What my Shaman can teach my Disc Priest

Wrath of the Lich King has taught me one thing.  Spam.

Yes, that's right.  Spam everything.

Resto Druids: Spam Rejuv.
Resto Shams: Spam Lesser Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Spam PWShields
Holy Priests: Spam Flash heal
Holy Palas: Spam Flash of Light (or Holy Light, depending on build)


Of course, after spamming these heals, there's always the obligatory bigger heals.  Think of the spam heals as buffers.

Resto Druids: Nourish.
Resto Shams: Healing Wave
Disc Priests: Penance
Holy Priests: Greater Heal
Holy Palas: kinda stumped on this one.


And of course, these heals arent all set in stone, meaning you dont have to spam rejuv for a resto druid.  i did an instance only putting rejuv on the tank with everyone else getting wild growth.  back in the day... when healing was boring. 


But what i want to talk about is the AoE healing that only a shaman can offer to a disc priest.  Why not druids? they have aoe heals.  yes, but that's instant.  holy?  that's dropped on people like a blizzard or a rain of fire.  but shamans are different.  see, their aoe is chain heal.  and it's casted at a single person (and heals 2 or 3 additional players depending on glyph). 

1. it is casted.
2. it is directed at a certain person.

this is exactly like prayer of healing.  =D 
as a disc priest, i've almost never.... no, actually, i've NEVER used prayer of healing unless it was to top everyone off at the beginning of an instance after i blessed everyone with fort.  there are simply better spells for me to use than prayer of healing when it comes to healing two or more people.  heck, i skip the binding heal as well.  but that was before cataclysm.  that was back when mana didnt matter much.  today, however, with flash heal being so expensive and pw:shield being so weak, we're stuck with heal and greater heal to do our work.  now is a great time to pull out prayer of healing as a viable heal when 3 or more people needs healing at once. 

honestly, i would never think of this before, but after playing a shaman, i have been "programmed" to toss chain heal often (for the haste proc).  with this mindset, i can easily go on my priest and prioritize prayer of healing more.  it does take some getting used to, but overall i think this is what blizzard wanted us to do anyway.  we're all holed up into a certain healing "style".  style doesnt mean more than having our own set of healing spells and ignoring everything else.   but now, our style will incorporate more of the healing spells we used to ignore.  this is a chance to use prayer of healing more, which i am glad to have. now if only prayer of healing gave me some other buff. that would be awesome. 

Shaman going LMN-tal

So there i stand at Death's Rise, looking out into the Northern Sea, wondering, why the hell does it take so long for me to kill something, anything, even a shark?

Then i look to the island that is my bane for the past several hours.  wondering why everyone likes standing so close to each other and why there are so many humans with flying mounts just merrily flying around, watching and waiting for someone to come along so they can double--no, triple team them to death.  I know my healing is great, and i can survive groups of five or six mobs at once.  i'll heal mysel through it, do a shock every chance i get, and drop searing or nova totem when they drop.  but that takes time.  it takes minutes.  nay.... tens of minutes to go through my quest objectives.  it is fine when i play with my girlfriend. she grabs everyone on the shore and dps them down by the time i throw her my first heal.  but without her, it takes forever.  sure, i probably have more survivability than she, but i dont have any way of actually dispatching, incapacitate, or disable any of my attackers in a short time.  my battles are all battles of attrition.

and then, only after 78 battles did it ever dawn upon me that i basically have the same gear any other elemental shaman would have for his gear, bsides +Hit, of course.  everything else was basically the same. So at that very moment, i went LMN-tal.  and it was good.  my healing sucked, but i realized that maybe faster questing would benefit me and my gf.  instead of relying on her to always kill the mobs, i can suppliment the dps with my own dps and we can kill things twice as fast.  although i still do have to make the occassional heal, it isnt as obtrusive as i imagined.  there will still be some fights where i would prefer to spec into restoration, but for general questing, some of these abilities rock my socks. 

