The holiday event “Love is in the Air” started last night. You can now complete Achievements and purchase old and newly added items. Those however require a sh.. big load of Love token. There are a couple of of ways to get these. The event boss will drop 6-10 Love Token once a day, then there is the usual daily quest grind and you can purchase love token with Charm Bracelets. These can be farmed!

Lovely Charm farming

Before you start make sure you have a “Lovely Charm Collector’s Kit“. With this item in Inventory you have a chance to get a Lovely Charm, when you kill a Monster of appropriate Level (green+). If you have 10 Lovely Charms you can convert these into a Charm Bracelet, which can be used to purchase a Love token.
The Big Question is “Where is the best Spot to farm Lovely Charms?”

Icecrown

West of Ymirheim and south of the Shadow Vault (around 40.0|50.0) is an area where Converted Heroes spawn quite fast in packs of ~8 Mobs. If you have the luxury of having a feral druid with PvP Set you can gather Lovely Charms quite fast. Instant Flight Form, snare removal via shifting and swipe are amazing tools.

Throne of the Tides

You can use the normal version of the instance and need to clear up to the last boss – basically you need to kill Lady Naz’jar to get access. The tunnel that leads to Ozumat is the home of Tainted Sentries and Unstable Corruptions. You clear the 2 first 2 Tainted Sentries, but keep the last 2 ones alive. Now an unlimited number of Unstable Corruptions will spawn, roughly 15 each 15-20 seconds.

Killing these will reward you with Lovely Charms. This spot is good for 700-800 Lovely Charms per hour. As you can see I was able to get 6×40 ~ 240 charms in 20 minutes.

Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

Farming Tips!

• wait for all mobs to repspawn after you cleared the 2 elite roamers
• gather the Unstable Corruptions in 2 groups
• the ones at the entrance & at the pool of water in the center as first group
• the remaining ones that gather towards the boss as second group

Mobs will respawn in relation to when they have been killed. By seperating them you will get them to gather more convenient and faster, kill them faster and thus last but not least respawn faster overall.

Related Posts

• Myrddin receives Ashes of Al’ar
• Future of Zul’Gurub remains unclear
• Cataclysm: Zul’Gurub removed
• Paladin versus Molten Core!
• Interview with Dave Kosak about WoW in 2012

With 1 day delay Blizzard published the 64-bit windows and apple client today. The installation is quite easy – in fact it seemed almost too easy, but it works perfectly fine.

By using this new client you can expect improved performance in various ways. My PC seems to load faster, WoW seems to have stopped stuttering in raid encounters (with lots of combat parsing) and it seems the load is slightly lower.

How to install 64-bit Client

1. make sure you have the 32-bit client patched to 4.3.2!
2. download the 64-bit client, Build 4.3.2.15211: it is small, only ~10 mb
• PC: http://us.media.battle.net.edgesuite.net/downloads/wow-installers/live/WoWLive-64-Win-15211.zip
• Mac: http://us.media.battle.net.edgesuite.net/downloads/wow-installers/live/WoWLive-64-Mac-15211.zip
3. Unzip the contents into your WoW folder
   
4. Start the Launcher (with 64-bit files present the launcher will default to 64-bit)
5. Check the lower left corner for (Release x64)
   

That was it … yeah … easy!

Notes

• If for some reason you want to return to the 32-bit client, Launcher -> Options -> Game Preferences -> check “use 32-bit Client”
• The 64-bit client is being distributed separately from the Retail version as it is not yet supported for use with World of Warcraft.
• Launching the game in 64-bit mode can only be done after patching the game to version 4.3.2, downloading and extracting the necessary files.
• The game’s built in voice chat does not currently work when using the 64-bit client.
• Mac Client:
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client does not currently support the in-game movie recording functionality.
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client iTunes’ Remote feature does not work at the present time.
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client does not currently support the customized LCD display for the Logitech G15 series of keyboards.
• [Mac] The 64-bit Mac client is currently not supported on 10.5 systems. You will need 10.6.8 or later for this version.
• Additional System Requirements:
• Windows XP Professional “x64 Edition” / 64-bit Windows Vista / 64-bit Windows 7 (latest service packs).
• Mac OS 10.6.8 or newer. Mac Computer with Core 2 Duo or better. 2 GB or more of RAM.

You can read the original blue post with links and further information here. Don’t worry I always feel safer using links from the original site, too!

