Back to school anime season (Part 1)

Well, it’s actually 4 weeks into the new anime season this fall and I haven’t made the seasonal anime rundown yet, since I have been spending too much time on other things. With that, I can now sort this season’s anime into three categories: Ones that are must-watch, ones that are OK, and ones I didn’t bother to download.

The first thing to notice about this season is the overwhelming number of high-school related anime. I understand how Japanese Senior High girls are one of the sell-points of J-culture, but nonetheless this season is a bit too much: Ef, Clannad, Kimikiss, MS/YS, DCII, etc. The thing is, since DCSS, I’ve never bothered to watch any of these anymore. Reviews/Synopsis of these are pretty abundant elsewhere so I’m sure you’ll find them.

Without further ado -

Minami-ke : Brought to you by the author of Kyo No Go No Ni, this is by far this season’s must-watch series. The opening message tells you exactly what it’s about: the daily life of the three Minami sisters. It’s slice of life, and it’s damned funny. Lucky Star was funny for it’s Otaku references, but Minami-ke is just pure comedy. You don’t have to be a hard-core anime fan or an Otaku to be able to laugh at the jokes in here.

Gundam OO : What more can you ask for than a new Gundam series with a L’arc~en~ciel opening? If you’re a Gundam fan and you’ve been following the news, you’ll probably be one of us who ranted about the mecha design even before the anime aired. I’m not gonna try to persuade you otherwise: the mecha isn’t the best designed stuff. But it certainly doesn’t do the series justice because so far the storyline has been decent and is really a good anime to follow. At the very least, for once, the series doesn’t involve stealing mobile suits. Also, we actually have visually pleasing female characters in a Gundam series for once. This is a must-watch if you’re a Gundam fan (which Gundam series isn’t, anyways?) and still a very decent series for those new or unfamiliar with the franchise.

Genshiken (2nd Season) : Same cast, 2nd season. This continues the story after the 1st season and the 3 OVA episodes. It does skip a bit which may be hard to follow if you’re not a reader of the manga. Nonetheless the new season has the addition of the two new members to the club. Lots of Otaku references in a story about Otakus for Otakus. Must watch if you’ve seen the first season; otherwise, go watch the first season.

Bamboo Blade : This is actually a high-school anime, but not one derived from an Ero-game (the ones I listed at the top are). Derived from the manga, it basically talks about a broke teacher at a high school who is trying to form a 5-gal kendo team to fight his former Senpai’s 5-gal kendo team for a year’s worth of sushi. You guessed it: it’s another comedy. It’s not drop-dead funny, but it’s light-hearted, cute and does give you some laughs.

Goshusho-sama Ninomiya-kun : High school, uncontrolled succubus afraid of men (huh?), and two words: Fan Service. Another comedy series, but this one sells nothing but fan service. Really. Click the link, see if you like the artwork, and watch if you’re into that kinda thing. It’s worth mentioning that the art quality starts to deteriorate in the episodes after the first. Hopefully the situation improves: whats a fan-service anime worth if its art is bad? Derived from the light-novel of the same name.

Shakugan no Shana (2nd Season) : Takes off where the last season ended. Nothing surprising about this second season so far anyways. It’s… Shana, nothing much to say otherwise.

You’re Under Arrest – Full Throttle : This is the 3rd season of the anime (not counting OVAs, TV Drama, movies, etc.). I watched the first season when I was a little kid and I was way too busy in college to watch the 2nd. Here’s the 3rd season anyways. The first thing you’ll notice is that none of the series resembles Kosuke Fujishima’s works. Miyuki and Natsumi don’t look like they do before (especially Miyuki), and the motor vehicles look like crap. A bit disappointed at first by the artwork, but the content is actually decent. By the 3rd episode you’ll get the good old You’re Under Arrest feeling that we’ve been used to in the previous presentations.

That’s all for now because I’ve only watched the first episodes of the other series, I’ll write part two when I have the time to catch up. Part 2 series: Dragonaut, Blue Drop, Prism Ark, Night Wizard, Rental Magica, and Shugo Chara. Seriously I don’t have enough time to watch all this.

On a side note, just for kicks and giggles I watched the first episode of the Negima! TV drama (real actors). I… really they should just stop turning anime series into live-action drama.

Shaman Notes 2.0

I’ve cleaned up the old notes and put together a new version, which you can find at the top of the page. I’ve tried to incorporate some 2.3 stuff into it. I hope it’s useful and all.

Suggestions and comments are always welcome.

Shaman T5 Healing set bonuses change

It’s a straight-up nerf. The 4pc effect remains the same but a 1 minute cool-down is added to the proc. 2pc bonus upped from 3% to 5%.

Luckily, Leotheras has never dropped T5 gloves for shaman and I won’t EVER be getting them. Hello, Astromancer Solarian.

[Edit]: This is the wording of Wowhead.

• 2 pieces: Reduces the cost of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 5%.
• 4 pieces: Your critical heals from Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave, and Chain Heal reduce the cast time of your next Healing Wave spell by 0.5 sec for 10 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per minute.