78 levels of restoration, basically.  78 levels of doing nothing but healing and i figured i might as well get a second spec, its only 100gold now!

and after playing 78 levels of Resto, i've come to realize just how awesome elemental is.  it is, indeed, LMNOP. 

get it?  OP?
yea dumb joke.  okay but yes....... i can do damage now!  gimme some quests to do. dailies would be great!

I have done zilch on my 80s

I just wanted to say that, for about the past month or two, i have done zilch, zero, nada on my 80s. 

This is in part due to getting my girlfriend to play.  Now she has several characters, six of them being bloodelf warlocks.  But she does enjoy playing her paladins.  yes, with an S.  There are several classes she does get bored of though.  She doesnt like hunters and elemental shamans.  she likes the melee classes more but sometimes goes and plays her mage.  even as a mage, she casts things in melee.  no really.  that's how you know she's one of those up-close and personal (or in-your-face, depending on perspective) kinda people.  She now has a rogue which has leveled past 50 in about a week.  she's into combo points and stuff (which i really hate, and hate even more now that it has infected other classes), being sneaky, backstabbing folks, etc.  she's dual spec'ed assassination and subtlety (which, after about two hours of practice, she is able to pronounce that word correctly). 

"so i am trying out my subly spec"
"its suttleteeeee".
"so anyway, subaly is.."
"SUT-TLE-TY"
"yea subably is great"

Anyway, lets talk about her two paladins.
One is level 78, almost 80.  We're getting there.  The paladin is paired with my shaman, who's a healer.  and i figured i could have simply dual spec'd Resto/Elem and not have to deal with gear changes much.  She's dual spec'd Tank/DPS on the paladin.  Preferring tanking more since somehow, it does more dps. odd or what?  the only problem is that she's never seen many of these dungeons in northrend before, so playing with guys who have played for years is difficult, mainly because no one wants to wait.  if that was me, i'd let the anxious dps die.  actually i do let them die since i heal on my shaman.  Healing on the shaman is quite fun actually.  i dont bubble spam. i dont rejuv spam. i only have one shield, my HoT has a cooldown and my AoE heal is limited due to a long casting time and proximity issues.  which allows me to THINK.  =]  Thank you bliz on this one!

The second paladin is a Holy/Tank.  More tank, less holy.  about level 50 just waiting for paladin #1 to ding. She's liking the healing but does have mobility issues due to not having a shield/rejuv like mechanic, which stays on the targets even when she's not in LOS.  I did install Vuhdo for her so things got a lot easier (the easiest being the ability to tell who really needs a heal) since she's able to see the health bars better and can tell who has aggro.  Unlike me, she's into the whole combo point/holy power thing.  for healing, its just holy shock, holy shock, holy shock, word of glory.  that's half of the healing.  the other half is Holy Light spam.  that's it.  i've been trying to get her to use her "hand" spells more but often, they're not needed until level 80. and even then, some people still do not know how to use their spells. but i digress.....

Anyway, so there's an update about me and my gf.  we're going to level our DK's next.  im blood tanking and she's unholy dps (and still wonders why she's doing 2k dps while her paladin, 6 levels higher, is only doing 1k dps.  my opinion: dumb combo points).  we're early 70s getting queues for AN and OK, if that gives you some kinda perspective. 

And so, this is why for the past two months i've basically neglected all my 80s.  It is not why i havent been posting much, however.  This is due to moving to a new job environment.  Im doing the same thing, just with another team of people (old boss retired, they wanted to keep me in the company so i had to work for another team).  Different location too!  I'm in the edge of the financial district in San Francisco.  Awesome place to be in the early mornings.  there's about three coffee shops on every block. and my new team is giving me a lot more to do, so less time blogging.  I'll also get to those Patch 4.0.1 changes when i can, but i've been playing more on my shaman to try to get him to 80 these past two weeks that i havent really been able to really write about any other class.  oh, and they took away treeform. it almost makes me want to close this blog.

Anyway, im hoping my posting pattern doesnt drop off like it did in october. Six.  SIX POSTS!!! grrrr.

Post Patch 4.0 Musings - Resto Shaman

I am bored.