Related Posts

• Patch 4.3 General and Enhancement Shaman changes
• A look at the first PTR 4.3 Changes
• Bind on Account – Heirloom Enchants
• Patch 4.1 Fire Nova Preview
• Does Feral Spirit benefit from Heroism?

Interview

You can find the whole Interview here, I’ll just mention a few highlights.

• Blizzard is happy with Looking for Raid (LFR) and Transmogfrification
• Raid Finder is the most successful part of 4.3
• Players have enough content to chew on until MoP comes
• We try to bring content faster

Oh well, what can I say? The Patch has been out a good month and the excitement is ebbing down a bit. The Deathwing fight has a shallow taste since we do not actually fight Deathwing, just some tentacles and crap … and in Dragon Soul you simply chop him down from 20% and he does not even fight back.
Of course we haven’t beaten all on heroic, but we have seen it all and while it is still fun I am not sure that will hold “a couple of months more”.
The exact wording is “the three excellent dungeons we have, the new raid, and Raid Finder that should give people something to sink their teeth into for a few months“.

Mists of Pandaria

All expansions so far were at least a 3-4 months on beta. MoP is not even in Alpha stage, yet. This means we still have at least 4 (more likely 5-7 months) before it goes live. Wonder if they can really afford to not bring new content up to then.

Bring new Content faster

If you have read blue posts and dev blogs you have heard that one before. In fact it was one of the goals Blizzard had in mind for Cataclysm. But we had never had in any expansion this little content updates before. WotLK and Catyclysm were roughly released at the same time of the year, but now one year later we have less contentupdates than before.

Wrath of the Lich King

• Obsidian Sanctum, Eye of Eternity, Naxxramas
• Ulduar
• Trial of the Crusader
• The Brood Mother Returns: Onyxia
• Icecrown Citadel
• Ruby Sanctum

Cataclysm

• Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, Throne of the Four Winds
• Firelands
• Dragonsoul

The locations in Dragonsoul are simply recycled content. Path of the Titans, Wyrmrest Temple, Maw of Go’rath, Maw of Shu’ma, Airship and the Maelstrom with a few Bosses added. Also the Models do not have any new look, just a bit customized, recycled models.
Basically we payed ~72€ on monthly fees to get it.
Recycling old content seems to be the biggest thing in Cataclysm. Shadowfang Keep, Deadmines, Zul’Aman, Zul’Gurub.

Random Heroics

Speaking about these last two instances. The current System for heroics is also a major step back and is part of the daily (weekly) heroic instances System. In Wrath of the Lich King you did get a random heroic daily, but not just from the last 2 published batch. This made the system a lot less boring than the current system. I mean we ran Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman for 7 months, just these 2 instances, 7 times a week … roughly 210 times … and now we will run End Time, Well of Eternity and Hour of Twilight equally often – yay! I think this is what Dave Kosak referred to “something to sink their teeth into”.

what would I do

To improve the current game I would:

• Fix the Looking for raid Loot System
• Exclude non soulbound items from calculating Item Level
• Introduce a separate PvP Item Level
• Merge all 5 man heroic instances into “Random Cataclysmic Heroic”
• Prepare a new Sanctum at Wyrmrest Temple, in case MoP is still more than 4 months out

And please Blizzard bring content faster! It doesn’t always have to be a new raid or new instances, or a ton of features at once. Sometimes little things help to cover time much better than a whole bunch of content.

Related Posts

• Cataclysm: Peparation, 25 Dailies to boost XP
• Cataclysm: ZG Removed, Mounts removed, Pet removed
• Future of Zul’Gurub remains unclear
• Cataclysm: Zul’Gurub removed
• Patch 4.0.1 Feedback

Borked has stopped raiding late 4.2 and at first I’d like to thank Group Therapy on EU-Ravencrest for letting me raid with them! The past weeks, especially after the heroic Madness of Deathwing with an Enhancement Shaman topping DPS I got quite a few whispers asking me how Enhancement AoE exactly works. Having this covered in a previous post I thought it would be nice to demonstrate how the AOE looks from an Enhancement Shaman point of view.
Yors’sahj the Unsleeping in 25 man heroic Version seems like a perfect encounter.

