Ghostcrawler announced yesterday that Nourish may get its 20% effectiveness increase from the HoT conferred by Wild Growth in an effort to make Nourish a more attractive raid heal. Bamft of Azshara (US) originally posed this suggestion in the Healing forums:

Subject: GC: Allow WG to count towards Nourish bonus?
I know I’d use the spell a lot more if I could WG a party and then tab/nourish them all off of that HoT. Just something to consider.

To which Ghostcrawler encouragingly responded:

Yeah, there is a good chance we’ll do this.

This change would mean that a Druid could better leverage Nourish by casting Wild Growth on her raid group, watching to see who had been hit with the HoT, and then patch heal whoever needed it with Nourish, effectively switching it over to the “tank heal” graphs of Direct Healing in Wrath. In this case, Regrowth would not get the +20% bonus from the [Glyph of Regrowth] which could make Nourish a more competitive option.  This news comes hot on the heels of an earlier announcement that Blizzard will look to both increase talent-based benefits to Nourish and to add a Nourish-specific Glyph to help increase its viability relative to Regrowth:

We think there is some validity to the notion that Nourish is not propped up enough by talents. It will also be getting a glyph at some point.

Break out the tinsel and Winter Veil lights, everyone. We might have a new toy to play with soon!

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Currant had known deep in the pit of her stomach, that the moment the giant mounted its drake that things were about to get bad.  Had she known just how bad, maybe she would have run back the other way.  As it was, she was committed, along with the unlucky souls she was trying desperately to protect.

Her massive paw crashed down on on the skull of yet another unliving Vrykul and she could feel it collapse like the shell of an egg, spatter and all.  She bared her bloodied teeth and shook her muzzle back and forth as Valenna left a dagger in the corpse at her feet taking the fallen Vrykul’s spear.  She turned and threw in a single motion that defied Currant’s ability to figure out how she’d bothered finding her target, and the shaft sped upward, barely arcing.  All about them, the steaming corpses of the Vrykul’s companions littered and stained the snow, bones jutting upward like the broken stalks of rotting plants.

Valenna’s eyes narrowed in critical appraisal of her throw and she panted, her breath turning to mist as she did, "That’s the last spear."  The sound of worry in her voice was unmistakable, even through the filter of Currant’s ursine senses.  Currant could hear the drake screaming in pain from the spear, watching as its wings folded and the creature began a deceptively lazy drift toward the ground, black blood trailing behind it like streamers.  Valenna bent and retrieved the blade she’d left in the corpse and wiped the gore on the leg of her armor.

The ice-crusted thing on the drake’s back – Skadi if the informants were to be trusted – merely grunted in annoyance and leapt from it’s back as if it were any other surface and slammed into the ground, shifting bodies and snowpack alike with the impact.  Snow sprayed about its fur-bound feet and settled around it, obscuring for the briefest of moments, its features.

When the snow settled, Currant found herself gazing into the visage of hate.  Skadi was slicked in the rime of Northrend, from the bristle of the fur on its armor to the glowing blue spots that stared out at her from the blackness beneath its horned helmet.  It opened its cracked lips and bellowed.  The sound that issued forth was nearly visible, the air seeming to shake.  While her companions winced, Currant roared in challenge, and charged forward just as it did the same.

Valenna seemed to ripple and fade as she dashed through the corpses of Skadi’s minions with the grace of a dancer.  Valenna’s war-sister Khat and an insane gnome with spiked red hair approached less gracefully from Skadi’s sides, their heavy armor slowing them some, and they lashed out at the giant’s legs, their massive blades biting deep, but not deeply enough to slow it.

Currant slammed into the giant, the mass of her bear form almost overwhelmed by the mass of the undead hero that met her, and its hammer crashed down on her head.  She felt it through the heavy fur that covered her, and even caught the crack of the hammer hitting her skull and her world faded to a blur.  Her ears stopped working and something inside her head was violently trying to get out.  Behind her eyes it threw itself from side to side, pushing at her and scraping at her ears, threatening to split them with the repetition of contact, scrubbing her insides raw.

She looked again and Valenna had appeared behind the hateful thing that had landed in their midst, and was lashing out with her glistening wet blades, severing tendons and straps of leather with equal abandon.  The gnome shoved a blade of his own through Skadi’s leg, only to be backhanded and sent sprawling through the snow and cutting a miniature furrow that only stopped at a stone wall.  Khat ducked under the whirling storm of Skadi’s weapons and backed out to a temporarily safer distance.

