Battleground binge

I only played WoW for a short time at the start of Cataclysm, and returned half way through the last patch of Mists of Pandaria, so I had a big hole in my progression, almost the size of two expansions. Catching up PvE content like dungeons, quests and raids is pretty easy, because they don't scale. I've done most of that, short of some difficult achievements like Getting Hot in Here and Show Me Your Moves! Catching up archaeology, fishing, and pet battles was a massive grind, but I have done 95% on those fronts as well. The area where I am still largely lacking progress, is in battlegrounds, but specifically those from Cata/MoP as I had completed Battlemaster back in Wrath.

I don't know why, perhaps just boredom, but over the past couple of weeks, my desire to do battlegrounds has come back with a vengeance.

I've previously gone back and finished off Tol Barad, but for the 5 battlegrounds since Cata (Battle for Gilneas, Twin Peaks, Silvershard Mines, Temple of Kotmogu, and Deepwind Gorge) my tally of wins was effectively zero. I've got up to a dozen wins for each on my hunter, as I've been PvPing on it this expansion, but I'm now back on my shaman, committed to earning achievements on my main.

I first did Ashran and the Gladiator Sanctum nemesis quests on my hunter, which I still believe was the right decision at the time, but I've since gone and done them again on my shaman, so perhaps it was not the best decision. I feel these battleground achievements are an even bigger task so it's not one I'd want to repeat later - 550 battleground wins = 1100 battlegrounds at 50% win rate. Doing 3 battlegrounds a day, it would take a year to complete.

I quickly realised that queueing for random battlegrounds just wasn't going to cut it. When you don't need half of them, but can only blacklist two - inevitably AV and IoC - then any benefit of faster queues or bonus rewards goes out the window. Queueing specific battlegrounds is better, but sometimes the queues for particular bgs just won't pop, and it is harder to convince people to come with you if you are cutting the rewards. Not that there's anyone in my guild at the moment with a tenth of the fervour I currently have for battlegrounds. My GM can't say no, but I'm not at the top of a long queue of people she can't say no to. And it is hard for me to find other like-minded people, so I'm just solo queueing it. The problem with that is, every 2nd queue pop is putting you into an in-progress game, replacing someone who quit because it's going to be a loss. After a few of those, my patience starts dissipating.

I was expecting a pretty bad time, from personal experiences to community perception, of Alliance dominance and shaman (elemental in particular) weakness. I toyed with switching to enhancement for PvP, as that is the generally better rounded dps spec, but decided against it for various reasons. The reality is... it all seems true, but it's somewhat muted.

Faction wise, Alliance do still seem stronger, but it ebbs and flows. If I ignore the games I enter that are already losses, my WL record improves significantly. There absolutely are times when you will be lucky to win one at all, but tonight for example, I entered 6-7 fresh battlegrounds in a row, and won most of them, before things started to turn sour.

Same goes for playing elemental, there absolutely are players who make the spec feel completely broken. Feral druids are the worst; but they aren't the only class I've seen competent players negate or passively heal my damage, and/or out-damage my healing surge spam. On the other hand, the strength of the team, and present numbers, matters more, and sometimes I get to be quite tanky, and sometimes I put out lots of damage. I recognise this is likely down to gear, but the point is, I usually only do terribly when the team does, and that is fine. I don't feel like a hindrance, which is more than I can say for elemental at the start of WoD, and why I can get enjoyment out of it.

So after a couple of weeks, my progress is 12-13 wins in each of the 5 battlegrounds. My shaman has caught up to where my hunter is, and I think I will be able to keep up this kinda pace until the Legion pre-patch hits - from there who knows. But if you are Oceanic/US and happen to see this and want a reliable evening bg partner, hit me up in the comments.

Legion class preview

The shaman class preview blog went up yesterday. The changes are few and largely quality of life related, and based on a lot of the comments, people seemed to be hoping for something more. I normally think shaman reaction is justified, and while there were some truths remarked, I felt the reaction was a bit overblown, almost self fulfilling. Not to worry, here are some thoughts.

