Live and learn

I’ve been tweaking my spec again, and taking tips from a resto druid who’s off-spec is Balance.

I was perusing her spec in Ulduar the other day and realised she’d taken Genesis. That talent that all the hardcore balance druids turn their noses up as being  a resto talent sitting in OUR tree and not providing  enough boom for the talent points.

If you look at core builds and suggestions for  where to spend your extra talent points Genesis barely gets a mention, see the Elitist Jerks think tank for an example. Brambles and or Owlkin Frenzy are considered better dps talents and they’re not exactly recommended just suggestions to put ‘overflow’ talent points.

She’d also done something else that to this jaded  old druid was heresy she hadn’t put any points at all into Nature’s Reach. My god the mobs were going to be chewing on her in seconds, no threat reduction and no  six yards safety net when they do charge across the room to gobble her . HERESY I tell you complete HERESY!

Then I stopped and asked myself when was the last time I’d even seen  myself in the top five on Omen on a proper fight, and even in the good old days when I could OT Kara because of my threat I ran TOO the tank not AWAY so those extra six yards aren’t exactly as beneficial as they might be.

So once I’d calmed down and had a little think I decided that as unorthodox and against the ‘best’ advice her choices were they made a certain sense, so  two points from Natures Reach, the filler point from Moonglow and two from Owlkin frenzy -a talent I like but is subject to RNG and taking damage so is more useful when soloing and I now have  Genesis.

Tried it out in ten man’s on Thursday my dps was certainly better not that I’d put that all down to the talent change as I’d picked up my fourth piece of T9 and had done some re-gemming as well.

I did pull aggro off the tank at one point, but if you’d blinked you’d miss it as he grabbed it back. Tanks abilty to hold  threat or taunt it back is much better than it was in Classic** or TBC, I noticed the lack of the six yards in TOC while trying to bring down the frost spheres but no one else noticed, and I still got the job done.

I’m waiting for some WWS parses from an officer (hint hint) to see how much is from Genesis and how much from T9, but on what I’ve seen so far its a much smoother dps increase than what I was getting from Owlkin frenzy or Brambles given the 3 min cooldown on treants, which I ran with for a while.

So it is a live and learn sometimes the experts and old hands are so locked into old thought patterns, like the need as a balance druid to have threat reduction -after all we campaigned long and hard for it to make us raid viable- and that our dots are weak and not worth buffing via talent points that sometimes we’re a bit slow to notice things change.

At the start of WOTLK most of us dismissed IS as a weak DOT because of scaling problems in both Classic & TBC and saw Moonfire as a way to force Nature’s Grace rather than for the damage it did, seems to me though that if I can give up all three major  glyph spots to my DoTs then  five talent points from  situationaly useful   talents to what are now  spells constantly on my targets isn’t that foolish a trade off after all.

**Actually that’s not strictly true our warrior tank in Fir Samhain was awesome at re-grabbing threat when I over aggroed, which he had to do a lot  when I came out of nowhere with a starfire crit  that damage-wise did nothing but tickle the boss but threat-wise  really wound him up.

Other tanks weren’t so used to a moonkin’s abilty to jump from the bottom of the threat meter to the top with one cast.

Patch Titbits

Well Patch 3.3 is on the PTR and there are titbits for  balance druids so in no particular order

Druid tier 10.

I don’t like the graphics at all. From the  two pieces of  briarthorn attached to the headpiece  past the carnivorous plant life on the shoulders (cousins to Seymour from Shop of Horrors) to the oversize girdle  that’s claiming to be a belt.   I like my T9 corset look I don’t want a  girdle.

Back to the helm and its faceplate, what is that even meant to be? A bug with thorns or another of Seymours cousins with the faceplate representing dripping green goo from its mouth?

And those gloves we’re meant to be in ICE crown you’d think there of all places we’d want proper gloves not  fingerless ones, or maybe they think we get enough protection from the cold with all the fur from our forms.

I know we’re druid our  sets are meant to be nature themed (though  not always) I’d hoped for something a bit more thematically tuned to Icecrown or generally winter themed.  Dress us in Yeti skins, I’d much rather that set of horns than a couple of briarthorns on my head.

Well on to the set bonuses.  The ones discovered initially were well  placeholders. They changed them within about 24 hours of them being released so now we have:

• 2 Pieces (Balance): When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 15% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 seconds.

