DURIDS IS 4 haf FUN TIME!

I’m not sure what it is about Druid blogs, especially resto Druid blogs, but they all seem to be so.. well.. nice.  I first noticed the phenomenon around this time last year while I was stuck down in the Falkland Islands for 6 months.  Visiting blogs like Resto4Life, 4Haelz, Leafshine – Lust for Flower and Bringin’ The Wood were all the blog equivalent of sitting down by a nice warm fire and putting your feet up, as are new (to me) blogs like Wild Growth.  Sure, there are other non-druid blogs with the same cosy atmosphere (Hi Larisa!) but you definitely get the impression that no-one’s allowed to start a resto druid blog until they fulfil some sort of “you must be this nice to post” test.

And I think I know why.

You could certainly make the case, and I’m sure others have, that there’s a trend for certain types of people to roll certain types of characters.  At the risk of making a sweeping generalisation, control freaks roll tanks, people who care roll healers and people with Attention Deficit Disorder roll dps.

Oh look, a pony!

But a resto druid isn’t just any old healer.  No, sir!  They’re Druids who turn into trees and heal with the spring-pine clean power of nature!  Can you get any more hippy than that?  There are folks who gather at Stonehenge every summer solstice who care passionately about their fellow man, mourn the loss of the environment and can play folk songs on their own hand-carved banjos and I’m willing to bet when they log into WoW, the chances are they’re not playing lolknights called Aarthaaz.

But here’s another angle.  I’m not really what anyone would call a roleplayer, except for when I’m on The Mighty Jingles.  It’s not my fault, his magnificence simply cannot be contained by mere mortals.  And yet… I do find myself adopting the mannerisms of the toons I’m playing at any given time.  When I’m on Henriksen, my trusty Dwarf Hunter, I don’t take no crap in guildchat from them hippy elves!  On no-one is this tendency to act like my toon more pronounced than when Shinano sprouts leaves and starts spreading the scrummy natural goodness around.  I find myself playing like a lentil-eating, tree-hugging, butterfly-kissing hippy.  And I love it.

TREE DURID IS 4HAELZ!
I simply cannot be depressed when Shinano picks up her roots and does the Tree Waddle.  When she /cries, the whole world cries with her.  When she /dances, spontaneous parties break out around her.  When she /cheers, she means it.  If someone dies on her watch, I feel genuinely guilty.  Not so when I’m healing on Aluriel.  When someone dies on Aluriel’s watch, it’s generally because I let the asshat die as a lesson to teach him what happens when he keeps Deathgripping mobs off the tank.  Aluriel is a priestess, she understands that sometimes you have to sacrifice an asshat for the greater good.  Not so Shinano, she believes that even lolknights have the right to Rejuvenation and Swiftmend.  There’s no conscious decision that I should play this way on Shinano, it just… happens.  I can’t help it, my inner hippy takes over whenever Shinano sprouts leaves.

Cat Durid is 4 FITE!
It gets worse.   Shinano is dual-specced Restoration/Feral DPS.  One of my personal pet hates is people who constantly hit the jump button while doing… anything.  It is my fervent desire that all bunny-hoppers die in a fire somewhere.  And yet… whenever Shinano slips into Cat form… I.. this is hard for me to admit… I turn into Tigger.  I bounce.  I sometimes also type “Rawr!” in /s.  I nearly went as far as tying it into a Feral Charge macro.  I do have a macro that yells “WEN CAT DURID IS FITE, DO NOT ASK FOR HEELZ OR NINERVATE!”  I become uncontrollably… perky.  I’m not proud of it, I know I need help.  The thing is, well… let me try to put things into some sort of context.

Everyone who plays will have had those “Zomg this is COOL!” moments, and I don’t mean from when you completed some amazing content, I mean when your class allowed you to do something that just smacked you right between the eyes as downright awesome and you knew right that instant that this was the class for you.  I can remember precisely two such moments on Calli, and she’s my Main.  With Shinano on the other hand…

HEEL BARES DURID!  BARE DURID AM STORNG FREND!

I’m level 36 and a hunter’s asking for one more dps for a Scarlet Monastery run. He’s starting to get a little desperate so I figure I may as well try. I tell him I’m a feral druid and I realise I’m a little low level, but as long as they don’t want me to do the Cathedral I think I could be okay, and I promise not to pull random aggro as I can always stealth past higher level mobs. Astonishingly he doesn’t reply with “lol noob”, he does in fact play a level 60 druid on his main and is happy for me to join the group. The rest of the group, who are level 40 or higher, don’t share his confidence but they’ve been waiting for an age to get going so no-one goes as far as to leave the group in disgust at my noobishness.

