Alt Appreciation: Shaman

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Shamans

Shamans, totem-throwers, master of the elements, and I even levelled two of them to the (then) max level. First up, the one I levelled during the now infamous ICC-summer, in Single Abstract Noun.

Cloudcaller

I may be mistaken, but as far as I recall, this was actually the character with which I first joined Single Abstract Noun. I have no idea what his spec was, but I do know I did some Role Playing with him. Listening to tales of the Loa, visiting a fight-tournament in the STV-arena.

I also remember that during Cataclysm, I actually walked with him from Ogrimmar to his birthplace in Feralas...yes walked... and got horrible stuck when he fell into the chasm between north and south barrens.  The pictures are somewhere on my hard-drive, one of the projects never finished.

But this character is for me how I played in Single Abstract Noun, a little levelling, a little Roleplaying, and a lot of talking...  the catchphrase for the guild was '... the guild where nothing gets done, because everyone is talking'

My second Shaman is alliance, and currently my best geared alt:

Verulani

I have no idea where she came from, it is probably buried somewhere in my blog-history, but she may actually been one of my earliest alts. She is now my enchanter/tailor, supporting Mardah. She is also my best geared alt, and I actually did Heroic Stone MSV with her.

She was one of my characters that started my transmog-sets. Although the set is fairly well know, and often seen, my transmog has some nice oddities mostly not seen in combination with the rest. First is the shield, which actually made me do this transmog. It's a reward from the north-western-plaguelands quest in the alliance city.

Th shoulders are from the bug-bosses in AQ40, this on from the one easiest killed...so hardest to get. Try keeping that one alive...I also have a set for weapon transmogs, shown is the dagger of Julie or something. I also have a big axe, and a hammer.

She was enhancement until she killed the LFR-Deathwing enough times for two of his axes, and then went Elemental. I actually considered making her my main starting Pandaria, but it is a little bit hazy why that didn't happen. And in the months to come, she will probably be played more, while we wait on the next expansion.

Next week, the dark arts...

End of summer, or....

So, the nerf-bat hit Firelands. And Innovation finally killed some more bosses with 25 (or 22). The problem is two-sides, do I think we needed the nerf? The answer is both yes and no.

No, we didn't needed the nerf.

To understand this, you first have to know the guild, which I think I do now, after 9 months. Innovation has a lot of ex-HC-raiders. People who don't actually want to be put in that situation anymore. Been there, done that. And to top that of, there are a few parents in the guild. So on a normal raiding night, Innovation has a lot of breaks. I think we normally only pull a boss thrice an hour, and that is considered fast then.

Actually, thinking about trash, 2 an hour is probably more logical. That means we are not fast, and we are not looking at heroics. We just want to kill some internet-dragons sometimes. Keep in mind, this is not an excuse to not perform! We just have a very relaxed pace. And with that pace, we had 3 bosses down, before the nerf. But, we were also running T11 till 2 weeks ago to gear up people. We would have been further probably, but...

Yes, we did need the nerf.

It's not like we couldn't kill Alysrazor. It was the high turnover that prevented us. As mentioned, Innovation was 3/7 pre-nerf, but only Shannox was killed with 25 (first kill even with only 21). Both the spider and the big guy where done on 10-man. The last few weeks had only about 18 people signing on. So our fearless leader had no choice to go with 10-mans to actually get some raiding done.

Interlude: Kudos to our fearless leader to actually bench herself last monday. Not many guildleaders/raidleaders do that.

I think the 10-mans had around 12 pulls on the bird before the nerfbat hit. And we were almost there, so the guild didn't needed the nerf.... but the guild also needed it. Last thursday we had a full 25-man raid to Firelands for the first time in a long time. And we killed 4 bosses, picking up the 25-kills for the spider and the big guy with a one-shot. And a genuinly first guild-kill, after 4 wipes, of Alysrazor.

Yesterday, we had a new boss to try, the fire-dude. And after some jokes about 'Thou shall not pass', and 4 wipes later, we downed him. The kill itself was messy, with 3 soakers and one tank going splat, but we did it, with 22 people... so... again, some short.

I have a nagging feeling why that is happening... I think I have seen that before.

On another note,
I hit the transmogrification-band-wagon, and am now the proud owner of the T2-recolered TBC-set. It may turn up on some of the screenies on the guild-website.....

It's coming....

Of course, within 24 hours of my 'what is coming post', the information is starting to leak :P

First up was Ghostcrawler with the threat-change (which is already live). At first I was sceptical about this, more stuff to make it easier on dps, now they don't even have to watch their threat. But then I thought of the amount of times I was threat-capped in heroics, because I overgeared the tank that much, that my third thick from Moonfire almost pulled aggro of him.

This change makes it easier for tanks to hold aggro, and not get that 'what-did-I-do-wrong'-feeling. It may even be more effective then the extra rewards for tanks, because they can hold aggro, and not get blamed by the overzealous dps for losing it.

Then there was an interview on a german site, mmo-champion has the translation. First surprising news for me was that patch 4.3 will bring Deathwing. So, unless they do a Sunwell on us, that will be the last patch, and patch 5.0 should come a lot earlier then late 2012 then, probably in the summer?

There was some talk about an Abyssal Maw-raid, but that's been cancelled. Now, I don't know when it was cancelled, but probably some work was done to it. I also would like to know how long it takes to make an expansion. Both TBC and Wrath lasted for almost two years. I suppose 4.3 will come out around december, just like the ICC-patch did in wrath. So normally speaking, patch 5.0 should be out in the summer. If Cata is also going to last almost two years, prepare for another ICC-summer, where alts will be flying around.

Patch 4.3 will also include three new dungeons, including one in Caverns of Time, and they shouldn't be revamps. I wonder, will they require Ilvl352 orso to enter? Just like the Troll-heroics have a higher entry-gear-level?

And there was some news on the ethereals. The Transmogrifier will let you change your gear-appearance. Now, I don't know about this one. Will it be a complete rainbow in raids? And the news about the Void Storage can maybe be included in this one, a place to store absolute gear. So, you can transmogrify your gear to your voidstoraged gear?

Personally, I don't see the need for the voidstorage, but that's because I already deleted so much gear in the past.... If this would have come earlier, Gowron could actually have used it. Mardah is completely different, because I only started playing her at the beginning of cata, she doesn't have much gear... well, she does have the Druids of the Fang-set :p

...waiting for more news...