Oakblade of the Venture Co server was this month’s winner of the World of Warcraft Comic Contest, submitting a piece which illustrates a less than well known caveat about Druid Flight Form:

Items which increase mount speed do not affect the speed of Druid Travel Form.

Keep in mind that while the Riding Crop will avail you little while flying, the form-equivalent item Charm of Swift Flight is acquired through the course of completing the Epic Flight Form quest. This “freebie” trinket can save you upwards of 100 gold since a Primal Might is required to craft the Riding Crop.

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In a flurry of Blue posting, European Community Manager Vaneras tagged several player-written guides on the Official Druid Forums (Europe) and stated that they’ve been added to an “Informative Druid Threads” post, a new stickied thread that seeks to index a host of guides for the Druid class, reducing the need to sticky a lot of individual threads. Alphabetically, Druids come first, so it’s probably safe to assume he — and possibly other Community Managers — will be doing the same for the other classes.

Among the topics stickied were:

• Balance Arena Sets: MP/5 vs Crit by Synneth of Executus
• Beginner Guide to Feral Druid in Arena by Sarokh of Genjuros
• Druid Information+IRC Channel and IRL Pics by Athinira of Ravencrest
• Guide to Resto Endgame by Heavenfall of Trollbane
• How to Get Epic Flying Mount in 2.1.0 by Dontbescared of Thunderhorn
• Kolphes’ Introduction to Feral Druiding by Kolphes of Nordrassil
• Maximizing Your Moonkin DPS by Isilvara of Moonglade

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One of the biggest problems facing Druid tanks is our itemization. It’s worlds better than it was pre-Burning Crusade, to be sure, but where Plate items itemized for tanking veritably jump into the bags of Warriors running instances, Druid tank gear is much more complex both in its acquisition and its value.

Uncrittability is one of the big sticking points of this issue. In order to become uncrittable, a tank needs 490 Defense. The thing is, there are exactly four items in leather that provide Defense Rating (not counting the useless greens ‘of Defense’) to a Druid tank. One of those 4 replaces the other, leaving us with 3 usable armor items at 70 that provide Defense.

Luckily for Druids, we have a talent that gives us a 3% chance to avoid being critted. What this means in a practical sense is that we need a mere 415 Defense to achieve uncrittable status.

Still, we need to load up on either gems or gear for other slots like trinkets, rings, cloaks and so on to make up for the fact that there are no bracers, hats, shoulders, gloves, shields, or idols capable of providing us with alternatives in Defense. I’m still wondering if I’ll ever be swapping out my Clefthoof set due to it having adequate numbers in both Defense and Stamina that are difficult or impossible to replace.

In order to maximize our advantages, some of the slots we fill are filled whenever possible with high armor items. Our ring slots are an excellent example of this. Until our armor is acceptably high, an Iron Band of the Unbreakable will generally be preferable to an Elementium Band of the Sentry in spite of it’s obviously better non-armor stats.

So this brings me to the actual topic of discussion.

In my previous post I didn’t mention the Gilded Thorium Cloak. In two of three ways, it is a downgrade from the Thoriumweave Cloak.

Because it has Defense on it, though, I took it.

This allowed me to remove the Defense enchantment from my shoulders and re-gem a few slots with Solid Stars of Elune. Pricey but worth it. The net effect was a significant upgrade in Stamina for an imperceptible loss of armor.

With absolutely no buffs running whatsoever, I’m at 25.8k AC and 14.1k HP. I think I’m moving up in the world.

This seriously sets me back from my T4 hat and shoulders, though.

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In the spirit of Alamo and out of interest in visitor demographics, I put together the poll at right asking you to indicate your current (or most often-used) talent spec. Please select from primarily Restoration, Balance, or Feral builds; a Balance/Restoration hybrid or Feral/Restoration hybrid; some other variant; or “WUT IS DURID LOL?” if you happen to not have a Druid.

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There was a rumor floating around a few days ago that Blizzard was considering a reduction of the cost to learn Epic Flight, a cost which is largely prohibitive for many druids who would like to complete the Swift Flight Form quest. Community Manager Drysc responded to this rumor yesterday, saying:

Depending on how mount riding skills are going to progress, the most likely point for a price drop would be with the release of the next expansion, just as the ground mount prices dropped when Burning Crusade was released. Again it would likely depend on a few factors, and may actually not change. But that’s a question for a later time.

So for those who were holding off dropping 5k on training the ability to fly at epic speed, don’t worry. Even if we’re lucky enough to receive news of the next expansion at Blizzcon next week, it’s unlikely we’ll see it’s release for at least a year.

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