I really am.  Of all the changes made to every class (some catastrophic, others not so much) i find that the shaman falls into the category of not so much. 

What i did before the patch:
On me - water shield and earthliving weapon.
On tank - earth shield.
I am missing a few totmes.  but that's ok.  my elementals are there.  my bloodlust is there.  i'm missing the tidal something waves spell that gives my spells crit in emergencies. but that's fine.  now its a little more built into a talent so that if my guy's low on health, i do some auto-crits anyway.   that takes the thinking out of that. They played around with my healing waves a bit.  now i dont even use lesser healing wave.  or that instant spell they gave me that ate up my mana (kinda like what every healer gets now, right?).  No, now all i use is riptide and healing wave.  greater healing wave is new to me and is added for those ohsht moments where i forget that we're in a dungeon. 

i am glad they took away a few buttons and gave me a few more that i'll never use.  but whatever. now i am back to healing almost exactly as i did in the previous patch.  the names of some spells might have changed, but the whole shaman healing mechanic remained relatively unchanged.

Before Patch:
Earth shield the Tank (or whoever).
Riptide for insta-heals (trigger tidal waves).
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
Riptide for insta-heals
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
repeat repeat repeat.

Sometimes i add in a chain heal if i feel like changing things up a bit.
Earth shield the Tank (or whoever).
Chain heal on lowest dps with most strategic position (trigger tidal waves).
Cast tidal wave hasted Healing Wave x2
repeat x2139482303.

After the Patch:
Please see above.



So what did change?

What i noticed first and foremost was that i never run out of mana.  actually, i am healing on my shaman at level 70 last week (currently 74) and i almost never go below 90% mana even at the most demanding of times.  my mana regen is almost off the charts.  its completely crazy. 

Second thing i notice is there's a lot less DKs tanking now.  THANK ELUNE!!!!  and when i do get a DK, they're actually tanks and not DPS wannabee making our lives harder bs crap shit bitch yadayada people who cant be assed to wait in queue. 
Oh wait, this post is about my shaman.  sorry.

Honestly, besides the addition of Greater Healing Wave and the removal of that one CD i almost never used and cant be assed to look it up, NOTHING has changed in regards to Shaman Healing.

Oh and my talents got wiped and several new talents were added, things were removed, etc etc etc.  if you want more resto shaman healing detialed stuff, find a resto shaman blog.  as far as i can tell, the talent trees were blah and the new healing mechanics are even blaher.  See why im bored now?

Learning to Heal

I have been leveling my shaman with my girlfriend's paladin (well kinda. half the time we're playing on our own because we're not really home together at the same time except for 11pm to 2am. and 2am is when I sleep to get up for work at 8am the next day.  yea kinda nuts.) and it has been a blast so far.  as many of you know, I have leveled up a paladin as a tank a year or two ago and it was pretty fun to actually be able to kill several things at once, albiet slowly.  with a ret paladin, I usually try to keep it to two mobs at once, but killing speed is roughly the same. I find mana management with the ret paladin a lot easier than with the prot paladin.  earlier this year I started a ret paladin on a new server and leveled him all the way to 80.  I really wasn’t planning to do much with him but to save up his triumph badges for some pvp gear and try out pvp a little.  but this was before my gf decided to start playing. 

Lately, the new server is basically where im spending a lot of my time when on WoW.  over the past two and a half weeks, I've leveled up a disc priest to 30 and a resto shaman to almost 40 as of writing.  The Warlock/Priest combo is on hold until my gf gets sick of the Pala/Shaman combo.  although I highly doubt she'll stop playing the paladin, as she's already level 40.  in a couple level's she's going to have a whole bunch of new spells and abilities that will actually make the paladin a little more involved.  the only proc she really has to manage is Art of War.  everything else are just new attacks or new seals, in which she's already familiar with. 

