It is with great pleasure that I share with you the first real preview of the new hairstyles for female characters in Wrath of the Lich King! The contents of these images were discovered (NOT created) and submitted by community figure Andrige, best known for his modified shapeshift skins and a host of other Druid-related art projects. He sent the female images to me and the male images to John of Big Bear Butt. You can check out the male preview here!

Thanks, Andrige!!

Disclaimer: Andrige wanted me to mention that, because he isn’t familiar with all of the existing hairstyles, that it’s possible some of these may already be in the game. Also, there don’t appear to be new hairstyles for Dwarves, yet. Some hairstyles look as-yet incomplete like the right-most Night Elf style with the bald spot.

Personally, I am a little disappointed that so many hairstyles appear to simply be crossovers from one race to another (Blood Elves appear to borrow styles from Night Elves, Gnomes, Humans, and Draenei). They look nice enough, and I can appreciate that it reduces development time to reuse previously created content, but I hope there are some new additions, as well!

P.S. For a nice preview of the new barber shop, check out Banana Shoulders’ guide, Shave and a Haircut!

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Last week’s Community Spotlight with highlighted articles got such a great reception that I think it’s something I’ll try to continue. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the gems I’ve set aside for you (they’re 11 +Healing, 5 Spirit)!

Recommended Reading

Another fantastic set of posts to educate, entertain, and edify you!

Staff of the Golden Salamander by Orsolya Berecz

• Best Looking Druid Set from Horns of YAOWN
  Horns gives further evidence of his secret love affair with Druids with his poll of what the best-looking set of Druid armor is. I won’t spoil the surprise of who the winner is, but I must express disappointment that Nordrassil didn’t fare better than it did.
• Nature’s Swiftness (for Shamans) from Anna of Too Many Annas
  Ever notice how all the races who can play Shamans have funny feet? Hmm. Anyway, in this article Anna explores and encourages the use of Nature’s Swiftness for Shamans.
• So What are You Wearing? from Runycat of Unbearably HoT
  This week Runy writes about the advantages and best methods of optimizing multiple gear sets with an eye toward maximizing DPS and threat for Ferals. And with that post title, she’s sure to double your entendre!
• The End Heal of Lifebloom Generates No Threat from Lume the Mad
  A must read for Restoration Druids, this article details controlled tests he performed to determine that the end heal of Lifebloom generates no threat whatsoever, either for its caster or its recipient. This article is preceded by Lume’s also useful Threat Mechanics post.
• Druids Dance with So Little Provocation from a Scary Bear
  So true. I know the first thing I did when speccing into Restokin last night was to /dance /dance /dance the night away. And then I Moonfire-spammed a squirrel.
• No More Salvation? What to Do! from Rollin’ Horde
  Learn about the new threat mechanic that will replace the Paladin’s Blessing of Salvation in Wrath of the Lich King!

Arena Pole Dancer Shirt

To celebrate her blog’s 100,000th visitor, Megan from Out of Mana decided to give away an autographed PvP-themed T-Shirt to the lucky winner. She had some great ideas and, in thanks for letting her sell the design myself, I offered to execute my favorite: Arena Pole Dancer. Here’s a preview of the shirt, both front and back (not to scale):

Arena Pole Dancer Shirt Front	Arena Pole Dancer Shirt Back

This shirt is now available within the Resto4Life Tree-Shirts store, albeit without the “Out of Mana” design on the back because printing two designs on a shirt increases the shirt price significantly. I prefer this design on red, yellow, brown, white, or even black shirts, but free color selection is enabled for all of them. You can read more about the T-Shirt winners (all four of them) at Megan’s post #100,000 Winnars, Shapeshifted Indeed.

New Blogs the World Over

And here are some new or newly-discovered additions to the blogosphere!

