- Poe man’s Rogue?
- Underpowered Mage?
- Half-baked Priest?
Squidly entered the Dark Portal for real last night.
At level 58 he was eligible for the quests and signed himself up for Ramps should a group eventuate.
The Old World is for Mugs
The questing was as easy as I remember. Being one of only a few in the zone means the respawns aren’t immediate, so you can cherry pick your mobs.
I was taking down mobs 5 levels higher with ease, even with my odd assortment of gear ranging from level 30 through to mid 50. The majority being mid 40s.
I was even surviving regular disconnections, my totems must have stayed online even when I didn’t.
The one thing I did learn 1st time round was doing level 58-60 in the old world is for mugs.
Just go to Outland and profit!
Honor Hold is under attack
I have seen Honor Hold under attack before.
Periodically the demons invade, wipe out all the NPCs, while all the player characters scramble around them.
At one point I headed into the keep and heard the sounds of battle – I have never heard that before. So, curious, I headed upstairs to where the Alliance leaders plan their attacks.
It was Tarren Mill all over again…
Level ??s wiping the floor with the NPCs and any unfortunate player character that entered the room flagged.
Then they set themselves up at the top of the stairs as some sort of welcoming committee.
Romping through the Ramparts
I got 3 runs through Ramparts with 2 groups, I healed both, only having 2 wipes… One unavoidable DC wipe and the other maybe unavoidable if I got Natures Swiftness off in time (or we didn’t pull 3 groups at once). Otherwise it was all smooth sailing, so smooth I am considering DPSing trash in future.
Not Particularly Enhanced
Anyway, back to the subject of the post. On the 1st 2 runs there was another Shaman in the group, an enhancement Shaman, but he didn’t drop his totems.
I asked him on a couple of occasions whether he was and what he was dropping. His only reply being he was… But I never saw more than my 4 totems.
So I asked him why…
They waste mana!
Mmmm, right. They enhance the performance of the whole party, meaning we take less damage and kill things quicker.
I was generally finishing each fight with a full bar, and we even had a Mage for free water. My healing stream totem was accounting for 1/2 my heals, but as far as he was concerned they were a waste of mana.
I’m interested to know what other shamans think of this…
Outland XP > Battleground XP.
Only yesterday I was telling you how awesome the BG XP is, suggesting that there is hardly any point in questing and instancing etc.
As SlikRX/Balthazario pointed out, this assumes you win. Well my experiences for the 1st couple of levels in HFP suggest that you need to mix and match your XP gathering ways.
The half dozen quests (primarily kill quests) and the 3 Ramps runs netted me 2 levels. Often mob kills were awarding me 1300+ xp.
As an added bonus, through cherry picking quests and a couple of Lucky drops, I replaced about 5 slots with Outland gear.
So if you do a quick calculation…
57+2=60
Squidly is now level 60!
Officially now both my 2nd highest character and only the 2nd to reach 60.
It has all happened incredibly fast, or so it feels.
Level 60 heralds a new stage in transportation for Squidly as well… thank you patch 3.2!
For only 250g Squidly now has his wings.
It’s just so natural to lift into the air and zoom over a building rather than mount up and run around it.
The only question now is whether I will wake Gnomeaggedon up from his slumber tonight, or push forward with the Squid.
Is Dual Spec short changing your skills?
Ohhh, a question for those of you with dual specs, especially if you use bartender as well…
When you get new skills, do both of your toolbars update?
I have noticed that if I train in new skills when I am in one spec, when I change specs, this other toolbar only has the old skills. This is all the worse because I have only just noticed, so rather than having version 8 of a skill, I will have version 3… Unintentional down-ranking!
Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/09/25/a-shaman-without-totems-is-a/
Grats on hitting 60, Shamans are so fun to play, i’ve been playing since beta, and never had the chance or the will to lvl me a shaman on the US servers.
but when i got married, i convinced my wife to play with me, and since the EU servers are close to my real life time, we rolled on Darksorrow, she rolled a NE priest and i rolled a shammy.
never had fun in my whole play time as i did playing this shaman, we are at lvl 67 now 😀
about bartender, i had the same problem before, a friend advised me not to update it, and it works perfectly.
so you might want to download the older one and keep it for now, till they update it again.
