Yay I hit level 70 on the weekend, just before my bux night, my wedding is coming up on the 3rd of March, so not long to go now, will be very busy this week won't have much time to play WoW i think.
Had a few goes at some PVP later after hitting level 70, bloodlust is awseom fun :D This is a WF with bloodlust on, not that it does more dmg, but yeh really kool spell...
There has been a lot of talk about Lord of The Rings MMORPG coming out, and I believe that WOW will prevail, I just don't think that WOW players are going to be ready to change games after all the new content that TBC released. I think this animation just about sums it up!
The reason I have changed my shaman tree to include the talent flurry is because, with enough equipment and the level 70 spell bloodlust, I figured out I can get my 3.6 second two handed mace (The Oathkeeper) down to a .11 second cast time.
If flurry procs, from a critical strike, it increases my weapon speed by 30%, when flurry is up if I pop bloodlust, that increases all attacks / spells buy another 35%, that's 65%, now this alone will make my weapon speed 1.26 seconds.
To get my weapon speed right down to the amazingly overpowered 0.11 second cast time I need to luckily get hold of (Abacus of Violent Odds) which is dropped by Pathaleon the Calculator in the instance called Tempest Keep - The Mechanar, the trinket has a chance on hit, similar to flurry to add 260 to haste rating, haste rating is approximately 15.8 haste to 1%, so that's 16% increase to my weapon on top of the already 65%, it also an ability to use the trinket as well with another 260 to haste rating, so your looking at a possible 32% from this trinket on top of the 65% that's a total of 97% reduction in weapon speed. THIS WILL BE OVERPOWERED, can't wait!!
I've been reading posts all over the net, about what people playing their toons are going to do once the hit the level 70 mark, and can't level their toons any more. I believe that 70 is the start of WoW, not the end of it, the system is designed to knock out players who can't play the game very well and leave behind the hardkore players as they have been named.
Reaching level 70 is not a challenge, leveling a toon is not a challenge in the game, anyone with a heart beat and 2 arms can do it, the quests details are displayed in web pages all over the net, with coordinates detailing what, when and where to kill things to complete quests. It's not difficult, the only thing separating players from reaching level 70 now and later is game play time, and that's not a dramatic issue.
If you hit 70 now or later it won't make any difference to you being invited to end game content, if your a good player, you won't get left behind, if your a good player your guild will recognize this and they will help you become attuned to each and every raid they need you in.
Guilds pick players to join them in raid based on a few things, items and player class skill. Leveling is a bi-product of the game, you need to be level 70 to get an invite.
A level 70 shaman (resto) who is no good at the game won't get an invite over a level 70 shaman (resto) who doesn't over agro, who keeps the tank alive, who does the right things and can follow instructions when trying new things. The same goes for any class. TBC is all new, if you can't follow instructions, or are just to dumb, or not skilled enough to do them, you don't get invited. Its as simple as that.
I hit 69, best level in the game! Have 24 quests still to complete in Nagrand, shouldn't take long to hit 70, though I'm a mile short of getting a flying mount, but I can save up for it, I need to respec again, I want to sacrifice 5% chance to crit with healing spells for improved Mana Spring and Mana Tide totem.
It means I don't get the full 15% in resiting interrupt mechanics and silence, but I think that's probably the best mixture I can get, for raid / pve / pvp. This is a screen shot of my mace now, with the +30 intellect enchant on it, cost me an arm and a leg but its worth it, check out my total stats now..
Its not the Crow Wing Reaper that I've been chasing, but my oh my its great. I found this if a Crashing Wave-Spirit in Nagrand, and have been using it for half my level in 68. My WF crits speak for themselves...
I was extremly tempted to respec to stormspike in enhancment tree, you can imagine what kind of damage this mace would do with 40% extra power from windfury, and 10% extra wepon damage. I ended up changing my tree to get 5 points spent in Flurry, so that the axe speed increases after getting a critcal stirke. Have kept healing up, so remember those crits are from a none enhancement shaman. But full enhancement shamans won't be getting crit heals like this.....
My gears gears set towards +dmg and +sta / +int, If i can land just a few items with extra strength or attack power, I'm going to be laughing, those kind of crits are against level 65 mobs, cloth wearers in PVP don't have a chance.
