Ailis in Hunterland

I, like many other WoW players, read Elitist Jerks obsessively.  I’m not the number cruncher that most of them are and some of their formulas and theories go way over my head but I like finding the nuggets of information and using their information (what of it I can actually understand) to help hone my character(s) as they progress to and through the end-game.

One post I’m deliciously addicted to is their Enhancement Shaman BiS thread, in which they talk about The Wishlist (as I like to call it).  Every tier that is released, they put together a list of the absolute Best-In-Slot (BiS) gear/gems/enchants/glyphs and build for your enhancement shaman.  I call it my Wishlist because this list is only available if you have access to every possible option of raiding – including hard modes.

With Tier 9, in case you didn’t know, all the loot is faction-specific.  Stats are identical but names and skins are different depending on your faction affiliation.  EJ wrote up their list from a Horde’s perspective so I thought I’d give some of you guys a hand and rewrite the basic gear list from an Alliance perspective.  I’m also going to write this without any profession buffs so keep in mind you’ll have an extra boost to one of your stats with Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking, Enchanting, Inscription or Blacksmithing.

To make this easy to follow we’ll do item slot followed by name of piece, the gems in order of slots available, and proper enchant (similar to EJ’s table but without the table).

• Head - Nobundo’s Faceguard of Triumph – Chaotic Skyflare Diamond/Wicked Ametrine – Arcanum of Torment
• Neck - Charge of the Demon Lord – Precise Cardinal Ruby
• Shoulders - Nobundo’s Shoulderguards of Triumph – Precise Cardinal Ruby – Greater Inscription of the Axe
• Back - Vereesa’s Dexterity – Precise Cardinal Ruby – Greater Speed
• Chest - Breastplate of Cruel Intent – Bright Cardinal Ruby/Nightmare Tear/Wicked Ametrine – Powerful Stats
• Wrist - Bracers of Dark Determination – Precise Cardinal Ruby/Bright Cardinal Ruby
• Hands - Nobundo’s Grips of Triumph – Bright Cardinal Ruby – Crusher
• Waist - Belt of Deathly Dominion – Wicked Ametrine/Bright Cardinal Ruby/Bright Cardinal Ruby – Eternal Belt Buckle
• Legs - Nobundo’s War-kilt of Triumph – Balanced Dreadstone/Bright Cardinal Ruby – Icescale Leg Armor
• Feet - Sabatons of Ruthless Judgement – Wicked Ametrine/Wicked Ametrine – Icewalker
• Finger - Ring of Callous Aggression – Bright Cardinal Ruby
• Finger - Planestalker Signet – Wicked Ametrine
• Trinket - Comet’s Trail
• Trinket - Death’s Verdict
• Main Hand & Off Hand - Remorseless – Wicked Ametrine – Berserking
• Relic - Totem of Electrifying Wind
• Glyphs – Windfury/Stormstrike/Feral Spirit (This is also best set up for Tier 8 as well so go ahead and get these glyphs now if you don’t already use them)
• Build – 18/53/0 (This is only for Tier 9 – for Tier 8, current Max DPS build is 16/55/0)

You will notice that the vast majority of these items come from places like the 25-man Tribute Chest, 25-man Algalon and other hard modes.  Like I said, wishlist and only available if you have access to (and succeed at) every possible level of raiding.

It will still be my wishlist because you never know but I will try over the next week to put together a 10-man version of this for those of you in 10-man guilds (as I know there are a lot) for your BiS given what you have available to you.

Happy hunting!

Continuing in the change to make relics purchaseable with emblems (thank god), 3.2 will allow you to purchase your sigil/libram/idol/totem with the new Emblems of Triumph.  So, far the totem choices for Shamans appear to be pretty nice.  They are iLevel 245 so a definite upgrade from Ulduar 25 totems.

The Enhancement totem is Totem of the Quaking Earth and I could see this being pretty popular based on the straight AP it gives every time you use Lava Lash.  Some initial testing done on the PTR showed that this totem procs constantly, so it’s looking like PvE enhance shamans actually have a good totem for once and don’t have to rely on PvP ones.

However, given the overall reduction in Haste from Teir 8 to Tier 9, I could see some Enhance Shamans possibly going for the Elemental totem in order to maintain a higher haste rating.  Elemental shamans who have done testing with this on the PTR do not seem overly thrilled and are, so far, calling this inferior to the current Totem of Hex.

