Tree Bark Jacket

The new TBJ is finished!

2009-08-23T14:05:00.005+10:00

I'm so worn out, I've been working on this thing day and night to try and get it done.

I've really tried hard to make it a better site this time around, which better features, a cleaner layout, and easier navigation.

I had some problems with different browsers, but I think most of the issues are sorted.

Please update your links :)

Come on over: www.treebarkjacket.com

Edit: My host is having a few issues presently so things might be shaky for a short while. But it's up. :)

Decided against the Blizzcon live stream.

2009-08-19T10:34:00.002+10:00

After agonising over it quite a bit, I've decided I won't be getting the Blizzcon live stream this year.

I really wanted to do it so that I could post any druid-related news as it is relayed, and without relying on sites like MMO and wow.com to post transcripts to copy/paste.

(It's not the end of the world, I just wanted to be able to do it myself, not just re-post the other sites' news.)

There are a few reasons why I decided not to do it:

I'm working hard towards my RL goal of buying a house, and $50 counts!

The panels I want to see are at 6:30am on Saturday and Sunday for me. That's not a huge deal, I've been up early for WoW commitments before, but it's still a factor. If I wanted to post things as we hear about them, I'd have to be up really early to catch the panels (I don't care about the archives/replay).

There's no guarantee that they won't cut to random stuff like behind-the-scenes or interviews, meaning the few segments I want to see may be cut short. I would be very cranky if they cut to stuff I didn't care about. Lots of people have asked about this, but no answers have been given by Blizzard, and if it's the case, I think that's pretty crappy, to be honest. If people are paying $40 ($50 here) they should be able to choose which "channel" (stage) they want to watch. It's not difficult to do.

Australian internet isn't the greatest, and I live in a rural area, making it worse. There's a very good chance it will be very poor quality - especially if my connection forced me to use the low-def version. I guess I should be grateful that I have internet - but boy is it suck compared to a lot of other countries! Australia really needs to get its A into G, as we say here. Give us better internets!

So all up I would be paying $50 for poorly streamed (due to my connection) video, at 6:30am on Saturday and Sunday, and the coverage may not stay focused on the 3 panels I want to watch, anyway. I really wanted to catch the news live, but I can't justify $50 for about 3 hours of panels that could be cut short and may well be very low quality due to my backwater internet.

So I'll just have to suck it up and deal with compiling druid info from the main sites. It's disappointing to me - I would rather be posting it first-hand, but it's not the end of the world.

To everyone on their way to the con itself - have a blast! Wish I could be there with you!

It's spelled L-O-R-E, not L-A-W.

2009-08-18T15:20:00.003+10:00

I've been spending most of my spare moments working on the new blog (and it's coming along very nicely), but I had to take five to expand on the speculation about the coming expansion. We're only a few days away from Blizzcon now, so we'll find out very soon if it's true or not.. and I'm quite excited.

If you read this blog, and hate spoilers, I've probably already spoiled stuff for you earlier, so uh.. sorry about that. But just in case -

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

What amuses me is the number of people getting REALLY upset about the possibility of changes that go against the lore of Warcraft.

I certainly respect their opinions and their passion for the story, but what people need to understand is that lore is a history, it's not a set of rules. The past can't be changed (well, unless we head over to CoT and mess around!), but the future is an open book. Just because something has been a certain way for thousand years does not mean that it can't ever happen.

Night Elf mages: WRONG WRONG WRONG.. right?

The possibility Night Elf mages seem to be causing the biggest uproar. Evidently Night Elves can't be mages because:

From http://www.wowwiki.com/Night_Elves

Their powerful magic was recklessly unleashed by the quel'dorei,[2] who believed they were superior to other Kaldorei and practiced magics far beyond the considered norm.[citation needed] This careless use of magic may have allowed the Burning Legion to invade the world, and finally led to a catastrophic battle known as the War of the Ancients. This battle changed the face of Azeroth for all time, and resulted in the creation of the continents of the world, tearing the land apart and forming the vast nexus of energy at the center of the ocean known as the Maelstrom.

...the Well of Eternity imploded in a magical cataclysm, sending untold numbers to their doom. Many Kaldorei were dragged to the bottom of the sea, only to be twisted and transformed into the sea serpents now known as the vile naga. The catastrophe tore the continent apart into three sections, and left a permanent storm known as the Maelstrom where the well once stood. With the majority of the Highborne dead, the kaldorei turned away from their arcane legacy and began a new culture focusing on attunement with nature and their surroundings.

The TLDR version is that the Highborne dabbled in magic that they shouldn't have, which led to the destruction of the Well of Eternity, which in turn turned many of the Night Elves into Naga, tore the world into several chunks, and created the Maelstrom.

Basically: bad things happen when you play with magic.

So the Night Elves are a little shy (to say the least) when it comes to dabbling in the arcane.

But does that mean they'll never do it?

What if something REALLY big went down, and they were forced to reconsider? They are, after all, avoiding magic mostly by choice - they're not incapable of it, right? They can just change their minds, no sweat.

Oh, wait:

From http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/encyclopedia/508.xml

Afterwards, arcane magic was outlawed on pain of death, but the Highborne arrogantly continued their dangerous sorcery.

Rather than execute their defiant kindred, Tyrande and Malfurion sentenced the Highborne to exile. The exiles journeyed over the sea to Lordaeron, where they founded the kingdom of Quel'Thalas and began calling themselves high elves.

Okay, so, it's outlawed. Fair call. But if the Highborne can break the rules, is the idea of the Night Elves changing their minds really so inconceivable? Sure, it's been quite a while, they're creatures of habit now.. but is it such a massive leap that a cataclysmic event might drive them to change their ways?

Forever changed (again)

This already happened. We just weren't around to see it. Something really big DID go down, we just didn't log on until the dust had settled.

Is it time for round two?

I LOVE the idea of the world going through a massive, cataclysmic event that changes zones dramatically - destroys some, sinks some, tears some in half. That something so massive, dramatic and violent tears up the world as we know it, and the people have to rise up and find new alliances and new ways to fight back. I got goosebumps just now as I was writing that.

Posted by Irem on wow.com Aug 15th 2009

This is why I want for this to be true. As players, we've often only got Blizzard's word to go on that we've lost something. "The Scourge has killed thousands of people!" That's not our loss. Those thousands are just words on a screen. "Bolvar and Saurfang the Younger are dead!" Suddenly that's our loss because they're characters we knew and liked and will never see again.

If they really want to make us feel something powerful while changing the old world, they have to actually -change- it. Make us feel that punch in the gut when we log in and the places we leveled and played in are altered permanently, and when we realize that things we took for granted seeing every day are gone. Force us to own our place in the world by actually taking something away from us. That's the kind of immersion a time-frozen-from-character-creation game world can't provide, and I applaud Blizzard for not playing it safe, if this is all in fact true.

This. This, this, THIS.

This is exactly how I feel, and I couldn't possibly have said it any better.

Caving to the whiners, or building on the story?

Most people seem to be in one or the other camp.

Is Blizzard relenting to the whiners who want gnome healers and to fly in Azeroth, or are they putting the boot up this game and shaking it up?

Is it a lazy plot device to accommodate player wishlists, or the next step in an ever-evolving tapestry?

Is it lore-breaking, or lore-expanding?

If the speculation is true, they're going to have to spin some really fantastic stories to explain it all and make it believable. As long as it's done properly and not someone waving a wand and saying, "BOOM! Garrosh is the boss of you guys now, trolls can be druids if you want, and Night Elves got over their silly aversion to arcane magic. As you were."

As I said above though, I don't consider lore to be "the rules". I consider it to be a history book of what happened once before. Who's to say it can't change?

Phasing - oh please let it be phased

If this is all true, I have every finger and toe crossed that they use phasing. I have to say I would be very sad if the geographical changes were brought in and simply made permanent for every player, old and new. I would be sad to lose the ability to go see the old barrens, and i would miss Orgrimmar so, so much.

I hope that they leave the old world how it is for new players (and new alts), but perhaps once you hit a certain level (maybe trigged by a questline), the world changes to post-cataclysm. If it's true, I hope they put in a device like speaking to Alexstrasza at the Wrathgate - something that allows you to go up to old Orgrimmar and say "show me what happened here". This game needs more Wrathgates. That will never, ever get old, and I get goosebumps every time I watch it.

I'd love to be able to roll an alt and go see "old Orgrimmar", and take a picture and preserve it Postcards from Azeroth style.

A small, worn and neatly folded card, tucked carefully into my Orc's armor; that she might glance at it occasionally while looking over what is now left of Durotar - remembering what once was.

Oopsie, slipped into lorenerd mode for a sec..

Please Blizzard - if you're going to change the world - use your magic phasing powers for good. Make us another Wrathgate-type video to make all the little hairs on my arms stand on end.

PS - I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I jumped on the possible-Tauren-paladin bandwagon and reserved "Holycao" (which is a play on the name of my first druid, Caoimhe). I couldn't resist!

Bring on Blizzcon, and the truth!

Are druids being trolled?

2009-08-15T10:02:00.004+10:00

MMO-Champion has done what they do best and served up some datamined info about the next expansion.

None of the information below has been officialy announced by Blizzard, this is only a compilation of information gathered from reliable sources. Just keep in mind that it takes a LOT to make me post something on the front page and I'm definitely not speculating here.

Here's the exciting part, if it's true:

The expansion doesn't have any new class. Instead, Blizzard will offer more race and classes combinations to players, some of them have been datamined on the 3.2.2 Test Realms.

* Human Hunter
* Orc Mage
* Night Elf Mage
* Dwarf Mage
* Blood Elf Warrior
* Dwarf Shaman
* Undead Hunter
* Tauren Paladin
* Tauren Priest
* Gnome Priest
* Troll Druid

Troll druids? Or Blizzard trolling us?

I don't think I would swap to a troll, I like my Tauren, but it would be great for us to get a couple more races as druids.

Then again, if this was our Dire form, I think I would be tempted..

I think I'll be taking this with a grain of salt - MMO say they have reliable sources, but here's the part that made me a little doubtful:

Flying in Azeroth
Part of the redesign of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is the introduction of flying to the two continents, allowing access to many new areas and quicker travelling across the large continents.

I could be wrong, but I find this very hard to believe. Blizzard have always said this would be a mammoth effort, with a lot of recoding to do, and they didn't want to put that much effort into revamping old content (they prefer to spend time and money on new and exciting content). Edit: If the follow-up info that MMO posted is true (about a lot of 80-85 stuff happening in the old world), then it would make sense to allow flying, I suppose..

So.. I'm not sure. As Matticus said recently, these news sites don't post "news" flippantly, they have reputations (and therefore, revenue) to preserve. But Blizzard have always been adamant that flying in Azeroth would be time and effort better spent on developing new content.

As usual, I'm taking the stance of, "I'll believe it when I see it."

Besides, we all know that Undead cannot play hunters.

Some new druid races would be really great (without mangling the lore, if possible). If the above is true, I can only assume they haven't "found" the second Alliance druid race yet - otherwise it might be a bit unfair. Although I love my Tauren and doubt I would reroll (other than for fun - hey, a 6th druid might be good for a laugh), it would be nice to have a choice.

Progress report: the new TBJ

2009-08-14T09:29:00.003+10:00

A few people have enquired about the progress of my new blog, so I thought I would give a quick report.

I had some problems with the initial WordPress install and a bunch of 500 errors. My host has been really fantastic though, and fixed them quickly for me.

Back in May I had a crash course in WordPress when I created my (now abandoned) guild website. It wasn't too difficult. I used to dabble in web design, but that was about a decade ago, and I never sat down and learned any of this new-fangled CSS stuff. Steep learning curve.

No matter. I might not know a single thing about CSS, but I'm pretty darn good at opening up a template file, reading through it for something that vaguely resembles the part that I want to change, fiddling with the settings, saving, and then checking to see if that changed what I wanted. In fact, I'm a champion at this. I am a VERY stubborn person, and I won't walk away until the template is doing what I want it to do. I've been able to stumble through and get it to look how I want - I'm quite proud.

The original template author would probably cry if she saw it, though.

You should feel for my friends too, it's been a rollercoaster ride with me alternating between "!@%$@%!### I HATE THIS THING ITS BROKEN I CAN'T MAKE ANYTHING WORK WHY WON'T IT WORK THIS IS RIDICULOUS" and (2 minutes later) "I am amazing. I'm so thrilled with how this is looking."

They must be so tired :P

Anyway - here's the deal:

- domain and space acquired (stop trying to peek!)
- WordPress installed
- theme butchered to my liking
- plugins added: contact form, related articles, etc
- lots of stupid test posts made

To do:

- put the static pages together (About, Blogroll, etc)
- transfer old content over (?)
- test that everything works
- put stuff in the sidebar
- little stuff like a favicon, wowhead links, etc
- ??
- profit

I'm not sure about bringing the old content over, or whether I should just start again (I would bring over particular guides etc, however).

Obviously, bringing it over means people will be able to search the older content.. but I worry that it's going to be a pain in the butt to do. WordPress has that annoying problem where it strips out your superfluous p and br tags, meaning that you have no extra line breaks between your paragraphs. I use those a lot.

150+ posts, no paragraph spacing.

On one hand, having ALL of my content on the new site is logical - all in the one place, for people to search. On the other hand, do I want 150 posts that look like ass? Is it better to have an archive of all the posts, and have them looking kinda bad.. than to just start fresh and say "go here for older posts" and point back to blogspot? I'm not sure what to do. I'm leaning towards "of course you have to import it" but ugh..

I suppose I won't know how bad it is until I give it a try!

At any rate.. I still have quite a lot to do before the new site can go live. It is a gradual project, at the moment.

:)

Community spotlight: Recent posts that I enjoyed

2009-08-13T18:46:00.004+10:00

Here are a few great posts that you might have missed:

1. HoTs Tree - Ulduar Healing Guides for Resto Druids (an index)

Aertimus has gathered together a whole lot of the druid healing guides for Ulduar, and put them in one place as a quick-reference.

Best of all, they're not one-sided guides from a generic wiki or website; they are guides written by bloggers from their own perspective, so you get a player's-eye view of how the fights work, and some great druid-specific tips.

2. Twig Heals: HealBot (setup 1)

Healbot resources are rare and very hard to find. Twig Heals shows you the first few steps to getting your Healbot set up and ready to go.

3. Heal With It - Screencap Quality and You

WoW screenshots can look a little bad if you don't know how to change the capture quality. Heal With It shows you how to improve the quality of your screenshots - which will be especially important if you want to show them off to the world!

4. Healing in 3.2 – Blog guide updated

Lissanna from Restokin has updated her well-known druid healing guide for patch 3.2. In it, she covers:

- Tank healing – Nourish supported by HOTs
- Tank healing – Lifebloom strategies
- AOE raid healing – Wild growth and other HOTs
- Recommended talent spec(s)
- Glyphs for tank & raid healing
- Set bonuses and Idols
- Consumables & enchants

It's a really thorough guide, and a great resource, especially for newer druids who aren't sure how to use all of our healing tools. If you've ever asked, "what rotation should I use?" then you should check out Lissanna's guide.

5. Dreambound - Raid Icons

This one speaks for itself - a guide to our available raid icons, and the best ways to use them.

6. HoTs & DoTs - Patch 3.2 Resto Druid Gear Guide: for the Casual/10 Man Raider

This is Part 1 of a planned two-part series from HoTs & DoTs. This part covers:

- The casual player who runs heroics with friends & occasionally PuGs 25s
- The fairly serious 10man raider who occasionally PuGs 25s
- The 25man raider gearing up a Resto alt or dual spec set
- The player back from a break, who wants to get back into 25man raiding

7. Mad Cow Chronicles: WoW TCG Fundamentals

Llanion has set out to teach us a little about the WoW Trading Card Game. If you'd like to give the TCG a go and you're not sure how it works, this is a great primer.

The second installment can be found here.

Enjoy!

Val'anyr - and why I want it to just go away

2009-08-12T17:47:00.006+10:00

Warning - this has nothing to do with item mechanics, healing, theorycrafting, or anything remotely informative. This is purely a personal post about things near and dear to me as a player, and will probably just end up as a silly ramble more than anything. Feel free to skip over it if you're not a big fan of that kind of thing.

I wish we could put items on ignore. Once upon a time, it might have been Foror's Compendium of Dragonslaying.

These days, it's Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings.

I don't want to see it, I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to see it linked, I don't want to see screenshots, I don't want to read about buffs or nerfs or anything else that has anything to do with it.

I want it to go away.

It's not sour grapes

You're probably already thinking I'm sulking because I don't have one. Classic sour grapes, right? I suppose it looks that way to most people. Straight-up jealously probably forms a small part of my feelings, I'm sure.. I think it would be silly to try to claim that it has nothing to do with it. But the jealousy over not getting a shiny weapon is a tiny, tiny part of why I feel so bitter when I see it. Few people would believe that, though, I suspect.

The truth is, only a few people close to me would probably appreciate how I really feel about that weapon, what it really means to me, and that I'm not just pouting because I'm not sporting one (and I probably never will).

I never set out to earn it, but I believe I did

I did a lot for my guild. A lot. I didn't do it to be rewarded, or thanked, or celebrated. I loved helping, and teaching, and serving. I enjoyed researching fights, spending hours creating diagrams and plans, stocking the guild bank, and helping people with quests. I helped to keep the forums running, and over time seemed to fill the role of "guild PR".

I helped the newbies, I ran some guild events, dealt with problems in whispers (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much), ran the recruiting threads, and spent time being a "good influence" on the forums and in dealing with other guilds. I farmed for potions and fish, I brought spare consumables for the healers, I sat out or passed on gear to new people, and I always carried candles, symbols, pet food, bullets, and campfire materials, so that nobody ever got stuck mid-raid without something.

I'll never forget the day in Black Temple when the tank ran out of bullets for pulling, asked if anyone had any, and I put some in a trade window. Better, though, the confusion from the tank and half the raid - wondering why on earth I was carrying bullets around with me. But it was precisely for moments like that - I loved saving the day, making things smoother.

I gave away large amounts of my own bank supplies to help guildies level professions or buy mounts, always loving it when someone asked 'has anyone got a ......' and being able to say, "I have it on an alt, I'll go get it for you". I kept the guild bank tidy, and helped to sell BOEs and other materials to keep our gold supplies up. I ran instances that I didn't want to do and had no need for, purely because someone needed my help.

Everything I had, I gave freely to the guild.

I loved helping, teaching, being a shoulder to cry on or a spare ear to listen, saving the day, coming prepared, supplying what we needed, greasing the guild's wheels, being someone to look up to, and keeping things running.

And while I never, ever did any of that because I wanted recognition, a trophy, a pat on the back or a medal... I believe I deserved that mace the most, and I defy anyone to say that I didn't.

I nearly lost it to a /random

I envy the guilds who are able to unanimously agree that Bob the priest has been around for 3 years, never missed a raid, is a tremendous healer, and he just deserves it hands down, no question. I had to campaign for it. I had to stand up and say no, I'm sorry, but I don't agree with a /roll between all healers, or even a /roll between the "finalists".

There were three of us. All long-standing members of the guild. All with excellent attendance. All good healers, in our different classes and styles. So the majority of the healers said that we were equal and should just /roll.

At the risk of sounding like a brat who wanted the shiny for herself, I put my foot down. All things were NOT equal. If our attendance, dedication, and skill were too difficult to separate, then why wouldn't it come down to the person who had done far and away more for the guild?

Wasn't it obvious?

Val'anyr is more than just a shiny weapon

Even worse was that - even after it was finally agreed by the officers that I would receive the first mace, Blizzard released the patch a week earlier than we expected and I could not get time off to raid on the Wednesday, or I would risk losing my job. The inevitable happened, as I knew it would - a shard dropped, while I was stuck at work, so it defaulted to the only finalist who was able to raid that day, because he didn't work during the day.

I had to fight to convince one officer in particular that it was unfair to then change things and give the entire set of shards to that person purely because he was lucky enough to be there on the day - during a raid time that was not the norm. If I had missed a normal scheduled raid, that would have been my fault - but I could NOT get time off work (and having a sick day would risk my job), and he wouldn't accept that.

The main arguments were "If you really wanted it, you would have found a way to get time off," and "Why is it such a big deal that you get the first one? What does it matter?"

I think that was what drove me crazy, really. Well, two things.

that people couldn't recognise the MASSIVE effort I had put into the guild, which in my mind would mean I was the obvious choice, all other things being equal; and

that you're DAMN RIGHT the first one is important, how can anyone say that?

It's not just a cool weapon - and I suspect the above argument is typical of people who are more concerned with loot than other issues. That weapon was not important to me because it was orange, or cool looking, or because I'd have lots of people /inspecting me on the Dalaran steps.

It was a testament to just how much I had poured into that guild.

And it hurt so much that I wasn't the obvious choice.

25 fragments short of a guild

But the guild split up. We never killed Yogg without a watcher. We didn't even get to kill him with all of the watchers.

Everyone went their separate ways. Some to hardcore guilds more progressed, others to play with friends. Some quit entirely.

So I will never get my mace. I will never get my trophy.

Instead, I have five fragments sitting in my bag. Five fragments to remind me of the fantastic team I was once part of, that I poured my heart into, but will never get back.

To some people.. it's just a silly weapon in a fleeting game. It doesn't matter. But to me, it symbolises friendships, hardships, hard work, good times, bad times, triumphs.. and everything I gave to my team. It was a small token to say "thank you for everything you've done for us."

You may think it's silly to put so much emphasis on a trivial pile of pixels.. but to me it means so much more than just another item in the game.

And that's the story of Christmas

So, ex-guildmates, friends, rivals, strangers... that is why I get sad when I see those fragments, or see other people with their new maces. It's nothing personal - but I can't help but feel a little bitter, because they have two things that I had, but lost:-

a shiny, orange "we couldn't have done all of this without you"..

..and, more importantly, a family to belong to.

Official word on Vezax and no more Clearcasting

2009-08-12T10:49:00.005+10:00

To follow up on my previous post about the apparent nerf to Clearcasting:

Blizzard wrote:

We wanted to make players aware of several changes made to the General Vezax encounter upon the release of patch 3.2, which weren't noted in the official patch notes.

These changes affect both 10-player and 25-player modes. First off, when considering the hardmode of the encounter, the mechanics were overly favoring groups that made heavy use of Restoration druids (Omen of Clarity procs) and “Enhancement” shamans using healing gear (Shamanistic Rage and Improved Stormstrike) to circumvent the mana restrictions. Omen of Clarity will no longer proc for Restoration druids, and Enhancement shamans receive a healing debuff similar to the ones Retribution paladins have had since the encounter’s initial implementation.

Recognizing that this would make the encounter far more difficult for raid groups that have come to rely on those mechanics, we also made changes to ease the overall mana burden when attempting the hardmode. The health of General Vezax and the Saronite Animus was reduced by roughly 25%, and the Animus will now spawn after six Vapors, down from eight, assuming none have been killed.

In addition, prior to 3.2, General Vezax could be very erratic in the use of some of his abilities, leading to long gaps between Shadow Crashes in particular. His behavior in this regard is now more consistent. As a side-effect of this change, in 25-player mode in particular, he will also cast Searing Flames slightly more often – whenever his Fire school isn’t locked out by player interrupts, essentially. Finally, because the “more consistent” Crash use ended up being a bit on the frequent side, a minor hotfix recently increased the period between Crash casts.

(my emphasis)

Edit: oops, it wasn't GC - force of habit! Also edited to include the link.

So there you go, trees - it's official. Any tree-punching on this boss will now be purely for entertainment purposes.

Wild Growth bug fixed! Wait, no..

2009-08-11T22:21:00.004+10:00

Resto druids have a long-standing (it's been months, now) problem with Wild Growth not playing nice with our mouseover macros. The digest version of the story, if you're not aware, is that if you have a dead or out-of-range person targeted and you try to cast Wild Growth using a mouseover macro, the Wild Growth won't fire (you'll just get a "your target is dead" or similar error).

There are ways around it, specifically a /canceltarget macro:

/canceltarget
/cast [target=mouseover]Wild Growth

..but it's incredibly annoying to have to use clumsy workarounds when the issue shouldn't be hard to fix (GC even said that himself).

Edit: the above macro may not be correct - if it doesn't work, try this one:

/cleartarget
/cast [target=mouseover,noharm,exists] Wild Growth
/targetlasttarget

This one comes from Restokin from a while ago. (PS - ignore my comments on that Restokin post - I thought my own macro at the time worked, but it turned out I was just lucky enough to go a long time without noticing the problem.)

After months and months, druids are still wondering what's going on. Why isn't it fixed? What's the hold-up?

Then GC said this today, and I had to laugh:

I was going to post that we fixed this, because we did. But I'm glad that I didn't because sometime during the 3.2 patch it broke again.

Sometimes when we don't address simple things head on, it's for reasons like this. We'll try to get it fixed (again) as soon as we understand what happened.

It's a serious issue that we want fixed.. but this really made me giggle. Glad they finally gave us word on what's going on, though.

Back to waiting!

I don't think it's much to ask..

2009-08-11T18:31:00.004+10:00

Along with big changes rolled out in every patch, there are usually a lot of tiny changes and seemingly insignificant changes to the game; but often these tiny changes are often some of the most anticipated and celebrated.

Recent triumphs in the "finally" category:

- moonglade mailboxes
- being able to track quests that don't have any "objectives"
- turning off XP at will
- updated feral forms
- an extra stable slot for hunters
- flight form affected by Crusader Aura
- potions stacking to 20
- the ability to swap items after a misloot
- Ravasaur mount

With that in mind, here is my list of little things that I really can't see as being terribly difficult to implement.

Blizzard - I don't think it's much to ask:

..that our characters to be sortable on our character collection screen.
..that we have a tabard storage system similar to pets and mounts.
..that we have a better pet/mount UI, with a search function.
..that we have another druid race per faction. It's about time.
..that we might upgrade our original 16 slot backpack.
..that "lowbie" mounts could scale to the speed of our epics.
..that we have a search button on our achievements.
..that Blizzard fix our ongoing mouseover macro issue with Wild Growth.
..that we have a 2000 Fish achievement.
..that we have a 100 pet achievement.
..that Chillmaw be made to be a summoned NPC.
..that we could display the number of quests remaining in Kalimdor and Azeroth by zone.
..that Australia would get its own servers (ha!)

What are yours?

What are the things that you wish would be implemented, and you just don't understand why they're not in the game already - after all, it's not much to ask, right?

Raptormania Part Deux: When Boredom Attacks

2009-08-10T08:29:00.005+10:00

Got bored. Went to Wailing Caverns to farm raptors, despite having earlier said something to the effect of "screw Wailing Caverns, I hate that place, I'll just buy the pet."

But I was bored, and an instance is the one place that you can farm by yourself without five billion other people camping the mobs that you need - so I figured I'd give it a shot and see how easy it was to do. As much as I LOATHE this instance, I discovered that the part in which you farm the raptors is right inside the instance door, and you just run in a big, straightforward circuit. You don't need to go deep into the bowels of the instance (as I had feared). The whole thing takes around 5 minutes per run and is actually FUN.

I know - I was shocked, too.

Without further ado, here's my ultra top secret method for farming Deviate Hatchlings:

Ignore all of the raptors outside the instance portal - they don't drop the pet. The ones you want are immediately inside the instance.
Turn thorns OFF.
Remember: nothing in an instance will leash. Run through every raptor you see. The room is basically a big rectangle - just run right around the whole thing, gathering every mob.
When you have them all, Hurricane or kitty Swipe as appropriate.
Loot the sparklies.

Result:

Now, I may just be crazy lucky, but those three came from just two runs, out of 5 runs total (I got two on my fourth run, and another on my fifth run). I kept one (that makes 87 pets) and I am going to sell the other two while the prices are up. Obviously these are one of the easier raptor pets to farm, so the price of them probably won't stay very high for long (at the moment - 2000g to 4000g). I suspect they will plateau somewhere in the low hundreds - it's still annoying to have to go to WC in the first place, after all.

I don't really intend to farm for the ones that drop from elites.. too many people camping them already, and it's too stressful to sit there and watch the spawn point for hours, waiting to mash your moonfire button. I'd rather do a few days of dailies and buy them at inflated prices, to be perfectly honest.

(If you're on Cael and you have one to sell, drop me a line. I buy and trade!)

Isn't he cute?

Aww, bless.

DISCLAIMER: I cannot be held responsible for any raptor-related maulings which may result in injuries ranging from feelings of mild discomfort to death. Raptors are wild animals and should be respected (I recommend paying particular respect to their pointy ends).

Remember: raptors run at 10m/s and they do not know fear.

Boy howdy are they cute though! /chin tickle

General Vezax - no more clearcasting procs

2009-08-09T15:44:00.011+10:00

Disclaimer: Everything I can find about this issue points to it being an intended change, but I can't find an official word on it - or even on the fact that his health has been lowered and the Animus spawns after fewer vapors.

The fact that his health has been nerfed and the Animus spawns sooner (which I doubt is accidental - you don't nerf a boss' HP by 25% by accident) says to me that the clearcasting nerf is deliberate, but I can't find actual confirmation, so I've edited the post to more speculative, and to add this disclaimer that we still haven't had official word on it.

PS: I also heard Onyxia deep breaths more - but this is also unconfirmed. ;)

EDIT:12/8 - this has been confirmed as an intended change.

Ulduar raiders - something you may not be aware of is a recent possible "stealth" nerf to General Vezax and the strategy used by many druids to supplement and sustain their mana over the course of the fight, usually in hard-mode.

I'm referring to tree-punching, of course.

The General Vezax fight seems to have been changed so that it is no longer possible to use clearcasting procs such as Omen of Clarity to get free casts off. This affects all clearcasting abilities for mana users. As far as I have read, ferals are ok.. but I can't find an official word on this.