 Im learning to heal with my priest all over again.  Its really difficult to heal in the beginning as most of my spells are not talented, my gear was crap and the tanks are all newbs. but as time progressed, I got a little better as well as the groups.  things began forming and falling into place.  no longer do I see fail groups.  I see more competent groups as I continue to level on beyond the basics of RFC, WC, VC, RFK and Stocks.  Actually, I've begun to see much more improvements to the groups when running RFK and Stocks and now, as im doing SM more often, I find that everyone, especially the tanks, know exactly what they're doing.  well almost.  there's still tanks with LOS issues, or tanks who don’t pick up the casters and whatnot, but they're still learning.  at least, im not healing squishybear or onetargetwarrior.  everyone's utilizing their AoE abilities and it rocks.  Even the casters, who usually aggro on me when I heal, now are LOS'ed back to the tank, if not, I reply with a Wind Shear and they come running into the tank's Thunderclap or Consecration.  

At around level 25, things began to take form as a disc priest.  my shields are buffed, my healing is better, my mana and regen is a little better and my heals are a little more efficient.  namely, I have flash heal sheild and heal ready to go.  I don’t have my favorite moves yet (pain suppression, penance, divine aegis) but they'll come in time.  Somehow im learning to heal with a disc all over again.  it wasn’t so fun the first time around, but that's mainly because there wasn’t a random dungeon finder tool.  but now, I queue up and I go.  quests? what are those?

The same thing happened with my shaman at around level 25.  He became much easier to play due to the addition of some abilities and spells.  prior, I was using healing wave. that's the only healing spell I had.  my totem selection sucked too.  it was one earth totem, and one fire totem.  I didn’t even get my water totem until about level 25.  glyphed water shield is great as it returns mana to me passively and when I get hit. having four charges makes it even better.  what I try to do is grab aggro from one mob first just to get my water shield charges to go off.   In any case, mana regen is a lot better.  additionally, with two healing spells and some very nifty totems, healing has become a lot more versatile.  the addition of a damage buffer and a HoT from my Earthliving imbue makes healing even more involved.  it is no longer cut and dry with just one heal and no real supporting spells/abilities.

But learning to heal with the shaman has got me thinking about the uniqueness of all the healing classes.  Namely, how to use my totems as a supporting role for the group.  Paladins have their blessings and hands. which is great.  these are direct spells and such.  priests have fortitude and a few other buffs.  druids have paws (Mark of the Wild).  But shamans have totems.  and these totems do different things based on what I decide to put down.  faster attacks? more spell damage? slowing mobs down? doing damage?  adding armor? all of these things can be done with totems. and I get four differen types to play around with at the same time.  fun times when you have another shaman in the group.  I usually put down healing specific totems and overall support for the group.  but my fire totem is always the magma totem because I find that a 6% damage increase to spellcasters simply isnt as great as having a 30% increase to all dps.  what?  yes.  I do 30% of the dps in most groups with that totem. whatever gets us through the instance faster is fine by me.

now the fire totem, in this case, the magma totem is my fire totem of choice, always gets planted at my front left.  and so I try to position myself close enough to the group to drop that totem as close to the group of mobs as possible.  in a pull, I usually accomplish this even before I have to heal the tank.  sometimes I can pull off a fire nova before I even have to heal.  a fire nova is basically "activating" your fire totem to blow up things around it.  this causes massive damage all around.  and if the tank has 4 or 6 mobs on him at one time, I usually do awesome damage.  sometimes I do pull aggro but that doesn’t last too long. the tank would pull them back a quick second later.  what this does, however, is cause my watershield to pop, giving me a bunch of mana back.  I do want this to happen.  and sometimes I purposely pull aggro with my fire nova (although I sometimes get more mobs than I want) in order to get some mana back.

I find that with this method, I have very little mana problems. I often drink but I do know that when I do DPS with the totem, I am expending a lot of mana.  I am not complaining, since healing alone would take up a small amount of my mana supply but remain pretty boring.  im sure as I level on, things will get a little more exciting.  I will have to heal more and use more spells.  im anxiously waiting earthshield, chain heal and riptide.  with those added to my arsenal, I hope to never have to use Healing wave again. 