Update: While Elemental shamans are still discussing the stats on this totem, Enhancement Shamans are leaning towards (again) the Elemental Totem given the fact that we sling Lightning Bolts more often than we sling Lava Lashes.  Initial testing shows almost a 100 DPS increase over the Enhancement totem, making the Electrifying Wind totem (for now) the Enhancement winner.

It would appear Patch 3.2 will drop very soon as final testing for the Coliseum is underway/finished and Blizzard is focusing more on minor bug fixes than any more class changes or item implementation.  The loot tables are still being finalized and I’m busy scouring them for possible upgrades and to see where Blizzard is taking my class in terms of stat focus and overall gear itemization.  I’m hoping to complete my gear wish list soon, but, for now, let’s focus on the Tier 9 set.

For ease of comparison, we’ll be looking at the Totally Triumphant set, which will be the highest iLevel set you can attain (258).  Keep in mind, there are two other sets that are slightly lower than this one.  However, Blizzard has tried to drive home the concept of raiding progression paths so Ulduar 25 should easily transition into Coliseum 25 with minor hiccups.

First thing’s first.  Here is the new Tier 9 set for the Alliance.  I’m going to focus on the alliance because that’s what I play but, as for me, I’m glad we have a skirt instead of pants as the Horde do.  Clicky for larger version.

Shaman T9 Enhancement 2P Bonus - Adds an additional 3% chance to trigger your Static Shock talent.
Shaman T9 Enhancement 4P Bonus - Increases the damage done by your Earth Shock, Flame Shock, and Frost Shock spells by 25%.

For comparison, here is the Tier 8 (25 man) set and bonuses (again, clicky for larger, readable version):

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%.

Bonuses

For me, I’m still not completely convinced that the bonuses are better than the current Tier 8.  The current 2 piece bonus is just sick as SS is our constant damage dealer, how we regen mana, and enables us to do far more damage overall.  That versus a minor additional percentage for Static Shock doesn’t seem like an “upgrade” at all.  Maybe a sidegrade.

I could see, however, how the four piece bonus would be slightly more desireable.  In PvE, we only ever use Earth Shock so that damage compared to the instant cast damage of Lightning Bolt when MW stacks to 5 is a little more appealing.

Most people will probably have the 2 piece bonus from both for a little while, which means you’re giving up the MW stack percentage for Static Shock percentage.  If you’ve glyphed into Lightning Shields and have taken Improved Shields, this could be a beneficial combo of bonuses.

Design

Personally, I think the Alliance Tier 9 Shaman set looks like a jelly bean factory exploded onto Shredder’s costume.  How can I be expected to be taken seriously as a bringer of pain in such a colorful regalia?

What I like most about the current design is that, in the transition period between Tier 7.5 to 8.5, you don’t look like a complete goofball.  The coloring is similar and everything looks relatively alright together (not perfect but bearable).  The transition from Tier 8 to Tier 9 is just going to be, well, goofy.  Red and fiery mixed with crazy pastels.

Stats

Other than the poor design elements and the somewhat questionable set bonuses, the stats on the new Tier set are pretty solid as you can see in this comparison.  It is quite stat gain in just about every category.  I’m not overly thrilled that I’m losing a red socket and two yellow sockets for three more (somewhat useless) blue sockets, but it’s manageable.

We will be losing 6 expertise overall from set to set, which comes out to roughly .73 point (every 8.2 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise), so nothing to be alarmed about.  Keep in mind, though, that the expertise in the Tier 9 set is only found on the gloves; whereas, the current expertise on Tier 8 is split between the gloves and shoulders.  Try to be mindful of that as you upgrade.

The interesting one is the huge reduction in overall Haste – 115 points.  Is this Blizzard’s attempt at making Haste a lesser stat for Enhancement Shamans?  Or will we see more haste on non-tier items?  Haste, right now, seems to be a personal taste stat.  I’ve seen some people gem out every available slot with Haste; I’ve seen some people avoid it like the plague and go for straight AP and/or Crit.

As the loot tables are finalized for the live servers, I’ll be taking a look at non-tier items to see how the overall itemization is proceeding, particularly in terms of this Haste reduction.  As for right now, I’m going to keep after my final pieces of my Tier 8 and a few more Runed Orbs to get some boots made.

Yeah, yeah, I’m on a raiding topic streak but I swear I’ll get back to the Shammy stuff soon.  I still have to make fun of discuss the new Tier 9 armor design.

