Gem Faqts Addendum

I've updated the gem chart from this post to cover somethings I overlooked and some things I was not aware of. Thanks to Lilitharien & Janaan for info on Discipline Priests and Blkthunder for noticing an oversight with tanks gemming in red slots. (thanks plusheal.com!)


I'd like to reiterate that this chart is about gemming for MAX capacity, so generally this follows a pattern of max EP values (equivalency points), and one of the 4 exceptions to gemming differently is in the case of balancing stats.
With this in mind I want to mention healer meta gems, and why Ember has been added as an option (and possibly an upgrade) to the Insightful meta. The reason is that it is increasingly trivialized for healers to manage mana with Ulduar gear. I think even with Naxx 25 gear this is nearly the case. My healset is mostly naxx 25 and I don't really have mana issues on any Ulduar fights and I am far from the best geared healer. I will hold off til 3.2 to replace the Insightful with Ember altogether, afterall the chart is about maxxing out and those too lazy to read the instructions will just have to suffer with gemming Ember metas prematurely.

Lastly, not a single Enhancement Shaman noticed my obvious dupe of making Agi the #1 gem for us. This is probably because not a single enhancement shaman actually reads this blog..
Anyways, gems your Enh Sham alt for ATK after capping Exp and Hit !!!


As a sidenote I'd like to mention that I FINALLY have a helmet worth wearing. I've always hidden the helmet as it has always made me look super gay. I'm not homophobic. Even my gay brethren don't want to look super-gay (unless it's the moustache parade)

I used to rock the Cinched Mullet(with a blade at the end)

This way I could whip my head around like a rabid mustang for extra dps, slashing and whinnying like the wildest of horses. The good times, they were good.

Sometimes I tried my helmets, but invariably, Blizz would let me down.

They tried to make me look like Batman, when clearly, I don't wear hockey pads.

Finally, last week I got a helmet from Ulduar that is the 1st helm badass enough to don my dome.


I dont care what its called or what the stats are because clearly, it is Bad-Ass, and I sound like Darth Vader when I wear it.
Something my guildmates may not be fond of in Vent............
Whatever, I AM UR FATHER!!!!!!

Minor update to my macros

I've updated the macros section to mention some lines I've added to a previous macro.

This one allows me to see my Spirit Wolves stats on the pet tab of the paperdoll screen, as well as letting me zoom my camera back an extra 15 yards. Finally, it prevents those annoying error messages from blocking my screen. I was getting tired of getting spammed with 'Spell not Ready' or 'Invalid Target' or 'Out of Range' or 'Delete Urself Noob'

Anyways, here she is-- the "Boobies Macro." Because boobies are awesome.

/run if not oldHasPetUI then oldHasPetUI = HasPetUI; HasPetUI = function() return true, false; end end PetTab_Update() ToggleCharacter("PetPaperDollFrame")
/console cameradistancemaxfactor 1000
/run UIErrorsFrame:Hide();

Shaman Get Beefed Up

It's always seemed like shaman were a bout half a patch behind the rest of the classes, leading to alot of QQ mostly. I'm not one to cry about things, unless were talking the "fetal position in the shower" scene that played out after my high school prom. (she made me feel so violated!)

With 3.2 looming, it looks like things may change, with many classes feeling nerfed, but finally shaman rejoicing with nothing but improvements. I'd like to share my thoughts on some of the changes...

I know, I'm right on top of the cutting edge in what's going on 2 weeks ago in WoW.

* A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.

I like this because I won't have to waste so much time dropping totems. That is really the only improvement this will provide as I use Totem Timers addon. I suspect that I'll still be using Totem Timers addon if they update for 3.2, the new UI for this appears a little clunky, check it out here at Ailis' Blog I'm interested to find out if Totem Timers will be the addon for this or if plain old Dominos or Bartender will do. Either way I'm gonna be wanting this smaller and opaque and out of the way.

* All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
Love it. I clung to my s5 gloves way too long to keep this effect, not a huge deal for enhance, but elementals should be lovin this. Mostly a PvP change, although I have taken Frozen Power once or twice to help DKs control the sparks on Maly, this would make that alot easier.

* Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
Just in time for me to drop mining for blacksmithing, yet keep the same amount of health.

* Chain Heal: Jump distance increased to 10 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
Awesome. Just awesome. Great news for all specs alike, Chain Heal is probably the most used heal of Enhance and Elementals that care about the raid and help top up health from time to time.

* Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
Meh. PvP is srz bzniss.. Will be nice for levelling shaman though, of course

* Talents

o Enhancement
+ Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman's attack power, down from 30%.
I love it. With about 6.5k attack power on raids, the 30% mana regen was overkill. I'd be at full mana and still have 10sec left on Shamanistic Rage. 15% will still easily bring me to full mana, but now I can use this twice as often. This will be nice as I can add Nova Totem to a rotation, and use Chain Lightning alot more often instead of having to conserve mana with Lightning Bolt sometimes. This is mostly a PvP change for the 30% damage reduction Shamanistic Rage gives

o Restoration
+ Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
Very nice. This will reduce alot more damage as it applies to spell damage too.

+ Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
Funny how it's mostly discussed in Resto circles just because it's in the "resto" tree of talents. Very nice change for Enhancement and Elementals. Restos already have Cleanse Spirit and would never use this spell. Ever.

+ Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
Meh. PvP

+ Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
Awesome. It's rare a shaman will spit out 2 Healing Wave spells on a target in a row, unless main tank healing. Even then it'll be rare. Now the first spell will be awesome instead of only a 2nd one being once, up 25% from the previous 18% too.

+ Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
Meh. Pvp

+ Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30 second internal cooldown, and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
Bleh. PvP. I guess some shaman might raid with this, but why???

+ Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
Niiiice. Very Niiiiice.

+ Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
Good change. The previous haste on LHW was so fast it was wasted. Unhasted it will still cast hella fast and the crit throughput will more than makeup for it.

+ Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.
Luvely, just luvely. Refreshing Water Shield was a serious pain in the arse. And more mana returns on chain heals will be sweet.

Overall the buffs to resto are very nice, and well needed for the top end game. Most guilds are reporting a noticable lag in shaman performance as the jack of all trades, yet master of none. Those guilds with the luxury of being choosy on who they take on 25 mans are taking the other 3 healers over a shaman.

I like Shaman healing because in a pinch I can fill any role effectively, the improvements will just make doing that easier as I don't foresee big results until new content comes out. The resto shaman is being tweaked to use the Jesus Beam more effectively, the only problem is that there are not a lot of occasions in Ulduar where you can take full advantage of chain heal spamming, or a chain heal rotation.

Peace Out!

Happy 4th of July!

America is Awesome! Thanks for football, pornos and crack-cocaine! (just kidding hehe)

You may ask why I didn't do a Canada Day post.

It's because I was drunk as fuck.

Gem Faqts. Part Deux

As a jewelcrafter I get asked to cut gems for people all the time. It's pretty rare that people know which gem to get cut, and I end up making suggestions alot. If I did not, you would see pug tanks out there with spirit gems, I kid you not. It would have happened had I not intervened.


So to make it easy I have a cheat sheet of what gems are best for what class. It was a bit incomplete, as well as not fully updated for WotLK. I've finally updated it for 3.1



Before you check out the chart I ask that you consider a few things first;


I assume you know how gemming works.
If you are not sure you know it, check out my first gem post HERE , in which I make idle promises to post this chart in short order.Now you know I procrastinate. Whatever lol.

I assume you are Hit and Expertise and Defense capped.
If you are not sure, check my post on hitting things properly HERE, special thanks to Dr. Steve Brule. Defense is only for tanks, of course. I don't have any posts on Defensive caps and what they do/how they work, but this should be self explanatory, be uncrittable at least or else please stop tanking, kk thx.

I assume you wish to max out your toon.
The best gems for your class means you will be stacking one gem exclusively. If you are a healer, you may be gemming differently, depending on your situation. If you find yourself running OOM really badly, you may be choosing Mp5 gems rather than stacking up the Spellpower. Generally though, a well geared toon has fairly balanced stats and will be gemming to max out their capabilities.Maxing out involves considering results after buffs. I.E. A Strength based melee will always take STR over Attack because it is affected by Blessing of Kings.

Maxing out will generally mean stacking one single stat, I.E. the same gem in all slots.

There are only 4 exceptions, in order of occurance frequency, on why someone would not take the single gem that maxes out their class/spec.

♠You need to gem for expertise or hit, or defense

♠You need some other colored gems to fulfill your meta gem requirement. A Siren's Tear (+6 all stats) can be a viable gem to fulfill this need for some classes, but is not indicated in the chart.

♠You are desperately outbalanced and need to stack up Mp5

♠You have some super awesome socket bonus. This one will probably never happen. Socket bonuses are nice but very very rarely outperform gemming to max your toon.