Maelstrom power

Maelstrom power is replacing both mana and lightning shield charges. This delineates our rotation more into generators and spenders - with the spenders revealed so far as earth shock (single target, as per current), earthquake (aoe) and healing surge. As I suggested the other day, I think this is partly aimed at limiting offhealing.

We'll be able to cast healing surge with 0 maelstrom, to enable out of combat regen, but it would have to be less effective than it is currently, otherwise there is no point in making it consume maelstrom. This won't really matter in PvE, our healing is already incidental, but the concerns remain for PvP. Healing will now actively decrease damage output (ie consuming maelstrom) in addition to passively reducing it by consuming cast time otherwise spent dpsing. Fine in isolation, terrible when compared to the passive healing you see from other classes.

Shock cooldowns

Shocks limited by maelstrom has allowed the removal of the shared cooldown, finally. Earth shock requires at least 10 maelstrom and consumes all maelstrom (assuming a maximum of 100) so cannot be spammed, but flame shock doesn't require maelstrom, but uses some if available to extend its duration. So it can be spammed, and supposedly will function as our movement dps. No mention of frost shock. I sincerely hope fulmination and its lightning bolt effect remain, because the shocks are dull by themselves. The description suggests the damage is just being loaded into Earth shock :(

Totems

• Searing totem (and magma totem?) are being removed
• Totems have more health, are no longer type limited, and can be placed without needing a talented cooldown.
• Elementals are not bound to totems.

These are all positive changes that people have been wanting for a long time. However, it is still dependent on us having useful totems to use. The only totems that regularly get used in PvE right now are being removed, and in their place we are getting Maelstrom totem, a 15 second ability on a 30 second cooldown. It generates maelstrom as well as doing damage, so it's not quite as bland as searing, but it's double the maintenance. And current estimations suggest maelstrom will not be hard to come by, so we can't yet tell what place it will have.

We need more, better totems for these changes to be meaningful. The best part of these changes is probably the freeing up of talent spots, hopefully we get some great replacements.

Rotation

Not much changing here before talents, lava burst still has its flame shock dependency, and earthquake (maelstrom spender) effectively depends on chain lightning - no word on whether enhanced earthquake is remaining. If it isn't, then earthquake should become instant cast baseline, which will have the side effect of making it far more useful in PvP.

Expectation is that unleash flame will be removed, as it probably should have in the WoD purge.

Identity

Blizzard believe elemental has a strong identity: "Through the body of the shaman flows bolts of lightning, as if from storm, and bursts of fire, as if from molten earth". Lightning and lava, that's what we're about. The theme is there, and it is hard to argue that our abilities don't reflect that. A lot of the complaints I've read seem to conflate spec identity with implementation - not liking the spells we have, or the rotation that results in, is a different issue. We also get elemental overload back as multistrike is removed, which should help reaffirm our identity - but I hope molten earth remains in some form, possibly as a talent. It does look cool and complements earthquake well.

If there is an area we are lacking, that is in the frost school - only reflected in frost shock and partially in elemental blast, both barely used as elemental. If frost should be part of our identity, we need abilities to better reflect that. If not, frost shock should be replaced with something thematically relevant. Water is reserved for restorative powers, but no reason frost couldn't reflect water used offensively. The problem here is frost mages - we barely differentiate from fire mages with 'lava' based abilities, but frost mages seem to have everything icy wrapped up. There's a dozen things they could do to incorporate frost and spice up our rotation, but I don't see it happening due to frost mages, and I think that's a real pity.

Perhaps the removal of frostfire bolt presents an opportunity... imagine a water totem cooldown that changes spells like lightning bolt and/or lava burst into frosty variants, that have synergy with the spells they replace. In fact, it'd be fun to explore the idea of one totem for each school, effectively giving us short lived 'stances' with higher attunements to each element. If I get time one day...

Enhancement in my eyes has had the bigger problem with identity, which Blizzard have attempted to clarify; they are not 'enhancing' others in battle (as they did prior to WotLK), but fighting with weapons/attacks enhanced with the power of the elements. I don't know enough about enhance, but if this new multi-spec feature eventuates, I'd love to try it again.