Why do I need to spend 13 points in the resto tree to gain a balance set bonus?  Why can’t it  proc of Nature’s Grace, (tweaked for the fact NG procs a lot more than OoC) I have zero control over OoC procs. The number crunchers reckon it procs on average twice every 60 secs so  that means I get 12 secs of this proc every minute. So assuming a tank n spank with no fire to move out of etc this will apparently convert into a 3% dps increase. Compare that to T9 (moonfire dots criting) which is (again according to the number crunchers) a 4%dps that you don’t need to be standing still to benefit from it.

• 4 Pieces (Balance): Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 5% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

“Cause the target languish”  erm okay not sure what  version of English is being used there.  The common consensus on this appears to be that some sort of  dot will be applied that  adds 5% of the crits damage over  4 seconds though there are questions about how it works.

Right more design advice to Blizz here,  make life easy for yourself, stop  coming up with new set bonus’es for each tier. Reuse the ones you know the players like,  the stats on the gear plus a familar  set bonus will still make sets preferred over the non set gear of the same ilevel. Change it with each expansion to reflect new spells, talents but within that expansion find some good ones and leave them be.

New Idol

• The periodic damage from your Insect Swarm and Moonfire spells grants 44 critical strike rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.

Given the Idol of Lunar Fury does  much the same thing using just moonfire and has pretty much a 100% uptime I won’t be rushing out to spend  emblems on this one.

It is better, five stacks will create 220 critical strike rating and  the 15 secs give you a sliglhty bigger buffer zone before it wears off  but  one moonfire dot gets me 200 for 12 secs I need 5  moonfire/insect swarm dots to get the 220, so about nine seconds at a beginning of a fight to kick in  assuming a 100% proc rate.

Kudos to Blizz though for creating idols that actually do more than buff one spell. I’ll be more than happy if this  type of idol (our dots providing a crit/ haste/ dmg buff for everything we cast) becomes the standard and we  no longer see ones that buff a single spell.

Rebirth

• Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Nice, especially as  mine is glyphed so no reagent cost, we run with between three and five druids in 25 mans so its not a major buff for me but definitely useful for 10 mans or the odd raid where we have only one  druid.

Battle.Net

YesI got the memo, I’ve made the change over but I don’t like it.  It’s not that they want us  logging on using a more ‘modern’ system. it’s that they’re planning on:

Our vision is for the new Battle.net to become the ultimate Blizzard Entertainment social network, in addition to its matchmaking foundation. Simply logging in to Battle.net will make it easy to find and chat with your friends across World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and future Blizzard Entertainment titles, including Diablo III. Keep track of all your buddies in your friends list, view their online status and presence information, voice chat, send out party invites, and broadcast messages to your friends. Detailed character profiles let players keep up to date on friends’ progress and achievements.

I don’t want random people keeping track of me not even my friends sometimes. If I’m not on a toon you know about it’s because I want to be left alone and from what I can see with this system its your log on identity they intend to use not your character. I just hope there’s an opt out option for this.

“Owlkin, owlkin, where have you been?”

This blog may become extremely quiet in November as I’m planning on entering  NaNoWriMo I did think of writing it the WoW universe so I could blog it here and had this idea of Ari getting misdirected as she teleported to Moonglade and ending up in Mornington Crescent instead. and her adventures as she follows the plot of an old  nursery rhyme

“Pussycat pussycat, where have you been?”
“I’ve been up to London to visit the Queen.”
“Pussycat pussycat, what did you dare?”
“I frightened a little mouse under her chair”
“MEOWW!”

Suitably altered for  Ari:

“Owklin,owlkin, where have you been?”
“I’ve been up to London to visit the Queen.”
“Owlkin,owlkin, what did you dare?”
“I slaughtered the Old God hiding under her chair”
“RAWR!”

I’m not sure I can  string that “plot” out for 50,000 words though. Not least because I’d keep getting distracted by wanting to  provide holiday snaps of Ari in London, like these:

Then again there’s a lot more to meeting the queen than navigating the Underground from Mornington Crescent to Green Park. Though as she can go pussycat and prowl or fly off as a stormcrow  if needs be getting away from most problems fairly easily. By and large Londoners don’t attack the strange and weird they just assume some film is being made and it’s a publicity stunt, so she’s not exactly going to be in combat a lot. Granted bears and  albino panthers might get them worried enough to run in the opposite direction

Well I’ve still got a couple of weeks to decide it I want to go with that idea or do something less fanfiction in nature so if it turns out to be halfway decent I can maybe pluck up the courage to submit it to a publisher or something. After all Ari can visit the real world another time.