Emerald Dream by Orsolya Berecz

• Grumble ‘N’ Autumn
  Written by a husband and wife who play Hunters on the Shandris server, Grumble ‘n’ Autumn details their in-game explorations.
• Hoofed Hybrid
  Formerly the author of the blog entitled Lifebloom, Boudi of Feathermoon (US) now writes about both her Druid and her baby Shaman on Hoofed Hybrid!
• An Old Druid’s New Druid
  The Alliance welcomes a Tauren-become-Night Elf Druid who enjoys raiding casually and apparently enjoys Druids enough to roll a second.
• Secret Agent Cat
  Tigerfeet writes an entertaining and cleverly-themed Feral blog. They’ve give her a Mangle and taken away her Mane.
• ThinkTank
  This blog explores the role of tanking from the perspective of multiple tanking classes. There seems to be a plethora of great Feral-related articles, though!
• Unpack Your Adjectives
  You did pack your adjectives, right? After all, you never know when you’re going to need words like: Feral, Wry, and PvP-oriented. In fact, those words would come in handy if asked to describe this blog!

Featured Artwork

This week’s Featured Artwork comes from Orsolya Berecz.  Be sure to check out all of her great work at her DeviantART gallery under username ShakSaag. (Wow, can you tell I listened to NPR on the way into work this morning?)

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Beta tester Lisana recently posted a question regarding the scaling of Feral Druids in Wrath of the Lich King and whether they could expect to once again "fall behind" Rogues as in TBC. Blizzard Developer Jimmythenumbers responded at great length with some new information:

In the next data push, you will find Omen of Clarity has been changed a bit. The 10 second cooldown has been removed, the procs per minute has been raised from 2 to 3.5, and melee abilities no longer trigger it. Spell interaction with Omen of Clarity remains relatively unchanged, with its hidden chance to trigger off spells reduced by half (and rolling the dice about 2x as often).

What this means is that more auto-attacks landing on the target will increase the benefit from Omen of Clarity. Haste, increased hit chance, and expertise will all make Omen of Clarity better.

We are aware of the concerns with reaching the hit rating cap, and will make sure Druids can pick up Rogue items to wear without exceeding that cap. This means Rogues will likely socket for hit, while Druids socket for Strength or Agility.

Before LK goes live, we will do extensive testing on how much damage classes do, and will increase or decrease their power as appropriate to meet our targets. Cat raid DPS suffered relative to other melee in BC for lack of an Combat Potency equivalent talent (OOC should now be roughly equal), for lack of a scaling finishing move (Savage Roar answers that), for lack of benefiting from Windfury Totem, and for lack of weapon procs (+35 agility != Mongoose). All of those lacks have been addressed. In addition, a change has been made to make the agility rebalance less severe (as I posted in another thread).

In PvP, we are adding many tools to the Feral Druid arsenal, including the redesigned Maim, Infected Wounds, King of the Jungle, and Berserk. We have also made some improvements to the "range bug". Attacks that require you to be behind a target will no longer be able to be parried, nor able to be dodged by a player. Our movement engine will now smoothly interpolate positions of moving units, preventing the "Out of range/You must be behind your target/Out of range/You must be behind your target/Out of range/You must be behind your target…" sequence from occurring any more. In addition, being able to apply a snare makes the Feral Druid able to slow down their target and lessen the severity of the "range bug". Yes, there are still issues with the model, especially when switching into and out of cat form, but many of the issues are being dealt with.

Druids are not being ignored; this forum is being read daily by developers.

Before you freak out at the statement "melee abilities no longer trigger it," understand that this means that melee special attacks (yellow damage) will no longer trigger it. It will only be able to trigger from auto-attack (white damage), but its proc frequency has been increased. The stated PPM of 3.5 is an average expected PPM and will increase with hit, haste, and expertise rating. Beta tester Werebeef explains in greater detail:

With no cooldown and 3.5 procs per minute, what this really means is that your melee attacks have a 5.83% (3.5/60) chance of proccing Omen of Clarity. Capping hit and having expertise makes sure you don’t fail to land attacks that might have been hits that proc Omen of Clarity, and haste means you land more attacks per minute.