Problem number one arrives when I arrive at Southshore in Hillsbrad and the paladin points out that at level 36 I have no mount so they’re going to have to wait ages for me to get to the instance.  ”Not a problem”, I reply, “Swift Travel Form is only 20% slower than a level 40 mount, and I know a shortcut.”  The hunter with the druid main sends a friendly emote into party chat, I’m starting to like this guy.  The rest are curious to know what this shortcut is I’m talking about, but I just tell them “Sorry, druids-only”, before taking a right turn as they all pass the Silverpine Forest border ahead of me, jumping into the lake and switching to Aquatic Form.  I scoot across the lake, pop back into Swift Travel form and make it to the instance entrance in second place, avoiding aggroing the mobs outside by shifting into Cat Form and stealthing cautiously past them all.  The last guy arrives at the Monastery wondering how long he has to wait for the noob druid, to which I reply “I’m in yur instanze, killin yur mobz!” and explain about my various travel forms.  Everyone has a good laugh, and the atmosphere lightens considerably.  Apart from the Hunter, none of the other guys really knew much about druid versatility and they were genuinely surprised and amused.  Then disaster strikes.  The tank has to leave, he’s really apologetic about it, but simply has to go.

So there are four of us stuck at the Scarlet Monastery entrance with no tank.  Some of them have dps friends who could offer their services, but no-one knows any tanks.  Then I get a whisper from the Hunter/druid.
“You want to try tanking maybe?”
Is this guy serious? I’ve never tanked an instance as a Bear in my life, and I’m only level 36, I don’t have Dire Bear form, just regular old Bear form.  The rest of the group are all at least four levels higher than me, I’ll never hold aggro!
“You’ll be fine, we’ll just go easy on the dps at first, the paladin healer’s pretty good, we’ll keep you alive.”
I reluctantly agree to give it a try if they can’t get another tank within five minutes, and sure enough, five minutes pass by with no tank arriving.  So the hunter proposes the new plan to the rest of the group and to my everlasting astonishment, no-one falls over laughing and they all agree that I should try to tank it.  And so a fresh dps is recruited and we head into Scarlet Monastery with the noob level 36 Bear tanking for the level 40 group.  And tank I did.

I won’t say we never wiped, because we did, but nowhere near as many times as I imagined, and never because the tank died or lost aggro.  I tell you, aggro stuck to me like bearshit does to bears’ asses.  It was a revelation to me and the other three guys in that group who’d never run with a Bear tank before.  The Hunter with the Druid main just exuded a smug “I told you so” aura all through the dungeon.  I wish I could remember that guys’ name.

“It’s Just Those, Bear Necessities, Mother Nature’s Recipes…”
Levelling and playing as a druid was filled with those ZOMG! moments.  Ever been killing Satyrs in Felwood and accidentally aggroed a stealthed patrol, who aggroed another group while you’re fighting yet another group?  Yep, done that.  Survived it too. Eight mobs on me, but nothing that shifting in and out of Bear form while making judicious use of stuns, roots, swipes and heals can’t fix.  On any other character in vanilla WoW I’d have been dead meat.  Or in stealth and running for the hills screaming like a cheerleader.

I’d just hit 60 mere seconds ago and Shinano’s about to head to the trainer and respec Resto.  Back in those days a level 60 druid was a healer or they were very lonely.  The call goes out in guildchat for a healer for Scholomance.  I can come as soon as I get back to Moonglade to respec.
“Where are you now?”
Eastern Plaguelands.
“Don’t respec, it’ll take ages for you to get back to Eastern Kingdoms from Kalimdor. Just head to Scholo and heal as Feral.”
Excuse me, have you taken leave of your senses?
“Nah, you’ll be fine.”
By some miracle we make it to Headmaster Gandling with no-one dying, then the tank gets ported and disconnects and the (Blackwing Lair geared) warlock becomes the new tank by default.  Somehow, by a combination of the warlock drain-tanking and my spamming every heal in my very limited feral book, the boss falls over dead with no further casualties.

We’re in Karazhan and fighting Prince Malechazaar when an infernal drops right on my head and toasts my leafy arse into charcoal.  We now have only one Holy Paladin healer halfway through Phase 2.  This place is by no means on farm status, things do not look good.  Then the Bear tank does something amazing.  He warns the Paladin to start spamming maximum rank Holy Light, pops out of Bear Form, Barkskins himself, combat rezzes and innervates me and carries on tanking as if nothing had happened.