Currant could taste blood in her mouth and feel it seeping from her ears, the sticky treacle matting her fur.  A small song coursed through her mind, like the distant hum of bees.  Soon it turned to the creaking of branches and the rustle of leaves.  The taste of blood became the clean crisp sensation of an icy stream and with sudden clarity, Currant took in the sounds of battle around her: the creak of leather, the gentle roughage of metal on metal and the soft thunk of weapons biting flesh.

With a suddenness, the bright blue in the depths of Skadi’s helmet shifted and Currant could see it looking past her and toward the last of her companions, Phaelia.  It too, had heard the gentle songs of restoration her magic brought, and somehow even its dead mind knew she was the most dangerous of its opponents.

It lifted its bloody hammer from Currant and turned toward the singer.

Currant blinked and lunged forward, a black-clawed paw catching the giant’s pelvis and pulling it to its knees.  It turned back, rage filling the air, and the three warriors pressed their attacks.  Currant dug her claws into every rotted opening she could find, holding the monster still while Khat and the gnome brutally hacked off its legs at the knees.  Currant bit hard into its chest and it began to thrash, knocking Khat to the ground but exacting a much higher toll from the gnome.  The poor thing’s skull broke apart messily as Skadi’s blindly thrashing hammer struck home.  His corpse fell spraying to the ground, painting the snow much differently than the zombies that had fallen before him.

One of Khat’s massive blades severed an arm at the elbow and Valenna managed to find enough of an opening to break in and nearly sever the thing’s head with two precisely executed slashes.  It was all the opening Currant needed.  She lunged forward and grabbed Skadi’s head in her mouth as it lolled about uselessly and she wrenched hard, pulling the entire thing to the ground.  She held it there while Valenna and Khat finished dismembering it, working her powerful teeth over the helmet to the weaker faceguard.  When she had it solidly in position, she bit down hard.  The helmet bent and broke and the gut-wrenching taste of dead flesh filled her mouth.

She shook it free and stepped back, her form flowing backward from that of a bear to that of a night elf.  She turned and spat out what was left of Skadi.  Phaelia was breathing heavily and when their eyes met, she shook her head, "I…I couldn’t…it was…too fast."

Breathing more heavily than she realized, Currant nodded, "It wasn’t your fault.  I’ll see to him."  She turned toward the fallen gnome and began to call on Elune.

A lot is being said these days about Druid tanking viability.  Some of it is well-informed, some of it is apologist, and some of it is downright lunatic fringe.  We all have opinions and insight and math but sadly, many of us seem to be thinking similar things.

Since hitting 80, I’ve only tanked a handful of encounters and fewer instances, spending most of my time as DPS.  This isn’t really a problem, it just isn’t what I expected.  I spend most of my time as a cat and was pleased to find the other night that I was competitive with other DPS in a raid.  I was only pulling 2200 DPS in my mostly pre-heroic gear (crafted epics and leveling blues mostly), but I was pleased to beat out more than one hunter.  Our career DPSers still did better than I did because they really know what they’re doing, but hey, not bad for a mostly-tank, right?

At any rate, I’ve been complaining recently about a lot of the changes, but though I whine and cry to my friends, I’m usually very tempered in my actual responses.  That said, there are some issues that still need addressing.  Commonly cited on the forums recently are issues with AoE tanking in general and Swipe in particular, itemization, and a lack of tanking tools.

Let’s look briefly at each:

AoE Tanking.  Swipe.

By some measures, Swipe allows us the greatest AoE TPS of any single AoE tanking ability, and few of us will contest that.  The problems with the ability are tactical, really, and much of it can be solved with less spastic DPS.

First, it’s a targeted frontal cone.  Most of the time, this fact is immaterial and it seems to me that the ‘cone’ is nearly 180-degrees, making it a VERY nice frontal cone.  It strikes EVERYTHING in that area.  Again, very very nice.  It can crit like crazy given the typical Feral’s crit chance and means that when tanking multiple mobs using Swipe, we are pretty much never Rage-starved.  It does nice damage, to boot.

