Introducing: Life in Group 5/Blueberry Totem/25 boxes
Our beloved gnome already noticed it: there aren’t really a lot of resto shaman blogs out there.
The problem isn’t just the lack of quantity, but also the lack of continuity. Every month some new resto shamans make their appearances, most of them vanish after some few months. My blog is online since one year, which isn’t that long, but I’m already one of the very veteran shaman bloggers. My blogroll changed countless times since my site went up, nearly always it was the shamans who dropped their virtual pencils and moved on, while other sites I enjoy reading, not shaman related, are sticking around for a long time.
I guess more resto shaman related blogs would really help the community. It’s just very good to have different views on one topic. It’s nice to have posts disagreeing with a post of another blog. I love that every blogger has his/her own writing style. But we resto shamans are still far away from having our own little sub-microcosm of resto shaman blogs. We just don’t have a decent amount of patient writers, who stick around longer than some months to build a solid reader base. And many resto shamans stop writing for various reasons, be it RL issues, quitting the game/raiding game or just loosing interest in writing.
I can’t influence the RL of other bloggers. I can’t change the fact, that blogging isn’t just fun and exciting, but time consuming as well. I can’t keep you guys interested in the game, enough is enough, we all will reach that point some day.
The only thing I can do, is comment on other blogs and direct some traffic to sites I like. Of course writing itself is a nice thing, but a blog just isn’t just that much fun without some degree of feedback. So whenever I’ll see some new resto shaman related blogs I like, I’m going to introduce them here on Shields Up, add them to my Blogroll and hope you guys will visit, comment and criticize.
Life in Group 5: This looks very promising. It has everything I want. It has a lot of stuff I can’t offer, be it out of inability or pure laziness: Posts from the background of a raider in the high-end content, real math, nice flowcharts and proper grammar. Oh, and it has rants and controversy, I love the counterpoint to Mek’s view on the state of resto shamans and the critical view on our favorite stat: haste. Vixsin, I’m already very much looking forward to your next post.
Blueberry Totem: I love this blog, because it gives me insight in a world I’m not that familiar with: 10 man raiding. I’m focused on 25 man raidings and I often lose the perspective for small raids. The mix of topics, centered around resto shamans but including general views about the state and development of WoW make this blog a very decent addition to your RSS reader.
twenty-five boxes: A duo of Shaman (zigi) and Druid (yigi) bring you the last blog I’m going to present today. This blog adds everything to the mix: resto shaman related topics, like in-depth help to gear up including shaman_hep instructions, comprehensible lists to decide if you have to blame yourself or can start pointing fingers at healers and a good eye into the future, aka the PTR.
Usually, this last sentence is that little place where I beg for comments. Not today. If you want to make me happy, click on the links to the blogs above, read good posts and leave some comments.
A Coin of Ancestry
Looking For Multitudes
Toravon the Ice Watcher (25 player)
1500 Dungeon & Raid Emblems
Woo, I am famous!
Thanks for it Drug. Just can’t access my dashboard atm so most of the prepared posts and continuing of articles will have to wait till later.
And thanks for posting the other two lovely blogs, it seems like interesting read indeed. Almost seems like every shaman healer out there blogging must post about their UI choice and haste
Rahana
PS: Maybe wouldn’t hurt to make some consolidated blog list in one post over at PlusHeal.com; if you copy this over I will write short review on yours to add there.
Smooth! I need moar resto food for lazy work days ^^
Thank you Thank you Thank you…as a newly minted 80 resto shammy myself I’ve been devouring every blog I find yours Gnomes and several others. I have a blog but it’s not the informative kind just my ramblings around Azeroth with my Pally Friend Balth. I most definately will be clicking the links
kattastrophe´s last blog ..His Mounts Better Than My Mount…
I remember when I was a baby Shaman, looking for Shaman information was extremely difficult. I find now that I blog, I don’t blog about being a Shaman myself nearly enough – might be time to change that.
