The Elemental Experience

I will not lie, I was about ready to dump elemental for a while when leveling in Hellfire Peninsula. The mobs near Zeth'gor were making me angry. All I wanted to do was to go in and kill their precious shaman Grillok "Darkeye" Evidently they had a problem with that. I had a bunch of issues with the pats picking me off and it was getting me upset at the trouble I was having with multi-mob battles.

Eventually, I was able to get him down after taking a break from solo work. After making my spec changes to get Eye of the Storm and Earth's Grasp, the second attempt at Grillok was smooth as butter. The pushback immunity helped take down the mobs faster and the added life to my Stoneclaw Totem made it last a lot longer in keeping the extra baddies at bay.

With Grillok out of the way, the questing in Hellfire felt a lot faster. Partial credit can be made to the spec change, but the larger part of the credit goes to my gear. When I first started out, I had zero elemental gear. All I had left over from the 1-60 grind was my enhancement gear. Having the right spell damage gear makes all the difference world, mobs die faster and I lasted longer in battle. I was enjoying grinding down mobs now instead of trying to avoid all unnecessary mobs. The travel from point A to point B was no longer "how can I avoid as many mobs as possible" to "how can I leave as big of a trail of destruction as possible."

While I was reaping destruction upon the lands of Hellfire, I managed to ding 62! I have proof! Be careful on clicking on said proof though, it's a full size shot of my UI at 1900x1200. My main gaming machine is a 17" laptop hence the wide proportions.


With 62 came the greatest gift to Shaman ever, Water Shield! Any mana issues I had before had swiftly gone out the window. Since I hit 62, I have barely had to drink unless I was killing too many mobs too fast. I LOVE this spell. I wish there was an equivalent for moonkins, but with the new mana regen abilities of moonkins come the expansion, I feel that will be less and less of an issue.

Stay tuned for more about Water Shield and Bit hitting 63!

Elemental At 60

Bittaurent's journey so far has been as an enhancement shaman. Now that she has reached Outlands, elemental is the path we are taking. It's been a rough change. Being melee for 60 levels and then changing to caster is like hitting a brick wall at speed, it ain't pretty.

Here's what I am having issues with:

• Casting pushback
• Mana efficiency
• Totem selection
• Taking on multiple mobs
  

For the pushback problem, I believe I have found a solution. My spec right now is this. To help with soloing I am going to dump Reverberation and take Eye of the Storm and Earth's Grasp.

Eye of the Storm will help with the pushback. While there are no strait anti-pushback talents like Celestial Focus for moonkins, Eye of the Storm will give you 6 seconds of anti-pushback when you a mob crits you. While that is only good for 2-3 Lightning Bolts, it helps get that mob down faster.

Earth's Grasp will help with with multiple mobs since my Stoneclaw Totem will live for a hit longer. It won't make it last a ton longer, but it is my only real CC soloing. Any buff will help there.

We'll see how the soloing works with the new spec.

I'm Back!

After a long hiatus, I'm back for more!

I have not been blogging for some time since my old guild Faultless fell apart and brought my moonkin raiding to a grinding halt. I was a bad moonkin by compromising my blasting ways and switching to feral to get into another raiding guild. Hellscream does not have a high demand for moonkins for raids. In order to get back into end game raiding, feral was my ticket to get into a new guild to work my way up to a moonkin dps slot. Odds are that won't be happening in my current guild since we already have a raiding moonkin, but a guy can hope. :)

While I am not moonkin raiding right now, come the expansion I am switching to full balance and leveling as a moonkin. I am looking forward to it. The expansion balance changes are so so nice. We've got enhanced raid buffs, enhanced mana efficiency, indoor CC, and so much more! I would almost sell my pet collection for a beta key. Almost. :) I am praying to the random WoW gods out there to get my name on the beta invite list. Here's to more hoping!

The reason I am bring this blog back is that I am leveling the other Tauren Mage variety, the Elemental Shaman! Meet Bittaurent!

I'll be chronicaling the progress of Bit toward 70 and into raiding. Come the expansion, I plan to chronicle Earthbane's and Bittaurent's progress in leveling to 80.

