Ammeli of Defias Brotherhood (EU) has kindly offered to share a video of her guild Ubiquity downing the Illidari Council of Black Temple. Because I’m obviously not familiar with this fight, I asked Runycat of Unbearably HoT for her ever fresh and unique perspective:

The Illidari Council is a retardedly long fight that subjects the raid to randomly thrown centers of AOE that, inevitably, kills the people who aren’t smart enough to run out of it immediately. Basically, it’s a 15-minute long fight that taxes your mana. There are four members of the Council: a Paladin, a Priest, a Rogue, and a Mage.

Mage: The fight is initiated (in our case) by a Mage who gets BoP’d and blinks up to the platform (and then everyone else grabs his or her target). The Mage tanks the Mage mob, similar to what you’d see for Maulgar. The Mage tank also needs a dedicated healer. The Mage Councilman will randomly cast Blizzard and Flamestrike all over the entire area, and if you don’t get out of those areas immediately, you WILL die. It’s something like 4000 to 5000 damage a tick.

Priest: Generally tanked on the platform by a Warrior and flanked by basically anyone who can spell interrupt (Rogues, Elemental Shamans) her Circle of Healing. She will occasionally cast Divine Wrath on an individual on the raid, and it essentially destroys your health (generally speaking, you watch your timers to see who gets it so that you can spam heal them).

Rogue: Total loser who is tanked by anyone in the middle of the room. He periodically vanishes and applies a poison debuff to various individuals. The poison ticks a little bit and then “blooms” in one fell swoop that brings your health down by about 75%. These people need to be healed immediately. Once he reappears from Vanish, the tank needs to go chase him down ASAP before he runs around and kills clothies. Occasionally, the Rogue will get BoP’d by the Paladin right out of Vanish, and the tank essentially needs to be like OH SHIT and blow all threat generating cooldowns (Taunt, Challenging Shout/Roar).

Paladin: Tanked off to the side by an intrepid Warrior tank who definitely needs at least two dedicated healers. His judgements need to be spell reflected or the tank gets smacked around; additionally, that tank needs to kite him out of all the AOE (Flamestrike, Blizzard, Consecrate).

This all goes on simultaneously, and all the members share health. That’s pretty much it. Intensive raid healing. Blow cooldowns early on because they’ll be up again by the end (Innervate, etc.).

Ammeli describes her role in this fight as, “12 minutes of main tank healing along with a Priest.” She finds the fight to be taxing on her mana as it’s the only fight where she finds herself needing to chain pot.

From the video, you may notice a couple of different things:

• Extensive use of Healing Touch
  When I asked Ammeli about this (being surprised at how much it’s used), she explained that the nature of the fight requires the healers assigned to the MT to deal with a lot of spike damage. While she still continues to roll Lifebloom she also uses the tried-and-tested method of pre-casting a Healing Touch (Rank 10) and interrupting it if it proves unnecessary.
• Spell Icons Popping up in the Middle of her Screen
  This is from an addon called Ghost Pulse (or Ghost Cooldown Pulse). It essentially flashes the icons of spells and items whose cooldowns have elapsed and are ready to use again. I was so enamored with this idea that I installed it myself for last night’s ZA run. I found it especially helpful for keeping track of my Swiftmend, Nature’s Swiftness, and Innervate cooldowns.

Thank you, Ammeli, for being willing to share this video with the rest of us, particularly those of us who may never see the fight for ourselves! Also, thank you for not subjecting us to a horrible, speed metal soundtrack (I love the music chosen for this video).

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Celica the Mage becomes Celica the Moonkin in this parody of the well-known PC-to-Apple Switcher commercials:

I wonder if anyone told him about the new Ritual of Refreshment spell.

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... is a 4.5-inch scale figurine of Phaelia decked out in full Season 2 armor

And thanks to FigurePrints, I will be able to purchase one for the price of $100 + $15 shipping. FigurePrints is a new company that's very cleverly applied a manufacturing technology formerly used to quickly prototype machine parts to the MMO vanity industry. They offer the creation of a customized resin figure of your character wearing whatever gear you have in your possession (they tie into the Armory to pull down your gear) in a pose of your choosing. There's a brief discussion of the technology available on YouTube.