In the meantime, thanks for the links to the other Shaman blogs. I ready 25-boxes and strongly recommend it. Looking forward to checking out the others.
Vok´s last blog ..Things that make you go BOOM!
Thanks for the support and for the compliments; I’m truly flattered. Hopefully I can live up to the hype and keep the ideas (and geeky charts) flowing!
~Vix
If somewhen in the next few weeks/month you ever think about quitting your blog, drop me a line so I can punch you.
just read blueberry totem’s blog, and though it’s …. well, you fail as a resto shaman
Dear jerigonzo, you can’t imagine how often I fail as a resto shaman. That’s just the way it is.
Anyways, comments like that aren’t helping anyone.
i don’t fail.
why?
haste.
you better not mess with my haste!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LEAVE HASTE ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!
didn’t mean to be offensive about blueberry’s blog.
it’s just that i read it and disagree with…
almost everything about it.
maybe it’s just the lack of practice in 5 man dungeon.
but as a 25 man raider i realized that most blogs about resto shamans are made by under experienced shamans, and gearing is so easy in WoW nowadays
btw
it’s so easy playing a resto shaman
If you disagree with something, you’re most free to post a comment under the article you disagree with explaining your reasons and giving evidence to support your argument. Such is the wondrous miracle of the interwebs. Simply saying “lol it sux tbh” isn’t really helping anybody, least of all yourself!
How hard it is to play a resto shaman depends on a lot of factors. Personal skill of course, and gear makes a huge difference; your group, their skill, their gear, their experience, even their classes and talent specs all have a huge impact on your job as a healer. Your group’s strategies make a difference. Your group’s raid composition makes a difference. Your individual gear/spec choice and how that interfaces with all of the above also makes a difference. For example, it’s a lot harder to heal an undergeared raid of players of below average ability and lacking experience than it is to heal a hardcore group of minmaxing progressionists – particularly if you don’t have the kind of gear and experience that comes from said progression.
And a lot of people come to the class without any idea of how it plays looking at bewildering talent selections, vast arrays of abilities and totems, and bosses that seem to be able to almost instantly kill their entire group. For them it is not easy, and they need help and advice from people who understand how hard and confusing and puzzling it can be. This is where the most experienced “hardcore” resto shamans and their associated ways and means are, frankly, not generally very helpful.
To take one example from Rahana’s blog, I totally agree with the post about not stacking haste until you’ve geared up a bit. Because I remember being at that gear level and struggling for mana regen and spells to hit hard enough while getting all the haste I needed from Tidal Waves and Heroism. And I remember what a difference it made gearing up to late tier 7/early tier 8 level – now, in tier 9, I stack haste haste haste NOM NOM HASTE. But I’d never recommend a freshly minted level 80 do the same! Yes, gearing up is a lot easier than it was. But you still have to put in a vast amount of actual playing time to farm all those emblems while in your substandard gear.
At the end of the day, it’s also worth remembering that there’s more than one valid way to play a class/spec – that’s part of the brilliance of our game. Not everyone will play the same way, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Well said charles, well said. Atm i am a fresh lvl 80 looking to get into shammy healing but you are right to say that haste is the least of my problems.
There a few things i need before haste, intel to get my mana pool up, but i think that will come fairly easy with my gear progression. Also what im finding hard now is getting all that restro gear while playing as a dps simly becasue, im not nearly geard to try and get some expereience and restro gear in some of the heroic’s.
The reason i think is so hard to get a shammy healer is i dont think theres alot of shammy restro gear before level 80, and even at 80 you have to do some time as dps before you can attempt to got pure restro imo.
Whoa! Thanks for the shoutout, drug! I had been getting a little bored with the Shaman in 3.2 content and I’d been leveling an alt the past few weeks, but with 3.3 I’m back in it to win it, so I’ll be posting a lot more shaman/healer content coming up.
Zigi´s last blog ..Hooray for Welfare Epix!