Submission Requirements

To participate in this challenge, you must send me a screenshot of your Druid. Pictures should be taken while in Moonkin Form and should meet the following criteria:

• Nothing should obstruct the full and glorious view of your character you’ve (no inventory screens or character sheets; we just want to see your Boomkin).
• Include a description of your surroundings or really any sort of flavor text you like.
• Feel free to include your favorite non-combat pet in the picture, particularly if you feel it complements your roleplay backstory.
• Be creative with your backdrops, and feel free to combine entries with your friends.

I’ll be compiling all the appropriate entries into a gallery of images for the site and showcasing my favorites. Entries should be in TGA or JPG format and can be sent to me at . To give me time to cook Thanksgiving dinner and visit with family, entries must be submitted no later than Wednesday, November 26th (but the earlier the better)!

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Turkey Day! Send Me Your Boomkin!

• 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!

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Phae on the WoW Insider Podcast!

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.

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Media Frenzied Regeneration

Tree-Shirts Deadline Extended

On an unrelated note, because I’ve been asked by a couple of participants and because I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment, I’m extending the Tree-Shirts Contest deadline until Sunday, September 28th. I’ll display the submissions on the 29th or 30th! Thanks for your understanding, all!

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Runy and Phae Get Their Nethers in a Twist

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Epic Dolls Episode 43: Druid Discussion

Since I (still) haven’t seen this fight, I asked Treibh a few questions:

How would you describe your role in this fight? Are you primarily healing a single MT? Multiple MT/OT? MT + raid?
I’m responsible for rolling Lifebloom on the Gathios, Zerevor, and Malande tanks, and then using my 4th GCD for whatever. Typically, that means helping out on the Veras tank when he is up or tossing in a Rejuvenation on one of my Lifebloom tanks or even the raid if needed.

Do you ever have trouble avoiding Flamestrike? How important would you say the speed enchant is for boots in this fight?
Avoiding Flamestrike isn’t too bad if you are aware of your surroundings and are ready to move. I can’t say I’ve died to AoE on this fight since we’ve learned it, and I’ve always done it in Tree Form. I’d say Boar’s Speed is pretty important – for this fight and really the majority of late-T6 and Sunwell fights that I’ve done so far.

I see two Trees in that video. Can you see the forest … for the Trees?
The other Tree (who also has the same assignment I do) in the video is Vashir. We have a third Tree Druid (Ibou) who wasn’t there that night, but all three of us are usually in the raid. Our guild has done pretty much every first kill from the start of T5 through Brutallus with three Tree Druids in the raid. Three Tree Druids on, for example, a seven-healer Brutallus kill isn’t what you’ll find on any of the common strategies, but we’ve made it work for our guild for the last year pretty well.

For those curious about the video soundtrack (someone inevitably asks), the first song is “Galvanize” by the Chemical Brothers and “Anthem” by Moby.

Thanks for sharing, Treibh!

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Treibh vs. Illidari Council

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).

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Ammeli vs. Illidari Council

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

This St. Patty's Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Celica the Switcher

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!

This St. Patty's Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

All I Want for Christmas …

This St. Patty’s Day, why not celebrate your arboreal nature with a Resto4Life Tree Shirt? Now through March 12, U.S. residents can save 17% on all orders $25 or more with code MARCH39 (Canadian residents can use code CADMARCH39).

Featured Artwork: Druid Love