The end, the end, the end … you’d have to be blind and deaf and under a rock to not know that the end of WotLK is fast approaching. The blogrolls are getting lighter (or more blood-thirsty, depending on which ones you frequent), trade chat more barren, PuGs more hard to come by and raids tougher to fill as WoW players shake off the dust acquired through the past 2 years, and actually pursue other endeavours. But not me! No,…

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I had to gear out a shaman (since the first days of Wrath’s release, to be precise, all those months ago). So when I received numerous requests to provide a how-to-gear for newly dinged 80’s I was set back on my heels just a bit because the lists that used to sit open on my desk during heroics, Naxx, and Sarth runs, are actually a bit outdated in today’s shiny ICC environment. But with…

The term “healing rotation” is often bandied about by bloggers and theorycrafters, as they take the dps max output model and try, very clunkily, to apply it to a role which doesn’t adhere to the same rules. Unlike our pew-pew teammates, for whom strict adherence to a sim model can have positive consequences, good healing is dictated more by the skill of your teammates, your raid’s strategy, and your reaction time than it is by the encounter mechanics. And so,…

If you want to make waves in the Shaman community and you don’t want to mention the now-taboo Spirit Link, then you would be well advised to follow Ghostcrawler’s lead. His response to a fairly innocuous forum post on Monday raised many an eyebrow in the Resto and Healing communities and might have permanently affixed a winkled crease in my brow. But one thing’s for certain, no one could accuse the crab of giving too much away, beyond of course,…

So, it’s come down to this: it’s the end of the expansion, you either have more Emblems of Frost than you know what to do with or not enough to even put a dent in your shopping list, you’re locked to a certain level of progression which either does or does not include ICC/RS hardmodes, and all you want is a gear set that will give you a feeling of accomplishment. Or maybe you’re making the best of this time,…

We’ve been hearing the fuss for months—healing is intended to be a “triage” affair come Cataclysm. Health pools will be up while healing numbers will increase incrementally, and having players at less than full health will become acceptable again. (Hey, we might actually be able to convince dps to use … um, what were they called …. popular back in the day … bandages!) In all, a healing mana recession is poised to be released on Group 5 residents, with serious…

As many players and bloggers out there have discovered, the end of the xpac is a great time for alts, and like many others, I’ve been living it up these days on a variety of toons, including one annoying cutesy Holy Paladin. Back in the early days of the expansion, my paladin was strictly a tanking toon, my favorite tank by far, but as part of my recent interest in expanding my healing horizons, I decided to swap out her…

With the recent preview of the guild leveling and perks system, now more than ever, the tag under your name will start to impact your interaction in the game world. With perks ranging from more XP, more money, and more tier points to mass resurrection, discounts, and guild-only loot, it seems as if the Cataclysm landscape is poised to be one where guilds are more a home and less a stopping point on your way to somewhere better. So the…

The past couple of weeks have seen a tsunami of new Beta information flooding the front pages of sites like World of Raids and MMO-Champion. 31-point talents, Twitter chat, multiple beta builds, specializations, guild leveling perks, and blue posts have been flooding the interwebs, and I must admit, I’ve been eating it up. But aside from the class and spec changes that have taken center stage in the Beta news stream, I have a couple more observations and musings to…

In the spirit of Cataclysm, which someone so appropriately has dubbed WoW 4.0, talent trees are the latest game element to see some of the effects of new-but-old-but new redesign philosophy (which by the way, as a fan of continual improvement, I actually applaud). Cut down from today’s 51-point trees, these new talent systems are intended to encourage players to identify with their spec early on in character progression, and to offer both meaningful and progressive changes in game play…