Arrowd of the US Cairne server has a question: How do you keep leveling without getting bored, abandoning a character, or rerolling? She says that she's had around 14 characters, and she's never managed to stick with one past about level 45. She always gets bored, and she wonders if there is a way to avoid it.
Now as I've mentioned before, I've leveled a lot of characters myself, and have a few 70s, but even I can sometimes get a little bit tired of the grind, and sometimes even I need to make up goals to keep myself focused. Sometimes I even need it for my level 70s if I'm running low on gold or raiding supplies. In that way, I can definitely feel where she's coming from, but I do (usually) manage to keep myself motivated.
Sometimes, for me, the Motivation is pretty simple. For example, on that Shaman I'm leveling, what keeps me going is the prospect of getting some sweet Dual Wield action going. I'm actually having a lot of fun with her, so I don't need to focus on it too hard, but the idea of imagining her with 2 axes enchanted with Windfury is a mental picture that is too awesome to put into words. I mean, we're talking cover of a Dragonforce album awesome.
So now I turn the question over to the rest of you. Whether it be leveling on a lowbie or grinding on a 70, how do you keep yourself motivation when the going gets tough and you get tired out? Is it the promise of a new skill? A new piece of gear? What keeps you charged up and logged in?
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.
Here on Hybrid Theory, we've done a lot of glorifying the group utility that Hybrids provide. It's one of their strongest points, and the factor that could make or break their raid spot in a setting of pure recruitment. Recently, I discussed the direction this concept of utility is going with a few raidmates of mine, and some interesting points were made.
The synergy between classes in The Burning Crusade is powerful, but moving in a direction in which the classes and specs become too reliant on one another, or you have to decide which hybrid is more important to you than another hybrid in the same role. Some class/spec combinations simply can't perform in a raid setting without a specific hybrid class alongside them. Some hybrid classes can't perform without other hybrids in their group. This poses a problem for the pure classes, and even though we don't know the exact details of the Death Knight, adding another class may only make things harder.
MMO Champion has pointed out something that should make Warrior and Shaman weaponsmiths rather happy: all one-handed epic weaponsmithing weapons will be non-unique as of 2.4.2. Combine this with the fact that the Main Hand designation is being taken off of most weapons as well, and you can see where this is going. Dual-wielded Dragonmaws, anybody?
If you can scrape together the mats, 2.4.2 should be a very good time to be a dual-wielding weaponsmith of the non-Rogue variety. The 2.7 speed on the mace and axe weapons means that your Windfury and Whirlwind will be very happy. All you have to do now is hope you have enough badges, gold, or pull with your raid leader to get all the Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes ready to go.
You know how it is: you're just running a long, minding your own business in a battleground, when suddenly some enemy mage hiding in a bush casts Pyroblast on you, and crits you for more damage than you can count. "Whaa?!" is you can say as you drop dead before you even knew what was going on.
They're called "one-shots." I'm not talking about Massively's snazzy screenshot feature -- I'm talking about any player being able to kill another player in effectively one hit, from maximum health all the way down to zero. In a forum post by "Deathanddecay," there's apparently a big argument among himself and some friends as to what exactly counts as a "one-shot." Does it have to be like a Pyroblast critical strike? Or can a three-in-one windfury proc count?
For my part, the distinction seems unimportant. Either way, you're dead before you have any chance to react and defend yourself. This sort of thing used to occur all the time before The Burning Crusade came out, but since then players' stamina has increased faster than their damage, so one-shots tend to happen a lot less. Now that the expansion's been out a year, however, if one player is in the best gear while another just hit 70, it could definitely happen quite a bit. What's your experience with one-shots? Do you prance around gleefully decimating your helpless opposition without effort? Do you dread going to battlegrounds for fear that you'll just die without being able to contribute anything? Or do you find that everyone is more or less balanced and one shots don't happen much anymore?
Eyonix is still running around causing havok on the forums (should we expect this regularly now?), and he's making a lot of noise in the Shaman forums specifically, always a welcome sign for Shamans like myself.
Where should we start? Mana tide trainable for all Shamans? Fat chance. The Spirit Weapons buff (from 15% to 30% threat reduction) will be a big help on uncontrollable burst damage like Windfury procs. And not only does he share some of his character stats (sounds like his right below where I'm at), but he's got a list of concerns that are being passed on to the devs.
And my own pet issue, the various "Shields" that we've got, are due to get some love as well. Along with the 2.3 Mana whoops, Water Shield buff* (it'll be free to cast), both Earth Shield and Lightning Shield could use a buff as well. A HoT on the Earth Shield? A Lightning Shield proc that passes off damage like Chain Lightning? We can only hope.
Shamans aren't a broken class-- I don't believe any class in the game is truly broken. I love my Shaman. But there are a lot of exciting days ahead for Shaman, I promise you.
* As Baluki points out in the comments below, Water Shield has other good stuff happening in 2.3, too-- not only does it give more mana, but at the end of a minute, it cashes out everything for you. Very nice.
Totem Talk this week is about beating your enemies to death, or hacking them up. It's time for our Shamans to call the wind down upon their weapons and deliver death up close and personal, with the help of some theorycrafting and a smile. Matthew Rossi plays resto a lot, but he's always down with a few well-placed Stormstrikes.
Before I even start talking this week, I figured I'd link this excellent compilation of theorycrafting for Enhancement Shamans from Elitist Jerks. I significantly improved my currently level 62 Draenei's DPS by making use of it and went through several group quests solo by dint of the damage increase. The shaman's combination of DPS and emergency heals (especially a Draenei's Gift of the Naaru) makes these quests a lot easier for my Shammy than they were for my warriors coming up. What also helps is an addon in the WoWAce suite called Enhancer that keeps track of the hidden Windfury cooldown that's at the heart of why my DPS was lower before I read that thread.