Ele timewalking set

I wasn't planning on timewalking more than once, then they chucked a whole lot of worthwhile rewards behind them. With some egging on from one of our tanks who was also interested, I put together a timewalking set to make the grinding as quick and painless as possible.

There's a great guide I recommend reading if you want to know the hows and whys, but it comes down to maximising the number of sockets, preferably red for primary stats, using all available enchants and taking advantage of legendaries and set bonuses where applicable. There's a bit of research involved but not many optimal options in the end, so this might save someone some work?

One thing to note for elemental is that we want multistrike as our first secondary, but multistrike is not available on anything before WoD, and sockets are harder to come by on WoD gear. Sockets definitely take priority so the main multistrike source will be enchants. Haste is the best secondary, but with how much I used earthquake, a bit of mastery didn't hurt.

I read a recommendation for the Tier 15 (ToT) set bonuses so I started with 4 pieces of that. The 2-set did 2-3% damage overall but the 4-set bonus I didn't find that useful, as Ascendance usually felt wasted on anything but bosses with how quick everything died, and the cooldown is only 2 minutes now anyway. Tier 16 has more red sockets, but again the 4-set is not very useful. So I'm changing to 2-set from each tier, and the best option to maximise red sockets and socket bonuses seems to be Shoulders and Legs from Tier 15.

As always, if you are missing an item, eg the legendaries, not a massive deal, make do with what options are available to you.

Helm
Headpiece of Celestial Harmony Tier 16 (SoO) with Sinister Primal Diamond.
The legendary metagem requires a helm with base ilvl 502+ so for helms with a meta and red socket, it's that or Cowl of Smoking Dreams from Garrosh Hellscream.

Neck
Flowform Choker with Gift of Multistrike.
There's also Necklace of the Terra-Cotta Invoker but that is BoP zone drop so much harder to come by.

Shoulder
Shoulderwraps of the Witch Doctor Tier 15 (ToT) with Greater Crane Wing Inscription.

Back
Xing-ho, Legendary cloak with Gift of Multistrike.

Chest
Hauberk of Celestial Harmony Tier 16 (SoO) with Glorious Stats.

Wrist
Thundering Deathscale Wristguards (crafted) with Super Intellect.
These bracers have spirit, and took some effort to craft, but they are the only option with two sockets, red ones at that. The other options generally also have spirit, or 1 yellow socket.

Hands
Gloves of Celestial Harmony Tier 16 (SoO) with Superior Haste.

Waist
Girdle of Shattered Stone (DS) with Ebonsteel Belt Buckle.
The other option here is Krasari Prowler Belt (crafted) with Living Steel Belt Buckle.

Legs
Kilt of the Witch Doctor Tier 15 (ToT) with Greater Cerulean Spellthread.

Feet
Cloud Serpent Sabatons (crafted) with Greater Haste.

Rings
Legendary ring.
Ashen Band of Endless Destruction (ICC rep) with Gift of Multistrike. There are other options with red sockets, but the proc from this ring is a bonus worth seeking.

Weapon
Dragonwrath with Mark of the Frostwolf.

Trinkets
Touch of the Void (garrison mission) is supposed to be really strong on bosses.
There are many options for trinkets, just check Wowhead for how they scale down. Some trinkets become next to useless. I went with Will of Unbinding (DS) - easy to keep the buff up.

For me, that adds up to 23 sockets (excluding meta), 19 of which are red. The best option to fill these are WotLK and BC epic gems, as they have the highest stats and do not have gear ilvl requirements. The red varieties are pretty rare at this point and can go for as much as 500g on the AH. If you wish to farm some yourself, you can run Battle for Mount Hyjal with a miner to mine the gem veins, and kill Onyxia and Magtheridon for their gem bags. The gem cuts you want are:

• Brilliant Cardinal Ruby / Brilliant Crimson Spinel
• Reckless Ametrine / Reckless Pyrestone
• Veiled Dreadstone / Veiled Shadowsong Amethyst

So after all that, is it worth the bag space? I believe so, output increased substantially and we will be running 5 timewalks every time they come up for the foreseeable future. It is an effort to out dps my equally geared paladin tank, as melee can kill things before you can even rampup, but we were both eclipsing the pugs in our groups.

