Hunter Done and Almost There on the Shammy

So I managed to get the hunter to 85 within a day or so of my last post. Total played time for the hunter from 80-85 was right at 24 hours, so not as good as the warlock despite my expectations. No epic flying on the hunter. Not sure if that makes a huge difference, but I guess it could have.

I've been working on the shaman next and have actually been leveling him as enhancement and that has been an enormous amount of fun. Very high survivability and incredible burst damage. Mobs have been going down faster with the shaman than with any other toon so far. I did equip him with two Heavy Geode Mace's, a BoE drop out of Stonecore, that's made him a bit overpowered. They can be purchased on my server for about 150g each and are really an excellent enhancement weapon. Slow, high dps, with hit and expertise.

I very rarely make it all the way through my rotation on this guy. I'll pull with lightning bolt, drop totems, Flame Shock, Storm Strike, Lava Lash, Unleash Elements and maybe Earth Shock if they're still alive. Then pull the next one. Rinse and repeat. Mana is not a problem at all. I have Lightning Shield glyphed so I only have to refresh it every 10 minutes.

I've done a few dungeons on him as well and have found his dps to be very good. I also tend to be pretty popular with the healers - healing stream totem and a few well placed chain heals off of Maelstrom Weapon procs tends to make everyone's life a little bit easier. Combine that with a very nice interrupt and good crowd control, and you've really got a lot of utility that you can bring to an instance.

After then enhancement shaman, I think the shadow priest will be up next.

I also did a few heroics over the weekend on the warlock. Pugging continues to be incredibly frustrating about half the time. I continue to be amazed by how many folks running instances are still not understanding how much of a difference it can make to just take the time to mark pulls and set up crowd control. But, instead of doing that, everyone rushes in, wipes and leaves and spends another 40 minutes waiting in queue.

Had a Throne of the Tides one - warlock and mage in the group. Tank didn't mark on the first trash pull, but the mage and I each CC'd one of the healers in the back. The tank broke the crowd control on both, so the mage and I reapplied, and he broke it again! Mage and I both said in party chat at the beginning of the pull that we'd be cc'ing the healers, so the tank was aware we were doing it (in case the new penguin on the floor wasn't his first clue).

Needless to say, the warriors in the front never went down and we eventually wiped upon which the tank and healer immediately left group leaving the mage and I standing there with bewildered looks on our face. Oh well. Eventually, either people are going to figure this out, or Blizzard is going to realize that their average player base isn't as smart as they give us credit for and either nerf the crap out of everything or start making epics rain from the sky. Probably a little of both.

And sadly enough, that's actually probably fine with me. While I get an incredible sense of accomplishment out of a well executed heroic that takes 2-3 hours to complete, I honestly don't have the time to be doing that on a regular basis. I'm not a big advocate of the 10 minute "gogogogo" chain pull fests either, but there should be something reasonable somewhere in the middle.