Q for all the shaman healers:  How often do you use Healing Wave anyway?  I would assume that Lesser Healing Wave +glyph is the way to go for quick healing, chain heals for multiple targets and riptide +LHW for big heals.  this is my theory since I am unable to test any of this out at the moment.  I am level 38 currently so I don’t have any of those spells to work with.  I want to know this because I want to know if I should respec my talent points later on, meaning, once I get riptide, do I want to remove my talents from all the Healing Wave talents? the one that reduces cast time by 0.5 seconds? the one that increases healing done from HW by 8% per talent point?  I find myself using Healing wave less and less. Much like how I don’t use greater heal at all on my priest.  I use shield, flash and penance. on my druid, I use healing touch (the Healing wave equiv) only with swiftmend.  Just pondering right now.  not sure what to do, but im more of a ABC caster (always be casting), so I prefer to continually cast Lesser healing wave than to cast Healing wave, wait 5 seconds, cast HW again, wait 5 seconds, cast HW again.

Thanks in advance!

Updates Updates Updates Aug 23

General Updates

I have been spending more time on Ysondre than I have been in Ravenholdt because I have been leveling my shaman and priest with my girlfriend as of late.  This is not to say I have abandoned my old realm.  Ravenholdt is the perfect sized realm, "medium" population with a horde imbalance of about 3 to 1, that means 75% of the population is horde.  What this does mean is that world pvp is not too lively, as you'll find some horde outnumbering alliance.  but it also means that when alliance do find the time to harass a town, they will do it in force, 10 deep, with air support.  and usually in Thrallmar (of course, the lower level town).  It does have a pretty mature market, with gem cutters with all cuts, glyph makers with 20 of each glyph at all times and a wide array of crafting mats, not to mention the entertainment to be had in trade chat.

In Ysondre the life is a little different.  There is much less going on in the AH, so mats are limited, especially mats to level professions.  people can easly control a market for a limited amount of time, buy up all the mithril and relist it for more (but always having to watch out for small time undercutters).   bags are limited as well, as are item enchants and enhancements.  bags are limited by the low amount of netherweave due to the low amount of people leveling through outland.  and those are the highest in-demand bags.  special enchants are hard to get as the supply is lacking. however, common enchants are lowly priced since there's a lot of supply and little demand.  things are quite skewed in ysondre.  so if you're looking to make some gold and don’t mind "farming" please go there and mine and herb.  seriously.  sungrass should not be selling for 40g a stack.  sungrass??

one thing I've noticed is that people do not know the value of some items.  I die a little inside when I see cut golden draenite.  why?  because the cut versions are trash, used only to skill up points and tossed while the uncut variety are used for tailoring.   yes, tailoring.  at 10-20g a pop.  why? because tailors need four of them to make their silly slow flying carpet.  not only are you tapping into a market with little or no supply (check the AH for fel iron ore or adamantite ore or even the gem in question, and you will see almost nothing, or something that's omg overpriced), you're about to provide the tailor (who's second profession is probably enchanting, and NOT jewelcrafting or mining) with something he is not able to produce on his own… ever. 

In any case, the difference in both servers cannot really be seen in the beginning levels, as leveling through the world can be a dry and lonely experience.  you will not find a lot of people questing to learn about the lore. heck, do people even read the quests anymore? or do they just pick it up and look on their map for the dots to tell them where to go?  im guilty of doing that but it is because I've already done those quests several times and do not need to be reminded of the story.  If cata is going to change the entire face of azeroth, I'd love to quest again through to level 85, just to see the lower level's updated story, from all angles (and that means, yes, I might have to roll a troll…. or a gnome now).  but yea, my point was that you will not see too many people leveling these days simply because there's the dungeon finder.  it makes leveling emmensly, immensely, whatevers, easy.  well not that easy. you still have to do "OK" and this teaches people how to perform in groups at an earlier level, and more often.  one complaint I had previously was that people do not know how to perform in groups because they simply never did it due to it being "too hard" to find groups.  well now you can easily do it.  and do it often!  so with repetition comes competence.  or at least I hope so.  no longer will a fresh level 80 walk into an instance for the first time because turning in quests was much easier to do.  no longer will we have to learn two different "games" when we play this game.  one at level 1, and the other at level 80.  although both are available starting at level 13-ish. 

