Kringle This! An Abducted Blog Post

Howdy folks, Kris Kringle is here at Ankh = Life to drop off a few holiday goodies. I would have been here a lot sooner, but all of the treats people have been leaving me kept me bogged down in other parts of the world. And you see, I'm a dwarf so I can't be a mage and none of my elves can either. So teleport's out of the question and I spent all of my gold on lots of vanity pets to keep my shops full of the workers I need to make all of these gifts.

First Gift: Shaman Macros
What kind of Enhancement Shaman doesn't have macros backing them up, eh? Nim asked for Shaman macros for Winter's Veil, and so Shaman macros he shall receive. In looking at the macros decide for yourself how rich their quality is and see if you can guess whether Nim's been naughty or nice. (Minds out of the gutter, ladies. Actually, Nim might like your minds in the gutters, so do as you please.)

General Macros

#showtooltip
/use [modifier:alt] Rockbiter Weapon; [modifier:ctrl] Flametongue Weapon; [modifier:shift] Frostbrand Weapon; Windfury Weapon

Here we have one of the first macros you'll use for a Shaman, the infamous Weapon Enchanting Macro™! This macro will allow you to cast any of your weapon enchants with a single macro. The default is Windfury Weapon there at the end which requires no modifier button. Feel free to move them around as you see fit, or as you level if you don't have some of these yet.

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=8 Windfury Weapon, Flametongue Weapon;
/castsequence reset=8 16, 17;

If you already know you want a certain setup for your weapon enchants all the time, then you can go ahead and put them in here. Use it once and it will cast Windfury on your main hand, use it again and you'll get Flametongue on your off hand. The reset=8 part is just there to reset if needed, you can take it out if you know you're always going to just caste the two spells back to back.

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:alt] Water Shield; Lightning Shield

Here is your shield management macro. By default it will cast LS, but holding Alt key will bring up WS instead. You can switch them around if your default preference is reversed. I default to WS when soloing and LS otherwise.

#showtooltip Ghost Wolf
/cast FlyingMountFullName
/cast GroundMountFullName
/cast Ghost Wolf

This is your mounting macro. There are a lot of ways to make these things to customize it for various situations, but I find them unnecessary. You need to replace FlyingMountFullName and GroundMountFullName with the full name of those respective mounts that you have in order for it to work. When you use this the first thing it's going to try to do is summon your flying mount. If it's allowed then it will do so and the rest of the macro will not happen thanks to the GCD, if it's not then it will move to the next line and try to summon your ground mount in a similar fashion, and then the same for Ghost Wolf.

If you're in combat then you can't summon your mounts, so that's the only time that GW should come into play, the rest of the time it will cast the appropriate mount for the area.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Stormstrike

Pretty well every Enhancement Shaman is going to start off their rotation with Stormstrike, this macro simply makes it so that you always at least start auto-attacking the target just in case you activate the macro a bit early and aren't in range for SS. I use macros of this style for just about every offensive spell that my characters cast just for the auto-attack feature. It's also good to point out that the /startattack will auto-target the nearest hostile mob in front of you if you do not already have a hostile target selected.

#showtooltip Shamanistic Rage
/use 13, 14
/cast Shamanistic Rage

And here we have the Cooldown Poppers™ macro. This is where you stick whatever spells and items you want to pop when a boss fight comes around. /use 13, 14 will activate both of your trickets for you and since they don't trigger the GCD you will also cast Shamanistic Rage at the same time. You can add in any other spells or abilities that don't trigger the GCD if you'd like as well, especially your racial abilities, by inserting a /cast line for them above the /cast SR line.

#showtooltip Shamanistic Rage
/use 13, 14
/cast Warstomp
/cast Shamanistic Rage

Here is an example of the same macro we just had with the Tauren racial ability added in. You can replace Warstomp with your own racial ability: Blood Fury (Orc), Berserk (Troll), or Gift of the Naaru (Draenei).

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=21/combat Magma Totem, Fire Nova, Fire Nova, Fire Nova
/cast [modifier:alt] Magma Totem

This is your down and dirty Fire Totem/Nova macro. The first time you cast it you'll drop a Magma Totem, and the next three times will be a Fire Nova. You can also hold Alt when you use the Macro and it will drop a new Magma Totem in case you need to reposition it. If you enter or leave combat, or if you wait 21 seconds after casting the spell then it will reset the castsequence back to MT so that you don't end up trying to cast FN without a fire totem.

The reset counter is set to 21 because that's the cooldown of MT, but it can be changed to suite any fire totem you wish to cast.

#showtooltip
/startattack
/castsequence reset=18 Flame Shock, Earth Shock, Earth Shock

Here's a shocking macro for you (see what I did there?). The first cast hits the enemy with Flame Shock, and then follows it up with Earth Shocks. After 12 seconds, the duration of the DoT from FS, it will reset itself bac to FS. Modify as needed.

Second Gift: Shaman Blogs!
It's a simple fact, Shaman blogs are hard to find and the majority of the ones you do manage to find are dropped pretty soon after they get started. Since I first started blogging I've gone through about a dozen Shaman blogs that were reliable for some period of time, but I'm now down to three. Or rather, four now that I have A=L.

You want some good Shaman blogs? Well here you go then:
Flame Shock
Shaman On Ramen
Troll Bouquet

Those are the best three resources I've found for Shaman related information.

Nimala, Such a Beautiful Name


Nim is a DUDE, dude!.

Nim =
Nim =
Nim =
Not Nim -
Not Nim -
Not Nim -

Got that people? No more getting that mixed up, alright? Just call him Nim so he doesn't "..feel like I should be wearing lipstick when people refer to me." Nim doesn't want to feel like that second batch of guys up there.

If Nim was a Hordie, then this would be him:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETAnH7LawXM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

Ok "Kris" Who the Crap Are You, Really?
Alright, fine. I admit it. I'm not the real Kris Kringle, I'm just an average guy with a cheap false beard. My name is @Psynister, writer of Psynister's Notebook and Fiery Weapons, and I'm a fellow member of Blog Azeroth.

This year we all opened up our blogs to one another and pulled a special Secret Santa of sorts where we get to guest post on other people's blogs. Nim here was (un)lucky enough have me pull his name out of the hat. Email issues kept me from knowing who I was going to be blogging for until just yesterday, so I'm over a week late in getting this post out there, and that's why Nim's been a bit quiet lately - because he's been waiting on me.

But here you go, and hopefully it gives Nim a nice boost into next year's blogging.



Note from Nim: If I were as sexy as George Clooney, I assure you I would not be writing blogs. I'd be too busy with the ladies.

Thanks for the guest post, Psynister!