European CM Ommra just announced that Tree of Life will finally gain access to the Barkskin spell with the release of patch 2.1:

Druids will be able to cast Barkskin in Tree of Life form in 2.1.

Severely limited in defensive ability, Tree of Life will gain a small amount of usability in arena with this change. This will also allow trees to pair of Tranquility + Barkskin in 5-man instances and raids.

Related Posts

• Forum Commentary: Tree of Limitations
• Barkskin (Barkbark)
• Mailbag: A Deforested Restoration Build?

Accessdenied of Blackrock recently posted a short tutorial on shifting directly to Bird Form while swimming. Although the technique is difficult to perfect, she does offer proof of her success, as demonstrated by the video below:

Instructions:

1. Swim in a straight line (use the autorun key).

   Stay as close as possible to the water surface.

   It’s not necessary to get your head above water.

2. While on autorun, press the “pitch-up” button and hold it.

   Your toon will stop swimming and look-up/thread water.

   Her head will be below water, but that’s okay.

3. Now press the jump key once and let go (while still pressing pitch-up and on auto-run).

   At the peak of the jump, shift to flight form.

   You will shoot up straight like a rocket.

Pretty cool.

Related Posts

• Cyclone Your Enemies, Heal Your Friends
• Hibernating via Focus Target
• Nethaera: Tree of Life Spells under Consideration

So lately I’ve seen another spate of threads on the Shoulderpads of Assassination. Rogues complain that Druids roll on them, that they are selfish and little better than thieves. Druids complain that Rogues are selfish and narrow-minded.

So here’s the deal: In Auchindoun, the dungeon complex in Terokkar Forest’s Bone Wastes, there is a place called the Sethekk Halls. The final boss of Sethekk drops the Shoulderpads of Assassination. These are one of 3 leather Dungeon 3 armor sets. The set bonuses for the Assassination Armor are clearly Rogue-centric. Still, there is no class label on them.

As a result, Feral Druids want these shoulders for tanking. Tanking, you say? Why the hell would Bears want those things for tanking? Rogues use them for DPS, after all. Well, that’s what’s at issue.

Short of raiding, there are only a few sets of shoulders that measure up. Common wisdom holds, in fact, that these are the best pre-raid non-PvP shoulders available, primarily according to Emmerald’s list. Interesting that they don’t actually hold that spot.

Still, they hold spot 13 overall, and of those that meet the criteria there are only 5 pieces that rate better, all greens. Looking down the list to the set that is widely regarded as the ‘Feral’ set, we find the Wastewalker Shoulderpads clocking in at 24 overall with 5 greens of Stamina or of the Monkey between them and the Assassination shoulders. Sitting at 35 on the list is the one that most Rogues tell us to go get, the Sun-Gilded Shouldercaps, or as we like to call them, Boob Shoulders.

So the complaints are rolling in from random Rogues on the Druid forums complaining that Druids ninja’d their shoulders and Druids shoot back that they’re the best pre-raid non-PvP shoulders we can get. Who’s right? Both? Neither? Do we care?

Well, the root of the problem is craptacular itemization for Bears. Still. After all the wonderful changes that HAVE gone in for Bear Tanks, the fact is that the people making items still don’t know how to itemize for Feral Druids. Certainly we have some apparent flukes like the high armor quest rewards, the Earthwarden and the Heavy Clefthoof set, but when you start to check the Dungeon sets and the Tier 4-5 sets, it begins falling apart all over again.

So what do Druid Tanks do? We pick up Rogue gear. See, high armor is important – very important – but equally important are Stamina and Agility, and Wastewalker is seriously lacking Stamina. I’m not sure anyone can make a good case for a tank settling for an item with half the Stamina sported by an alternative.

What’s interesting is that according to the method used by Emmerald to determine the usefulness of an item for a Bear, there are 5 green items that rank better than the Assassination shoulders. Interestingly, the only options of these I’d really consider are the ‘of the Monkey’ items. Stamina items, while nice, are single-stat items and lack mitigation beyond armor and health. The Monkey items at least add crit and dodge in addition.

So, we ask ourselves, why shouldn’t a Bear Tank just pick up some Dragonhawk Shoulderguards of the Monkey?

Two reasons:

First, they are greens with random enchants. This alone ensures that you may never see them drop or see them up for sale. Their very nature means that I have a better chance to see Assassination shoulders drop…more than once. Statistically, the Assassination shoulders are just more accessible.

Second, why should Druid tanks be denied decent enough itemization that they HAVE to turn to Dragonhawk shoulders? Something smells funny here, and it may not just be my wet fur.

I wear the Assassination shoulders. I socketed and enchanted them. I love them. How did I get them? Simple. I ran Sethekk with my friends. I helped a guild Rogue get his and he helped me get mine. I’d certainly have rolled on them against any Rogue I didn’t know personally and I’d have made this clear from the start. That way, if anyone takes issue, we get it out of the way before the run commences. Some people may not be happy with this method, but until the shoulders say Class: Rogue on them, they’re fair game for anyone that can and will use them.