Raining trinkets

A big turnaround in fortune and a fantastic week in WoW.

At the start of the week, I was still using mythic Blackiron Micro Crucible along with the Chipped Soul Prism from Kazzak.

First up, we hit Iskar and while we still haven't had it drop, I coined a socketed Unblinking Gaze of Sethe. Nice.

Completing the mythic dungeon weekly, I wasn't expecting anything but was rather fortunate to get a warforged Prophecy of Fear.

Now all that was remaining was the class trinket. I've obviously made enough noise about wanting it, and about my lack of luck using personal loot, that my guildies tried to wind me up about it. But we went with master loot after 6 kills using personal, so finally I got a Core of the Primal Elements.

The trinket makes flame shock much more powerful and changes the talent selection and priorities a bit. It might take a few days to get used to, particularly not automatically flame shocking when switching back to a target after killing an add. I'm hoping it will improve my results on some of the earlier bosses, in particular Hellfire Council, where last week Warcraft Logs had me at 75% overall, but only 9% within my bracket, presumably down to the missing trinket. However I think we've reached the point where no-one needs those bosses and they may just get skipped.

I was also fortunate to have a Cursed Demonchain Belt drop from trash, and again socketed. With this and the trinkets, I don't really need anything before Heroic Archimonde, and as we are not doing mythic, all that's really left for me is the kill. After spending 2 hours on him, the only major hurdle left seems to be separating the infernals. Once we get better at that, they should die a lot quicker and we should see him defeated.

A funny moment on normal, I switched to the Void Star because it looked like we wouldn't get out in time to ignore it. I was wrong, everyone else got out, leaving me to eat the Void Star - but I landed on a little ledge off the edge and didn't die. I couldn't get back up, and eventually the Nether Storm surrounded me and killed me, but it was pretty amusing.

To top off my good week with loot, I also knocked off a couple of big ticket items on my to-do list. Firstly, a Highmaul Coliseum group helped me get the Lord of War title and Warlord's Flag of Victory, something I'd long since given up on doing solo. Secondly, the amount of rep you get from mythic dungeons is superb, and both Auchindoun and Everbloom give Laughing Skull rep, so 5-6 runs later I finally got exalted, saving me many, many trips to The Pit and Everbloom Wilds. Finally, I also got wave 30 endless proving grounds on my hunter. I set out to do it on my shaman, but gave up and went and did it on my hunter, as I did in Mists, because it is still so much easier.

Goodbye multistrike?

After the Legion announcement, with the talk about how specs would be differentiated, I had been wondering about multistrike. Elemental's mastery was essentially multistrike until it was made into a stat and given to everyone, and as a result elemental lost a unique characteristic. So I was thinking about people's reaction if that was to be reversed, and today we learn that in Legion multistrike is actually being removed. This surprised me; most people, if asked what stat should be removed, would name versatility. I like multi, but that is primarily because it's our best stat. I have a few reasons to dislike it as well:

1. As it was elemental's mastery, we needed a new one and got molten earth, which is conceptually cool, but weak in practice, with mastery our worst stat as a result.
2. It has a reduced effectiveness in PvP, so specs that are attuned to that stat suffer comparatively.
3. It's a percentage chance for an attack to do more damage - so it is very similar to crit, but on a separate damage event.
4. It contributes to 'spam' - lots of little combat numbers as opposed to fewer, bigger numbers, more spell effects/sounds.
5. It's not great for resto, for when I switch specs.

So I won't be too sad to see it go, as long as elemental gets back a unique multistrike element akin to our old Elemental Overload mastery. Moving away from it completely could be quite harmful to the spec's already weak popularity.

Blizzard also needs to find some way to keep secondary stats interesting. Removal of multistrike with no other additions would leave 4 stats for DPS classes - haste, mastery, crit and versatility. If each piece of gear has 2 secondary stats on it, that would reduce the number of possible combinations to 6. This would be good for getting the optimal stats from random stat rolls, but would this simplify gearing too far?

