[Druid] 4.0.1 Live Moonkin Impression

First things first. I have much love for Skywall Horde, and for the fantastic server shut down party we held in the Alliance inn in Dalaran. I also have love for the Alliance moonkin who joined us in all the dancing and merriment. It just goes to show that you can't be an angry person and play a moonkin. There's too much goodwill to be found among those who would play something as silly as a magic-using owlbear.

So, I got into WoW late last night after the long patch install process finished. My first stop was the auction house, to pick up any glyphs I could not obtain yesterday. But no luck. Everyone was gouging. Fortunately the guild bank was well loaded and I got almost everything I needed there. I just need a Glyph of Wrath now and I'll be in business.

For level 80 raiding I selected a 31/0/5 spec. As with all Cataclysm specs, it's more notable what I didn't take since the majority of talents will be found in any given build.



In Tier 2 I skipped 3 points in Moonglow. Though 85 druids are having mana problems in the Beta (problems that might soon be addressed), that's not likely to be relevant to level 80 raiding, especially to those in full ICC gear. I've yet to test this myself since my guild does not raid until Saturday, but the scuttlebutt on Elitist Jerks is that it will not be.

This frees up 3 points that I put into Gale Winds and Solar Beam. These three points? Completely optional. I could also have put them into Owlkin Frenzy instead, except that relies on me getting hit, which I hopefully will not be. Owlkin Frenzy will be helpful while leveling, but I'm not there yet. The ability to have my own interrupt (still good in ICC, especially as a 10m raider) is useful, and the extra AoE is just gravy for clearing out the trash.

The last talent I skipped over is Fungal Growth reason being that there's only one fight where I really wanted a snare, that being Heroic Saurfang, and without Wild Mushroom until level 85, this talent is too uncontrollable. We can have a general idea of where our treants are going to die, but we can't make them die exactly where and when we want. And we can only use them once every three minutes, which makes the usefulness of this talent spotty at best.

Everything else in the balance tree is pretty solid, though it should be mentioned that Sunfire is not working correctly and is not affected by haste in the same manner that Moonfire is. However, moonkin will take it anyway to get to Lunar Shower, which will help with a lot of our movement issues. This is likely a bug that will be addressed in a future patch.

As far as the resto tree goes, without the ability to access Master Shapeshifter (we can only put 5 points in resto) our only real choices are Blessing of the Grove and Heart of the Wild, but they are both dps increases and worth taking over skipped talents in the balance tree.

After having specced myself, I figured the best thing to do to get used to my new moonage was to join a heroic, and while I did queue for one, I saw an ad in Trade for the raid weekly, which was Noth. I decided I'd get some action faster joining the raid weekly than sitting in queue, so I whispered the raid leader and off I went.

The biggest change to moonkin in anticipation of Cataclysm is no doubt the change to Eclipse. It's now a core mechanic of our spec and a part of a young owlbear from the moment they hit level 10, even before they can transform into a boomer proper.

We now have a little Eclipse bar underneath our health and mana bars, which is half purple on one side with a moon on the end, and half orange on the other with a little sun. Upon logging in, there is a little diamond in the middle, the neutral starting position.

The way the bar works is simple. Keep doing nature damage and the diamond moves towards the moon. Keep doing arcane damage and the diamond moves towards the sun. When you hit either end of the bar, you get an Eclipse and do more damage for the appropriate element. Hit the moon and you do more arcane damage. Hit the sun and you do more nature damage.

But as you cast more arcane or nature damage you move the bar back in the other direction and thus the eclipse eventually wears off.

So the way the bar works is simple, but in practice there are things that could be improved. The biggest issue is that the bar is a tiny little thing underneath the mana bar, which doesn't help its visibility at all.

The UI does try to compensate for this. When in a lunar eclipse the Starfire and Moonfire buttons will be highlighted to give you an idea of which buttons to press, but when your field of vision is largely in the middle of the screen, who's going to be looking at a tiny bar in the upper left-hand corner? I don't click buttons either. I'm a keybinder so I'm not looking at whether or not my action bars are highlighted when I'm going through my rotations.

This would be fixable with add-ons, but unfortunately Squawk and Awe, the most popular Eclipse add-on, isn't fully updated for 4.0.1 yet. Andriele has a test version on the EJ forums that adds Starsurge, Sunfire, Lunar Shower, and the new Nature's Grace, but it doesn't do any power tracking. So in the meantime, I will probably try getting the test version running as my dot/cooldown timer and pick up Eclipse Bar Plus for the Eclipse bar. EBP allows the Eclipse bar to be moved out from under the player frame and enlarged so it can more easily be seen. It also allows for power increases to be displayed as numbers or percentages.

Considering how important Eclipse is for moonkin, it's a little surprising that some element of the sun and moon effect were not integrated with the new Power Auras-style alert that splash around the screen when certain abilities proc. I kept seeing these green floral patterns appear on either side of me and there's nothing incredibly obvious to say what they are. It wasn't until I looked at the tiny little buffs in the upper right corner that I realized they were letting me know that Nature's Grace was ready.

Power Auras works because the player personally sets up the icons so even if it's something as odd as a skull or a fist, they know what it represents to them. Green plants on either side doesn't tell me anything. They have no meaning. Well, they do now, but only after I kept staring at my buffs to see what the proc was. For a novice player who doesn't read patch notes or know about the Power Auras mod I can only imagine their confusion.

Oddly enough, while Nature's Grace is covered by the new auras, Eclipse is not, and I managed to hit an Eclipse numerous times without realizing that I had because there is no obvious alert for it and I do not look at my action bars or my character portrait when dps-ing.

I didn't have any add-ons installed when I did the raid weekly, but I believe my dps was reasonably good, because I was the only player to regularly pull Noth off the tank and I did it twice. I did feel very bad for the tank though, as he or she was no doubt trying to get used to class changes just as much as I was, and without Omen I wasn't sure how quickly I was riding up on threat.

Once I get mods set up to better track Eclipse, dots, and the new Starsurge spell (since I don't look at my action bars I don't see it come up off cooldown), I think I should be back in business, and it'll just be a matter of lining up in front of the target dummies and doing a few practice rounds to get the muscle memory set up.

I did change my keybindings a little, moving Typhoon to the tilda key so I could add Starsurge to the 1 button so it could sit next to Wrath (2) and Starfire (3), thus lining up all three nukes in a row, but otherwise my bindings are almost exactly the same. I should be reasonably comfortable by Saturday.

I'll just have to hope that everyone else adapts as easily.

Blog Azeroth: What's in a Name?

I don't normally participate in Blog Azeroth shared topic suggestions, but I realized that I'd never touched on this.

Character names are very special to me. I will never reroll a character on another server with the same name because it just doesn't work that way. The name is not an all purpose alter ego for me. Though I go by Hana in WoW circles, it's only because Hana is my main. For all other internet purposes I use something else.

In June of 2005 I was given a trial run of WoW and knew that I wanted to be a tauren. I picked the druid class and needed a name. I thought about it for a bit and selected Hana, a delightfully concise name with a druid-appropriate meaning. It was immediately accepted without complaint (ah, back in the day when good names were still readily available) and she entered the World of Warcraft.

Hana is Japanese for "flower" and it is pronounced "ha-na" not "han-na" as I often correct people. To my endless amusement, it's also Japanese for "nose" when the inflection is slightly different. Being tauren with a sizeable snout I can't help but chuckle. It's perfect for her.

Gillien's name is a longer story.

I can't create a character without a concept. I don't "I want to play an arms warrior" and then just start one up and go. Each character has their own personality, their own individual mission in life that affects what they do, what quests they take, and so on. If I don't get into their personality I stop playing them.

So I wanted to play a paladin, but couldn't start one until I had a good idea of who he or she would be.

Then, I was rereading an old story of mine which had a particularly machiavellian character named Gillian. The original Gillian was a politician, and willing to do whatever it took to secure his seat of power... so that when the time for disaster came, he would have the ability to do what it took to make sure humanity survived. The original Gillian made his share of enemies and doomed a lot of people, but humanity did survive, and largely because of his duplicity. After their survival was assured, Gillien resigned from his position, no longer trusted by his constituents and his career destroyed. He had been a heartless bastard in many ways, but he'd done everything for the right reasons and ultimately his act was a selfless one.

I realized that I had my blood elf paladin.

Unfortunately though, the name "Gillian" was taken by an orc on Skywall. I think it was a rogue or a hunter. Initially I was disappointed, but then I realized the pronunciation shouldn't change if I just slipped a letter over and made it Gillien.

Thus, Gillien with an "e" entered the world.

Gillien originally hewed closely to the concept that he was the original Gillian if he had been born a blood elf in WoW, but as time wore on he became his own person, the hard edges smoothed and he became more introspective. Much of this was because of my entries into the Blizzard Glboal Writing Contest, but it really started with the conclusion of the Sunwell event, which made the blood elf paladins, who had previously thought they were being all uppity about stealing the Light, realize that they hadn't fallen as far from the Light as they thought.

I don't consider Gillian and Gillien to be the same person anymore. They would have common ground should they ever meet each other, but they would behave differently under similar circumstances.

My final 80's name is a result of what happens when there isn't time to pick a name.

