Sunday Night (15 Apr) - Watermelon, Seeds, and Salt

Sunday Night (15 Apr) - Watermelon, Seeds, and Salt

JB caught up with a fresh Siege of Dragon Soul lfr on Sunday. She was in elemental spec in the forlorn hope of getting some gear. JB got her obligatory four bosses down, but of course no loot came her way. Some nice mail boots dropped, but JB was already wearing a pair just like them. Three times tier pieces dropped, but only one of them, the leggings, could be used by shaman. JB lost the roll on the leggings, and walked away empty handed.

For the Sunday night raid, JB switched back to enhancement spec. Our 6:30pm raid didn't get started until 7:15pm, but hey, that's fifteen minutes earlier than it took us on Saturday night. Our DPS group still had the three top DPSers from Saturday, along with a new arrival, a mage who has raided with Wild for a long time. JB knew our DPS would be much improved with her along. Our other DPS, who'd had so much trouble on Saturday, was also back and wearing those leggings JB lost the roll on. Better gear, better DPS, JB hoped. I will make one observation about the low DPSer from last night. The player is an alt of course, and an elemental shaman. JB does 20k plus DPS in her enhancement spec, but in elemental spec she really has to push to keep her dps above 15k. In her latest lfr, JB was 11th out of 17 in dps with 16.3k dps. The gear level difference isn't that different, either - enhancement gear is at i384, elemental gear at i380.

We reassembled in Yor'sahj's chamber and killed our way through the trash mobs. JB led with 25.5k dps on the trash, the mage who'd joined us was 2nd with 21.9k, and even the elemental shaman did 19.2k. The shaman was mostly spamming chain lightning, though, so the numbers will say more when we tackle the boss. It was time to see what we could do.

Our first attempt was pretty forgettable. We let oozes reach the boss, and we couldn't recover from it. It was a wipe. Not an auspicious start, given we'd failed three times the night before.

We righted the ship pretty quickly, though. On our second attempt we brought Yor'sahj down. Here are the dps numbers:

#1: JB, 22.3k dps
#2: mage Od, 20.8k
#3: mage Sb, 19.9k
#4: warlock, 17.1k
#5: shaman 2, 11.9k

I checked the elemental shaman's gear level - it's i381, better than JB's elemental gear. The shaman has no tier bonuses, but then neither does JB. I don't know what the issue is.

We moved on to the boss that Wild hates, because the RG2 raid seems to freeze and do poorly on Warlord Zon'ozz. That trepidation didn't carry over to JB, however, and the G3 raid brought the Warlord down on our first attempt. We've yet to do that in RG2. This fight augments dps so the numbers nearly double. Here are the results:

#1: JB, 36.5k dps
#2: warlock, 32.9k
#3: mage Od, 30.9k
#4: mage Sb, 29.6k
#5: warrior, 18.9k (single tank fight, so one tank went offspec dps)
#6: shaman 2, 16.8k

We made two attempts on the fourth boss, Hagara, but many in the raid didn't have much experience with this boss. It was good practice, but we wiped both times. JB finally met her match against Hagara. The boss has to be moved around a lot, and JB had a hard time staying in melee range of the boss while also avoiding all the nasty things she could be stepping in as well as the hurricanes that I swear followed her wherever she went. Mage Od topped JB on both attempts: 17.5k to JB's 17.0k on the first attempt, and 23.8k to 17.0k on the second. JB will have to work on that. We won't embarrass the poor elemental shaman, but it wasn't good.

Ok, I can't help wonder what the problem is. The strange thing is that there really isn't much to DPSing as an elemental shaman. The standard attack is (1) drop totems and keep them replenished (the Fire Totem being the most important to have up), (2) cast Fire Shock and replenish it whenever it drops off and when switching targets, (3) cast Lava Burst on cooldown, and (4) spam Lightning Bolt in between those things. There are two spell procs that do most of the damage, but they're automatic and there isn't anything special to do but cast them when they pop up. There are only two longer cooldown attacks: usually shaman open with the elemental pet that generally can only be used once in a boss fight, and earthquake, which is our AoE dps spell. That's all there is to it. I don't know who the shaman's main is, but maybe we could get some help for him. I just have to think he isn't keeping up his Frost Shock DoT and/or is missing his big procs.

Anyway, Philly is demanding some attention. Better get at it!