Problematically, it is targeted.  In theory, this is a null-issue as we can simply re-target and keep on that Swipe button.  Realistically, I often lose sight of my target and it’s not unknown for me to fail to notice that my target has moved out of range and I’m just sitting there for several seconds.  As any tank knows, you can lose mobs in those seconds depending on the situation.

A far more pressing problem is mob pathing.  Far too often a mob will run behind us and out of Swipe.  While no tank actually wants a target behind them, those with true AoE abilities can afford to ignore them if they need to, in spite of the hit to mitigation they’ll take.  It’s usually trash that does this and therefore the loss of mitigation is merely annoying.  For the Druid, however, a mob behind us is a mob that is literally not being tanked.

More commonly cited is the frequency with which a Druid tank loses mobs in a pack to the DPS, especially when there’s AoE DPS being thrown about with reckless abandon.  While I’m of the opinion that the above-mentioned positioning issues are largely to blame, it has been pointed out that this could be avoided by allowing Swipe more front-loaded threat.  Such a change was recently announced.

This runs the risk of giving us far too much threat, but does allow for our laying off the Swipe button long enough to work in Barkskin, Demoralizing Roar, Mangle and other abilities without materially impacting our threat.  Interesting.

There is also a noted lack of tanking tools.

In general, I don’t think this is a huge problem.  I’m seriously pissed off that Warriors have appropriated some of my abilities (Enraged Regeneration and Damage Shield in particular – especially since both appear to be improved versions of what Druids have, at least in some ways) it’s probably only fair, with a short cooldown Barkskin usable in forms and Survival Instincts being given to Druids.  Still, it rankles.

But Druids do have fewer tanking tools.  The common retort is that "Druids can heal and buff and DPS."  Really?  As the player of a Druid I didn’t know any of that.  Seriously.  I’m glad you guys are here to tell me these things.  :eyeroll:

This is not the post to debate the merits of Druid utility.  Suffice it to say that Druids sacrifice breadth of utility in a role for breadth of utility in a class.  Warriors do the reverse.  Druids have fewer tanking tools.  Period.  End of debate.  This is true.  I don’t need a lot of tools to tank and I’m not actually concerned with asking for more.  Would a true AoE ability be nice?  Absolutely.  Can I make it work without one?  Absolutely.

This, however, leads us to itemization.

Because we have so few tools to tank with, we also have fewer statistics we can use.  Bears have Agility, Armor, Stamina, Dodge, Expertise and Hit to worry about in our tanking gear.  Warriors and Paladins add in Strength, Parry, Block and Defense.  Because all tanks share rings, trinkets, cloaks, and necklaces, this often puts us in the unenviable position of using gear with a lot of wasted itemization.  This is especially true if, as many posters have said, the armor items will still be best in slot, just by smaller margins.

True, we can use Strength to raise our AP, but it’s more efficient and practical to get that other places.  Strength is like Haste: it’s okay if it’s there, but we’ll never go looking for it.

Add in that we’re using Rogue gear for our leather an we see a near pathological resistance to itemizing for Bears at all.  Holy Paladins, Moonkin, Restoration Druids…all have specialized itemization needs as well, and continue to get it.  Cats get by just fine using Rogue gear, so it’s not totally bleak, but Dire Bear is increasingly looking like something we’re only supposed to do when there aren’t any willing plate-wearers around.

We still tank and we still tank well, don’t misunderstand me.  But when the spec and role you want to play has gone from picking up the scraps from other classes (pre-BC) to getting targeted itemization (pre-Wrath) and then back to picking up scraps from other classes (now), all while some other specs continue to receive targeted itemization, it makes you wonder what the game wants you doing.

Blizzard has given us new talents, allowed us to be competitive for the leather we do use, and made many fundamental changes we’ve needed for ages though, so I can’t help but feel that the state of the Druid as a class is pretty good.  I even think the upcoming armor change will ultimately be beneficial in freeing up itemization options (though I have some real issues with the implementation – it feels too much like a Band-Aid).  I just want reassurances that I won’t be hearing: "This is so much easier with a Warrior/Paladin," when I tank for much longer.