Darkker was created to join a group of coworkers on another server. They told me to reroll Hana on Dark Iron. I said no. Hana was a different druid. The one on Dark Iron would have to be a new one. And since Dark Iron was a PvP server, this was going to be a vicious druid that hated the Alliance (and with good reason considering how much she eventually got ganked). This one was going to be darker.

...

So I named her Darkker.

Yes, I decided to toss in an extra "k" in there just to change the spelling a little. I'm not terribly proud of it, but Darkker rather suits her name.

I know some people like to have theme names, or start/end all their character names with the same few letters so they're instantly recognizable, but I have to individualize all my characters or it just doesn't work. Even though they're both druids, Hana and Darkker are different people to me and I can't imagine ever going kitty or PvPing on Hana just as moonkin is an impossibility for Darkker.

What's in a name? Quite a lot. It's not just a name. It's an identity.

[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.

[Druid] I am a Lazy Moonkin

I have a white board at work that I often doodle on (in addition to tracking work-related information). Currently it has a picture of a sleeping moonkin oblivious to the world around it. There is a tree dancing on one side of it and a bear with its tail on fire on the other, thanks to my officemate, but the moonkin itself is still sleeping.

That's really been my approach towards Cataclysm news about moonkin. It used to be I tried to keep up, but not being able to participate in the beta made my interest wane because what was once relevent became no loner relevent at all. I know things are changing, patch 4.0.1 is going to land and I soon won't know my right from my left. I'm going to have a new spell called Starsurge and Eclipse is going to have its own UI interface. But how all that is going to come together I don't know or pretend to understand. When I try to read the concerns about moonkin from my more mathy brethren my eyes glaze over and the moonkin in me goes back to sleeping.

I actually understand and am more excited about the changes coming to holy paladins than I am about the balance side of things.

But I don't intend on changing mains. I just feel I'm not in a position where the changes are meaningful to me. If something's broken, I have faith someone else will fix it, because there are wiser moonkin than me and I sincerely believe that if we are woefully underpowered in Cata that Blizzard will do something about it.

It does make me feel a bit lazy though. What's going to happen if we try doing ICC after 4.0.1 lands? Will I be the nubkin trailing on dps because I don't know what I'm doing?

Well, I figure everyone else will be on a learning curve too... I won't be the only one. It'll be okay to be a lazy noob for a while and sleep is good.

[Druid] Forum Comments about Druid Healing Come Cataclysm

I was reading my morning dose of blue posts, when I came across a long discussion between Ghostcrawler and forum posters regarding druid healing. I am not an expert on druid healing by any means, but I was struck by a particular poster that Ghsotcrawler had quoted.

The hot topic of the discussion was what buttons a druid presses to heal in current content, which largely consists of Rejuvenation and Wild Growth, and how Blizzard wants to change this for Cataclysm. Apparently there was the notion that only baddie druids would stick to those two spells.

The difference between good and bad healers is really obvious right now. A resto druid who does nothing but casually Rejuv the entire raid is a bad healer on the vast majority of fights (i.e. non-damage aura fights).

Ghostcrawler begs to differ, saying that druids pushing the toughest hard mode content are still rolling majority Rejuvs + Wild Growth and performing adequately, which sounds appropriate for me given what I've read on the matter.

But then the comment that really got me was this:

Nah c'mon. You can at best be a mediocre druid if all you use is rejuv and WG, and it is unlikely that any such druid would find success doing 10 man hards.

As I said, I don't consider myself an expert on druid healing, but I have healed 10-man hard modes, and the vast majority of my healing comes from Rejuv, followed by Wild Growth, with a sprinkling of Lifebloom, Swiftmend, and the occasional Nourish thrown in depending on the situation.

Personally I feel like a baddie no matter the content I heal, just because I don't feel very comfortable as a tree. It's probably the HoT thing. Back in vanilla and TBC I was very happy being able to choose the right heal for the job and managing my mana pool. But when I can't be sure of whether my HoTs will fully tick out I feel like I'm just blowing heals for no reason. If I had to ration my mana pool in WotLK I'd probably be a nervous wreck of a tree.

But if the content I heal is any measure, I'm pulling my weight and doing just fine, relying primarily on Rejuv and Wild Growth. I can find uses for my other spells, but they're limited. For instance:

Regrowth - If I want to pre-HoT a tank before we start I'll toss this on because it lasts a long time while the tanks get into position. I'll also Regrowth Valithria before taking a portal.

Lifebloom - I throw this on the tanks for extra healing depending on the fight or phase of the fight as extra padding. Whether or not I roll it or even stack it depends on circumstances. Usually it just goes up when I have a free GCD and there's little need to HoT someone else, but if that tank's going to take a lot of damage in the near future I try to keep it stacked and rolled.

Swiftmend - While I like this while running 5-mans, I've found it surprisingly underused in a raid environment. I still use it, but many times I find I can count on my fellow healers to get to the severely wounded first. Unless I'm positive I saved a dps with this, its healing feels superfluous.

Healing Touch - Only in emergency in combination with Nature's Swiftness. Does anyone even use it otherwise? A shame since it used to be the old standby for a leveling druid.

So, yeah, I use my other spells. Would my healing be horribly crippled if I didn't? Not really. Not in a raid. And not unless something happened to our holy paladin and he wasn't there for the night and the disc priest or resto shaman got ice-blocked, prematurely faceplanted, or some other horrible thing.

When that happens I toss on the HoTs and Nourish spam the tank, but 90% of the time a resto druid is fine with just Rejuv and Wild Growth.

Honestly, I think it'll be fun to use more spells again. I feel silly casting HoTs all the time whether the raid really needs it or not. I'm sure I overheal like a maniac and it's considered a good practice, because if I don't, someone might die. They might not, but I can't take the chance.

Paladins often get shafted as the two button healer, but I actually feel much more dynamic in my decision-making and actually press far more buttons healing ICC on my paladin than I do on my druid. On a typical raid fight as a tree I will Rejuv, WG, and possibly two other spells (maybe Innervate or a couple other heal abilities). On a typical raid fight as a paladin I will Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, Holy Light, Flash of Light, Divine Plea, Avenging Wrath, and Judgement of Wisdom, guaranteed. And then maybe Holy Shock and Divine Illumination if needed.

Maybe my paladin won't be constantly juggling all those spells, but they are cast at some point in the fight. Whereas the druid does almost the same thing the entire time.

I'll try to get some Cata moonkin comments in sometime. Seems harder for me to get a coherent post going on that one instead of just dropping one off the cuff.

[Druid] The Fuzzy Swiss Army Knife

As of last night I have now performed as a tank, healer, and dps on every fight in ICC, all on the same class. I can't think that's something common. And honestly it's not something I set out to do.

I started ICC as a moonkin with a bear offspec that I used once in a while, but not very often. Our tanks have good attendance and we had other people with backup tank specs. Our roster at the start of ICC hadn't stabilized but the content wasn't punch-you-in-the-face hard so when we needed a third healer I usually brought in my paladin, despite the fact we already had a paladin healer.

But by the time we killed the Lich King and started hard modes, our roster was stable and we had a spiffy ret pally with a decent tanking offset. It was decided that what we really needed was a backup healer, so I changed my off-spec to resto, and I healed for many a hard mode if one of our healers was missing. I also healed the normal modes of the bosses we couldn't kill on heroic yet. I even did embarrassing things like heal in my moonkin gear because I forgot to swap gearsets. (Did that twice on normal Lich King and once on heroic BQL. We lived.)

Then our ret paladin retired, and a few weeks later our OT was going to be gone for a weekend, so I specced back to bear and tanked for a couple nights.

Since our healer attendance was good I left my bear spec up since I prefer tanking random heroics as a bear to healing them as a tree. I figured I'd just go back to tree when needed. And then last night we ran into a problem on heroic Sindragosa.

We were making fantastic progress, and got within 300k of killing her (so sad!) when our MT's internet gave out. He popped on, he popped off. He couldn't stay connected for more than a few minutes, and Sindy's not exactly a short fight. We only had a half hour left to our raid night and our only backup raider online was our unproven ret pally replacement, currently on trial with our guild. He'd never killed Sindragosa before, not even on normal. Heroic was out of the question.

We made the call to switch to finish the lockout on normal. I would OT and our usual OT would MT. (Two bear tanks. Such fun!)

Sindragosa went down easily enough on normal. It was a little sloppy, but that was because our healers decided to try two healing it for fun.

Then there was the Lich King.

When I play as my off-spec, whether it's as a healer or tank, I always try to fill in the role of the missing person. For something like BQL, where each raider in the guild has a usual spot to stand, I stand in the spot of the healer I'm replacing. It means no one else will have to adjust to accommodate someone being missing. For something like Putridice that means I will be the abom if our DK is missing or the Putricide tank if our bear is missing. It means I have to be flexible, but it also means that I really get to see the different sides of a fight.

Since our DK was the one who couldn't stay online that meant I had Shambling Horror and Raging Spirits duty. And I'd have to say that I'm really envious of our DK's ability to Death Grip the horrors to himself. I hit the first one with FF as soon as I could target it only to find out that it doesn't establish a threat table right away so I had to wait a second to taunt it. I was also terrified that a dps would pull a horror off of me since our more zealous squishies have made the occasional "oops, pulled threat" mistake while our DK was tanking. I consider myself a competent tank, but I can't help feeling a bit nervous stepping into someone else's shoes, because I want my substitution to be as seamless as possible.