Basically, the issue is that Windfury weapon has a cooldown that, if you don't compensate for it by selecting the proper main and off hand weapons, will end up lowering your DPS considerably.
After Druids got a blue's attention last week with a well-written class issues list, the Shaman have done the same. Danemoth of Blade's Edge server has posted a short, concise list of Shaman issues. And already got a blue response. The response was just a tag by a CM, but it shows they are listening.
Here is a summary:
1) Shaman specs outside of Restoration lack survivability. 2) No pushback resistance for Lightning Spells put a hamper on solo grinding / farming as well as in PvP. 3) Totems immobility and short range need to be buffed. 4) Other classes got new skills/spells in TBC that changed their playstyle, Shamans did not. 5) Enhancement shaman lack significant ranged combat abilities as well a way to chase down fleeing opponents. 6) Threat management is a bigger issue than ever with the TBC talents boosting shaman dps. 7) Shaman have issues handling an assist train. (When someone gets zerged by multiple opponents). 8) Lack of a way to deal with other classes' crowd control abilities put shaman at a distinct disadvantage in PvP. 9) Off-spec Shaman itemization is poor in Karazhan and beyond. 10) Flametongue and Frostbrand Weapon both scale poorly. 11) Windfury and Stormstrike demand the shaman using the slowest weapon for maximum dps gain, but that concept is counter to the weapon normalization introduced in patch 1.8. 12) Shamans need more control over their fire-and-forget Totems to direct them at a specific target or to stop them from breaking cc. 13) The large global cool down associated with dropping four Totems in combat makes it difficult for the Shaman to be responsive to changes in combat.
Read the whole list through the link. If I've misinterpreted something, list it below.
Windfury Totem will no longer trigger for any "yellow" attacks unless they are on next swing attacks, such as Heroic Strike and Cleave
That is fairly significant, I think. And those of us who are anxious to test out voice chat (coming in patch 2.2) will be able to do so after a new PTR build being pushed tomorrow morning: We will be activating Voice chat on the PTR with the new build tomorrow morning August 10th.
Voice chat is currently available only for parties, raids and custom channels; there is no cross-server battleground voice chat at this time.
Hortus goes on to note that it won't work for PPC Macs for the time being, but a forthcoming build will fix that soon. It's probably a good thing that VC isn't going to be active for General chat and the like; I could see that getting annoying fast. It would be nice if it worked for guild chat though.
I love playing a Shaman, and one of the main reasons is the unique gameplay of totem buffs. Paladins can buff just as well as we can (if not better-- those blessings are very nice, I'll admit), but no other class can just slam down a totem into the landscape, and either buff a group or damage mobs instantly. There's a whole other strategy, as kayholder is finding out, to totem placement, and it's different from almost everything else in the game.
To answer her question, I don't lay all my totems every fight, but there are a few totems-- as a Resto/Ele Shaman, I try to have Wrath of Air and Mana Spring out-- whenever possible. At the highest levels, totem buffs are really powerful-- most melee people love Windfury, but Strength of Earth is a real boost to DPS as well as block for tanks. Her shaman is playing along with a Shadow Priest, so the Mana totem will be a big help, and Wrath of Air will boost both his shocks and her spells. As for placement, the comments on LJ are right-- she should have him lay totems down, and then pull mobs in one area to that place, in order to get the most use from them.
But even in larger situations, I love how totems work-- I love coordinating with my group what totems will be dropped, and I really enjoy paying attention to where my group members are in order to place the totems correctly. If I'm in the MT group, I run up with him to get Strength and Windfury down near him, and then move back to the caster group to put Mana down. When I drop Mana Tide (which I have, since I'm Resto), I always do a shout out to the casters in my group that "Mana is going down near me," so they can move in to get the bonus (the new animation helps a bit for that). Totems are definitely a unique way of laying down buffs, and I really enjoy the extra element of gameplay they add.
Fellow Troll Silvertusk points out the growing dissatisfaction of Horde players, which has only become louder since the 1.12 patch notes arrived on the scene. After being told by CM Eyonix that no changes were being made for shamans in patch 1.12, the patch notes say otherwise - the windfury totem receives an additional change this patch which allows it only to proc off normal melee attacks. Estimates on how bad this change will be range wildly, but Eyonix responds that the change was felt necessary because the burst damage of those under its effect was simply too high. But many shamans, and Horde players in general, are taking the change hard - seeing it as the last straw against those who were attempting to PvE on the Horde side. And, while many will respond instantly that the Alliance are better at PvE and the Horde are better at PvP, the continued changes make some wonder whether end-game raid content is something Horde can do at all.
And, before you say "Go PvP and QQ more noob!" it may be worth taking a look at this post - which provides a serious and well-reasoned comparison of the ability of Horde and Alliance raids. If you've only played Alliance - or if you've only played Horde! - it's worth having a look at how the other side works.
Arrowd of the US Cairne server has a question: How do you keep leveling without getting bored, abandoning a character, or rerolling? She says that she's had around 14 characters, and she's never managed to stick with one past about level 45. She always gets bored, and she wonders if there is a way to avoid it. 
MMO Champion
Eyonix is still running around causing havok on the forums (should we expect this regularly now?), and he's making a lot of noise in the Shaman forums specifically, always a welcome sign for Shamans like myself.
Shaman's Windfury Totem is being 
I love playing a Shaman, and one of the main reasons is the unique gameplay of totem buffs. Paladins can buff just as well as we can (if not better-- those blessings are very nice, I'll admit), but no other class can just slam down a totem into the landscape, and either buff a group or damage mobs instantly. There's a whole other strategy, 
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