Best WoW Improvments

When World of Warcraft launched people were amazed by its easy to learn yet difficult to master approach to mmo gaming. It, as any mmo, wasn’t perfect but throughout the years has been polished to waxy shine. Here are my top 5 World of  Warcraft improvements in no particular order.

What Competes For Your WoW Time?

Most of us have lives on the other side of monitor’s liquid crystal glow. WoW, being an mmo, takes a considerable investment of that most precious non-renewable resource – time. With so much to do in a day and only 16-20 hours (depending on your sleeping habits) to get it done how do you decide what gets your attention?

Telluric Currents and You!

We had our first raid last week, Magmaw in BWD died a well deserved death, and I went into it with a 7/2/32 TC spec, While passive mana regen is a little lower the boost you can get during the exposed head phase of Magmaw is amazing.

News From the Front

A few quick things going on and some upcoming topics:

• Raids for my guld start tomorrow, I'll finally be able to give some firsthand reports on Cata raids.
• I'm trying out a new Telluric Currents spec. I'll let you know how it goes.
• I leveld my poor neglected hunter to 81 and worked on his Engi/Skinng
• Engineering is awesome... like really awesome... Loot-A-Rang anyone?
• The stomach flu is not fun.

I really have high hopes for the new Telluric currents spec. I'll be trying out a full TC spec and a basic resto spec with TC thrown in. I'll be posting my thoughts on hunters after ol Itad gets to 85. I'm reallying enjoying the leveling so far. Raid reports should be coming in regularly now. We go for Magmaw tomorrow and have high hopes for success.

Shammy Healing Love

While dealing with a virulent plague running through my fever wracked body I realized that I hadn't posted about the buffs we got so here goes:

Hooray! We get some hotfix love. The big news was Purification went from a 10% buff to a 25% buff. That's tasty. The not so big news is that blizz acknowledged that our cooldowns pretty much suck and need some work. So what cooldowns do we need?

I'd like to see them give Spirit Link a go. It was such a cool beta concept and it might even make up for the lackluster Spirit Walker's Grace. Maybe some kind of healing typhoon would be in order a big "oh snap" button to bathe the raid in watery goodness.

Shammy Heroic Healin'

""See this Finger?"
"Sir no Sir"
"That's right! Damn trogg bit it off in Grim Batol!"

Hit the break for some heroic healing advice from a battle scarred and bloody resto shaman.

Happy Valentines Day

Ahh valentines day. Valentines day and I have a love/hate relationship. I love to shower my wife with gifts but hate that everyone feels the need to declare a day to be nice to your significant other. Thanks to this blog I can tell the tale of how my wife and I met first in WoW then in RL.

Patch 4.0.6 and the Resto Shaman

Some things changed for us in this last patch so here's a quick breakdown of what affects us and why it matters.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Reign Over WoW

Naithin over at Fun In Games suggested this Blog Azeroth Shared Topic. What would you do if you had a chance to redesign wow from the beginning?

Help Me Help You!

Having run a resto shaman for several years now I thought I'd write a little article about things that help us to help you. Each healer in wow is different and there are a few things you can do to help us keep your butt alive.

The Forest For The Trees

You know the saying. Can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes it's very easy to miss the big picture while focusing on the details. The following is a meandering story with a somewhat cogent point at the end. Read at your own risk.

Your Tanking Toolkit

Tanking is making mobs mad enough to punch you in the face repeatedly and ignore the monkeys flinging poo at them... I mean dps doing damage to them. Each type of tank (warrior, druid, death knight, paladin) requires a different play style but there are some universal tanking tools. I'm going to help you build a "toolkit" to improve your tanking.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: When Good Guildies Go Bad

Meet Bob. Bob is a solid healer, reliable raider and all around good guy. Meet event X that affects Bob's performance, attendance, or attitude. What does a RL/GM/Friend do about it?

Were Five Levels Enough?

This weeks Blog Azeroth Shared Topic is brought to us by Ringo Flinthammer and the letter *. Were 5 levels truly enough for this expansion? I guess it kind of depends on which crowd you run with.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: An Open Letter to Cataclysm Heroics

This weeks shared topic was brought to us by Squelchy of Blame Squelchy. Hit the jump for a nice little letter to our new favorite pastime... heroics.

Officer Hour: When to bench

For most hardcore raiding guilds it's easy to decide who goes to a raid and who is benched. The players with the higher numbers, better survivability and class skill are taken over those who aren't up to their level but what casual raiding guilds?

Out in the cold

Any other shamans feel a little left out in the cold by the latest patch notes? This isn't a we need buffs post but we certainly aren't balanced to perfection and the lack of tweaks to the class is a little disheartening. Resto mastery is all screwed up for starters and elemental just feels clunky as a whole as far as enhancment goes I don't really know but I'm sure it's not perfect. I'm not going to post a big rant about it... just needed to vent for a few mins. What are your thoughts on it? Do you think shamans are okay right now? What needs tweaking, buffing, nerfing or just attention in general?

Limited Time Only: Working Smarter

     There’s a phrase where I work that gets used often; “Work smarter, not harder.” We do a ton of software installation and configuration and to do it all manually for a few hundred computers would be impossible. Instead of wasting every moment of every shift endlessly tweaking things we create a script. The way it's used in this case is to automate the process of installing and configuring software on a computer. It's "fire and forget" as the military folks say.


So how does this apply to WoW?

Hints to Help your Healer Heart you!

Your healers have a tough and thankless job. They stand in the back, have strokes over spike damage and try to hold back their nausea when the oom train comes a callin' all so you can get the glory of killing something. Be grateful whelps! Well okay maybe I went a bit far there but there are a few things you can do to make your healer's life easier and keep them from ragequitting.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Will the last one to leave...

... please turn out the lights.

What happens when your guild goes kaput? Are you the lone figure trying desperately to rebuild a fallen house or a member of a mass exodus escaping an oppressive Pharaoh? There are many different reasons guilds fall apart and none of them are particularly pleasant. I'm going to cover how to move on to another guild when the one you are in collapses.

[Post is being revived for the shared topic week.]