The (defunct?) Tree-Punch Method

If you weren't aware of this method until now, here's basically how it worked:

Stand with the melee.
While going about your normal healing business, tree-punch the boss until you get a Clearcasting proc.
With clearcasting up, cast a Lifebloom. This will cost 0 mana.
When the Lifebloom expires, it will return part of its base cost. (not as much as usual though - I think it is 25%)
???
Profit.

Figure 1: BAM.

Because the Lifebloom cost you 0 mana to cast, but refunded you some mana, this method means you are gaining mana every time you do it. Alternatively, you could use that clearcasting to cast say, a free Regrowth.

It was a very effective way to sustain your mana, particularly on hard mode when you aren't able to use the saronite vapors to get mana back. It also meant that you could sit with the melee and stay out of the way of Shadow Crashes.

Unfortunately it seems that no mana users can use clearcasting anymore, and if this is the case, this method will no longer be viable.

(Insert sad pandas here.)

Figure 2: This is actually just Figure 1 with a big red X through it.

Other changes to the fight

Vezax's health has been nerfed, and in hard mode the Animus' health has been nerfed too (it now also spawns after 6 vapors, down from 8). This means that the fight is shorter, so it should be less of a strain on mana.

No more melee tree?

Some people choose to continue to use the "Shadow Crash Dance" method - casting Lifeblooms from the puddle (which reduces the cost by 75% but also the ticks by 75%) and allowing them to bloom for a nett gain in mana (particularly if you are wearing 2pc + Spark of Hope etc).

It has been argued by some that the mana gain is too small to bother using this method - but on hard mode, if we can no longer punch our way to free healing in Phase 1, it may become a more commonplace strategy to sustain our mana.

Could anyone confirm (or would someone like to test) whether Fel Mana Potions still work on this fight? They were working pre-3.2.

Just a heads-up, it may mean no more tree punching on this boss.

Raptormania

2009-08-08T16:39:00.005+10:00

I've started my quest for a Whistle of the Venomhide Ravasaur. Horde characters can do this quest, it is basically the equivalent of the Alliance Wintersaber - but nowhere near as grindy, contrary to what many people assume.

I'll sum it up:

Go to Un'goro Crater, speak to the trainer to get the quest.
Take off your clothes and go aggro a handful of Venomhide Ravasaurs. Being naked helps the mobs stay alive for longer.
The raptors' skin is full of poison - and you have to get splashed by it by hitting them over and over (you can't just stand there). Keep hitting them until they have splashed poison on you 20 times. Note: if you are grouped, you will get credit for other people in your group getting splashed - so group up!
If you go with a friend and aggro a handful, it will only take 5-10 minutes. If there are lots of people competing for spawns, it may take longer.
Hand in the quest and get your baby raptor. He will give you a random daily quest each day for 20 days - for example, go kill 20 dinosaurs and feed him the meat. Very simple.
At the end of the 20 daily quests, return to the trainer with some extra materials (80g 20 Runecloth, 20 Rugged Leather), and you get your mount.

That's it!

Note: if you are soloing this quest, you'll need to be at least around the level 50 mark, to be able to kill the appropriate mobs. However, this mount can be used from level 40 and up - so if you have some higher level friends who can save you from being eaten by things in Un'goro, you can let them do all the poison-soaking while you get credit too. (I can't find anything that suggests there is a level requirement to accept the quest, so I assume a level 40 can do it)

As an aside - have you bought an Obsidian Hatchling from Breanni in Dalaran? He's adorable. But the little Venomhide hatchling is even TINIER! Of course, he won't be tiny for long; only 20 days if you quest for him every day - then he'll grow up and let you ride around on his back.

Aside from Breanni's, There are also a number of other baby raptors that you can adopt as pets. They are BOU (bind on use), which means you may find them on your local AH.

Keeva keeps a watchful eye over her new charge.

Now, as cool as it is to ride around on raptors and have them as baby pets.. frankly I'm slightly perturbed. Did we learn nothing from Jurassic Park? These animals are SMART. They learned how to open doors. I think we need to ask ourselves - are they just biding their time until they can rise up and eat our faces?

You won't be cooing, "aww, cute" when that happens, will you?

Non-combat pets my foot.

In the meantime, if you're happy to be lulled into a false sense of security, here are some resources to help you:

Wowraid's quick guide to the Ravasaur quest
MMO-Champion shows you which raptors drop the BOU pets

Enjoy!

(but when your new pet eats you, don't come crying to me about it.)

The new Empowered Touch - will you use it?

2009-08-05T12:14:00.003+10:00

I actually always liked Emp Touch for the huge Healing Touches I could belt out if I needed to; but it wasn't very economical when Healing Touch is used so rarely (unless you're a HT glypher). Two points for something that I would use usually once per fight at most is a stretch. I loved those big (cue fanfare) "I'LL SAVE YOU!" moments, but two points to boost ONE spell that I use so rarely.. it was hard to justify.

Of course, this ties back in with my article on black sheep talents and the fact that you need to weigh these things up for yourself and your own situation.

What I'll likely do

I had a leftover point in Natural Perfection, with the reasoning that "1% crit is better than an empty slot." Concrete argument there ;P

I would have had 1/2 Emp Touch but I (currently) use HT so infrequently that it just wasn't warranted. It's a weak argument, but I went with 1% crit on Regrowth, blooms, and the occasional Nourish, over a boost to HT which I rarely use. I did miss my big emergency heals, though. I see this buff to Emp Touch as an excuse to get my big NS heals back :P Hooray!

So that was one point to pilfer, but where to get the other?

I'm likely going to drop a point in Living seed, making it a 66% chance of a seed rather than 100% chance. My overall talent spec would then look like this.

I don't like dropping a point from Seed because I really like it, but in the end, I prefer to put a point into something I can rely on to be boosted every time I use it (even if that is not very often), rather than an additional 33% chance to proc Living Seed, a spell that:

can only come from a portion of my heals (the direct ones);
is rarely valuable in a raid-healing situation;
after proccing, may expire without being used;
may or may not end up entirely as overheal; and
is of unreliable size.

There are too many "ifs" in there. I would rather know that my point is helping a particular spell full-time (even if that spell only gets moderate use), rather than applying to something only when the stars align themselves nicely.

Plus, a 66% chance is still quite a high chance - I'm not losing the whole talent. I will still get some Living Seed buffers when I direct heal.

A hybrid within a hybrid

It's important to note that the spec I mentioned is basically a "hybrid" resto build.

Look Ma, an analogy!
Original photo credit to Redken on Flickr.

By that, I mean that it doesn't focus on raid healing or on tank healing specifically. It's an "allrounder" spec.

I choose this middle-of-the-road option because I am mostly doing earlier raiding content, heroics, etc. I don't need to hone my talents or have them specialised for either raid healing or tank healing. I don't need to max out all of the tank healing talents at the expense of the raid healing ones, and vice versa. I've gone for a balanced spec that will serve me well in a range of situations.

Check out Restokin's post about 3.2 healing builds - it explains your options for more specialised raid healing and tank healing builds a little more, and where you might want to pinch those points from.

FYI, why I didn't drop the others

Nature's Grace - I've dropped points here before and there's a noticeable difference (and I don't like it). It feels slowww. I think NG makes a difference and I will avoid dropping points from here.

Revitalize - I like this one too much. I enjoy bringing something to raids that nobody else can. It's certainly not mandatory, your raid will do okay without it - but I like bringing it along.

GotEM - This was where I actually wanted to drop a point from, but I don't have the haste to support that yet. More importantly, I am still getting upgrades over blues and greens at the moment - I don't want to play around with this talent if my upgrades may cause my haste to fluctuate all over the place in the next few weeks. Plus - we all know how much I hate math and calculating ratings and whatnot.

What about you?

1. Are you going to take Empowered Touch, now that it also applies to Nourish?
2. If you didn't have it before, what talent points will you rearrange?
3. How does your usual assignment, play style, raid size and level of content affect your decision?

Farewell, you fugly feral forms (except you, purplecat)

2009-08-04T19:35:00.003+10:00

Patch 3.2 is upon us.

Never again will we glance upon the twisted visage of a Tauren "cat".

No longer will our bears' jaws sag and droop like so much saggy, droopy stuff.

Our feral forms are finally being replaced with shiny new models, after years of complaints (mostly about rampant, chronic lockjaw). It's not just a reskin, either - this is a full revamp. We're getting more polys.

I have to say, I'm slightly sad. Don't get me wrong - I'm very excited for the new forms, I think they look great; but I can't help feeling a little sad about losing the look that we have had for such a long time. Definitely want them gone - but still sad to see them go!

So, I decided to give our old forms a bit of a send off. I shipped all of my Caelestrasz druids (yes, all four of them!) to the Barrens for a bit of a photo opportunity. All of my Cael girls in the one spot, together, to say goodbye to the forms we have lived in and loved (or perhaps endured, loathed, switched to first person mode..) for the past few years.

And, through the magic that is Photoshop, I can share the moment with you all.

From left to right:
Keeva, my beloved Tauren; Drucie, my baby feral; Caoimhe, the Elf who started this whole crazy thing; and Kiiva, the newcomer.

Farewell, you fugly forms (except you, purplecat). In a strange way, I'll miss you.

A plaintive request: Chillmaw and friends

2009-08-04T08:49:00.002+10:00

Dear Blizzard,

The Threat From Above quest is very poorly designed.

I am tired of rocking up to the little snowy plateau to find 20-30 people all "waiting" for their "turn" (and I use these terms VERY loosely) to tag Chillmaw.

Now, waiting I can handle. That's fine.

What I can't stand is a bunch of random people standing around, racing each other to tag him, then a mess of people tagging the cultist NPCs (either on purpose or by accident with AOE), meaning that the group who tagged Chillmaw has missed out on one or all of their adds, and will now either have to steal from another group (thus perpetuating the problem), or wait until the end and do the quest all over again. The "cycle of hate continues," as one forum poster put it.

If that doesn't draw out the process long enough, invariably some group will have 5 members but one is still dawdling at the Crusade area, so they'll do the quest, then the 5th turns up and they decide do it all over again for that slow member, while everyone else has to wait (again).

The other day I was invited with a friend to join a group - we were told "we have two spots left", so we dropped group and asked for an invite. "Sorry, 1 spot now :(". So we didn't bother to join, and chose to wait and do it ourselves after that group had finished. But when they ENGAGED Chillmaw, there were only 3 people there. Not a full group of five. Halfway through, another DK turns up, and the group has to do the quest over again because he didn't get full credit.

Friendly players will also try to help, but inadvertently tag the adds with AOE or otherwise. I am guilty of this - I hit kitty swipe and then realised my folly. It was an accident, but caused the group to have to start over. This kind of thing happens a lot.

Then there's the completely innocent, random stealing of adds: yesterday I was standing off at a distance, minding my own business (waiting) and one of the cultists ran all the way over to me and started belting me. Not wanting to "steal" the mob from the group, I shadowmelded, and luckily after a few hits from someone else, it was re-tagged to them. I must have looked at that one funny.

Why this quest just plain sucks

One mob for 20-30 people who want to kill him at any given time.
Deliberate and accidental tagging of the adds.
No "queue", just people jostling to have their turn.

Add in the warlock standing on the hill deliberately griefing by tagging over and over, and this really has to rank as one of the worst designed quests I've ever known.

Please make it a SUMMON quest, so that you don't have to wait around for it to respawn and then miss out because some jerk ninja-tagged it for the 5th time. And make the adds automatically link to tagging the dragon, so people can't rob you of credit and force you to do the whole thing over again, or incourage people to steal from the next group in line.

Please think really hard before ever making a quest like this again.

Love, Keeva

Moving (soon). Do you have suggestions for TBJ?

2009-08-03T15:19:00.002+10:00

I bit the bullet and put things in motion, I'm going to move my blog to my own space (sometime soon), which will give me more control over the format, and make it less of a "dear diary" blog and more of a helpful and informative resource. That way I can have static pages that I can keep updated - rather than links on a sidebar to old posts that slip away into the void. Side bars are nice, but I prefer tabs. I see side bars as incidental info - a place for things like your blogroll highlights, some icons/banners, a quick blurb about something, your recent achievements. I don't like having my guides sitting in my sidebar, getting lost.

Anyway.. I was going to do this all in secret, revamp the site, and then say, "TADAAAA!" but I realised that this is probably the perfect opportunity to ask if anyone has any particular suggestions. It would be an opportune time to squeeze things in and make changes now, since I'm working with a new template and whatnot anyway.

So.. are there particular things you'd like me to add in? I'm looking to add things like recent/featured/related posts; a list of categories.. and I've just added a chatbox.. what else is missing?

What would you like to see?
What would be helpful to you?
Content wise - would you like to see more articles about (XYZ)?
Are there things you've seen on other blogs that you wish I had on mine?
Have you seen cool widgets that I probably have no idea even exist?
Is there anything that bugs you about the current site, that you hope won't be duplicated?

It's difficult to know what to change without knowing how other people see the site. For example, back when I first started, I think my blog was only allowing comments from registered members. Some bloggers prefer that - but personally I would rather open the floor up (while still having control). I get frustrated when I have to go through all sorts of hassles just to send a quick comment to someone. The point though is that I don't comment on my own site, so I wouldn't have known there was a problem until someone said so!

Have you noticed any annoying niggles like that about my site? Do you have any display issues with the text or graphics? Any and all suggestions and (gentle) criticisms are welcome. :)

I can't make any promises - any suggestions will still have to fit into the template I have chosen, obviously.. but I'm really keen to make my blog into less of a diary and more of a resource - so now is the time to ask what it's missing - and get it right from the start! I'm not sure how long it will take me to put everything together - I want it to be very polished before I open the new one up again, and I'm super busy (in real life, in the game, and blogging), so it may be a project over a number of weeks. I love projects.

One of my goals will be to be diligent in setting up and using categories, and then each week try to do at least one piece that fits into one of those categories - for example, Technical (UI, mods, macros, etc), Community (new blogs, interviews, links), Theorycrafting (talking about healing).. so that I have a reliable and constant stream of meaty articles mixed in with the other random bits of news, my characters, and non-druid posts. I haven't made use of Categories before and I am regretting it - so that is definitely one thing I want to implement. It would be much better to be able to click "Technical" and see a list of all of my UI/mod related posts, instead of relying only on keyword searches.

This kind of hindsight is great; now that I am revamping, I have an opportunity to fix these kind of problems.. but I know I'm probably blind to other things that I should be doing on the site. My blog hasn't even been around for a year yet, so I am still learning some of the basics.

Maybe you've noticed something missing, or there's something you would like tweaked or added?

Thanks in advance for your help! :)

The race I would most love to play is...

2009-08-02T11:22:00.002+10:00

Vrykul.

I think Vrykul are awesome. Apart from being undeniably inherently awesome, they also look fantastic - especially the females. They're not stick-thin, "pretty" girls like the other mostly-humanoid races in the game (humans, elves, etc). That's probably why I love orc girls as well - because they're not pretty.

I don't like to play ugly girls, I do like them to be feminine.. but I prefer characters that don't necessarily look like fashion models. Vrykul girls look like girls.. but they still have that warrior look about them. They're attractive, certainly, but you probably won't find then dancing on letterboxes for gold - they have better things to do than to have men fawning over them.

Like.. making necklaces out of your entrails.

(I was never really into the whole arts and crafts thing, myself..)

Figure 1: Vrykul girls will kick your ass six ways from Sunday.

I LOVE Vrykul and wish I could play one.

It's your turn! Which race would you love to be able to play and why? Choose any race you like (even if doesn't exist in the game). Include a picture if you can.

Jousting guide redux

2009-08-01T15:36:00.005+10:00

A couple of days ago, Turpster posted a video on WoW.com explaining how to do the Argent Tournament jousting quests.

Ever so slightly annoying is the fact that I had actually planned to update my jousting for beginners guide, and make a video of it - just a day before he posted his. Darn it. So now I look like I'm riding around on his coattails.

But I don't care, I'm gonna do it anyway!

Not exactly as polished as his, though :P

My small criticism of Turpster's video is that while it does go through each of the abilities and explains what they do and how they all tie in together, it doesn't really show you how to move around while you joust - there's a bit too much close up melee mashing, and the inset Turpster screen often obscures your view of what's going on. I think being zoomed in to almost first person mode doesn't really help you get an idea of what is happening. Basically, what he's telling you to do and what you're seeing on the screen don't match up very clearly.

I wanted to show the method that I think the majority of people use, showing the positioning and movement (zoomed out), plus give a few tips that I have picked up from others.

Three methods for three skill levels

There are probably a number of ways to do this, but here are three methods catering to various skill and experience levels.

Note: For all methods, you need to begin by facing the center of the ring.

Method 1 - for absolute beginners
(or for those who just can't seem to win!)
1. Get 3 stacks of Defend up.
2. Talk to the NPC.
3. As he runs away, throw a Shield-Breaker, and then run towards him to close range (or he will charge you). If he took off any of your Defends, reapply.
4. When you are in melee range, spam Thrust.
5. Whenever the NPC runs away, throw a Shield-Breaker and then follow him to get back in range and to stop him from charging you.
6. Get back into melee range and continue to spam Thrust.

This method can be summed up as "never let the NPC get range on you to charge or shield-break, and slowly whittle them down with melee attacks."

It's slow, but it is pretty much guaranteed to get you through the quest in once piece.

Method 2 - Intermediate (the common method)
1. Get 3 stacks of Defend up.
2. Talk to the NPC.
3. As he runs away, spam Charge until it goes off.
4. Swing around in an arc, and throw Shield-Breaker as you move back around to melee range.
5. Get back into melee range and spam Thrust.
6. Whenever the NPC walks away from you, back up and spam Charge until it goes off, then repeat steps 4 and 5.

The basic idea here is that anytime the NPC walks away, you want to Charge and Shield-Break them to remove stacks of their defend. Charge also does bonus damage. Then once his shields are down, you can spam Thrust as much as you can until he walks away again.

Optional: some people prefer to begin by throwing a shield breaker and THEN charge the NPC. This will nett you more damage, because you're removing one Defend with Shield-Breaker before you charge, which then makes your Charge do more damage. So this is a good way to do it.

However, I don't do it this way because of my high latency - I can't time a shield breaker AND a charge before the NPC decides to charge me instead. On the other hand, it is extremely easy to mash my Charge button, then shield break afterwards. It is still a very effective method, and you're only missing out on a small amount of damage at the very start.

If you have high latency, or you're not so great with keybindings, charge+shieldbreak is probably going to be easier for you than shieldbreak+charge, and it won't make a huge difference.

Method 3 - Advanced (very fast method)
1. Get 3 stacks of Defend up.
2. Stand behind the NPC to talk to him.
3. As soon as you have hit "I am ready to fight", hit Thrust.
4. Back up a few steps as the NPC runs away, throw a Shield-Breaker, and then Charge.
5. As you charge, hit Thrust again, to do additional damage on the way past.
6. Swing around in an arc, and throw Shield-Breaker as you move back around to melee range.
7. Get back into melee range and spam Thrust.
8. When your Charge cooldown is almost ready, run away from the NPC, then do a 180 degree jump-turn, and Charge him. Hit Shield-Breaker on the way back around, as above. Get back into melee range, spam Thrust, and repeat this step.

Remember to try to keep your stacks of Defend up as much as you can. One mistake Turpster makes is that he says you should "mash" your Defend button - don't do this. It will put your Charge and Shield-Breaker abilities on cooldown. If the NPC removes one or more of your charges of Defend, reapply - but don't mash this button otherwise, there's no need.

I've made a very quick and dirty video showing how to charge/shield break at the start, as well as jump-turning and charging. It's not as shiny and pretty as Turpster's, but it shows the basics, I think. Try to ignore the pet birds in the background, and be gentle about my blatant keyboard turning in some parts (I actually use a weird hybrid method of half keyboard, half mouse turning).

YouTube video: Jousting - how to (1:33) NB: Volume may be a little loud - sorry if it is!

Another excellent video can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIE8RiFqpSI&NR=1.
It's nice and clear, easy to see exactly what the player is doing, and he steps you through everything.

And another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hSCvj6uBsY
This one is in slow-motion to show you exactly what to do, and shows you the jump turns also.

The above two videos put my little one to shame.. but I made mine to help people who have problems with charging and moving around. When I was first learning, I was frustrated by how wide the turning circle of my mount was - which usually caused me to have my Defends taken off, and I would take a lot of damage. I didn't realise I could use this sweeping circle to my advantage to hit the NPC with Shield-Breaker on the way back (something that I hadn't tried until blog commenters mentioned it). It's something that beginners may like to graduate too after using the "safe" method.

It's a very amateur clip - but hopefully it helps someone :)

If you have other tips - feel free to comment and I will add them in.

Black sheep resto talents - and why you shouldn't (necessarily) write them off

2009-07-29T18:02:00.004+10:00

It seems black and white with most talents.

This talent is good; this one is useless - don't even think of picking that up. Good talents, garbage talents. Take these talents. If you pick that one up, you're terrible. This one is mandatory; that one is a waste of points. Straight down the line. Simple.

If you take this talent, you're a bad druid.

Many people will categorically state a number of our talents to be "useless" or "terrible" for raiding. I'd like to talk about why I think it is a mistake to take these kind of statements as gospel. Most often they will be quite correct; but it's important that you make your own judgments and not just follow blindly the statements of others.

It is all too easy to rubber stamp an ability as "useless" because everyone says so - without considering and exploring the possibilities of how it might actually be an asset to your healing..

..or to another player, whose playstyle and content level do not match your own.

Now, obviously, many WoW blogs that set out to teach their respective classes are aiming at the raiding level of players, so most statements will be made with that in mind. If they state that a particular ability is bad, you can usually tack "..for PvE raiding" onto the end of the statement. And if you're getting your info from a knowledgeable and trusted site, then they're likely to know what they're talking about.

But I will always try to frame my statements and advice as "here's how I do it" rather than "here is the best way to do it, period." I prefer to give people options, rather than dictate what is right and what is wrong. Give them the pros and cons, and let them apply that to their own situation, and make up their own minds.

Be open to new ideas

As players, I think it's important to avoid developing long-term biases towards our talents and spells. Not only can this cause a lot of heartache and frustration if those talents and spells are changed, but it also makes you blind to the possibilities that some talents may give you for different encounters. I'm not here to force anyone to change their ideas; but I myself have changed the way I look at certain things, and it really opens your eyes to new strategies, styles, rotations, and gives you more ideas for how to adapt in particular situations. Abilities once labelled "garbage" might actually be incredibly useful if you open your mind to the possibility that they might not actually be ignored by default.

Remember when Regrowth was "bad" (expensive/ineffective/etc) and only bad healers used it (much)... and then with talent and encounter changes, suddenly it was THE go-to spell?

Remember when Rank 4 Healing Touch was almost our sole heal (until HoTs could stack)? Healing Touch all day? For many people it is now just an occasional clutch heal - and a running joke in my old guild. Doesn't get much airtime anymore, the old Healing Touch.

Remember when Lifebloom was so amazing, then it was nerfed, and changed in such a way that people had to change how it was used, and many even stopped using it altogether?

The point is that things are always changing; a talent that might have been considered useless 6 months ago might suddenly become super amazing after a patch, or extremely helpful for hard modes. Don't become too set in your opinion on what's terrible and what's good.. because changes to talents (or to gameplay and fights themselves, or the introduction of new content) may find it very hard to accept that you need to dust those spells and abilities off.

But as raiders - especially hard mode raiders - you should also be careful not to dismiss something as terrible; it might actually be awful for most fights, but incredibly powerful on one particular hard mode. You may think, as a min-max hardcore raider, that the widely-accepted cookie cutter builds are the best you can get - but you never know when something once labelled a waste of points will turn out to be valuable.

Keep an open mind, basically.

The pie is a lie (sometimes)

In particular I believe that it is far too easy for us to get caught up in meters, spell breakdowns and Recount pie graphs when deciding whether an ability is good or bad. It just doesn't work like that. We're not DPS classes; we can't just look at a spell, see that we cast it X times and got 7000hps out of it, and decide it's our best spell. A spell cast only a few times per fight may be just as crucial in downing that boss, but look terrible on paper because we only got 10k total healing out of it for the entire night.

It's important to look at all of the facts, and yes, meters and reports ARE important. But numbers aren't everything - and you should never simply look at a pie graph and decide that the smallest sliver represents a terrible ability. It just doesn't work that way. It's important to examine things from all angles.

Trash or treasure?

So let's talk about the black sheep talents that people are always beating on. I'm not talking about weighing up whether to drop a point in GotEM now that you have XYZ haste and a boomkin in every raid, or whether or not Nature's Grace will make you clip your Nourishes. I'm talking about talents that, at some point in their life, have been labelled "garbage".

Are they really terrible?
Should you give them a wide berth? Are they useless for everyone? Or do they have some merit?

Improved Tranquility

When I first hit 80, Keeva had 2/2 Imp Tranquility, despite the fact that most people said it was rubbish. Why? Because I was doing heroics, lots of heroics, and having a 4 minute CD Tranquility at my beck and call was sooooooo good.

But as I moved into raiding, it became less valuable, and rarely used.

The thing to remember about Tranquility is that it is usually most valuable for smaller groups, and least valuable in large raids. In a 5 man group, it heals every person (in range). The whole group, all at once. In a 10 man, it heals half the raid - still pretty great, and I would consider having Imp Tranquility if I was mostly doing 10 mans. In a 25 man though, it only heals 20% of the raid (at best), and since 25man raids often have people spread all over the place, its effectiveness is reduced even further. There are just fewer times that Tranquility (even if you DID have it on a 4 minute cooldown) is useful, in a 25 man raid setting.

But it's definitely NOT a garbage talent - if you spend more of your time in 5 and 10 man dungeons it can be really great. Definitely do not write this talent off if you are a more casual player and you mostly run in smaller groups.

Tranquil Spirit

Tranquil spirit reduces the mana cost of your Healing Touch, Nourish and Tranquility spells. Previously it only affected HT and Tranquility, so it was seen as a pretty bad talent (because HT and Tranquility are used rarely, therefore there was no real need to pour 5 points in to save mana). Now though, it also affects Nourish, and as more people are now using Nourish, it is better value.

Obviously, the more you use Nourish (and HT/Tranquility), the better the investment. But before you decide to invest 5 points in it because you're a tank healer and it makes sense - stop and ask yourself if you are having mana troubles first. It's kinda like "stacking" regen on your gear - you want enough regen to get you through the fight reliably - and not much more than that, or it's a waste. If you're not having mana problems, why would you need to invest 5 points in a mana-saving ability?

Also consider the encounters and your usual assignments. Your mileage may vary - particularly as you move into hard modes. Do the fights require lots of Nourishes? How does your usual assignment affect this? In the end, the question is - How much economy will I get out of these 5 points? Do I need a mana discount, or can I get by without it?

Now, I'm not saying this is a rubbish talent, not at all. If you are using these spells a lot, then it can be great. Just don't blindly say, "I use Nourish a lot so I should take this talent." This talent is basically only useful if you find that you need to save mana - otherwise it is poor to useless. Examine whether you need the mana savings first, or whether those 5 points (or some of them) may be more valuable placed elsewhere.

Natural Perfection

NP is generally seen as a PvP talent, and I think it's a pretty fair call. It is one of the talents that I would put at the bottom of my list of priorities.

Some people will argue that crit is more valuable to us now that we use more direct spells, which is true; and that it goes on to benefit us through other talent synergy, for example Living Seed and Nature's Grace, but unfortunately it is still of limited value - we are still first and foremost HoT healers, meaning that the majority of our healing does not benefit from our crit rating. Obviously, the more direct healing you do, the more you'll get out of your crit rating, but it is still towards the bottom of the list of our stat priorities, and 3 points is quite expensive for 3% crit.

BUT - Blizzard wants crit to be more useful for us as resto druids. There may be changes on the horizon that may make this talent more useful for PvE raiding. Sometime. Something. We're not sure. All we know is that they've said they want crit to be better for us.

For now, I treat this one as more of a "I have a point left over, 1% crit is better than an empty talent slot" kind of talent. I don't think it's BAD.. but I think there are better places to put your leftover points.

Future patches may dictate whether this talent becomes more attractive for us for PvE raiding.

Revitalize

The Revitalize rollercoaster. It's great. It's awful. It's broken. It's sex on a stick. It's garbage.

It's hard to keep up!

Certainly it's a better talent now that A) it's not bugged, and B) it also procs off your WG ticks. Team it up with the Wild Growth glyph to hit up to 6 people, and it really increases those procs, particularly if you are a dedicated raid healer. Remember, too, that it will return power to your target even if they are at full health and the HoT tick is counted as overheal.

The problem though is that far too many people simply compare it directly with other mana replenishment abilities. They size it up next to Replenishment and decide that it's terrible. The strength of Replenishment will dwarf Revitalize, true, but I think it's a mistake to just put them side by side.

Things to remember:
- It isn't overwritten by Replenishment - you can benefit from both, you know!
- Revitalize isn't just for mana users; it helps your melee boost their DPS through extra rage, energy, and runic power
- Smaller raids and guilds may not have the luxury of a Ret pally (etc)

Now, if you're usually on the tank, and you tend not to throw many raid heals around, Revitalize will probably be a waste of points for you. On the other hand, if you are more of a raid healer, you (and your raid) will benefit much more. It's not a constant pulse of power return, because it still relies on you to cast the spells, and then for the procs to happen - but if you're a raid healer you will likely have Rejuv and Wildgrowth on most of the raid a lot of the time, and there will be a fairly good return from it. Add the WG glyph, toss on the melee, and they will love you.

If you really can't spare the points, then you'll get by without Revitalize. The raid probably doesn't need it to succeed. But I enjoy being a utility/support class, and bringing abilities and talents that can benefit others in the raid (outside of me just keeping them healed).