Things to Consider

Before you complain about tunneling the boss, I didn’t! Enhancement DPS suffers a lot from target switching and I was on boss most of the time, except if blobs were about to reach the boss or if the Mana Void needed some beating.

Even if I was able to get to get a top 20 ranking for this fight my gear is still pretty bad, mostly Tier 12 and some raid finder drops. Also I ruined the initial AoE on 2 transitions. With hat in mind there is huge room for improvement!

Tips for the Fight

• Glyph of Flameshock
  Increases the duration of your Flame Shock by 50%.
• Glyp of Fire Nova
  Increases the radius of your Fire Nova spell by 5 yards.

These 2 Glyphs are very important to max your AoE, but single target DPS will suffer.

Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

Damage Breakdowns

Related Posts

• Borked: Conclave of Wind heroic
• Borked Progress: Twin Dragons Valiona and Theralion heroic
• Enhancement Shaman solos Gruul’s Lair
• New Videos, Firelands and PTR
• Myrddin solos Plague Quarter

Eliminate the Competition!

If the Raid Finder pops up and shows that 1/8, 2/8, 3/8 of the bosses are killed you can join and check the raid without penalty in case tehre is too much competition, you can leave right and queue right away again. Only on 0/8 you get 30 min deserter debuff. With Deserter debuff I log another char and test my luck again.

As soon as joining the raid you should check the competition. For example if you are looking for tier token, then leave the raid as soon as there are 5 or more (6 for vanquisher) rollers for it. Even with 5 rollers it is unlikely that you actually win something. You have the whole week to complete the runs, there is no disadvantage leaving raids and hoping for better chances next raid.

Usually I divide raids into tier and weapon/trinket gathering. I am not that picky when it comes to tier, but as soon as spine and madness is up I will immediately leave if the chances are bad.

One thing you should keep in mind, there is a role bonus for loot but overall the system is really stupid. A balance druid is classified, as a feral druid as dps. This means both would get a role bonus when rolling on the agility staff, or int trinket.

Use this system to your advantage. As enhancement shaman it is not difficult at all to find a raid where you are the only dps shaman and there is no rogue. Should the axe drop you’d be the only roller with role bonus.

What can you do about competition?

At first, vote kick your competition. You will often notice that many people have already 2-3 votes on them, since people already do that en masse. It is better to get the competition out than actually being kicked.

They are afk? Play like crap? Missing enchants? Whine about it in raid chat. Whining sucks, everyone hates whiners, but they hate slackers even more! You’d be surprised how many people like to vote kick people for no reason, especially once the window pops up.

NEED!

The system does not reward you for being nice, there is only drawbacks. I know it sucks, personally I prefer to pass loot to people who need it more, but LFR is different. Everyone needs on everything they can and you can’t expect this kindness. LFR means that once a week you will be able to roll on loot per boss. It does not matter, if you pass, greed, need.

Even if you do not need and item, you can try to use it to get an item someone else won. For example I won two leg token on my shaman and was able to trade one of it into a glove token that a warrior won to get 4 piece bonus.

If you don’t want to be an ass you can, at the end of the raid when it is clear that you won’t be able to trade your won items for anything useful, give out the surplus loot to other players.

Arrange Rolls

Of course it is always a risk, but you can try to arrange rolls with other people. Ask if they need the item you are after (and also risk to make them even aware of it, since some of them will roll on it, just to piss you off) or simply inspect them. If they have the item already it may be possible that they are not interested – apart from vendor value – to roll again.

Other than that you could maybe convice a – as enh shaman – elemental shaman, that you roll for him on int gear, while he rolls for you on Agi gear and then hope the player holds the deal.

Friends

Bring friends, it makes all of the above easier! It is always good to have people you can trust. You can focus your vote kicks, get a higher chance to win rolls and manually trade loot.