68 Finally, so excited, I hit it in Sekketh Halls last night, I'm still chasing my Crow Wing Reaper from Talon King Ikiss. I've done 4 runs now and have worked out how to pulverize this instance hands down now. Talon King Ikiss has been the hardest to beat, we couldn't work out a start to down him without interupting his AOE spell, then we realised that behind each pillar in his room the spell doesn't harm you its LOS, so now hes very easy to kill. But the spell is crazy look at the sheer damage is does if you get in the way of it.
I went back to Orgrimmar after this run and got my new spells and had a quick glance at my new Fire Elemental, I thought I would be able to summon the Fire and Earth elemental at the same time but you can't which sucks, but its still fairly good.
At this rate when I hit 70 in two levels Ill have over 8k in mana and health, and that's providing I don't find any better items to use. I really really really want my Crow Wing Reaper, I think Ill keep running the instance until I get it hey. I've been picking Druids as the MT over Warriors, kinda because Druids won't need to roll on the Axe if it drops, but also because they seem to be better tanks. The have insane amounts of HP and attack power and amour, I seriously think Druids are the next MT....
I did an instance run last night with a level 64 paladin, we did slave pen and he was the main tank. Now I don't like the idea of Pali's on the horde side, which is what I wrote about in one of my previous post. But boy did his Aura's, and blessings have some benefits, he gave me blessing of wisdom, and it was restoring 33 mana every 5 seconds, that along with my mana spring totem down made it virtually impossible to run out of mana. I really did enjoy playing with one, as much as I hate them. I can see them being a nessacity on each side, alliance with shammans horde with palidins, the instances at higher levels are hard and the spells they have are well worth having one.
I hit 67 this morning, my toon now has roughly 7.5k hp and mana, I've got some serious saving to go before I can get my flying mount trained and things after spending it all on getting my epic riding skills, but I think I might just have enough by the time I hit 70, I gained roughly 100g today just doing some quests and selling items at 67.
I got a group of guildies together and ran Sethekk Halls, we had 4 67's and a 68 druid as the tank. I was the healer, this is seriously a hard instance. The mobs are in close groups, they fear and they hit really really hard. The first boss in the instance is harder then the end boss in my opionion. I would love to run this instance again, I want the Two Handed Axe (Crow Wing Reaper) that drops from Talon King Ikiss, hes the end boss.
A little while ago I wrote about some items that have been dropping that have statistics that are mental high, and that they don't actually give the player all those stats, and that blizzard should be fixing them. I called it Crazy Stats, anyway I've been using a mod called Auctioneer, for those of you that haven't heard of it or used it, it allows you to run a search through auction house and keep track of item prices and things like that, the idea is to buy low sell high. Anyway I was searching for items to purchase that I might be able to resell at a higher amount in order to make profit on them and I came across a piece of amour with +0 stats. Thought I'd post the picture :D
I hit 66 last night, finally and it opens up a ton of stuff to you, the difference in my opinion from 65 to 66 is huge, I don't know if its just that I am over the half way mark to 70, or if the spells I got made a difference, but its awesome anyway.
I got the next rank of Lesser Healing Wave, which now crits for around 2.4k, which is pretty good for a 1.5 second heal. And I got my elemental totem, which has saved my ass more then once I can tell you. I though he would be like a pet you could control, but he actually stands around where you place the totem, so what I've been doing is pulling 4 or 5 mobs to me, dropping my elemental and casting Earth Shield on him, and healing him to keep him alive, while I DoT the mobs and drop my Magma Totem, and just aoe them all down.
Good for quests where you need to kill 10 mobs or so, can complete them fairly easy now. The elemental on a 20minute timer though, but I can't see any reason why elite missions aren't solo able by a shaman now. It has a 20minute cool down, but that's fine, I cranked him out in a PVP game last night I thought I'd have a go at as well and he pulverized a lvl 68 druid.
I know that's I've been talking allot about Clefthoof Amour Kits, but they are fantastic, I searched high and low for mats of the AH and bought enough to make 5 kits, I managed to sell all 5 kits for between 80g and 100g within roughly 4 hours in Orgirmmar yelling in the trade window. It was awesome, gave me enough money to buy my 150 riding skill for 540g, and I had AV tokens to pickup a Black Raptor for my Tauren :D He looks cool, I was tempted to get the Black War Kodo, but I have always wanted a Raptor.