Stay tuned, here we go!

And Thus, there was BOOM!

This weekend has been a profitable one when it comes to gear and progression.

From Gruul's on Thursday, I nabbed the Collar of Cho'gall a nice upgrade although it doesn't have a meta gem slot. From our Saturday Kara run, I cleaned up. I came away with

• Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran
• Handwraps of Flowing Thought
• Exchanged Violet Signet of the Great Protector for Violet Signet of the Archmage
• Ruby Slippers

I also completed my Windhawk set!

• Windhawk Belt
• Windhawk Bracers
• Windhawk Hauberk

They are all great upgrades! All told, I now have 887 damage unbuffed (along with 969 heal for those off heal stints) and with my Scryer's Bloodgem for boss fights, I am above 152 hit for the boss fights.

On our Tidewalker kill, I managed to hit 771 DPS for the fight. Awesome! It was a great increase from my run on Hydross where I hit 485 dps. I increased my dps by 286. Kick butt.

There is still room for improvement. Coming up next, I'll take a gander at some gems and what's good for Boomkins.

DPS: Theory vs. Practice

In the quest for moonkin ass-kickery, this moonkin still has a ways to go. Using the moonkin DPS spreadsheet from Elitist Jerks, my best DPS casing cycle is

Insect Swarm -> Moonfire -> Starfire x 3

When fully raid buffed, I should be hitting about 717.5 DPS. My numbers are dismally lower than theory. On our Gruul's attempt last night, I was hitting only about 447 DPS.

The difference could come from a number of places, my noobness at moonkin, bad gear, taking a longer than expected time to find our healer to battle rez, or not having enough spell hit. The rotations I did use where not the recommended ones. Part of the problem I see with this rotation is the cast time for Starfire. I was getting interrupted from the silences and the ground slams in the middle of casts. To mitigate that, I was casting Wrath more than Starfire.

According to theory, replacing Startfire with Wrath in the rotation should net me around 664.5 DPS, still 217.5 DPS off the mark. Why the big difference still if the lower cast time should result in less interrupts? Skill.

I am a moonkin noob still. In feral I know my stuff, know the rotations, have a feel for when I can toss what spell, and did not have a problem cleanly chaining spells together. In moonkin, I am still getting a feel for everything. I am not used to my dot timers yet nor used to range combat role yet. When casting wrath too, I keep trying to cast it before the global cool down is up.

So what I am going to do tonight to get some casting sequence practice is to wander over to Dr Boom in Netherstorm and practice, practice, practice.

Welcome to Cowmage!

Welcome, Welcome! If you wait a while, I will do the moonkin dance for everyone's enjoyment. :)

My name is Earthbane from Faultless on Hellscream. I'm here to help myself make sense of the world of moonkin and to share my experiences with those pondering or interested in the art of the Boomkin.

In the past I have played around with just about all specs of Druids. From feral to balance to resto, at one point I have done all of them. My main focus for the longest time was feral. I was tanking for T4 & T5 raids and had some pretty good gear. Let me correct that, have some pretty nice tanking gear. Even though my bag space is insanely limited by keeping my old feral gear around, I am not going to destroy everything that took me so long to accumulate. I did that last time I was balance, I destroyed all my balance gear for bag space when I had to switch to feral for the guild. I feel pretty stupid for doing that now I have to spend so much gold and time to get geared back up to an acceptable raid level. If I do end up going back to feral, I certainly do not want to do all that grinding and collecting again. One time is more than enough!

I am keeping feral as a plan B, my goal is to stay dedicated to the moonkin cause for at least 3 months. My favored outcome is to get my gear and skills built up to a point where I can be a regular member of T5 raiding again. This is going to be a fight since moonkin are not normally a desired raid member and my gear is only at the T4 level at best. The challenge will be a welcome change of pace as I was getting a bit bored and almost burned out on tanking.

For this blog in my balance experiment, here are my goals.

1. Update at least once a week.
2. Give and gather tips and advice for fellow balance druids
3. Share my balance experience, good and bad, as I drive on through and pew pew

More tips, updates, and details to come!