As usual, I don't have numbers for you, but Dreambound has a great writeup from last week showing returns for different classes over the course of a raid night. Have a look, and hopefully it will give you a more practical view of how well it works. Usual disclaimer: your mileage may vary according to content and raid makeup.

Improved Barkskin

I wanted to give this one a quick mention. It is clearly directed at PvP, but it's a good example of unconventional talents that you just might find very useful for particular encounters.

In this case, I know that some high-end raiding druids are starting to use this for some hard modes, because they are finding the extra mitigation to be invaluable on high-damage fights. The less you have to worry about damage on yourself, the more you can concentrate on keeping the raid up.

This is a perfect example of why you shouldn't be too quick to label a talent as bad for PvE. It definitely has limited value most of the time - but shines in a few fights. Worth keeping in mind!

Living Seed

Many people don't really understand the value of this talent, to be honest. I see so many people spitting on it and saying it's useless.

It really drives me nuts when I see people whip out a chart or report and say something like, "Living Seed only made up 3% of my total healing for the night! It's terrible!"

You can't just look at it like that.

Druids don't have any "buffer" abilities. We don't have shields or anything we can put onto a tank to help reduce damage taken (as much as I have campaigned for a barkskin we can cast on others). Aside from HoTs ticking, this is our only buffer ability, such as it is.

Now, it's still probably not going to make up much of your healing "pie". It's never going to look very good when you size it up next to the numbers from Rejuv, Regrowth, Nourish, etc. But then, neither is Swiftmend, for example - but the majority of druids know how great Swiftmend can be in a clutch situation. It doesn't matter that it doesn't look very big on paper - but if you are in a tank healing situation, particularly where the tank is taking big, fast hits, then it can save them. Most people (I say most because I am aware of some druids who don't take Swiftmend) wouldn't toss Swiftmend out of their spec because it only made up a small proportion of their healing on the night. I believe it is the same with Living Seed.

Living Seed: A talent that only worked a measly 3% of the time,
or a spell that may have saved my tank a number of times tonight?

I compare it to Glyph of Rejuv. Pretty crappy on a whole lot of fights, but then simply amazing when the job calls for a bunch of Rejuvs on a whole lot of people who have low health for extended periods. Living Seed is mediocre-to-useless if you're a raid healer; but if you're a tank healer on a fight where he's taking chunky, sustained damage.. that's when it shines, because it has the potential to save that tank over and again. It may not do much in the way of total healed, but how many times is it going to help save your tank?

You have to weigh up how much tank healing you're going to be doing, and whether or not those buffer heals are going to make a difference *at the time*. I remember back learning Sarth3D and it I would watch 5K Living Seeds land on the main tank when he was very low on health, and it was a huge relief to have 5K "free" heals backing me up (and that was in Naxx gear - the seeds are going to be even bigger as we progress through content).

It's not how much healing it does on paper at the end of the day, it's whether that healing is enough to smooth the damage and get your tank through whatever hardmode it is that you're learning (or whatever). Are you going to be assigned in a way that will have you chain-casting direct heals on someone who is taking lots of damage? Or will you be healing raid members who won't usually be hit twice in the space of 15 seconds?

Like everything else, you need to weigh up whether those 3 points are worth investing, based on how much direct healing you'll tend to be doing, and whether or not that could potentially make or break the fight/s for you.

In conclusion

Throw out the pie (well, mostly) and consider the encounters themselves. Deep in resto we do have a number of talents that are situational - and each person will get different mileage out of those talents according to the raid content, their guild, the number and type of healers in your team, assignments, the tanks' gear levels, etc. If you look at all of these variables and still don't see much benefit in that talent, for YOU, then toss it and grab something else, absolutely. Just remember that numbers aren't always everything and you can't simply look at a graph and say "this spell is useless".

Remember that many blogs and resource sites are going to be dictating the best choices for min/max hardcore raiders. You need to consider whether this actually fits you, your guild, your raid size, and the level of content you are tackling.

Don't write things off permanently as garbage - they may turn out to be extremely useful down the track. A talent may be less useful for your current content and style, and you may get better economy and results out of investing your points into something else. But sometimes the bad PvE talents can be very useful (for example, the druids using Imp Barkskin for hardmodes)

A small disclaimer to round things out

I'm not here to tell you how to play.

I'm not trying to sell you on talents that are generally considered bad, or uneconomical. I'm not telling you to go invent some crazy unconventional spec and try to force it to work for you.

I do hope people understand the intent!

MOST of the time, cookie cutter builds and most talent advice will be sound. They will be the best route to take (especially if you min/max). I'd just like to urge people to keep an open mind, consider your personal circumstances, and don't write the "bad" talents off permanently.. because they can be useful.

Perhaps not most of the time, and not for min/maxers.. but they're not all entirely useless. Not always, not for everyone.

Spring cleaning

2009-07-29T14:15:00.002+10:00

I tidied up my side bar a little, and added a chatbox. Feel free to use it to say hi, leave a message, or ask questions!

(This is about as close as I'll get to Twitter)

I condensed a few things that I had at the side, to make it tidier. Moved a few things around, too. I think it's in a more logical order now.

Then I realised I'm missing a couple of blog banners - how have I gone this long without a link to Restokin there? I feel so bad. I can't list ALL of the blogs I read, but I do like to list my particular favourites. I need to look at my blog list and see if I've missed anyone else that should be bannerized! My "blogroll" (such as it is) needs to be updated.

I'd like to shift to WordPress (and my own space) so that I can have more freedom with the layout - I really loved putting together my guild's website - but A) I'm kinda lazy and B) I wouldn't have a clue where to start. Blogger is really great.. but I do like having full control of how things look :P Wordpress also has shiny gadgets like Armory info and latest achievements.

Not only that, but I'd love the ability to have "pages", so I don't have to shove a lot of info into a side bar. I could have tabs! Wonderful tabs. About, contact, guides, all that stuff. I'm sure a lot of bloggers would understand when I say that as your blog gets older and bigger, it starts to get a little unwieldy if you don't have a place to put your static information, separate to your day-to-day musings. Guides, etc, would be what I would really want to put into a static page, so they don't become "lost" in the archives, or end up becoming a long, long list in your side bar.

I'd really like tabs and pages. And to be able to have better control over the layout. And maybe those cool "featured article" type banners.

Maybe a project for sometime a little later.

Half gnome, half bird, all wrong

2009-07-27T20:50:00.002+10:00

This is not a trick picture.

In Icecrown, Frazzle Geargrinder will give you a daily quest to use her Jump Bot to jump all the way to the highest point of a nearby mountain, and then plant a flag (Alliance or Horde flavoured, depending on your persuasion).

Along with having a whole lot of bouncy fun, I also got a cute surprise when I tried to shift to birdy form to go back down the mountain. Now, as we know from most other vehicles, shifting doesn't usually work. It just spits back an error message that you "can't do that right now" or similar. I always do it anyway.. mostly out of habit.

But this time, I found that it did work.

Well, almost.

I couldn't fly (much to my extreme disappointment), but oddly my shadow took on aspects of my forms when shifting. Cat form gave me a tail (*shudder*), bear form large paws, etc.

Cute? Disturbing? I can't quite make up my mind. The shadow makes me think of the winged monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, or something. Gives me the willies!

Healbot v Grid (final) - better late than never!

2009-07-22T11:26:00.001+10:00

Disclaimer: this writeup comes from experimenting with Grid and Healbot earlier this year (up to about March). If there have been improvements since then, they will not have been included in this post. If you know of a particular improvement that has since implemented, please let me know and I will edit in a comment to reflect the change. For example, if I say that Grid doesn't let you put your tanks together, and you know that there has been a change or a new module to change this, let me know and I'll include it.

However, with the many features constantly being added and improved upon, it would be too much work for me to keep updating the post as each addon evolves. Much like my "How to get 50 mounts before WotLK" it will be fairly static; it won't be a dynamic, evolving "guide", but a comparison of the addons in their current forms.

(This is basically to prevent comments in 3 months' time telling me I'm wrong because Grid CAN do XYZ and Healbot CAN do XYZ... which I bet will still happen!)

Also, once again - these are my personal opinions of the various features and drawbacks of each addon. I have endeavoured to be as fair and objective as possible. Please do not take any negative criticisms against your preferred addon as an insult to you and your choice! Any nasty comments will be deleted. Feel free to disagree - but be constructive, please.

Also, I'm going to have to say it before I hit post: Yes, I do know about VuhDo and I may give it a try sometime - I just haven't had time to have a look. :P

So - in the category of:

"Out of the box" functionality
WINNER: Healbot

Out of the box functionality - meaning how quickly after installing the mod you can jump into healing with it - is a huge factor for many people when deciding between different addons. Many people are happy to spend hours tweaking their UI to be perfect, but others prefer to hit the ground running with addons that are ready to go as soon as they are installed. You can have the most super awesome mod in the universe, but if the default looks terrible and it's difficult to set up, then many people will steer clear.

It's very cut and dried between the two addons in this case: for a healer, Grid has limited functionality out of the box - at the very least you will need to change the size of the boxes to be able to fit names properly and see health information. Fine for DPS/cleansing classes, but not good for healers. In fact, I think the addon would benefit greatly if the author was to add a couple of pre-packaged layout frameworks, one for DPS (similar to the current default) and one for healers, with the bar-like format that many healers prefer. This would make it much easier for healers to use "out of the box", and prevent a lot of people from being scared off by Grid's overwhelming customisation options.

Healers need to tweak Grid a fair bit in order to have an easy-to-read frame display.

On the other hand, Healbot comes out of the box looking pretty darn shiny; and while there are a bunch of things that I personally would want to adjust to suit my own personal style (can't stand the way it fades bars - I only like faded bars for people who are out of range), I could easily use Healbot in its default state and do a respectable job. I wouldn't be able to do the same with Grid in its default state.

Healbot's appearance when you first unpack it, showing tooltip

Customisation
WINNER: Grid

Grid wins in this category, but not by as great a margin as most diehard Grid users might think.

Grid does have options that Healbot doesn't, for example corner dot indicators, extra icons, extra texts, and of course the flexibility to change the placement, size and colours of each. Healbot really has everything you need to build a good frame display, it's just that Grid goes further and gives you many more options so that you can truly customise the display to suit your own personal taste.

However, for many of these options, you will need to install additional Grid modules. While this makes for a far more customisable set of frames, the downside to this, obviously, is the need to find and install the modules you need, and keep them updated. As Healbot's options are all built-in, you only ever have to keep one addon up to date to have them working.

Some of the additional Grid modules available at Curse.com

The big benefit here is that if you have some kind of catastrophic UI failure (we've all been there), you're more likely to be able to get back on the horse as a Healbot user, because you won't have to spend time doing the simple things like changing the size of the bars to make the raid's names visible. From running with Healbot users and listening to them, there seem to be a few random minor problems with the addon, whereas Grid seems to be more stable on a daily basis; but if you lost everything, it's going to be much easier to recover Healbot than to recover Grid, particularly if you rely on a lot of the additional modules.

Basically, Grid gives you tonnes of display flexibility in exchange for a bit of hassle setting it up and keeping it running. Healbot gives you all of the basic things you need to see - health, buffs & debuffs, heals, HoTs, and so on - and you can customise these to a point - but you don't get all of the extra bells and whistles that Grid gives you.

But Healbot has definitely come a long way and is surprisingly customisable. I think a lot of die-hard Grid fans would be shocked at what you can do with Healbot - it's definitely not the clunky, boxy, rigid set of frames that I expected.

Navigation and ease of use
WINNER: Healbot

Ease of use ties in with the previous category, logically. Grid's extensive customisation options mean you also have to navigate.... extensive menus. Depending on what you prefer, of course, I found Healbot's tabbed windows to be much easier to navigate than Grid's drop-down style. But then, I think this is due in part to the fact that some of Grid's options (to me) seem to be put into the wrong categories, and I often wish I could get in there and rearrange things a little.

Once you've been using Grid for a while, you'll know where to find each option in the menus; but even as a seasoned user, I still often find myself getting a little lost in the long list of options in each section. With so many options to customise, it's only natural that there are lots of boxes to check and fields to fill in, but I do think that Grid's menus may need a bit of a tidy up so they are less overwhelming. I'd love to see give tabbed menus a try. Whether or not they would be just as overwhelming if they tried to cover the same options, I'm not sure; but surely a whole tab devoted to say, HoTs, would be a nice logical way to customise your frames.

Aesthetics
WINNER: Grid

I feel that Grid wins this category because it just gives you so many more options to customise the look of your frames, meaning that you can have a really slick looking setup according to your tastes.

BUT Healbot has come a long way, and does have quite a few customisation options. It has a couple of options that Grid doesn't: the ability to display your frames in a single column (old-school style on the left or right of your screen), and the ability to show health bars as green progressing through to red according to health deficit, as a slow colour change. Grid allows you to set thresholds for the health bar to change colour and warn you (eg 85% or below = yellow, 50% or below = red) but many Healbot users enjoy that gradual colour change.

Overall though, Grid just has more bells and whistles, more options to change fonts, colours, icons, indicators, and other layout elements, making it more flexible and giving it the potential to be as attractive as you want to make it.

Information display
WINNER: Grid

Both mods display their information nicely, but I think Grid edges ahead, both because of it's level of customisation, and because it has the ability to present more information in the same space.

Grid can show various triggers as:

- frame colour
- border colour
- corner indicator (and with extra modules, extra indicators on the sides and more in the corners)
- icons (and with extra modules, extra corner icons and side icons)
- texts (up to 3 texts, I believe)

It also has a better custom debuff system but I will go into that later.

Healbot does frame and border colour, two texts, and icons, but doesn't have any corner indicators or as many options for changing colours etc. As far as I'm aware it has no options for adding extra texts and icons.

I'd like to stress that both mods will show you everything you want to see; they both display all of the important information that you need. Grid just gives you more options to display it in a way that you want, meaning that if you react faster to colours, you can set it up so that colours are one of your main triggers. If you work better with icons, Grid has the standard center icons but also corner and side icons. Grid makes it very easy for you to set up your frames in the way that YOU will interpret the information fastest - which might be completely the opposite of how someone else likes to see information - but you get the flexibility to choose.

HoTs
WINNER: Grid

In the past, the general opinion that I heard about Healbot was "fantastic healing addon.. Although probably not so great for druids." During my time experimenting with Healbot, I found this to be true, for one main reason - the most important thing that druids should look for in a UI, in my opinion - HoT tracking.

I have to say that if I had to list what was most important for me to see in a frame mod, the health bar/deficit would be first (obviously), and HoTs would be second.

Grid's HoT Trackers (GridStatusHoTs and GridStatusLifebloom) do a brilliant job. They allow you to put numerical, coloured counters in the center, sides or corners of the health bar, so that you can track each HoT. The timers can be a set colour, or can be assigned to change colour as the timer runs low; in the case of Lifebloom, you can also assign colours to stack numbers, so a single stack might be a red timer, and 3 stacks a green counter.

All of this information is displayed clearly, but does not obscure the rest of the information on the frame. This is where Healbot falls down in its HoT tracking; in my experience I found that trying to display the HoT icons on the bar meant that the name and health information was obscured. Making the icons smaller (to be able to see the bar) results in not being able to identify the spells very well (as the icons get smaller) and trouble reading the timers, as the texts of the counters are ultimately linked to the size of the icon. Similarly, if you increase the size of the font, it can also obscure the icon itself, making it hard to see if you're looking at Regrowth or Rejuv, for example.

I found Healbot's HoT timers made it hard to see information beneath them;
if made smaller, then the icons and texts become hard to see.
This means your frames overall have to be quite large to accommodate
the HoT counters and show the player's frame clearly.

Healbot's HoT icons look great. But in practice, they make the health information difficult to see (on a moderate sized UI), and scaling them down makes the HoT hard to see. You have to try to find the happy medium between icons that are large enough to see which spell they are (in turn allowing for decent sized timers), and still being able to see the person's frame under those icons. With Regrowth, Rejuv, Lifebloom and Wild Growth all up on someone's frame at once, I found it difficult to see the health bar, and this would make me very nervous in a raid. Grid's timer information never obscures health information, so you can still make judgments on when to throw an extra emergency heal.

Comparing Healbot and Grid HoT displays when
both mods are set up to have similar sized frames.

As you can see, Grid's HoT timers do not obscure the rest of the information in the frame. I found Healbot's timers to either be so big they obscure the frame, or too small to read the text. The alternative then is to increase the size of the frame to allow for good sized icons without obscuring the other information - but this ends up making your raid frame quite large. I like my frames to be neat and compact.

Also, Healbot lays down the HoT icons in the order cast, not in a specific placement, which means that you can't even get used to Regrowth being say, the one on the left each time - you still need to rely on being able to see the icon properly, as the icons will be in random order on each person's bar. I find that Grid's layout, with set positions for HoTs (that you choose according to your own prefences) makes it easier to interpret timers because you can rely on each spell always appearing in a set position. You can use icons if you want, or simply use colored dots or texts, plus the option to have these colors change over time. You can use the standard green/yellow/red, or choose any colour you like; you can also choose the time thresholds for these color changes to occur, to allow for your own style. Healbot does not have this depth of customization.

If I had to pick one major fault (for druids) with Healbot, HoT tracking would be it. I can honestly say that I could manage swapping from Grid to Healbot if the HoT tracking was improved. It's definitely on the right track, but needs some changes so that HoT information is better displayed. Because we have 4 different HoTs at our disposal, often on many people at once, we need to be able to view and interpret tracking and timer information extremely quickly, to be able to make snap decisions. If the icon is obscured, the display order is random, and the text is difficult to see, then this reaction time suffers. This is a big problem. You don't want your HoT displays to slow down your reaction time.

Any HoT tracking is better than no HoT tracking; but I strongly feel that Grid's tracking options give you a much clearer view of your spells at any given time, they don't detract from the rest of the information, which allows you to process the information faster. A druid with no HoT timers can perform well; but a druid with great HoT displays can really maximise his/her output and fine-tune their timing down to miliseconds.

Basically - if you're serious about excelling as a healer and you're doing difficult content, then you need a really good HoT timer to streamline your performance and improve your reaction time. Healbot is almost there - but Grid just does it better.

Buffs
WINNER: Healbot

This is another category where both mods can show you what you want to see, but in this case, Healbot has some cool features that Grid doesn't.

Both will show you buffs present and buffs missing, depending on what you prefer to see. For example, I prefer to see a pink dot on every frame, denoting Mark of the Wild, and if someone is missing a dot, they need the buff. It's just what I'm used to seeing. Other people prefer to only have a dot showing on someone who is missing the buff, which you could argue is more logical, since it is easier to see one person out of 25 who has a bright pink dot, compared to one person with no dot, out of a sea of 25 people. It's just personal preference.

But Healbot goes further and has alerts for when a buff is about to run out - including sounds. I thought that was a really cool little feature. Most of the time I buff by default, and don't need a reminder, but perhaps there are shorter duration buffs like Thorns that you forget to rebuff. Or it's a special fight and you need to remember to give people Amp Magic or Shadow Protection.

Of course, Grid does have a little more customisation in that you can assign buffs to corner icons and whatnot, but I don't think this is particularly noteworthy in this case. If your frame can show you a buff (or a missing buff) it probably doesn't matter too much how it does it.

Debuffs
WINNER: Tie

Standard debuffs (curses, poisons, magic etc) are basically identical in both mods, aside from (once again) a little more flexibility in display options with Grid. Both will show you debuffs as a centre icon, border, or frame colour. Grid goes a little further and lets you have corner/edge indicators and corner icons (with extra modules). But both mods will show standard debuffs fine.

Poisons & curses - set to display as frame colours (my preference!).
Note: both mods can display these as icons, which many people prefer.

Grid edges forward a little for me personally with its custom debuffs. Healbot still allows you to display custom debuffs (for example, by changing the frame colour or adding a border), but if you want to use frame colour as your indicator, you can only use one colour for ALL custom debuffs. Most people would probably say, "so what?" but this is something that I am particular about, so it stood out for me :)

I like to be able to colour particular custom debuffs particular things (and sometimes with a particular priority). This is especially important in fights where there may be multiple custom debuffs that I would like to track. For example on XT002, I might colour Gravity Bomb bright pink, and Light Bomb bright green. I need to know who has each, but I also need to be able to discern between the two very quickly. Of course, many people just use icons, but I ditched that method long ago when I found that some curse icons looked like poisons (and vice versa). I find it much easier to react to colours than pictures.

So really it is an extremely trivial and TINY edge that Grid has over Healbot - and it will ONLY matter to you if you like to use frame colour AND have separate colours for each debuff.

Apart from that it is basically a tie.

Mouseover macro/Clique compatibility
WINNER: Healbot

Both mods are compatible with click-casting and mouseover macros.

In the case of Grid, you will need to download and setup another addon, Clique, for this functionality. I have seen many Healbot users criticise this fact in the past. In reality though, many Grid users don't use click-casting, so this doesn't matter to them at all.

If you are a click-caster, then Healbot comes ready to go - with no extra modules or setup required; you simply have to assign your spells accordingly. Many people see this as a big plus.

Summary

Healbot was once considered by many to be an "ezmode" healing addon that chose ranks of spells for you, which earned it a bad name as a mod that created lazy healers. Things have changed. It is now a powerful, feature-packed frames mod that shows you all of the things that Grid can show you. It is far easier to use "out of the box", has easy to follow menus, and is easier to keep up to date. Its main failing for druids is the clunky HoT display; but I am confident this will be improved over time.

Grid simply offers many more options for customising your frames, according to how you want your information to be displayed. It has far superior options for HoT tracking, which is essential for druid healers to excel in their healing. It requires some setting up before use, and quite a lot of tweaking to suit personal taste; adding more modules will also mean more and more extensive dropdown menus, but this is the tradeoff for seemingly limitless options for customising the look and layout of your frames.

I think one of the most common arguments against Grid is that "you need to install so many extra mods to go with it!". In reality, I think I have 3 extra modules - which is hardly a big deal at all. You could potentially have hundreds of extra modules installed - which would be a bit of a nightmare to keep updated manually - but what non-Grid users need to keep in mind is that while it may seem like a pain to have to use addons for an addon, this is where Grid gets its massive level of customisation.

And on the flip side, I don't want a whole lot of non-druid addons included by default. Why would I need totem timers, or rune tracking? That would just be bloat, and extra options in my menus that I don't need to see. With Grid you can "build your own mod" by picking and choosing your addons accordingly.

Many non-Grid users see this as a negative. Grid users understand that it means that the mod only includes options that we choose to use.

Really, I could write about these mods all day - I've barely scratched the surface of both. But I do hope I've given people a basic idea of some of the main features of each. The best way though is to give them a try and see what suits you. I believe more druids prefer Grid for their frames, but many use Healbot and swear by it.

If you want a mod that requires only minimal setup and shows you all of the information you need, with click-casting built in, Healbot is great.

If you prefer to tweak and customise your UI to exactly how you want it, including HoT timers, extra texts and icons, and custom debuff options, then Grid excels.

There is no right or wrong mod to use - it's all about whatever helps you best.

Happy healing!

When greens mean progression

2009-07-20T20:19:00.002+10:00

Kiiva is 80.

When I hit 80, I naturally started to put together a resto set (having levelled as feral and without any healing gear put away), so that I would be able to get back into healing.

I was a bit lost, to be honest. When Keeva hit 80, she was still wearing Tier 6 and Sunwell gear, which was quite good for Naxx 25. I never had to "put together" a set. Compare and contrast with Kiiva, who levelled entirely as feral and around about the 79 mark I realised I should prrrrobably consider taking the resto quest rewards if I was going to want to at least do 5 mans at 80..

So, I set about quickly looking at the reputations I had, what I had stashed in the bank, etc. At first I had to make do with half greens, half feral gear! Finding a green resto item was exciting. Greens at that point really were progression items for me.

With my "rule" that all of Kiiva's gear has to be paid for properly out of her own earnings (no outside loans, donations, or funds from other characters), I had to scrape together the cash to buy rep items and BOE epics.

My current gear is half enchanted, partly gemmed.. yuck. But it's because I am very literally scraping money together as I go. An epic here or there and I'm back to no cash - then back out to quest and farm and play the AH to get the next piece. Ha, I just remembered I still don't have glyphs.. :P

It's fun - it feels like I'm really working on my character, rather than having epics land in my lap.

My current gear:

Helm of the Majestic Stag - Kirin Tor (Honored)
Artruis's Focus Stone - quest (Sholazar)
Mantle of the Underhalls - quest (Icecrown)
Wispcloak - Auction house ~500g
Tunic of the Unduly Victorious - quest (Icecrown)
Putrescent Bands - purchased from gbank 200g
Moonshroud Gloves - Auction house ~500g
Bridenbrad's Sash - quest (Icecrown)
Earthgiving Legguards - Auction house ~320g
Earthgiving Boots - Auction house ~350g
Runed Mana Band - made by a friend (with my mats)
Lady Nightswood's Engagement Ring - quest (Icecrown)
Will of the Red Dragonflight - quest (Dragonblight)
Totemic Purification Rod - Kalu'ak (Revered)
Iron-bound Tome - made with Inscription
Harold's Rejuvenating Broach - quest (Nagrand)

To be honest I have been very busy with my two jobs, plus my current RL project of building a new chicken coop, so I haven't even had time to look at available gear and see what I should aim for to round out my "pre-raid" set.

I'm sitting at around 1450 healing in tree - not bad for not having stepped into heroics or raids yet. I'm quite happy with this starter set of gear that I have mashed together through quests and AH shopping sprees. Hopefully I'll get some time shortly to get a few more pieces, enchant and gem everything, buy some glyphs (heh), consider the various reps that I need to raise and for what benefit, plan out which badge items to get and in which order, and finally - do instances!

I can't wait to get back into healing :D

Blizzard's Q&A and the future of trees

2009-07-16T17:38:00.005+10:00

A look at the druid corner of the blogosphere today shows just how passionate we all are about our forms - whether you love them, or you want them changed.

I won't copy/paste the entire Q&A session, as others have already done so and given good summaries of their thoughts for each item. If you would like to read the entire Q&A, it can be found here.

Instead I wanted to touch on only one point - regarding Tree of Life itself. First - a disclaimer: GC is speaking very vaguely on "improvements" that might be made "sometime" to the druid class. This is not a definite, it is probably something that was merely tossed around standing at the water cooler. Here's the question, and GC's answer:

Q: Can you describe for us what the intended identity and versatilities of the Tree of Life druids are supposed to be?

A: Druids overall have a strong niche. We are at a little bit of a crossroads with the Tree of Life however. We are currently wondering if druids sacrifice too much just to be as good as a healer as everyone else. What I mean is that if druids were good healers in caster form but great healers in Tree form, then there might be a decision there. However, we pretty much assume that healing druids are in Tree form nearly all of the time and balance around that. We don’t think it would be fair for them to be the best healers just for taking that talent.

In addition to having to give up utility in order to heal as a Tree of Life, we have become less enamored with druids locking themselves into one form. In fact, you really never see the basic tauren or night elf druid form (you know, the one that actually shows off the awesome armor art) because all druids are in cat, bear, tree, or moonkin form nearly 100% of the time. I’m not saying we would just cut Tree of Life from the game. It’s been around awhile and for better or worse, it’s part of World of Warcraft now. However, we could see taking the druid in a direction where shifting was much more common and easy to do. Maybe you only go into tree form for certain spells but leave for other spells -- this didn’t work previously because of the high cost of shifting, but in the absence of power shifting, we’d love to get rid of the costs completely. Another way to go would be to make Tree of Life form a cooldown, more like Metamorphosis. You shift into tree when you need a healing boost, but you don’t stay in it all the time. Now, I am totally waving my arms here. This is not the kind of change you are going to see in the next patch. But it is something we’re thinking about long term, and the kind of thinking we’d love to have more feedback on from the community.

Note to other healers: this is why you are unlikely to see any kind of “Holy form” ever. Giving up healing to do damage works okay. Giving up everything to heal is lame.

I almost don't know where to start, because I have so many point swimming around in my head that I want to get down on paper - not uncommon for me!

I think the blatantly obvious thing to state is that forms are our "thing". We give up certain parts of our abilities in order to improve other aspects of our abilities. We transform into bears, giving up our ability to heal ourselves or cast offensive spells, but becoming solid tanks. We transform into cats, also giving up the ability to heal, in order to be nasty melee dps. We transform into trees, giving up our ability to do damage, in order to excel at healing.

If the cats, bears, and moonkins are content to do their thing and not think it's unfair that they can't heal AND DPS at the same time, why is it such an issue for trees?

Here's Lissanna's take, which I think mirrors my own thoughts:

We lock ourselves into forms and don’t come out because that’s what druid playstyle IS at this point. It’s possible that tree form could work differently than our other forms, but doing that would probably be lame, because the druid class expects to spend all of our time in a form. In PvE, there can be more shifting around to use Utility spells (hurricane & roots, etc) that aren’t useable in tree or feral forms. The problem of sacrificing everything else to be able to fill our roles well is just that… we have to sacrifice everything else, and in the end, that’s fine. Making tree form a shapeshift on a cooldown is actually a lame idea, since none of our other forms would have that, and it would go against what it is to be a druid.

Bears choose bear-centric talents and gear and roles because they want to tank.
Cats choose kitty specs, gear, and they rip things apart because they want to DPS.
Moonkins choose to zap and pow with spells.
I spec ToL because I like to heal. I don't care about DPSing.

There may be times as a bear, cat or moonkin that you need to pop out and heal, rez, innervate, CC, depoison, etc. But it's rare enough that we don't see people jumping up and down and demanding that bears should be able to cast Regrowth and cats should be able to shred their target to pieces while tossing out Rejuvs on the party.

