Posts I Loved

We’re So Heroic by Nicole Chartrand

Here are a selection of my favorite writings from other blogs:

• The Day the World (of Warcraft) Stood Still
  Posted just before the recent Presidential election here in the U.S., Rhoelyn provided a wonderful parody of the conflict between Azerothian “politicians,” Saurfang and Vargoth! Loves it!
• Despair
  Aendi provides an RP-based perspective on the recent zombie invasion. A must read for anyone who found nothing but aggravation in this world event.
• Moonkin Builds: Leveling to 80
  Don’t just take my word for it. If you’re looking to go Balance, Graylo has you covered with his recommendation of how to Laser Chicken on your way to 80!
• Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak
  Runycat shares her secret recipe for this very meaty Northrend delicacy that combines Rhino steak with Wyrm meat! Wash it down with some dangerous-sounding Kungaloosh!
• ThinkTank’s Bear and Cat FAQs
  Kalon has compiled two great FAQs for both Cats and Bears looking to enter Northrend in the coming weeks!

Druid Dance Revolution

Alice from Aman’thul (US) sent in a series of images from a recent Druid dance party in front of the Aldor bank in Shattrath. I especially like the obvious mixture of Tauren and Night Elf Druids. Like moths to a flame, so too are Druids drawn to /dance with one another, regardless of race or faction:

I wonder how many players instantly reroll Druids after bearing (lulz) witness to our delightful class cohesion. Thanks, Alice!

Comic by Eggo

This week, reader Eggo brings us a new comic about the upcoming nerf to Wild Growth, whereby they’re considering adding a 6-second cooldown. It’s enough to make me want to whip up some delicious Ghostcrawler Gumbo (+20 to “Class Balance”). Be sure to click on the panel preview at right to view the whole comic!

Blogs Both Great and Small

• Adventures of Desdarii
  Desdarii of Blackwater Raiders (US) mixes RP with out of character posts on this beautiful blog about her Draenei Mage!
• Casual WoW
  Byaghro is an “extremely competitive casual gamer” who happens to play a Restoration Druid on Hellscream (US).
• The Delicious Druid
  OM NOM NOM Druids! Cusper plays a delectable Restoration Druid on the Muradin realm (US).
• Furry Bear Ass
  I don’t name them; I just share them! FBA is written by Ylee and Steaky, a Feral/Resto pair from Terrokar (US).
• Healer Envy
  Ayeba of Earthen Ring (EU) is one of those Restoration Druids that dabbles shamelessly with a Priest, Shaman, and Paladin. Hopefully, it’s only to better learn their weaknesses!
• Holy Discipline
  Thoughts from Anea, a Holy/Discipline Priest of the Exodar realm (US).
• Kaliope’s WoW Crafting Blog
  Kaliope writes about all things tradeskill-related on this unique blog about the Crafts of World of Warcraft.
• A Moonkin and His Blog
  Macbook of Stormscale (US) (clearly not a roleplay server) managed to snag Moonkin.info for his home on the web. Look for lots of PvPing chicanery here!
• Screen Shots by Jezi
  See Azeroth as you may or may not have seen it before with this unique photoblog from Jezibel of Kilrogg (US)!
• Tree’s Blog
  Charlotta of Scarlet Crusade (US) like to fish naked in Orgrimmar, and she has the screenshots to prove it!
• Trials and Tribulations of Tree Form
  With the byline “it ain’t easy being green,” Emanee speaks to the difficulties of playing a Restoration Druid!
• World of Snarkcraft
  Joveta and Seri are two cynical Priests from Scarlet Crusade (US). Their blog is filled with information and tips for players of all types, not just Priests!

The Herbalist’s Bulwark: A Macro

Here’s a handy macro from Vreenash of Dragonblight (US) that incorporates three protective abilities in one, two of which are herbalist-specific:

#showtooltip Lifeblood
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Barkskin
/use Fel Blossom
/cast Lifeblood
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

A Peek into My Inbox

This is a look into my personal inbox, which I’ve integrated with my Resto4Life account. You can see that I make liberal use of colored labels to try to stay organized (this often does not work, but at least my inbox looks cheerful). Allow me to explain the various labels and what they’re for:

