Dear Chain Heal

I will admit. I was madly in love with you, Chain Heal. I mean... it was so easy. How can you blame me? All I had to do was use your incredibly smart ability in Wotlk to heal a bunch of people. I would gleefully cast you again and again, and you would heal those in need. "You're injured, I'll heal you, and then bounce to you, skip you because you're at full health, and then heal this person over here," you would say. How could I not love such a wonderful spell? How could I not be sucked in to the comfort of your rejuvenating embrace?

I had such high hopes for our future in Cataclysm. I thought for sure you'd be the only one for me. But alas, I've found my love affair with you, Chain Heal, to be waning. In this Cataclysm time of non-tanks having 100k health, I'm afraid you're just not the go to spell anymore. Either the health pools are too high or your spell coefficient isn't what I thought it would be, but you simply don't heal enough for me to be completely reliant on just you anymore. But I still want to be friends.

I know you could sense it. I know you know that I started seeing other heals. That night you saw me with Healing Rain... well... it's a bit faster than you are. And I need that. I can't spend all my time on one spell anymore; I need variety. I like its ability to be cast, and then allow me to do other things while it's healing people... for me. I know it doesn't proc Tidal Waves like you do, but I still have Riptide for that too. Admittedly, Healing Rain is a bit expensive though. It's more than twice the mana that you cost. So, I can't see us going as steady as I did with you.

I guess I'm just at a stage in my life where I feel like I need more. I need more mana. I need more throughput. And I'm afraid I can't get that from you alone anymore. Now I'm sure I'll still find raid situations where I want to use you a lot. I'll probably even be able to use you and Healing Rain together to really burn through my mana. But I feel like I have so many other friends right now, and I need that. I need old friends like Greater Healing Wave and Healing Wave. I need new friends like Healing Surge. I probably even need to start relying on some of my neglected friends such as Gift of the Naaru. I'm finding that now more than ever I'm relying on my friends with longer cooldowns such as Nature's Swiftness and Mana Tide Totem.

I'm even able to branch out and see friends like Hex and Bind Elemental. I won't even go into the noticeable difference I feel when I use all of my totem friends. And oh, how much fun it is to be with Spiritwalker's Grace; it almost feels like I'm cheating when it's around and I'm flying through the air casting spells.

So, Chain Heal, as close as we once were, I'm afraid we've grown apart. We're still friends; we'll still hang out. I just need a little space so that I can enjoy my other friends as well. Thanks for understanding. I know you'll still be there for me as much as I need you; I just thought it was fair to let you know where we currently stood.

Hit Cap: Fast Track

Like most casters, it's important for a dps shaman to get spell hit capped. It doesn't matter if you're enhancement or elemental, you still need to not miss with your spells. For Enhancement Dranei shaman, the magic number is 420 (that's 16% hit against a level 83 boss).

One of the reasons my dps was so poor the other night was that my spell hit was so low. (The other reason was because of my horrible weapons, which I'm working on, but that's really a whole other post.) So if the magic number is 420, I was sitting at 143. That means that aproximately 10.65% of the time, I missed with my spells. Ugh.

So, I figured that I'd work towards getting closer to that number. Little did I realize that 2 days later, I'd be hit capped.

Now, I get to cheat a lot as a Jewelcrafter. I get to create a Figurine - Twilight Serpent and throw in 2 Rigid Dragon's Eyes to get an instant 96 Hit rating. The Ring of Scarlet Shadows with a +16 hit gem in it produces another 54 spell hit. Throw in a belt buckle and another Dragon's eye gem for 27 more. Then add some Dragonstompers for another 26 to make a total of 362 hit.

Wow! And I didn't even set foot into a single instance for those upgrades. BUT... that still doesn't get me to 420. I'm still about 58 short. So, I'll still miss about 2.23% of the time.

So, what does one do? He recommits his wife to run instances with him (3% hit from Misery) and then I'm actually 20 spell hit over cap. I guess I can change one of the gems to an expertise gem.

And THAT, my friends, is how you get hit capped. lol.