On Leveling

What I noticed differently about this game is that I have been doing instances to level up way more than I do questing.  a couple of years back, I would be questing most of the time, trying to get my player to a higher level.  I did find that while questing, I was able to learn the little details of my class, but it wasn’t until I started playing with other people in instances that I really started to understand how my class played in comparison with others and how it can benefit others.  When playing solo, I learned my spells well and well enough to use the different spells in different situations in groups.  What I find lately is that everyone who parties with me knows quite a bit about playing in groups, especially post level 25.  but, they do not use all of their tools to their advantage.  somehow, leveling through instances requires knowledge of only several abilities.  It’s a great way of learning to play in groups, but I find that it doesn’t help people actually learn everything they need to know about their class. 

One Trick Ponies

What I see the most? People are not utilizing all of their skills, but only resorting to AoE style of play.  Because many tanks can simply group a bunch of mobs together, the dps usually busts out with their AoE type spells (blizzard, volley, rain of fire, etc) and try to burn down all the mobs at once.  this makes it easy, actaully.  although healing through it might not be as before (I'll explain that in a bit), things seem to work and we move on to the next batch to start the process all over again. 

What happens when people use their AoE all the time?

1. no one gets cc'ed. no one gets "crowd controlled".  no one is dazed, sheeped or forced to repent.

2. no one interrupts.  casters, with 3 second casts usually, do not get interrupted.  shield slam? no. hammer of justice? no.  wind shear? no. kick? no. silence? no.  counterspell? no.  of course not.  all of these spells are learned in raids or in arenas, of course, at level 80. 

3. no emergency spells.  what is this? a near wipe! oh lets just wipe.  actually there are many emergency spells that every class has that will help to live longer, and possibly to avoid a wipe.  im talking interrupts and cc's, but also those damage mitigation spells every class should have by now.  divine protection, last stand, shield wall, fears, frost nova, and so forth.  what usually happens is that the hunter or warlock's pet takes over tanking and no one really has to blow any of their cooldown spells.  one other thing is that mobs hit for less damage comparatively, so some healers will find it a lot easier to heal four people (each with one mob on them) than healing a tank with four mobs on himself.  sometimes I even prefer to heal four "tanks" than just one.  tis weird.

4. no synergizing.  This means no one is really talking about ways to improve their dps with other members.  should warlocks toss curse of the elements? which totems are best with this group composition? why are you giving me "dampen magic????" stop overriding my blessings! etc.

there might be more, but this is all I really wanted to talk about.  all of this should be learned during our play time leveling, if not through discovery, than its through being told by someone in the group (sometimes without an explanation).  but being told by someone in the group is often a matter of chance, so we leave it up to chance to learn how to best use our abilities?  sigh.  but whether or not we know how to really "play" our character, or why our character is doing crap damage vs everyone else, what matters most is that we learn how to work as a team.  the above four points kinda illustrate how, as a member of a team, we can help each other out.   

The Resto Shaman

I've been leveling up a shaman recently with my girlfriend's paladin.  he's been quite a blast to play actually.  What I've learned from having only one heal for 20 levels, and now having a second heal, that healing with a shaman is indeed, boring. but thank god we're not just limited to healing. no really, there are several instant attacks that you must utilize as a shaman.  must.  even at the cost of mana.  because you helping to kill things faster makes instances faster, even if you have to sit and drink a little.  here's my little bit of insight I want to share for those in levels 20-30. 

1. include the fire totem. magma totem over searing totem. blast it on cooldown.

2. save frost shock for runners.  if they don’t run, earthshock to reduce their attack speed (but if you have a warrior/druid doing demo shout, this becomes unnecessary).

3. target any caster and windshear their spells.  less damage taken means less you have to heal.  windshear is on a short cooldown so you can do it multiple times a fight.