Weapons

• Blade of the Unmaker - Rogue
• Electrowing Dagger - Rogue
• Finger of Zon’ozz - Mage, Priest, Warlock
• Gurthalak - Death Knight, Paladin, Warrior
• Kiril - Druid , Hunter
• Maw of the Dragonlord - Druid , Paladin, Priest, Shaman
• No’Kaled - Shaman, Rogue
• Rathrak - Druid , Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock
• Razor Saronite Chip - Rogue
• Souldrinker - Death Knight, Paladin, Warrior
• Titahk - Druid , Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock
• Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth - Hunter

Trinkets

• Bone-Link Fetish - Death Knight, Paladin, Warrior
• Crech of the Final Dragon - Death Knight, Paladin, Warrior
• Cunning of the Cruel - Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock
• Eye of Unmaking - Death Knight, Paladin, Warrior
• Heart of Unliving - Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman
• Indomitable Pride - Death Knight, Druid, Paladin, Warrior
• Insignia of the Corrupted Mind - Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock
• Resolve of Undying - Death Knight, Druid, Paladin, Warrior
• Seal of the Seven Signs - Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman
• Soulshifter Vortex - Death Knight, Druid, Paladin, Warrior
• Starcatcher Compass - Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Rogue
• Vial of Shadows - Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Rogue
• Will of Unbinding - Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock
• Windward Heart - Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman
• Wrath of Unchaining - Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Rogue

Tier 13 Token

• Corrupted Conqueror - Paladin, Priest, Warlock
• Corrupted Protector - Hunter, Shaman, Warrior
• Corrupted Vanquisher - Death Knight, Druid, Mage, Rogue

This tactic has worked out well for me, below is most of the loot i got this way (alone) over the past 2 weeks:

Myrddin:

• Obtained Rathrak, the Poisonous Mind.
• Obtained No’Kaled, the Elements of Death.
• Obtained No’Kaled, the Elements of Death.
• Obtained Wrath of Unchaining.

Katya:

• Obtained Kiril, Fury of Beasts.
• Obtained Wyrmstalker’s Tunic.
• Obtained Starcatcher Compass.
• Obtained Wyrmstalker’s Legguards.
• Obtained Sporebeard Gauntlets.
• Obtained Bracers of Looming Darkness.

Pathfinder:

• Obtained Deep Earth Grips.
• Obtained Girdle of the Grotesque.
• Obtained Treads of Sordid Screams.
• Obtained Kiril, Fury of Beasts.
• Obtained Deep Earth Headpiece.
• Obtained Deep Earth Spaulders.
• Obtained Will of Unbinding.
• Obtained Molten Blood Footpads.
• Obtained Mycosynth Wristguards.
• Obtained Mycosynth Wristguards.

Stormfront:

• Obtained Spiritwalker’s Grips.
• Obtained Petrified Fungal Heart.
• Obtained Spiritwalker’s Cuirass.
• Obtained Spiritwalker’s Legguards.
• Obtained Spiritwalker’s Spaulders.
• Obtained Dragoncarver Belt.
• Obtained Imperfect Specimens 27 and 28.

Related Posts

• Love is in the Air Farming (Lovely Charm)
• Interview with Dave Kosak about WoW in 2012
• Myrddin receives Ashes of Al’ar
• GM Response on LFR Loot Rolls
• Enhancement Shaman solos Gruul’s Lair

I had spent weeks camping one of his spawn spots but never had the luck to get him to spawn for me. during the time I have been able to take down Vyragosa (rumors are that the Time-Lost Proto-Drake is a rare spawn of Vyragosa) a good 12-15 times but it was always others who ended up finding the Proto-Drake. Christmas however seemed like the perfect opportunity to camp Storm Peaks. Indeed noona had been online 24th-25th at night and I was able to get him.

Related Posts

• Love is in the Air Farming (Lovely Charm)
• Interview with Dave Kosak about WoW in 2012
• How to get the most out of LFR
• Myrddin receives Ashes of Al’ar
• Enhancement Shaman solos Gruul’s Lair

Countless kills were needed, but finally Ashes of Al’ar dropped! We have been duoing TK with FS for quite some time when we finally got lucky – me a bit more than FS In all the years since TBC it was only the second mount that dropped for us. First one went to Nhiha, on his first and only run since TBC

Related Posts

• Love is in the Air Farming (Lovely Charm)
• Future of Zul’Gurub remains unclear
• Cataclysm: Zul’Gurub removed
• Paladin versus Molten Core!
• Interview with Dave Kosak about WoW in 2012

I know people are always doubting if my business model in wow really works. What I am doing it to keep stuff at a high price at the auction house and never undercut anyone. In fact my prices are often 5-8 times higher than normal and people often write me nice mails that I am crazy … but what can I say … it works!

How does it work?

