A Shaman Gets Wet

What the hell Blizzard?

Are you freakin’ kidding me?

So I went on the damn water totem quest and two hours later I was finally able to obtain my Water Pole. Now I won’t rant about the obscene amount of travelling you have to do in order to complete this quest of futility. I also won’t complain about the fact that once you finally have the damn Pole in your bag it’s primarily useless. I will, however, complain about the fact that by going on this quest it takes a player out of the overall questing rhythm.

By the time you hit level 20 a player feels like they are finally hitting a bit of a questing cadence. Go out CLUB THE HELL OUT OF something and return to get your XP. Your spell rotation is starting to take shape and things seem to be happening fairly quickly. Then Blizzard throws this giant brick wall in your face and flips you the middle finger.

“Dear valued nerd. I understand that you’re trying to achieve greatness with your Shaman and kudos for sticking with it this long. But could you do us a favour and go wander around ALL OF AZEROTH for the next few hours. It would be most entertaining for us. Thanks.

P.S. We’re going to send you into zones that are above your level just so you can have your ass handed to you by a nomadic bear.”

Give me a break. I understand that they are trying to make the totems a bit of an achievement for the player. They’re trying to make you feel like you’re accomplished something. But come on, why the hell does it have to take so damn long and waste so much of my damn time? Why can’t the quest be a challenging battle with a powerful mob? Or even better, how about a damn quest that you are accompanied by an NPC. During the quest the NPC puts you into situations that require you to use specific totems. It would be a sort “training” quest and would allow the lonely shaman the opportunity to better understand the mechanics behind different totems.

Well, regardless of how much time I spent on this quest, the quest is over. The Water Totem is in my bag and I am able to move on into my 20’s.

A Shaman Gets Rolling

With that awful, awful fire totem quest in the rear view mirror (it really was just awful). Shammydavis is able to look ahead to the great span of levels that is 11 through 20.

I have to admit, I’m having a good time playing the Shammy. It hasn’t felt too gear dependent and even without the help of any heirloom items the levels have gone by fairly quickly. The only change to my rotation so far has come with the addition of the lightning shield. The lightning shield was an ability that I got back in the early levels. I just never used the damn thing that much, it didn’t seem necessary. As I climbed the levels I found myself buffing myself with the lightning shield before every pull. So my rotation went from Bolt, Bolt, Shock, CLUB THE HELL OUT OF THEM to Lightning shield, Bolt, Bolt, Shock, CLUB THE HELL OUT THEM, Lightning shield (reapply) and FINISH CLUBBING THE HELL OUT OF THEM!

As far as using that stupid fire totem, I have learned one very valuable lesson. Don’t use the fire totem. Lesson learned. See, the problem with the fire totem is the fact that, at this level, all it does is a ranged attack. But the ranged attack is completely uncontrollable, when you‘re finished CLUBING THE HELL out of a mob this damn pole of Satan will fire another attack at the next closest mob. Sometimes my totem would fire a shot at a passing squirrel, but other times it would fire a shot at a wandering mob. The mob would get all pissy and come over and first club the pole of Satan and then start CLUBING THE HELL OUT OF ME. So if I can pass along any advice it would be this; keep you totem in your pants, I mean bag (sorry). The only time I pull out my totems now is when I screw up and pull too many mobs. As soon as I recognize that the F’n Harpie I just sent a bolt at is bringing a couple of bitchy friends I frantically throw down any and all totems available to me. At this point that would be a totem to increase my armor and the pole of Satan. Then as soon as I am finished CLUBBING THE HELL OUT OF THEM, I retract my fire totem right away before it can get a shot off... and drink.

Oh, I have left out the greatest addition to my rotation. I have decided to become an Herbalist. The skill learned at level 75 herbalism is an instant cast heal over time spell and believe me I use this skill. Maybe more than the heal ability that Shamans learn from the trainer. Not only has Herbalism saved my life more than a couple of time it has also provided me with a nice little income on the side. All thanks to wonderful flower power.

Levels 11 through 20 have flown by and I now stand before you an adult Shaman. I wonder what wonderful skills I will get at level 20? I get a nice shiny new dinosaur mount, no more walking for this sucker. Off to the Shaman trainer to get my… oh crap… Water Totem quest.

A Shaman Hits Double Digits

Dear Blizzard,

SCREW YOU!

Thank you,
Nebz

So Shammydavis dinged 10 and with great power comes great responsibility. Finally, I was thinking, finally I can specialize in my chosen talent tree. Finally I can train in some kick ass abilities. But best of all I can finally get my fire totem and add a little dps to my shaman (insert fail sound effect here).