Related Posts

• Night Elves go Dungeonpunk
• The Cloak off My Back
• Head, Shoulders, Knees and…oh wait…

A topic on the official druid forums entitled “Cant decurse or buff in tree form…..!” was started today by Galladriel of Illidan. While the spell limitations of Tree of Life may be a dead horse to some, this topic included some interesting and — aside from the usual gear/spec/reputation posturing — constructive discussion about this form and the necessity (or lack thereof) of its inherent limitations. The posting of this topic comes in the wake of PTR 2.1.0 notes stating that while changes have been made to both the spells available in Tree of Life and that the ability tooltip has been updated for accuracy, community concerns about the form’s stringent limitations seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

Of primary concern to many druids (including the original poster) is the form’s inability to cast Abolish Poison, Remove Curse, Mark of the Wild, Thorns, or Barkskin. (Healing Touch is also mentioned but mostly perfunctorily; I don’t think many druids still argue for the ability to cast this spell in Treeform.) Not being able to cast Mark/Gift or Thorns can be frustrating, especially given the ten-minute duration on Thorns. Not that you would expect to stay a Tree for stretches of ten minutes at a time, but it’s frustrating to see Thorns drop on your main tank just as you’ve shifted into Treeform. Even just allowing Thorns to be cast without also giving access to Mark/Gift would be tremendously helpful. And really, what could make more sense than a Tree bestowing you with a thorny damage shield (which, outside the realm of Azeroth, makes very little sense)? You generally don’t buff during combat, so this limitation seems annoying and unnecessary.

The real frustration for a Tree is not being able to cast Abolish Poison or Remove Curse, both of which are classified as Restoration spells. These aren’t the only Restoration spells to which we lose access, of course, and — unlike priest Shadowform — Tree of Life isn’t billed as a school-limited or school-exclusionary form. However, the two decursing spells’ Restoration classification firmly places them within the realm of healing.

Notouch of Bonechewer argues that:

“…the limitations to it were built in for a reason. It’s up to you to figure out what those reasons are and learn to incorporate them into your play style.”

She believes that it’s partly laziness that makes druids want to decurse in Treeform and that “artistic” shifting is a demonstration of druid skill. While I agree that it does take some skill to be able to manage the use of Treeform in instances where decursing is required (all of them at one point or another), I prefer to let my skill show by capitalizing on my class’s strengths, not by overcoming my class’s inherent and unnecessary deficiencies. If there isn’t a good reason for the limitation, simply having it for the sake of separating men from mice — or elf from tree — is silly.

Calenbraga from Feathermoon points out that feral-specced druids have to deal with similar limitations while in form:

If a feral druid dies in cat form when a battle rez, innervate or emergency heal could have improved the situation they make it clear they’re a crappy druid. Same deal for a moonkin.

Same deal for a tree druid.

Sounds logical. Each of our forms do have limitations. Except that Tree of Life is the only one of our forms to have limitations which are directly counter to the role it is intended to perform. When a druid turns into a cat, she doesn’t suddenly go from being able to stealth to not. And when a druid turns into a bear, she doesn’t suddenly lose the ability to bash. You don’t lose abilities which are core to performing the role of your new form but instead only gain abilities which lend toward performing that role. The downside is the loss of spell access (healing, damage, buffing, debuffing), but all of these spells are outside the the bounds of melee dps and tanking. When a druid turns into a tree, however, she finds her retinue of healing abilities greatly diminished, one of the most important and necessary among them being decursing.

The last spell under discussion was Barkskin which I view as icing on the cake. While I agree that — if only for Lore reasons — a Tree should have access to something called Barkskin even if they don’t have an inherent armor bonus for being made out of wood, if we were given the ability to decurse, I would ask for nothing else.

A 41-point Healing form should not be something that you can’t use to heal a group in Heroic instances. As it is, Treeform makes easy instances even easier and the hardest instances all but impossible. This seems to me a fundamental flaw in its design and one I’m surprised that the development team persists in ignoring.

Related Posts

• Nethaera: Tree of Life Spells under Consideration
• Ommra: Barkskin to Be Usable by Tree of Life
• Indoor Roots Possible in WotLK

Boubouille over at MMO-Champion recently posted an in depth preview of patch 2.1.0 (registration required to view) which — among tons of other content — includes pictures of Tier 6 armor for all of the classes. Every time the graphics for a new tier of armor is released, it gives me hope that the previous tiers will somehow become more accessible, but I suppose that’s the original EverQuest player in me. I don’t like the look of the druid Tier 6 armor, but I suppose we look like totems in treeform so we may as well look like totems out of treeform, too. As always, the priest equivalent looks amazing, and I admit to feeling armor envy. I wish someone would tell the basement programmers at Blizzard that nature includes more colors than green and brown. There are purple mountains, blue skies, and every other color in flowers. I’d like to see more colors incorporated into some of our armor sets.

The stats on all Tier 5 armor are also getting an overhaul, and the MMO-Champion article includes links to the updated Nordrassil Harness (Feral), Raiment (Restoration), and Regalia (Balance) sets. In addition to the armor preview, the Gift of the Wild spell icon is getting a facelift. Before my dual-purpose macro for casting Mark/Gift, I created a macro that used a different icon for my Gift spell, so it’s nice to see them recognize and correct this annoyance.

There is a ton of additional information applicable to all classes — including all new jewelcrafting recipes, Darkmoon Faire upgrades, new mounts and weapon graphics, and reputation guides for Skyguards and Netherdrakes — so be sure to check out the article for yourself!

Related Posts

• Arena 2 Class Set
• Season 2 Gloves Lackluster
• Druid in a Bottle