• Purple – Contact Inquiries
  These are e-mails sent either through the contact form on the site or to my e-mail directly. I try to get to these within seven days of receiving them, but sometimes they slip through or require more time to respond to (I’m looking at you, Silvergulch). I archive all contact inquiries once I’ve responded to them.
• Gold – Mailbag Possibilities
  These are contact inquiries that I flag as potential fodder for a new post. These typically have responses that I think could be valuable to more than the original sender. These get converted to contact inquiries and archived once I’ve used them.
• Orange – Community Spotlight
  This includes links to new sites, new utilities, artwork, and more. New sites to highlight also go into my Google bookmarks under the “Blogroll Possibilities” label. I archive all community spotlight e-mails once they’ve been posted.
• Green – Comment
  These are comments on a recent post. GMail generally does a good job of stacking comments from the same post together so that my inbox isn’t filled with them, but sometimes I have to prune duplicates. Once I’ve responded to all of the comments on a given thread, I delete these e-mails. You can see from the above that I’m way, way behind right now.
• Light Blue – Tree Shirts
  This is anything to do with the Tree Shirts store.
• Gray-Blue – Advertising
  This is anything to do with advertising on Resto4Life. You may have noticed that I’ve recently added some ads to R4L. I’m not entirely certain what I’m doing, yet, but we’ll see how it goes!
• Dark Blue – General Resto4Life
  This is stuff that relates to Resto4Life that doesn’t fit under any of the above categories.

I try to keep up with my email such that I don’t have more than 50 items in my inbox at any given time. Lately, however, I’m onto page 2 of my Gmail, so apologies to anyone who’s still awaiting a response. I admit that I was feeling overwhelmed until I came across this perspective-inspiring post from Lorelle, professional blogger and apparently all that running a large blog entails. I envy the fact that she makes a living completely from her multitude of blogs, but I admit that I don’t envy the overhead that comes with it!

Every now and again, I have to stop and take a look at the many “projects” I’ve accepted responsibility for (and I don’t mean the ones at work, which lately suffer more than they probably should) and pick one or more to politely withdraw from. This is why you may have noticed that my name no longer appears as the Druid moderator at Plus Heal, why my activity on the Blog Azeroth forum community has been intermittent, or why I don’t participate much on social sites like Twitter or the new gamer-equivalent, Raptr. It’s also why I’ve shied away from creating a Druid-based forum community, despite several visitor requests and an already-purchased domain.

Who am I kidding? Resonant post from Lorelle or no, I’m still feeling overwhelmed!

Related Posts

• Community Spotlight
• Blog On, Azeroth … Blog On
• Community Spotlight

On Saturday, I was invited to join staff writers Mike Schramm, Matt Lowe, and Elizabeth Harper for WoWInsider’s weekly podcast! This show was focused around healing and included some great discussion of ways that Blizzard might change healing to make it less segregated from the rest of the game. Additional talking points included:

• Glyph choices for Restoration Druids
• The Scourge Invasion
• Our opinions of who the best healer is right now
• Our plans for picking up a copy of Wrath and what we plan to do at release
• The awesomeness that is [Glyph of Levitate] — /jealous Priests
• General talk about Resto4Life

From the show description over on WoWInsider.com:

It was all healers all the time this past week on the WoW Insider Show. Special guest tree Druid Phaelia joined us from her site, Resto4Life.com, and our good friend Matt "Matticus" Low brought his priestly insights from World of Matticus (and our own Spiritual Guidance column), and our producer Elizabeth Harper brought some Paladin judgment to the table. We chatted about how healing is going lately in the game, which classes are doing well lately (and which are doing not so well), and what Ghostcrawler might do for healers to make things more fun than whack-a-mole. We also talked about the 3.0.3 patch, and where we’ve been in the beta, and where we’re going first on launch day.

It was a wonderful honor to be invited, and I hope you’ll give it a listen!

Related Posts

• Epic Dolls Episode 43: Druid Discussion
• Resto4Life Says “Farewell” on Twisted Nether
• Some Follow-Up

Druids of Azeroth Wallpaper from Andrige

Andrige brings us yet another beautiful wallpaper this week, this one featuring Druids of all both Horde and Alliance and of all specs. This is a piece that required weeks and weeks of painstaking effort, and I’d say the end result was well worth the time and dedication. There are presently two versions of the wallpaper: one with an orange background (for ebil Hordies, no doubt) and one with a blue background.

On a related note, I’ve added a Resources page, specifically to archive things like Andrige’s gorgeous wallpapers and to prevent great utilities like Paininabox’s Wrath spreadsheet and Rawr from being lost among the many other posts here.

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIINS!!!

And for those of you who just couldn’t get enough zombie fun this week, Andrige has also released a great video featuring his own undead escapades:

Bear-o-Lantern (now with Boomkin-o-Lantern)

Reader Tone also sends in this screenshot of his bear dressed up as a jack-o-lantern. Who says Ferals can’t wear costumes?

Bears aren’t the only ones dressing as pumpkins; reader Athryn sent in this screenshot of her Boomkin boyfriend Loupana of Moonrunner (US):

The Feral Prince of Dire Bear

Some people have WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many free macro slots.

Thanks to Gidget of Bloodhoof (US) for sending this in!

Stormcrow in Flight

Reader Mike sent in the above picture after having recently completed the Swift Flight Form quest line. This quest series was my favorite in all of WoW, and I’m quite sad to hear that many new Druids will miss out on it since SFF will soon become trainable at level 71. I encourage everyone to do it anyway, because it really is a joy.