I get Tree of Life form for the first time and squeal with glee at the new Tree emotes.  I swear you’d have thought I was a thirteen year old girl.

And you haven’t lived until you’ve done Karazhan with 10 druids.

You can try stuff on a druid that any normal person would think was as mad as a box of frogs, because on a druid you can get away with it. Druids rock. Hard.

So to my furry and leafy brothers and sisters, keep on enriching the blogosphere with your friendly presence.  I’m not sure why it’s a better place because of you all, but it is.  I will close simply by allowing the legendary Alamo to have the last word on the subject:

Durids is make best frends. When people has lonely time, durids will haf sum laffs with lonely peeples!  Durids, u are my frends, and I likes you! almost like as much as bosoms!

DURIDS IS 4 haf FUN TIME WIT FRENS every1 is like a fun time durid!!

Why is Abbreviation such a long word?

Regular readers may have noticed that my blog posts err towards the..  shall we say, epic in nature?  I never write a sentence where a paragraph will do.  In fact, I’m already doing it again, all I needed to say was “I write long blog posts”.  So Krizzlybear, and everyone else who doesn’t have half a day to check their blogroll, this post is for you.

Shinano hit level 80 very recently (six level 80’s down, four to go!) and I’ve been doing instances as Feral while building up a pretty respectable Restoration set for raiding.  I raided the guildbank for 4 pieces of epic leather BoEs farmed from 10 and 25 man raids.  I got my Rogue, Fingers, to craft a few other pieces, tailored some others on Calli and blew some cash on the Auction House for the rest.  End result, 1400+ spellpower and 800 spirit unbuffed (while specced Feral), enough to start doing Naxx 10 man after a resto respec.

Anyway, last night we’re putting together a Sartharion and Malygos raid for alts and non-raiders.  We can only rustle 20 players up, so we decide to go ahead and get the “Less is More” achievements while we’re at it.  With 20 people we’re not going to try anything flashy with Sartharion, so go for a simple 0 drake kill.  In retrospect we could easily have handled 1 drake, but we wanted a quick kill, so that’s what we did.  I was only on Shinano to get the raid invited and sorted out, and was going to switch to a better geared dps character for the kill itself, but people were getting impatient and wanted to start, so off we went.

Sartharion dropped like a stone, and that’s not all that dropped.  The Staff of Restraint and Concealment Shoulderpads were on his loot table this week…  and no-one else wanted them!

Rrawr!

Now if only 3.1 and dual-spec would get here!

I Can Remember When All This Were Nowt But Pixels!

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane.  Cast your minds back a year to when Burning Crusade had just been released and we’d just levelled our way up to 70 and were starting our 5 man dungeon runs.  And let’s not forget that we had to do 5 man dungeons to even get access to heroics since you needed Revered reputation with the associated faction to even unlock Heroic mode.  Blackheart the Inciter in the Shadow Labyrinth was a nightmare boss for most with his mass mind-control ability.  The entire Shattered Halls instance was universally despised by every healer who was forced to run it over and over again to grind the necessary Honour Hold reputation for the healing head enchant.  The ironic part was that in order to unlock Heroic mode for the other Hellfire Citadel instances you needed the same reputation level that gave you the head enchant anyway.

Time for Fun! NOT!

Let’s talk about those heroic instances while we’re on the subject.  They were hard.  Our first heroic group posted an after-action report in our guild forum after running Heroic Steamvaults.  Some of the trash was harder than normal mode bosses.  These were guys wearing full level 70 dungeon blue sets, very experienced raiders.

Let’s talk about Karazhan.  Remember that every single person in a Karazahn raid had to work their way through the attunement process to get the key back then, and there was no-one in Tier 6 gear to hold their hands while they did it.  Karazhan itself was another brick wall difficulty curve.  There were still guilds working on Kara as progression content when Wrath of the Lich King went live.  Gruul’s Lair?  We poked our noses in there once shortly after doing a few Kara raids and the tanks were getting two-shotted by the trash.  It scared us away from Gruul and Magtheridon so badly we probably lost two months of raid progression due to being over-cautious in gearing up from Kara before we went back!