With Ulduar, Blizzard embarked upon a slightly new path of raiding, a parallel route, so to speak, called Hard Mode.  This was tentatively seen in Naxx with achievements earned for killing a boss in a “harder fashion” which contributed to overall achievement netting you a Proto-Drake.  With Ulduar, Blizzard stepped it up a bit by adding another incentive in terms of loot.  Kill the boss in Hard Mode and you will receive a random piece of loot at a higher ilevel.  Sounds good in theory, right?

Two major issues have risen out of this motif, one of which is touched on by WoW.com, that being morale.  The other issue is gear itemization.

Morale

The first issue of morale comes from guilds attempting hard modes on select bosses before the instance is even fully cleared.  We come from the conditioning regarding raiding that the first 25% of a raid’s bosses are loot piñatas, the next 50% are a mite bit harder and the final 25% are more difficult and require much more coordination and, at times, the loot upgrades from the previous 75%.  So, with this conditioning in mind, it would stand to reason that the Hard Modes follow the same arc so, if we will receive better gear from XT Hard Mode and that gear will help us down Yogg in Normal Mode, then why shouldn’t we go for it?

Good concept and whether or not you should varies from group to group and raid leaders must be ever ready to make the call to do it or not.

However, you lead to morale and burnout issues.  Wiping on FL+4 multiple times takes a lot out of a group.  So you dial it back to FL+2 and move on.  By the time you hit your actual progression boss, say, Mimiron, your raiders are already suffering the diminished morale from a failed Hard Mode attempt and, consequently, may not give it their all on an entirely brand new boss.  Even if you down him and it’s the first time, yes, you’re excited, but, dammit, we didn’t down FL+4.  In terms of conditioning, Flame Leviathan is seen by your raiders in the same light as Noth or Anub’Rekhan in the simple fact that it is the very first boss of the instance and, therefore, no matter the mode, should be easy.  Wiping on him, no matter how many towers or how illogical that seems, is demoralizing.

Some guilds have addressed this issue by refusing to attempt any Hard Modes until the instance is completely cleared at least once.  I believe this is a great policy – if you can move through the instance at a relatively decent pace.  However, if you’re stuck on the same boss(es) week after week and are, effectively, farming every boss up to that point, the second issue with Hard Modes comes into play – gear itemization.

Gear

Whenever a new instance is released and the loot tables are pretty much set, I open up a notepad document and start browsing loot tables for my upgrades.  I make a very specific list of what is potentially best in slot and any optional “I’ll take this instead since it’ll probably be a while until I have that” pieces.  I do this so I have a game plan going into every boss.  I don’t have to sit there and compare what dropped to what I have to see if it’s an upgrade.  I know what I’m after and I save my rolls, loot council, DKP, whatever the system for those specific pieces.  This usually means I pass on items that may seem like upgrades.

The issue arises when my best in slot non-tier upgrades are spread across four different versions of the same instance – 10 man Normal/Hard and 25 man Normal/Hard.  I’m not alone in this either.  Elemental Shamans have it even worse than I do with very little non-mp5 mail dropping in any version.  Most of the classes have this issue.

I realize that Hard Mode Heroic will drop the best gear.  That’s a given.  Top level content = Top level gear.  But to restrict certain slot upgrades to only a certain boss’s Hard Mode doesn’t seem like the best plan or the best idea in terms of raider morale.  You end up with a raider who upgrades everything except one certain piece because their group cannot or simply will not kill a boss on Hard Mode.  Eventually, you end up with several raiders in this predicament and, while you have the first however many bosses on farm in an instance while you’re working on the latest progression boss, overall morale is low because no one has gotten an upgrade in a while.

So what’s the solution?  For me, I don’t exactly know.  For Blizzard, separate lockouts.

Four Versions

We have the Coliseum on the horizon and, with it, comes the option of four different Raid IDs – 10 man Normal, 10 man Hard, 25 man Normal, 25 man Hard.  Each one has a different loot table; each one has the same bosses.

In theory, this seems to be a good idea.  Don’t touch Hard Mode until Normal Mode is done.  Step into Hard Mode to see what it’s like, then go into Normal when you don’t get as far.  Separate progression paths depending on guild scheduling and group makeup.

But will this lead to increased raider burnout?  We are talking the same instance four times each week, potentially.

And does this solve the problem of gear itemization?  Will our Elemental Shamans be able to fully gear up in all four modes separately or will their upgrades be spread across all the versions?  (This we won’t know fully until the loot tables are completed.)

Blizzard has already stated that this is an experiment only and they aren’t setting this new method of raid lockouts in stone until they see how it works with the Coliseum.  So I guess we’re all going to be participating in this experiment.

/jumps on her wheel and runs