In Arenas — especially 2v2 — there is a lot of Paper, Rock, Scissors (with Warlocks being the atom bomb). There are certain combinations that seem custom-built to exploit your team’s weaknesses. In these situations, often your best hope is that the other team makes a mistake that you’re lucky enough to capitalize upon. For Ebene and I (Warrior/Druid), two such team combinations are Warrior/Shaman and Scorpid Hunter/Healer. I don’t think we’ve ever succesfully beaten the former, and the latter is a real pain in the butt.

The strength of a Scorpid Hunter is that his pet stacks a poison on you that prevents you from removing his master’s Viper Sting (mana draining poison). Prior to Patch 2.2, the Scorpid Poison also did a tremendous amount of damage. Against a Scorpid Hunter it’s very important to keep an Abolish Poison up as often as possible to try to keep yourself from getting poisons stacked up (and it seems a bit of a problem that a Hunter should be so necessarily described in terms of her pet). If you get into trouble, you can shift into Bear Form and use Frenzied Regeneration so that you can’t be affected by the mana drain component of the poison.

This morning we faced a Scorpid Hunter/Holy Priest combination named Viper Burn from the Firetree server. As you might have inferred from their team name, they rely upon a combination of Viper Sting and Mana Burn to effectively take the wind out of the sails of any team with a mana user. They are built to overcome the popular combination of Healer + DPS. Definitely tough competition, especially considering the ratings of some of their other teams (the Priest is 2100+ on his 3v3). And. They. Cheat.

I can understand the desire to win in competitive PvP. As Megan of Out of Mana writes:

You already know that so many people QQ about PVP. PVP is serious business. People get very emotional (me included) about PVP because of the human component—someone else just gave you a serving of pwncake and it didn’t taste very good. It’s fine if Prince screws you over, you can blame it on Infernals, AI, coding, and the alignment of the moon. But when someone kills half the raid during a Gruul Shatter? That pisses you off because it was the result of a human. PVP is like the latter 100%, all the time—you just gave someone honor or rating points, possibly bragging rights, and if they are Undead, they are eating your body. And that sucks.

And when they cheat? It’s 100 times worse. We fought Viper Burn twice, and they used two exploits (that we could see). The Priest, McNugget, found some area in the Nagrand arena where he could stand and, while remaining completely visible, was unchargable. In our second game, he exploited the “/sit” macro to continue drinking despite repeated attacks to put him into combat. After the second Moonfire, I had to switch to Cyclone to prevent him from continuing to drink. We won both games (thankfully), and I hope the pound of pwncake we served them had weevils in it.

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When I first started my blog, I spent a couple of days hours Googling for “Druid blog” and “Druid warcraft blog.” At that time, I was only able to find Amanna’s Adventures in Azeroth, a great blog that directed me to a handful of other Druid blogs. At my most recent count, there are more than twenty-five Druid blogs. They’re pretty well-distributed among our different talent specs, too, with the majority being Feral, but several Restoration, and a handful of Balance.

While I don’t actively participate in the blog communities for other classes (although I devotedly read several Priest blogs), it seems like the online community of Druid bloggers has exploded. This is good and bad. On the one hand, most of the Druids who write are generous and friendly people, citing each other’s articles and information as valuable to their own visitors. On the other … that’s a LOT of blogs to keep up with! I used to spend probably an hour every day trying to visit every blog to see who had updated. But I found that once I got in the “visit, visit, visit” mode, I was less inclined to actually “read, read, read.” Which is when I discovered Google Reader, a web application that lets you collect multiple RSS-based subscriptions in one place.

Google Reader tells you how many unread posts there are for those sites you’ve elected to watch (by subscribing to their RSS feeds) and lets you browse through a simplified version of said posts. You can even organize your watched blogs into labels (I have one for each spec of Druid, one for Priests, one for “Other WoW Blogs”, and even one for my favorite web comics). This has reduced the time I spend looking for updates tremendously and lets me spend that time actually reading the work of other authors. If you’re like me and keep up with several different blogs, Google Reader can probably save you a lot of time, too.

And on that note, I won’t feel so guilty about innundating you with yet more excellent blogs, ones I’ve recently discovered myself that you may find worthy of a bookmark or RSS subscription:

• Magna’s Generic Sounding Druid Blog

  Don’t let the name or less than eye-popping aesthetics fool you; this is a great blog for a couple of reasons: 1) she’s a Resto Druid whose guild is currently in Black Temple and 2) her writing is both interesting and insightful. I look forward to keeping up with this one!

• Zanderfin’s WoW “Casual” Raiding

  An interesting focus for a blog, Zanderfin of Bronzebeard writes of all things raid-related. And he does so in an intelligent and thoughtful manner! “Hardcore” never seemed less appealing.