Finally got the mats to make my long waited Clefthoof Amour Kit, I found some Clefthoof near the bone yard at Tekorra Forrest and killed enough to gain the 8 peices of Think Clefthoof Leather i needed to make the kit, this gave me +30 stamina and +10 agility. 
That plus finding my new chest peices brought my total hp and mana up to roughly 7k each.....for a level 65 shammy my base stats are hardkore. I had to drop 44 dmg by using my new chest peices but the amount of hp and mana I now have is worth it, I can seriously sit back lighting bolt my way up in levels.
Terokkar Forrest looks awesome, and I have to say I have found this place to be much more fun the questing in Zagarmarsh, that place gave me the craps. I completed about 10 quests yesterday, and am looking forward to completing more in this area. There is plenty to pick from, the horde towns in this zone are right where they are meant to be, there isn't much distance to travel between quests and I just have to say I'm enjoying killing Wolfs / Spiders and other creatures that are normal as apposed to giant alien walking things from War of Worlds.
You might disagree with me on this, but the general vibe that I'm getting surrounding this is that horde don't want Paladins. I'm really annoyed at blizzard for introducing this idea, in my opinion I think they slacked off and instead of making things interesting and say introducing a completely new class, like a Necromancer for example, they just gave Shaman's to alliance and Paladins to horde.
A new class would have made things interesting, the two new races are great, that was a good way of introducing them into the game and that's fine, but a Paladin on the horde side isn't going to go down well, at least not for another 6-8 months. People on the horde side have built up a kind of aggression towards them, they are what made alliance alliance and what separated the two rivaling sides. Same goes for Shaman's on the alliance side.
I know I haven't posted in a while, I've been flat out organising my wedding / bux night etc.....but I managed to get some play time in last night and finally hit 65, got roughly 160g at the moment as well, so well on my way of getting 150 riding skill. I'll be saving gold from here on in for that exact reason.
I put my new talent point into 1% extra damage in the elemental section, so by the time I'm 69 I'll have 5% extra damage to spells. And the last point I'll be using will either be 1% extra crit with weapons or 8% extra stats from Grace of Air and Strength of Earth totems. The new Strength of Earth totem gives me +86 strength at the moment, its pretty hardkore. Wrath of Air is by far the best new totem shammys get, I absolutely love it, been hitting crazy doing crazy crits....
Any spell that can hit 1836 damage at level 64 is great in my opinion, especially if its my own. Not only has my lighting bolts been great, but my healing has been spot on as well, I've been able to solo heal in many instances and can't wait to get my next healing wave, I think that's at 66. The biggest crit heal I have done is a 4.3k that was at 64 mind you, and apparently a couple of my guildies who are level 70 shammys have hit 5.2k healing crits before with roughly +500 healing.
My rested xp is 4 bubbles from the end of 66, so getting to 66 shouldn't take long. Can't WAIT!!
Been a few post floating around the net about some items that are dropping with completely mental stats. From what I've heard the items still give you the correct amount of stats when you equip them. But stuff like this shouldn't even be happening. Boy of boy would I like either one of these.
Reminds me of the south park episode, could wear that one peice of cloth amour on me feet and have more stats then all my equipment put together and run around naked ganking everything....."How do you kill that which has no life."
Did a run last night in Underbog, we had a 66 Druid as the tank, 2 mages 67 and 64 and a lock 62 plus me 64 shammy. We did alright, hard to do a 3hr or so instance with a little one. I had to stop a lot to feed the baby, change the baby, look after the baby, settle the baby, dress the baby. But he's worth it. We got pali loot from 2 bosses, and didnt have anyone to DE either so I ended up winning the rolls for both of them and vendored them.
Its a pretty awseom instance, very fun, but one thing I noticed is you can't skin anything in there. I have no idea why that happened to us, the herabilsts could get herbs from the bog creature things, but me and the other skinner couldn't skin the bats.
I've got rested XP to 65 now, and am half way through 64 just from running that instance. So ill probably run another one tonight if I get time and try and hit 65, and maybe get some shammy loot in the process. I socketed a shoulder peice I had aswell with +6 int and +5 dmg to give me +1 dmg / +2 int / +1 sta more then before.