The changes to Omen of Clarity were made with the intention to bring the ability more in line with Rogue’s Combat Potency, an ability that "gives your successful off-hand melee attacks a 20% chance to generate 15 Energy." Despite my earlier skepticism about Blizzard’s interest in addressing the Cat Form range bug, it does sound like they’ve made some large improvements, so I think we should stay hopeful.

In a separate thread, a player expressed his upset over the change to Agility whereby it converts to less crit rating than before:

As we’re aware, it seems most of us are losing 6-10% crit rating off the bat because of the Agility nerf.
We also don’t seem to be compensated in any way for the agility nerf. The agility nerf happened because Blizzard felt that Agility was too good and was leading to lopsided itemization.

Developer Jimmythenumbers comes to the rescue once again, responding with the following:

To help deal with this issue, in the next data push, Druids should find their melee critical strike chance is about 5% higher.

The conversion of Agility to critical strike chance remains the same 40:1 at level 70, but the base amount for 0 agility has been increased by 5%.

This is all very positive news for Feral Druids, and it seems as though Blizzard is paying close attention to all the constructive discussion on the Beta forums. Now if only I could get a beta key! (Although with Revive coming, I’m not altogether sure what I’d post about!)

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Reader Tangible of Hyjal (US) writes in with the following bug report for the live environment:

I thought I’d let you know about an odd Druid bug I found today. I’d never bothered to level up my mace skill, even though I’ve used one for ages.

During the Sunfury Attack Plans daily quest, I decided I’d spend some time just auto-attacking the geologists, occasionally throwing in a Lifebloom to keep me going. However, I noticed the bloom was actually only getting me for 600. I’m currently at around 1850 +healing, but even with 200 +Healing, the final tick should be scaling past its starting value. So I killed the mob, and tried a three stack on myself. Bloom scaled without issue. That’s when it clicked in that it’s auto-attack doing so. I grabbed another mob and tried again while auto-attacking to verify.

In summary: throwing an LB on yourself while auto-attacking results in the bloom portion not scaling with your +Healing. How’s that for obscure!

I’ve heard odder things before, but I was skeptical so I flew up to the ogre area above Shattrath and tried something similar. I was unable to reproduce this issue myself, even after several attempts. I told Tangible this, asking if maybe he might have an addon that was displaying combat text incorrectly, and he was kind enough to do some more testing and provide some concrete evidence that he is experiencing this.

To ensure I’m not completely insane, I went off and did some more testing, this time with some screenshots. My character has 1887 +Healing in these tests, with a regular Lifebloom bloom hitting me for around 1500. The first two screenshots below are of me meleeing a mob, one time with the LB blooming properly, one time with it only blooming for 600. The interesting part of this is that when I was testing this originally, I never saw a proper full bloom at all. This time, I could get it to bloom properly around 20% of the time. It might have to do with the timing of the auto-attack swing.

Lifebloom Blooming at Expected Value

Lifebloom Blooming as though without +Healing

The second two screenshots are of me testing what you asked below — i.e., whether it was just showing 600 in my combat log, but actually healing me for the proper amount. I flew up high in Zangarmarsh, then dropped down, and auto-attacked a mob. I tried to get the timing as exact as possible for the before/after final bloom, but was still off, due to my larger resolution and the time it takes to take a screenshot. That said, you can still easily see the numbers add up to a 600 bloom, not a 1500-ish one.

Before	After

In the "before" screenshot, my HP is shown before the 227 tick you see has been applied (it kind of looks otherwise, with the value on my character icon fading, but it’s just fading into view — you can see it at the bottom of the scrolling combat text over my char, which moves upwards). You can look at the combat log for "after" and add the numbers up from there:

3617 HP (start) 
+227 LB
- 123 Hit
+228 LB
+228 LB
+600 LB Bloom
= 4777 HP

4777 is the value seen as my HP in the "after" shot. It’s definitely not healing me for what it should be.

