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.

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

Trial of the Crusader

We brought Anub’arak down yesterday in 25 man, we would have done it last week if  they hadn’t repaired the floor when we weren’t looking.  yes we did go back twice & petition GM’s about it but in the end it had to wait for reset and 25 people online and ready to raid.

We don’t seem to have finished with summer breaks yet, we had 23 on Sunday and went and  spent the night on Yogg-Saron anyway. Our dps was a bit low and I lost count of the tries we made but we did progress from wiping on Phase one at the beginning of the night to wiping on Phase 3 by the end. It was a good night’s raiding though because we got that little bit better with each fight. I think we did have 25 for our last couple of fights.

I’ve retired my two pieces of  Tier 7 and replaced them with Tier 9, shoulders & gloves. (the Conquest ones ilevel 232) I like the T9 shoulders, especially that funny odd pocket on them better than the dreamwalker lookalikes. They just reminded me of the bad old days when  druid tiers were all healing.

Monday’s raid was cancelled and Wednesday we did TOC  10 man then VOA, which at least left me time to visit the Draenai  starter area and do some lowbie  quests, which meant I managed 4 achievements all in one night,

• Call of the Crusade (10 Player)
• Koralon the FlameWatcher (10 player)
• Emalon the Stormwatcher (10 player)  only about 5 months after I got the 25 man version. I really don’t do 10 mans much. I may change my mind on that though

and the one I was actually after “Exalted of Gnomeregan”  Only Ironforge and Exodar rep to go now  both are more than half way through revereved and I haven’t even started on Exodar Valiant training. It is just too boring. I did get the Argent Champion  about three weeks ago so I’m inching closer and closer to the Crusader title. Though I’m really not sure why I want it on Ari.

UI Additions

The addons I use are linked from the UI and Addons Page,

The latest changes are the additon of Icehud and Power Auras Classic in an attempt to focus my attention on the centre of the screen. I’m still getting used to having a HUD (Heads Up Display)  which is partly why I still have action bars near the bottom of the screen.  Power Auras is set up to let me know when Starfall (the crescent moon) and the treants (the leaf) are off cooldown and available for use. It means I use both a lot more than I did and spend less time glancing down to see if they’re ready yet.

I’ve known about Power Auras for a long time but steered away from it as the screenshots  showcasing it tend to show big  icons that take up large amounts of screen and I don’t like big icons. Then I saw the set up menu and realised they were scalable and movable (which may be added features since the first time I tried it, or may be me not noticing the first time). So I have nice small icons sitting just above my cast bar. I appear not to be casting in this shot but I must have done something recently as Quartz eclipse addon is showing a cooldown. That whole space between the eclipse cooldown & the Power Aura icons can fill up with bars. Probably would have been more useful if I’d taken a shot when it was .

Normally on my alts I try to avoid  anything beyond basic addons such as Titan Panel & Ark Inventory, its bad enough having to rebuild Ari’s when things go wrong but I’ve made an exception for these two. I love that Icehud can be set to show combat points (or runes on a DK) showing up dead centre of the screen not to mention the energy bar, something I look at a lot more than Ari’s mana bar.

The two little power aura icons curving up the outside of the the HUD are there to tell me slice and dice (the sword) is up and rupture (the exclamation point) is doing its thing. If I’m honest it because I was mashing both of them without checking whether they had run out or not and wasting combo points reapplying them

I may have to restrain myself from placing too many buffs/debuffs/dots/cooldowns on Power Auras or I’ll end up with a complete circle surronding the HuD and forgetting what they’re supposed to be for