The problem with Trees

Since its inception, the Tree of Life form has undergone a lot of changes, mostly to remove or improve restrictions placed on us that were seen as disadvantages. It was rough at the start - but we've had a lot of minor improvements to relieve some of the problems. Compared to Day 1, trees can now:

- move at normal speed instead of 20% slower than other classes
- cast all restoration spells, not just HoTs, NS and Swiftmend
- cast Remove Curse and Remove/Abolish Poison
- cast Nature's Grasp
- cast Mark/Gift of the Wild and Thorns

The remaining restrictions or complaints against ToL:

- ugly appearance (to be changed sometime in the future)
- form hides the character/equipment (not unique to this form)
- can't CC
- can't cast offensive spells

Since their release, I don't think anyone can argue that we haven't had some good improvements. We're no longer locked into certain heals and not others. We have access to our utility spells to cleanse. We can run around with everyone instead of having to shift out and run at normal speed.

But STILL some druids complain that we should be able to heal and DPS in Tree form.

Trees are not a sometimes food

I will concede that trees are.. a little ugly. But a spruce-up (hehe, spruce.. get it :D) is on the horizon - and I'm confident it will be impressive.

Sure, we can't see our pretty elf or tauren characters. But that is true of every druid form. Are they also hoping to make cats, bears and laz0r budgies shift in and out frequently? Surely not..

I don't want my ToL to be turned into a 3 minute healing trinket that I put into a rotation. Or worse - a proc that is out of my control. I don't want it turned into a trinket in exchange for the ability to moonfire and cyclone. I can already do those things - I just have to temporarily give up my boosted healing. And I'm fine with that.

Geez, it's not like shifting out makes us AWFUL healers. If a cat shifts out, his healing is going to be woeful (but better than nothing). But as a resto druid, I can pop out and do respectable DPS and continue to do respectable (if not excellent) healing - I've just lost those boosts to my spells. They're not crippled, just reduced. Shifting does not suddenly make me a terrible healer.

I honestly do not see it as a huge sacrifice to have to lose some healing in order to DPS or CC.

However, I do understand that some resto druids don't like being a tree all the time, and would like to spend some time in caster. Certainly I would like to see myself every now and then. Others like the idea of a super-resto form that you bust out when things are really dire - along comes the awesome tree to save the day. I can definitely understand the appeal of that one! Pew pew, heal laz0rz.

For me, I guess what it boils down to is that we've had Tree for years now - and suddenly they want to take it back and make it something you can only use occasionally, as a super perk. I don't want to give up the form I have loved for several years because some people feel that we should be able to DPS and heal.

Counter argument: Tree form benefits aren't much

So just when I thought I had a handle on exactly how I felt about the issue, Siobhann from Silver Hand comes along and complicates things for me by bringing up a really good point, grr. so I'm cranky at you, Siobhann! *angrytree*

The difference between moonkin/ToL and other forms is that all we do when we shift into them is lock out half our casting abilities. Feral forms are an entirely different playstyle with energy or rage and you GAIN a completely different set of abilities by shifting.

Why should I be forced into a form that only has access to healing spells to heal the same as other classes who have all their base abilities?

I shift into cat form, I get an entirely new ability bar and energy rather than mana. Shift into bear, I get a different set of abilities and now I'm a warrior playing with a rage bar. I shift into tree from caster, all I do is lose abilities. I gain nothing but the spirit->spellpower conversion and aura that I should have access to all the time with 41+ points in a healing tree.

Gotta say it, this is a great point. What do we actually gain in tree form? Buffs, and that's about it. Immunity to poly (which has limited use for me, as a PvEr). Modifications to what we already have - nothing new or special. And to add insult to injury, I not only don't get anything new or different, I lose abilities also.

I have to say that I never really thought of it that way. I consider/ed our tree form buffs/auras/improvements to be defining, and more than adequate. But maybe tree form is - as other people have said - just a bunch of modifiers wrapped in a broccoli graphic? (I believe I'm paraphrasing Nadine from Magtheridon - sorry, I closed the window)

Should they perhaps be considering giving us different abilities or a different power system as a tree? Some kind of energy-type power like "life force" or something? And some funky new spells (and take months to balance them..) Not necessarily more spells to have to choose between, but something different. A slightly different style of play if you choose to become a tree.

Rather than focusing on the fact that we give up our offense and defense - should we address the fact that we don't really gain anything great when we shift into tree?

Suddenly I'm not so sure of myself.

A common sentiment on the forums at the moment is "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". The majority appear to be vehemently opposed to turning ToL into a trinket (as am I).

But I have to admit that now I am questioning what really is so great about this form that I love.

I still don't care about being able to DPS in tree form. I doubt I'll ever care. But now that I sit and think about it - even though we are definitely formidable healers in our current state - ToL basically just boosts our existing spells and spellpower and doesn't give us anything new or change our play much (if at all). On top of that, it removes our offensive and CC spells (although we can still cast them, but then we lose healing performance).

Even though I honestly don't care to DPS, now I find that I can't help feeling as though we've been a little short changed.

I'm happy the way we are at the moment, though. I will be very unhappy if ToL becomes a proc or is put on a cooldown.

As always - time will tell.

Epic flyer: done!

2009-07-13T22:16:00.002+10:00

Next goal: 1000g for dual specs.

Then after that.. I'll start stockpiling, I suppose!

5000g

2009-07-11T14:20:00.002+10:00

I'm off to start my epic quest!

I'm very pleased with myself - starting from scratch with no gold and no outside help, and now I have my epic flying skill. Much faster than when I got my first couple of epic mounts, too. I think this is the fourth one? I'm not sure - I've lost count. At any rate, I've definitely put a whole lot of gold into my characters.

Now I just need another 1000g (and half a level) and I'll be flying in Northrend :)

PS - Wrathgate is awesome and it will never get old. And if you have only done the Undercity quest as Horde or Alliance, you're missing out. The two quests are quite different and it's pretty cool to see what "the other side" was apparently doing while you were running through the city following the route that your city leader has chosen - Thrall goes through the ruins/elevator and goes after Varimathras in the royal chamber, Wrynn goes through the sewers and hits up Putress (down where that creepy Apothecary Keever hangs out).

It's awesome how it ties the two sides together into one event at the end.. you really should see it from both factions' point of view.

3.2: Northrend flying at 68, no waiting; more info on raid extensions

2009-07-08T17:22:00.004+10:00

In 3.2, Cold Weather Flying is being changed to an heirloom item.

Taken from Wowraid:

Tome of Cold Weather Flight is actually a new heirloom item planned to go into patch 3.2. At level 80 players can buy this heirloom item from the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran for 1,000 gold and send it to an alt of the same realm, faction and account. The tome can be used to learn Cold Weather Flying at level 68, consuming the tome in the process.

Translation:

You can buy Cold Weather Flying (note: no change in the price), and send it off to an alt; the item is consumed when the alt learns it. "Big deal!" was my first thought - it's the same price, and single use (at first I thought it meant you could mail it to *every* alt, thus saving you the cost for each subsequent character). If it gets used up, you're not saving any money, so who cares?

But then I realised what it actually means - the cost is the same, but you no longer have to wait until you are almost through levelling in Northrend to be able to fly.

You'll be able to fly in Northrend from level 68 - essentially immediately - by having your main character mail you the skill while you're still in Outland. No levelling to 77. No trudging across Northrend on foot/horse/cat/monkey. You'll be able to fly as soon as you get here!

It really goes without saying that this will make a massive, MASSIVE difference to levelling. Especially to Alliance characters starting off in Daggercap Bay, ugh.

More info on raid extensions

* In order to allow for parties and raids to progress through instances at their own pace, players can now extend a dungeon or raid ID on an individual basis.
* Existing or recently expired IDs can be extended via the Social tab under Raid by clicking on Raid Info.
* The ID of any instance to which a player is saved can be extended. Doing so will extend the lockout period by the same amount of time as the original lockout (i.e. extending an Ulduar raid ID will add 7 days, a Heroic: Halls of Lightning dungeon ID will add 24 hours, and a Zul’Gurub raid ID will add 3 days to the lockout time).
* An ID can be extended more than once.
* An extension can be reversed on an individual basis provided the player does not do anything in the instance during the extended lockout period that would save that player to the instance.

So my interpretation of this, correct me if I'm wrong:

- extensions are individual; each person chooses to extend their ID or ditch it for a fresh week/day/3 days/whatever
- if you decide you don't want it extended anymore, you can reverse it, BUT
- if you've killed another boss since extending it, you have to wait for the rest of the extension period to expire before you can start fresh.

So if you do half of Ulduar, extend your ID, and then kill one more boss on a Thursday, you can't just opt to reset the instance and get a few days of farming in before the next raid reset on Tuesday.

Also, the second last point is pretty interesting - it would seem that you can extend your raid period indefinitely, for as long as you need. That should really help the raiders who can only raid a few hours per week, but are really keen on conquering the fights; but also the hardcore raiders whose team might be completely decked out (and so don't need resets to farm gear), but want to push on for their kills.

Exciting changes!

Rawr!

2009-07-08T17:17:00.002+10:00

I set my alarm for 6:30am on Sunday and sat bleary-eyed in my pyjamas, as Stompalina cheerily wished me good morning. I asked whose crazy idea this was, anyway. She laughed. I grumbled.

But I had a blast being on the show with them. It was a lot of fun, and I think I did okay, considering the fact that it was stupidly early on a Sunday. I only had a couple of mishaps.. one where I zoned out for a sec and misunderstood what the guys meant when they were talking about not being able to get into instances.. heh. Ohhhhh you mean actually getting INTO instances. Right, right. I thought that was a PTR thing, I never even knew that could happen on live servers.. I'm so clueless. Playing on a small, backwater Oceanic server means we never have maxed instances, so I have just never come across that problem.

Still, I was a little embarrassed that my eyes had glazed over and I missed a few key words like "error message" and whatnot. Those couple seconds of silence from Stomp that said to me "you have no idea what I just asked, do you?"

/blush.

Had a great laugh about it later, though. Not sure if it got edited out - haven't had a chance to listen yet. :P

Other than that, I think at one stage I was waffling about tradeskills and forgot my point (luckily one of the guys cut me off with his opinion.. saved!!).. I knew what I was talking about when I started, I swear.

The other slightly embarrassing moment was when Stomp paused mid-sentence and asked, "Do you have birds?" I have nine pet budgerigars who tend to be extremely noisy - often to the point where I can't hear people on vent. My grand plan to keep them quiet for the podcast was to leave their blankets on and sit in the dark. It almost worked.

I had a great time on the show, and the time absolutely flew past. I was so disappointed when it was over, I wanted to stay and chat more! Thank you to everyone who stopped by the chatroom, especially old friends... and thank you to Stomp and Haf for having me (and Jeppy for being the chat moderator). I had heaps of fun - would love to do it again sometime :)

If you missed out - head over to The Rawrcast Show's site and grab it (in various formats).

I hate Borean Tundra

2009-07-07T17:46:00.003+10:00

I really hate Borean Tundra.

Lots of people have their favourite zones, and their most hated zones. I seem to find that most people I talk to hate the zones I love, and vice versa. For example, I ADORE Stranglethorn Vale, and get excited to "finally" get there when I'm levelling. Many people can't stand the zone.

I love Zangarmash. I love Blade's Edge Mountains. In my experience, STV, Zangarmarsh and BEM are some of the most hated zones.

Oh, and Dragonblight. Most people hate it - I really enjoy it. To each their own, I suppose.

But I hate Borean Tundra.

I don't really know why; I suppose it's an irrational hatred. There are some good quests. Maybe it's the landscape? The weird groundcover? I'm not sure. All I know is that I really hate the place.

The only saving grace for this horrible zone is this:

/click
/click
/click
/click

.... *explodes from the cute*

Level 75 now, enjoying fishing and cooking dailies so much! I'm weird. Bank alt has 3500g.. well on my way to epic flying/cold weather flying. Levelling slowed a little in the last few days, had a minor accident at work and haven't played as much over the weekend. I'm hoping to get to 80 this weekend though.

Most people would want 80 so they could start doing instances, get some shiny gear.

I want to get to 80 so I can do dailies. DAILIES YAY!

Maybe I hit my head in the accident? :P

Faction change service Q&A with Nethaera

2009-07-02T13:05:00.002+10:00

Just a quickie - Neth has answered a few of the faction change service questions (although I'm still very interested to hear more info on how they will deal with reps and mounts).

Updated* 7/1- Due to the many questions that have come up with the announcement of this new service, we wanted to take the time to answer the ones we can at this point in time.

Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A.. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.

Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to?
A.. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human paladin, you’d only be able to change to a blood elf paladin.

Q.How much will it cost?
A.. We do not have further information on this at this point in time.

Q.Will I be able to switch back to my original faction but a different race?
A.. No. You will only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.

Q.. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A.. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.

Q.How often can you change your faction?
A..We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.

Q. How will this affect the balance of Horde and Alliance on the realms?
A.. We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share.

So you won't be able to change races within your faction, nor will you abe able to change to the opposite faction, wait out the cooldown, and then change back in order to say, go from Orc to Undead.

I think they want to prevent people from deciding that "the best rogue is Race X" or "Race Y has the best warrior racials" and everyone just piling into these particular combos.

Even so, I think we'll see race to race swaps in the future. I'm surprised faction to faction came first, actually. And then eventually, I think we'll see class to class. Yeah, it might seem silly.... but hey, they said PvE to PvP would never happen, and it did. Eventually.

Oh oh oh, and I forgot another question that I thought of: what if you're on a PvP server... the rules state that you can't create characters of both factions on one server on the same account. Are they finally going to break that rule and allow for players to have both factions on a PvP server?

Doesn't affect me at all, I play PvE and I've had multiple accounts for a long time.. just curious!

Kiiva progress update!

2009-06-30T21:13:00.002+10:00

Kiiva is now 70 and in Northrend. It's good to be back.

Look a little familiar? I guess I just really like that spot overlooking Daggercap Bay..

My bank alt has 1700g, and I think I will easily be able to afford epic flying, cold weather flying, and dual spec by time time I need them. Making money in the game is something that I really enjoy doing, and it's exciting that Kiiva has full 20 slotters, high professions, her epic mount, and loads of cash left over as she goes into Northrend - all without any external help from my other characters or friends.

I've tried to rein myself in and not bore everyone with a trickle of small updates on how I was going - but I think 70 is a worthy enough milestone to mention. I'm still having a lot of fun doing everything from scratch - but I have to admit that I'm really itching to get to 80 and do some healing again!

Onward to 80 - and to healing!

More "casual" stuff; latest big changes

2009-06-30T17:55:00.009+10:00

I opened an enormous, squirmy can of worms when I posted about "Casual vs Hardcore". Not that I was the first to do that, of course.

And as I mentioned, Blizzard is clearly making it their new direction to offer up more of the game to what most people refer to as "casual" players (although the definition of casual blurs according to your own personal views and ingrained stereotypes). Part of this is to apparently make raiding "easier" (more accessible in their view), but there have also been a number of other changes over recent months to allow people more flexibility in order to play with their friends.

Whether or not you like or agree with these changes is a very personal thing. Personally, I sit on the fence somewhere between wishing the game wasn't getting easier, and appreciating that it makes much more sense for the vast majority of people to be able to enjoy the game and have changes made that allow them easier enjoyment of it.

While there are some changes and nerfs that I think cheapen the game a little, I'm certainly not one of the people saying that "casuals are ruining the game"; I think that is extreme.

I think we should really refer to this as catering to the "socials", not "casuals". The term casual really seems to carry a negative stereotype, and for some reason casual is synonymous with "scrubby". We know this isn't always the case - there are plenty of players and guilds who play on casual schedules due to real life commitments, but are just as skilled and dedicated as the "hardcore" players.

Blizzard have recently announced two interesting changes - one slated for 3.2, the other for "sometime" - that should be pretty big for social players.

Latest changes for socials

Two new interesting changes have been announced for the future.

1. The ability to change your faction (ie Horde to Alliance or Alliance to Horde), transforming your character to that of the opposite faction, while keeping your class (and I assume, most possessions). This is a future change, for sometime down the track (likely in a major content patch, or it may even be something implemented in the next expansion).

2. The ability to extend your raid lockout period by one week, to allow groups to keep working on an instance if they want more time. This will be released with Patch 3.2.

Faction change

This is pretty huge. It's a great change for people who rolled a particular faction and perhaps found themselves segregated from friends who play on the opposite side. Social players will be able to opt to change over to the other faction to find a new home with friends on that side. It also means that players are able to experience the other side of the game - without "throwing away" the progress made on your main character.

Future changes will allow you to change faction, in addition to already
being able to change your character's gender, appearance, name, and realm.

So you can go experience the Horde side of Warcraft without throwing away your gear, achievements and whatnot, and have to start over. Considering that I have actually done this twice now, I couldn't help wincing a little :P

For raiders and PvPers, things are a little less cut and dried, and although not much has been announced yet (we need to be patient!) Here are my questions:

- what about faction specific reps? Will they be erased, or will you get the equivalent - eg Stormwind=Orgrimmar, Exodar=Silvermoon, etc? What about PvP reps that are faction based (one would assume these would just swap over, surely)?

- will you lose achievements based on the above?

- what about faction specific mounts? Will you lose them? Or will you magically score the equivalent city's mounts (as above)? And the PvP mounts?

- Would you lose your Wintersaber/Ravasaur if you had one? Yiiiiikes. That would be tough to give up! Such is the price of faction flexibility though, I suppose..

- will "Realm First! Level 80 Night Elf" disappear, or forever live on in your Undead's achievement pane as something worth a giggle every now and then?

- will people keep their Black War Bears and still be credited with killing the leaders of their OWN faction?

- will this mean a way to transfer BoA items to the other side?

Obviously there are standard questions like "what's the cooldown period" and whatnot.. but I'm more interested in what will happen to your statistics when you take the plunge and go to the dark side. Interesting stuff.

I don't know that I could change Keeva, I love her too much as a character. I don't see her as a lump of pixels to be shunted around at will to do whatever suits me. Much like Caoimhe, my first druid who was "retired" when I rolled Keeva, Keeva is now on hiatus. She may come back later if I want to play Horde again, but for now she is on a break.

But then, part of me can't stop thinking about all her achievements, titles, long ground-out reps, and those 5 Legendary shards in the bank..

Something else I wonder about is whether this will cause massive faction imbalance overnight on servers and battlegroups where people have long wished they were on the other side. What if a battlegroup notorious for terrible Horde players all suddenly change to Alliance? :P

For raiders, it will mean that you might no longer have to consider uprooting yourself and your guild to move to another server to boost your pulling power and find new recruits. If Alliance isn't working out for you but you spot a great Horde guild, it will be easy to make the switch without having to relocate all of your characters. As a raiding guild, you'll suddenly have access to twice as many potential players - we may see some cross-faction guild mergers happening rather than entire guilds relocating to try to boost their numbers.

It should be interesting to see how Blizzard are going to handle this, and what it will mean for faction balance on the realms. Will we suddenly see a massive shift one way or the other? Or will people casually drift from one side to the other, according to PvP and raiding opportunities that pop up over time?

Future changes?

So far, to allow players more flexibility without having to reroll or start over, Blizzard has introduced:

- server transfers
- paid name changes
- PvE to PvP transfers (which was never going to happen)
- paid gender/appearance changes
- faction changes (in the future)

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if further down the track they introduce paid class changes. I'm also waiting for account-wide achievements, reputations, special items etc.

Raid period extension

In 3.2, raid groups will be able to opt to extend their raid period to 2 weeks.

A new feature has been introduced in this build, you can now extend your raid lockout to make them last one more week. This is probably very useful if your guild is trying to get a specific boss down and doesn't really need any other loot in the instance, you can just get one more weeks of tries without having to clean everything in the way.

As quoted above, this is going to be very useful for hardcore and casual guilds alike, if they are working on a particular boss but can't quite get it down on the last night of the week - VERY frustrating!

While progression guilds will probably be interested in this for the weeks when they are working on new content, I think that it will be even more exciting for casual guilds who only raid for a couple of hours a few nights a week (or less), or sometimes find it hard to put a group together. They won't lose their progress in an instance because they can choose to continue the following week.

Obviously this means sacrificing a week of drops from those earlier bosses that you're already locked out of, but it does give you that flexibility of being able to decide whether to keep pressing on with new content, or start over for more gear.

There hasn't been any clarification yet about whether this would mean you could be "trapped" in a 2 week lockout if you go along to a pug and they decide to extend to 2 weeks; I think that is the main concern at the moment.

A change that helps everyone progress at their own pace

This is definitely a change that is great for casuals and hardcore alike; although I'm sure there will be some people complaining that it is catering to people who are bad and can't kill bosses. Personally I think it's a really great change for the guilds out there who love to raid but can't always field a team or have real life commitments that eat into their playtime.

A hardcore guild might raid 4 nights, 4 hours at a time; a casual 2 nights for 4 hours. Now the casual guild will have the option to raid for 16 hours in one lockout period, like the hardcore guilds have been able to - but do it over a fortnight if that's what their schedule allows. It will still be slower than people who can devote more time, but without the hassle of having to spend the bulk of your raid time reclearing the instance to get a few tries on the new boss and then run out of time.

That is something that was always frustrating - granted you would get gear along the way, but spending 3.5 of your 4 nights just getting BACK to the boss you're working on, having a few tries and then running out of time... ugh. At least this way you will be able to say, "Ok, we're out of time.. let's keep trying next week."

Should be interesting to see what the options will be to reset the lockout after that first week has expired though. Will individuals be able to opt out? Or will they be locked in? Will guilds be able to do an extra night or two, then opt out and have the rest of a normal lockout to start the instance over?

I may not agree with all of the changes that Blizzard has rolled out over time, and yes, I am "hardcore at heart" and not afraid to admit that I DO think skilled and dedicated players should get greater rewards and recognition.. but I still recognise that there are players out there who simply don't have the time. I'm all for changes that help these players raid when they want to and progress at their own pace.

I can see a lot of positive things coming out of these changes - for both types of players.

TBJ Rawrcast: July 4th

2009-06-29T07:42:00.003+10:00

I'm going to be chatting with the guys from The Rawrcast Show on the 4th of July!

4th of July with Keeva on Rawrcast

I'll have to double and triple check my timezones, but I think that 4PM CST on Saturday is 7AM Sunday (GMT+10) for me. So I'm gonna be rockin' the podcast in my jim-jams and bunny slippers on a chilly Sunday morning here in Queensland, Australia.

---

Stompalina already has a bunch of stuff lined up to chat about - but if you have any questions etc, please let me know, or jump onto the Rawrcast forums. I can't make any promises on what I can mention or cover - it's Stomp's show, not Keeva's show - but I'll see what I can sneak in if she lets her guard down.. ;)

Hope you guys can stop by and listen in; judging from past shows it will be a lot of fun!

What did I miss?

2009-06-25T09:37:00.002+10:00

Wow, gone a few days and my reader is jammed with entries about 3.2 patch notes, set bonuses, and changes. That's cool though, everyone covered it nicely so I don't have to! :P

One huge change pertinent to my previous entry about "casual" vs "hardcore" is the change to the badge system:

Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.

So, Heroism and Valor will no longer drop from anywhere - instead, the heroics, 10 mans and 25s that dropped these badges (eg Heroic Nexus, 10 man Naxx, 25 man Malygos) will drop Emblems of Conquest. You can either use these for Conquest gear, or exchange them 1 for 1 for Heroism or Valor tokens, to buy those items.

The upshot: you can kit yourself out in Conquest and Valor gear without ever setting foot in a 25 man raid.

The hardcore raider in me screams "WHAT A RIP OFF! Now anyone can get Ulduar gear without having to work hard in Ulduar!"

The casual Kiiva in me rubs her chin and says, "Nice, now I can get Ulduar gear without having to work hard in Ulduar..."

Well, not exactly. But it DOES mean that I don't have to play "catch up" trying to gear my rerolled character up to the tier of raiding that I want to be playing in. I won't have to run old 25 mans (if I don't want to) to be able to get gear of an adequate standard to go do Ulduar or start out in the next lot of raiding. If I want to, I can just run heroics with a few friends in order to dress Kiiva in some shiny epics.

On the other hand, running the "old" stuff now has a purpose after you've grabbed all the drops out of them that you need. Heroics, after finishing reps and whatnot, were places I never bothered with again (unless for mounts and achievements). Now, I can go do heroics or Naxx and grab Conquest badges to be able to gear Kiiva or get her some items for offspec.

As Spinks said in Gevlon's post - this is an alt patch. Archangel added the point about dual spec. It gives people a reason to go back and do these heroics and raids once they've exhausted the achievements and taken all the drops they needed. And I would add that it is also a reroller patch - allowing people to reroll without thinking they'll have to spend months catching up to the level of gear they need.

The change will also help people who need/want to take a break from the game but don't want to "fall behind" the gear curve when they get back. My previous post had a number of people saying that they came along halfway in TBC and struggled to be able to raid because they were always behind. With this change, you won't have to run Ulduar in order to be ready for Icecrown. You can use your half hour here and there to keep gearing your character (at a more relaxed pace) and still be able to jump into Icecrown if you want to get back to raiding (this may be me).

The casual in me says "sweet change!" but I can understand how the hardcore raiders, taking their items on DKP saved for weeks, might be.. slightly pissy.

I believe I'll be setting up camp on this here fence. :P

Short holiday!

2009-06-19T07:47:00.002+10:00

I'm going to the beach for a week for a badly needed holiday.

Normally I would slip out silently and nobody would probably know - but I have received a lot of emails lately, particularly about Grid functionality, so I wanted to let everyone know that I haven't disappeared, I'll be back in a few days.

I might do a followup post on Grid to answer some questions that people have had recently. :)

See you soon!

Counter-rant: Not all hardcore raiders are a$$holes, you know.

2009-06-16T12:28:00.002+10:00

Jacemora wrote a piece on being tired of the term "casual", and on being tired of hearing hardcore raiders complain that the current content is too easy.

Personally, I am tired of people lumping all of the "hardcore raiders" into a group that is apparently a bunch of egotistical jerks who care only about themselves - and, according to commenter ARA - are uneducated cretins who speak only "pigswill". Sweeping generalisations work both ways.

When I state that I think the game is getting too easy, it is not because I am an egotistical hardcore raider rambling incoherently about big bad Blizzard taking away the hard stuff of the "good old days" and handing out boss kills like candy. It is because I genuinely believe that some changes are unwarranted and make the game feel less and less engaging.

I don't take it to the extreme of the beta players complaining that mounts at level 20 "cheapen" what they worked so hard for in vanilla WoW. I earned the gold for my first epic mount by selling a few crafted items per week for 2 or 3 gold. I worked for it. But I don't cry that giving mounts to level 20 players for 5 gold is a horrible change. I think it will help make the game a lot more enjoyable for many people, and it doesn't take away from my game experience.

But the current raiding content leaves a lot to be desired for the serious raider, and I'm sorry, but having that opinion that does not make me an egotistical, swill-spouting, burger-flipping retard.

New Naxx and entry level content

Naxx was far, far too easy. Anyone who says it wasn't is a fool. It was made easy because very few people got to experience it originally; so it was toned down (a little too much) and branded as "entry level raiding" so that everyone had a chance to experience raiding if they wanted.

The problem is that for the serious raiders, Naxx was ridiculously easy and horribly boring. It was cleared in the first night or two, and very quickly became a 3hr or less instance. My guild started doing 3 hour clears the second raid reset. In greens. lolwut? And this is not me blowing my guild's trumpet - before people start up with the egotistical crap - it is a fact that guilds could go in wearing Northrend greens and blues and leftover T6 and clear the entire raid in a single night. The alarm bells went off immediately. We were concerned for the future of competitive raiding.

BUT, remember, it was meant to be entry level raiding - and Blizzard assured us that Ulduar would be much harder. Phew.

But it isn't. It's harder than Naxx, but it's not hard. Sure you probably can't grab 24 random people and go clear it, but there are plenty of casual guilds progressing through quite quickly. I see guilds that would probably never have cleared BT clearing up to Vezax and working on Yogg. That's great for those guilds, but for the serious raiders, it really cheapens the game because there's no longer that true feeling of accomplishment if people can go in and zerg it.

And despite it being quite easy, they continue to nerf it because they want everyone to be able to "experience" the content. That's a noble cause, and I know that if I could only raid once a week (as I used to) I would want to be able to see all of those bosses (over time). I don't want to take that away from people who have tight schedules and can't raid 5 nights a week. But when you can walk into an instance and clear all but the last couple of bosses in one reset, something is wrong.

Of course, Blizzard's counter to this complaint is the various hard modes - set in place to keep the "hardcore" raiders happy. Normal modes allow everyone to experience the content, hard modes give more of a challenge to the "serious" raiders. This is another noble cause, and I really can't fault them on that. They're trying to keep both sides of the player base happy.

As a hardcore raider though, I have lost most of my interest in hard mode fights because I do see them as the same old content with an extra gimmick or two thrown in to keep us occupied for a little longer. Of course they're challenging (in before "but you haven't done hardmodes so you can't talk!"), but it's still the same boss, just made more annoying.

"This is too easy for us" is not the same as "Your casual 10 man guild sucks ass."

I know that sometimes it can sting when you see hardcore raiders whine that the content is too easy and that Blizzard is catering to casuals. I know this because I have gone from casual raider to hardcore raider and then back to casual again (well, I'm not hardcore at the moment). And you'd better believe it makes me feel like a second class citizen at times, when I see people knocking others down because their armory doesn't show any hard mode achievements. I hate it.

In terms of my blogging, it often makes me feel like some kind of imposter, trying to be some kind of authority on my class when I haven't even done any hard modes.. for shame. I know some people will know the feeling I am talking about.

I have the advantage of knowing how it feels to be casual AND hardcore. I have played in guilds where I knew the frustration of only being able to raid once a week, but still wanting to progress. And I've been in hardcore guilds raiding 20+ hours per week. It's difficult because I'm not one of the people who think raids should ONLYbe for serious raiders. I'm NOT saying that "casual" players shouldn't get to do these bosses. We all want to enjoy the game. But the fact is, for serious, vanilla-bred raiders, this stuff IS too easy, and hardmodes are just gimmicks. We want something that we can really sink our teeth into.

