Thursday, September 30, 2010

[Druid] The Sleeping Moonkin Kicked in the Head

With all this talk of Cataclysm being pushed out to December, even January if Amazon.com is to be believed, I figured that patch 4.0.1 would likewise be delayed. After all, aren't glyphs still a little messed or uneven on the Beta/PTR? I haven't heard anything about theorycrafting for them.

Heck, where's the theorycrafting and screenshots of the new Tree of Life? (Wasn't it supposed to get a new graphic?) I would have figured the resto druid blogs would've been all over those.

But this morning I got a rude awakening. Flying boot to the back of the sleeping moonkin's head. Of course, it would be the day after I made my lazy moonkin post.

What's this? MMO Champion says the 4.0.1 patch could be as soon as October 5th or 12th? Well, come to think of it, I guess the background loader did finish. But are we really ready? Are we that close?

I still have things I wanted to do before 4.0.1.

I wanted to beat Heroic Lich King.

I wanted to get my warlock alt to 80 while I knew how to play one. (Just finally in a position where I'm able to use my raid rotation in 5-mans.) Now I may have to learn affliction all over again.

I wanted to get my resto druid alt (my third druid) to level 50 before tree form disappeared.

Well... Bane of the Fallen King doesn't seem to be going away in 4.0.1, so my guild will still have a crack at it. It'll just take a little time for everyone to relearn how to play, but I'm concerned what will happen to the difficulty. Heroic Lich King is already a tough fight. With the removal of the 30% ICC buff, will that make a difficult fight too difficult? Will it be just that much harder or will it actually be a bit easier? What if some of our guildies end up with underperforming specs?

It's mostly for this that I wish 4.0.1 would take a little longer.

Since this wake-up call I looked at the balance druid glyphs and I started thinking about which ones I'll likely use.

Prime: Insect Swarm, Moonfire, Starfire, and Starsurge in some combination
Major: Entangling Roots (insta-CC!), Innervate (to support the healers), Rebirth (still learning H LK so people die a lot), Starfall, and Thorns (if it does enough damage to warrant using on the tank on cooldown) in some combination
Minor: Typhoon (now easily switchable between whether I want knockback or not) and the rest are quality of life issues

I also looked at the talent trees.

These I think are more likely to change leading up to release. Not significantly, but I would not be surprised to see some shuffling and number tweaking still. I'll probably have something like a 33/0/3 for when I finish out level 80. Oddly enough, the talent trees don't feel so much like "What do I choose?" so much as "What do I skip?"

Keeva already mentioned in her 4.0. resto guide that balance has 41 talent points, which is the least of all the druid trees. I'm not sure what happened between now and the last time I tried to build a talent spec on my blog, but it feels much more like almost every talent point I take in the balance tree is a given. The rest will depend on my mana situation and how much I feel I can safely give up for improved snares and roots.

The latter will be good for solo-ing as I level, but is of dubious importance to raiding and I barely even quest anymore.

Well, I guess the moonkin has been persuaded to get off its bum and start fumbling around for what its dps is going to look like. I'm still skeptical about next week though. Maybe october 12th, but the 5th just seems too soon. The PTR is still up.

2 comments:

Keeva said...

I don't think we'll see the new tree form until Cataclysm release. Although it's not a major feature of the expansion, it's of the things that is widely anticipated, so I think they'll wait to bring it out.

I really hope it isn't just a stock Ancient.

Hana said...

I hope it's not. If it's supposed to be something that really calls out "I'm using my super special cooldown" it should leave a certain impression.