We did have one wipe, which was totally random (the healer in charge of cleansing forgot to dispel off the MT going into Phase 2, and that was really unusual of him), but we downed him in short order. The new ret pally won some brownie points for being excellent about Defile, considering that he'd never done the LK fight before. It's really hard to find someone who can play and won't flag as having 25-man experience on GuildOx, so I'm hoping he works out.

Being able to say I've tanked/healed/dps-ed every fight in ICC, probably gives me some perspective. I do know that if I am to set up an alt/non-raider run for the guild (it's been brought up a couple times) that I will want to tank if we cannot get a guildie to do it. But I don't think tanking is the hardest role.

The thing is… once I know what to do as a tank, I might be a bit nervous, but I know what to do. The boss's attacks don't change. Damage is generally predictable. I pot. I use cooldowns. I tell someone when to taunt. The raid depends on a tank knowing what s/he's doing, but once the tank has that knowledge and is capable of executing it, the role of tanking itself is more routine. For an alt run that may include puggers I would want to tank instead of a stranger because I trust myself more than a tank I've never met.

The role that stresses the heck out of me is really being a healer. It might be because of my lack of experience (I only went tree once we started ICC hard modes), but healing hard modes always leaves me feeling like I'm running on a treadmill with a nasty set of spikes behind me. I toss my Rejuvs and my Wildgrowths, the occasional Lifebloom or Nourish, I'll top the meters on heroic Festergut and BQL, but even if everyone lives at the end of the night I'm still wondering if I'm doing it wrong. Perhaps the whole idea of blanketing the raid with hots just doesn't work for me because it's just a tick over time, whereas I'm comfortable with the machine gun style of paladin healing because you know pretty quick whether or not you're "doing it wrong." (Tank death will do that.)

While I hesitate to say that dps is the least stressful job (being ranged dps on heroic Blood Princes will quickly disabuse any notion of facerolling), it's a job I know very well. I can feel like I'm at the peak of my performance and still have the mental bandwidth to call out instructions during raid. Granted, I can usually do the same as a tank (if I don't have boss crotch blocking my view), but I have difficulty functioning as a raid leader if I'm healing a heroic mode. I'm very much a fan of audio alerts because if I'm healing I might not see what's happening around me, but if I can hear there's a good chance I'll react.

Still, there's a part of me that finds it fun being able to fit in wherever the raid needs me. I'd rather dps of course (I love being a boomer and booming is what I do best), but I like the challenge of being able to do whatever's necessary to get the job done. It's something that probably wouldn't have happened back in my 25-man guild, at least not without a lot of consternation, but being a druid in a 10-man there's a real opportunity as a fuzzy swiss army knife.

[Druid] First Pass 31-point Cataclysm Talent Trees

To the surprise of no one, MMO-Champion has the new talent trees up from the latest Beta build. Blizzard says the druid trees aren't as far long as the other classes, so much of this will probably change, but we can at least see where they're going.

Since I've actually raided as all four druid playstyles now, I figure I can probably talk about all four without sounded like a complete idiot (though kitty remains my shakiest), and the changes to all trees are actually relevant to me.

Balance

We can see right off the bat that unpopular or straight dps talents have been kicked out. No more Brambles or Earth and Moon. Even though Lunar Guidance remains in name, it now increases the radius of our Solar Beam and generates more Solar or Lunar energy for our new Eclipse.

I made a preliminary talent spec using the available talents and was pleased to find myself at 36 of 41 points spent, and this was after I'd taken everything I'd considered must have, or even taken talents I would have considered to be so-so just so I could continue up the tree.

For instance, I have a full three points in Genesis now, which is considered fairly worthless for moonkin in WotLK. But when the talents I'm skipping over are Fungal Growth (slowing targets in area of my wild mushroom or expired treants), Owlkin Frenzy (unchanged), and Lunar Justice (mana back from standing in beam of light over defeated enemy that awards honor or exp), is Genesis really that bad anymore?

I spent a full 31 points in the balance tree and those three talents were my leftovers.

On the resto side I spent 3 points in Furor (more or less the same, just with fewer ranks) and 2 points in Blessing of the Grove for increased Moonfire damage. There's nothing deeper in the resto tree that's moonkin specific.

So what to do with my last 5 points? Well, I'd probably pick up Owlkin Frenzy since having situational pushback isn't so crazy anymore and maybe put 2 points into Perseverance in the resto tree to reduce the amount of spell damage taken, since healing's supposed to be a bigger deal now. Or maybe two points into Fungal Growth, because the slow might come in handy.

We actually do have choice, which is kind of nice.

And what happened to moonkin form itself, since it's not in the talent tree? Apparently it's now trainable! Level 40 according to MMO-Champion. That's kinda trippy, and it makes me a wee bit jealous that other druids can /dance in moonkin form without being balance druids.

It might not stay that way though. Ghostcrawler says they're experimenting with whether moonkin form or Starsurge should be the level 10 bonus for specializing in the balance tree.

Feral (Bear)

The feral tree saw a lot of pruning of "X talent increases the damage of Y ability" as well as any pure damage or stat increase abilities. Feral Swiftness and Natural Reaction stay, but Survival of the Fittest is gone, oddly enough, since bears would still need it to be uncrittable. Mangle is now baseline for ferals, as a reward just for specializing in the tree, so that's not a talent anymore. Primal Fury lost the cat component and now looks like a bear-only talent. Thick Armor remains a talent so apparently the damage reduction just from our mastery alone with not be enough to cover us. We'll still have to spec into it.

Fury Swipes is a new talent that gives us a chance at a free auto-attack whether in cat or bear form, which is nice. Pulverize and Endless Carnage will synergize for more threat since the first does extra weapon damage and gives us extra crit based on the number of Lacerate stacks for a limited time, and the second will allow the Pulverize state to last a few seconds longer.

But the feral tree doesn't feel finished yet.

For one thing, Feral Charge is still a talent, when there is a new trainable skill called Skull Bash that does the same thing. The Brutal Impact talent has similar been changed to reference Skull Bash rather than Feral Charge. I doubt ferals will have both since 2 points in Brutal Impact will already reduces the cooldown of SB to a mere 10 seconds, and having two methods to charge and interrupt would result in a crazy amount of mobility while simultaneously locking up casters (though that would be fun). But then there's also an Improved Feral Charge, so… maybe we will have both?

I didn't find quite the room in the feral tree for a bear spec as I had with the moonkin, with 39 of 41 talent points spent, but that's because I pushed up the resto tree to get Perseverance for the spell damage reduction. If that's regarded as optional, then another 5 talent points are refunded (since both the Tier 1 Blessing of the Grove and Natural Shapeshifter are fairly useless for bears). But then what's left to spent them on?

As with balance, it's easier to say what I skipped over than what I kept.

I skipped over King of the Jungle (same as on live), Primal Madness (which I think has a typo, but generates a certain amount of rage when Enrage or Berserk is used), Nom Nom Nom (pure cat talent), Nurturing Instinct (same as live and still pure cat), and Brutal Impact.

With two points left I'd probably take Brutal Impact. More stuns and interrupts are good, and that would take care of all my points.

Feral (Cat)

I found cat to be freer to spec than bear, even taking what would arguably be filler along the way to arrive at my 36 and 41. For cats the key new talents is the lovable Nom Nom Nom, which allows the player to use Ferocious Bite to refresh Rip during the last 25% of the target's health. Primal Madness will increase maximum energy by 20 during Beserk and Tiger's Fury, so there should be less losing of energy when those are activated at less than optimum times, and Endless Carnage will increase the duration of Rake and Savage Roar, all of which makes the cat rotation more forgiving than its current incarnation.

I ignored all the bear only talents in the feral tree, but I put 1 point in Nurturing Instinct as a filler just to go further down the tree, because with healing being harder, getting more heals as a cat seems to work in my own interest. Who knows. There might even be a need for cats to pop out and heal themselves if a fight gets really bad, and since all cats will have Predatory Strikes just to get to the Tier 2 talents, it'll be possible to make that heal an instant.

In resto I nabbed Furor and Blessing of the Grove, the latter for the boost in Shred damage.

With 5 points left to spend I'd probably fill out the rest of Nurturing Instinct and grab 2 ranks of Infected Wounds since I like the kitty PvP, leaving me with 2 more points I'd probably drop into Natural Shapeshifter because of the PvP. Or maybe I could take Perseverance for the spell damage reduction.

Again, there are choices.

But the tree does feel a little lean for me. There are still talents I'm passing over, but they're clearly for bears rather than usually for bears (like Infected Wounds) because they do not operate in cat form. In the bear spec I made for myself I skipped over talents that still had a bear component to them. In the cat spec, there's nothing not taken that had a cat specific affect.

I'm gonna love Skull Bash in PvP though. Ten second cooldown with talents on a combined spell interrupt/charge that increases the mana cost of the target's spells for the next 10 seconds? Now if only cats didn't have to Skull Bash from a distance so we could reliably interrupt on boss fights like rogues.

For a different perspective on the feral trees I recommend Kalon's write-up at ThinkTank. I agree that a lot of the removed talents did things like boost our expertise and increase our combo point generation, but I'm not as concerned about them because expertise can be fixed with gear and even combo point generation might not be as much of an issue if the numbers are changed so our white damage counts for more or when we do perform a Rake or a Mangle the damage is more meaningful.