Hey Al, Ty and the Shaman is great fun.
I love dps when I’m resto and heals when I’m Ele 😉
Had to upgrade Bartender for totem bars, but sounds like it’s a Blizz problem
Sent from my iPhone
grats on 60 and yes shammies are fun 🙂 and a shaman that doesn’t drop his totems …shouldn’t be playing a shaman…especially if its an enhance shaman. ok, maybe when you are questing, you might skip them, but honestly – enhance never ever runs out of mana. between improved stormstrikes and shamanistic rage, I’m not sure its even possible O-O
as far as dualspec and skills not updating themselves, its not a bartender issue – its the dualspec issue 😦 something in blizzard’s code is missing. my husband’s UI modifications consist of questhelper and grid for healing. that’s it. it never even occurred to him that his skills might not have updated automaticaly in his resto spec, so it wasn’t until a mage in heroic Culling of strathholme pointed it out that he even realized that he’s been using mark of the wild rank 7 O_O. umm..yeah…
Hey Leah, good I’m not just a Gnutty Gnome… It struck me as strange that I was having to drop a mix of melée and caster totems and he was doing nothing.
OK looks like I just have to be careful with my toolbars
Sent from my iPhone
Did you point out that one of the totems gives mana? Or that he can pull them back up after a fight for 25% back? He isn’t just a bad shaman, he’s a bad player for clearly not giving any consideration to your advice.
I didn’t bother, tho i did tell him to pop his fire resist totem for Nazran.
U don’t know if he was even using his totem calls, as I never saw 4 totems.
The thing that annoyed me was the lack of group buff understanding. It may still have been bad efficiency for him, but X 5 worthwhile.
I never saw lightning shield… If I remember right that’s an awesome mana free dps
Sent from my iPhone
Gratz on 60.
Bad shaman is bad.
solo I only drop totems while fighting against long odds.
in party I always drop my totems, it’s sort of yanno a core mechanic of the class. If the nub shaman didn’t want an extra 16-20% attack speed, 154 ap and 62 sp which he can generously share with the others… well then he’s truly a nub.
waste of mana indeed, I guess this is a shaman without shamanistic rage or improved stormstrike? Other core enhancement talents.
eh whatever, I just hope I don’t see this idiot in one of my parties.
the bars not updating is a dual spec thing, just check every time you go back to a trainer and see that they’re updated manually if you have to.
Funny.. I thought I replied to this…
I tend to drop totems everywhere.. Mana is such a non-issue between mana totem and water shield.. and it just means I can keep on pulling.. and try and create the long odds.
Also that way, I know the totems are off cooldown if I need to quickly drop them again.
I was reading yesterday that BigBearButt has been caught out with the toolbars as well…
I guess there had to be some price to pay for getting the dual spec before 80…
My favorite part was where you did a quick calculation:
57+2=60
😉
Gratz!
Synergy!
1+1=3…
57+2=60
Honestly.. it really feels like I have skipped some levels…
I changed to enhance shaman on my alt yesterday (currently 77 level)
The strength totem alone give me around 200-300 AP increase (while my total AP is around 1500)
And, Windfury totem for 5% attack speed.
Even for his own sake, he should dropping some totem.
A mana spring totem will provide more mana than the cast cost (Solely on himself, not counting other mana user), if he stand beside it more than 10 seconds….
I don’t see any justify reason not to use it….
okay, other than stupidity.
Okay, to complete your sentence
A Shaman without Totems is as stupid a=
-s a Hunter without a pet,
A tank (except DK) without a shield,
A melee mage/priest/warlock
Nothing wrong with Melee Mages… unless they are already dead.
Yeah I don’t know what his problem was… if I remember right he gets enhanced totems too… so it would have been a good idea for him to drop his, rather than my Poe Man’s totems… because I was trying to help the melee out…