That's not "a load". It's a fact. The current content is too easy for hardcore raiders. The hard modes (from what I understand) are meant to fill the void, but for me, personally, I see them as a stop-gap measure to keep the serious raiders happy until the next content patch.

This is really driven home when Blizzard keeps nerfing the base content in ways that are totally unnecessary. Why nerf Hodir's flash freeze on Yogg? Cancelaura macros are NOT HARD. If you were standing that close to a cloud in the first place, then you fail. Hardcore or casual, organised or PUG, learn to not stand near Bad Stuff(TM). Blizzard shouldn't need to nerf something so fundamental. Make it more obvious (like the colour change to voids on Sartharion) but don't give everyone training wheels.

It is this type of nerf that makes the hardcore raiders angry - the unnecessary nerfs to fundamental aspects of fights that simply do not need to be changed. It trivialises the fight even further.

Trivial base content is disheartening for serious raiders.

This is the crux.

If they continue to nerf the encounters such that every man and his dog can clear Ulduar, especially with silly, wholly unnecessary nerfs that even the puggiest pug should not have issues with, then more and more raiders will continue to bleed from the game because they see the content as trivial. Many casual raiders will probably say "good riddance", but the fact is that hardcore raiders enjoy this game too, and are disheartened by what they see as "dumbing down" of the raiding that they have enjoyed over time.

For a lot of people, this is not about whining, or a holier-than-thou attitude. It's about perceived loss of a challenge that they have enjoyed over the course of years. I think that many hardcore raiders have extrapolated what they've seen so far in WotLK and it's not looking good. To them, their game - raiding - is becoming trivial and disappointing. That's not whining. It's not insulting casuals. That's how it feels. The challenge is no longer there if everyone can do the instances and there's no longer any exclusivity, no longer any feelings of awe when you look up to the guilds clearing the top content.

When Ensidia cleared Naxx in the first night, I wasn't impressed. I was disappointed. In fact, I kinda pitied them. They had finished the game with months to wait for new content. Yuck.

And that's pretty much how I feel now. Guilds that I used to really look up to.. they don't impress me anymore. They're still skilled players - that hasn't changed - but there's nothing to set them apart.

I have to be honest, not even the Algalon kills impressed me :/ No, I haven't seen him, obviously - and I'm positive he would kick my butt - but after a mostly underwhelming boss experience in Ulduar, there's just no sense of achievement. Not because I think I'm amazing or my guild was amazing, but that it just wasn't that hard. No Kael, no Archimonde.

Hard modes to the rescue, rite? Although I haven't experienced them myself, I can see how quickly the raiding guilds are clearing the hard modes and that in itself is quite disappointing. It won't keep them busy for long.

Giving everyone a chance to see the content is great. I don't want to take that away from casual players, because I have personal experience with the frustration of not being able to raid "hardcore". But making the encounters more like expanded 5 mans is a real drag. Sunwell was something to aspire to. Ulduar, while a gorgeous instance that I do love, seems like another round of Naxx - just going through the motions with everyone else, and no real sense of achievement when you come out the other side - because everyone else is there with you.

Hardcore raiders want something they can't really have.

Well, they could have it, but it would be very unfair to a lot of people, so it probably won't happen.

The hard modes are great in theory. 3 drakes, time trials, Ulduar hard modes. But aside from Algalon, all of these are the same bosses, just with extra things to deal with. Zzz. I am going to go out on a limb and say that most hardcore raiders don't want hard modes of existing content - they want content that only they will get to see, being truly skilled and dedicated players - a la old Naxx and Sunwell. Unfortunately:

A) way too many people missed out on experiencing Naxx and Sunwell so that will probably never happen again; and
B) oftentimes skill is not the barrier - rather, time available to raid.

The problem for casual players in TBC was that you had to spend months farming BT in order to get anywhere in Sunwell. Casual players simply didn't have the time to be able to clear BT for gear, AND get any time in Sunwell. They might have been the most skilled players on the planet, but working nights or having 3 kids meant never getting to set foot inside Sunwell.

Sunwell (and old Naxx etc) definitely gave hardcore raiders a trophy instance. We could brag about being "a Naxx guild" or "a Sunwell guild". I remember going into BGs and having random people comment on my gear. It really gave you that sense of achieving something above and beyond what everyone else could do.

But giving the minority a special instance (which is in essence what happened with Naxx and Sunwell because so few guilds were able to experience them) makes a LOT of people unhappy, and that makes very obvious bad business sense.

If there's a solution, I ain't got it.

Frankly, I don't think you can give the hardcore raiders a trophy AND keep the casual raiders happy. I simply don't think it can be done. If you gave the serious raiders an instance with all hardmode fights (much like Sunwell was), the people who raid more casually will be upset because they aren't getting a fair chance to do the content. And hard modes, while good in theory, are really just the same old stuff but made to have you bash your head against the wall for an extra week or two.

I feel that they were on the right track with hardmodes.. but didn't quite hit the mark.

Maybe more Algalon type bosses that open up once you've achieved certain things? I'm not sure. I'm just not a big fan (you may have noticed) of tacking on extra "challenges" onto the same boss fights. It might be challenging, but to me.. not terribly interesting in the long term.

I don't know what can be done to keep both sides happy.

TLDR: Not all "hardcore" raiders think "casual" raiders are scrubs.

I am not raiding hardcore at the moment. I may return to it; I'm not sure. But for the time being I won't be on the pointy end of progression, where I like to be.

I know how it feels when you're not a hardcore raider, when you feel like everyone is looking down their noses at you. Especially with the advent of the Armory, so people can bring up your page and then scoff at you for trying to comment on hard mode encounters that you don't have experience in, like you don't have the right to comment on matters that you have no place speaking about.

It sucks!

There are definitely people out there who think their raiding achievements make them a better person than you. But a lot of us just want more of a challenge (and not rehashed content!). Saying that the current content is easy and asking for something more challenging is not an insult directed at you because you haven't been able to kill Boss X yet, for whatever reason. Progressing at a different rate does not make you bad. When I say current content is too easy, I'm not saying "anyone who can't clear Boss X r bads lol". I'm simply stating a fact - that the current raid content is easily cleared by the hardcore (read: usually people with more raiding hours per week) players, and we would like something more challenging to sustain us.

But it is wholly unfair and insulting to lump all hardcore raiders into a giant bucket of no-life, self-righteous morons who think casual players are unskilled peasants and don't deserve to share the same content as they do.

We just want to enjoy the game as you do - at our own pace.

More transport changes

2009-06-12T08:14:00.005+10:00

Hot on the heels of changes to mounts and class forms, Blizzard has also announced more portals and an extra zeppelin route, to make journeying easier.

In the next major content patch we will be adding a few methods of improved transportation to areas of interest while leveling.

It is time for the denizens of Azeroth to witness the full might of the Horde as they do what they do best: employ goblins to construct zeppelin towers and float players across vast seas using sky boats. That's right, a new zeppelin route is being added in Thunder Bluff and will transport players to Orgrimmar. Isn't technology magnificent?

Also, brought to you by Azeroth's greatest users of magic, are all new portals coming to Stormwind and Orgrimmar. These portals will transport players directly to the Stair of Destiny at the Dark Portal. Travel is just so much more convenient when it's instantaneous! Players will then find that a new connecting flight path exists at the Stair of Destiny allowing players new to Outland easy and direct access to the city of Shattrath.

Keep your seat backs and tray tables in a full upright and locked position, and we hope you continue to enjoy your methods of travel in Azeroth and beyond!

My plea: Give us a few more flight points!

Blizzard, if you're watching: How about some extra flight points in some of the more painful zones? Places like:

- Desolace
- Eastern Plaguelands
- Western Plaguelands (Horde)
- Hinterlands
- Badlands (Alliance)
- Blasted Lands (Horde)
- Swamp of Sorrows (Alliance)

... the zones that have ONE flight point (or NONE!) but ask you to go to the other end of the zone to quest, and back again. For example, the quest Whiskey Slim's Lost Grog (Alliance version!):

1. Fly to Aerie Peak.
2. Ride all the way to the eastern coast of the zone (the extreme other end of the zone)
3. Collect bottles
4. If your hearth is on cooldown, ride alllll the way back.

(Then sometime in the next day or so, find a quest that requires you to go take a picture of Gammerita on the same beach. ARGH!)

Having the 30 minute hearth really helps - often I will simply hearth back to the start of the zone to hand in my quests, but it would make things so much simpler if I could fly. Plus, that wouldn't "cheese" the content by nerfing the mobs or quests; it would just make travel a little faster.

Please Blizzard - give us some more small camps with flight points, like you gave us extra graveyards. This makes it faster to get around and to level, without people complaining that you're wrecking the quests or ruining their fun by nerfing the mobs.

3.2 mount changes

2009-06-11T14:55:00.008+10:00

Blizzard have announced some big changes to mount levels and costs in Patch 3.2. Here's the summary:

Level 20 - normal ground mount
Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)
60% land mount speed (same as the current level 30 mount)
Cost: 4g training + 1g mount

Level 40 - epic ground mount
Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)
100% land mount speed (same as the current level 60 "epic" mount)
Cost: 50g training + 10g mount

Level 60 - normal flying mount
Expert Riding (Skill 225)
150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed (was 60% flying speed)
Note: this means that to travel at 100% land speed you'll want to get out your ground mount
Cost: 600g training (faction discounts now apply) + 50g mount

Level 70 - epic flying mount
Artisan Riding (Skill 300)
280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply) + 100g mount

Cold Weather Flying remains unchanged.

Summary: You'll be able to get your first mount at 20, epic mount at 40, and your flying mount at 60, which is 10 levels earlier than the current system. Epic flying is still only available at 70, but will be cheaper now that faction discounts apply (for exalted, that's a saving of 1000g). Cold Weather Flying will not have its level or cost changed.

I'm not sure what this will mean for druids in terms of flight form. I assume it means we get 150% speed instead of 60% (to match the flying mounts). Looking forward to getting confirmation on this.

At present, we get our flight form at 68 (trained). Will the new system mean druids can have normal flight form at 58, to keep it in line with having it two levels earlier than other classes? Or will they simply bring our flight form in line with everyone else? Personally, I am just curious - it would be handy dandy to have flight form at 58 when you first venture into Outland, but certainly no biggie to wait two levels.

I suspect we'll see a few people complain that a mount at 20 and epic mount at 40 will make our travel form "useless" (cue cries for a replacement skill I would imagine) but I still use mine plenty, even on my high level druids.

Edit: Blizzard has now confirmed that travel form will be learned at 16, and normal flight form will be learned at 60, as 150% speed (up from 60%). Swift Flight Form remains unchanged. Thanks Treebound Cat for pointing this news out :)

The Swift Flight Form quest chain will remain - it is not being removed.

And for our non-druid friends (or non-druid alts!):

Aspect of the Cheetah: Requires level 16
Ghost Wolf: Requires level 16
Paladin Warhorse: Requires level 20
Paladin Charger: Requires level 40
Warlock Felsteed: Requires level 20
Warlock Dreadsteed: Requires level 40

I think this is fantastic news for everyone wanting to level. Being able to ride around at 20, and have an epic mount at 40 is really huge. That will speed up levelling a great deal. Suddenly the Barrens doesn't seem so bad! ..and being able to fly around Outland from the get-go - instead of waiting til you're nearly finished with the place - will be a huge help.

Great changes.

Levelling: merely a nuisance?

2009-06-10T16:53:00.006+10:00

I'm having a lot of fun levelling Kiiva, my baby elf druid. She is 44 now, after two weeks. Not bad, I think, for someone who has done it alone, with no group questing, no instances, and no help.

As of right now, here are Kiiva's stats:

3 days, 9 hours played (over 2 weeks)
Level 44
288/300 Herbalism
225/300 Inscription
259/300 First Aid
225/300 Fishing (tonight is fishing quest night! I am genuinely excited)
677g 66s in the bank <<< I am very proud of this

Now, I don't think that is too shabby considering I did it all by myself so far. Level 44 with 600g in the bank (and 16 more levels before I'll need to spend it). 600g that I earned from scratch with no outside help - just my own AH skills and selling whatever I pick up (no active "farming"). When Kiiva hits 60 she will easily be able to purchase her epic mount - starting from absolutely nothing, and with absolutely no outside financial assistance, and no grinding or farming or saving up after I hit 60.

I think that's pretty impressive! So there.

Hitting the fast forward button

A few people have implied to me that I'm making things hard for myself by not using the Refer a Friend facility to "go faster". Read: to race to 80 ASAP, so I can play the "real" game. Many people use the RAF system and could get from 1-80 in two weeks, not be "only" 44 in the same amount of time. They can't understand why I would want to go "sooooo slow", when I could rush to 80 and play properly. They see levelling as an inconvenient hurdle before getting to 80 and playing the real game. Why waste time on old content when you could get to 80 and start getting epics?

The truth is that I am enjoying taking it slow. But I also missed the Alliance towns and quest hubs. I had forgotten how Theramore looked inside. I haven't seen any of the Northrend Alliance towns at all (only experienced them briefly while accidentally riding through them on Keeva...). I want to enjoy this levelling experience, and come out of it as a level 80 character who has done everything and earned everything.

I have friends who run SM as soon as they hit 20. Over and over and over for 10-20 levels, to catapult them to endgame ASAP. That's cool, it's their choice. I did it a little bit on one character (dual boxing) but it's not really my thing. I don't consider it cheating, or wrong, or anything like that. But I do get a little defensive when people tell me I'm going slow... when I'm actually doing things the way they were intended (apart from not doing any group stuff).

I know they have sped up 20-70, but I still think I'm doing pretty well even after that change, especially considering that my tradeskills are pretty high. I intend to finish this with max professions and a decent sized purse, so I can concentrate on things like gear and rep grinds straight away - not having to double back to grind for inscription etc.

We could be running SM by now!

Anyway, the crux of this rambling is that I think there are three camps:

1. The "gotta get to max level ASAP" camp (using RAF, dual box SM runs etc)
2. The "I'm taking my sweet time and enjoying it, I don't care when I level" camp
3. The "I want to get to 80 fairly quickly, but I'm not rushing" camp

I'm hovering between 2 and 3. Yes, I want to get to 80 so I can gear up and heal again.. but I don't want to rush and miss all the content.

What about you guys? Do you rush to 80 ASAP, bypassing as much of the tiresome low content as possible? Or do you soak up the quest lines, run instances, explore and enjoy the "old" content?

Easy pocket money for druids 10+

2009-06-07T12:57:00.005+10:00

Here's a little tip for everyone, but it's particularly good for druids because of our Teleport: Moonglade spell.

There is a vendor in Moonglade named Lorelae Wintersong. She sells the recipe for Runed Arcanite Rod.

This enchanting rod is required by all enchanters to be able to progress to higher levels of enchanting. The problem is that it is ONLY sold in Moonglade. Nowhere else in the world. It is also a limited item, on a short respawn timer (meaning it may not be available when you go to Moonglade to get it). So for many enchanters, it is a bit of a pain to get.

We druids, on the other hand, have the advantage of being able to port to Moonglade whenever we please.

Remember: In WotLK, a lot of people are rich and lazy.

Many people have tonnes of gold and nothing to spend it on.

They are also lazy, and would rather pay exorbitant prices on the AH than have to go get something for themselves. This is particularly true of people who decide to reroll professions and then power level them. They don't want to travel all over the place - they want to be able to stand in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and power level their new profession as fast as possible.

If a new pattern or formula requires someone to go halfway around the world, that's a pain. If there's one up on the AH for 30g (maybe even more), they'll just snatch it. It's not worth the time and effort to travel to get it themselves. I have done this myself a number of times; I've paid 20g for a stack of meat to level cooking, or ridiculous prices for cloth and herbs... all because I don't want to have to keep flying back to town to train the next levels.

In the case of the arcanite rod - some people don't even HAVE the Moonglade flight path. I've even helped friends get the pattern - when I've overheard them complain about having to go "all the way to Moonglade", I've offered to port and grab it for them. It's a real hassle to get that pattern if you're not a druid.

As a level 10+ druid, you can take advantage of this inconvenience!

Make a quick 15-20g+, casually

I suggest any time you are about to hearth and log for the day, port to Moonglade first, grab the formula, then hearth afterwards. If you're levelling, grab it whenever you head to Moonglade for training. I grab one whenever I port there, for whatever reason.

It will cost you 2.2g (less with rep), and will probably sell from 15g upwards (personally if I was a non-druid I would likely pay up to 100g if it meant I didn't have to mess around getting to Moonglade).

For those of you at 80 with high incomes, this may not be worth your time.. but considering that this is easy for any druid of level 10 and up to do, if you have 2g to invest, you can quickly turn that into a lot more. Very handy for that first mount and training costs.. especially for crazy rerollers like myself, with no "main" feeding cash to the new druid.

And those of you who are saving 5000g for epic flying may be looking for tips on how to squeeze as much gold out of the game as you can. This tip might be worth 10g or it might be 100g, depending on your server - but regardless, with Teleport: Moonglade at your disposal, it will only take you 2 minutes of your time.

Particularly helpful for lowbies, but also for the thrifty, seasoned druid. Every little bit counts, right?

:)

Blizzard: We will show you all feral colour combos soon

2009-06-05T09:01:00.004+10:00

Just as a quick follow-up to the feral form picture spam, here's a quote fresh from Blizzard:

Based on the current looks of tauren, I believe there are a total of 19 different skin choices for male tauren, and 11 skin choices for tauren females. Many similar tones will share the same bear and cat forms though. We're looking to release a break down of the tauren skin tones and night elf hair colors, as they correspond with the different cat and bear form color options, shortly after the new night elf cat form art is released.

So don't worry guys, you won't have to jump on the PTR to fiddle with the barber shop to pull together a list of the different colour combos. Blizzard should be providing one soon.

Edit: here they are (created by MMO Champion, based on a text list released by Blizzard):

Thanks Beru - I'm in Australia so updates always happen while I'm asleep :(

NE cat form model revamp

2009-06-05T08:42:00.002+10:00

The Night Elf cat model has been released, to mixed reviews:

Personally, I think they look great - I especially love the noses on the new cats (both Tauren and Elf).

Meanwhile, a friend is spamming me in IMs about how much he hates them because they look like My Little Pony cats. I'm giggling.

I love the white kitty, and I already loved the white elf bear. So Kiiva will be "safe", she won't have to change her identity to get the feral forms that I like. Unlike Keeva. While I do understand the "logic" that we should have similar colouring in all of our forms (because it "makes sense"), I still hope they don't force us to have to change our character's appearance to get feral forms that we find appealing.

Broken record mode on: Keeva has been Keeva for 2 years. Some people might see it as no big deal to head to the barber shop and ask politely for an entirely different skin colour - but I don't want to do that. I want to keep Keeva's identity. But the feral forms that correspond to her white skin tone are the ones I particularly dislike. A lot.

Here's hoping they rethink it. Allowing us to choose would not hurt anyone - if you want a white bear and a matching white cat to go with your white hair, you could choose that - but if I hate the white bear and just want to be brown, with a black cat, then I could choose that too.

I'm getting tired of the "but it makes SENSE, durrr!" argument - does it make sense that a hairdresser could change my skin?

Having 3 forms that match in some way is good, I definitely agree. But being forced to have two forms that you hate, OR change the fundamental appearance of your character (which I and many other people have become attached to and consider part of that character's identity) .... that's pretty disappointing.

You've done an AWESOME job so far - but let us choose, Blizzard!

Shapeshift: Yakcat

2009-06-03T07:54:00.004+10:00

Yes, I'm adding to the catformblogspam.

(click for bigger version)

The new Tauren cat forms look amazing. Brilliant job, Blizzard. No more hideous wyvern things to wince at. Now I feel very torn between my Horde druids and my Alliance druids - good thing I have choice of two Alliance and two Horde to choose from!

Not only do they look better in terms of general aesthetics, but don't they look so.. Tauren? The broad noses (with nose rings) really make them tie in well with our Tauren forms. And I love the eyes - they look so intelligent, as if someone is in there. Much, much better than the original painted-on eyes.

I think I like the bottom left colouring the best. I couldn't think what it reminded me of though - until I realised...

Form of........ A YAK!

... with claws, and perhaps a little more compact.

The only problem is that if they are still going to be linked to humanoid characteristics, then once again the feral form that corresponds with Keeva's colouring (completely white) is the one that I think looks ugliest. I dislike both the white bear and white cat.

Enough that I would like to change colours, but being the silly person that I am, I'm too attached to Keeva's identity. Most people would say it's no big deal, just go to the barber shop or wear your helm or be grateful for what we got - but I am attached to all of my druids, and I can't just change her identity like that. I hate the idea of playing Keeva as a white Tauren, she can't just become a brown Tauren in the barber shop because I want to pimp-my-forms.

:(

Nevertheless, I'm extremely impressed and can't wait for the NE kitties.

This also adds a lot of excitement - if this is the fantastic kind of remodelling that cats got - what is in store for our other forms down the track?

Heh... yaks.

Ding/ding! 30!

2009-06-02T19:58:00.000+10:00

I turned 30 on Saturday, and Kiiva turned 30 yesterday! :P

I really wanted Kiiva to turn 30 on the same day. In hindsight, maybe that's a little bit too nerdy.

Alas, my grand plans were foiled - Alliance zones and quests do not seem to be as linear as the Horde's. I wasted so much time just travelling around trying to find quests that weren't red to me. It was very frustrating. Perhaps I've been spoilt by the Barrens though - since it is one massive zone that takes you from 10 right through to your early 20s - and then Stonetalon, Thousand Needles and Ashenvale directly bordering the zone provide that super-easy transition to the 20-30 content. Smooth.

Poor Kiiva spent most of the weekend just trying to scrape enough quests together to get by. I had to double back and do Ashenvale, because I didn't realise that I hadn't thought to go there (I prefer Eastern Kingdoms). Yes, this was an oversight on my part - but one would think that Redridge, Duskwood AND Wetlands combined would be sufficient! In the end I had to do part of Ashenvale and then go back to Duskwood agaaaaaaaaaain.

I was starting to feel as though I'd been ripped straight from a Family Circus strip.

Before that, I had gone to Hillsbrad, where many of the mobs are 25-26ish, so I thought I was set. But then I got to Southshore and found that only ONE quest was doable in Southshore at 27. The only other quest that was even available was the murloc quest (I hate it so) but it's probably not the best idea to attempt this at 27 BECAUSE THE MURLOCS ARE 32 AND STAND AROUND IN GROUPS.

Oh murlocs, I hate you so.

Except the baby ones, because they are so freaking adorable.

Alliance zones, you're really grinding my gears.

World of Scrimpcraft

Despite my levelling frustration, I am still very happy because of my financial progress so far.

Without a single penny of outside assistance (from my Horde characters or friends - other than gifts of a couple of lowbie leather items to wear, and a handful of herbs to help my inscription levelling), at level 30 I have serveral large bags, my first mount, 70g in the bank, and a whole bunch of auctions up as well. My goal is to buy my mounts, epic flight form, Northrend flying and dual spec without help from the cash I have Horde side. I'm on the right track so far.

My little auction alt is also enjoying large bags and a booming trade. I'm trying inscription on for size, and having fun. I've found a few glyphs in particular that sell at nice prices, but with the crazy price of herbs on Alliance side, it's not very profitable to do it long-term. For now though, while I am just trying to get my first few hundred gold together, every bit of profit counts.

With gold being so plentiful now, it would be easy to do a day's worth of dailies on Keeva and send 500g over to help out. A friend just sent me 2000g when he quit - I COULD have sent that over to my newbie, and she would have been set all the way through to Northrend. But I'm getting so much joy out of building everything up from scratch - knowing that all my bags were earned, and my mount skills came from money that I saved up from nothing, and now I have to work towards getting enough for my epic at 60. It's very satisfying.

I do not know what Kiiva's future is, but I am really enjoying her so far.

RL PvP with bears: ur doin it wrong

2009-05-28T09:43:00.004+10:00

Forgive me, I'm on a bit of a bear kick at the moment, having just got my bear form on Kiiva, and having fun with it (the header *does* say "predominantly" resto-flavoured, after all). By the way - it turns out that if you've done that bear form quest 6 or 7 times, you end up REALLY pro at it! Who'da guessed it?

Avoiding bear PvP IRL

Concerned about being ganked by a bear druid IRL?

Are you constantly looking over your shoulder in fear of a RAWRBOMB attack?

Never fear! Bear spray is here! Simply spray all over yourself to deter those pesky bears.... no, wait... don't. That would be STUPID.

From one of my favourite sites, Not Always Right - funny & stupid customer quotes:

Me: “Hello, thank you for calling [outdoor supply store]. How can I help you?”

Customer: “Yeah, um…I bought some bear spray from you earlier today and now my skin is burning.”

Me: “Your skin is burning? Did the bear spray come into contact with your skin?”

Customer: “Of course! I sprayed it all over myself!”

Me: “Did you read the instructions?”

Customer: “No, I thought it was like bug spray.”

Me: “Sir, you’re not supposed to spray it on your skin. You’re supposed to spray it in the bear’s eyes. You should probably go take a shower.”

Customer: “So I can’t repel the bears by putting bear spray on my skin?”

Me: “No, sir…are you sure bear country is the right place for you?

YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

Night Elf bear forms

2009-05-28T07:42:00.002+10:00

Night Elf bear forms have been released.

I actually REALLY like the white bear in this series, so I feel better about being "stuck" with a bear that matches my hair colour. I still think linking directly to hair and skin colour is a little inflexible for people who are very particular about those elements of their character.. but I won't complain about how the white bear looks for elves. I'm happy with how it looks. In fact, it's probably my favourite of the bunch! :)

Also, last night I played a NE bear for the first time in years. I noticed something very glaring - the eyes are TERRIBLE on NE bears. They look painted on, and as if they don't really fit the model mesh properly at all - you can barely see them. I never realised how much better the Tauren face looked.

The new eyes look great, and fit the whole "glowy elf eyes" deal that Night Elves have going on.

And the ears... they seem a little less goofy.

I think the Taurens look better overall, but they always looked beefier and a little more.. bearish. But these new NE ones look really nice, they have much more elf elements blended with the bear skin. I like them a lot - nice work Blizzard - they look awesome!

Cat forms to come now.. nervous about that. Four years of complaints about the hideous Tauren version.. will they fix it? Or just rehash the same idea? If we're still wyverns, I think there's going to be a huge outcry. I'm also slightly concerned about the NE versions because I adore the current NE cat. I hope the silver/white corresponding cat looks good, because I do spend a lot of time in kitty.

Exciting!

My thoughts on new forms announced

2009-05-27T06:38:00.004+10:00

I'm late for work but here's my two cents on the new druid forms changes:

WHY ARE THEY DIRECTLY LINKED TO OUR CASTER FORM APPEARANCE?

What if I want Keeva to have white skin but I want a black bear?

What if I want Kiiva to have blue hair but I don't want a blue bear?

Am I being ungrateful?

I just think that this is like giving us something awesome, being really flexible by allowing us to change at a whim in the barber shop (that's great!) but then on the other hand being inflexible because you have to like both your caster hair/skin and your feral skin at the same time... what if I think bluebear is great, but I can't stand blue hair on my Night Elf?

For example, Keeva has white skin, but I don't like that white bear - I like the black one. So I either have to pick a caster skin that I don't like, or a bear skin that I don't like. I can't have two that I like at the same time.

Not only that, but Keeva, as a tauren, can't really just change her skin colour after 2 years. White skin for two years.. suddenly I'm a black Tauren instantly! ....mmmno.

I want to stay "me", but still be able to have interesting feral skins. Is that too much to ask?

They do look MUCH better though - they've done a lot to improve the overall look. It's smoother, has more definition. The face and horns especially look better. I wonder if they will change the big NE ears?

Keeva has had white skin for over two years. I know that to a lot of people, skin and hair colour doesn't mean a thing. But to some of us, our characters are important. You might be able to get a haircut, but you can't just magically change from having white skin to having black spots. I'm Keeva and I have white skin. And I chose Kiiva's hair colour very carefully and deliberately. I don't really see it as something I want to change every now and then when I feel like turning purple in bear form.

I honestly LOVE the new bear model. It looks fantastic. Awesome idea, love the new colours.. but it doesn't quite hit the mark in terms of implementation. It makes sense that all of your forms would have a visual link between them (such as blue highlights, or white skin/fur), but I really don't like the idea that I might have to sacrifice my preferred caster appearance in order to get the feral appearance I want.

Why should I have to throw away a big part of my character's identity in order to have a good feral appearance? Or, to reframe that question, why should I be lumped with a feral appearance that I don't like, because I choose to keep my character's appearance the way I have always wanted it?

I don't know if it is possible/realistic/practical to change the way it will be done.. but I really hope that there is a way around this.

The same, but different

2009-05-26T22:42:00.004+10:00

Meet Kiiva.

Kiiva is (as of tonight) a level 10 Night Elf druid. I didn't quite manage to get bear form before the server went down, but that can be tomorrow's project.

A lot of people will probably think I'm nuts, but I thought it might be fun to reroll. Again. This makes druid number.. 5. Well, officially. There have been others - but this will be the fifth druid that goes somewhere.

Contrary to popular belief, I DO actually have other characters, but only a couple have made it to the post-60 bracket. I have a hunter mid 70s and mage mid 60s.. but I just keep coming back to the druids. I honestly really enjoy levelling druids, plus I know them inside out, so I don't have to learn to play a new class (some people would argue this is the point of rolling a new character - some variety - but I just love druids that much). I keep the same bindings and UI, so as my lowbie druids acquire new skills, the bindings are already set and ready to go - and I don't have to teach myself new abilities.