Restoration

I'm much less happy as with the resto tree than I am with the others, largely because most of the bottom tier talents really don't have anything to do with being a resto druid in particular. Most of the bonus healing to this spell and that spell is gone, with the higher tier talents introduced in WoLK being pulled in to form the bottom half of the tree, though a few oldies like Improved Rejuvention and Empowered Touch remain in slightly altered forms. Newer "quirky" talents such as Living Seed and Revitalize remain, and there is the new Efflorescence that creates an AoE heal after critting with Regrowth.

But getting back to building a spec, the early talents just feel like filler. Blessing of the Grove's bonus healing to Rejuvenation is the only direct boost to what a resto druid down. Natural Shapeshifter doesn't impact healing at all and Furor effects every form except the caster one. No matter what, the resto druid will be dropping two points in filler off the bat. I suspect this will have to change.

In Tier 2 Improved Rejuvention would be a must have, but its only companion is Perseverance, which feels like it should be optional, except there's nothing else to take at this tier and we've already seen what great options there are at Tier 1, so again the resto druid would be dropping a couple points in filler. Considering that it will no longer be possible to subspec until reaching 31 points in a talent tree, this is quite a concern for someone who wants to level as a healer!

Tier 3 is a bonanza though with Living Seed, Nature's Swiftness, and Revitalize all on the same row. MMO-Champion's calculator currently says that moonkin form is required for Nature's Swiftness, but even if moonkin form is now trainable I'm sure that's a mistake, because balance druids will be unable to get high up enough in the resto tree to use it, and resto druids can't cast heal spells in moonkin form.

Tier 4 only has Nature's Bounty of interest, but because of Tier 3's bonanza I was able to fill more points in there and ignore Fury of Stormrage (chance at instant, free Wrath) which I'm sure is nice in PvP, but I don't do as a resto.

I put full points in the rest of the tree except for Natural Perfection to take me up to 31 points, and then spent 9 points in the balance tree to get Genesis, Nature's Grace, and Moonglow. Swiftmend is probably going away through since that's supposed to be the level 10 ability druids will get just for specializing in the tree.

This left me with a meager 1 point to spent somewhere else, which is maddening because of all the "waste" in Tier 1 and Tier 2. Natural Perfection, with its crit bonus, sounds like a fantastic "optional" talent, but I can't take two points in it without dropping a point from Nature's Grace or Moonglow.

On the other hand, if I could get back the points I "wasted" on Natural Shapeshifter and a lesser degree Perseverance, I'm not sure what I'd spend them on. Perseverance I might have dumped points into anyway, but since I didn't get a choice at the end of my tree it feels like appetizing. Natural Shapeshifter I'm sure I don't need as a resto druid, but the remaining options aren't that appetizing past Natural Perfection.

More than the other specs, the resto druid feels like there's no choice involved.

Though it still could be worse. I actually can't figure out a spec with points leftover as a paladin...

In conclusion I'm probably most happy with moonkin, somewhat with bear, less with cat, and least with resto. But all of this is still early and hopefully there will be some more "interesting" talents to make things fun without us having to maximize dps, survival, or heals. I think the moonkin's optional talents like Fungal Growth are the most "fun" of the bunch and it would be nice if the other trees could take a page from it.

Selling Myself Short

I don't know if other people who have multiple 80s ever run into this problem, but I've been habitually regarding my feral druid's dps as "crappy."

This is the first expansion I've had more than one max level character with a main spec as dps, and being that I raid, I have a good idea of what feels like good dps and what feels... underwhelming. I know meters aren't everything, but they're a good tool for evaluating one's own performance and as a feral druid I've gotten used to feeling inferior to when I'm on my moonkin.

But then again, it's inevitable that given less gear and less time invested, that whatever my feral does should feel pretty "poor" against my main.

Then today I went on an ICC 10 pug on my feral. It was a good run, clearing out two wings before people failed on Blood Princes (between a lagging healer and an inexperienced range tank it wasn't so good). One-shotting Putricide was definitely a highlight though. After the raid was over and people were leaving, the raid leader thanked me for my "leet dps."

I was stunned.

My crappy dps alt? The one with virtually no drops from ICC until that [Whispering Fanged Skull] dropped today?

But going by Recount I had set a new personal best for dps on Saurfang. I was either #1 or #2 on almost every fight, even crappy ones for cats like Rotface. I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn't the worst geared in the raid, but not the best either. Definitely middle of the road in that pug.

On a whim I decided to take my dps and compare it to the benchmark of my own guild, using the World of Logs report for our most recent raid. As in, if I was applying for an open feral spot in my own guild, would I take me?

I stack up better than I thought I would, but I can't say my feral compares to our rogue and our ret paladin, her gear still isn't there yet (get rid of those ToC 5 leather boots!), but I think if she was full ICC 10 geared she could be competitive. I would consider her as a backup raider if someone wasn't able to make it.

So maybe I'm not so bad after all. Maybe for my gear I'm actually doing just fine.

[Druid] Not the Best First Crack at Heroic ICC

I was waiting to get our first crack at heroic ICC tonight, but when we reached Marrowgar there was something different about me. You see, I was a tree.

Our resto shaman couldn't make it tonight and our paladin healing lead really did not want me to bring my paladin since the role we were missing was our shaman's awesome raid healing. I argued that I'd probably heal better on my paladin, having healed as one since TBC, but the raid agreed to wait while I respecced and regeared myself.

You see, we're a small raid guild with only 11 regular raiders, and we hate benching. When our shaman is missing, we're down to our paladin and our shadow/disc priest who does the uber swapping mania. Two healers aren't enough so I often went on my pally if we needed a third.

But we're doing hard modes now so raid comp in all likelihood matters more, and if I can learn to play resto as adeptly as holy, then it would not hurt as much for a healer to be absent.

Since we picked up a ret pally with a prot off-spec who can fulfill the backup tank role I used Hana's off-spec for, I had offered to look into making a resto set. I built out what I needed in Rawr and read over Keeva's fantastic new resto druid guide.

The only thing is... since no one had responded to my offer on my guild forums, I didn't bother assembling anything because I figured people weren't interested. I'm known for sometimes going a mile farther than necessary, so I chalked it up as more than I had to do.

Until tonight. So I ran around Dal grabbing gear and gems while our raid was clearing trash. After they summoned me our JC/enchanter cut and enchanted the lot for me, and in I went, with jack squat but theoretical knowledge of how to play a resto druid.

HoT the raid, right?

Crap... my Grid's not set up for HoTs because paladins don't need them and as a moonkin I only bothered to add poisons and curses.

Wild Growth when three or more targets can be affected.

You know... that doesn't work so well when everyone's scattered around during a Bone Storm. It requires more heads up healing than I can manage as a nub tree. We eventually got people to be better about staying roughly in the middle of the room though so might not be so bad later.

Convenient keybindings are good.

It would have helped if Nourish wasn't the 7 key, Lifebloom wasn't 0, and my Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch macro wasn't the 3. Things that didn't matter as a sometimes heal bar for a moonkin turned out to be horrible as a tree.

In a nutshell, I sucked. I didn't even do half the healing of our holy paladin and our disc priest.

It's a very different mentality healing as a druid than a paladin. I can't help wanting to top everyone off, like immediately.

Still, we managed to get Marrowgar to 50% despite the horrible healing on my part, and in the end decided to save him for later. We were making a lot of mistakes, and I think if our shaman had been there we would have been able to handle it better.

So I went back to moonkin and we pushed on to Heroic Deathwhisperer, which we heard could be 2-healed, and she was. She was a one-shot. So was Heroic Gunship. (I would have cried if we managed to wipe on that.)

We were a little skeptical about spending much time on Saurfang, given that most 10-man guilds seems to skip him and come back later, but we gave him a shot and found out that we really weren't doing too bad. We had a heart-breaking 10% wipe as our best attempt of the night.

But because we wanted to kill the Lich King for our eleventh, who sat out last Monday, we switched back to normal and killed him so we could continue with the rest of the instance on Monday.

I'm thinking I might ask our priest to stay shadow on Monday so I can get some tree form practice in on our farm fights.

Final note as a nub tree who assembled her gear too fast: As I was writing this I just realized I still have my feral glyphs in my off-spec. Way to go!

[Druid] Solar Beam?!

From the Blizzard Twitter Chat:

Q. What change are you most excited about?
A. Some of the new Balance talents for druids, like Solar Beam, which works like Freya’s spell where it instantly silences a target and they have to move out of the beam to get rid of the debuff.

Holy moly, druids are actually getting a silence! And it's ongoing too. I wonder if it'll have to channeled. They must think highly of it if they'd call it out as one of the changes they're most excited about.

Talk about throwing balance druids a bone!

Now I have this funny mental image though of a moonkin charging up a big ball of light between its antlers/horns before letting it fly. >_>

Other Twitter tidbits for us:

Q: How will haste affect channeled spells. Will it be similar to DoTs and HoTs?
A: They will channel faster but their duration will remain unchanged. You will get more ticks on the same cast.

Nutshell: More haste will do more for our Hurricane (and our Tranquility for the times we use it).

Q: Will relics and wands be getting any new attention in Cataclysm?
A: With relics, the plan is to make them class agnostic. In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized. They will feel more like wands.

