Shamus - Resto Shaman

[Shamus]

Player information:
- Age & Location: 23, Ft Bragg NC
- Usual Play Times (Server Time): 5pm-1230pm
- Number of Testicles: 2
- Can you attend raids on these days:
-- Monday: yes
-- Tuesday: yes
-- Wednesday: yes
-- Thursday: yes
-- Friday (optional): most likely
-- Saturday (optional): most likely
-- Sunday: yes
- Do any others have access to your account? Nope
- Do you use a blizzard authenticator? If no, why? Yes
- How long have you played WoW: Since 2005
- Endgame experience (What bosses have you killed):
-Nilla-
Was casual player, mostly pvp'd, did some MC.
-BC-
Everything but SP
-WoTLK-
Missed Naxx/Ulduar while I was deployed to Iraq. Have done all TOGC content except heroic Anub 25 man (Hard to write that down. /facepalm) 12/12 ICC 25, 11/12 ICC 10, 10/12 ICC HM, haven't fooled with 10M HM stuff much.

Character Information:
- Name, & Class: Shamus, Restoration Shaman
- Race & why did you choose it: Orc, No particular reason other than I considered going Enh OS, but never did.
- Link to Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... &cn=Shamus
- Can you describe the ruckus? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBmM79YadYM (Unrelated to question, yet still, glorious.)
- Professions and why did you choose them: Alchemy, has a history of being a favorable profession for shammies. JC, for the dragon's eyes since Haste Cap w/ Trauma can be a bitch.
- Spec, Dual spec. How often do you play other specs? I play ele as an OS, not very often, but can pull between 10-11l on DBS.
- Explain your choice of gear for main & offspecs: Resto is aimed torwards the 1269 haste cap, im torn between dumbing down with 12sp/10 haste gems to 1209 and using a haste elixir right now, Trauma kinda fucked up my groove. My ele gear isn't perfect as its mixed in with some resto gear, but in a perfect world I'd be gemming 23 sp unless i could get sp or haste as a bonus and then I use 12sp/10 haste or Nightmare Tear, respectively.
- What Glyphs do you use for each spec and why: Chain Heal, Earth Shield, Riptide ~ Currently what EJ reccomends and I have found no reason to disagree. For ele i use Lightning Bolt, Lava, Flame Shock.
- If you are applying as a DPS, what is your normal rotation?
- If you are applying as a healer, what spells do you use & when/why? Chain Heal/Lesser Healing wave totally depending on the fight and what our healing comp is. Riptide is used on cooldown. Earth Shield on MT or OT never falls off. For certain fights, or when absolutely necessary I find Healing Wave is a necessity.
- Highest PvP Rank on this character (vanilla & arena titles): Sergeant
- Prior guild(s) & your reasons for leaving: Brutal Knights (Andorhal) ~ Attendance issues and poor raid awareness leads to preventable whipes. Accelerate (Andorhal) ~ Only for a short period of time while searching for a new off server guild. Equitas (Alliance - Moonrunner) Good guild but I had to quit the game for some real life issues that arose, which have since been taken care of.

Other Information:
- A Screenshot of your character's UI: http://i928.photobucket.com/albums/ad12 ... ShayUI.jpg
- WWS/Wowmeter/Worldoflogs reports: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rrvktda17vsv1mvx/
- Alts & their name/level: Vaaro - 80 Ret Pally
- Out of game contact information (AIM/MSN/etc): email [email protected], skype spencer.schamun
- How did you find us? Is there anyone you know in Simple Math?: I'm currently on Andorhal, and let's face it, if Andorhal was a high school, SM would be the popular kids.
- Why Simple Math? Is there anything else you'd like to tell us? You guys obviously know your shit, I like the idea of going into a raid where I can fully trust the other 24 guy/girls to play as hard and as focused as me. Also, cool tabard.
- What kind of computer do you use? CPU/Memory/Video Card? Typical FPS during a 25-man raid? EVGA Motherboard, 4 GB DDR2 RAM, NVidia GTX 275, Killer Xeno network gaming card. Typically 55-70 fps during a raid.
- What kind of internet connection do you have? Run an internet speed test against Boston at speedtest.net Link the results below.

wow slow, basically I currently live in the barracks but am moving back to california in 3 weeks and have FiOS and amazing fast internet there, can't wait.
- Finally, we ask that you draw us a picture using MS Paint. This is not optional.

