The MM guild changed the raid schedule for this week. On Monday. Our G2 raid leader (I'm calling us G2 even though we don't really have two regular raid groups yet) had some real life issues to take care of and did not schedule our planned Wed/Thurs raid nights. Instead, Mf, another tank and raid leader that had not been raiding, scheduled a Blackwing Descent raid on Tuesday night. Wild didn't see the raid on the sked until Tuesday afternoon. Well, the Wild family already had plans for Tuesday night so Wild did not sign up. The BWD raid is up for Wednesday night, too, and Wild signed up for that. We'll see if it comes off, and if Wild gets an invite.
The Three Clans ran into some difficulty with the dungeon and pvp finders when we gathered together around 8:30pm Tuesday night. Sin, Lao, and JB had planned to group up and see how we'd do in level 80 dungeons and pvp. But the dungeon finder demanded that our gear be at least i272 to get an invite, and we could not muster up that level of gear. We tried pvp, and again were told to come back when we were better geared. Stupid rules.
So we switched to Unbleached, Kiren, and Sista on the alliance side. We started with pvp, and while waiting Kiren slaughtered Sista over and over in duels. How many was that, Kiren, nine kills? He did let Sista win one of them so she could claim the achievement. Kiren is one tough pally. Sista is learning, though, so watch out!
We finally got into a WSG match. I'll give the horde credit for working together. I think the allies might have had the better talent and gear, but we didn't really jell as a group until very late in the fight. Sista loved slipping into stealth mode and then ripping into an unsuspecting horde with her Ravage attack. Not so much fun was trying to chase a target that knew there was a stealthed cat druid in the area and who twisted this way and that to avoid letting Sista get in range. Too many times Sista came too close to other horde players and she'd lose her stealth. Sista did have her moments, though. Sista was mostly on the attack, but did find herself helping to defend our base with Unbleached and one other at one point. We'd killed one attacking horde, but two others had gone to the roof (a mage and a moonkin) and we were exchanging fire. Sista slipped into stealth and crept up to the roof. The moonkin never knew what hit him. Sista killed him in seconds. The mage was a good distance away and had time to hit Sista with spells several times before Sista could close. Still, Sista almost took him out, and although Sista died, the mage retreated from the roof. Despite outplaying us the horde could not cap our flag, capturing it nine times but then losing it. That was ultimately their undoing and we won the match.
Here is how the stats played out:
Unbleached couldn't stay any longer so Kiren and Sista headed into the dungeons. Multiple runs in Scarlet Monastery and a run in Razorfen Kraul bumped Sista from level 33 to level 35 and I believe Kiren made it to level 37. Sista picked up some more gear and is happy with her progress, although she is still unhappy with the state of her healing gear. At the end of the RFK fight we decided to go after an optional boss. There were only three of us - Kiren, Sista, and a very good hunter (who out-DPSed Sista the whole night the rat). Kiren could mostly keep himself healed as we cleared through trash to the optional boss. When things went a little long against the boss, though, Sista figured Kiren might be out of "save me" abilities, so she popped out of cat form and healed. Healing with feral spec and full agi gear wasn't all that good, but it was good enough and we brought down the boss. Sista does want to be able to heal, and is dual specced to heal, but the gear just isn't there yet. I'm sure Unbleached would like to pew pew in shadow spec now and then, too.
Wild picked up a new i359 chest piece Wednesday morning (replacing an i325 chest), pushing up his gear score to i342. Wild at first turned his nose up at the chest piece because the stats were not the best for healing, but the wonders of reforging made the difference and Wild couldn't resist grabbing it off the AH. Wild's spell power is over 6,000 now with MoTW and he has over 92,000 mana. Even with that size mana pool, it burns away fast.
JB has continued to make modest gear upgrades, primarily through quest rewards. Her gear score is i301 and she's working her nerve up to take on some random dungeons. She has been working hard on her spell priorities and has that down pretty good. No matter what her DPS turns out to be against a real boss, she is comfortable she would be hitting on all her spells in the right priorities.
One thing that she needed to be better prepared for was her totems. While questing and killing mobs, totems are pretty much drop and forget. In a dungeon it's a little more complicated, at least if you want to do it right. There are four types of totems (fire, earth, air, and water), and shaman can have up to four active at a time - one of each type. Shaman have the ability to drop sets of four at the same time, and up to three pre-determined sets can be configured. JB uses all three sets - one for soloing, one for groups, and one for pvp. However, situations change and a shaman needs to know when he should change the totems that he drops, and when to drop them.
Totems used to buff groups are what concerned JB the most. As group buffs have changed over time, other classes were given buffs that were the equal to or better than shaman buffs. This has been intentional on the part of Blizzard, as they do not want players to be invited into groups simply because of the buffs they bring. That has been the case in the past - paladin buffs were once so important that better players of other classes were not invited because there "had" to be a pally. Shaman, too, sometimes got the name of "buffbots" where the buffs were more important the skill of the player.
So now all of a shaman's major buffs can be replaced by another class, and if the same type buff is used by two different players, the more powerful buff cancels out the other one, and if its a shaman totem that's the one inevitably canceled out. There are some shaman that don't bother to totem buff at all, dropping only a DPS totem during fights and saving their mana by not dropping three others. Most shaman, though, try to learn what classes have buffs that trump their totems, and if those classes are present, switch to different totems that would help the group. JB is working on learning that.
Another issue is that shaman have a LOT of totems, and I at least have a hard time keeping track of what they all do, what type they are, and what they look like - just finding the totem you want can be frustrating sometimes. For that JB recently picked up the addon Totemtimers. TT separates totems into their four types, making it much easier to drop a single totem of the type I want. TT also makes it easy to put a set of four totems together in a compact, space saving way. Wild's button addon, Dominos, has three totem bars to make sets with, too, but it takes up quite a bit of screen real estate. What I don't like about TT is that totem sets show only the icons, not the names, and frankly I don't have every dang totem icon memorized and probably never will.
It's a work in progress, but JB hopes to be able to adjust her totem sets depending on the group makeup, and to be able to find single totems when the situation (or the group leader) calls for it.
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