How to make wands and relics a bigger part of gameplay is something we’ve had many, many discussions on. Ultimately though we’d rather see warlocks, mages and priests casting their spells, not zapping someone with a wand. In Cataclysm we don’t expect to see much wanding, even at lower level.

The relic thing has always been uncomfortable. I didn't have one my entire vanilla career in WoW, because there were only a few in game I could possibly obtain; three of which were feral/resto drops I never got, the other (moonkin) which was a world drop BoE. Gold was a lot harder to come by in vanilla, so I wasn't about to spend what little gold I had buying a blue off the AH (and blues were worth something back then!).

My first idol ended up being [Idol of the Wild] from Hellfire Peninsula, and it was for a spec I didn't play.

Things were a little better in WotLK with a emblem purchasable idol available right off the bat, but I remember while I was raiding Naxx I would occasionally get asked why I was using [Idol of Steadfast Renewal] instead of [Idol of the Shooting Star], because the latter was clearly the superior of the two. And I had to answer quite frankly that the stupid idol had never dropped for my guild. I eventually got it, but not until the last week or two before Ulduar came out!

Again, things improved. Last tier's emblem started getting added to the Dalaran vendors, and then Blizzard took things a set further and just made them always purchasable. But they're still quirky things to balance around and they're really only usable by one spec.

I'm not sure making them into another stat stick is the answer, but it certainly would be easier for the designers to balance around, and prevent the creation of idols that everybody passes on. I had to explain to my 25-man guild why I didn't want to spend my EPGP on [Idol of the Crying Moon] because it was simply outperformed by the Starfire one from Naxx. Being the only moonkin in the raid, I didn't want to sound like I was passing on it so I could get it for free.

Q: When you say you're going to make relics class agnostic, does it include druids' idols as well?
A: Druid, shaman, paladin and death knight. It’s possible we will still keep some that are very specific to certain classes and specs. Overall though we’re not happy with the current design where an ability procs a buff on you. If it’s an ability you don’t use often, then the item is terrible, so they end up feeling really passive already. At the same time, the fact that we have to offer so many prevents us from ever giving you the choice of which one to use. So we make the Resto druid or Enhance shaman version every new tier. It would be a more interesting decision if there was a crit + Intellect relic and a haste + Intellect relic, and you can choose which one to use.

So it looks like goodbye ability procs, hello stats. They don't say they'll actually fold relics in with wands, but what's going to make them different? Aside from the fact we can't shoot them. And that it would be silly to have a death knight equipping a wand.

And that's pretty much it for druids. I didn't find the paladin-specific portion that interesting (what there was of it), so I'll leave that to the other bloggers out there. But we did get a few other general tidbits for everyone.

Q: Do you intend to have all 280% flying mounts scale to 310% when a 310% mount is earned, or will only purchased mounts do so?
A: Our current plan, is that in Cataclysm, you can learn a new rank of flying that lets all flying mounts move at 310% (even current 280% mounts). That will probably be as fast as mounts will ever get. We don’t like it that when you get a 310% mount that you stop using your old ones.

This is sweet. I'm sure some people will complain, because they earned their 310% speed mount through crazy raiding skills or crazy PvP skills, but I've missed the fact that I don't ride Malfas anymore because he's 280% speed and my Violet Proto-Drake is faster. Malfas has a story behind him. The Violet Proto-Drake is something that arrived in a mailbox.

Q: What will happen to our gems and enchants on gear that give us stats that are being removed in Cataclysm ?
A: We are going to change most gems and enchants that have obsolete stats like armor pen and defense..

This is probably going to result in some regemming for some folks, assuming the 4.0 patch drops before launch as usual. Last time healing gems turned into spellpower gems, which resulted in very little change for either my balance druid or my holy paladin, but this will be something all the plate tanks and physical melee dps will be concerned about.

Related to that, when the spirit to hit conversion in Cataclysm hits this means our Purified Dreadstones are going to end up looking more like Veiled Ametrines and moonkin will probably end up way over the hit cap.

Q: What kinds of UI updates are planned for Cataclysm. Eclipse and Soul Shards are two, but any others?
A: We have already moved professions from the skill tab to an awesome new page on the spell book. In fact, in the absence of weapon skills, we got rid of the skill tab entirely. We have a new talent tree UI that shows all of the talent trees without scrolling and provides the passive bonuses as well. We’re changing the glyph UI to support Paths of the Titans. We’re changing the PvP queue UI to support rated Battlegrounds. We’d like to improve the V-nameplate feature. We’d like to provide more information when you level up about what new spells or features are now available to you. We’re experimenting with better ways to organize buffs and debuffs and communicate procs and cooldowns too.

Sounds like quite an overhaul! I'm looking forward to it. I admit I'm not so great at designing my own UI. I pick up a mod here and there because someone suggests it and I think it looks useful, but it's all piecemeal and I don't build a whole "look" from scratch.

I'm glad Blizzard is hoping to clear things up for folks who aren't as big on designing their own UI, and they're just going to take a whack at it as a whole. They've made a lot of improvements lately (the tutorial is actually quite nice now, if you've made a new alt recently) and given the age of the game it's nice to know they're not resting on their laurels. Just because it works doesn't mean that it couldn't be better.

Q: What change are you most excited about?
A: We are changing the old zones probably more than most players realize. A place like Stonetalon is virtually unrecognizable. It has all new quests and item rewards and dramatic changes to the landscape. A zone like Western Plaguelands has actually been updated to reflect the fact that the Scourge are in retreat (which is not to say that the zone is without its dangers). Everywhere you’re going to see something new and surprising. I think a lot of players are excited about the level 80-85 experience (as they should be!) and the goblin and worgen zones (which if anything are better than the death knight starter zone, if you can believe that), but I think a lot of players are going to want to reroll new character of existing races and classes just to see how much everything has changed.

This quote almost makes me want to take one of my alts out to Stonetalon for one last romp, except then I remember some of the lowbie issues I had with that zone, like how far I had to run on foot to get anywhere. I guess it's better now that mounts are at level 20, but there's probably a good reason that we're not going to recognize it anymore. It needs the makeover--bad.

Western Plaguelands I have an alt perfectly positioned to do a final run through, and I plan to do it before Cataclysm lands. I might even do some Scholomance runs with her for old times' sake if I can get some saps (*cough* party members) from LFD to land in there with me.

I guess it's a good thing that the goblin and worgen zones are going to be interesting, but I admit I'm a little reluctant to believe they could be better than the DK starting zone. Maybe it just means they're more personal or there's more going on. The battle for Light's Hope Chapel was really a crowning moment for me. I did it on launch day so there really was a horde of death knights bearing down on the chapel and it made the climax of the starting zone epic. I don't think it's possible (or even reasonable) to make the end of a low level zone epic, because those characters haven't earned their mark on the world yet.

But maybe Blizzard will surprise me. There's still plenty of time before the expansion comes out.

[Druid] Resto Musings

I started to write my post about the druid masteries yesterday and found myself instead writing a post about tree druids, which isn't exactly a point of expertise of mine, so I cut it off and decided I should make a separate post for my leafy brethren.

In the time since I read the Friday evening druid preview, I had the chance to chat with some other druids I know in game to get their takes on it and most of them seem a little baffled by the Tree of Life change. It's kind of been a given that druids shapeshift, after all. But not all of them were outraged.

One of them, who wasn't particularly given to tree dancing (he was a very serious, game-face tree) was just puzzled, not exactly shouting thanks, but not bemoaning the loss of it either. The questions was more: why?

I guess since I read blogs a lot, and most bloggers are quite tied to being trees, my view is a little skewed. Maybe there are a substantial number of players who don't really care either way. So I did some thinking about the history of resto druids.

Back in the vanilla days, restos did not have any special form to call their own. They healed in caster form and that's all there was to it. (Well, except maybe casting Innervate on priests because goodness knows druids didn't raid if they didn't have Innervate for those priests!)

Then TBC came along and Tree of Life was introduced. It had problems at first and not everyone liked it. Only hots could be casted in tree form and trees had to pop out for the occasional Healing Touch/Nature's Swiftness combo or to Remove Curse or Abolish Poison. Trees moved slower too. Nobody PvP-ed in tree form. It just didn't happen. I remember our trees popping out to caster form on Shade of Aran just to make sure they moved away from him in time.

But after some tweaks, trees could cast more spells in form, pretty much all their healing and defensive utility spells. There isn't really a need to leave tree form anymore unless they want to help dps, which isn't what a healer signs up to do anyway. I don't think I've ever heard a tree druid complain about their inability to contribute to the raid's dps. I think I've heard more complaints from moonkin that they can't help spot heal without popping out of form.

So the primary remaining issues that are "annoying" are 1) they can't be CCed as easily, being trees (PvP-only concern) and 2) the druid doesn't actually gain anything by going into tree form.

1) can be dealt with just by removing polymorph immunity. While I've always liked the druid's inability to be polymorphed, it's not like I'd quit playing a druid over its loss. I don't face mages all that often.

2) is a tougher monster. With ferals it's very easy to see what they gain in exchange for everything they lose. They get a whole new resource system (energy or rage) and a slew of new abilities that can only be used in form.

