Ailis in Hunterland

So it’s been a very interesting couple of days.  My guild has held off tackling Ulduar until all the issues with the instance servers settle down, even though Ensidia already has downed Yogg-Saron (duh..).  We’re hoping to go in tonight on 10 man and check it out so here’s to crossing fingers. Kdkdos ksli ofk j… Okay, I’ll cross fingers later.  

In the meantime, what have I been doing?

I’m so glad you asked.

Ailis Has a Legitimate Split Personality

I dual-specced my Shaman for Enhance/Resto.  Since the instance servers have been sporadic at best, I haven’t been able to really try out the new enhance build or my resto build at all.  I did some pummeling on the training dummy and watched my DPS skyrocket so I’m pretty pleased with the enhancement changes.  The new expertise boost with Unleashed Rage enabled me to actually use my gem sockets for something other than expertise for a change.  It was nice to gem in agility…almost refreshing.

I still haven’t seen a Feral Spirit glyph yet on my server.  If you’re on Stormrage and can make one, will you send one to me?  I really would like to test it out.

I’m not sure how the changes in haste for melee will fully affect me until I get into a sustained dps situation like in a raid.  Once the servers are stable, I’m tempted to grab some people just to go pound on Patchwerk so I can really test my new stats.

Resto-wise, I’m a complete noob.  A few of you have asked for some resto info so I may ask a good friend of mine to step in here and jot down some resto notes for those of you wanting to know.  I’m really nervous to heal in Ulduar.  My gear is good, but is it good enough for Ulduar?  Everything I’ve read so far says “maybe” and that makes me quake just a little bit.

But it’s a good quake.  Promise.

I Challenge Thee!

Other than that, I love the Argent Tournament.  It’s such a little, silly medieval tournament in the far corner of deep, dark Icecrown but it’s a blast.  I love when you fly in on the taxi, everyone cheers when you crest the mountain leading into the arenas.  The duelling on the horses is a blast. I suck at it and am hardly coordinated enough to get it done but I got my achievement fair and square and was extremely excited afterwards.

The RNG continues to hate me as I fish for the Sea Turtle.  A guildie of mine got it on the first day and then promptly received a mini-pet from the fishing daily the next day.

I hate him.

However, I have enough mats for multiple stacks of Fish Feast so it’s not a total loss, right?

If we get into Ulduar tonight, more raid goodies tomorrow!

It’s Patch Day!  

Some of you, like me, are probably scouring the intertubes for all the information you can find to get ready for this afternoon when the servers go live.  I’ve been reading up on boss fights in the hopes that we can go into Ulduar tonight, browsing loot tables, reading up on new achievements and a ton more.

So, when the servers come up what are you going to do first?

For me, it’ll probably go like this:

Step 1. Log in

Step 2. Disconnect

Step 3. Reconnect and troubleshoot addons

Step 4. Disconnect

Step 5. Reconnect and buy dual-spec (yay, achievement!)

Step 6. Spec into Enhancement and Resto (builds still TBD but this is what I’ve been playing with)

Step 7. Disconnect

Step 8. Reconnect and attempt to hearth to Dalaran but end up having to take the boat because of lag

Step 9. Head out to the Argent Tournament

Step 10. Profit

What about you?  What are your plans for the first few moments of the new patch?

Set bonuses are a sticky subject among most classes.  My current T7/7.5 bonuses are “okay” to say the least.  I use water shield way more often than lightning shield so the 2-set bonus only does me good if I remember to clicky the black shield instead of the blue one on my autobar.  Four set is…better.  Faster attacking means more hits and means more of those hits will be lava lash hits which results in higher face-pounding numbers.

Tier 8 however, brings some very nice bonuses for the Enhancement shammy.

• Shaman T8 Enhancement 2P Bonus — Increases the damage done by Lava Lash and Stormstrike by 20%.
• Shaman T8 Enhancement 4P Bonus — Increases the frequency of Maelstrom Weapon being triggered by your melee weapon attacks by 20%

Hallelujah, the bonuses are to things I actually use in my rotations!