I do, however, often forget that I don't in fact have Wild Growth at level 7.

Starting from absolute scratch

I have absolutely nothing. I started with nothing. No money, including my Alliance auction alts - they sent all of their goods to the other side, and I gave my small amount of gold away, so that my alliance characters had zero cash and no assets. I wanted to start with absolutely nothing.

Why? Probably because I'm nuts. But also because one of my favourite "mini games" in WoW, aside from actual farming, is making money - and making it from scratch is a lot of fun.

To not have the luxury of a level 80 that can farm, quest, or dump hundreds or thousands into the Auction House to turn a profit. I had to start with zero. It's surprisingly exciting (to me, the nutter..) to start with nothing, and sell a half stack of linen cloth that you scraped together for 50s. Fifty whole silver - that's a lot of Refreshing Spring Water!

To start with zero copper and earn every penny, no loans, no favours, no help.. and turn that into a couple of gold in the first few levels - it's exciting. I love it. I could easily send over 5000g from Keeva, but I'm really enjoying this. Everything from scratch - levels, achievements, money.

I'm excited again.

Loremaster, server firsts, turtle mount..

I love improving my characters, and at the moment Keeva is really just doing dailies and grinding out the last few reps that she wants. It's.. dull. And while I do appreciate a bit of a breather, I need something to work towards. Achievements and rep grinds alone will not sustain me.

So I'm starting over. For fun. Problem is, I lose a lot of big achievements that I really like having. My server firsts. My Of the Nightfall title. My turtle and rocket mounts. Things I won't likely get back. And of course the fact that on Keeva I have 34 exalted reps, and on Kiiva I have none. Particularly the ones I'll probably never get back - like Hyjal and BT. My many, many pets.. my Brewfest mounts (not to mention the rest of the meta achievement), my Headless Horseman mount. My titles. Loremaster. Mr Pinchy. The Immortal. Five shards of Val'anyr (HA!)

I've put a LOT of work into Keeva.

Masochism at its finest?

It stings to leave those things behind. I'm not tossing them away - just shelving them for a bit. I couldn't walk away from Keeva entirely.

But the loss of all the achievements, levels, reps, gear.. it means that I am starting with a clean slate, and every achievement will be one that pops up on my screen as I go, unlike when the achievement system was implemented and a lot of the achievements were already in place. This time, I'm earning them one at a time.

One painful rep at a time..

And I just did Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle, and almost finished ZG.. *weep*

I've missed the Alliance

It's been a couple of years since I played on the Alliance side. I miss the cities - I love the music of Ironforge, I miss the quest lines. And I haven't seen the Alliance side of Northrend yet. That is the same reasoning I used when I rerolled Horde - that I had basically been missing out on a chunk of content - I'd never seen Orgrimmar, I didn't know where all the Horde towns were. I'd like to see that part of the Northrend content.

I've missed so many old-world things too. I've missed Stormwind, Elwynn, and Westfall (note: I have NOT missed the Defias).

Number 5 is alive!

I brought Kiiva over to Stormwind on the boat (I prefer Elwynn for lowbie levelling). I started with nothing, and quested and vendored greys until I had enough for herbalism training. I got my fishing nearly to 20. I put two stacks of linen on the auction house and got excited when they sold for a gold or two. When a green training sword of agility dropped I was thrilled - it actually felt like treasure, rather than something I would normally vendor out of laziness. I raced back to put it up for auction - jiggling at the prospect of my odd collection of auctions getting my purse to 5 or 10g, so I can start playing the auction house.

I'm looking forward to levelling professions. Fishing. Northrend greens. Reputations. Heroics. Badges that I can use for things instead of having them gather dust. Harold's Rejuvenating Broach. Dual specs. Healing and raiding in poor gear while I work my back back up (yes, I enjoy this - I used to take off half my gear to do heroics). Not leaning on my big bank or Ulduar gear.

I know it's nuts, but I am really enjoying this.

Jousting - help for beginners

2009-05-24T18:00:00.008+10:00

I used to hate the jousting quests that are part of the Argent Tournament. For a while, I skipped them.. but it bugged me that they gave me so much trouble. I was irritated that a daily quest would take so long to do and often I would fail and have to start over.. yuck. So I stopped doing them for a while, and sulked.

But, being extremely stubborn and not wanting to be beaten by a quest, I wanted to finish what I started. A friend offered me a few pointers and the difference was amazing. I went from being absolutely smashed by these mobs (and being very embarrassed and sullen about it) to finishing fights with 90% health.

So - here are some tips for how to make it a little easier if you've been having problems with it. This is not a quick method, but it is "safe", if you're trying to get the hang of it. (Note: please see comments for some readers' suggestions for how to speed things up)

Before you talk to the NPC, start with three stacks of Defend
ALWAYS start with 3 shields up. Quickly renew your shield if your opponent removes your stacks, so you don't lose too much health.

Most importantly, don't get distracted and let them drop off! Renew them periodically even if no stacks have been removed. It's easy to forget to renew them if you are doing well or concentrating on your opponent's shields. Your opponent will tear through your health if you have no shields up.

As soon as you engage, break his shield and close range
After you talk to your NPC, he will turn and turn towards the center of the ring. As he runs away from you, toss a Shield-Breaker, but run after him as you do it - so that he never gets far enough away to be able to charge you and remove your shields.

Stay in melee range as much as possible
Stick to that guy like glue. Simply put, the "safe" way to joust is to keep Thrusting merrily away at melee range, and anytime the NPC runs, toss a Shield-Breaker and then run after him ASAP to get back in melee range. By doing this, your opponent can never get range to charge you and remove your shields, but you'll take a shield or two from him and gradually whittle him down.

Every now and then I will back up slightly (in all my keyboard-turning glory) or run away a tiny bit to get range to shield break again (if you reduce his shields to yellow or red, you'll win faster by doing more damage). Remember though, this opens you up to being far enough away for him to charge you and reduce your shields. If this happens, just refresh to green again.

Doing it this way often means that the mob can never remove even one of your shields, which means you should lose very little health over the course of the fight. But don't get complacent - make sure you renew your shields before they expire and drop off. If they run out, the mob will damage you very quickly while you try to get the shields back up.

Why I don't usually bother charging
Charging is pretty cool and a bit of fun. Wheeeeeee, zooming across and wheeling around. The problem though is that once you have charged past your opponent, you have such a wide turning circle that it takes you a few seconds to sweep around and run back to him (unless you jump-turn, and I'm guessing if you're having problems, you're not confident doing this). In that time, you are vulnerable to being charged yourself, meaning that you'll lose a shield stack, and for a few seconds he'll be able to damage you harder. So it's not as "safe" than just meleeing and shield breaking him.

Of course, if you are reducing his shields with extra charges, you'll be killing him faster, so it won't matter too much if your shield drops a stack from a charge; but if you've had troubles with jousting in the past I would recommend just sticking with this safe "melee method" until you're a little more confident.

That's it!
To recap:

- always start with full shields
- whenever the mob runs from you, shield break and run after him
- stay in melee range as much as possible, keep Thrusting
- if you get a chance to toss extra shield breaks, this will help you DPS faster
- don't let your shields drop

Oh, and don't forget to re-equip your normal weapon when you're done. It's pretty embarrassing to pop out of cat form after killing Chillmaw, and have a huge Tauren-sized lance in your hand because you didn't realise (in flight or kitty form) that it was still equipped. HEY EVERYONE LOOK AT ME! I'M REALLY DUMB! (*flashing neon arrows*) :/

Hope this helps - good luck!

Cold turkey: Day.. what are we up to?

2009-05-18T07:43:00.002+10:00

It's really very weird, suddenly not raiding, after doing it for so long.

I don't know whether I feel happy, or sad. Both, I think. Sad because I feel a little robbed, after working so hard... and because I've lost a big chunk of what I've been doing for the past couple of years. Happy because now I am actually sleeping well, looking after myself, and I don't dread logging on to face a bunch of stress that has to be dealt with before 7:30pm.

I know I could find another raiding guild easily. I could be raiding again this week if I wanted to.

The fors and againsts for going back

Part of me wants to, for a few reasons:

- I've raided so long, I feel lost without it
- I'm very big on having a sense of completion. Not killing Yogg is very irritating
- My character now feels "incomplete"
- I play to heal, and excel; there's very little healing to do when you're farming!
- I find it hard to spend time playing if I have no goal; I could research upgrades, but why bother if I won't be raiding anymore?

Part of me wants to stay down, though:

- I'm sleeping better and for longer (no more nightmares)
- I have more time for friends and family
- I have more time to get things done around the house
- I have more time to look after myself
- I can log on when I want, and log off when I want
- I can watch my favourite TV shows
- I can decide to have an early night
- I can go away for the weekend or for short trips without letting anyone down

So I still feel very torn.

For the time being though, I really don't feel like raiding anything - not even 10s. I thought I would.. I thought I would want to jump into 10s to at least be raiding a little. But I didn't realise how badly I needed a break from it all, and I'm enjoying it.

.. but part of me hates that my character is unfinished, Yogg is alive, and others are raiding while I have nobody to heal. I hate loose ends. I know that when Warcraft is taken down our characters will disappear... so ultimately we are pouring our time into characters that will be deleted - but I still feel compelled to "finish" Keeva. To cap out her reps, to have her kill all of the bosses, and to collect the best gear she can. I don't like leaving things unfinished.

My biggest, perpetual frustration

For as long as I can remember, my biggest frustration in Warcraft has been playing with people whose goals, standards and expectations do not match my own. Whether something simple like pairing up with someone who wants to do quests in a different order, or they want to quest while you want to farm... to the biggie - raiders who don't have your same level of commitment - it all just drives me nuts.

Of course, this is just the double-edged nature of MMOs. You're not playing with thousands of people who are you. I can't expect everyone to want what I want.

...but it still drives me crazy.

In my experience, there will always be a handful of extremely committed raiders who are there to get the job done. They have top attendance, they're at the instance early (no summons), and never have to be told to buff or move out of AoE.

But then there will always be people who drag their feet and drive me around the bend. The random AFKers, people who want to be summoned to the instance. The ones who ask for a repair mount despite the fact that I put one up last attempt. The ones who mess up and then say "lol my bad". The ones who feel like doing something else so they don't turn up at all. The ones who are either only there for loot, or just there "for something to do" - and don't really care what happens. And the worst of the lot: the ones who think they are awesome and/or extremely "pro" but are either bad players, or let us down in the ways listed above.

Plus there are the unexpected real life interruptions that can wreak havoc with your team, too - school, illness, family, work. These can't be helped, but do add to the frustration.

The handful of skilled, committed and dedicated players - I love them. I wish I could find 24 of those and mash them together. 24 people who are just as committed, can make all of the raids, don't need someone to hold their hand, and want to win. But in my experience, it is nigh impossible to get those 25 people in the same guild and on the same team at the same time.

So call me defeatist, or pessimistic.. or just call me a plain old whiner. I honestly feel that no matter where I go, which guild I join, or the content I choose to enjoy - (some) people will always let me down because the majority do not have the same standards that I do.

I'm tired of pushing people uphill. People who really only care about themselves, their loot, their personal goals - and are using the group to facilitate that. Some people might say, "that's the point.. you team up to raid and improve your character" - but I play for more than that. I play for team achievements, for group goals. So when I'm playing with 15 or so people who clearly don't care about the team, but only about themselves, it drives me nuts.

Yeah, I'm STILL annoyed about easy content

And on top of all of that, there's the fact that content is getting easier, which is making raiders lazier and lazier (this is more pronounced in raiders who did not do "vanilla" raids). They have come to expect fast clears and little work to be able to conquer new content (and I use the term conquer VERY loosely). There's no challenge anymore. Hard modes... sorry, but to me, they're just gimmicks. You kill the boss normally... now come back next week and kill him again with more raid damage and 50 elite Smurf adds that bite your ankles while you dodge pools of lava and periodic lasers that turn your healers to stone and make the MT take 250% damage. Zzz.

I don't want to detract from the people working on these hard modes, good on you, but I still see them as a bit of a bandaid fix to keep the "hardcore" raiders happy. Snore. I hate gimmicks.

So I think I might be done.

This might be it

I always thought that I would raid until the game dies. But I would say a good 90% of people are lazy, bad raiders who don't really care about anything except themselves. I know you good raiders are out there, but you are a minority, and that is incredibly frustrating to me... to the point of making me ill lately.

I'm actually sleeping now. I'm eating well, I'm not having nightmares. I can relax and do what I want, when I want. I don't feel stressed all day in anticipation of what I might have to face when I get home. I can work on reps, chat with people, play casually, and walk away whenever I want. I know in my heart that all of this is a good, good thing - it's positive. But when you drop something you've been doing 4 nights a week for several years... especially when it isn't "finished".. it just doesn't sit right. I want to say I'm done with raiding.. but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll have to eat my hat sometime down the track.

Who knows, maybe I will want to get back into it sometime later - lots of people take a break and come back. But I'm wondering if this is my "chance" to get out of raiding without letting anyone down. Without suddenly announcing mid-progression that I'm bored, bye. I want to do it. I turn 30 next week (ahh!), and I'm thinking it's probably time I stopped playing games all day and did something productive.

I don't know that I want to give it up yet... but I know that I probably should.

I'm just so tired of only ever being able to rely on a tiny handful of people, at best. The majority just keep letting me down and making things painful - and it happens over and again.

Is it even worth trying again, starting all over from scratch? I'm not sure that it is.

Ulduar screenies

2009-05-11T16:22:00.000+10:00

I was saving this post for when we killed Yogg, but that isn't going to happen now, so here they all are. Maybe I'll get a 10 man Yogg instead sometime.

NB: I don't have shots of the first couple of bosses because I was stuck at work.

Oops, apparently my Vezax picture isn't up. I'll have to edit it in later.

One day I'll do Yogg and finish things off.

Break from hardcore raiding

2009-05-11T08:50:00.002+10:00

This morning I made the announcement that we would be transitioning from a hardcore 25man guild to a casual 10man guild.

It stings. I play this game to raid; I will always be a raid healer, it's what I love. But it got to the point where I was spending every spare moment doing my Taz devil impression, whirlwinding around to try to keep everything running, to keep our heads above water. It's definitely been a labour of love.

Unfortunately, I had more faith in my team than my team had in themselves. A handful of them decided that we couldn't keep going (despite the fact that we had a very successful raid week). And we all know what happens then - it snowballs as more and more people decide that if we've lost 1 person, we'll lose more, and then more, and it becomes a race to see who can leave first - because nobody wants to hang around when things get messy.

Some people did us proud. They stuck around, despite telling me that they would like to find another team. They were committed to seeing things through and finishing what we started. Unfortunately we couldn't do that.

Other people just jumped and didn't look back.

And others took it that one teeeeeeeeny step further into "unhealthy e-rage" territory, leaving me love notes to discover in the morning:

...f#$k you, now im actually gonna help tear your pathetic excuse for a guild apart.

srs game... is srs.

I guess I am quite naive and old fashioned, I tend to think of this game as a really pretty chat interface - this is a social network to me. But to others it is purely about winning, about loot, about colouring in their achievement panes.. and it doesn't matter who they step on or step over or leave behind to do that. That makes me sad, because I count all of my guildmates as friends, so when they jump ship without a word, it does hurt.

I think in most cases it is probably embarrassment though, that people feel they can't hang around anymore. I would be lying if I said I wasn't angry at them for being quitters. If they had held it together for just two more days, things would have been dramatically different. Two days.. but they quit and walked away.

I don't hold grudges though.

Well, unless you turn your personal issues with me into a vendetta against my entire guild. That pretty much gets you stricken from my Christmas list indefinitely.

So for me.. it's time to go casual. Kick back. Breathe. Take a break from pushing 20-odd people up a hill when they really didn't want to be going up the hill at all.. they just wanted an easy ride to the picnic at the top.

I have to stop using so many lame analogies.

Time to farm, finish reps (finally got that darn Cenarion rep done), fish, do 10s, heroics, dailies. Blog!!! I've missed you, blog.

I need a holiday, and intend to take one soon.

Last night I had my first good night's sleep in weeks.

I chose the name Inexorable. At this point, the people who left are probably laughing and thinking it is an ironic name. Personally, I think it is more fitting than ever.

I'm not dead, I feel happy

2009-05-05T13:50:00.005+10:00

I've been neglecting you guys really badly. Probably not as badly as my Children's Week orphans - I really need to stop flying off cliffs and forgetting there's a small child following me...

I still don't really have time to write anything substantial. Working two jobs, plus some illness lately, plus a lot going on in the game has meant putting the blog to one side for a bit. Also, honestly, I don't really have much to write about at the moment because I simply haven't had a chance to stop and think about my character or general happenings in the game. I've basically been going through the raiding motions for the last few weeks and haven't even had a chance to stop and check out the new stuff.

I'm not a big fan of constantly regurgitating WoWInsider or MMO material - I do it sometimes for the big stuff, but I never intended my blog to just be another news snippet portal. I want to *write*. Part Time Druid's article on blogging is spookily-timed, sometimes I think a few of you druids are nosing around in my head.

The point is - I don't really like the idea of posting for the sake of posting. I could easily throw down some snippets from MMO etc, to make it look like I'm being active and whatnot, but the fact is that plenty of other people do that, there's not really any need for me to, and if I do it too often I start to feel like a cheater.

Add to that the fact that I could be posting these news items, but I don't have time to sit and discuss my thoughts at the moment. Take the legendary mace for example - obviously a hot topic.. but I don't have time to put my thoughts down about it. And even if I did, I'm not sure I would want to since I'm lagging behind everyone and everything has probably already been said. I don't really want to be rehashing other people's ideas.

I'm certainly not criticising those of you who are reporting back with your thoughts on items and changes.. I just don't like looking as though I am piggy-backing.

So until I can relax a bit and find some time to come up with some of my own content, I'm not happy just reposting blues etc. I don't mind posting on hot/shared topics, but I need to feel that what I am writing is valued and fairly original, otherwise I feel like I am doing myself a disservice.

A quick update

But I will give a brief update on what has been going on for me in the last few weeks:

Yogg Saron is cool.

Still working on Yogg-Saron. Awesome fight; kinda annoying that we need to take fewer healers though (and even then those healers need to spend time DPSing). We are pretty much neck-and-neck with our nearest rival guild; I think they may take the server first tonight if we aren't able to get back in there. That will make me a very sad panda, considering all the problems we've had in the last week or two.. but they have been working hard this last week. It has been a good race. I just don't like being second ;)

Drama llamas

The guild is bouncing back from the AMGDRAMA of our MT/Raid Leader having a progression meltdown and transferring in the middle of the night. Another officer took the opportunity to leave at the same time, shaving us down to 4 officers, which doesn't sit well with me at the moment - I prefer around 6.

We lost a few people to RL stuff, a few jumped ship because they felt the grass was greener in another guild that was 2 weeks/1 boss ahead of us, and we lost a few people to a mix: those who claimed RL issues but really just wanted to leave to go to a "better" guild. Poor form kids - it's not hard to find you, and it just makes you look like your pants are on fire. I expected better... but what can you do. I don't understand why people feel the need to cover up their intentions and reasons. I've been in a situation where I couldn't raid according to my standards and my goals, and it's horrible. If people really want to go, I can empathise. I just don't understand why you would lie about it - it just makes things even more unpleasant.

If you're really unhappy and you feel that moving on is the only solution, just say so. Just say you want to go to a more progressed guild. Don't look me in the eye and tell me you're failing school and giving your account away to someone or your car exploded so you can't afford to play anymore, and then let me notice you back and playing in another guild on another server under another name. We're not idiots, you just make yourself look bad doing that. Man up, say you're not content and that you need to move on. There'll probably be a little bit of annoyance, but a whole lot less than if you spin some ridiculous lie and then get found out later.

I think a few people should read Matticus' articles on drama and gquitting. Call me crazy old-fashioned, but I think that after you play in a guild for a period of time, it would be nice to do the "right thing" by your team and actually talk to someone. Failing that, at least don't lie when you leave.

It would actually be nice to STAY FRIENDS instead of you burning your bridges on the way out.

On a nicer note - we gained a few people, which is very exciting. I like new faces. Really looking forward to getting to know everyone better.

Why I'm tired

I spent a few days mashing together a new guild website after ours was taken down; another reason why I have had so little time to blog! It was important to get a site up ASAP to make sure we could advertise and also just to have a web presence. I'm so excited about controlling our website; previously it was not updated frequently, and I think it looked more like an online brochure rather than something that showed us as an active, progressive guild. Now that I am in control, I can update it as often as I like, and that makes me extremely happy. I'm weird.

Our ravaged guild bank went from 10k to 30k within a few days, meaning I could turn guild bank repairs on for everyone while we are learning Yogg. I've spent a lot of time this week taking out my frustrations through fishing, farming and playing the AH for the guild bank - it has made me very happy to see it back up to a healthy level. Plus, a very generous ex-guildmate quit the game and sent us 6500g - /wave Amarant! :)

We may not get the server first Yogg kill, which will be very disappointing. But boy did we go through a lot to keep raiding... so any disappointment will likely be short lived - I'm just glad we're still here. We've been poached, robbed, mocked, lied to, let down and generally knocked around, but we're still going, and I'm so proud. Everyone could have thrown their hands in the air and said it was too hard to continue - but we're still raiding and progressing, and it feels great.

Phat Loots

Loot is a non-issue for me at the moment. Often we will kill a boss and I forget they have loot (good thing the badges are distributed automatically now, or I would have missed a lot). I'm more interested in the kills. Obviously I want to get my hands on the T8 4pc bonus ASAP, but otherwise I have a very relaxed "if loot lands in my lap, cool" attitude. I never look at my DKP, I just don't care.

So far I have picked up the T8 chest, those nice bracers, and a ring.

I also have 3 Fragments of Val'anyr in the bank :)

My direction

This recent "unpleasantness" has kinda thrust me more into a GM/leadership role than I had previously cared to perform. I can lead; I just prefer to be the quiet achiever who does stuff for the guild in the background.

The other officers are great, and we have a great new raid leader, too, which is a relief because I'm not a raid leader. I'm a one-trick pony :P

I'm not sure how this will impact on my game or blog, though. Obviously things are more chaotic than normal at the moment, but I don't know how much extra time I will need to devote to the guild (over and above what I was already doing). I worry that I'm not actually getting any time to play other than for a couple of hours on the weekend - most of the rest of my time is taken up doing officery things.

Things are still a bit up in the air at the moment, but I am very wary of burnout. I don't want to let my guild down while we are going through some changes (plus I have 3 legendary shards, and that puts a certain amount of pressure on a person to stick around and not explode!). I hope that things will settle enough that I will be able to keep enjoying my druid - with the flow-on effect being that I am able to keep blogging about enjoying my druid.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back into writing (in my spare time, not at work, this is so naughty) soon. I still owe you guys a final Healbot writeup, after all.

Inexorable is recruiting!

2009-05-01T08:01:00.004+10:00

Hey guys, normally I don't cross-post non-druidy stuff in this blog, but I know there are some other Oceanic readers here, and I wanted to spread the word.

My guild is currently recruiting. We are leading progression on our server (Caelestrasz - Oceanic PvE), and we making a final push to get Yogg-Saron down (he should die on Sunday).

Images courtesy of Wowraid.com

At the moment we are seeking priests and hunters. Ideally I would like one of each flavour priest (holy, disc and shadow). We will also consider other dps classes, and wouldn't mind another holy pally.

I've just finished getting our new site off the ground - http://inexguild.com/ - it has more information about the guild, our progress and recruitment.

So if you're looking for an Oceanic raiding guild (or you have a friend who is looking) - have a look at the site, and feel free to send me a forum PM, email, or whisper in game to chat. I'm online every night if you need more info.

Thanks :)

Arbor Day Submissions!

2009-04-30T10:34:00.003+10:00

Better late than never, right folks?

Basically I had gathered everyone's submissions together (I have over 30 pictures!) and just had to create thumbs, upload, and post them all up - but we had somewhat of a guild "hiccup" last week that threw everything up in the air. Our guild MT and raid leader transferred to another server. To make matters worse, when members of the guild expressed their anger at his sudden disappearance, he removed our forums and guild website. Whee.

Luckily I grabbed a backup of the forums in anticipation of such a thing happening, secured my own corner of the internets, and with the help of some friends, they were back up within a day. I'm still working on the guild website, which is a fairly hefty job. On the bright side, I'm getting a handle on using WordPress, so if I ever decide to put TBJ onto its own web plot, it won't be so daunting.

Bringing things back up has taken up quite a bit of my time, plus I've had to jump into damage-control mode, so I've been absolutely flat-strap as we Aussies say... and I do apologise.

But enough of that ghastly business - bring on the trees!

1. Averna from Nerf this Druid says, "This is me keeping watch over the Argent Tournament with the guard on the hippogryph. I mean, *someone's* gotta do it, and the poor guy must get lonely up there sometimes. So I decided to pay him a visit =D"

And here she is getting around in style:

2. Here's Lissanna from Restokin relaxing with her treant buddies in the jungles of Northrend:

3. Jurik on Kel'Thuzad US enjoys dinner with friends, long walks on the beach, and base jumping:

... and hanging out with the local fauna in The Underbelly. Personally I'm not a big fan of being stung in the face by wasps, but to each their own!

4. Lanatha of Icecrown US says, "Since Lana's not used to the whole tree thing, she figured it'd be perfectly fine to hang around by the mushrooms growing by the moonwell in Zangarmarsh. (They kinda look like trees, right?)"

5. Moojoos from Caelestrasz (yay!) with is PG entry:

6. Naavi on Skullcrusher likes living on the edge and sleeps over an open fire, eep.

7. Ekzee from my own guild has a few snaps to share:

Even trees "gotta go" sometime! Where did you think they went? Behind a tree? UGH!

NO EKZEE! DON'T DO IT!

and the sneaky thing took this picture of me in Mimiron's room:

8. Kagrra of Cenarius-US and blogger of The Druid Team sent these multicoloured trees:

9. Blakro (pronounced Blackcrow) of Durotan US says: "Here's my beloved Resto druid main BEAR jumping (which stands for Building, Earth, Antenna, RAWRBomb) without a [Parachute Cloak] near one of the big crystal trees in Crystalsong Forest. Taking this picture was easier than "falling off (as) a log" and I didn't "bite it" thanks to Swift Flight Form. In the immortal words of my teecher Alamo, "when tree durid is FALL do not ask for HEEL and NINIRVATE!"

10. My buddy Camel getting a little big for his britches!

11. This is Homunkuhlus from EU Aman'Thul:

12. Adeanna of Lanakila on the Proudmoore (US) shows us the classic cranky-tree-casting. I'm not sure why we always look so mad when we're healing..

13. Gadfium from Emerald Dream EU shows us how to fall "with style!"

and here he is about to solo Kologarn (nerf)

14. Keredria US Drenden wishes everyone a happy Azeroth Arbor Day! The dispirited ent and angry oak spirit aren't quite so enthusiastic..

15. Aertimus from Darkspear US and blogger of HoTs Tree sent this - which was really weird because I was thinking of doing the same thing!

16. Stompalina from www.rawrcast.com has a sandbox tiger. I love it!

17. Maiara, Hartigen and Aidia of Evil Eye on Bloodscalp EU say there's no better way for a Tree to pass its free time than waterskiing in the waterfalls of Sholazar Basin. "Our roots make for excellent rudders and the leaves catch the wind perfectly!"

18. Podog from Aggramar takes it easy in Dalaran with a couple of friends.

19. Sylly from Rolling Hots says that this screenshot depicts the natural reaction of all other creatures upon encountering a tree, which is to immediately feel humbled by it and to need to pay it proper respect. "We got the shot by me eating a giant feast, and my guildies all eating a small feast and kneeling down around me while I was up on a little platform in Naxx."

20. Thedoctorr - Dark Iron US sent this one, I think it is gorgeous (it appeals to the photographer in me!)

21. Livith sent in these great moonwell pics:

22. Beruthiel from Falling Leaves & Wings asks, "Are you my Mother?"

"That is what I wanted to know, as I followed this tree =) Perhaps she is the one who dropped the acorn that spouted me!"

Goodness, I'm exhausted now.. what a marathon!

Thank you to everyone for your wonderful entries - please let me know if I have accidentally missed you - I had so many that even searching through my emails carefully I still kept finding extras that I had missed. I do apologise if I haven't included yours - just let me know and I will put it up.

Happy Azeroth Day - hooray for trees!

Thanks!

2009-04-25T11:37:00.003+10:00

Thank you all for your great Arbor Day submissions. They're all great.

I'll work on getting them up in the next few days - I have quite a few to sort through, and I'm still pretty flat-out going for Yogg-Saron at the moment!

Once he bites the dust I'll have more time to blog again :)

Arbor Day - not much time left!

2009-04-18T13:49:00.002+10:00

There's not much time left to submit your screenshots for Azeroth Arbor Day.

I've received some really great entries, but only a few so far. You need to get yours in by Wednesday 22 April in time for Arbor Day on Friday.

Info and instructions can be found here.

GridStatusHots fix

2009-04-16T17:40:00.003+10:00

If you're having trouble with seeing other druids' HoTs on Grid, here is the fix - thanks Quast of Shu'halo:

1. Make sure you have the latest version.

2. Open the gridstatushots.lua file in your interface/addons/gridstatushots folder with notepad.

3. Search for the following line:

local bname,brank,btexture,bcount,btype, bdur, bexptime, bismine = UnitBuff(unitid, i)

4. On the line directly underneath it paste:

if bismine == "player" then
bismine = true
else
bismine = false
end

Tested just now in Ulduar - other druids HoTs are no longer showing on my Grid.

PHEW!

Too soon, Executus

2009-04-15T10:30:00.002+10:00

Just a super quick note to say that 3.1 caught me by surprise (I was counting on it being next week), so I may not be posting much for a little while.