4. always keep water shield up.  they are your mana resource.  glyphed water shield rocks too.

5. at level 30, always recall your totems.  this saves you some mana.

After level 20, you can easily contribute to the speed of many dungeons by adding a ltitle burst dps when needed.  just remember to watch your mana usage and hold off at certain times.  especially when the tank is taking heavy damage (but those are often the best times to dps.  oh so juicy).  but I always have to remember I signed up to heal and so I should heal first and foremost. 

The GF's Ret Paladin

My girlfriend has been trying to level up her paladin for over a week and has gotten her to her mid 30s today.  Not much to say except that she usually top damage meters.  Is that great or what?  well she tops dps.  im sure she gets it from me.  but I think what makes her dps high is that I mention several things about her fighting.  always judge on cooldown, and always use seal of command.  so she's rocking through the instances with very little problems and doing pretty good damage. 

Now that her paladin is about the same level as her warlock, we'll be leveling together.  all four characters.  her lock and pala with my priest and shaman.  I guess I'll have to check out the different combinations (theres just two, but hey, trying to see how they fit together) to see which one works best to boost our dps and healing.   you know, that synergy thing.

Updates Updates Updates

Let me just say a few things about this Enhancement Shaman… it sucks at level 10.   let me tell you I spend all my time in melee range casting lightning bolt.  how enhancement is that?  and the totem quests are a bit out there.  I know I have to do a bit of legwork, but hell, it sucks having to run around back and forth to get something only to find out that I have to go find someone else to do something else and so forth and so on.  im not just talking about the shaman totem quests, but also the warlock pets quests where somehow, in order to summon up a feldog, I had to run around the world several times.  not fun when all I really want to do is play around with enhancement.  what? I don’t actually get to play enhancement until level 30? are you serious? 

That’s like the paladin not able to really "tank" until level 60.  or the ret paladin not getting a second attack spell until level 40. oh and the druids don’t get cat form until level 20.  annoying.  these are pretty annoying since, you know, the NON hybrid classes are what they are at level 1.  mages are mages.  warlocks are warlocks even without the pet, hunters are hunters.  rogues are rogues.  but shamans are elemental shamans and cannot specialize into restoration until at least level 10, and not into enhancement until level 30 when they supposedly get some good enhancement attack.  prot paladins don’t really get much to go by.  consecration at 20, avenger's shield sometime later.  then finally, at 60, you can get hammer of the righteous.  and then seal of command?  please, I'd rather have seal of command for tanking any day.  druids are balance druids.  they cannot be feral until 20.  feral bear at 10?  what? that’s the dumbest thing anyone's ever thought of really.  no one levels or even quests as a bear.  they only tank as a bear. useless for 5 levels at least until they're able to use the dungeon finder.  no really, cat form at level 5 would be awesome for the levelers, especially one who never really cared for the "balance" tree anyway.

Anyway, that is my rant.  I spent one whole day on totem quests and felhound quests.  also spent half the time traveling because there are no shaman trainers in SMC.  cant we have trainers in every city?  they can just be at an embassy.  I don’t care.  but come on, the world of azeroth is a lot smaller now and all the factions should have trainers at every other city, like when a paladin decides to level up in mulgore he should be able to train in thunderbluff.  heck, druids have a trainer in SMC, why not shamans?

So wifey decides to make a paladin.  she loves it now.  it seams that "Holy LIght" is an awesome tool.  indeed it is, and should be used often.  so now there's a level 15ish paladin and a level 31 warlock now.  Anyway, paladining seems fun to her and so sure, she's gonna level that and I thought it would be super cool if I leveled a shaman, since, after all, people have been saying how many of the buffs they have go well together.  I don’t know the details, but I guess so.  in any case, I'll probably level as elemental since I cant really do enhance at the moment.  or resto.  I did put some points into faster healing waves.  might as well heal right?

and that is basically what's been going on with me over the weekend.  upcoming this week will be a post (hopefully) about Vuhdo. I've been meaning to write about it for the logest time and even have a partial post under construction about it. 

Until then, peace.