First let’s talk about the talent tree I have decided to pursue. A shaman has three choices (duh), Enhancement (two handed melee DPS), Elemental (DPS caster in leather/mail) and Restoration (healer). Now, personally I don’t have very much interest in trying to level Shammydavis through the Dungeon Finder (too many horrific runs with other toons). For leveling toons my poison of choice is good old fashion questing. Leveling a healer through questing is a matter of outlasting the mob you are currently poking and for me that doesn’t spell fun. So that narrows my choices down to caster or melee, and since I already have a level 80 mage, I decided to level as a melee (Enhancement).

Alright, we have a talent tree! Let’s look and see what I get to put my first point into on my journey to uberness. Ummm... ummm awesome… one point goes to raising my intellect by a hair. Nice. Great. Wonderful. Grand.

Well at least I get to go on my magical and mystical journey for the elusive fire totem. Now I won’t bore you with the specifics of my journey, but I will tell you that I wasted a total of 54 mins of my life on this damn quest. 54 mins! What the hell Blizzard?

Years ago I used to read a comic in the Saturday newspaper entitled “The Family Circus”. Although the comic wasn’t very funny, once in awhile it had a drawing of the crazy adventures of little Jeffery. In one of the frames Lil’ Jeffery’s mother would ask him to go and get the mail. The next frame contained his “hilarious” journey through the house, into the yard, into the playground, out on the road, to the mail box, to the fridge, to the bar, into the bathroom and then finally to his mom. The final frame would be his mom asking “What took you so long?” Ugh! On this quest chain I felt just like Lil’ Jeffery. Crisscross the Barrens, then into Durator, into the Barrens back and forth until you finally end up back where you started just to kill some crappy fire elemental that was beside the guy who started the damn quest. Oh, and of course Shammy is only level 10 so I HAD TO WALK THE WHOLE DAMN TIME! Nerd rage! Screw you Blizzard! I had visions of some jackass sitting at corporate Blizzard laughing at me as I ran back and forth.

“Look”, he would yell to his buddies, “another sucker is on that stupid fire totem quest. Pop some popcorn this loser’s going to be awhile.”

Up yours Blizzard!

Well needless to say I finished the quest and I got my stupid fire totem. Big frigin’ deal. I just keep telling myself that this quest chain was an anomaly, after all that running around I’m sure that the water totem at level 20 will be a breeze.


P.S. Blizzard I still love, don’t make me leave the game. I’ll pay extra if I have to.

A Shaman is Born

My most recent endeavor has been to roll and level a Troll Shaman. You may think, “big deal” or “who cares”, well I’ll tell you the little twist I have in store… you ready for this… I plan on leveling all the way to 80 this time! Crazy, I know, but this time I’m actually going to see this one through.

The first decision I had to make was which race was I going to use. Admittedly, the Horde side has many more choices over the Alliance, so I was to chose between Tauren (slow, kind of dull and they take up too much real estate on my screen), Troll (ugly, crappy racial traits, but man can they dance) and Orc (way ugly, better racial traits and cool wolf mount). So I choose a Troll, what can I say I’m a sucker for the cool dance moves.

The second decision was his name. Do you know how damn hard it is to be original any more when it comes to naming your toon. Think of a name right now, any name, now try and use it in the character creator. Go ahead, I can wait…. Didn’t work, did it? It’s brutal; all the original stuff is gone. So now you’re left using a “1” instead of an “l” or some other form of phonetic bastardization. Oh and if the original name that you choose did work, guess what, there’s probably 100 other toons with the same name on other servers. My shaman is Shammydavis, there are a lot of other Shammydavis’s already running around Azeroth. I didn’t know this at the time. I swore I was the wittiest cleverest person ever when I thought of Shammydavis. Sadly, I am not.

So here I am, Shammydavis, ready to take on the world. I am part of friendly little guild that my friends started, For Shatt (s) and Giggles (damn we’re funny). I have my mace and my shield. Everything seems to be ready to go. Wait a minute. I don’t have any 18 slot bags? I have no gold? What the hell is this? Now I’m starting to rethink this whole thing.

My Shammydavis is born to the world and as a level 1 Shaman your attack choices are very limited, as a matter of fact for the first 9 levels every attack was exactly the same. Lightning bolt (usually twice before the mob gets to me) and then CLUB THE HELL OUT OF THEM! One nice thing that has recently happened is Blizzard has decided to make manna and health regeneration much quicker for the first 10 levels. This allowed me to bolt, club and move on with very little down time. Eventually I got my first shock spell (level 2) so my pattern varied enough to include the new spell. Lightning bolt (x2), shock and the CLUB THE HELL OUT OF THEM! That’s it, rinse and repeat for the first 9 levels. Oh sure I got a new shinny totem at level 4, but honestly I don’t think I ever planted the damn thing. Maybe once I threw it out there when I pulled one too many mobs, but as far as early leveling goes I never dropped a totem. Oh sweet ignorance, and then “DING!” level 10!