Moonkin gain two raid-wide buffs associated with moonkin form (haste and crit aura), increased mana efficiency thanks to getting mana back from crits, and extra armor in exchange for the loss of all healing spells.

Tree gain increased healing done aura, increased spell power, increased mana efficiency from reduced cost of hots, and increased armor. It's a little less than moonkin, but the parallels are almost the same.

With balance druids, they just get better at what they do when they become moonkin, but becoming a moonkin doesn't make them better than a mage, and a balance druid outside of moonkin form is less than a mage, though they can certainly help heal when desireable (ex: Dreamwalker).

Resto druids similarly become better at what they do when they become trees, and being a tree doesn't make them a better healer than a priest or a shaman. A tree druid out of form will be less effective as a healer, but they could still toss out a few Starfires if they need to help dps down a boss. I still think that a resto druid out of form will out-dps a holy paladin.

Mechanics-wise, both trees and moonkin give up some of their base caster abilities to become the equivalent of a healer or caster dps of another class. It doesn't seem right that trees would be singled out, and if anything, I think there are more moonkin who would like to stop looking like a ridiculous owlbear than there are trees who want to be casters. Not that I want Blizzard to take away moonkin form either!

Perhaps what's really needed is mechanic gain for being in tree form. Cats and bears do completely different things when in form. Perhaps, in retrospec, a spell like Wild Growth could only be used in tree. Or trees could have situational cooldowns that are uniquely tree-like (ex: Taking Root - Temporarily immobilizes the player while something really good happens in exchange).

The thing is... the cat's out of the bag and it's going to be very hard to put it back. After two expansions of having restos become trees it's messing with the status quo, and what has been a core feature of the spec.

To be honest, trees will be gaining a lot by not having to be in form, and I could see potential cries for a nerf bat because of it. It's not so much that they can dps while keeping the same level of healing. It's really because I play arena as a healer, but the single most annoying spell a druid can use is Cyclone.

If there's no tree form, those restos won't even lose any of their healing capability to cast it. No mana loss switching in and out. No loss of spellpower because they're not in tree form. Cyclone will be less punishing for them to cast than ever.

Of course they won't have the increased armor from tree form either, so maybe that'll be something.

In the meantime, I've started playing my baby resto druid again. Dinged 36. It would be nice to try getting her up to 50 so I can join in the annual Arbor Day screenshot parade hosted by one of our fabulous tree druid bloggers, but I'm not sure I can level fast enough for that.

Keeva made a nice poster for the Pro-Tree movement. It's too big to use as a sig on forums, but speaks very clearly about how she and the other trees feel.

[Druid] Cataclysm Mastery Preview

This is a continuation from yesterday's post regarding the druid class preview for Cataclysm. Yesterday's post was getting long so I figured I'd continue with the mastery bonuses today.

Balance

Spell Damage

Spell Haste

Eclipse

Eclipse: We are moving Eclipse from a talent into a core mechanic of the class and making it less random. Balance druids will have a new UI element that shows a sun and a moon. Whenever they cast an Arcane spell, it will move the UI closer to the sun, and buff their Nature damage. Whenever they cast a Nature spell, it will move the UI closer to the moon, and buff their Arcane damage. The gameplay intention is to alternate Arcane and Nature spells (largely Starfire and Wrath) to maintain the balance.

Well, I was right that we would get Spell Damage for one of our masteries, but we got Spell Haste instead of Spell Crit for our second one. I admit I'm a little surprised by it, since this runs counter to the majority of the casters and Wrath has never really played nice with haste, but most of the time, haste and crit can be taken in equal amounts, so maybe we'll just look for more crit on our gear to balance it out.

Having Eclipse be our third mastery is a little disappointing, if only because it's not "new," but I'm a little curious what this UI is going to look like. I currently have a mental picture of one of those tower bars in WG or EotS where there's Horde and Alliance color blocks on either end and the bar in the middle goes one way or the other depending on who's capping, except for moonkin I'm picturing a sun on one end and a crescent moon on the other.

If we're supposed to maintain the balance between the two, what's to stop someone from just twisting spells IS/MF/W/SF/W/SF/IS/MF/etc? Or would that result in no buff at all?

I also wonder how this will make it less random. Will the bar just always be up?

Feral (Cat)

Melee Damage

Melee Critical Damage

Bleed Damage

Feral (Bear)

Damage Reduction

Vengeance

Savage Defense

Bleed Damage and Savage Defense: Feral druids will receive two sets of passive bonuses depending on whether the druid is in cat or bear form. Bleed Damage will be improved for cats. Savage Defense is the current bear mechanic for converting crits into damage absorption and will be improved for bears.

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s unbuffed health. For boss encounters we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Feral tree and the druid is in bear form -- these values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Feral tree and are in bear form, so you won’t see Balance, Restoration, or Feral druids in cat form running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today -- there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so the Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is that all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

Cats get increased Melee Damage as expected, but they don't go down the Melee Haste route of the enhance shaman, fury warriors, or combat rogues. Rather, they get Melee Critical Damage like assassination rogues. The third mastery is the boring but practical increased Bleed Damage, which pretty much means: Don't forget to refresh Mangle, not that you ever did forget, did you?

The first two bear bonuses, Damage Reduction and Vengeance, aren't really a surprise since the other tanks had them. Savage Defense being moved to a mastery is though. I'm just not sure why. It already scales pretty nicely with crit and attack power, but supposedly it's going to be made "better."

I admit I'm more interested in seeing what the tweaks to cat rotation and additions to bear tanking will be like than the masteries themselves.

Restoration

Healing

Meditation

HoT Scale Healing

HoT Scale Healing: HoTs will do increased healing on more wounded targets. The mechanic is similar to that of the Restoration shaman, but with HoTs instead of direct heals. In Cataclysm, we anticipate druids using a greater variety of their spells so there is a distinction between healing and HoT healing.

Healing and Meditation were givens again, after seeing the other healer previews. HoT Scale Healing is nice though, if only because hots are better at providing a cushion for injuried players than bringing them back from the brink of death.

One of my favorite things in arena is when we catch a resto druid druid and his dps unawares, so the druid doesn't have a chance to hot him up before the kill. A dps could be maddeningly close to dead and not die if he has a full suite of hots on him. But if he doesn't have anything and the HT+NS combo is on cooldown that's a dead dps.

Of course, this means that resto druids will now be even more annoying in arena.

[Druid] Preview's Up! Changes Are... Interesting...

Well, some of what I expected came true. Some didn't. I'll just go through everything though as the preview brought it up.

New Druid Abilities

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

As a sometimes bear druid, there's a lot to like about getting Thrash. It's another multi-target attack spell, will buff damage from Swipe with talents, and give us another button to press to prevent multi-target/ heroic tanking from getting too monotonous. The name makes me think of sharks in the water, but... maybe that's just me.

Stampeding Roar seems kind of weird to me, since it sounds like the bear/cat is scaring their party members into running faster. While I can think of instances where this would be useful, it just doesn't like something you do to people to you like. (Unless it's angry feral raid leader who wants people to stop dying in the fire.)

Wild Mushroom... made me laugh, because... well... I'm a getting a magic mushroom. It's an absurd spell to give an already absurd-looking creature. I'm sure there will be jokes about moonkin and their magic mushrooms, but if any spec could get away with having those, it would probably be us since we're already ridiculously plush owlbears.

I just have odd mental pictures of myself detonating mushrooms around the corners of dungeons... Engineering done moonkin style?

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

All heal-over-time spells (HoTs) will benefit from crit and haste innately in Cataclysm. Hasted HoTs do not reduce their duration, but instead add additional HoT ticks. Haste will also benefit Energy generation while in cat form.

Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.

We want to add tools to cat form and depth to bear form. If a Feral cat is going to fill a very similar niche to that of a rogue, warrior or Enhancement shaman, it needs a few more tools -- primarily a reliable interrupt. Bears need to be pushing a few more buttons just so the contrast between tanking and damage-dealing is not so steep.

Barkskin will be innately undispellable.

We will be buffing the damage of Mangle (cat) significantly so that when cat druids cannot Shred, they are not at such a damage-dealing loss.

Druids will lose Abolish Poison with the dispel mechanics change, but Restoration druids will gain Dispel Magic (on friendly targets) as a talent. All druids can still remove poisons with Cure Poison and remove curses with Remove Curse.

Oddly enough, they mention that hots will benefit from haste and crit, but not dots. Oversight? Though moonkin aren't as dot heavy as a warlock or shadow priest, we dot more than say an ele shaman or a mage. It seems poor to not give it to us. [Edit: Ghostcrawler clarifies in a later post that dots will be effected.]

As far as the resto changes do, I like the toolkit as-is. I don't think we need another healing spell. Mind, I've never raid healed as resto, but with three kinds of hots, a quick heal, a super big heal, and an AoE hot I think we have a pretty good toolkit, and now restos will be able to dispel magic. I also like that all druids will keep the ability to cure poison and remove curses, and we won't be like the paladins who are losing their cleansing abilities if they aren't the healing spec.

For the feral end, I'm looking forward to get a reliable interupt. It's kind of annoying that cats fill a rogue-like niche, except that we can't interupt. I've been on ToC 25-man runs with my feral and have been told to help with interupts because the rogues in the group were failing, but I can't reliably do it because I need to make use I have at least one combo point up and it's on the GCD.

