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just a bit because the lists that used to sit open on my desk during heroics, Naxx, and Sarth runs, are actually a bit outdated in today’s shiny ICC environment.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,…

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…

The past week and a half has been a busy time for me—RaidWarning podcast prep, business trip to the Left Coast, more beta testing on my shaman and my priest (as well as my baby goblin!), and a new instance to explore in both 10 and 25-player modes. Since I started writing this post over a week ago, FH managed to wrack up a US #21 kill on Halion 25 Hard Mode (after a previous week of attempts that saw…

There’s no long post to be had here, folks, just something worthy of note: The Shaman Roundtable, part of a series hosted by the Raid Warning podcast, is being held on July 13th. There are some great community members taking part, and like the previous podcasts held for Priests and Pallies, it should generate some interesting topics of discussion. (It may sound silly, but I’m actually pretty bummed out about not being asked to participate. Feels like 3rd grade kickball…

Like the movie sneak peek that’s intentionally ambiguous so as to convince you to line up for midnight release, a burst of information appeared last week on WoW news sites in conjunction with the Cataclysm Friends and Family alpha testing. While the majority of information centered around scenery, models and professions, we also did get a taste of talent trees and new abilities. And I’d be lying if I said I could sit coolly on the sidelines and wait for…

Patch Triple 3 (3.3.3), while not a sweeping content release, ushered in with it a number of changes, most notably to PVP and to class auras and effects. And because of the subsequent release of Blizzard’s character previews, players have been more focused on the horizon and talking of things to come. But sliding subtly into play with this most recent patch was a fix to a relatively minor but long outstanding Resto Shaman issue—Glyph of Earthliving Weapon (GoELW). Like…

Without a doubt, healing is something I consider a comfort zone. I write about it, I talk about, and I genuinely enjoy the game more when I’m doing it. So a few months ago I finally bit the bullet and rolled the last healing class I didn’t have as an alt—a Priest. It was an RAF romp, capitalizing on a friend’s desire to finally level a mage. And while the leveling process was something unto itself—what do you mean priests…