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If the post title seems familiar, it’s because I already wrote this post once during the WotLK beta, using the then-applicable values for +Healing, coefficients, talents, and Glyphs. A lot has changed since then (for the worse, unfortunately) so we’re due for a second look at the various direct heals in Wrath, their relative efficiency, and relative effectiveness. Today we’re going to look at the following spells:

• Regrowth without the [Glyph of Regrowth] used as a raid heal and cast on a target without Regrowth
• Regrowth with the [Glyph of Regrowth] used as a tank heal and cast on a target with Regrowth already
• Nourish used as a raid heal and cast on a target without Rejuvenation, Regrowth, or Lifebloom
• Nourish used as a tank heal and cast on a target with Rejuvenation, Regrowth, or Lifebloom
• Nourish used as a tank heal and cast on a target with Rejuvenation, Regrowth, AND Lifebloom with the 4-piece T7 set bonus
• Healing Touch
• Healing Touch with the [Glyph of Healing Touch]

Since our goal is to compare the maximized version of each of these spells, we’re going to assume the following talents have been taken:

• Regrowth: Improved Regrowth, Empowered Rejuvenation, Moonglow 
• Nourish: Tranquil Spirit, Moonglow 
• Healing Touch: Naturalist, Empowered Touch, Tranquil Spirit, Moonglow 

All spells will be assumed to have been cast in Tree of Life form, and all benefit from Gift of Nature and Master Shapeshifter.

Continue reading ‘Direct Healing in Wrath’…

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  Mr. Phae on learning the recipe for [Murloc Fin Soup]:

Oh you poor little Murlocs. I figured out how to turn you into food.

Tomorrow I hope to bring you a second, revised look at direct heals in Wrath. Huzzah!

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This Sexymap preset is now one of the pre-installed presets in the latest version of SexyMap. The tutorial will remain to show you how to create a preset from scratch. Enjoy!

One of the most interesting addons to hit the scene in the last while doesn’t do anything to help you become more efficient by measuring your performance, organizing your inventory, or visualizing your raid’s health. All it does is make your minimap look different. Well, not just different, but f!#@ing sexy. So much so that they named it SexyMap. Now, I realize that WoW Insider highlighted SexyMap a short time ago, but after you install it, you might notice that there’s really not much there for Druids. Several generic skins, several great skins for Mages, Warlocks, Paladins, even a Rogue skin, but nothing for the citizens of Moonglade. *weep* [ed. latest edition includes this preset, so this has been remedied!]

Luckily, SexyMap was built with customization in mind. Every one of the default skins is recreatable — in-game — with the configuration window. I’m going to take you step-by-step through creating my Druid preset, Emerald Portal.

First, you’ll want to actually download SexyMap from Curse or your favorite addon site. Also, if you want to experiment a little more, download TexBrowser, which allows you to see all the different textures you can use with SexyMap.

Once installed and in game, right-click on the mini-map to open the options for SexyMap. There’s a lot of options, but I’ll only go over a few of them that are necessary for you to achieve the same preset described here. By default, the zone text is displayed and we’ll want to remove that from marring our SexyMap, unless, of course, we hover our mouse over it. In the options, click on Zone Button from the left menu and click on On hover from the options for Show zone text… That’s really the only thing we need to change before we begin work on the minimap design.

Now for the fun part. Click on Borders from the left menu of the SexyMap options. You’ll probably see the options for default SexyMap. Click Clear & Start Over. Don’t worry. That default preset is called Blue Rune Circles and you can go back to it later if you really want.

SexyMap allows you to create a lot of different shapes of maps. We are going to stick with a circle, but there’s an option to have a circle with a faded edge. This will help give our design an integrated look. Where it says Minimap shape, select Faded Circle (Large) from the dropdown.

Every piece that goes into a SexyMap preset is called a “border”. This can be rather misleading as many of the parts aren’t really borders, but that’s what SexyMap calls them, so that’s what we’re going to call them. You can create a new border layer by entering a name in the Create new border textbox and clicking the Okay button that appears or pressing Enter. Let’s start by creating one called Background Leaves. Type that in the textbox and click Okay. It’s important to note that it doesn’t matter at all what you name these layers. They don’t even have to be unique. They are only to help you organize your layers.

Now, I’m going to go step-by-step and explain all the options and setup for the first border layer of this preset. This may seem rather involved and I’m going to present and explain a lot of material that isn’t completely necessary if you aren’t interested in tweaking the preset. But even if you decide to skip to the bottom and start setting up the layers on your own, you may find the following information a useful reference if you need it.

