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.

Yay its Friday…

… and I’ve two weeks leave ahead of me. So Dax is going to get to 70. If not this weekend (she’s still 65) certainly by the time I return to work.

We had guild drama tonight, not a clue what sparked it and not going to speculate. I’ve barely been there but I know someone I was getting to like is hurting.

There are days I wish MMORPG’s insisted on people doing Emotional Intelligence Quota (EQ) tests before letting them play. Or at the very least listing the results on Armory so the rest of us can be forewarned that we have a selfish twat in the zone. Who hasn’t matured beyond the Feed Me Seymour stage of social interaction.

You know the type. They spam chicken at you if you decline their invite to duel.

Are more interested in having a row in BG chat with their ‘team mates’ than fighting the opposistion.

Are convinced that if they ever ever lose an Arena its because the other class is OP. Naturally they congregate in the 2v2 bracket because they don’t have 4 friends who want to play with them. (Yes they annoy me no end QQing on the druid forums about resto’s)

Somehow they decide they can raid with 24 other people, well 23 they usually bring that one friend with them, though you may not notice till they finally explode and leave the guild, which is when their tag-a-long suddenly announces “If you don’t want X in the guild then I’m leaving too”. Followed by a silence while people try and remember what Tag-a-long ever did and would we miss them.

Of course its everyone else in the Guild that is wrong and if we’d only listened to them we’d be in Wrath by now, not wiping on whoever we’re currently learning. Lets ignore that the core raiders started off in Z G together while X never saw inside a raid instance before they removed the attunements , they know best because they read it on Nihilum’s web site.

They know more about every class while clearly not having a clue, obvious when they tell the shamans they should be decursing faster or that a ’sleeping sheep’ is a talented mage abilty.

Erm no it’s not it’s me messing about hibernating a polymorphed beast.

But I’m wrong and so are the mages and they’re right (and yes that really did happen, a long time ago)

None of the above has any connection to whatever happened tonight, but all of a sudden I needed to let it out.

Sssh don’t tell

I have a dirty little secret. I hate shamans. They should never ever ever be wanted over a druid. There I’ve said it.

I really didn’t care in Vanilla WoW they were something Horde had that I could ignore (as long as I stayed out of BG’s) even if my only party buff was being a walking crit totem.

Then the space squid crash landed on Azeroth, and don’t think I haven’t noticed they kill white stags and side with the Furbolg against Moonkins in their starter area. They can’t even hold on to their hatred of Blood Elves, teaming up with them, and have you seen the monument to the fallen in Sunwell Plateau

Completely ignores the Dwarves, Forsaken, Gnomes, Humans, Orcs, Night Elves, Taurens, & Trolls, who fell reclaiming Sun’s Reach. At least the humans touch you up for funds to support their orphans not to build some naff statue to their ‘greatness’. Okay maybe the Blood Elf & Draenai arrogance is a different subject. Back to why I hate shamans.

I just do.

I have no need to be rational about it.

I suppose you want arguments, well lets face it Shamans are nothing but proto druids, messing around trying to master the elements that are part of the very Nature druids are one with.

When TBC came out and they buffed Moonkin damage and our Aura to 5% crit I was a happy little moonkin till I saw what they gave elemental shamans, no need for a walking crit totem when you got a real one with 3% crit & hit. Heard way too many players tell me 5%crit to party & 3% hit to melee & ranged isn’t as good as 3% hit/crit to party. What can I say apart from learn to maths.

Now along comes WOTLK and we get Improved Moonkin Aura:

Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 8 sec. This effect has a 30 second cooldown.

Something we’ve asked for an improved aura, and haste was a good way to go, but they went and nerfed it between alpha (10 secs no cd ) & beta, its still good but that 30 sec cd is a pain.

Or course we can’t rejoice for long because look what they did to Wrath of Air

Summons a Wrath of Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. Party members within 20 yards of the totem have their spell damage and healing increased by up to 101. Lasts 2 min.

to

Summons a Wrath of Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem provides 10% spell haste to all party members within 20 yards. Lasts 2 min.

Wheres the bloody cd on that?

Machica was an attempt to go the ‘if you can’t beat em join em route’ but I don’t like Shamans I want my Boomkin to be better in what I specialise in than some untalented level 64 totem.

Meh I know life’s not fair but I can already hear the players comparing group/party buffs and deciding we lose against totems again. Even though the silly buggers never did catch on to the simple fact they stack!

Walking the Line

Meant to write this yesterday but ended up delaying, waiting for a rant to work it’s way out of my system rather than onto the page.

We have a new Class leader, promoted during last nights raid. Not one of the three other druids congratulated him, because we’re not impressed by the choice.

Last guild I was in the Class leader was chosen by the class members. A class meeting was held, people were nominated and the GM was whispered by those members as to their choice. Class leaders were invariably people the class would follow. This guild well on the last three choices the CL is picked from the class member who invests most time sucking up to the GM. If he’s more comfortable having his mates as officers then thats his choice but its not necessarily the best way to build long term loyalty to the guild.

So now we have a druid alt leading us, least time in the guild of the core druid members, least raiding experience as a druid, shown very little knowledge of druid builds, and five seconds after being promoted switching to his shaman main to raid, and with 5 pieces of T6 on that toon he really should be higher on the healing meters.

And the title? well the first draft would have probably got me gkicked if anyone read it. Even this one might but theres a line. I could self-censor myself and pretend that things like this don’t affect how I feel about the guild or I could go OTT and take potshots at the individual to catalogue why I’m less than impressed (mf1 SFx4 Hahahah).

Okay done with that

Goals for this weekend

Really need some, definitely having a meh bored with the game moment. I know it’ll pass but lets see if Ican keep playing through it

1. Get Machica’s class quest done and possibly level 22
2. Farm primal life on Dax for BT resist gear – at least finish off that stack of 10
3. Farm gold on Ari- need it for next week’s consumables

Damn thats an exciting list NOT.

Somewhat Mollified

Back into MH last night for Azgalor.

Decursing my little heart out (over 300 by the end of the night) and yay RL noticed and commented on good job.

Would have been completley mollified if a certain ‘helpful’ feral hadn’t whispered me before raid and had a conversation that went something like:

Feral:”I’ve been doing some research about dps rotations”

Me: “Oh? And did you discover that keeping IS & IFF is a personal dps loss?”

Feral: “MF/SFx4 is the best dps rotation”

Me: stunned silence (like thats it? thats what you want to tell me?)

Feral: “Could you try it tonight just for me?”

Me:”Did it occur to you I might already be doing that?” (okay I’m not its IS/MF SFx3 on bosses with i:FF as needed but thats because thats better for raid dps)

What I wish I’d said was “I’ve been doing that since Zul’Gurub, but tonight I’ll do it just for you”

Yes I know my dps is low. I know it better than any one else. I agonise over it, I read up I ‘talk’ to other moonkins. I download every simulator I can find and try and improve it. I’ve upgraded the PC tweaked my UI five ways to Friday, considered throwing in the towel & respeccing to resto after a really bad night, and with all the AOE in MH there are a fair few of them.

Some of it is pure and simple gear, there isn’t that much. I’m not adverse to cloth but we’re not doing Vashj so that awesome chest (and the T5 helm) is out of the question. The caster gear that does drop is usually hard dkp bidding because we’re caster heavy. (Which makes me wonder if i:FF is worth the talent points)

Just cos I don’t prattle on in Vent doesn’t mean I don’t know there’s an issue or that I’m not trying to sort it out.