Buffing Mangle (cat) will be sweet too. Most fights it's possible to get around to the back of the boss, but sometimes it's hard, either due to bad tanking, the boss not cooperating, or there's a void zone/fire/slime puddle right where I would like to be standing. Admittedly though, I'd like this the most for PvP. Other players are less considerate about letting a cat druid Shred them from behind if they can help it.

New Talents and Talent Changes

Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade. We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well). Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.

We want to make the Feral cat damage rotation slightly more forgiving. We do not want to remove what druids like about their gameplay, but we do want to make it less punishing to miss, say, a Savage Roar or Rake. The changes here will be on par with increasing the duration of Mangle like we did for patch 3.3.3.

Balance druids will have a new talent ability called Nature’s Torrent, which strikes for either Nature or Arcane damage depending on which will do the most damage (or possibly both), and moves the Eclipse meter more (details below). The improved version of Nature’s Torrent also reduces the target's movement speed. 10-second cooldown.

Restoration druids will have a new talent called Efflorescence, which causes a bed of healing flora to sprout beneath targets that are critically healed by Regrowth.

We plan on giving Feral cats and bears a Kick/Pummel equivalent -- an interrupt that is off the global cooldown and does no damage. We feel like they need this utility to be able to fill the melee role in a dungeon or raid group, and to give them more PvP utility.

We want to make sure Feral and Balance druids feel like good options for an Arena team. They need the tools to where you might consider a Feral druid over an Arms warrior, or a Balance druid over a mage or warlock. Remember that the PvP landscape will probably look pretty different for Cataclysm with a focus on rated, competitive Battlegrounds.

Okay, now for the part that has the resto druids up in arms, and with good reason! Tree of Life is going to change into a cooldown! No more grumpy, hotting trees running around? I don't think the player base is going to go for it. Ever since Tree of Life came out the restos have really made that shape their own.

The argument about having at least one spec that can show off armor is pretty weak to me. I don't think anyone is going to choose a spec based off that, and restos like being trees.

I've never heard a resto complain they're giving up a lot to be who they are. Truthfully, a bored resto druid who wants to help dps a boss would probably outdps bored holy paladin trying to do the same (because goodness knows I need a good set of circumstances to break 1200 dps on Gillien). Sure they have to drop tree form, but they can. Restos are still competitive in arena as well, popping in and out of tree form as needed, just as any other druid might with their own shapes.

I will say this. I have a baby resto druid that's now level 36. If it looks like this Tree of Life change is going through, I'm going to make sure I level her far enough that I can chain run some instances as a tree before that goes away. I like the trees.

The rest... is okay. Ferals will get some PvP love, hopefully (I want to get back into PvP with Darkker for Cataclysm, especially with rated battlegrounds). So will balance druids.

It's too early to tell exactly what Nature's Torrent or Efflorescence are going to do other than add some more damage (perhaps as another nuke?) or more healing (maybe additional hot on top of the regular hot?).

I'll cover the masteries tomorrow.

[Druid] Well, the Class Preview Isn't Up Yet, But…

The druid class preview isn't up yet, but after seeing the warlock and priest previews there are at least a couple things we can expect for moonkin.

1) Improved Faerie Fire will no longer effect hit.

Why? Because Misery won't. The priest preview says that Blizzard doesn't want people to have to plan their gear based on who they have in the raid (I wonder if that means the draenei racial hit will be going away too?), and while being a moonkin this has never affected me, I know warlocks and mages who kept two sets of gear, or a trinket like Dying Curse, to swap in and out depending on whether or not they had a moonkin or shadow priest with them.

Earlier Blizzard has said something about moonkin getting a spirit to hit conversion so we shouldn't have to worry about having to make up hit by grabbing cloth gear or putting points into our talent trees. Spirit won't scale with buffs like Blessing of Kings anymore, and the priest preview says Divine Spirit is going away, so we shouldn’t have to worry about suddenly getting a lot of hit we don't need after the raid buffs up. Mark of the Wild won't affect it either.

2) Dots will automatically benefit from crit and haste.

With both warlocks and shadow priests getting this, there's no reason to believe that moonkin won't either. The way dots are going to work for those classes is that haste will allow more ticks of the dot to get in rather than shortening the duration of the spell because the dot ticks faster. This means dots won't have to be refreshed any more often than they would with zero haste. Moonkin dots were never affected in this manner, but resto druid hots could be through the Rapid Rejuvenation glyph.

This might also prevent some of the issues higher level moonkin are seeing in ICC (and formerly saw in Sunwell) where the power of their dots vastly diminished as their gear improved, to the point where it was debatable (or not even worth it) to keep dots in their rotations.

What else might be store for us?

We can expect one of our mastery abilities to be spell damage. Warlocks get this across all three specs, and so do shadow priests and ele shaman. We'll probably get spell crit as our second mastery bonus, since shadow priests, ele shaman, and two of the three warlock specs do.

The last mastery bonus will probably be something unique to us, since each of the warlock specs gets a bonus based on what their tree focus is (shadow dots for afflication, fire damage for destro) and the ele shaman have the very specific Elemental Overload. Given our penchant for changing forms, I wonder if it will be tied to something about being a moonkin, so the bonus won't apply if we're currently in another shape.

I haven't a clue what we're going to see for the feral and restoration trees, aside from masteries that can be gleaned from the other class previews.

One of the feral masteries will surely be Vengeance for tanking purposes (the warrior preview says all tanking specs will get it), possibly Damage Reduction since prot warriors got it, and possibly Melee Damage since arms/fury warriors and enhance shaman have it. I seem to remember Blizzard posting something to the effect of "if in cat form, then these mastery bonuses and if in bear form than these mastery bonuses" but I can't seem to find the post at the moment.

Oh here we go… thank you Kalon for the link on your blog.

Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we’re not quite ready to discuss.

So if Melee Damage and Damage Reduction are paired together as the one set of feral form trade-offs, I wonder what cats will get paired with Vengeance. Maybe Melee Haste? Fury warriors and enhance shaman get that. Armor Penetration is also a possibility. Arms warriors get that. And then the third ability will be probably something cat specific and bear specific, hopefully with a flavorful name that makes it sound like we're chewing on our enemies.

Resto druid masteries will likely mirror the healing priest and resto shaman masteries with Healing and Meditation being the first two masteries, for more healing power and for mana regen, and then something druid-specific for the third one. Since druids are commonly considering to be the hot masters, I'd take a stab at it having something to do with hots.

It would be pretty cool if the resto mastery worked like the new warlock dots where if you reapply you don't clip any remaining ticks; you just add to the duration of the spell. Hots could keep rolling for forever!

My First GDKP Run: ICC 25

Well, I wanted to go to ICC on my feral druid... and I did.

Dark Iron is a fairly hardcore server for raiding. The top guild on Horde is one of the top 100 in the world, having downed several bosses on 25-man heroic, and three other guilds have killed the 25-man Lich King. Another five are working on Arthas. Compare this to my primary server of Skywall... where the top guild is still working on the Lich King. Our guys are good, but they aren't crazy good.

So while Skywall hosts a ToC 25 GDKP, Dark Iron hosts an ICC 25 GDKP.

GDKP is typically a special kind of pug, first popularized on the Korean servers where players run a raid and the awarding of drops are decided not by main spec/off-spec rolls, but by who bids the most gold. Hence the G in GDKP. The "pot" or the "purse" of everything paid is divided equally among all comers in the end.

It's considered to be a drama free method of pugging because all the terms are disclosed up front, bidding is public, and the concept is simple. If you're willing to pay the most for an item, you're the one who gets it. Additionally, the gold is only divided up at the end, so if someone leaves early or they're so bad they get kicked they get nothing. It's incentive to play well and to stick it to the end.

For more reading I recommend the Elitist Jerks thread on the subject.

Because my feral is an alt with gold to burn and no raid schedule, GDKP runs are theoretically perfect for her. Consider that she is primarily in heroic and emblem gear (with one ring from ToC 25) with no prior proof of having done anything in ICC before. Link achievement? Not possible.

What normal pug would take her?

Admittedly, even the GDKP run almost didn't, because her gear is on the low side, and you do need to have some geared people to make sure those bosses go down. The raid leader said he would see how the raid shaped up when it was almost full, and eventually said no, leaving me to run a random heroic and feeling a little disappointed, but understanding. Then maybe a half hour later, he whispered me again asking if I was interested in filling in. Someone had left and they were at Gunship. I said yes in a heartbeat.

Being in that ICC 25 raid was… humbling. There were a lot of genuinely well-geared people on that run. If most of these people were on their alts (remember this was ICC 25!) I shudder to think what their mains are like.

I was never in the top 5 in a VoA or ToC 25 pug as a feral, but I was respectably middle of the pack. In ICC 25 I was… next to last for overall damage. I was beating the tanks for certain, but I never got higher than #12 on the damage meters for any boss fight.

But I did pass the idiot check. And so did the majority of the raid. The raid leader ran a tight ship. Instructions were clear and concise. People listened to them. Only once was there a call out for someone doing something completely wrong. We cleared seven bosses with only three wipes; one on Festergut, one on Blood Prince trash, and one on Blood Princes themselves.

Yes, this pug cleared seven bosses and my feral got to ride along with no prior ICC experience.

Money talks?

