Running Dungeons

While your doing your random dungeon daily for you respective rewards, emblems to satchels, keep in mind your guild. If your a healer or a tank and you have others in your guild around the same level group with them. They get into runs faster you get more friends and the great ( I owe you one ) benefits of having a guild that is helpful.

Now not everyone will want to group up but offer anyway, make it known you will group up.

Azjol-Nerub Destro Voidwalker tank??

Foo, our great guild leader always wanting to show just how far out of comfort zone we can work decided a 80 destro lock was perfect candidate to tank Azjol-Nerub on a Void.

We had 3 warlocks, 2 at 80 and 1 at 71 and me a 74 Resto shaman, later we also picked up a 80 Rogue from the guild. So 3 warlocks a rouge and a shaman cleared Azjol-Nerub, not bad with a destro locks voidwalker tanking. Now mana for me (the shaman) was a challenge to manage, and making sure I didn't pull aggro was near on impossible.

Breaking the daily grind.

Now everyone is basically a grinder. Whether you grind Reputation, Professions, Exp, Achievements, Badges, Honor etc, you grind something every day you play.

Face it some days you will feel like farming others you want to quest grind rep, it varies and so should you. The game is no longer fun when your forcing yourself to do something. Now this doesn't mean just because you don't want to do it, don't do it, rather spend less time on certain things than all.

Levelling crafting on the cheap

If we look at what the 'average mug' crafter does, we can 'structure' our training to take advantage of this, both as a crafter and as a gatherer
Dont be these guys:

• Would like to learn a profession.  Spends a fortune on stuff in the AH. Doesn't finish in twenty minutes and gets bored. Gives up.
  
• Knows that some professions go together - like herbalism and alchemy.  Tries to keep up, but cant be bothered.  Finds that they get to level 40, and can't gather anymore.   Gives up.
• Can't get into their raiding guild without a profession.  Takes 6000+ to AH.  Cant find all the mats in the AH. Spams trade and pays 3 times going price.  Uses a profession levelling guide. Sells everything at a vendor.  Runs out of money.  Begs for gold.  Might even get profession, but will never make money from it.

The 'simple' way to level your crafting professions will, by my rough and ready numbers,  set you back about 6000 gold.  However, as much as possible - I have a break even (or better) policy.

Cooking

Now I know I'm more of a dungeon runner than any sort of profession grinder but hear this. Cooking is great! Level cooking you can get some nice "well fed" bonuses from it.

As a shaman healer and being incredibly lazy I got to 74 without even picking up cooking. Now I'm leveling it as fast as cash will allow.

Healing Naked

That is what happens when you tell Foolich that healing Violet hold was too easy. You get naked and heal it. Very interesting things happened none of which interesting.

Now while I only made it to 2nd boss as tank Disconnected and everyone left, I still kept everyone up even the mage that tried to tank. IMPOSSIBLE !! you scream but it happened with what i have above and Buffs.

Of course mana was always low after each portal I had to drink. Totem sets droped me to 85% or less mana, and totem sets elemental and heroism basically forced me to drop mana tide at the start.

Now while i do not recommend this, it took my group till around the 8th portal to notice there naked healer jumping around. This alone should prove that Gear score doesn't mean everything and skill plays a big part.

As far as I'm concerned I believe it was my group as much as me, they where not over geared in any sense, some a little lower than I would have thought but overall well rounded group. Healing with no gear = very little spell power from gear (above is buffs mostly and staff which has been enchanted) low mana regen (thats with water shield on) and lower crit/hit, makes for small heals. I had to heal around 1.6 times as much as normal which cooked my mana cause the small pool and no re-gen , but VH can be healed in the above format.

Egamad of Caelestraz......another day of stupidity.

Gearing up in Dungeon finder

Gear in the dungeon finder is a great way to be "set for life".

You will find as you progress as a healer you will be able to get a large amount of virtually un-beatable gear. As you can (hopefully) see from the above I have gear that is 1 to 2 levels above me for my head, neck, off hand (including a shield) a cloak and after this was taken I got new legs.