The idea of this service is excellent. I have no doubt they will do very well, especially if they begin taking orders prior to Christmas (although there's little chance of these orders being processed prior to December 25th). There are a few limitations to it, however:

• Price: $115 is pretty prohibitive for most, even if the end result is amazing. I know I'd have to pool birthday and Christmas to get one for myself, and that would mean no computer upgrades or shoes!
• Gear Selection: Because the company keys off of your Armory profile, you have to have the items you want displayed actually in your character inventory (and worn at the time they perform your character scrape). Since this is a vanity item, I see no reason that they shouldn't allow you to specify whatever gear you'd like. If you happen to be nostalgic about the Stormrage set that you've long since vendored for the sake of bank space, you should still be able to get a figure crafted wearing those items. What if you never managed to complete your Tier X set but like its aesthetics? I worry that not allowing this feature may turn off many potential customers.
• Time: Once you've completed your order, you are guaranteed receipt within 90 days. A character can change appearance drasticially in 90 days, making the option to select whatever gear you want even more important.
• Character Appearance: Face, hair color, hairstyle, piercings, etc. are character customizations that cannot be datamined from the armory XML output but are absolutely essential to allowing you to individualize your character, and consequentially your figurine. I haven't been able to determine whether these customizations are included in your order. As a licensed Blizzard product, however, I suppose its possible that Blizzard is willing to provide them this data, even if you aren't asked to provide it when ordering.
• Size: Because the figures are created to scale, the gnomes turn out really tiny, even though you pay the same price. I'm glad that I play one of the largest race so that it would be easier to see the detail of my character.

Overall, I think this service is an amazingly cool application of a technology that was previously put to more mundane uses. I would LOVE to be able to get one of these created of Phaelia, but I'd have an incredibly hard time deciding which pair of shoes to wear ... and talking Mr. Phae into it.

Female Human Druid (Resto)	Male Night Elf Hunter

P.S. In case you were wondering, this was not a paid advertisement. I just thought that some of you might find this service as interesting and appealing as I do!

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As requested by visitor Ammeli, this week’s featured artwork is an illustration of a Tauren Druid! “Druid Love” is a Chibi-style illustration of Astrid Hansen’s Tauren Druid, Onjedone. Who knew a cow could be so cute? I love the color of her eyes and the detail she went to in drawing and coloring the [Cenarion Vestments]. And as if this picture were’t already oozing with cuteness, she’s wearing a pink tabard with a little white heart in the center. This picture makes me consider that maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to be a cud-chewer after all… but then I think of all those narrow doorways in Ironforge.

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Today I have three community-related items I'm pleased to share with everyone. And thank you to those who have taken a moment to share them with me so that I can pass them on to everyone else.

Druid UI and Wallpapers

Ronco of Ravencrest (EU) recently posted some Druid-themed UI elements based partially upon the Night Elf and Tauren flight forms. While the design and size of the elements he's created is less subtle than what I tend to pick out, he's also created some very nice Night Elf and Tauren Druid wallpapers featuring some of our class spells and forms. Here are a couple of samples:

Thank you to Magnetronkip of Frostwhisper (EU) for directing me to this find!

Hafu Knows Kiting

And wants you to know, too. Hafu of Tichondrius (US) recently released a video wherein she explains some of the basic techniques behind Druid escapism in Arenas. While some of the principles demonstrated are more easily explained than performed (at least for me), Hafu does a good job of narrating many of the conventions successfully employed by 2k+ rated Restoration Druids in Arenas. A must see for any new Arena participant. You can submit commentary on this film here.

Resto Druid Kiting by Hafu

Gray Matter

Graylo of Eitrigg (US) shares his Gray Matter, a personal WoW diary with tales of a raiding Boomkin whose guild is currently deep in Serpentshrine Caverns. Many of his posts center around his recent raiding progress with some devoted to sharing his impressions on talent specs, patches, and recommended improvements to the spec.

Have something you would like to share? Please feel free to use the contact form!

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