The border layer Background Leaves should now be listed in the bottom under Borders in the bottom. Click on the Background Leaves border in the list to the left and you’ll see its Entry Options in the right window. Here are all the options for an individual border layer. This is also where you can delete a layer if you no longer want it by clicking the Delete button. But we aren’t going to do that, so scroll down.

Next is the Texture Path options. If you have installed TexBrowser, you can click on the Open TexBrowser button to open TexBrowser in another window. TexBrowser isn’t that complex. You basically can browse through all the textures in the game and it will tell you the path you must use to that texture. While you can use any texture, some are completely unsuitable. I’d suggest sticking to the Particles, Spells, Textures, and XTextures. For now, just type Spells\TreantLeaves.blp in the Texture path textbox and click the Okay button that appears at the end of the textbox. This entry is not case-sensitive. You can type all lowercase, uppercase or mixed case, but it must match one of the textures in the game.

Scrolling down, Texture options is the next section. Click on the white square next to Texture tint. This brings up the Color Picker which should be familar from the Blizzard options. For this border layer, leave the color white and slide the opacity slider to about 50%. Click Okay to close the window.

The Layer dropdown determines which strata the border layers sit on. The order goes from 1 to 5, with 1 being on the bottom. Like layers of a cake, if you place something on the 1. Background all of the other layers will sit on top of it. Er, except you usually don’t have a background layer of a cake so maybe that wasn’t the best analogy. These leaves will sit under the map, so select 1. Background for Layer.

Blend Mode determines how the border layer interacts with the rest of the map. Add Blend usually makes all the colored portions of the map multiplied lighter against all layers beneath it. Alpha Key and Blend seem pretty similar in that they simply let the border layer’s opacity show what’s beneath it without making it lighter like Add Blend. Disable and Mod Blend aren’t really used in this preset and I haven’t found a good use for them. The best way to understand how the Blend Mode works is to experiment with it and see how it causes the layers to interact.

For this preset, select Blend for the Blend Mode.

The next section controls the rotation of the border layer and its layout on the minimap. If you chose to click Disable Rotation, it disables all of the rotation options and enlarges the texture for some inexplicable reason. For that inexplicable reason, I don’t recommend using that option, but rather to leave the rotation at 0 if you don’t want to use rotation.

One cool option, which I’m not using here but I’ll cover for sake of completeness, is the ability to base the rotation on the orientation of the player. In the Match player rotation box you can choose Do not match player rotation, Normal rotation, or Reverse Rotation. Normal rotation causes the texture to rotate left (counter-clockwise) when your player turns left and clockwise when your player turns right. Reverse rotation rotates left when the players turns right and vise versa. The Do not match player rotation option allows you to base the rotation on the next options below and by default isn’t selected.

If you aren’t basing the rotation on player rotation, you can either set its rotation speed or you can simply rotate the texture a set fixed rotation. Rotation Speed determines the speed with which the texture spins on its center axis. Positive values spin clockwise, negative values spin counter-clockwise. You can set the speed with the slider, or by typing in the numeric value below the slider in the textbox and pressing enter. Static Rotation rotates the layer, but doesn’t set it spin in a continual motion.

For the Background Leaves layer, enter 231 for the rotation of the leaves, or whatever other rotation looks best to you.

Lastly, we have the scale of the layer and its horizontal and vertical placement. Use 1.58 for the scale of the layer and leave the Horizontal nudge and Vertical nudge both at 0.

The first border layer is complete. Your minimap should look similar to the image to the right.

Now is a good time to save your preset. Click on the Preset tab and give your preset a name such as Emerald Portal in the Save current settings as preset… textbox. By typing the same preset name later you can save your changes into the same preset or you can branch off different versions if you want. After you’ve saved your preset, you can select it from the list of presets.

Now that you understand how to create one border layer, you should be able to recreate the rest of the border layers described below. For my version of this preset, I’ve used twelve border layers. I’m not sure how well some computers might handle this. If you need, I recommend stripping down the Nature Rune layers, removing the Glare layer and even maybe the Map Inner Glow and Map Outer Glow layers. This should lower the layers down to four layers. The nice thing about SexyMap is that you can choose and experiment as much as you want to create something that looks sexy to you.

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