Elemental Shaman Pre-Naxx Gear. . .sorta

I was planning on listing some options for Elemental Shamans pre-Naxx, but my research wasn't going well. It is my opinion that the number one stat for Elemental Shamans (or any DPS really) is Hit Rating until you are hit capped. Unfortunately there are about zero (decent) Mail spell caster items with hit on them that you can get from Heroics or reputation vendors.

What this left me to was to just find whatever items I could with Hit rating on them. For reference, elemental shamans with Elemental Precision need 368 hit to be hit capped for Naxx. If you're a JC, there is a lovely trinket Twilight Serpent and you'll be able to pack this with two Rigid Dragon's Eye. This is a huge hit rating for one slot weighing in at 96. If you're not a JC, you won't be able to get this trinket or the gems.

If you're into PvP (or if even if you're not) the Wintersgrasp Mail Spellcaster armor has hit on it. It'll take commitment to get all the items though and there's some less than optimal stats for PvE (resiliance) but it is an option for hit items. I started down this route and ended up finding the JC stuff and stopped doing WG as I don't enjoy PvP. Your milage may vary.

There's a cloak in normal HoL (Cape of Seething Steam) that has a splatter of hit (29) on it and is easy to get (or atleast you've got more than one chance a day at it).

All your gem slots should be filled with Rigid Autumn's Glow (exalted with SoH to get the pattern) if you're still low on hit.

There are some enchants available that give hit. You should have Icewalker on your boots anyway, there's Percision to gloves, and if you're desperate there's the Titanium Weapon Chain that a BS can make and old world (BC) stuff from Sha'tar (Arcanum of Power)

And lastly, there's a food buff from Worg Tartare that gives 40 hit to bump you up that last bit during raids.

Again, I stress the hit cap for Elemental Shamans with 3/3 Elemental Percision is 368. If you have more than that it's too much and is wasted.

That's the end of the factual stuff, and now for an anecdote. Walked into Naxx on my Shaman with about 360 hit rating (couldn't push it to the full 368), 1600 SP self buffed, and 20%crit. . .walked away with 2k dps overall for a full clear. The guild master commented that I was pushing good numbers for the gear I was wearing (which I agree with, was only hoping for about 1.6-1.7k) and I fully attribute that to my hit rating. Missing takes away alot of your DPS. I also walked away with 7 pieces of gear, which is just crazy to think about.

The Deal

Without further ado, the little awaited “What’s going on here” post. So first off, I want this to be primarily a World of Warcraft blog. I play WoW. I do limited theorycrafting of WoW. I wanted a place to sound out those ideas, make comments on others ideas (perhaps more elaborately than in their comments section), and all the other things a blog like area will allow me to do.

As to the informative part, I would say I currently have three characters: my Tankadin main, my Elemental Shaman, and of course the ubiquitous Death Knight alt. I’ve also got a hunter floating around that use to be my main in TBC, but I haven’t played him much since WotLK came out.

My Tankadin is *the* character I play nowadays. He was originally an Alt that I made for two reasons. First, my Hunter was at the point of not having anything truly useful to do outside of raids. So to get on the Hunter and play around for a few hours felt empty and non productive. The second reason was that the Tanks of our guild, while sufficient, were not. . .how to put this nicely. . .the tanking type.

As far as I know, our main tank was originally a DPS warrior who switched to tanking because no one else was available and he just became the de facto tank. Unfortunately he still had the mindset of a DPSer and liked those high DPS values. Now don’t get me wrong, he was a good tank or we’d never have gotten as far as we did (up to KT and Vashj), but I still just got the general feeling that he was average in the tanking scene.

Our Off-Tank(s) flat out weren’t that good. Slow to react, not confident, undergeared and expecting much. Not all of the OTs were all of these things, but enough from that list to make them subpar tanks.

And I thought to myself, “I can do better than this.” And so my Paladin was born. Why a paladin? Well, maybe another time since this is already longer than I thought and I still want to talk about my other two characters.

My main alt is my Elemental shaman. While I believe that I’ve got the mentality to be a tank, I know that deep down I like being a big damage dealer. About the time WotLK came out, a friend of mine who’s only experience with MMOs was Diablo II decided to give WoW a try. Two or three days into his ten day trial he bought the game and TBC and hasn’t looked back. However, he was completely green to WoW’s style of MMOs and so I created an alt to level beside him and help him learn to play. I settled on a Shaman because it was one of the few classes I had never even tried to play, and they fit a role I like to play: DPS / Utility.

My DK came about during the time when my Shaman was still low level and my Paladin was in the process of transferring servers. I needed something to play and DKs start at 55. Plus, I heard the opening quest series was very well done (which I agree completely with). If you’re ever thinking of making a DK to just mess around with, and haven’t yet, I suggest you wait till after you’ve been in Naxx a few times because then you’ll be familiar with the people you interact with at the beginning. Or maybe you don’t want to wait or care about that, but I found it fun to be killing these guys on my main, and doing quests for them on my alt.

Ok, I’ll stop there. Stay tuned for a Pre-Naxx Elemental Shaman gearing plan that’s based solely on my observations and researching abilities on www.wowhead.com, cause I’m going to want one and the best way would be to make it myself.

And so it begins. . .

This is the first post, made seconds after the creation of this place. I hope to make a habit of posting here and will do a real post very soon. (Being optimistic here :))