It looks like not only did they add the 1min CD, but the initial 0.15 reduction was removed as well, and the proc only turned the heal into a 2.0 one. This is now easily the worst set bonus ever. I’d rather have my -24sec NS CD.

2.3 Shaman Changes, Hydross Down

If you can manage to kill every other boss (apart from Vashj, obviously), Hydross is a complete pushover. All you really need is a few tanks that can generate snap aggro, healers that are smart enough to stop healing on transition, and AE who aren’t stupid enough to get themselves killed on the first transition. A couple of pulls later you will find the pair of bracers lying on the ground (sadly our 3rd pull was a 2% wipe, but it helped refine our strategy so all is well).

Tips: people who are prone to somehow aggro the boss on transition are ordered to run across the threshold so hydross doesn’t double-shift; searing totems placed on the otherside help with positioning the boss; pvp-geared soulink warlock can help catch stray adds with Seed.

killshot

***

Apparently the 2.3 patch is up on PTR and we have the first round of patch notes. Of course, much of it is subject to (and I hope it will eventually) more tuning. I’ll just list Resto Shaman-related changes.

Full patch notes can be found here.

Healing: Almost all items and enchantments that provide bonus healing now also provide a smaller number (approximately 1/3) of bonus spell damage. There are a few items and enchantments where this was not possible, such as random-stat items and Zul’Gurub enchantments, but this is now the case on virtually all other items.

The only good point about this is keeping your mp5 and int/sta while being able to kill some mobs, and making killing your inner demon at Leotheras retardedly easy. Seriously, if you have spent any period of time farming elemental gear you would have well over 600 spell damage, which would require 1800 healing+ to achieve. On the good side, you can now bring 1 less set of gear.

Chain Lightning cast time reduced to 2.0 (from 2.5), mana costs reduced, benefit from spell damage reduced appropriately.

Lightning Bolt cast time reduced to 2.5 (from 3.0 where applicable), mana costs reduced, benefit from spell damage reduced appropriately.

Bad news for elemental shaman, good news for resto shaman. You deserve to be shot if you can’t kill your inner demon at Leotheras.

Grounding Totem: This totem is now destroyed upon redirecting any spell to itself.

Nerf. Really. Can I now have the cooldown reduced to 10 seconds please?

Mana Spring Totem effect increased.

Water Shield: This spell no longer costs any mana to cast and its duration has been shortened. At the end of its duration, it now grants mana for any remaining globes. In addition, the mana granted per globe has been substantially increased.

More mana is always welcome. I’d like to see the new numbers for the water shield, and I doubt that the mana gained at the end of duration proc will be the same as having all 3 globes spent. Anyhow, if you’ve been keeping water shield up in boss fights, you’ll notice that the globes get used pretty quickly. Now can somebody explain to me how the water shield relic works (i.e. does it increase it if you have it equipped on cast, or when you have it equipped on proc).

Two-Handed Axes and Two-Handed Maces are now trainable by all Shaman at the appropriate weapon masters. The Enhancement talent has been replaced by Shamanistic Focus.

Since my healing gear now gives me good enough spell damage, I will now carry my enhance gear with my Gorehowl around instead. Can we get free 350 weapon skill as well please?

Cataclysm Raiment: The bonuses on this set have been adjusted.

Details please.

Mystical Skyfire Diamond: A cooldown has been added to this item’s effect, but the chance for it to trigger has been increased.

I personally use Insightful Earthstorm, but this is supposedly a nerf to those who use it as Chain heal has a 300% chance to proc it over other spells anyways. Also depends on the length of the cooldown they add.

***

Someone explain to me why they switched around sweeping strikes and death wish on warriors.

Leo the blind guy

Once people figured how to kill their other half and how to actually run from the whirlwind before it cooled down, things started to click and we began to have wipes where we got to see his little speech before he ripped himself in two. That was last week.

In the end it’s about controlled, burst DPS to get in as much DPS in without messing Whirlwind and form switch transitions. The first few times we got the boss to 15%, we tried to just zerg him, that didn’t quite work out. In the end when we finally killed him we upped the DPS pre-15% and evaded the whirlwind when we were fighting him and his shadow form at the same time (well, those who could evade it anyways).

We ended up killing him with half the raid dead and a minute to spare. Repeatable? Maybe.

Killshot

As a resto shaman, killing your demon shouldn’t be hard at all. Before demon phase starts, give yourself an earth shield (rank 1). If you don’t get demons, you can pass the shield to the tank. Place a wrath of air totem before the demons spawn. Face the demon and start casting your lightning bolt and switch to your damage weapons while casting (I use the SH blue dagger and nightbane shield), thereafter (earthshock > lightningbolt) x N and your demon should die quite quickly. The pushback you get from the demon whacking you should make your lightning bolts cast in 4-5 secs which means your Earthshock would have cooled down by then (unless you have a pally apply concentration aura, which I didn’t). No other +damage gear was necessary. If shit hits the fan (your stuff gets resisted, you daydream for the first few seconds), use NSed nukes and Chain Lightning as needed.

This is a fight where you’ll need to raid heal using your single target heals especially while people are killing their demons, since they are spread out. I used lesser healing wave exclusively. Since you can basically go /afk during human phase, mana shouldn’t be a problem.