Enlighten Me!

This last week, I somehow picked up Enlightenment from ToC-10. It's a staff, with spell power, haste, and crit. I must say it was a surprise as I've not bothered to even look at staves for quite some time.

Let's look at the stats:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
72	92	113	108	550	2

---

Now compare to what I had:

Spectral Kris:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
30	30	36	46	487	1

+

Voice of Reason:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
49	49	46	31	74	0

Total:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
79	79	82	77	561	1

---

The difference was:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
-7	+13	+31	+31	-11	+1

---

The result was an upgrade. The 11 spell power lost could easily be made up with the additional socket.

But what if I pick up the Guiding Star?

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
36	48	0	49	550	0

+

Voice of Reason:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
49	49	46	31	74	0

Total:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
85	97	46	80	624	0

---

The difference would be:

Stamina	Intellect	Crit	Haste	SpellPower	Sockets
-13	-5	+67	+28	-74	+2

---

74 spell power is a big deal, but so is losing 67 crit.

So, that's a lot of numbers. LT;DR is this -- I'm no longer after the Guiding Star. It looks like the staff will be in my possession until I can upgrade the shield, and I'm not sure that's going to happen any time soon.

Tier 10

MMO-Champion has given us a glimpse at our new Tier 10 items.

Totem\Relic
For resto shamans, the effect is as follows: Your Riptide spell grants 85 spell power for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

Now at first glance it looks a little blah. 85 * 3 is 255. 255 vs 234 from the Tier 9 totem is not a whole lot. And considering how often Riptide is cast as opposed to Chain Heal, I doubt I'd have the full 255 very often.

Gear Set
2 piece - Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.

This could actually be good for Lesser Healing Wave spam, and Chain Heal spam. I would be currious though if it stacks with the haste Healing Wave already gets from the Tidal Waves talent. My guess would be not.

4 piece - Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount.

I'm not sure exactly what this means. Does it mean that if I get a critical strike, it will heal my target for an additional 25%? If so, a 16k crit heal would turn into a 20k crit heal. Not bad at all.

Name: Returned

I just wanted to do a follow-up on my previous entry: Name: Stolen.

My name is once again unique. I am again the only Pirimus in WoW. Not sure who it was, but they've either renamed their character or deleted it. Either way, I'm happy again.

Heartmender Circle; Lack of Mace; 5-man ToC

Three-in-one today:

Ring --
I finally picked up my Heartmender Circle, purchased with 35 Emblems of Triumph. It's got some nice stats on it.

By equipping it, I lost haste, but gained crit. I've been a big proponent of haste as of late, so some may wonder why I would give it up. The reason behind it is that I want my crit at 30%. I'm sitting at about 28% now. I was able to keep Chain Heal at a 2 second cast, so dumping a little haste for some more crit was an okay thing to do.

Lack of Mace --
I still wait on the Guiding Star. I'm a man (or Draenei) obsessed. It really does bug me that I don't have a mace.

5-man ToC --
I was asked recently what I did to "auto catch" Eadric's hammer in the Trial of the Champion. I actually stumbled on this by accident, but it works quite well.

Just use the Grounding Totem -- it will "catch" the hammer, regardless of who it's thrown at. There's a long enough CD on the hammer throw that you'll be able to keep the totem down the entire fight. From there, it's easy mode.

Tier 9, here I come!

Stumbled on this little tasty crumb today:

The current plan [talking about 3.3] is to make Emblems of Triumph the "base" of emblems so everything that drops Emblems of Conquest would be changed to Triumph and then the new raid content would drop the new highest emblem along with things like the heroic daily and such.

Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20122741378&pageNo=7&sid=1#126


So what does this mean? More heroic farming, more daily farming, more Naxx farming. I'm wondering how long it will be before Naxx is a two-hour clear.

Resto Shamans in 3.3

I thought I'd stop in and take some time to discuss changes coming to resoration shamans in the next patch, 3.3 .

Wait .... there are none. Nevermind.


In general, what we're going to see is Icecrown Citadel with three new five-mans and one raid. The five-mans are quite exciting. But I'd really like to get through current raids before being thrust into a new one. I'm so behind :(