Because I was a last minute addition the raid leader actually didn't have an opportunity to check my finances, but people were supposed to bring 3k minimum with which to buy things and he had been checking in Dal before inviting people. I had 7k, and hoped I might pick up a couple items off the early bosses. The announcement stated that we were heading for Saurfang and anything beyond that would be dependent on the composition of the group. Truthfully, since this was a pug, I didn't expect we'd go beyond Saurfang, especially as a 25-man, so the fact we did was amazing!

It was a good experience, and I'm predisposed to go again, if they'll have me. I'll have a fatter wallet this time. (I walked out with no new gear, but 10 frost emblems and 4k gold!) Only one item dropped that I wanted, a ring off Rotface. I bid 4500g for it, but lost to our bear tank at 5000. Maybe I should've bid a little higher, but at the time I really wasn't certain how good the ring was since I hadn't checked out the boss drops past Saurfang.

I think there were several elements that made this a successful pug.

1) The gold requirement

If you want to come you must have gold. It shows you're capable of bidding and paying for items and stops the tourists who have no gold but just want to earn some of the pot. You could of course have money and never bid for a single thing, but a smart raid leader will watch out for those people and stop inviting them unless they're one of the powerhouse tanks/dps/heals that make the raid happen.

2) The gear requirement

I was the worst geared person in the entire raid, but was at the point where there was absolutely nothing left for me to buy with triumph emblems. To give you an idea, according to WoW Heroes my feral is perfectly geared for ToC 25 and ICC 10. This meant that the raid's potential dps was very high.

3) Experienced raiders

People were expected to know the fights. Bosses were not explained beyond sorting out assignments. Nobody failed for not knowing the fight, and fact was, very few people got achievements that night. They already had them. Even Rotface with all the slime management was a one-shot. I think we could've done Putricide given more time.

4) Good raid leadership

The raid leader was very aware and good at calling out events, whether it was managing people with spores on Festergut or people who had to run from flame spheres in Blood Princes. That he managed to do this as a healer was even more remarkable. He also had a very matter-of-fact tone of voice. He never got mad, but just laid things out as they were. He gave orders, expected them to be followed, and they were.

5) Professional attitude

Almost everyone had it. No one was whiney or full of themselves. Vent was clear of chit-chat. It was all business, very professional. Many of us left with a polite "Thank you, sir" for the raid leader, and all properly typed out.

So now I'm 4k richer, I have 25-man achievements to flash in my attempts to get in an ICC 10 pug, and I had one heck of a smooth run. It was just about everything I could have wanted from a pug raid.

I wish some more gear had dropped that I could have used though. I felt kind of bad that I didn't spend anything since I otherwise got so much out of it and the raid leader really did take a chance on me with my gear and no proof of experience. It opened some pugging doors for me and I'd hate for the raid leader to think I just came to freeload.

I can't say whether all GDKP runs are as good as this one. I haven't been to the one on Skywall yet (work keeps conflicting), but I think it's a certain type of player that comes to those runs, so that tends to weed out the poor performers. The participants need to know and understand how GDKP works, and those who don't bother to learn how the system works don't get that far. Also, participants need a decent amount of gold, and be willing to spend it.

Players will pay thousands for a choice epic (the [Shadow Silk Spindle] from Blood Princes last night went for 13k), but for a player to do that they need to understand the value of the item to them.

In a pug that does /roll, someone might very well roll on items that are negligible upgrades, upgrades that aren't really upgrades, or even technically off-spec (healers rolling on +hit gear). Would those same people drop 5k on the item?

GDKP ensures that the person who ends up with the item is the person who really wanted it. It won't stop off-specs, but people aren't likely to drop tons of money on something unless they're sure about it, and if they do drop a ton of money on it, everyone else is happy because they got compensated.

Over 100,000 gold was "spent" on last night's run, so everyone left with a pretty good payout even if they did get any items, and several said they'd be happy to come again.

[Druid] Does this mean I'm a real raiding kitty now?

My feral druid isn't part of a raid guild. She still sits in her mostly abandoned guild started by my coworkers, so if I do any raids with her it's always as a pug, which suits me fine because I can stop playing for a week or two and nobody wonders where I went (because I'm focused on my mains on my primary server).

I tend to be a little concerned about my status as a pugger though, always striving to not be bottom dps. As an alt in a land of ICC 25 geared mains I think it's a more reasonable goal than being top dps.

Since all I have are pugs, I don't want my time wasted by being incompetent or being kicked midway through a run for being incompetent, and I've been able to do that. Though there have been times where I've been completely wasted on the meters, it's typically not fair for me to gauge myself against mages, so I look for other melee, and in particular I look for other feral druids.

One night, after having not played my feral in a while, I wanted to do the raid weekly, but I couldn't seem to get a group for Malygos (maybe people have bad memories?) so I hopped in a VoA 25 led by one of the third tier casual raid guilds. They had a cat druid in there that was decently geared, mix of ICC Lower Spire and ToC stuff. Had the Death's Choice trinket. And here I was in nothing but heroic and emblem gear.

I fully expected to get my butt whooped on the meters, but surprise surprise, I was pulling about 6.2k and the other druid was lagging behind me by a reasonably steady 600-800 dps. It was a personal best for me (having an arms warrior really helped) so I was happy with myself.

The funny thing was, the other druid noticed what was happening as well, and I got a friendly whisper asking how I was beating him when he was better geared than me.

Cat dps is incredibly complicated, so I couldn't begin to tell him exactly what I was doing because there just wasn't enough time between trash and boss pulls. I told him basically that I tried to always keep Savage Roar up, keep Rake up (since arms warrior removes need for Mangle), Shred to 5 cp, and then Rip.

What I couldn't tell him was that I was weaving Ferocious Bites into my rotation (I'm just starting to get comfortable doing that) as long as there were 8 seconds left on Rip, that I was trying to use Berserk strategically during Bloodlust or a trinket proc, that I try to use Omen of Clarity procs for Shreds no matter what, that I try to be strategic about when I use my energy and for what so I don't find myself empty when I need to refresh an important buff/debuff, and most of all that I still considered myself a novice learning a very complicated spec to play. Cat dps is so frantic that knowing the priority list is still a far cry from executing it, which is why mods like FeralByNight (which suggests the player's next move) exist.

I really didn't feel qualified to be telling a raiding druid how to play his cat, and I'm guessing that if he goes to his guild's ICC 25s he's probably playing his main. He must have logged far more hours on his cat than I have on mine, and I'm not at the point where I can look at a damage breakdown in Recount and tell him that he's letting Savage Roar drop too much, or he's bad about refreshing Rake, or he doesn't use Tiger's Fury.

But I guess the fact that he asked at all means that my cat dps was respectable and maybe I wasn't quite the newbie that I thought I was. My feral occasionally got into pugs, but we're talking like raid weekly pugs. They kill a boss and that's it. She had only finished ToC once, and no pug would take her into ICC since her gear score is considered too low and she lacks achievements besides.

He asked how I opened to get Savage Roar up and I told him that I'd Mangle if it wasn't up yet, then follow it with a Rake, and then SR. The important thing is to get SR up and a couple combo points is enough, because it can be refreshed later.

Fast forward a couple weeks, again with minimal playtime on my feral, and I logged on last night thinking to do a daily random and work the AH.

I joined a pug VoA 25 that failed so hard that people left after the first wipe. Thinking I'd do Wintergrasp, since it was up in a few minutes, I queued and ran through my AH options while I waited.

Lo and behold, a ToC 10 group was forming in Trade. I figured ToC 10 might net me some nice gear, so I joined it and we cleared it, but I had no luck on drops (barring a leather caster helm for my rarely used healing set). I did get more emblems though, which was nice because my feral doesn't have the backlog of emblems my moonkin and my pally do. She was getting dangerously low if she wanted any gems for new gear.

After the ToC 10 I queued for a random heroic as dps, thinking to get some kitty practice in, but wait! Someone was LFM for Malygos Must Die! Well, that was a hard weekly to get a group for last time. Might as well go while someone was looking. I came out #1 dps and most stacks of the flame debuff on the boss. Nice to know I haven't lost it in all the months since he was top level content.

I queued in LFD again… and while I was waiting, minding my crafting for the AH, someone was LFM for ToC 25. My lucky night for pug raiding?

And in this raid was… that same feral druid from a couple weeks ago.

He was now gemmed completely for armor pen (I can't afford to, I don't have enough native armor pen on my gear), he had his two piece T10, and the majority of his gear was now from ICC 10/25 Lower Spire.

We sized each other up, and then we were off.

The gear advantage was showing more this time, my lead on Recount much narrower. As far as straight up dps went he was beating me, but I was consistently doing more damage; I had better uptime on my dps. I knew to pay attention to Recount this time to compare our performance, to see what we were doing differently, and the breakdown of our abilities was similar. Top 3 damage was from melee attacks, following by Shred, followed by Rip. He was doing more damage per attack, but I was doing more attacks.

Maybe I do know what I'm doing. Maybe I'm a real raiding kitty now. The difference between our damage done could be attributed to greater raid awareness or use of situational abilities (like Feral Charge to get back behind a boss after having to run away), not because we don't know the priority list of which abilities to use.

I want to get into an ICC run with my feral now. That might be too much to ask on a server obsessed with gear score and achievements (seriously, some people ask for VoA achievements when making a run), but I want to try.