We're a hardcore raiding guild with a #1 spot to defend, so my priority in the coming weeks will be raiding and server firsts.

The final Healbot writeup IS coming, I just haven't had time to polish it lately. No doubt I will also post my thoughts on Ulduar, our nerfs and changes, and whatnot in the near future. I also expect to have much more to post about from now on, that we have some new content and challenges. I actually created this blog to have something to do while we waited for WotLK, but Naxx etc didn't really present much of a challenge (plus everyone had the strats already). While I enjoyed doing up a Sarth MT healing guide etc, but there hasn't really been much to write about, really. I miss creating diagrams and strategies, walkthroughs, etc. So I'm hoping Ulduar and beyond will give me more to sink my teeth into - both in raiding and blogging.

I have big hopes for 3.1 - for myself, my guild, and for this blog.

Hopefully by the time I get home from work the servers will be stable and I can jump into Ulduar and get started!

:)

Raider preparation for 3.1

2009-04-09T23:51:00.007+10:00

I've been feeling a little fidgety about 3.1. On one hand, I'm a hardcore farmer at heart. I love nothing more than seeing a bank full of potions, food, and consumables, all ready to go. On the other, I know there are changes coming in 3.1 that will mean I shouldn't pile up entire bank tabs of flasks. So I haven't.

But I feel like I should be doing more. That I haven't prepared properly. It's making me antsy. I don't like it! So, I sat down and thought about all the things that raiders would need to sort out before 3.1 is released. I thought I would share, in case others might get some use out of it.

You can grab a printable shopping list style version here. Yeah, I'm weird :P

1. Stock up, but don't go nuts

Food

Have a stack or two of normal food/water just in case you're without a mage.

Will you be using Feasts? Who will be carrying those? (they are BoP) Even if you are using Feasts in your raid, take a stack of your chosen food as a backup.

Have enough food in your bags for the first raid; plus enough in the bank for a couple of days. AH prices could be brutal at first, and supply could dry up temporarily - don't get stuck without any!

Flasks, elixirs, potions and scrolls

Again, have enough in your bags for one raid, and enough in your bank for the first few. Don't be caught short.

Don't go crazy stocking up on flasks & elixirs - in 3.1 herb nodes will drop more herbs meaning they will be cheaper and more plentiful. Have some saved, but not a whole bank tab full.

Remember that changes to mana regen plus the fact that you will be learning fights may mean you will use more mana pots than usual. Consider taking more than you normally would. You may also prefer to take some regen consumables (eg mp5 flasks) to begin with. While learning Naxx I used mp5 flasks, but once I got used to the instance and could manage my mana better, I swapped to spellpower. It might be good to have some options in your bags.

If you're a 10 man raider, you may not have access to full raid buffs, so you might like to take a stack or two of scrolls just in case. Fort can make a big difference.

Money

Make sure you have enough money on your character to pay for a few nights of wiping!

You may not get much time to farm or do dailies, and you don't want to be stuck with no cash, or have to borrow. Now's the time to do a few days' worth of dailies, or sell off some old bank items to pad your wallet a little.

Glyphs

Have you considered the glyphs you'll be using in 3.1? Buy or get a friend to craft you the ones you'll need. Take a couple of each just in case you decide to swap a couple of times. For example, I might use Innervate at first, but decide that I'm doing ok without it, and swap to something else. Or I might struggle for mana and think "boy I wish I had an Innervate glyph right now!"

Not sure which combo to use? Here's some help:

World of Matticus
Restokin
Nerf this Druid

Armor and weapon enhancements

Take these with you into the raid, so that as soon as you get an upgrade, you can immediately enchant and gem the item without having to port/hearth and come back to the raid. This saves time and frustration, nobody likes waiting around for people to enchant their gear!

Consider the items you might need - enchant scrolls/mats, leg armor, spell threads, cut/uncut gems. Buy them now while they are cheap! The prices are sure to peak at release, if only temporarily.

Bring a spare meta gem in case a new headpiece drops for you.

Go to Sons of Hodir & Wyrmrest and purchase a spare shoulder/head enchant to keep in your bags.

2. Mods, UI, macros

Mods & UI

Which of your mods are stable for 3.1? Which ones will need to be replaced? Do it now, don't wait until 3.1, you could end up with a mess.

Check Curse and WoWInterface to see if your essential mods have been updated for 3.1. If you update your mods now, you'll have time to tweak them, instead of wasting time later.

Is your UI what you want it to be? Now's the time to jump in and fix it up - when Ulduar comes out you may not have time. You want to jump in with a UI that is functional and won't cause you frustration while you're trying to learn fights. Check out No Stock UI for ideas on how to streamline your screen real estate.

Macros

Do you have all of your macros in place? This is something else that you need to get into place before 3.1 so that you don't have to mess with it on the day.

Useful pages to help with macros:

World of Matticus - A Guide to Mouseover Macros
Wowwiki - Useful macros for druids
The Druid Wiki - Macros and Addons

3. Talent point wipe and Dual Spec

Your primary spec

Do you know how you intend to spec in 3.1? Plan it now, so you don't have to fumble with it when you log in on the day.

Which glyphs will you need for this spec?

Your secondary spec

Make sure you have 1000g put aside for dual spec.

Plan your second spec - balance or feral? Another healing spec? Hybrid? Tanking or kitty dps? Raiding or just for fun?

If your dual spec will be for raiding:

Caps - hit, defense, etc. Does your offspec set measure up?

What holes are in your gear? What do you still need?

Examine gear lists and mark down your wishlist items.

If you don't get your preferred item in the next couple of weeks, is there a heroic or badge item you could get as a backup?

Gem and enchant everything in advance.

If the consumables required for your second spec are different, make sure you pack them!

Create an offspec outfit in Outfitter/Closet Gnome/Item Rack (etc) so that you can swap to that gear quickly during the raid.

Which glyphs will you need? Take some extras just in case you want to juggle different ones.

Do you know your rotations? Go test them on the capital city target dummies.

Set up your macros etc in advance, and practice them.

Ask people for some tips and advice on playing that spec.

4. Delicious epics

Loot wishlist

Look over the loot lists (eg on MMO Champion) and identify possible upgrades as well as noting the items that you're not interested in. Make a wishlist. Consider set bonuses and whether or not you want to keep them, or how you would juggle items around.

Get RatingBuster so that you can judge items on the fly. Looting is what takes the most time in raids - if you know what you're looking for beforehand, and have RatingBuster loaded, it will save a lot of time.

Load up on high ilvl gear (duh)

It kinda goes without saying that everyone wants the highest level gear they can get their hands on - but I'm talking about the first boss in Ulduar, Flame Leviathan, who is fought almost entirely from vehicles. The vehicles' hp scale with the ilvl of your gear, irrespective of whether it is the right gear for your spec. For example, I would be better off wearing a level 226 feral ring than a level 213 resto ring, because it will give my vehicle more health.

So grab as much high level stuff as you can to fill up your gear slots. Work out what your Leviathan set is, and make an Outfitter/Closet Gnome/Item Rack outfit for it so that you can change quickly for that fight.

DON'T throw out your 213/226 gear if you want 10 man achievements!

If you are primarily a 10 man raider or you're interested in completing the 10 man achievements, make sure you don't throw away your ilvl 213 and 226 gear as you pick up upgrades. The achievement "Herald of the Titans" requires that you not wear any items higher than 226:

Defeat Algalon the Observer on Normal Difficulty without anyone in the raid wearing any equipment with an item level higher than 226.

Keep this in mind when you pick up your new equipment.

5. Strats

Strats

Read over the basic strats to see if there is anything you will need to pay particular attention to and what that will mean to you.

Will there be heavy tank damage? Heavy raid damage? AOE dodging? Silences? Poisons and curses? Crowd control? Will you have a special role in the fight?

Strat sites that you may find helpful:

Strat Fu
Wowwiki
MMO Champion

For a druid specific article, read WoWInsider's Shifting Perspectives' preview of Ulduar.

6. For officers and raid leaders

Items to make your raids run smoothly

Consider bringing some extra materials or reagents for items that your raid members may need. For example, I often get asked to make pots but the person doesn't have any vials.Consider those frequently-made items and if you can spare the bag space, perhaps bring some along to ensure people don't waste time hearthing to gem or enchant their gear, or make consumables. Most people should bring these items to be prepared, but there's always someone who gets caught short, and if you can help them out, it will speed up your raid.

For example:

- raw blue gems
- enchant mats
- leg armor
- thread + a few eternals
- vials
(note: thread and vials are available from mammoth mounts also)

One person can be assigned to be the pack mule (I like this job), and ensure that they have a few stacks of gems, enchant mats, vials, spare flasks and pots, feasts, flares, essential reagents, repair bots, etc. This may be unnecessary 99% of the time but I like to be prepared.

An officer or two should also be assigned to carry abyss crystals. Make sure you state the policy on these too - are they free for all? Paid? DKP? Only for BiS items? Only for particular ranks in the guild? Arguments will slow you down.

Loot

Do you have your loot system sorted? If you use DKP, have you set/adjusted your prices? Are you resetting before 3.1?

Are there any contentious items that may cause problems - items that may need to be exclusions or exceptions to the DKP system?

Have you discussed how to handle offspec loot now that dual specs will mean people can make better use of that gear to help the raid progress? What are the priorities?

If a fragment of the legendary mace drops, do you know how to handle it? It's very hard to decide who should get it at the moment, since we don't know the stats or other possible procs, but as the fragments can drop from even the first boss, you should at least have a vague idea of how you'll handle it. MMO Champion's page on the mace can be found here.

Achievements

What's your raid's focus? Killing stuff ASAP? Trying the hard modes straight up? Doing some of the achievements straight away, or ignoring them? Work this out beforehand. If you intend to do some of the achievements in the first week, make a list of them and their requirements so you don't have to spend time looking up the possible achievements. Mark the ones you intend to go for and the ones you intend to ignore or come back for later.

Communicate to the raid team which achievements you will and will not be attempting, so that nobody gets upset because they thought you'd be doing them all in the first week. Set your priorities and goals, communicate them clearly, and stick to them.

Are there particular steps you are taking to prepare for patch 3.1?

Naxx relics to be purchased with Valor tokens

2009-04-09T18:44:00.003+10:00

Blizzard have confirmed that they do not intend for Emblems of Valor to be used to purchased Ulduar gear.

However, relic items from Naxx have been added to the Valor quartermasters:

Sigil of Awareness
Idol of Awakening
Libram of Resurgence
Totem of Hex
(etc)

So if you haven't managed to pick up your Idol of Awakening yet - don't fret, you'll be able to purchase one with valor badges soon.

New WoW resource: Wowraid

2009-04-05T18:52:00.002+10:00

A guildie put me onto Wowraid - a new site similar to MMO Champion, with daily updates on what's happening around the World of Warcraft universe, including a roundup of Blizzard posts, upcoming changes, etc.

The really nifty thing about the site though is its recruitment area. Guild leaders enter the classes and specs that they are looking for, and players can search using various filters to see who might be seeking them! The information is updated weekly (by forcing guilds to renew or update their listings), so you can be sure it is up to date.

When searching for a guild, you can filter by:

- Region (US, Oceanic, English, German, Spanish, Russian, French)
- Faction
- Realm name
- Realm type (PvP, PvE, RP, RP-PvP)
- Timezone (Oceanic, Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern)
- Guild name
- Classes needed (optional: spec needed)
- Main raid size (10 or 25)

Plus progress in each instance - which is either in the form of "have killed boss X", cleared the entire instance, or the big achievements like Undying/Immortanl, Sarth3D, 6min Malygos etc.

So for example, let's see who's looking for a resto druid.

In the picture below, I have said that I am looking for a US guild, 25man raid team, horde, seeking a resto druid, and I'm only interested in guilds that have cleared Sartharion with 3 drakes (you could enter Immortal and/or 6 minute Malygos too, if you wanted - or no achievements at all if this isn't important to you).

The site is still growing, so these lists should be longer as time goes on. For now, the results show that there are currently six 25man Sarth3D horde guilds seeking resto druids. From the symbols on the right, I can also see which of them have completed Immortal and 6 minute Malygos (for interest).

Nifty, huh?

Here's what my guild's page looks like: http://wowraid.com/recruitment/id365/Inexorable-US-Caelestrasz (although I need to find out our exact needs, I know we need DPS but I'm not certain which classes/specs).

While you're there, check out the real-life Warcraft scenery - photographs from around the world that match the different zones in Azeroth, Outland and Northrend.

Azeroth Arbor Day 2009

2009-04-05T12:27:00.004+10:00

Arbor Day is coming!

I spoke with Phaelia and she has given me the all-clear to run with Azeroth Arbor Day this year.

What is Arbor Day?
Arbor Day is a holiday to celebrate our wonderful trees. It is recognised in many countries around the world. Here in Australia Arbor day is at the end of July, but since the majority of readers are probably from the US, we'll go with the US date - the last Friday in April (that's the 24th).

What is Azeroth Arbor Day?
Azeroth Arbor Day was created by Phaelia of Resto4Life. It is a celebration of Tree of Life druids - both elf and Tauren.

Sadly, we all still look the same as trees - Phae didn't get her wish for diversity this year. Personally I think it would be logical to have the current "brown" tree to be the Tauren form, and the purple version to be the Night Elf form. The skins are already in the game, seems logical to me! No matter, maybe later in the year we'll hear more about some improvements to our forms.

To quote Blizzard recently:

Druid forms are not coming in 3.1, but (big but) we are working on them. I have to say that when these do go live, it will have been worth the wait.

Exciting!

How can I celebrate?
Send in your Tree of Life pictures!

Need inspiration? Check out last year's submissions.

*** Please submit your entries no later than Wednesday 22 April. ***
This will give me a couple of days to compile everything and publish on the weekend following Arbor day.

Things to remember

You can submit as many pictures as you like (but I may need to pick your best ones if I get a lot of submissions).

Please include your name & server (optional) so that I can credit you properly. Also please let me know if you have a blog so that I can link back to that.

Make sure your druid is in tree form, of course!

Your druid can be alone or with more tree friends. The more the merrier!

Remember that the theme is the celebration of trees - be creative with your backgrounds.

Turn off all UI elements before taking your screenshot (press Alt+Z to do this) so that your picture isn't cluttered with bars and bags etc.

If there is a story behind your picture, please include that also.

Other submissions
All other tree-related submissions are encouraged! Artwork, comics - anything you like - it's all welcome. If you have something to celebrate the Tree of Life druid, please send it in!

Advertising Azeroth Arbor Day
If you would like to advertise Arbor Day in your own blog, Phae has given permission to use the badges made by Valenna at parrydodgespin.com:

In fact I encourage people to advertise it, since my blog has nowhere near the readership that Phae's did - and fewer people will see it this year if we don't spread the word!

Last year's submissions were fantastic! I know that this year's pictures will be even better though, with some of the amazing new landscapes in Northrend.

Go forth and photograph! I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. :)

Community spotlight

2009-03-25T19:52:00.012+10:00

Here are a few great blogs that you may not have visited yet. Some are new, others have been around for a while but I have only recently stumbled upon them.

Druid Heal Raaff from Druid Heal describes himself as a "hardcore casual gamer" - unable to adhere to a hardcore guild's schedule, he wiles away the hours playing with stats, talents, and gear (to our benefit!) Druid Heal is home to the Resto Mega Guide, which covers everything from talents to idols to gems. Updated 24 March. Also check out his mana regen calculator here (updated for 3.1 as information becomes available). This is the blog I lean on when I don't understand the numbers (which is always). :)
Nerf this Druid Nerf this druid is a relatively young blog - it has been around since October last year but has been gathering a lot of momentum in the last couple of months, with some great posts about the upcoming changes in 3.1. Another druid who isn't afraid of numbers (yay!) - she was kind enough to put a lot of us out of our misery and finally test the Nourish glyph to see if it stacks with 4pc T7 - big brownie points right there.
Passport to Shandris Passport to Shandris has been around since 2007, but I only found it recently :( Recent posts include a fantastic wrap-up of the 3.1 changes (so far), and an ongoing guide to different facets of druid healing. Check out this guide to the best raid heal to cast.
Restokin Restokin is a brand spankin' new blog written by Lissanna, a druid who is well-known on the official forums and beta/PTR forums for posting helpful and informative threads. She got a huge plug on WoWInsider today (prompting a few bandwidth hiccups, I'm certain..) with particular emphasis on the guide to 3.1 healing. From the caliber of her forum posts, I know this will definitely be a blog to watch.
Upyursh This is another fairly new blog - another Aussie druid! Check out this great guide for the G9 mouse and G13 gameboard. So far, lots of great druid-centric addon, macro, and peripheral info. Nom. Another blog to watch :)

Do you know of any other great druid blogs (new or established)? Let me know and I will highlight them in another Community Spotlight post in the future.

Ulduar "Immortal" to be per-boss, not per-lockout period

2009-03-24T13:31:00.004+10:00

Hurrah!

The Undying/Immortal achievements in Ulduar have been created on a per-boss basis; that is, you don't have to do the entire instance without anyone dying; you can keep working on the achievement over as many raids as you need to.

The Undying, Part Two has been renamed to "Champion of Ulduar" and now require you to kill each boss without dying, but not necessarily during the same reset Title Reward: Champion of Ulduar.

The Immortal, Part Two has been renamed to "Conqueror of Ulduar" and now require you to kill each boss in Heroic difficulty without dying, but not necessarily during the same reset. Title Reward: Conqueror of Ulduar. (Source).

While I do think this "dumbs down" the achievement a little, I really can't get away from the hatred I feel towards the current Immortal achievement. There's just too much random luck involved; too many times that you are put at the mercy of a bad internet connection.

Previously, I would have (sullenly!) sat myself out of a raid rather than risk the title for others. In Ulduar though, it won't matter - because I won't be jeopardising an entire week's work for 24 other people by disconnecting on the final boss; at worst, it would stop them from getting one boss. That's still not good, of course, but it wouldn't be the way it is now - slog your way through the entire instance for several hours, allllllllllmost get the achievement, and then have someone disconnect in a void zone, YAY! This time around, if they disconnect and die, it hasn't ruined the entire week's effort - it just means that there's one last boss to finish off for the achievement.

Some quick notes, as summarised on the WoW forums:

-2nd attempts in the same reset will not count, only first try
-Can be done over multiple resets
-Algalon is not apart of this achievement, which is intentional
-The titles are currently placeholders and should change when the patch hits
-Naxxramas Immortal/Undying will not change, this is for Ulduar only

I'm all for tough achievements and skill and whatnot, but the Naxxramas Immortal is horrible, stressful.. I hate it. The fact that Ulduar is per-boss actually makes me WANT to do it, rather than dreading it - I'm actually looking forward to it now!

Raid frame challenge: an in-depth view of Healbot

2009-03-22T17:51:00.004+10:00

This is the third installment in my "Grid vs Healbot" series. I had planned this to be a multi-part experiment and feature the other raid frame heavyweights such as Pitbull, XPerl, and so on, but really it's such a massive job to look at them carefully that I don't think I can commit to doing another one - not for a while at least.

But the most important challenge, I think, is definitely Grid vs Healbot. So many people ask, on a weekly basis, "Which is better, Grid or Healbot?" The answers given are often incorrect (due to people not understanding the capabilities of the other mod) or simply, "Try them both and see which one you like best" which is actually probably an excellent answer, but not what a lot of people want to hear.

So, without further ado, here is my attempt at giving those people are more definitive answer. This entry will be about Healbot's features; then I will follow with another to compare the two mods directly (I need to separate the two posts because of their length, I don't want to overwhelm people too much).

Legend

Once again, here are the symbols that I will be using to show what each mod requires to get them working to my satisfaction (legible, useful, and attractive, etc).

Note that the green check marks come in two flavours: ready to go, and ready to go (but you can adjust the display).

Some features are ready to go by default, but are usually set up in a way that isn't very attractive or just isn't quite what I want. For example, poisons will show up, by default, as an icon in the center of the frame, and a corner square also. I don't like that - I prefer my frame to turn green to indicate poisons. I could certainly get by using the icons, but I prefer to use different display options. So, technically I could install Grid and have poisons showing just fine - but the options are there if I want to make things a little more attractive or to suit my tastes better.

A plain check mark, on the other hand, means that the feature is ready to go and presents in a way that is nice and easy to read, and doesn't need tweaking to be attractive, and can be left as-is.

Remember - the final goal will be to be able to assess whether I could disable Grid and be satisfied to use Healbot instead. That, as a druid, Healbot can show me all the things I need to see in a raid, in a way that is both easy to interpret, and aesthetically pleasing.

Healbot

healbot
-noun
1. a bar-style raid frame addon displaying target health, buffs, debuffs and other information.
2. Informal. a healer who follows his/her target around and acts as their personal healer:
Keeva is my healbot for PvP.

-verb
3. Informal. to act as a personal healer:
Keeva healbots me in PvP.

Old Healbot
Healbot has been around since vanilla WoW; unfortunately, while being very useful, it gained a bit of a negative reputation because it would actually choose the "correct" rank of spell according to how much health your target was missing. This was obviously quite handy, but it did give the mod a bit of a bad name for "playing the game for you" - which is why I never used it. I don't like mods that make decisions (such as spell ranks) for me. Your opinion on this may vary.

Healbot: Simple, beautiful
But, that nasty business aside, Healbot is well-known for being simple to use "out of the box", meaning that as soon as you load it up, you can pretty much run with it. This makes it perfect for people who want a solid raid UI but perhaps don't know much about customising UIs - with Healbot you can just install and run, with minimal tweaking.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. ~Confucius

Healbot does have some pretty nifty bells and whistles, but its biggest sell point, I believe, is this simplicity - that you can use it immediately with almost no knowledge of addons or UI customisation. If you want to load a raid UI mod and run, Healbot is definitely a great choice.

Alright, let's get started on the nitty gritty.

1. Aesthetics

So, how is Healbot when you first fire it up? Pretty darn... well, pretty. The bars are a fairly good size, text is good.. and it has a really cool tooltip that shows you what your buttons are bound to, and what your heals should land for (how cool is that - especially if you're like me and don't run with any spell buttons on your UI).

Healbot when first loaded - showing tooltip

So if you wanted to walk into a raid right that second, your frames would be a decent size, legible, and attractive, even without tweaking them or personalising them to taste.

Let's rate things in the same way that I assessed Grid.

There's really not much to fault here. In terms of basic aesthetics, Healbot is excellent, and it is excellent with very little initial tweaking.

Despite its simplicity, Healbot does have a lot of options for changing its appearance. For example, some people prefer the green bars (that change colour gradually according to health deficit). I personally prefer my bars to be coloured by class, so at a glance I can see the class of person taking damage, and make split-second decisions - ie, triage.

Contrary to popular belief, Healbot doesn't have to be green bars and only green bars - you can set it up to be coloured by class (like Grid), if you want to, although I think many Healbot users will call me a heathen for doing this :)

Healbot and Grid, both set to display frames by class colour. Please don't hurt me.

You can also change the size of the bars, number of columns (something you can't do in Grid), font type and size, border, background, group headers (and customise those as well). When it comes to displaying buffs and debuffs, you can choose between border and frame colours as well as the standard icons. Not as many options as Grid, but whether this matters to you will depend on the number of things you need to display on your frames at any given time. And.. I think we should pay attention to Mr Confucius' wisdom above - keeping things simple isn't a bad thing.

Healbot can show you 5, 10, 25 and 40 man groups. It shows pets, although I am disappointed that you can't force it to show pets coloured by owner type. I like to see hunter pets as green, warlock pets as purple, for example, so that I can prioritise healing. That is not a huge problem, only a slight niggle.

Another small problem is that there is no background to the individual frames (perhaps this is something I missed). Grid allows you to set a customised background colour (eg red or black) to make health deficits easier to see. If you use the green bars on Healbot this is not a problem, because the bar will change to red as the person loses health; but if you are like me and prefer class coloured frames, this isn't the case. I like to have a colour behind the bar to show me more easily how much health is missing. But - this is more a personal preference than anything.

2. HoTs and HoT tracking

HoT counters are now built into Healbot. They are shown as numbers on top of HoT icons on the target's bar. Very attractive and simple. My main gripe here is that the counter doesn't show up until the time remaining has dropped under double digits (ie, 9 seconds or less). This annoys me because I prefer to see exactly how much time is remaining, so that I know how many other things I can do before I need to refresh my Regrowth, for example.

I also found that the counters are quite cluttered on the icons; in order to make the counters legible, I had to increase the size of the icon and text, and this obscures the person's frame, meaning that if they have a health deficit, it can be difficult to see. This would not be an issue for someone who chooses to display the HoTs off to one side (not on the frame itself) but as I prefer to have my HoT counters inside the frame, it is a problem for me. I found that having several HoTs on a target made things very cluttered.

Left: Healbot, set up to my preferred frame size, and showing all four HoTs. Disclaimer: different frame configurations will make your HoTs easier to see; this is merely to demonstrate that on my chosen frame layout, the HoTs are quite cluttered.

I don't like that there isn't a set position for each HoT; they are just put up in order of casting.

The Lifebloom counter also doesn't count down with a decimal place; it only counts in whole seconds. If this is what you are used to, you will probably be quite efficient, regardless; but having fractions of a second display can make your Lifebloom rotations much cleaner and tighter.

As a druid, I think that the HoT display is possibly the most important thing on our UI, and as such, this is what I really focused on when I was looking at Healbot. I will go into this more in my comparison of the two mods.

3. Buffs and debuffs

Healbot shows missing buffs, rather than showing everyone who has a buff. You can choose a colour to display when someone is missing a buff, for example, red for someone who is missing Thorns. You can tell it who to check for these buffs - by class, by type such as 'healers' or 'ranged', and of course, the tanks. This is brilliant. Basically, you set it up to tell you when the tanks are missing thorns, and if they are, it turns them red. When they get their buff, they go back to normal.

And on top of that, you can have Healbot play a warning sound as well - in case you missed them changing colours.

I definitely give Healbot an 11/10 for "missing buffs display".

However if you want to display who has particular buffs, then it falls down a little. Again, this is personal preference - some people like to be able to see if there is a renew on the tank, or weakened soul, etc - not necessarily their own pre-combat buffs. A minor issue for most, but probably something that some people don't want to do without.

Custom debuffs, another important part of my UI, are also handled fine with Healbot. You can enter your own debuffs, such as Frost Blast, and have it display in a special colour (and again, a warning sound if you like!). The colour can be set to the border, icon or frame colour (but not to corners as with Grid). The only minor problem is that you can only choose one colour for all custom debuffs; if you want two different debuffs to display as different colours, you can't do that.

4. Other

Most of these things are built in and turned on by default (or require a quick check mark or slider bar adjustment). I can't find the low mana alert (if there is one) or feign death warning. Death is shown as an empty bar (zero health), but I prefer DEAD to show on the frame.

Overall

I'll go into better detail when I write the final installment comparing the two mods, but for now, my super brief summary would be that Healbot:

- is really attractive out of the box, has plenty of great features and requires little tweaking

- has pretty good HoT display options built-in (no need for extra modules)

- has quite a lot of options for changing the appearance of the mod - and would probably surprise a lot of die-hard Grid fans. Still not as flexible and customisable as Grid, but it honestly has all the main stuff that most people would need.

- would be good for UI newbies and seasoned healers alike

Overall, Healbot shows you a lot of buff, debuff, HoT and healing information as soon as you load it. If you want to spend a little more time on it, you can pretty it up even more, but if you don't have that time, you'll still have just about everything you need as soon as you start.

Stay tuned for the final installment - Healbot & Grid side by side (dun dun dunnn).

Do you know of a great How-To guide for Healbot? There are a few out there for Grid but I had problems finding an up to date guide for Healbot. If you know of one, please let me know so that I can list them here to help out Healbot users.

The Empress' New Clothes

2009-03-21T22:12:00.004+10:00

Look what Matticus and Pike pointed out, if you missed it - Blizzard have given Phae her own Ulduar epic, from Iron Council (25man):

Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed

Isn't that wonderful?

I remember when Breanni got his in-game tribute, very cool. I think it goes without saying that you have to make a massive contribution to register on Blizzard's radar and have them place something in the game as a tribute - that's a pretty big deal, wouldn't you say?

Grats Phae!

PS - This item was already in the game as Vestments of the Sprouting Seed, but has been changed to be a tribute to Phae. Now I think it begs the question - did they choose this item for her because of its name and the fact that she is expecting?

I didn't know whether to laugh or groan when that dawned on me. Maybe it's just a coincidence...

Possible change to ToL talent - no need to be "in tree" to get cheaper HoTs

2009-03-20T21:38:00.002+10:00

A recent quote from GC regarding PvP as trees:

One change we are (probably) going to make that will help Resto PvP a little is this:

The Tree of Life talent currently grants bonus healing to group members and reduces the cost of your hots in tree form. We would like to change the talent to say "Reduces the mana cost of all your hots and also lets you go into tree form, which grants bonus healing."

In other words, you would not need to be ToL to get the cheaper hots (in PvE or PvP) so long as you had the ToL talent. In PvP, you could still use tree form when you wanted to be more tanky but your efficiency would not be so bad when in caster form.

So, basically, if you are specced into ToL, you would ALWAYS have cheap HoTs and good efficiency, even if you're not in tree form. The benefit of tree would then be the bonus armor, ToL aura, and extra healing from ToL and Master Shapeshifter.

This has been made as a change for PvP, but I can see benefits for PvE - there are times in fights when I need to do a little DPS, but I feel like I have to keep shifting into tree because I'm drying up, fast. With the changes to Lifebloom (and, to a lesser extent, OOFSR regen), this would be handy. Not a huge deal for PvE, but handy.

I wouldn't be running around often out of tree form - but it would be good to not have to have to worry so much about wasting mana if I do happen to be out of form and casting a heal or two.