Tanks and healers each have another stat, in bonus armor and spirit, that can be found on rings, necklaces, cloaks, and trinkets. I think spirit works well as it gives some options in gearing that players can utilise depending on the fight, but bonus armor is the best stat for all tanks, so it doesn't provide any options. And DPS have nothing equivalent - perhaps this is in an area for improvement.

Leech, avoidance and speed (tertiary stats?) are completely inconsequential. They currently function as a bonus, but their effect is minimal, and attaining them is unreliable. These stats could become permanent secondary stats rather than random chances at a bonus, but their effect would probably need to become a bit more pronounced to make them valuable, as it is hard to find any worth in them at their current levels.

PvP spec choice

@RavagerHD We have no changes planned for Elemental Shaman in PvP at this time.

— WarcraftDevs (@WarcraftDevs) August 25, 2015

Well, there it is. You know, the start of WoD was the first time I'd properly considered main switching from my shaman. Elemental was in a particularly sorry state, and resto wasn't really an option for me as the guild had a wealth of healers. I really didn't want to change, but up until the last moment it seemed like the logical decision to switch to my hunter. Fortunately, we received numerous bandaids along the way to keep us above water in PvE, so I didn't have to.

But the situation in PvP never improved, so for that I did make the main switch. I find shaman PvP frustrating at the best of times, but having elemental lose everything that made them workable in the past, I just couldn't do it, and committed to playing my hunter instead. This tweet, suggesting nothing will change until Legion at the earliest, completely vindicates that decision.

In 6.1, I grinded out all the nemesis quests in Ashran, earning Warlord of Draenor, something I would never have stuck at on my shaman. So I've got mixed feelings - I know I made the right decision, but I'm still unhappy that I couldn't PvP on my main without hating it. And I'm a little angry with Blizzard's continuing apathy.

As for a spec change? Playing enhance doesn't entice me, particularly when their effectiveness seems to be limited to 1 or 2 compositions in arena, which I do not enjoy. Resto is bearable if you've got friends to peel off you - hard to come by. Now that I've 'finished' Ashran on my hunter, I can be effective in there by free casting heals in the middle of a pack of 30 players, but it is not very engaging or rewarding. However, resto is totally unsuitable for farming Bloody Coins - up to 1350 out of 2000 on my hunter. Getting that many killing blows as a healer, while transformed, would take me a decade.

Fulmination chain

I've had 2 pieces of tier 18 for a week or so now. The elemental 2-set bonus states:

Your Earth Shock has a 45% chance not to consume any Lightning Shield charges and to have its cooldown instantly reset.

What this means is that when you earth shock, to drop your lightning shield stacks into a fulmination, a proc allows you to instantly cast it again for the same effect. The extra cast also gives the set bonus another chance to proc, meaning you can get lucky and chain multiple earth shocks/fulminations in a row.

These are independent events, meaning two procs in a row, resulting in 3 earth shocks, has a 0.45 x 0.45 = 20.3% or roughly 1 in 5 chance of occurring. This continues as follows:

4 in a row - 9.1%
5 in a row - 4.1%
6 in a row - 1.8%
and so on.

The first time I had 6 earth shocks in a row I was briefly shocked, until I got a moment to think about it and realised you could easily experience that a couple of times in a raid night. When I had 9 in a row, I thought I probably wouldn't beat that for a while. But on our heroic iskar attempts, I had a new personal record of 11 earth shocks in a row.

This did cause a 'holy shit' moment, where I had to bring up the calculator and figure the probability of that happening - 0.034% or a roughly 1 in 2940 chance. I hope to beat that at some point, although I suspect it might be a once in a raid tier level event.

For now I will save my thoughts on the set bonus until after I get my fourth piece and I can see the interaction with the 4 set bonus.

A quick final note, last night I ran LFR to get the last 5 Tomes of Chaos I needed to form the legendary ring Nithramus. I look forward to trying it out, but I am only aware of 2 others in our raid team having it so far, so the full effectiveness won't be visible just yet.