With the release of Wrath of the Lich King looming on the “soon” horizon, many players find themselves looking for ways to keep themselves busy. Here are 12 steps to ensure you’re as prepared as possible for stepping foot on the shores of Northrend. (Hint: buy warm boots)
No major news today, but there were a few tidbits I wanted to bring to your attention, particularly concerning the itemization for Restoration-based PvP in Wrath of the Lich King.
PvP Itemization
Some of you may remember that prior to Patch 2.4, Blizzard considered converting MP5 to Spirit on Kodohide gear. At the time, there was a tremendous outcry from players (myself included) that this was an intentional decision to handicap Druid mana regeneration in Arenas since MP5 was widely regarded as the superior regeneration stat in PvP. With the buff to Spirit-based mana regeneration in Patch 2.4, however, it suddenly became apparent that Spirit was no longer a stat to be discounted. In fact, the change in 2.4 single-handedly made Kodohide significantly less valuable in PvE.
According to reports from MMO Champion, this will no longer be an issue in Wrath of the Lich King. Druid PvP armor will come in three flavors:
- Feral with Agility, Stamina, Critical Strike, and Attack Power « link »
- Spell Power with Stamina, Intellect, and Spirit « link »
- Spell Power with Stamina, Intellect, and Critical Strike Rating (mmm … tastes like Laser Chicken) « link »
The Spirit-based set is obviously intended for use by Restoration, but the spell critical set could be used either by a Balance Druid, or a hybrid Restokin spec (assuming that spec continues to be viable). However, the complete absence of either Spirit or MP5 leads me to believe its itemization is as yet incomplete. After all, everyone needs some form of mana regeneration. It’s also worth noting that none of these sets include pieces with “green” armor, and the set bonuses appear to be unchanged (though the Balance set reads slightly differently, I suspect it’s a typo).
Druid Changes
Unfortunately, there was nothing particularly earth-shattering for Ferals anxious about their relevance as a tank. Here are the changes that have been discerned so far:
Feral Skills
- Ferocious Bite damage slightly increased.
- Swipe now hits 4 targets.
- Savage Roar now increases attack power 40% and lasts 14/19/24/29/34 sec depending on how many combo points you have up. (Previously 35% attack power and 9/12/15/18/21 sec)
Balance Talents
- Celestial Focus (Tier 4) reduces the casting time lost when damaged by 25/50/70% when casting wrath. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
- Control of Nature (Tier 2) reduces casting time lost when damaged by 40/70/100% while casting Entangling Roots and Cyclone. (Previously reduced interrupt chance)
The change to Celestial Focus was likely made because of the previously mentioned spell pushback changes. We can probably expect a similar change to be made to Nature’s Focus which functions in the same way as Celestial Focus on live. The Swipe change when considered with the [Glyph of Swipe] will allow Druids to hit five targets at once which is certainly good news.
There have also been bug reports that Swiftmend is not functioning at all on the Beta servers. Unfortunately, this will make healing in the new instances more difficult for Restoration Druids. Thankfully, we have a functioning version of Revive handy!
Balance Revamp Coming
Responding to a detailed and eloquent post by beta tester Ashthra, in which she details several key areas of unnecessary bloat in Balance, Developer Koraa promises that further polishing to the Balance tree is currently in the works. Hopefully she was kidding when she promised Boomkin more bloat:
Currently working on a polish pass of the Balance tree. Get ready for more bloat!
Clearly, the Developers haven’t taken a good look at Moonkin recently. They’re already quite bloated!
More Comments on Feral Tanking
Following up on the now legendary tanking thread with many blue responses, Developer Ghostcrawler made several additional statements concerning Bears in WotLK. Once again, due to the length of these responses and the fact that this is a Restoration blog, I’ll try to summarize the key points:
- Of the four tanks, two have shields and two do not. All four are intended to be equally viable through talents like Survival of the Fittest.
- Ideally, they’d like to see raids filled based on how well players are liked rather than a must-have utility or buff.
- Efforts are being made to improve the ability for Tanks and Healers to fill other roles when not needed to tank or heal. This should hopefully lead to less raid member swapping due to changing encounters.
- Blizzard agrees that it’s a problem when a tank outgears content and cannot generate enough rage to maintain threat.
Here’s hoping the aforementioned polishing pass to Balance will simultaneously include some of these promised improvements to Ferals.
Hairstyle Names
Shamelessly procured from WotLKWiki, here are a few of the new names for hairstyles (replacing the placeholder names like “Female Human Hairstyle 1”): Bald, Peasant, Solider, Monk, Barbarian, Dashing, Loose, Scholar, Rogue, Fabulous, Samson, Bearded, Colonel, Duellist, Goatee, Wizard, Chops, Van Dyke, Mustacioed, Clean, Prince, Wild, Swept, Foxtail, Slicked
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Healing the first instance of LK as resto last night I can confirm that swiftmend is malfunctioning. In a frustrating twist, it will light up when you are targeting someone with swiftmendable hots, but clicking it produces a ‘invalid target’ error.