Without further ado, here is the Best in Slot gems list. The top gem for each class is indicated with an asterisk *
Stack that gem in every slot with only the 4 exceptions


click to enlarge


It should be noted that if you are a Feral Cat Druid, Armor Pen will only outperform Agility gems if you are over 300 ArP. This is not difficult to attain, and the vast majority of kitty-cats will be gemming for ArP.

As if you didn't already know, the stats that gems have are inherit in their colors. What you may not know is that the mixed colored gems take stats from their primary colored gems. For example, Blue gems will have Sta/ Spirit / Mp5 or Spell Pen. Now if you mix a yellow or red with a blue to get purple or green, the purple or green ones will ALWAYS have Sta / Spirit / Mp5 or Spell Pen in addition to whatever stat comes from the "color tree" of the other gem, be it red or yellow.

There are not mixes for all stats, for example, there is not a purple gem with Armor Pen and Mp5, despite Armor Pen being a "red color tree" stat, and Mp5 being a "blue" stat.

Gems of a certain stat will always have the same suffix, except for Unique quality gems.
Any gem named "Delicate" is going to be a pure Agility gem no matter what expansion it came from and no matter what quality it is.

If I made any glaring errors, please let me know
Peace Out Dawgs!

[Edit: Thanks to Cazenovia for noticing an error with resto/balance druids blue gem choice,
Lilitharien for help on healer Metas, Lilitharien and Janaan on Discipline Priest info and Blkthunder for tank gem info ]

1st healing post EVAR

Not really sure why I've never made a healing post yet. Maybe because I just don't have much to say about it that is interesting, until I made a couple observations last night on my way to honing my healing skills.I've played a healer lots over the years, but mostly dps roles.

My WoW healing experience extends to healing instances specced enhance while levelling in BC (I gear for sta/mana when levelling so running OOM was not a problem ever) Then when I began raiding Kara I collected a decent healing offset and consistently competed for top healing spot on the charts with another shaman I used to raid with lots. ( I know, healing meters dont mean much, but they do tell you something)

These days I heal when there are no healers or we are short. I've healed most of the heroics, and most of the naxx fights.I've got mostly Naxx gear (10 and 25) for my healing set, although I am still rocking a couple blues and a titansteel crafted mace. Fully buffed with food and flasks I'm rockin about 2450SP 28%crit and 650mp5 (lower while casting of course, I forget how much though) so I've got decent gear but I worry about falling far behind as our healing team is mostly in all 25man naxx and 25 Ulduar gear. I figure I am about 80-90% as well geared as the other healers. It's not a big worry but I wanted to see some numbers to determine where I can improve, and how I stack up next to the "real healers", other than gearwise. I ran Recount last night while we learned the Iron Council encounter (read-wipefest)

Here is a couple general observations, from a healing melee's perspective.

It's friggin difficult to Stay-Out-Of-The-Fucking-Fire when you are staring at health bars.
It was like watching hummingbirds on crack play tennis, my eyes had to flit back and forth from health bars to checking where I was standing to keep in range and out of the fucking fire every second (on GCDs of course) Nonetheless, I did stay out of the fucking fire, except on our last attempt, I turned to run, lagged graphically and instead wound up turning a full 360 and ran back into the fucking fire. DOH!!

I can healz!
I was consistently middle of the pack for total heals on each fight, and bottom 3 for overheals. The overheals doesnt mean much because I was on raid heals, but it was still nice to see. I was pretty much white-knuckling my mouse in focus to make sure Earthshield never dropped and that I always had Riptide up on someone. I realized I need to check out PowerAuras addon or something to keep track of CDs for me on riptide, mana totem and nature's swiftness.

1 healer makes the difference.
Usually I've been going heals if we have a rough time on Ignis. Everytime I do everything goes much more smoothly. Same thing last night too on the Iron COuncil, we were running it with 22 or 23 people, another healer logged on and our healing team had a much easier time.I know it seems redundant and overly obvious to observe what a difference 1 more healer makes, I just never appreciated it so much until I was on the heal team and we got 1 more in there to help, I've always been that 1 more guy to join and help.

Good Healers Heal Themselves.
Without exception, on every boss fight, every healer had themselves as their 2nd or 3rd most healed target. Each also had a tank as the most healed target even if they were on raid heals.I guess at face value it could seem selfish for healers to look out for Numero Uno and heal themselves first, but it's the first reaction I suppose. It's also the quickest way for healers to keep themselves alive, and thereby keep the raid alive.


Peace Out! (I'm so gangsta)