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Auryann of Scarlet Crusade is a recent addition to my guild Aegis Hestia. She went through our application process as a Feral, with her furry tail swishing left and right. However, due to a recent influx of Ferals, it was decided by those-who-decide-things that we could not afford to take her on were she to remain Feral-specced. She was so well-liked, however, that those-who-decide-things asked if she would be willing to respec Restoration so that we could invite her. Luckily, she agreed. This was great news for all involved; our guild gained a skilled player with wonderful personality, and I was no longer the only Restoration Druid! This, of course, opens up a whole host of possibilities for Tree-related puns (can’t see the raid for the Trees, leaf us alone, etc.).

Auryann has started her own blog, Lifebloom and You, that focuses on her transition from Feral to Restoration. Here’s a snippet from one of her first content articles, “Oops, forgot to mana up”:

After switching, there were a few things I had to get use to doing again. First, I had to remember to drink up which is something I never did as a feral druid. I never needed mana. Okay, sometimes I did. So often after finishing a fight and heading to another one people had to often remind me to drink up. Oops.

As you can probably tell, I’m pretty excited about this latest addition to the Druid blogosphere. I’d appreciate if you would stop by and make Auryann feel welcome!

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Last night I was priveleged to be with my guild for yet another downing of Gruul the Dragonkiller. I get swapped into raids when people need to leave since I rarely make start times, but I’m okay with this. I do what I can.

Long story short, we got him after several attempts (we seem to only marshall ourselves after several wipes to a big bad and then go, ‘Okay, this is our last shot for tonight’ which true to tradition, worked again last night).

I was the lucky Druid to score the [Leggings of the Fallen Defender]. Afterward, a quick trip to the Scryer terrace and the [Greaves of Malorne] were mine! Finally, if and when I upgrade to T5, I won’t lose my T4 2-piece bonus!

But wait… is all as rosy as it could be?

As anyone who knows me can attest, I’m a Stamina whore. For a very long time, I stacked Stamina and little else in an effort to exploit the strengths of my class as a tank. I couldn’t do anything about Crushing Blows, so I decided to stack Armor and Health. Many Bears prefer AGI and the dodge and crit it brings, but I’ve always looked at that more as a luxury for the mostly or all-epic Bear. I still wear quite a bit of Blue.

As a result, I wore my [Heavy Clefthoof Leggings] for a long time, and every gem socket I have is packed with a [Solid Star of Elune].

This gave me roughly insane health totals, especially when raid buffed. I was a happy and contented Bear.

But when I got a new cloak with Defense on it and realized I could get rid of a different piece of gear with Defense on it, I picked my legs and got myself a [Forestwalker Kilt]. The gods of the random number generator smiled on me and I got it on my first trip to Heroic Mana Tombs. I was ecstatic. Not only did I get a pair of legs that only minimally dropped my armor and Stamina (these things have 3 sockets on them, after all) but they added threat and mitigation through STR and AGI. Hell, I even got a small INT boost for my feral mana pool.

In all, very nice.

I was wearing these up until last night, when I got the Greaves. After kitting them with a [Nethercleft Armor Kit] (still need a Nether for that), I’ll be losing even more Stamina (21 points to be exact, as I’ve Netherclefted the Kilt), but I’ll be gaining significantly in Armor (around 900 in Dire Bear, putting me just shy of 30k), and a small amount of AP, dodge, and crit.

It is an upgrade given that the Stam I’m giving up isn’t even a single trash mob hit, but sometimes that sliver of health is what gives your healers time to catch up, that proves the difference between surival and wipe.

But… and there’s always a but… the added survivability from Armor and Agility are also impressive. I’m too lazy to do the math, so instead, I’ll be keeping my Kilt (and indeed I have yet to dispose of my HCH pants) for Stamina fights, fights where perhaps I don’t have the best resist gear, but where my armor and dodge are less valuable.

Once again, the upgrade involves more of a consideration of playstyle and situation than in the past game, perhaps adjusting that playstyle to fit the gear. But it is also in part, a significant source of the fun in that there are so many factors to consider.

Plus, I’m out of my skirt… for now.

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The cooldown on our combat resurrection spell Rebirth will be reduced from 30 minutes to 20 minutes in an upcoming patch:

We want to whack the cooldown from 30 minutes down to 20 minutes.

And just to say it, we have no current plans to lower it further and make it usable in arenas. A full druid team with a bunch of Rebirths sounds a little wonky.

While I am appreciative of any attention given to the lack of viability of Druids as 5-man healers (except when “backed up” by another healer), a reduced cooldown on Rebirth doesn’t address the essential problem of not having a standard resurrection spell: you can’t ressurect more than one group member unless one of those that died is herself another Druid or a “real” rezzer. If anything, this change is discouraging because it’s likely the only improvement they’ve decided to make.

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