MOVED!

Keine Ordnung is moving… and getting a new name! Under the title of Too Many Annas, my ramblings are continuing elsewhere. HOORAY! I’ve made the jump from wordpress.com to a self-hosted wordpress blog at the url:

www.toomanyannas.com

Any of you who have subscribed through RSS should find the transfer problem-free (if Feedburner is not lying). Any who click through should point your bookmarks and links to the above address, as this little template blog is now shut down officially!

Raiding and the Resto Shaman, or how I learned to stop worrying (about overheal) and love my Chain Heal Button

So, this is the first of a series of posts (hopefully) covering some aspects of raiding and resto shamans.

Blathering the First (for you who play resto shaman):

Know your strengths: You have Four (count’em) things that you bring to a raid that no other healing class does.

• Multiple Target Healing
• Heroism/Bloodlust
• Totems
• Earthshield

Read the rest of this post…

Even Bad Raid Nights can have Silver Linings

So, every raid has hot nights and cold nights. Sometimes it’s your fault, sometimes it’s not. Tonight… well, it wasn’t really our fault. Disconnects, lag, Hydross deciding he really didn’t care about threat lists (wut tank? lawl!), our MT/Frost Resist tank not being able to stay connected more than 30 seconds at a time, preggo warlocks and hunters having to leave because of tired/sickness. Just one of those runs, and for being an off night, we did actually kill 3 bosses in SSC. And sometimes, even in the off nights, fun things happen.

Ventrilo Conversation:

(Hunter Class Lead): “Uh… guys?”
(HCL): “I, I’m going to need a minute I think.”
(HCL): “My wife just, er… I’m going to be a father.”
<random twittering>
(Raid Leader): “Ok, Hunter2, you take over misdirects. HCL just switched realities on us. HCL, you need to go lie down?”

Making that not one, not two, but THREE babies in my 25 man raid, all due next October/November. Our MT and Warlock class lead are expecting their third, and one of our hunters is expecting (unexpectedly) her first. And now the hunter class lead has come over all daddy-like. His wife has excellent timing too, right in the middle of a Leotheras trash pull.

I guess that means we just have to get tier 6 down by next October…

New Look

Same old Anna, shiny new look :)  The old skin was getting to be a little too “wall of text” for my liking, so I’m going to try this one for awhile.  If you hate it, let me know, and I’ll take that into account!

PTR changes and Arenas

So… I have a really bad case of ‘Grumpus’ this morning, as I’m still not sleeping, so I’m going to try to keep the ranting to a minimum and just throw some opinions out there. There is currently, on the PTR, a MS type debuff now acting off the Shaman Flametongue Weapon buff. This… is utterly senseless. And while this will have little/no effect on PVE players, once again Blizzard is tailoring their game based on PVP concerns - and not just any PVP concerns, but specifically Arena concerns, just like they did with the recent lifebloom and lifetap nerfs.  And I’m sure (at this rate) that they’ll continue to do with future 2.4 changes.

Thing is, I’m not sure this will change much about the effectiveness of shaman in arenas either. (I could be wrong, of course) The whole thing just screams “we want you to shut up about class balance, so here’s a random buff to make you quit grousing; don’t you love us now?”

Of course, I’m not the only one to find this whole bit about balancing the entire game around PVP rather reprehensible, especially when “balance” seems to mean “make everyone the same”. Leafy certainly feels strongly about it. As does Siha over at Banana Shoulders. As do many other bloggers getting behind Leafy’s Dont Nerf Trees banners. And I think Siha probably said it best.

[PVP Balance] is never going to happen until everyone in PvP plays the same class, with the same talent spec, nude.

I’d hate to see this game turn into a boring mush where everyone is the same spec with the same skills and wears the same gear, but I fear we’re headed in that direction. I mean… how many arcanist reskins do we need, really? Are you going to give priests a MS debuff next? How about kitty druids? (Opaladin mentioned that we should do that and then call the debuff “Cat Scratch Fever”).

Are we all going to have CC abilities, since everyone knows it just isn’t *FAIR* if some people have CC and others don’t. Know what? Screw fair. I’ve played enhancement and elemental shaman. Yeah, not having CC kind of sucks. Having totems rocks my socks.

I personally find it interesting to have different classes that can do different things, and if Blizzard didn’t realize before they let loose the Arena system that this kind of relentless squeaky wheel syndrome was going to happen, then they’re more blind about their players than any of us have ever thought. It has never made sense to me that pre BC all the PVP information was that it would NEVER be balanced for 1v1 stuff and was only intended for groups… and yet here they are, trying to balance it for 1v1 or 2v2 (gogo lifebloom nerf?) because of the Arenas.

So here’s hoping blizzard doesn’t kill their game trying balance the concerns of a bunch of grousing arena players who will *never* be happy while completely destroying the PVE experience that makes up the larger portion of Warcraft players.

[stomps off soapbox]

Haiku?