During the Burning Crusade, my good friend Terrantal and me decided to take over the Auction House for Arcane Dust. It was quite a stunt back then, think we invested 17k gold, which was a lot back then and at least I could not have lasted 2 more hours before I was bankrupt. With tons of Enchanting mats in store I posted auctions with 2 price ranges. One expensive one and an even more expensive one to make my other auctions look cheaper than they were.

Weird enough, the expensive auctions sold more often than the cheaper ones and soon we expanded to other branches. Today’s posted auctions value around 900k gold buyout.

This can work with nearly every product, that has a low auction fee or if the you can afford to have the item at the auction house for a very long time and still make profit.

For example

• Enchanting mats, fee: 1 silver for 48 hours
• Glyphs, <2 silver for 48 hours
• Recipes, < 10 silver for 48 hours
• Companion Pets, very low fee for 48h

Glyphs are a perfect example, since they have low crafting costs, their auction fee is next to nothing and the profits are huge. Another of my favorites are Blood of the Mountain, I buy them for 500g and resell for 1650g. It may take a while to get them sold, but if you do the math I can have them at the AH forever and still do profit selling them.

If you like to do old content, these turn out to be extremely profitable. For example Molten Core drops quite a number of recipes, e.g. Healing Power, Spell Power – which are the highest ones you can put on heirloom weapons. Illusion Dust (22.95g per 1) and Greater Eternal Essences (99.50g per 1) from green items and the above mentioned Blood of the Mountain. A single run can easily yield 6k gold if you are not in a hurry to sell items – 1 recipe 3950g, 1 Blood of the Mountain – 1650g, 3 Greater Eternal Essences 300g = 5900g without gold from bosses and vendored epics.

No Mass Sales

Of course selling items en mass is unlikely this way, but the auctions you sell will be extremely profitable. There are a couple of things you need to keep in mind. You need to be persistent, if you have only energy to do these things short term you won’t get happy doing it. You cannot afford to slack with these auctions, since you will only sell when:

• the competition pisses of buyers
  e.g. 1000 auctions of 1 dust, no one likes to click 60 times to get a stack of cheap dusts, or to skip through 20 pages at the AH.
• the competition slacks
  e.g. cheap stuff has been sold out, forgotten to repost stuff
• someone who is leaving the realm buys out expensive stuff to transfer to the new realm to get around the gold cap
• you are the only one offering a special product
• you have customers that are lazy
• you have customers that don’t care

This happens more often than you may think. There are days when you log on and have sales for 5-10000 gold waiting in your mailbox and you get this fat grin on your face. There is a quite a number of players who worked this business model successful themselves. You should really try it out.

You can probably earn a little more by crafting items yourself, getting enchanting mats cheap and fast but I prefer the lazy man’s approach and don’t waste time with that. Just buying stuff cheap then put it expensive on the Auction House.

The Story so far

If you have followed previous posts, you know that I had already 2 Million Total gold acquired in February and I took the opportunity of this post to create a new summary.
Since the last post in February I gained roughly million gold for a grand total of 3,110,276 Gold since the achievement system came live. This was 1145 days ago, averaging 2695 gold/day.

Total Gold Acquired: 3110276g
Gold Looted: 293015g
Auctions Posted: 863157
Time spent retrieving these auctions: 287,72h

Here are the other stats:

Related Posts

• Total Gold Acquired: February 2011, 2 000 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: October 2010, 1 400 000 Gold
• Total Gold Acquired: August 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: March 2010
• Total Gold Acquired: November 09