Related Posts

• Andrige’s Tree of Life Wallpaper
• Andrige’s Tauren Tree of Life Wallpaper
• Mana Regen Calculator Updated

Phaelia: This week, I’m honored to share a guest post from Graylo of Gray Matter, a premier Balance blog featuring tons of theorycraft beneficial to any Balance (or Restoration) Druid seeking to improve her DPS or learn vital feather-preening techniques.

The night after patch 3.0.2 dropped my guild was running Black Temple and the [Naaru-Blessed Life Rod] dropped off of the Reliquary of Souls, and my GM, who plays a Warlock, said “looks like a Warlock item to me.”

Before you start writing angry comments about how my GM is an idiot, rest assured that he was joking. Though his comment does highlight one of the issues we are going to have after Wrath of the Lich King is released. With the merger of Healing and Spell Damage into a single stat, Moonkin and Trees are going to be seeking some of the same gear. However, this does not mean that every piece of leather gear with Spell Power is ideally suited for a Tree or a Moonkin. While any item with Spell Power maybe good for both builds, it is my opinion that most items with Spell Power will lend themselves more to one spec than the other.

In this article, I will take a look at each of the relevant stats to see how they lean. Then I will look at a couple of examples to answer the question: Is it Resto gear or Moonkin gear?

Spell Power

I only mention it to get it out of the way. This is the primary stat for both builds and provides no insight into who benefits from this item most. Plus, when considering items of a similar level the amount of Spell Power will be fairly close on both items.

Hit Rating

Unless something has changed in WotLK, a heal is not going to be miss or be resisted by its target. Therefore Resto Druids have no use for Hit Rating. This is the most obvious indicator of how an item leans. If it has Hit then it’s Moonkin gear.

Note from Phae: If it’s “hit” then it’s sh— … er … that is to say, it’s not something you want to GET.

Crit Rating

Crit is a little more ambiguous. It is not the most important stat for either build, but definitely has its purpose in both builds. In TBC, Crit Rating was good for Moonkin, but horrible for Trees since few Druid heals could crit. That has changed somewhat in WotLK. Regrowth will play a much bigger role in Druid healing, Healing Touch can now be cast in Tree of Life, and the new spell Nourish can crit. All of this points to a bigger role for Crit Rating in a Resto Druid’s life.

However, it is my opinion that Crit Rating favors Moonkin more. Over 80% Moonkin DPS comes from spells that can crit. Critical hits not only increases Moonkin damage but also increases our average casting speed for Starfire and returns mana. A majority of druid healing will still come from HoTs, and critical heals have an increased risk of wasted heals due to overhealing.

Note from Phae: Yes, spell crit is better for Restoration Druids than it once was, but try not to go overboard. HoTs still can't crit, and the 50% additional crit from Improved Regrowth actually makes spell crit less desirable to Restoration Druids, not more. To understand why, imagine you have 0 crit chance and pick up gear that gives you 10% crit chance. Your net improvement would be 1.1/1.0 or 10%. Now imagine you have 50% crit chance and pick up gear that gives you an additional 10% crit chance. Your net improvement is 1.6/1.5 or 6%, a substantially lower improvement. For the sake of clarity, this assumes you get exactly double the benefit from a crit, which is actually close due to Living Seed but not exact.

Haste Rating

Haste rating has the biggest question mark. When I talked to Phae about this stat she said she was slightly inclined to defer to Moonkin on this stat, but I think it is much more even.

Haste can be a significant DPS increase for Moonkin but it comes at a cost. It doesn’t increase mana efficiency at all so if you don’t have the mana pool for it, it won’t help your DPS much. From a Restoration perspective, haste does not decrease the duration of your HoTs, but it does have several benefits that can make a Resto Druid more effective. A shorter global cooldown means you can roll Lifebloom on more targets, or allow you to get more direct heals off in between refreshes. It also will help you to get off an emergency heal if both Nature’s Swiftness and Swiftmend are down.

In my opinion Haste doesn’t lend itself to one spec over the other. So, there is no help here.

Note from Phae: The value of haste depends almost entirely upon your style of healing. A healing style that relies primarily upon insta-cast HoTs – Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth – will little benefit from haste; its global cooldown reduction is overpriced. On the other hand, an unglyphed Healing Touch or heavy Regrowth build would benefit from stacking spell haste. Still, it’s rare for a Restoration Druid to so vigorously eschew her HoTs to focus instead on direct heals.