And then there were the attunement requirements for Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye that meant you had to keep running the same heroics/instances over and over to get people the necessary access to the 25 man raid content the rest of your guild was doing.  At least Gruul and Magtheridon were relatively quick to do at that stage, but if you were in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple and recruited another non-attuned raider you had to do entire clears of Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep before your new raiders could even get their feet in the doors of Hyjal or Black Temple.  Let’s also not forget that Vashj (to a lesser extent) and Kael’thas were rock hard raid bosses! I lost count of the number of guilds who broke apart under the strain of trying to get Kael’thas Sunstrider down.  There was a very good reason that even after the various nerfs and attunement removals you’d see people recruiting with messages along the lines of “Recruiting for xxx raiding guild, we’re 4/5 SSC and 3/4 TK, first 3 in BT and MH down”.

All of which brings us to today.  And people are complaining that Naxxramas is too easy?  We have very short memories!  Let’s just put all of this into perspective, shall we?

Following the various nerfs to raid content that Blizzard implemented, as well as the seriously good badge loot that would see guilds who never progressed past Kara decked out in Black Temple-equivalent gear, we were pretty much prepared for anything, despite what Illidan would have you believe.  Then there was the great pre-expansion nerf that would see raids gathering up and AoE’ing down trash that would previously have two-shotted any tank foolish enough to not go for mass mitigation tactics rather than balls-out threat generation.  Brutallus was being dropped with half of his enrage timer left.  People were gearing up way in excess of their progression or (and let’s be honest with ourselves here) skill levels, but it didn’t really matter because with the gear they were wearing and the various content nerfs, you could get away with zerging just about anything.

So now we’re in Wrath of the Lich King and we’ve a large percentage of the player base wearing gear that they’re never going to replace until after they hit the late level 70s at least.  You hit those early Northrend dungeons and you just blitz through them.  Marking targets for crown control?  That’s for pussies!  Gather them up and AoE them down!  Now you’ve hit level 80 and you don’t bother with normal mode anymore, it’s straight into Heroics to pick up some level 80 epic loot!  I know many players who have never seen the Occulus, Halls of Lightning or Utgarde Pinnacle except in Heroic mode.  And to a large extent, in my experience at least, you can still get away with the same tactics.  No need to gear up from running normal mode level 80 instances, get straight into heroics and zerg your way through!

What’s next?  Naxxramas! This place is being PuGged a month after the expansion went live.  I can remember the trash packs in level 60 Naxxramas .  They were absolutely brutal.  If you tried to AoE them down you’d be one very dead player in extremely short order.  But in level 80 Naxxramas, with the changes to tank threat generation it’s a different matter entirely.  In fact the only thing that holds me back on trash in Naxx now is the size of my mana pool.

We’ve gotten sloppy.  We’ve forgotten how to mark targets for crowd control and seperate out the most dangerous mobs for special treatment.  And we’ve forgotten how to do it because for the most part we don’t need to.  There are no “most dangerous” mobs.  Trash that would one-shot anyone who got too close previously and had to be kited now gets tanked.  Raid content in Wrath of the Lich King is just one big loot pinata, we smack it as hard as we can and wait to see what loot drops out.

So people are zerging their way through 10 man Naxxramas, getting bored with it within two weeks, then zerging their way through 25 man Naxxramas and finding it not much harder than the 10 man versions.  We’re all having some serious fun, but there’s a little voice in the back of our heads that’s wondering where the challenge is.   And after a month in Naxx when you’re clearing the place on heroic mode in a night and half and wondering what to do with the rest of your raid nights, that little voice is getting louder and louder.  I’ve heard it said that the solution to this is to do the same raids but with one hand tied behind your back, for the achievements.  For example, doing the whole of Naxxramas with 8 or less in your raid.  Now call me a bluff old traditionalist, but if I’m going to do a 10 man raid with 8 people I want slightly more reason to do it than another 10 lousy achievement points.  Better loot?  Sure.  Another 10 meaningless epeen points?  No thanks.  So where IS the challenge in Wrath raiding content?

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and go well with ketchup.

One word: Malygos.

This guy is badass.  He’s a proper raid boss in every sense of the word.  He’s not a brick wall-learning curve like M’uru was.  He’s not as remorselessly unforgiving of the slightest error as the Eredar Twins were, but he’s a Boss fight like the way we remember them, make no mistake of that.  You will not drop this guy on heroic mode the same night you first meet him.  You probably won’t drop him in 10 man mode the first night you meet him either.  You cannot zerg him.  He hits like an armoured train.  He will put pressure on your healers.  He will make your dps wake up as they struggle to beat his enrage timer and do the correct dps in the right place to the right target at the right time.  Your tank will worry about his survival again.  He’s not impossible, far from it.  He’s just a straightforward badass raid boss like the ones we used to know and love who requires a raid who can identify their arse from their elbow and he absolutely in no terms is going to go down to a PuG zerg.  He’s the kind of boss most of us have forgotten how to do.