Here’s my armory profile:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hyjal&n=Tangible

Those are the items used during the testing. You’ll see in my Zangarmarsh test I gained Light’s Salvation during the attempt, this isn’t a factor (both because I can get the 600 LB to occur without any procs, and because it procced after the LB was already applied).

If you’ve any other questions, or want the full screenshots or such, just let me know. Hopefully you can manage to reproduce this issue.

I spent about 10 minutes in Zangarmarsh last night trying to reproduce this issue. Even after 20 Lifebloom blooms, I never saw a value less than 1236 (I was wearing PvP gear). I’m posting this in curiosity to see if anyone else has experienced — or can reproduce — this phenomenon themselves. After all, as Tangible points out, how often are we going to have the need to Lifebloom while meleeing something to death?

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In addition to the newly-discovered Glyphs, these are the Druid-related patch from the latest build on the Beta servers:

Feral

• Primal Tenacity now reduces the duration of Fear effects by 10/20/30% and reduces all damage taken while stunned by 10/20/30%.
  Old version: 5/10/15% fear reduction and 5/10/15% damage reduction while stunned
• Infected Wounds effect now reduces the movement speed of the target by 10% and its attack speed by 3%.
  Old version: 10% reduction to both movement and attack speed
• Challenging Roar now has a 3 minute cooldown, reduced from 10 minutes.

Restoration

• Replenish now gives a 5/10/15% chance to restore 10 Energy/5 Rage/2% Mana or 10 Runic Power per tick.
  Old version: 5/10/15% chance to restore 10 Energy/4 Rage/2% Mana/10 Runic Power per tick

Flourish Amount Healed Unchanged; Nourish Dynamic Changed

MMO Champion is reporting the total amount healed for Rank 1 of Flourish as 1610, which means the overall amount healed as not been nerfed as we had feared. Everyone celebrate, but do so quietly so as not to attract the attention of the nerf bat!

As expected, a change has been made to Nourish whereby it heals for an additional 20% provided you have a Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, and Regrowth running on the target. I say “expected” because with two Restoration Druids and a Priest in the raid, you could feasibly have healed for 35% more (Lifebloom x 2 + Rejuvenation x2 + Regrowth x 2 + Renew). Gift of the Earthmother appears to remain unchanged, still restoring 5% mana cost on Healing Touch and Nourish per heal over time on the target. It’s probably safe to expect a change similar to the one made to Nourish, however.

Balance Druids to Benefit from Improved Scorch

A recent change was made to the Mage talent, Improved Scorch:

Improved Scorch – More damage types added, now your Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Fire, Frost and Arcane damage, increasing damage taken by 2/4/6/6/10% and lasts 30 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

This means that a Balance Druid can expect to receive an additional 10% damage on all Starfire, Moonfire, and Starfall spells, assuming a Mage with 18 points in Fire is present.

Changes to Energy, Mana Regeneration and Potion Mechanics

Mana- and Energy-users can expect to see an interesting difference in the way they regenerate mana. It now regenerates steadily over time rather than waiting for 2-second “ticks” to increase. The overall effect is a more constant stream of mana, though it not clear if the actual formula has changed. You can view a video of this new mechanic via Filefront here.

Say goodbye to chain-potting in the expansion. Blizzard is implementing a "one potion per encounter" debuff called Potion Sickness:

While I’m personally pleased at the idea that I may not have to bring 20 Super-Duper Mana Potions to each raid (or whatever they’re called in the expansion), I recognize that this as a nerf to Alchemists who use trinkets that afford them X MP5. Also, keep in mind that, while I’m sure at this point that most of us are accustomed to having ample regeneration and not needing to chain pot, that probably won’t be the case  when we reach level 80 and start to gear up. Mana management and personal mana-restorative abilities will become essential for raids. This also places increased pressure on DPS to complete encounters before their healing corps runs dry.

Note also that this debuff will apply to Super-Duper Health Potions, a consumable frequently brought in mass quantity by tanks. Healers will have to be more careful not to have our tanks need the use of such consumables since they are no longer going to be available more than once per encounter.

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