[Ninetales]

I feel like you lack a general experience of raiding hard mode content pre-nerf, also your gear is very lacking.

[Nehraxus]

I don't think your meta is active.

[Nehraxus]

Also do you have experience with H halion 25m? Have you messed around with the ptr at all? What are your glyph choices for primes / majors and if you could link a spec that you would be going come 4.0 I'd appreciate it. What are your typical assignments for healing in a raid, if you were assigned to strictly "raid" healing what do you feel your other responsibilities would be? Do you have a tracker for your earth shield? Do you have a tracker / range checker for your totems? I'm not seeing either in your UI SS but I do apologize if I missed them.

[Shamus]

Your absolutely correct, as it were I had to game quit shortly after my 25 man LK whichI believe was March 7th of this year. I wasn't planning on returning to WoW, but that didn't last long. So I missed out on what would've been the heroic grind, as well as the heroic gear, but stayed up to date on the fights via TankSpot. So far through ICC 25 HM I've yet to come across a fight where I felt I wasn't adequately geared, but then again I haven't seen heroic Lick King yet either. I've played with the 4.0 specs quit a bit for resto as well as ele, and even quite a lot for my Ret pally. Here's the spec Im currently looking at for resto, but Im sure it will change:

http://wowtal.com/#k=m1Ag0v0H.a0o.shaman

As for the meta, it is active, I was fooling around with various gear and the haste cap yesterday after raid and forgot to throw it back in, but it's back in my shoulders.

As for my totems and ES, I use totemtimers, which are usually in where you see my blizz default totem bar above my chat box, they are disabled in this pic of my UI, probably forgot to re click the Addon whiel switching toons.

As far as assignments during a raid, that varies fight to fight, but generally if I'm strictly raid healing, I mix chain heals on grouped packs, i.e melee, or stacked ranged targets, while keeping ES on my assigned ES target, and I use riptide on cooldown to spot heal, LHW when absolutely necessary, I try to avoid the mana intense HW's. If the fight call's for cleansing or purges, for a fight like Halion or Deathwhisper, Im generally clicking my cleanse like crazy.

As for Halion 25m HM, I've seen bits and pieces of it, but not played through it completely yet, but th efight doesn;t seem hard to grasp, like IMHO, all things warcraft usually tend to be.

[Shamus]

Linked the wrong 4.0 spec, here is the correct one, with glyph choices, bearing in mind that Im still unsure if riptide may be a better choice than earth shield, depending on fights and the healing comp.

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbbZcG ... :0mVMsdMzc

[shadylol]

this guy is a true brother! when we are in the same group doing the weekly, i was flying to the naxx this just want wait for another min and ask tank to pull.

thanks man good thing is my hearth is on cool down

[shadylol]

this guy is a true brother! when we are in the same group doing the weekly, i was flying to the naxx this just want wait for another min and ask tank to pull.

thanks man good thing is my hearth is on cool down

oh yeah while u are in iraq i'm sure your staff sergeant told you that leave all the stragglers behind!! just fuck them

[pelinel]

[quote="shadylol"]this guy is a true brother! when we are in the same group doing the weekly, i was flying to the naxx this just want wait for another min and ask tank to pull.

thanks man good thing is my hearth is on cool down[/quote]

can someone translate for me?