So the monkeys over at World of Matticus have been at it again - this time creating healer haiku. So I figured I’d make a few shaman haiku of my own. And/or general raiding haiku. I’ve had to force myself to stop at 5 6 so that I can get working on some other things (like getting ready for work).

Earthshield for the tanks
Spam chain heal on the scrub rogues
Hooray! Mana tide!

Tank has pulled again
Still I am out of mana
Good thing I have ankhs.

Chain heals! More chain heals!
Uh oh! Healing wave the tank.
Now the rogues are dead.

Void reaver is mad.
You broke his motorcycle
Many poundings, VROOM!

Mana spring is great,
With wrath of air totem. What?
You want windfury?

All run in for Gruul
But where did the two tanks go?
Hey look, priest is squished.

Anna, version 3.0

As of just now, Angoleth is finally level 70.

BA Shared Topic - What would you add to WotLK?

I’m sure I”ll come up with more interesting things as I think on this one, but I thought I’d jot off a quick list while it’s on my mind.  Will talk to spaceship husband and see what we can come up with for more changes later though, so expect follow ups (and possible Paladin/Rogue/Mage lists!)

Shaman:

• Spirit Pets (perhaps as a talent)
• Some kind of (talented) instant cast heal

Hunter:

• An extra stable slot!! Maybe TWO!!
• More pet abilities added to more pet classes (maul for bears, thorns for crabs, amirite?), better designed pet aggro
• fix pet pathing

Priest:

• “Viable” holy DPS (ok, I know lolsmite is a marginally sustainable build for DPS, but it’s so hard to pull off…)

SSC/TK this week

  So our first Void Reaver kill last week earned us the right to call him Lootreaver (raid leader wouldn’t let us call him that until we’d actually, you know, gotten loot from him), and we were officially 5/6 SSC and 1/4 TK.  Shaman healing on Void Reaver is a nonstop chain fest really, as so far the best way we’ve found to deal with it is to have me stand right under him, eat poundings, and just chain heal spam everything in melee - especially since I have to stand close to keep the totems up for them.  The times we’ve wiped have been to ranged getting orbed, and not to melee getting smushed, unless I got smushed first.  Which is nice, and leaves me feeling happy with myself as a useful raid healer - sometimes being a small heal for lots of people can be frustrating (see: Leotheras).

This week, no new boss progress, though we did manage to get Solarian down to about 30% a few times, before someone blew up the raid.  Solarian is another shaman-friendly fight for healing, as just about everyone is standing all in one spot at the same time. I can chain cast for quite awhile, and that seemed to work well here too, with the random raid damage/moonfire thing she does.

Upgrades!    Annorah is no longer the dignified shaman in grey/blue!  She’s now decked in Red/Gold!

• Natural Life Leggings
• Gladiator’s Ringmail Armor
• Cataclysm Gloves
• Cataclysm Shoulderguards
• Girdle of Fallen Stars

All upgraded in the last week.  I have no more stockpile of primals/enchanting mats/gems, that’s for sure.  I’m pretty sure I also have no more DKP.  Comletely tickled that she gets to continue to match, and that she matches her engineering goggles too!  These new upgrades gave my healing a serious kick in the pants on the WWS too, and I moved up on the healing charts.  Next week hopefully a Solarian kill, and hopefully see these upgrades put to good use.  The longer I stay resto, the more I’m enjoying it, and the less likely I am to really want to switch back to one of the DPS specs… even if I carry both sets of gear with me all the time.

You attempt to cast Dispell on Burnout.

  So, today I respecced Angoleth to survival (5/13/43), and took her into Sethekk with a friend of mine to tame an Avian Darkhawk - one of the dark brown owls.  At the suggestion of other fabulous survival hunters in my raid corps, owls and boars are where its at for the aggro, so we’ll see how she does.  I think her name is going to be Taleh, which is (if memory serves me properly) “Darnassian” for ‘Hooty’.   You can find all sorts of fun translations if you borrow a friend that doesn’t have your racial language ability and say fun things at them.  For instance, “mandalas” is “mongoose”.   Anyway - I’m holding off naming her, because I can’t decide if I want to keep the brown owl or attempt a tame on Gutripper (elite, frost trap immune owl in Nagrand), who is silver/black.  Also, this will be the first time since my Z’G bat that I’ve had a “flappy” pet.

So far the main difference I’ve noticed is a considerable drop in DPS, but a definite jump in survivability - and my traps stick around for FOREVER it seems.

Another suggestion made to help with this burnout was to change her name, which could definitely go a long way towards alleviating that feeling of nostalgic burnout I get when I log on.  Her nickname has always been “An” (pronounced Ahn, not Ann) - so I may see if that’s open on Feathermoon, but for some reason totally coming up with a new name for her is… well… awkward.  She’s got a history and a past on the server, and leaving behind her name would be really really hard.  I guess that ties into that whole RP thing - as a character, she has a separate existence (to me) from just pixels on a screen.  So that makes it hard, since, in a way, she’d have to be a part of that new name.

I guess I’m not sure if I could rename a character I’ve been playing, writing about, planning about, and generally being friends with for 3 years.