frantically kept himself alive with LHW while the friendly gurloc DPSed the Lich down. Hurrah! The Lich was killed and the quest was soloed. Kam is now honoured with The Oracles and can get to grinding to Revered for the egg.

* The Ice Cube Of Shame is thus called because, in Karazhan runs of old, you could tell which Mage had overthreated and pulled aggro because they would suddenly become an Ice Cube. It's really obvious guys, you ain't foolin' no one.

Kam in Kara... Naxxramas

Thursday was raid night, so Kam went along to Naxxramas as run-in-and-out melee DPS. With the green weapons, pastel mixture of blue and green gear and little clue, off we went into the Arachnid quarter.

Anub'Rekhan was fairly ok, Kam mainly stood behind him and did some hitting. When the crypt guard thing appeared the DPS were meant to switch onto it, but we were also meant to stay spread out so the spike things Anub shoots didn't hit more than one person. Sadly the off tank was positioning the add near to Anub, so I couldn't move onto it without getting in line with some squishie cloth type or another. So I just sat on Anub instead. We did try the kite tactic when the cloud thing happened, but the healers got confused and died or the tank died, so we reverted to tank-and-spank instead, which worked well.

Anub dropped Knife of Incision which scored far higher on my enhancement scale than Kam's crusty 90 dps green weapon, so it was equipped. And Kam's DPS jumped by around 100. Still, I did feel dirty using an offhand dagger with flametongue.

Grand Widow Faerlina. Yes, due to some confusion the add which dispels her frenzy died too soon, so a wipe happened and Kam ended up dead in front of the lady. Second time we got it right and she bit the dust. Kam's role was to stand behind Faerlina and do some DPS, nothing too exciting. The reward was the Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets, a proper upgrade! Got to get those gloves gemmed and enchanted.

I didn't want this to turn into an Incompetent Warrior style post, but on our next boss Mrs Maexxna, some shaman was meant to be keeping the Poison curing totem up and Nature resistance. Now unfortunately said shaman got confused and thought Mana Spring was in a different school to Poison Cleansing, so put up mana spring after poison cleansing, resulting in the poor main tank getting the nasty poison on him and dying. Some staring at the floor was done, all corpse-like.

Second time Kam got it right and we had poison cleansing, natural resistance and some standing behind the big spider swinging weapons wildly - resulting in one dead spider.

Finally the raid went to have a look at Patchwerk, because he is a "simple tank and spank". Sadly the off tank wasn' quite hard enough so Kam once again ended the encounter lying face down on the floor. Still, Kam got the spider wing achievement, some loot and emblems for his efforts, so it was a good run overall.

Heroically going forth to find bugs

Tuesday night was the first Lich King heroic Kam had attempted, luckily it was Drak'Tharon Keep so he could do the two quests he had for it.

Currently Kam is specced as Enhancement and, because there are quite a few healers in the guild, will be staying that way until the dual spec thing comes in, when I can reacquaint myself with the healing ways. Of course that means there is much healing gear to be collected through quests until then. But anyways...

The run went fairly well. Given my inexperience with melee DPS in groups, Kam managed to die on Novos the Summoner, but still got the achievement for killing it. Many deaths were had on the void circles at the beginning too. Maybe I need to turn down the scrolling combat text so some of the actual floor is visible over the spam?

On the final boss I managed to taunt the boss off the tank while transformed, so Kam was soundly flattened, and was dead when the boss died. Not released mind, just lying there enjoying the fight. But when The Prophet Tharon'ja died, Kam didn't get the achievement for killing it, so didn't get Heroic: Drak'Tharon Keep or the normal one. Ouch. Apparently this has happened before for other guildies, but I raised a ticket anyway in hope. Unfortunately it seems GMs can't fiddle with achievements, so they suggested I redo the kill and I should get the achievement. Helpful.

Kam also got to hex things on this run, which was great fun. I almost felt like a mage, what with the turning mobs into critters, having to get in range for the pull, and shouting out when the mob became unhexed. Unfortunately with the 45 second cooldown, once the mob is out it cannot be rehexed immediately, so it's more a fire-and-forget type spell.

Finally I'd like to curse Drakuru for leading Kam astray and make a promise that Kam will be back to get him in Zul'Drak.

Ding 80, grats say Rhonin

While working on the opening quests for Knights of the Ebon Blade, Kam hit 80. The achievement came up so there was no need to announce it in guild chat, much grats were received.

Then the next day a most curious mail appeared, from none other than Rhonin himself. Having followed the events in War of the Ancients and Day of the Dragon, this was pretty cool. He was right too, although the journey to 80 was no minor feat, the true battle of gearing up, running heroics and besting the raid content still lies ahead.

At least somebody likes Kam

With great grinding comes great reward - one Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole and one cute little Pengu. Having started on the Kalu'ak dailies at level 71, Kam has become very familiar with rescuing (or kidnapping) puppies, collecting boxes and getting da seal lovin' goin' down (mon). Although Kam's Nat Pagle Extreme Angler FC-5000 with a line from the STV competition had the same +fishing, it wasn't epic. And purple is what it's all about right? It's a bonus that Pengu is such a nice little pet, he makes a cute noise when you click him and I actually prefer him to Stinker.

My only tip for this rep grind is to get started early and don't dwell too much on the fact that you could be grinding for actual gear, rather than fishing trinkets. Oh, that and water riding & walking is really useful when trying to catch tasty reef fish.

Resto gear guides for Heroics and Naxxramas

Happy new year peoples. Now Kam is almost 80 I've started to look for big lists of Resto loot to go seek. Here is what I've found thus far.

Chain Heal Rises as Circle of Healing Falls has an interesting discussion about stats for haste and mp5 to shoot for (350-400 haste & 550 mp5 in combat).

This Healer Wrath rep post from World of Matticus has more to add to my old Shaman rep post. This one covers all healers, so is an interesting read to keep informed of what the other healing lot are after.

Mana Tide - To-do List for the Level 80 Resto Shaman is a nice list of specs, glyphs, reputation loot and BoE stuff.

Way Of The Totem: Rep rewards: Filling your gear gaps has more rep item discussion, but you can never get enough, right?

The Egg and I is a discussion of where to spend those badgers, erm I mean emblems, from Way Of The Totem.

Gear Choices Pt. I - Gearing up for Naxx is the list from Shields Up!

Healing With Hooves is a blog I've just discovered, but they have a good 3 part guide to Resto gear part 1 part 2 part 3.

Now all I need is similar lists for Enhancement and Elemental. Me, collect 3 sets of gear? Why I've not done that since... ok, since the end of TBC.