Can't make it to Phae's farewell

2009-03-19T17:27:00.003+10:00

I can't make it to Phae's farewell tomorrow on Scarlet Crusade because I am working at my second job. The different hemispheres and whatnot make it so that it falls in the middle of the afternoon for me. Bah. Gotta get me a laptop..

BUT - let's just say that while I can't be there, my character will. In spirit.

... thanks to a level 2 boar. *grin*

:)

Tier 8 & 8.5 stats released

2009-03-19T14:08:00.004+10:00

Another quickie for you - the 10 and 25 man Tier 8 item stats have been released, thanks MMO as usual. Click for larger versions of these images.

Tier 8 (10 man):

Tier 8.5 (25 man):

There's also mention of Tier 8 idols, with the resto one being:

Druid T8 Restoration Relic -- Increases the spell power of your Nourish by 187.

I wish they would reverse the sets - I think the brown 10man set looks the best. But - I like both sets, so that's okay I suppose. I used to lament the amount of brown in our gear, but the Tier 8 set looks really nice. Perhaps because it's more brown and gold rather than just dull brown.

Fun and silly guild activities

2009-03-18T13:54:00.002+10:00

Still piecing together my healbot writeup, but it's been a super busy week (in real life and in guild-land), so it's not ready yet. In the meantime I thought i would share a fun guild even that I am running (again) on Saturday. I did this back in October when we were 70 but had just got all of our new talents and abilities, and it was great fun.

It's just a guild event this time around (although friends are welcome to come along!), but I am considering some server-wide activities for later :)

It's a fairly straightforward competition - people form up teams, we all assemble at the front of Kara, and when I say go, they all rush in and destroy the place as fast as possible. Here are the best boss kill times from last year:

44s Attumen
55s Moroes
29s Maiden
27s Opera
2m27s Nightbane
48s Curator
36s Illhoof
48s Aran
48s Netherspite
1m12s Prince

The bosses themselves only take about 10 minutes; the bulk of the time is actually spent travelling through the instance, and I suspect this time it will be much faster because at level 80 it will be easier to bypass a lot of trash. Plus, the trash that can't be bypassed will probably be nuked down in a few seconds, so I'm kinda picturing this long winding train of players and mobs weaving through the halls of Karazhan....

Here are the basic rules, if you're interested:

A WWS/WMO must be provided after the event to verify that you killed everything.
I'm not pointing fingers, but some people like to be "creative" and.. skip things. Every boss in Kara must die - except the silly animal boss.

Your team, your classes, your specs, your choice. Stack 7 shamans if you feel like it. WHEE!
Can you tell I copy/pasted this from my October entry? Oops.

All teams zone in at the same time.
There shouldn't be anyone else at Kara opening the gate, so the best way to do it is to have both teams standing back while I stand at the gate, yell GO! and open it for them.

You can skip pulls where necessary if you would like to. I really don't care how much trash you kill or don't kill.
It's all about the bosses. Skip as much as you can.. then just pray you get BBW for Opera :P

Prince must be the final boss. Other than that, you choose the boss kill order.

Teams must share a vent channel! This is for added fun and laughs.
This is a social event to help ease up some pre-3.1 tension. We're raiders and we're bored. A little friendly competition, perhaps a couple of small wagers under the table.. and being forced to share the same vent space. It's hilarious to listen to all the bluffing that people do to try to fool the other teams.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: When Prince dies, official confirmation MUST be given in the form of a screenshot clearly showing server time on the map. NO SCREENSHOT, NO WIN. NO EXCEPTIONS.
I ask for a WWS and a screenshot just to be sure. It used to be easier back at 70 when some people hadn't finished kara (?) so someone would get the Karazhan achievement as soon as Prince died - easy to spot the winners there. But now.. not so easy, unless you have a rerolled character in your group.

Plus, the WWS lets people see the crazy dps numbers and the insanely short fights.

And the booty:

WINNERS
For this challenge I will be donating 1000g prize money (of my own), meaning that the winning 10 people will take home 100g each. Additionally people might like to place their own bets on the side, I'm certain. Definitely encouraged!

LOSERS
The losers will each receive absolutely squat.

AMG BONUS PRIZE!!!!!111
500g bonus prize (50g each to each team member) for the fastest Maiden kill. MUST BE VERIFIED WITH A BOSS MODS SCREENSHOT - eg the message that says "Maiden down after X minutes Y seconds". No screenshot, no win.

The guild time to beat on Maiden is 29 seconds. Looking forward to seeing what happens this time.

I've run a few fun guild events in the past and I have a few up my sleeve for later in the year - currently in the planning stages. If you're interested in running one of your own, check out the Guild Relations forum - players have submitted a bunch of great ideas for fun things to do.

The Big Innervate Fix + Drucie comes back

2009-03-14T19:32:00.003+10:00

With the 40% nerf to spirit-based regen, Innervate has taken a big hit. On the PTR it no longer gives you back a full bar of mana, but around 75%.

Now, before they announced the changes to Lifebloom, I really didn't mind too much - I don't often use my own Innervate, so it wasn't the end of the world. But now that mana really will be a lot tighter for us, many druids are calling for Innervate to be added to the spells that were improved to compensate for the nerf. Our while-casting regen talent, Intensity, has been improved so that our regen while casting is around the same (or ever so slightly more), but Innervate got the nerf bat to the face, and the best we've heard so far is that Blizzard will consider changing it.. maybe.

Well, never fear, druid friends - Blizzard comes to the rescue today and quells our mana fears in the updated official patch notes:

Innervate: This spell no longer costs mana.

TADA! All fixed! Thank goodness!

...../tongue in cheek

Also, not remotedly druid-related but something that has annoyed me for a long time - in the category of "...finally!!!":

Badges and Emblems looted off of any dungeon bosses by a member of the party or raid will automatically be given to all eligible party or raid members. Party or raid members must still be inside the instance to receive Badges or Emblems.

Random baby druid update

Drucie is making a comeback!

Drucie is my "baby" druid. I have always liked to have a "main" druid, specced resto for raiding, and that is how they stay. But because I love soloing as feral SO much, and because I enjoy farming on a druid, I have alt feral druids.

When they announced dual specs though, I thought, "what's the point?" What's the point of levelling a second druid if Keeva will have access to the best feral gear in the game in Naxx and eventually Ulduar, and she can swap specs at a moment's notice? So sadly, Drucie has been sitting, unloved, since patch 3.0 (she didn't even have her talents re-entered).

I eventually changed my mind because I was so bored on Keeva. Once I was locked into raiding for the week, I couldn't do alt runs with the guild (having no 80 alts). And only raiding for a night or two a week was just NOT meeting my healing "needs". I have urges, you know. Healing urges.

Once upon a time I used to take off part of my gear to go do heroics. I healed them in my blue overalls, partly for the laughs, but also because it felt like much more of a challenge when you shed 1000 healing. I miss that, and I think I would really enjoy having a second backup druid to heal instances and raids, should the guild need it.

So I thought - Drucie is 64, why not keep levelling her, do some alt Naxx runs, and heal on her in my spare time when I feel like I haven't had my fill? Not only that, but let's face it, herbing in flight form is so much better than doing it on my hunter.. so having a druid farmer makes sense.

I'm having a lot of fun. It's been a long time between Mangles.

Tasty Tier 8 bonuses

2009-03-13T18:45:00.003+10:00

Good old MMO, what would we do without you?

Druid T8 Restoration 2P Bonus (Class: Druid) -- Increases the healing done by your Swiftmend spell by 10%.

Druid T8 Restoration 4P Bonus (Class: Druid) -- Your Rejuvenation spell also instantly heals your target for its periodic healing amount.

Before you have a heart attack over the 4pc, it's not an instant heal for the entire amount that RJ heals for; rather, an additional tick as soon as you cast it, rather than the spell having to be on the target for 3 seconds to start ticking.

It's understandable that you might read it as the entire heal, I think Blizzard's tooltips often leave a lot to be desired. I blinked at it, at first :)

Very tasty - having Rejuv start ticking instantly will be great for tank and raid healing alike - particularly raid healing.

But.. I can't help but worry that people will complain that druids are sniping heals by throwing 2k insta-juvs around the raid to patch up small amounts of damage before anyone else can get to it. Wild Growth + Rejuvs = unhappy Shamans, at the very least. I think rejuv may be headed for a nerf sometime.

Hey - I needed to edit this to say something.

I have two words for you:

Frost. Blast.

:D

T8 designs

2009-03-11T11:44:00.002+10:00

Final Tier 8 designs are out! Click for the large versions:

Visit MMO Champion for the rest of the sets.

MMO has also updated their list of Ulduar loot to date. Enjoy!

Lifebloom: my turn

2009-03-11T08:47:00.004+10:00

This is a brain-dump on the proposed Lifebloom changes, inspired by Bell's post on how the changes will mould druids' playstyles. It's short but sweet, and spot on. Go look.

Bell explains that there will probably be four styles after this change:

- ditch LB altogether
- keep on rollin' (just on fewer targets)
- allowing LB to bloom most of the time, for maximum longevity
- deciding on the fly whether to roll or refresh

My "new" style

It's a little hard to say how I'm going to roll (no pun intended) until we get into Ulduar and see A) how taxing the bosses are for tank healing and B) just how much pressure this puts on my mana.

I am predicting that for most fights where the tank is taking moderate damage, I'll still have full HoTs up. Depending on the damage on the tank vs the raid, the "free time" inside that rotation will be filled with either extra heals on the tank, or WG/spot heals on the raid. YUM! This is what I want.

There are some fights that I might normally keep another stack up on an offtank - say, Sartharion for example. I think I will be swapping to the "roll on the MT, slow stack and bloom on the OT" style. Of course, depending on the damage, I may use the micro-management style on the OT - slow stack to 3, then when he's about to run out, make the decision to either refresh to keep those ~1300/sec ticks on him, or allow it to bloom for a ~10000-15000hp heal in a hurry.

I've said from the start that other than on fights with predictable, timed damage (eg Maexxna, Loatheb, Malygos even), it's going to be near impossible to plan ahead to use the bloom - but we will have the option of assessing at the last minute whether to keep rolling, or let the stacks drop for a chunk of healing.

Mods such as GridStatusHoTs, Healbot's HoT timers, HoTCandy, Lifebloomer etc will be VERY important to people who want to use this style of Lifeblooming - because there will be a lot of last-minute decisionmaking, and an accurate timer will make a big difference. If you haven't used a LB timer addon in the past, I suggest you grab one now and familiarise yourself with it. They really do make a massive difference to your rotations and healing overall.

A test of skill, or a pain in the butt?

At first I was upset, because I would be losing the ability to roll LB on several people at once, refreshing each at JUST the right moment - precision timing takes skill to pull off, and it's extremely satisfying to keep those green numbers rolling while you are seemingly doing 10 other things at once. To lose that made me very sad - but then I realised that I would be making the same kind of decisions and using the same precision timing.

This time, though, I'll be adding in another decision - do I refresh this or let it drop? I think that many people won't bother with this kind of decision-making, they will simply use LB as a set-and-forget heal - stack it up and let it bloom without giving it too much thought. I doubt that will be my style, I think I will lean more towards watching the secondary target/s carefully and making decisions on the fly. Rather than just refreshing on auto-pilot, I will have to quickly consider whether to refresh or allow it to drop. So it may work out to be more quick thinking required, not less. That makes me happy.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want LB to be double the cost, I think that was a little heavy-handed. But I love the idea of having to make split-second decisions, so the "to bloom or not to bloom" question will keep me on the ball.

It's a little exciting. I like adjusting and thriving in the face of dramatic changes.

"I'm not dead! I feel happy..."

Personally I think that the people loudly proclaiming that LB is now useless are getting a little carried away just now.

That is precisely what they said pre-WotLK, when we got wind of those LB nerfs - I think I remember someone saying something to the tune of "only a moron would use LB now" and basically said that on beta, druids were just spamming Regrowth. Take LB off your bars, they said.

I think this is the same kind of deal. We'll need to adjust, definitely, but LB is still going to be just as powerful, just not as efficient, especially over several targets. So if there's still moderate damage hitting your tank, it will still be important. It's still going to provide the same health buffer as it does now, that hasn't changed.

I also see a number of druids saying things along the lines of Nourish doing the same healing as LB, for less mana, and you don't have to wait. When I see that, I think, "That's nice, dear, but I'm a HoT healer, not a Paladin." I want Nourish to be PART of my rotation; not THE rotation.

Disclaimer: If glyphed HT works for you, do it. If you enjoy Nourishing rather than rolling HoTs, do it. If you think LB is pointless and something else works well for you, go for it. We have a lot of versatility now, there's no real right or wrong way. Personally though, I play a druid for our HoTs, to provide that buffer on the tanks, to be a support healer to the tanks and to the raid as well. I don't want to be a tank healer or a raid healer. I want to be a support healer, and our HoTs are fantastic support for the other healing classes.

I don't see my HoTs as "stealing" healing from the pally or disc priest on the tank. I don't see my WG as a tool to raise my HPS by getting in before the shamans. I see these things as something I cast to help those other healers out - to give them a buffer on their targets so they can finish the job.

And I love it! I LOVE being support. I love being the assistant to the other healers. I don't want to be the star of the show (although I do love shining on particular fights, such as high-mobility fights or Maexxna for example), I truly love being the one who can race around helping the entire team in different ways.

It's what's so great about being a druid! I don't want to stand on the spot and Nourish someone over and over! I want to refresh my HoTs at the last second while I duck and weave and toss a WG on the raid and NS+HT someone who is about to die and refresh that LB again throw a quick Regrowth and let the OT's LB bloom because he needs the health right now...

*pants*

I really adore our healing style. I love having HoTs with direct heals to complement them. I don't want it to be the opposite, direct heals with HoTs on the side (if that is your style though - that's fine!).

__________

Maybe it's stubbornness, but I would like to think it is common sense when I say that I will continue to roll LBs (providing, of course, that the tank is taking damage enough to warrant it - there are some fights now that I don't bother to HoT the tank because the boss doesn't hit hard). LB is still a great tool. So it will be more expensive - so what? It will still do the job it is doing now, still healing for the same amount. It will still be a 1300/sec (your mileage may vary) buffer to smooth out that damage on your tank. That is not "useless".

Just use your discretion and adjust your style according to your mana constraints, the incoming damage, and the number of targets taking damage. Does the OT really need your LB? If he does, will slow-stacking and blooming be the way to go? If the damage is constant, LB will probably be valuable (even if you have to allow it to bloom, to save mana). If the damage is spiky and hits are widely spaced, perhaps consider Nourish or Regrowth instead.

Above all - be versatile - it's what we do!

PTR druids have NOT abandoned Lifebloom

Finally, for those of you who may be concerned because you have heard that PTR druids have abandoned LB altogether in favour of Nourish and other spells, please consider:

1. Until a few days ago, LB was bugged and instead of returning half the mana cost to the druid, it would return it to the TARGET. Would you use a spell that was double the cost but never gave you the mana benefit? No wonder they weren't using it much.. OOM-o-rama. Probably made some mages really happy, though... in my guild we have dubbed this bugged LB "ninerbloom".

2. Claiming that PTR druids have wholly abandoned LB in favour of other spells is poppycock. I've seen a few parses so far and they've all had a decent (20-30%) chunk of healing attributed to LB. Evidently it is not "useless". Obviously a lot of these testing guilds would be in the best gear around, so mana will be easier for them than someone in starter gear, but it's clear that they haven't shelved LB.

Some paraphrasing from the EJ Resto PvE thread:

I'll be the first to admit I was extremely worried about the LB nerf on top of the OO5SR nerf. But after downing Deconstructor on the 3rd attempt, most of my worries are relieved. I rolled LB/RJ/RG on the MT only and raid healed. As for mana, it got a little tight at the end on the last two attempts so I switched to slow-stacking LB when the boss was around 10%. I never ended any attempt completely OOM and gave away my innervate to a boomkin on the 1st attempt. The closest I got to OOM was 5k left.

GC stated he wanted us to force us into decisions on LB rolling usage. It felt good in there. I had to mind my mana and switch to slow-stacking LB at the very end when it felt tight. My fellow druid said the same thing, mana regen didn't feel as tight as he anticipated.

and:

The first attempt I went with how I am used to healing(constantly rolling on MT as well as aggressive raid healing) and I ran OOM quite quickly. However, after that attempt I was a LOT more cautious about "wasting" casts(IE I canceled heals on people that got healed up before my nourish/regrowth/etc finished) and refreshing lifebloom(I was actually doing what GC said... Watching to see if I should let it bloom or not). I also found that slow-casting lifebloom was the "best" way to do it.. at least for deconstructor(raid damage was heavy).

I still topped all meters(no priests in the raid); not that topping meters is the most important thing.

Honestly, the increased mana to lifebloom may be a pain in the short run, but it did make me a more alert and tactical healer.

All in all, after thinking the sky was falling its not near as bad on ptr. If you havnt given it a shot yet, I would. It took me one encounter to adjust to the changes. We even hit the enrage timer(on purpose) and at that point I was still at half mana with my innervate up.

Now, I won't lie, there ARE a lot of parses from the PTR showing druids using upwards of 60% Nourish, sometimes with 0% LB. That makes me cringe. On the other hand, some druids (such as those above) are testing on the PTR and adjusting to the changes, and reporting that it's not so bad. I've seen a lot of negative reports.. but just a few positive ones are enough to satisfy me that I will be fine, and LB won't be useless.

I still think double cost is too much. I wanted to state that for the record. I don't want people to think that I believe this change is awesome and justified. BUT - I'm going to assume that Blizzard has made up their mind, so rather than waste my energy stressing about it, I'd rather work out how to tackle it. If they end up reverting or adjusting the cost down (which is still a possibility), that will be a nice little relief - but for now I will just assume this is going live and I will need to adjust accordingly.

__________

So chin up, trees - Lifebloom is not useless; it's still powerful and valuable. It's just expensive now, and we'll have to find ways to tweak our styles to accommodate that.

We'll have to be more discerning, and ask ourselves whether LB really needs to be up on our target. LB might be a little pointless/inefficient on SOME fights, but it's already like that now - there are a number of fights in Naxx where I don't even bother healing the tank. If the same is true in Ulduar, I won't care, as long as this is not the norm. If a fight needs Lifebloom up on the tank, it will be up there - but the cost is something we will have to be mindful of.

As long as they don't take away the ability to roll on the MT, I will adjust. Double mana is a blow, but I do not believe it will be so restrictive to warrant shelving LB for good.

Viva la Lifebloom!

Busy busy

2009-03-11T07:29:00.002+10:00

I just wanted to post to let everyone know that I haven't dropped the Healbot vs Grid project - I just haven't had time to do the final stage, which is running both Healbot and Grid simultaneously in an actual PvE raid setting, the purpose of which is basically to see if Healbot does all the things that I normally have Grid do for me (that I now consider "must-haves" in my raid UI).

Unfortunately for the past two weeks I have disconnected on almost every boss in Naxx, which is frustrating to say the least. Infuriating? Depressing? All of the above.

I always used to disconnect on 4H when the first meteor came down, but whatever they did to Naxx to "optimise" it has made it absolutely unplayable for me. Obviously as a dedicated raider, the prospect of not being able to do Naxx anymore is rather upsetting. I only have a couple of upgrades that I still need, but mostly it's just the idea of having to sit out of raiding AGAIN. It's so boring. I really hope this week is better.

It's not my mods, I know this for certain, but running two raid UIs at once is probably pushing my luck a little.

Luckily most of the info has been pre-gathered, I've already taken a lot of comparison screenshots showing how both mods display things like debuffs etc. Once I have my bonafide raid test sorted it will just be a case of putting everything together in a meaningful way. So it won't take long, it's just Naxx's weird prejudice against me that is holding things up.

Last week I was booted from every single boss, and several times in between, excluding the bosses that I logged off for entirely so I didn't mess up Immortal for my team. I missed out on "Shocking!" - curses. The only boss I didn't disconnect on was KT. We finally got Immortal, despite chronic disconnection problems plaguing me and another healer, random disconnects for other people over the course of the night, and another healer being severely ill - but still soldiering on. What a team!

Still, I think I would relinquish my title and rewards if someone could just give me a guarantee that I could stay online for Naxx. It's like Felmyst all over again - but an entire instance. Makes me a very sad panda.

________

On a brighter note, shortly I'll be jumping into work on strats for Ulduar (mostly for my guild, but I'm sure I'll end up posting them here too). That is something I have been looking forward to ever since we stopped doing Sunwell. I'm itching to Photoshop me some diagrams...

I've also been super busy with a bunch of guild-related work, annnnnd I'm going back to my second RL job soon, so I have a bit to juggle. Lots of irons in the fire.

But I really love being this busy! :)

________

I'm really looking forward to finishing this part of the experiment though, so if Naxx goes well this week, I'll be able to finish my comparison post. If not, I may be able to test it on Sartharion, but I'll just have to wait and see how things go. If all else fails, I will go do a 10 man to test it out.

Stay tuned!

Very quick undocumented changes in 3.1

2009-03-07T11:22:00.007+10:00

Just a very quick note on some additional changes to the new PTR build.

Nature's Grace now increasing your spell casting speed by 20% for 3 sec. (Old - Reduced the casting time of your next spell by 0.5 sec.)

Tree of Life mana cost has been changed from 28% of base mana to 13% of base mana.

Please note that these are not confirmed.

The NG change is possibly due to the raising of Nourish's crit rate and the subsequent clipping of the GCD since Nourish is such a zippy heal to cast.

I'm not entirely sure why they're lowering the cost of shifting to ToL - I'm guessing for PvP. The only time I'm out of form in a PvE fight is when I happen to throw an offensive spell (and how often is that?). I have to admit I am entirely ignorant to the needs of PvP druids, because I don't ever PvP - but I'm assuming that's what this change is about since PvP druids have been asking for mana fixes for a long time.

Anyway - unconfirmed, so keep an ear to the ground for new info.

Addendum: an equip effect has been added to Val'anyr, the legendary healer mace:

Val'anyr Hammer of Ancient Kings - Equip Effect -- Your healing spells have a chance to cause Blessing of Ancient Kings for 15 seconds allowing your heals to shield the target absorbing damage equal to 15% of the amount healed.

WTB more info ASAP! At the moment that equip effect makes it lean more towards the direct healers and away from druids (QQ), but we'll have to wait and see the stats and any other equip/use effects.

We need more clarification on the wording, though - it could be interpreted as once the weapon procs, for the next 15 seconds any healing (I'm assuming effective healing) on the target will shield the target for 15% of that total effective healing. So if HoT ticks count to that total healing over the 15 seconds, it would still be good in the hands of a druid. Interesting stuff, but I won't get excited until we know more information.

I really hope they make this weapon viable for all of the healing classes, rather than pigeonholing it and making it a "pally weapon" or "disc priest weapon" by having particular stats or effects that point more to one class than to the others.

Healbot fans: I need your help

2009-03-06T20:36:00.002+10:00

Healbot and Grid stuff again!

I'm nearly done with my side-by-side assessment of Healbot and Grid, and whether Healbot can do all of the things that I like Grid to do for me.

But aside from that, because I'm not an expert on Healbot, I am POSITIVE there are some cool bells and whistles that Healbot can do that I don't know about.

So - Healbot fans: what are the features of Healbot that you just can't live without?

I want to gather together a list of "must haves" in Healbot and examine whether Grid can do them, and if so, how well. I've already found a few things that Healbot can do that Grid can't - but I'm sure there's other stuff out there that Healbot can do a little better (or that Grid can't do at all).

Can you help me find them? Because I don't have the time to be able to get into all the nitty gritty cool stuff, and I want people to know all the cool things that the mod has to offer. The more info that we can give people on the two mods, the better they will be able to choose what suits them.

The main problem is that I know what *I* like in Grid, but if I were to go through all of the options and things that you could display, it would take me forever. Instead, it's best if I ask people what they can't live without, in case it's something I don't use and haven't covered.

If you can point me in the direction of the cool stuff that you just adore, and a quick idea of where to change the settings, that would be great.

Thanks in advance everyone! :)

New Ulduar 25 man badge gear - sneak peek

2009-03-04T10:47:00.003+10:00

MMO Champion has released screenies of the new 25 man badge gear available on the PTRs. Here are the healer-centric items - click for pics:

Leather belt
Leather legs
Leather gloves

Cloth belt
Cloth legs
Cloth gloves

Spi/haste neck
Crit/mp5 neck

These items are purchased with new tokens - Emblem of Conquest.

Just like Heroism and Valor tokens, these Emblems will be used to purchase your Tier items, as well as "Runed Orb" (the next version of the Frozen Orb), Deadly Gladiator gear, and Emblems of Valor (1 Emblem of Conquest can be exchanged for 1 Emblem of Valor). Current prices are here if you are curious.

Couple of nice items. KT refuses to drop his legs and I'm way behind other people on DKP so I doubt I'll get them anytime soon; these new badge legs are a nice upgrade on my current legs. The belt might be good for a haste set (I find particular fights call for haste, but at other times I don't care much about it), but I lose regen. I need to reserve judgement on my regen needs until I see how much the Lifebloom changes affect me.

I am also still waiting to confirm whether or not the Nourish glyph stacks with 4pc; if it does, I'll need to stick with my T7.5 gear; if it doesn't, I'll be free to pick up new gloves, for example. Half of me is hoping for stacking for chunky Nourishes; the other half is wishing it wouldn't so I could wear my BiS shoulders, chest, and helm (which is finally going to be buffed in 3.1). I would hate to have them gather dust in my bank.

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I'm impatient, I want to start planning my Ulduar wishlist, and have a revised "best in slot" list. I'd like to follow the lead of Phae, Sydera and others who have put lists together, and perhaps have a BiS guide for each level according to the content you have access to, eg:

Quests + 5 mans + BOEs + crafted gear
Heroics + Heroism badges
10 mans + Heroism badges (some people can do heroics but can't do 10 mans)
25 mans + optional hard mode drops

I can see a table in my head with the content levels across the top and armor slots down the side, so rather than having 4 separate lists, it's all together in one table.

Another project to piece together over the next few weeks :)

Raid frame challenge: first impressions of Healbot

2009-03-03T18:34:00.007+10:00

BIG DISCLAIMER: Please see this and future posts on the subject for what they are: experiments and exploration, a chance to test out the other mods and report back to you on A) how easy or difficult they are to understand at first, and B) how they compare to what I want out of a raid frame mod. Yes, I love Grid to bits, I think it is fantastic. But I am perfectly capable of examining other mods and giving an honest and objective assessment of their cool points and failings.

PLEASE DO NOT leave comments attacking me because you think I am insulting your choice of addons.

This is a project to help the healing community get more of a balanced idea of the old Grid vs Healbot debate, the main points of which are usually "Healbot can't do what Grid does" and "Grid is stupidly complicated and takes hours and hours to set up." I'm here to actually give you an honest and frank assessment of what I think of the other mods, and where possible, compare the features (as much as I can as someone who hasn't used them for a long time).

Certainly if you think I have made a mistake, that I've missed a feature or said Healbot can't do something that it actually can, feel free to let me know, but please don't frame it as though I am launching an attack on Healbot. I am actually doing this to dispel the old idea that 'Healbot is bad and Grid is good and if you like Healbot you're bad'.

I DON'T HATE HEALBOT. I'm doing this to help, so please don't get your knickers in a knot over it.

Thank you.

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Well, so far I'm impressed with Healbot out of the box.

I wanted to approach it without reading any instructions, how-tos, or anything. A complete Healbot newbie. I wanted to see how easy it was for me to set it up considering that I have never touched the mod before - so I could see through the eyes of someone who is new to UIs and may be looking for advice on which mod to use.

I won't go into big detail because I'm still in the middle of trying to set it up to be a second raid frame to use this week, but I have to say I really like how simple it is. Some things I like so far:

very simple menus; everything is in front of you on tabs, rather than in dropdown/hierarchy lists, which can be a pain to remember and navigate

detailed tooltips at your cursor tell you exactly which heals are assigned to your buttons

the entire frame can be displayed as one column (as many old school raiders prefer), or in as many columns as you prefer. Grid is not as flexible in this way (I believe you need an extra addon, if this is even possible). I prefer a grid, but I know lots of people prefer to have one vertical column of health bars on the side of their screen, so it's good to have that option.

it's also extremely easy to swap between traditional "green health bar" style frames and by-class colouring (I prefer the latter). By using a few slider boxes and checking a couple of buttons, I made my Healbot's basic bar layout look just like Grid (ignore the HoTs!):

Healbot and Grid side by side - Healbot changed to look like my Grid settings

I would estimate that making Grid look like that, if you hadn't played with the mod before, would probably take close to an hour to find the right options and then get everything done by trial and error. Most of the time would be taken trying to find which of the menus to go to for each option (again, though, this is mostly related to the huge number of options Grid gives you). The ability to immediately find and change the look of Healbot really impressed me.

At first glance it seems that my assumptions (and what I've heard) were correct - the level of customisation isn't as great as with Grid. I can tell that immediately; all of the basics are there (and that's all that a beginner would need), but I can tell that I wouldn't get anywhere near the customisation options. The tradeoff, though, is that you can virtually use this mod immediately (after you assign your heals and cleanses). This would make it extremely easy for a complete UI beginner to use.

I'm also not sold on Healbot's HoT display; to a beginner it is probably great, but to me it is inflexible (I can't choose to separate them to different corners) and cluttered. But I will go into that in more detail when I actually do the write-up.

So far though, I'm pretty impressed. Looking forward to tweaking it more and actually testing it out.

Undocumented change: I've been hit with the nerf bat - to the face, evidently

2009-03-02T18:37:00.003+10:00

So I logged onto the PTR to check that it downloaded ok and that I didn't have another patch to install etc. This is what I was met with.

BEFORE

AFTER

I believe this is what is referred to as an unacceptable slap in the face. I'm cancelling as we speak!