How refreshing!  More like this please… oh wait.  That’s it??  Yep, I’m afraid he’s the end of current raid content in Wrath.  I’m hoping that he marks a change of pace in raid design however.  It’s likely that Blizzard designed the intial Wrath content as a big “Sorry for Burning Crusade being so hard” Christmas present.  Here are some loot pinatas for you to batter while we prep the serious stuff for a future patch, go ahead and have a laugh and gear up for the good stuff to come later.

I hope so.  I mean, I like chocolate and candy as much as the next person, but too much can leave you feeling a little sick before long.  Bring on Ulduar please!

HEEL BARES DURID!

Last night we did something we’ve been talking about for ages but never quite got round to – an all Druid Karazahn raid, and it was the stuff of legends.  I’ve not had as much fun playing this game in months.

The raid consisted of three Ferals, four Laser Chickens and three Trees, and let me tell you, it’s really hard to fail at a boss fight if you have ten battle rezzes and seven characters who can toss effective heals around.  I’m not sure how long we took to clear the place but I used a flask of blinding light just before Moroes and there were two minutes left on it when we pulled the Prince, so most likely the raid lasted a little over 2 hours.

This was also Shinano’s first instance as a Laser Chicken!  And it was a lot of fun, although those chickens sure go through mana fast!  Of course, when you have 10 innervates spare who really cares?  Shinano’s Boomkin gear had just over 1000 Nature damage (Kara, Zul Aman and Magister’s Terrace gear) so it’s really not that hard to get a decent Boomkin set good enough for a two hour Kara clearance if you want to.

We had a few “uh-oh” moments of course, some fights in Kara are designed with a certain class mechanic in mind, and if you don’t have that mechanic you need to improvise, so here are the fights that gave us some trouble and how we dealt with them:

Moroes
Problem:  No crowd control for the undead adds.
Solution: Bear tank them, kill them.

Terestrian Illhoof
Problem: No mage or warlock, so no spammable AoE for the Imps.
Solution: We have 10 Hurricanes!  Hurricane rotation set up, Imps pwnd.

Wizard of Oz Opera Event
Problem: No fire damage to keep Strawman crowd controlled.
Solution: Bear tank him!
Problem: No fear to keep Roar crowd controlled.
Solution: Gief moar Bares!

Shade of Aran
Problem: No spell interrupts.
Solution: HEEL MOAR! LOL
Problem: No crowd control for Elementals
Solution:  TANK MOAR LOL!

Seriously, there are some elements of the Aran fight that are totally trivial as a druid.  His Chains of Ice and Mass Slow are merely temporary irritations for a Druid.  And if we can’t interrupt any of his casts, big deal.  We’ve got ten Barkskin-uninterruptable Tranquilities ready to go, not to mention 10 Battle Resurrections if needed.  Aran was the one fight I thought might give us some problems, but in the end it was over so fast that I got caught by surprise when he died.

Oh, and Kitties cheat, too!  There’s a lot of trash you can skip in Kara if the entire raid can stealth!

And just to prove we did it, here are 10 Druids all casting Tranquility on Prince’s terrace.

There should be a video of the night available soon, I’ll update as and when it’s available.  Now, for next week I just need to find another 9 Paladins…

Apologies for all the Alamo-speak. 

UPDATE: Video is now available as promised.  My personal favourite moment is the Pikachu-inspired “Voodoo Gnomes, I choose YOU!” unleashing of the Zul’Aman Tiny Voodoo Mask trinket on Netherspite, although the entire raid stealthing past the trash to the tune of The Pink Panther comes a close second.  Be warned, the soundtrack is NOT safe for work.  Video here (327MB or view streamed from Filefront).

Throwing The Cat Amongst The Pigeons

I was going to make this a post about 10 man content, but news that Blizzard are shipping all the Wrath of the Lich King talent changes with their next patch came out of left field and caught me a little cold.  Since it’s the biggest news in town at the moment, it’d be remiss of me not to comment, so before we go any further, here’s the blue post:

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade’s release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.

We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: Inscription

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

So, much as when The Burning Crusade was released, we’re getting a whole bunch of changes released prior to the expansion to smooth the transition.  So far so good.  Or is it?  Rather than refer you to our full panel of experts, we’ll just get Calli and Shinano to cover the things I’ve looked at most closely.  Gorn also had something he wanted to say.

Calli, any comments from the mage perspective?