y elo thar

My “step back” is over and I can, uh… “step forward”?  again?  I guess?  Hooray.  At any rate, the posts and updates should start flowing at a normal pace again for a while.  I think this blog thing has had more of an effect on me than I’d realised: by the end of last week it was actually getting hilariously difficult to refrain from posting.  I even had to stop posting on/reading the various shaman forums too in order to make room in my mind for work relating to my deadline.

Anyway, deadline has been met – and it was great to finally do something “proper” again.

Guest posts

The guest posts proved really popular – and I hugely enjoyed them myself (thanks again guys) – so, considering I know a whole bunch of people who could write really interesting guest posts, hopefully those won’t be the last we’ll see!  Remember to (shameless plug ahoy!) check out Liz‘s and Fred‘s blogs if you liked their posts.

Posting plan

As for my own posting plan, I thought I’d share in advance some of the “guide” topics I’d like to write about in the coming weeks.  If there are specific questions or suggestions relating to these topics, let me know and hopefully I can address them to some extent.  I reckon it’s past time to add some new guides to the blog, and I’m aware that many of the old guides that I wrote in a rush way back when I started could do with some tidying up and perhaps more complete analyses too.

Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking:

• Fire totem use: how, when and where to use searing totem, magma totem and fire elemental totem, as well as how they affect glyph choice and stat weightings
• Stat weightings and gems: a more in-depth look at what influences our stat choices and how we can decide between enchants, gems, food buffs, etcetera.
• Latency, reaction time and elementals: analysing how casters (and especially elemental shamans) are affected by these factors and what players can do to minimize the effect.

I’ve also got a couple of opinion/feature drafts on the go (the first of which will hopefully appear tomorrow!) which may or may not have anything to do with elemental shamans 🙂

Spreadsheet

I’m also in the middle of a major rewrite of my spreadsheet’s internal workings to add some new functionality and tidy up some old ones.  I’m not sure exactly how much I’ll add to this pass and it’ll probably be some time before it’s ready for consumption (or I might go all supergeek and finish it this week), but here’s what my priorities are:

• Full Chain Lightning use options (implemented)
• New 4t10 bonus (implemented)
• AoE modelling (in progress)
• Fire DPS totems (I need to get more precise data about fire totems first!)
• Better handling of movement
• Optional EM smoothing (presently you can’t choose, it just happens)
• Present a ‘snapshot’ of the rotation the spreadsheet is using to help the user understand what’s going on

In the long-term I also want to write a better latency model.

There are also three questions I really want the spreadsheet to be able to answer more accurately:

• How does haste compare to crit beyond the 50% haste mark?
• How do the Big Four glyphs scale with movement, with respect to each other?
• Is Glyph of EM potentially worthwhile in some situations?

I already have a rough idea of the latter.

Around the blogs

While I haven’t been writing, I have still been reading – and there’ve been a bunch of great posts on my google reader subscriptions lately.  So if you’ll excuse the indulgence of sharing some of these with you:

On the elemental front, Kazgrel has written a great and intelligent guide to elemental levelling that even looks at a lot of the factors that make levelling shamans different from raiding shamans, and how that influences glyph and talent choice etc.  I also really enjoyed this post on Bloodlust about an elemental shaman’s experiences in ICC.

Restoration-wise, Vixsin has (amongst other things) featured a resto BiS analysis and a great look at tank healing.  ShieldsUp! has an important illustrated guide to the interaction between charging tanks and their healers as well as a salivatory analysis of 2-piece tier 10 (which makes me jealous that I won’t get it for aaaages 😦 ).  Meanwhile Blueberry Totem has started a “lightweight, easy to understand and not-so-serious guide about shaman healing“, reflected on becoming a guild master, and posted a recipe for … Blueberry Pie.  Right…!

For everyone struggling on the Plagueworks, Kae has already got up some excellent illustrated strategy posts!  Rotface, Festergut and Putricide are all featured.  And on the 10-man raiding front, Anathema posted a great QQ about 10-man caster trinkets.

Also, because it’s relevant to a post I’m planning for tomorrow, I want to highlight that Miss Medicina has posted repeatedly about why the Oculus instance is a failure.  And because laughing is always relevant, Righteous Orbs continues to amuse the heck out of me every time I read – and often they make some excellent points in the process.

Anyway, that’s probably enough for now – there are of course many, many more posts that have amused, entertained or impressed me on the various blogs linked to in the sidebar, so definitely go explore if you’re looking for more to read!

Elemental Theorycrafting Think Tank

Argh, I almost forgot – masanbol has resurrected the elemental TTT over at Elitist Jerks!  It’s basically the definitive source for elemental theorycraft – a lot of the data for my elemental guides came from the original elemental TTT article.  It’s still in the process of being updated, but be sure to bookmark it and go check it out if you’re interested in elemental shaman theory.