[Shamus]

hahaha shady sorry I had gf aggro and I had to go

[vix]

its ok i gkicked the mts gf and still got accepted

[Greyknight]

1) ur gear is way below the standards of a guild whose done everything in the game. Justify why we should take it because of this
2) your experience is lacking, not even a attempt on HM LK is a big no no because chances are, you are going to be lost and cause a lot of grief when doing HM LK for the first time. Justify why we should take it because of this
3) Explain your key bindings, its weird, frost shock as 2, blood lust as 4, considering you put the healing spells as Shift + 3 & Shift + 4, that takes a split second longer to cast over just pressing 3 or 4 and that could mean life and death. Pretty sure earth shield is in there somewhere invisible.
4) How do you keep track of your totems/CD's, Totemtimers? default ui? etc? (This was answered earlier)
5) Your trinkets, solace is better for regen, very little increase in SP for your trinket over solace or even heroic solace, why are you wearing them because you can easily get it in ToC ot ToGC, gdkp or anything.
6) Why did you quit? was there a reasoning? burnout? RL issues? got bored of the game? usually people who quit the game because of burnout or lost interest in the game and "never coming back" tend to quit again shortly after playing. Once they get the jolt they need from playing WoW again but will eventually go back into a slump of boredom then quit. If it was RL issues, what are the chances of it coming back?
7) Hows your regen like on long fights with that gear, do you need innervates during a fight on LK which lasts 15 min?
8 ) Please explain the benefits of a riptide lasting longer than 6 seconds than a glyph of lesser healing wave. What roles do you expect to be in when using either and who would you put the riptide on with the glyph.
9) Since you know the soft cap is at 1269, why choose a trauma over something that has stats if its affecting you from getting to that soft cap level. What are the benefits you earn with a trauma that outweigh the extra stats you get from a reg mace
10) Chances of heading into iraq/afghanistan anytime soon or in the future?
11) H Deathwhisper fight, why is someone like woodsy healing more than 2x you are. He is also healing more than you on most fights, why should we recruit you over someone like woodsy who would heal more/better than you?

[Shamus]

@ Greynight's Questions
1) Understandable concern. I mentioned this to Grouch in game before apping, he directed me to app anyways. I guess my answer to this question is gear can be upgraded, generally skill cannot.
2) I've yet to encounter a fight in game that I couldn't understand, at least conceptualize, through raid videos. At most one full attempt in game and I'm solid. I've always been great at picking things up quickly. If you guys have any videos of H LK kills, especially from Nehraxxus or Greyknights POV, I'd love a url.
3) The key bindings are very specific to me, I use a mouseover addon, healbot, to heal, so it frees up my other keys for more situational spells, or macros for specific fights.
4) Totemtimers
5) I totally agree with your analysis here, and basically its chalked up to bad luck. Ive seen solace drop very few times, and have never won it, even in GDKPs I've been out bid everytime. As all things Warcraft, I'm sure once I get my hands on one it will either be useless or it'll drop every time I do TOGC/TOC from then on.
6) RL issues having to do with family, but nothing that can or will affect my future raiding. Between alts, pvp, and raiding, I've yet to burnout on WoW.
7) Usually during LK I'm good on mana, I do have to watch my bar carefully and cancel cast when necessary.
In my experience, raiding with two holy light paladins I rarely get a chance to throw a LHW on the tank, which 99% of the time is my ES target, so I feel that extending the amount of ticks of my riptide allows for a bit of preventitive medicine, allowing maybe for a tick or two to hit if the target loses health again during the duration of the HoT.
9) I have a heroic midnight sun in my bag for fights where the extra haste/mp5 may be more beneficial, Trauma I tend to use on fights with more raid damage, the proc seems to add about 5-7% more healing, which essentially is like and extra ancestral awakening.
10) I end my service to our country on october 15th, so no, this soldier has done his duty.
11) That really depends on the attempt your looking at, the kill was a fluke involving melee bunching up around me, as opposed to spreading, turning my spot into a ghost blast zone. Usually myself or Joomkin tops healing on that fight. Reference H Putricide for a more accurate display of healing. Also, I believe Woodsy is very happy in BK lo, but you could ask him to app if you'd like.

Hope this answered your questions and concerns

[Ninetales]

Normal lich king is not the same encounter as heroic lich king.

[Shamus]

I am aware, I've researched the fight and watched many kill videos as well as attempts. I'd like to see exactly how SM does it, if one of your healers or ranged doesn't mind recording a kill.