Stormstrike is the numero uno leading attack by my class.  Without it, our Earth Shock doesn’t do as much damage or, really, any of our nature-based attacks which is just about every frickin spell we have.  Lava Lash is triggered every 6 seconds when I’m pummeling.  The high damage burst it does in relation to my Flametongued weapon is always a welcome addition to my overall DPS.  

A 20% increase in both of these will mean I will have to count to 15 instead of 10 while letting the Tank secure aggro…nuts…

The four piece bonus is even cooler, in my horned opinion.  A five-stack of Maelstrom Weapon means an instant cast of high damage or high healing without breaking any swings, thus maintaining our overall DPS.  A 20% increase in the chance for MW to stack means, basically, every fifth swing or so will be coupled with a burst of lightning or a quick heal.  With the addition of Imp. Stormstrike giving mana back, the mana hit we take by firing off more lightning will balance out nicely in the end.

*cackles maniacally*

We’ll call it MAD for short.  After Patch 3.1 drops, I will officially have and be MAD.  I will be so MAD, in fact, that you will never know which Ailis you’re talking to at any one given time.

Why?

Dual-specs, baby.

Dual-specs.  That much anticipated feature that will allow anyone (if you’ve forked over 1000g), at any time (while not in combat), to swap specs.  Classes everywhere rejoice!

Wait, you’re a what?  Not a hybrid?  Wait a moment.  *consults her hunter husband*

Ohh, so some of you pew pew, boom boom, slashie slashie folks aren’t really jazzed about this.  That’s cool, man.  *examines her fingernails*

For the rest of us awesome hybrid bad-asses, this is a wonderful, beautiful thing.  

No more “I brought my heal gear in case you need me to spot heal in this fight.”  or “Do you need me to throw on my tank set for the chow?” or “I put on my one piece of hit gear for the MC on Raz.”  It will instead be a lot of “Oh, you need me to heal on this fight?” *click* “You need me to tank on this fight?” *click* “You need me to be ranged on this fight?” *click*

Dual-specs, for those of you ardently avoiding patch notes and the myriad of blogs devoted to the subject (which means they wouln’t be here, Ailis.  Hush you.), is a crazy new feature designed to give you two full talent trees, glyph panes, outfits and action bars to swap between at your disposal if you are not currently in combat.  You can go Heal/Tank, Tank/DPS, DPS/Heal, PvE/PvP, Heal/Heal, and many many more options.  

So, me?  Yeah, I’ll be going the way of a lot of shamans and go Enhancment/Restoration.  Ever since I heard rumors about the dual-specs, I’ve been ardently rolling on any offspec mp5 mail that drops…which is a lot and, funny, no one else wants it.  So you never know, will I be Bash-faces-in-Ailis or Save-lives-Ailis?

For the hybrid classes (Shamans, Paladins, Druids to name a few), this is a huge boon to us as it makes us a lot more flexible in raids.  In one full run of, say, Heroic Naxxramas, you will need anywhere from 4-6 healers depending on the boss.  When this is implemented, you could, feasibly, bring 3-4 dedicated healers and 2-3 hybrids who can flip to their healing spec when the fight requires it and go back to tanking or dps’ing when they can.  This opens up a lot more variety in who to bring on raids and a lot more flexibility – don’t have 5 healers online tonight?  Bring a druid, paladin or shaman who has healing as their second spec.  Same with tanks and even the difference between melee and ranged dps.  Have too much melee for KT?  Kitty, please to transform into mister owl-bear and go pew pew?

However, does it do a little bit of injustice to the pure classes?  Are rogues, hunters, warlocks and mages going to get a little bit of snubbery because they can’t flip around to fill needed roles?  I don’t think so, actually.  Each of the pure classes provide skills and services that the hybrid classes, in most cases, cannot.  

What it will do, is require you to be on your toes as you cannot switch specs in the middle of a fight.  Decide who is going to be in what role before the fight starts and, for those of us stepping into Ulduar knowing very little (if anything) about the boss encounters, hoping you made the right decision to have me go dps instead of heals for this guy.

How about you?  Are you going to dual-spec it up or stick with the solo spec you have going now?