Spirit

In the Burning Crusade, Spirit clearly lent itself to Restoration build,s and it is still a good stat for Trees in WotLK due to talents like Intensity, Living Spirit, and Improved Tree of Life. Moonkin on the other hand had very little use for Spirit. It was good for mana regeneration because most Moonkin picked up Intensity, but it did little for our DPS. That is changing with the addition of Improved Moonkin Form, which increases Spell Damage by 15% of your total Spirit.
Despite this change, I still believe that Spirit lends itself more to Restoration then Balance. The Resto Tree has more talents that benefit from Spirit, and I think healers in general benefit more from mana regen then DPSers do. Restos can easily blow through their mana really quickly trying to keep someone up and prevent a wipe. A Moonkin’s mana usage is much more consistent and can be managed in other ways. Plus, the extra DPS a Moonkin will get from Spirit is fairly small.

Note from Phae: I’m the one with Spirit; I don’t wanna hear it! Living Spirit means a Restoration Druid gets 1.15 Spirit for every 1 Spirit that a Moonkin would get. If said Moonkin doesn’t even have Intensity, I’d punch it in the beak for trying to take an item with a ton of Spirit.

Intellect

Obviously both builds need some amount of Intellect, but an item with an extraordinary large amount of Intellect probably lends itself more to a Moonkin. The Balance tree has two talents, Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate, that buff the druid based upon his level of Intellect. Restos can’t get these buffs without putting over 20 points in the Balance Tree.

Note from Phae: I believe that the new mana regeneration effect, Replenishment, makes Intellect desirable for all casters since the amount of mana restored is based on your total mana. As a result, I would be less inclined to consider this a stat that favors solely Moonkin, though I agree that Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate does seem to give the slight advantage to Balance Druids.

MP5

To be honest this isn’t a great stat for either build. It is a very expensive relative to the other stats listed above. Plus, it has only a situational impact on performance. If you don’t have mana issues currently, then more MP5 isn’t going change anything.

That being said, I believe that MP5 lends itself more to Restoration builds. As I said before I believe that mana regen is a little more important for healers then it is for DPS.

Note from Phae: Ewwwww … MP5! This stat continues to be overpriced for those casters with an Intensity-esque ability (ex. Meditation, Arcane Meditation). I’d look the other way on an item who sinks a large portion of its item budget into MP5.

Examples

To illustrate these points lets look at two pairs of boots that drop in Naxx25:

I think both boots would be good for either a Restoration or Balance Druid, but I think I know which one Restos would prefer. Despite having 38 Crit rating, I believe the [Boots of Septic Wounds] are more of a Resto item. They have a large amount of Spirit and the gem socket allow for more potent heals and greater longevity. On the other hand, the [Boots of the Escaped Captive] favor a Moonkin build in my opinion. The sheer quantity of Haste means that they will provide more DPS at the expense of less valuable base stats.

For another example look at these two chest pieces, also drops from Naxx25:

In my opinion, the [Vest of Vitality] is clearly a Moonkin item. The large quantity of Crit and complete lack of Spirit say this item is for all out DPS. The [Tunic of Prejudice] is a much more balanced item that has lots of Spirit that I think Restos will find more attractive.

Leather vs Cloth

I want to make a quick comment on the Leather vs. Cloth debate. Moonkin are used to having to fight with Mages, Warlocks, and Priests for cloth gear because there was very little leather caster DPS gear in the Burning Crusade. My guess is that in Wrath of the Lich King we are going to see clothies push back and say they should get priority over Druids.

I still believe that armor type doesn't matter for the most part. The stats on the gear are what cause you to do more DPS or be a more effective healer. Therefore, I say rolling on cloth items that are clearly better then the other options available should be okay. That being said, be mindful of the clothies' needs. Don't roll on a cloth item when there is a leather item that is equally accessible. For example, a Moonkin should probably pass on [Slippers of the Seacaller] if a clothie wants it, because the [Naturewarden's Treads] are available just a few bosses later.

Final Note

None of this means that Restos shouldn’t roll on the [Vest of Vitality], or that Moonkin shouldn’t use the Boots [Boots of Septic Wounds]. All of these items could be upgrades for either spec. These are just guidelines to help you navigate your gear choices.

My suggestion is that you talk to the other caster druids in your guild and see what gear they are looking for and how big of an upgrade it is. This type of planning with your shape shifting brethren can prevent arguments and feelings of animosity. It can also save you DKP and help you get the item that best suits your needs when it drops.

I want to say thanks to Phae for giving me this opportunity and supporting my blog. The Druid community would be at a loss without you. Note from Phae: <3 Thanks, Gray!

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• Pre-Raid Gear: Back, Waist, Wrist, Neck, and Fingers
• Guest Post: So You Want to Rip Some Face?
• Pre-Raid Gear: Head, Shoulder, Chest, Hands, Legs, Feet

Phaelia: I AM EATING A RED GUMMI BEAR AND PRETENDING IT’S YOU BERSERKING
Phaelia: OM NOM NOM
Runycat: I WAS HANDLING SOME WOOD THIS MORNING AND THINKING ABOUT YOU
Runycat: OH SHI—

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