Finally!

We took down Yogg-Saron last night in 25 man mode. Nearly three months after the guild killed him in 10 man, and we did it with 24 people, because we still can’t get 25 raiders online on a raid night.

If it hadn’t been for the ability to extend raid lock outs introduced in 3.2  we’d still be trying. I think we’ve held it the raid ID for three weeks, so if we did get the right raid make-up we at least didn’t have to spend it getting a full clear and then being reset before we could spend a night learning on Yogg.

I lost track of the number of tries we made last night but we were at it for at least three hours (going by the number of flasks I drank) we hit the enrage timer on the previous attempt, but on the  kill we beat him to it with seconds to spare, which is always an adrenaline rush.

Blizz needs to rethink its policy on  raiding. I know they think 5/10/25 normal/hard mode provides more choice but  there are a finite number of players and by having more routes to loot you’re spreading the playerbase server by server too thin (possibly something they’ve recognised with the decision to making LFG cross server).

On the one hand it doesn’t affect me I raid for the epic feel of a raid not the epic loot, which is why I avoid  the 10 man versions sorry but level 80 versions of  Blackrock Spire don’t feel epic to me. Unfortunately a lot of people do raid for the purplez and if they’re not lured into 25 mans by clearly superior loot then the knock on effect is I don’t get to go.

I preferred it when the 10 (or 20 in Classic) were distinct  instances in their own right  Zul’Gurub, Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj, Karazhan, Zul’Aman those were places worth going to for their own stories and lore. Not just toned down versions of  25 mans.

I dunno maybe if the 10 mans dropped blue loot of the same ilevel  as  25 mans purple loot (and badges that could only purchase blue loot) those that raid for loot would come back to the 25 mans.

Alternatively I could learn to love 10 mans, I’m not even sure why I’ll farm 25 mans to ensure other people get the gear they need long past the time when the instance is fun, but I will do 10 mans only if I must (maybe because farming both would lead to burn out?)

And as a complete aside why is UBRS still classed as a 10 man dungeon rather than a 10 man raid?

Drakefire Amulet not required

3.2 landed last Wednesday and Onyxia took off. Is it pretty much the classic fight upgraded for level 80’s  with the addition of some dragonkin adds to give the melee something to do while the ranged are keeping her dotted in phase two.

I took the obligatory pre shot,  well I took a few but you get this one.  Each time I did a screen capture I felt something was ‘missing’ but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I realised we’re missing fifteen people which makes the buffing area in front of her lair seem oddly empty.  I don’t miss forty man  raiding  it’s  hard enough to organise 25  people and even with the summer break over we’re still struggling to put together  four  balanced raids a week (This was done with 22 so its really 17 people short) but you did feel you were involved in something big and epic when you crowded together before a boss and that the boss was something to be taken seriously because you had to gather such a large group to even stand a chance. Sometimes now we just look ‘lost’ when we gather in a staging area.

Oh and for future reference(mine) the moonkin nearest Onyxia is me the one hanging back is not. You can clearly see my moonkin is much better geared.

Having lost all my screenshots to PC crashes over the years I thought I’d try to find one online for comparision and I hit paydirt. One of my old guildies has stored them on  photobucket,  Not the same shot but this is Argent Eve  gathering  in Stormwind to deliver the head after our first kill. Now that’s a crowd

I’m right there in the front of the shot (the one on the right) still riding a normal mount as I was too poor to afford the epic land mount (the mounts cost more then learning the skill back then).

And for a bit of added nostalgia one in Onyxia’s lair just as we killed her

I don’t think any healer misses 40 man’s, and the sheer amount of green bars that had to have up, though this was before grid came along and made life a bit more bearable I think.  Mine was just as bad because even if I was pew pewing most of the time it only took a couple of dead or Dc’d healers for me to have to role swap and start chucking out Healing Touch.

Oh and if you’re trying to ‘find’ me on the raid windows this is pre name change when I was Silverthorn