GM conversation

• Eilrethane whispers: Greetings Myrddin, I am Game Master Eilrethane. I am sorry for interrupting your gaming, but can you spare a moment to discuss your issue regarding loot?
• To Eilrethane: hiya, sure
• To Eilrethane: I find the previous reply unclear
• To Eilrethane: sorry for bothering again
• To Eilrethane: but I am not allowed to even roll greed, as it counts like a NEED roll, which I can only do once per boss per week?
• Eilrethane whispers: The raid finder allows players to be eligible for loot only once per week. This does unfortunately not take into regard if you need, greed or win an item.
• To Eilrethane: so I have to pass in order to go and try again?
• Eilrethane whispers: Actually, not even then.
• To Eilrethane: so I can only go once a week no matter what?
• To Eilrethane: (and be eligible to loot)
• Eilrethane whispers: Yeah, unfortunately. :/
• Eilrethane whispers: Once per boss.
• To Eilrethane: pretty silly system
• To Eilrethane: I can understand the receive 1 item per reset limit
• To Eilrethane: but everything beyond that is pretty silly
• Eilrethane whispers: Well, it is a casual alternative to keep people from farming full set of gear from raids for a full raid. :p
• To Eilrethane: but thanks for clearing it up
• Eilrethane whispers: Well, in theory, you can get up to 6 items per boss each week, assuming you can roll need on all the loot that drops. :p
• To Eilrethane: well by getting 1 item per week, sub item level is hardly what you can call “farming full set of gear”
• To Eilrethane: so it is silly to pass on anythign for worse geared people, since it doesn’t matter at all good good
• Eilrethane whispers: Exactly. :p
• Eilrethane whispers: Go crazy, shamans are the new hunters.
• To Eilrethane: I hope you can pass that on, this is a real flaw in the system
• To Eilrethane: yeah, I was awesome already before, but this patch really improved it for us
• Eilrethane whispers: I believe this is something that is already being watched and the feedback will be coming up on the forums quite soon as well.
• To Eilrethane: for once we are top … guess we will be nerfed soon
• Eilrethane whispers: Pfft, let’s hope not. ^^
• Eilrethane whispers: Awh.
• To Eilrethane: well thanks for clearing things up
• Eilrethane whispers: No worries. ^^
• Eilrethane whispers: Apart from that, are there any other issues that I may assist you with, Myrddin?
• To Eilrethane: no thanks, not like I needed stuff from the lfr
• To Eilrethane: was just wondering why I was not allowed to roll
• To Eilrethane: I think LFR is a real fun way to play
• To Eilrethane: I was in doubt about it, but after trying it was realyl amazing
• Eilrethane whispers: Hehe, indeed.
• Eilrethane whispers: If there is nothing else that I can help you with. Farewell then, Myrddin. Hear the tales of the Ancestors, let them inspire and guide you on your journey.

Related Posts

• How to get the most out of LFR
• Love is in the Air Farming (Lovely Charm)
• WoW 64-bit Client now available!
• Interview with Dave Kosak about WoW in 2012
• Myrddin vs Yor’sahj the Unsleeping 25m heroic

Sources

• Official Patch Notes

In a Nutshell

• Raids and Groups:
  • 5 man: 3 new 5 man Instances, End Time (video), Hour of Twilight, Well of Eternity
  • raid: Baradin Hold, new boss Alizabal
  • raid: Dragonsoul, last raid for catacylsm, leading up to Deathwing
  • looking for raid tool with new difficulty level: “raid finder”
• Guild
• Guild Leader replacement
• Items
  • Transmogrification (more details here)
  • Void Storage for items, will strip enchants, gems to use
  • Reforging relocated, ask a guard – in Stormwind reforging is between stockade and harbour
  • Bag Search is now available
  • Fangs of the Father, new Legendary (Rogue only)
  • Epic gems drop in Dragon Soul now, but the drop rate is supposed to be very low, no compensation for other professions like in wotlk
  • T13 not available via vendors, they are raid only (good luck 10 man raiders)
  • Darkmoon Faire has been updated with many new features, 2 new mounts and some new companion pets
  • World Event Pets are no longer bind on pickup
  • Tyraels Charger, the mount from Annual Pass should become availbale
  • Enchanting materials AH fee was drastically raised
  • Vendor values of gems have been reduced
  • Chaos Orbs are no longer Soulbound
• General
  • Quest tuning for Northrend, 33% less xp required
• Classes
  • All raid and party buffs which grant group members 10% increased attack power have been changed slightly. They continue to provide 10% increased ranged attack power, but now provide 20% increased melee attack power.
  • Shamans
    • Flametongue Weapon no longer increases spell damage. It now increases all non-physical damage done by the wielder by 5%.
    • Lightning Bolt has a new spell effect.
    • Wind Shear’s base cooldown has been adjusted to 15 seconds, up from 6 seconds.
    • Talent Specializations
      • Elemental
        • Call of Flame no longer causes Fire Nova to extend the duration of Flame Shock.
        • Earthquake damage has been increased by roughly 75%.
        • Elemental Fury now removes the cooldown from Chain Lightning.
        • Reverberation now reduces the cooldown of Wind Shear by 5/10 seconds, up from 0.5/1 second.
        • Shamanism now increases the spell power benefit to Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, and Chain Lightning by 36%, up from 32%.
      • Enhancement
        • Improved Lava Lash now causes Lava Lash to spread a Flame Shock debuff from the target to up to 4 nearby targets. This excludes crowd-controlled targets and those who already have a Flame Shock debuff from the shaman.
        • Improved Lava Lash no longer increases base Lava Lash damage by 15/30%. This increase has been rolled into the base Lava Lash skill.
        • Mental Quickness has been redesigned. Instead of granting the shaman spell power, Mental Quickness now causes Enhancement shaman spells to behave as though the shaman has spell power equal to 55% of attack power. Enhancement shaman spells no longer benefit from spell power from other sources.
        • Maelstrom Weapon can now also proc from fully absorbed melee attacks.
      • Restoration
        • Ancestral Healing now also causes the shaman’s heals to increase the target’s maximum health by 5/10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of the target’s maximum health, for 15 seconds. This effect does not stack if multiple Restoration shaman are present, and does not apply to heals from procs.
        • Riptide’s periodic healing coefficient has been increased by 50%. The initial direct heal is unchanged.