Totems: who, what, when, where, why? Healing sets.

This time on your totem fix, we will focus on the healing choices for totems (as this is what i do).

Most choices are simple mana/health, spell power, haste etc. But when and what to use are entirely different as battles change, bosses have phases later on, and some one in your group will do something they probably shouldn't.


The most obvious choices for totems as a healer are;

Recruitment

Thank you Egamad - I think :)
As I have been ... reminded, we are currently recruiting.
Our current plans are :

Totems: who, what, when, where, why?

Egamad here again now with a guide to totems!

Totems: the who, what, when, where and why of all totems.

As a shaman you will find totems a blessing and a curse: yes they give good buffs, but are they useful? Is it worth my mana? How long will we be in range?

I will run through my totem layout for the "Call of the....." totem sets you get as you progress. Also what you should have hot-keyed as you will need them but they may not be the one you dropped.

Nexus normal as shammy heals

This what you want to see, when you and the tank form an understanding and feed each other what you need to keep the party moving.

This was a nexus run, to get this remark from the tank it simply involved keeping him alive. However we did wipe once, in a very common place for the nexus, ...

Crimson Halls open tomorrow.

Wow.com reminds us that crimson halls open tomorrow.
Opportunity plus instinct equals profit. (apparently Ferengi acquisition rule #9)
Want to know how?

The Resto Shaman and Dungeon Finder.

Guest post by Egamad


Dungeon finder is the best thing to happen to Wow since conjured bread.
Now don’t let that fool you it is not perfect, it doesn’t take skill into account, you could have a 5 year old playing patty cake with the keyboard as a tank and still be expected to keep the group up. It does happen.

This is what you need to know so that you can carry your team no matter there skill, after all healer is 34% tank 33% and each DPS is 11%. What you have been given, when to use it, and general tips from a leveling Resto shaman.

Fail better

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samual Beckett).

• Level 18 Mage that took 3 months to level.
  
• Level 60 Warlock that refused a class appropriate scholomance epic upgrade because it had less shadow damage than my felcloth armour. (sorry I dont remember which one)
  
• Level 80 Warlock doing 700 dps in Heroic Halls of Lightning.
  
• Death Knight tank that couldn't hold agro in an instance by myself.
• Death Knight tank that wiped 10 times straight in Old Kingdom.
• Death Knight tank that still can't find the guardians on the first boss in Old Kingdom.
• Death Knight tank who cant remember frost presence.
  
• Priest healing my undamaged self, while tank was dying.
• Tank Healer who let the tank die because I was too busy raid healing.
• Lost a lot of money on the Auction House.
  

And the list goes on.


I am still trying to find new ways to fail.

Levelling via LFG as DPS

Ok.  The good news. DPS are likely to level quicker by LFG than by questing.  The bad news is you will be waiting much longer than either a Tank or a Healer between instances.
How to turn this into gold?

Levelling via LFG

Getting to 80 quickly - plan B.

The Looking for group option provides a really quick way to level - but works best if you sign up as 'tank' or 'healer'. In fact it is too quick to level your standard gathering skills.

So what to do?

Inspect right next to Vote to Kick

I (mostly) like the new LFG interface. It makes getting instances very quick if you are a tank or healer (or very friendly with one).

But seriously, you can not check gear before joining up with a cross realm pug (pick up group member). So what do you do - 'Inspect' them soon after joining them.

However, several of us are .... mouse challenged, and click on the item just above or just below. And the item just above inspect is .... Vote to kick.

So - you have gone from wanting to know who has good specs/gear etc to ... a randomly unpleasant person.

Oh well.

Talents & classes.

Class is what you chose when you first started your character.
Talents are those things you get at level 10, and define what role you will take in your class.  Once you hit level 10 - there will be a new talent option on the bottom left toolbar - with a default hotkey of 'N'.
Depending on your Class and Talents you have chosen, you are specifying your primary role.  But what roles are there, and what talents should you take?