On the other hand, healing as a tree is a blast (except when I forget to watch my own healthbar in the default UI). I did miss swiftmend, but I found flourish to be great for keeping the group and the crazy-aggro-generating moonkin topped off. I was also using Regrowth alot more (remember the glyph of awesome isn’t available yet), but that may have been because I giggled every time ‘living seed’ triggered.
“I’ve got spirit! Yes I do! You don’t though ’cause you pew pew”
Made me laugh
I looked at those PvP sets and decided I’d take the resto set and get crit from other gear.
Then I remembered I barely PvP anyway and hopefully they’ll remember PvE Boomkins usually spec intensity too.
The change that swipe now hits four targets made me a very happy bear and I also thought about swipe hitting five targets with the glyph, meaning that tanking a group of five would suddenly become much easier.
But I’m also worried that the glyph may go away due to this change, maybe they realized that the swipe glyph was something all bears wanted and no serious tanking bear would go without and decided to make it an ability instead. I sure hope not. It’s going to be glorious to go bear in DPS gear and swipe-kill five mobs at once during questing.
Especially now that frenzied regeneration is actually useful as well. 
@Phaelia: Thanks for the great summary! Seeing roguish critical strike rating on dedicated feral druid gear, while at first alarming, has gotten me thinking about the more positive side of it.
Unlike Rogues, us Druid folk can also derive spell crit from that rating. While certainly not a primary concern for a feral, it’s still potentially useful for aiding our offspec heals or giving Bear tanks an extra burst of threat when pulling mobs with balance spells. Maybe it won’t be so bad!
Regarding the Celestial Focus change, with all 3 points in it, would you expect that to mean that each of the two potential pushbacks will hit your Wrath for a 0.15 sec penalty each? Although it’s a shame to lose the chance to ignore pushback completely, overall this change (along with Nature’s Grace reducing Wrath’s GCD) seems like its going to make Moonkin an UNSTOPPABLE WRATH MACHINE!!! (even more so than they already are!). I can’t wait! (though I do still wish they’d give Starfire this pushback resistance as well… I’m so hard to please!
)
@Oni: Another interesting outcome from moving Swipe to four targets (and even more so if it can be five) is the effect it would have on rage generation. Currently, Swipe is pretty rage efficient because all three hits have a chance to crit and generate 5 bonus rage from Primal Fury. This, coupled with Ferocity reducing the cost of Swipe to 15 rage, makes it already possible to use Swipe for “free” if all three hits crit. While this obviously doesn’t happen every time, Feral Druids do still get a lot of crits so you’ll usually get at least 5 or 10 rage back with a Swipe. If the new version hits one or two more targets, it suddenly becomes much more likely to get these free or nearly free Swipes… and even possible to use Swipe to actually *generate* rage!
I have a feeling Blizzard won’t let this dynamic make it to live without tweaks, but a bear can hope!
Phae, something I’m itching to know: how’s your healing gear working as boom on beta?
I’m at 2.1k heaing, I suppose it’d be some respectable, albeit crit-less gear when I spec balance for leveling.
@Zaira: I’ve been waiting till 73 or so to start doing instances, so I’ve mostly been specced Balance for the purposes of leveling. Last night though I got fed up with being a fat laser chicken so I respecced deep Resto. Mr. Phae does more than enough damage for the both of us, after all and even was a little mopey when he noticed that I was outdamaging him in BoomBoom form. ^^ I look forward to trying Flourish on a party greater than two.
@Thorn: I think I’d probably be in the same boat, even if specced Balance for PvP. It’s just so frustrating to not be able to play because you’re OOM, especially with the current success of drain teams.
@Oni: That’s a really interesting observation. You may be right about the removal of the Swipe glyph, but I hope not. I can see a raiding bear forgoing it for something else since there are generally multiple tanks available for trash mobs, but it will be godly for the purposes of 5-man instances.
@Tone: Wow, you’re right. The consolidation of melee/spellcaster stats is going to be wonderful for Druids in a way I hadn’t considered. I have to wrinkle my nose when looking at Beta quest rewards because there are now a lot more stats and stat combinations that I have to consider when picking my reward. I pretty much have every item saved up for when I can take the time to really evaluate them. Hopefully I can firm that up for myself before the expansion goes live. I think you’re right about the way that Celestial Focus will work. Truly awesome.
@Hokuto: In my full Resto set (mixed T5 and badge gear), I was BOOM BOOMing everything quite impressively. Really just tearing things up in my Balance spec. And that’s with no crit to speak of and tons and tons of Spirit. I haven’t used Innervate once even. Now that I’m deep Resto spec, the BOOMs are more like booms, but I still feel more than capable. HoTting myself while I nuke things seems to work very well, and I did dip far enough into Balance to nab Insect Swarm.
Could you provide some information about how spell power translate to the old stat of plus heal. For example how many points of spell power does it take to increase a life bloom tick by 10.
@Lotha: That’s actually what I plan for my next (non-fluffy) post!
I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing. I just imagined a bald druid…
samownall – World of Warcraft News
wowbloggers last blog post..Phasing
You rock ! By the way I like fluff too.
@Lotha: Hey, me too!
Fluff posts take less than six hours to write and fluff makes my pillow nice to sleep on.