Enhancement Shaman Changes

Nothing has changed or been tweaked since my preview here.

The Mental Quickness changes lay Eye of Purity finally to rest (hah, it did not even drop once for us in 10 man ) other than that there are little single target changes, maybe even a slight buff all together … while our AoE capabilities will become quite powerful.

The only change I really despise is the Wind Shear nerf. Not so much the Cooldown nerd, but that there is no compensation for it … the lockout period stays low and it becomes the worst interrupt of all classes. Blizzard Devs do not realize that no Enhancement Shaman has been using Reverbation Talents this Expansion and it makes you wonder how much out of touch with the class they really are.

Videos

General Look at 4.3

Transmogrification Menu, Void Storage, new Reforging menu, Shaman casting animations, new Lava Lash in action.

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Patch 4.3 End time Instance

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Related Posts

• A look at the first PTR 4.3 Changes
• The Enhancement Shaman 4.0 Guide
• Patch 4.1 Fire Nova Preview
• Patch 4.0.6: Enhancement Shaman Windfury Changes
• 3.3 Shaman Changes, Fire Nova

Tactics

The adds have roughly 250k hp, and hit for less than the average level 85 mob, but the amount of mobs and their abilities can still make this fight a little challenge. Basically the encounter features a moonkin, a healer, the boss, a warlock + felhunter and a mage.

At first I’d go for the priest “Blindeye the Seer” and interrupt his heal, his heal can heal up quite a chunk of health and thus slow the remaining kills down. As second I’d go for the warlock “Olm the Summoner” and his pet, since he casts a nasty death coil every few seconds.

The third add I’d put to rest is Krosh Firehand, he casts nasty fire balls and has a spellshield which reduced magical damage taken. You used to have a mage tanking him, who had to spellsteal the buff to be able to take the huge hits (they hurt at level 70 when you had like 12k hp). So don’t forget to purge his shield.

The remaining add and Maulgar himself are pretty straightforward and easy. Just kill them, don’t forget to use Tremor Totem to get out of Maulgar’s Fear.

If you look at the video I tried to have Grounding totem up, but with all the casters it is just gone to fast to be useful, you are probably better off using windfury.

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Gruul is kind of easy, you can kill him way before his Hurtful Strike becomes a problem and the other major killer ability is his shatter, but with no one else around not even that will become an issue.

Good Luck!

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• Enhancement Shaman solos Sapphiron
• Enhancement Shaman solos Void Reaver
• Enhancement Shaman solos Sartharion 10 man
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Shannox, Firelands

Shannox is probably the easiest 10 man heroic mode in Firelands. This is an Enhancement Shamans PoV and yep our Owl got trapped (rumors say it is not the first time, ha ha)

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Beth’tilac

Beth’tilac is probably the hardest 10 man heroic mode after Ragnaros in Firelands. This is an Enhancement Shamans PoV and yep I know I fell down

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End Time, 4.3 PTR

Here is a quick Preview of End Time on of the newly introduced Instances on 4.3 PTR from an Enhancement Shaman Point of View.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Posts

• Myrddin vs Yor’sahj the Unsleeping 25m heroic
• Enhancement Shaman solos Gruul’s Lair
• Myrddin solos Plague Quarter
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• Borked: Conclave of Wind heroic