This week’s featured artwork is a comic book-esque piece by Guillaume Bonnet, entitled “Lazzlo’s Jewels” and featuring several characters belonging to the author and his guildmates. Among them is Tuuli of Perenolde, a feral-specced Druid depicted alongside her ferocious Cat and Bear Forms. Oftentimes someone that draws well won’t be a great colorist, but such isn’t the case with Guillaume. Each of the five images is as beautifully colored as it is drawn, and all are unique. And be sure to check out his full gallery — he’s quite prolific and all his pieces are of similar quality!

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The piece of artwork featured this week is a piece by Christian Inside, MonkeyfroG on deviantART. It’s a beautiful, full color depiction of his girlfriend’s Druid (name not given). I was at first surprised to see her referred to as a Druid, but then I recognized the Nordrassil shoulders. I’m guessing from the Merciless Gladiator’s War Staff she’s wielding that her robe is the Robe of the Elder Scribes, a beautiful garment dropped by Nightbane in Karazhan. These two items collectively indicate that she’s of the Balance persuasion, despite her otherwise strong resemblance to a Priest. This piece is particularly signficant since it points to the current problems with Moonkin itemization and such Druids being forced to wear cloth. Happily this a problem which should see some redress in Patch 2.3.

I love the level of detail the artist went to in depicting the Druid’s armor. If I could change one thing about the piece, however, I would have like to have seen the left side of the background be green since Druids leverage both Arcane (purple) and Nature (green) magics to restorative and destructive ends, possibly flipping the colors to provide better contrast against her hair and robes. Still, I imagine she uses this image as her desktop wallpaper and will for some time to come!

P.S. Thanks to an anonymous commentor for pointing out that her staff is the Season 2 Balance staff and not the healing staff from Magtheridon.

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I love fantasy art, especially digital paintings. I have a collection of thousands of images I’ve collected, having diligently recorded the piece’s title and artist’s name in the filename. Because the sheer number of pieces can be overwhelming, I’d like to start a new feature, one where I highlight a piece or two of World of Warcraft Druid art, along with a link to where you can find more of the artist’s work.

The first piece I’d like to showcase is entitled “Druid of the Talon,” a digital painting by Dan Hornbek. It features a wizened looking Night Elf (can you not be wise after living so long?) huddled over a knotted staff, possibly preparing to cast Cyclone on an approaching enemy. My favorite part of this piece is the Druid’s hands which convey his age. The pearlescent moon behind him is also a nice touch.

From text at Battle.net.

[Druids of the Talon] are secretive druids that have adopted the totem of the crow. Their primary role in society is information gathering and intelligence. They have the ability to transform into storm crows and fly over the field of battle to scout and deliver orders to distant troops. Their magical spell-like abilities are capable of channeling even the winds to fight against the enemies of Kalimdor. They may create ferocious cyclones to sow chaos into enemy lines.

From the sounds of it, we got our Talon aspect (Cyclone and Flight Form) with the release of the Burning Crusade.

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Once considered an urban legend, the “Rawr Bomb” consists of a Druid paratrooping in over unsuspecting prey, dropping out of Flight Form and activating Feral Charge at the last moment to reach their opponent without taking fall damage. A difficult skill to master, the slightest miscalculation or unfortunate lag results in the “Rawr! Splat!” instead of the desired effect. From Logrimm of Boulderfist comes a video of his personal exploits as a Bear-a-trooper. Featuring the high-energy song, “Scatman” by Scatman John, The Rawrbomb will have you almost pitying the unfortunate Horde who find themselves in Logrimm’s shadow ominous shadow. “For the Horde” indeed.

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Blizzard recently announced that all items with +Healing will be gaining an automatic amount of +Damage equal to 1/3 the item’s +Healing value. While this may not sound earthshattering, it’s worth noting that for the same item stat allocation, a healing item will typically have double the +Healing as the equivalent +Damage item. If we consider a very simple example, if an item has 300 +Healing, the damage caster equivalent would have 150 +Damage. With the upcoming change, the healing item will gain a “free” 100 +Damage (1/3 * 300). That’s an amazing 66.7% of the spell damage available to pure damage casters, all while retaining the amazing +Healing stat. To be honest, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more protest from damage casters…

Nhara of Rajaxx wrote in this weekend to share her experience on the Public Test Realms. Bedecked in her shining Primal Mooncloth Robe and with 60 points invested in Restoration, she videoed her encounter with Uvuros of Shadowmoon Valley, a level 70 Elite mob that typically takes 2-3 players to kill. Of her experience, she writes:

I started with Zahna, the elekk in Nagrand which is part of the “kill
an elite of every animal race in nagrand” quest series. The fight was pretty easy, and I downed her on first try, so I spread out my wings in search for a greater challenge and ended up in front of Uvuros, which some of you may know from a 5-man elite quest in Shadowmoon Valley. I didn’t really think that I would stand a chance, but I just had to try it.

While Nhara doesn’t manage to kill Uvuros, she does manage to drop his life to a very respectable 66% before running out of mana. In her current healing kit, her 1830 +Healing will convert to an additional 610 +Damage. Imagine the havok she will subsequently be able to wreak on Outland elites! All in all, a very impressive feat and one that is promising for the rest of us, especially given the upcoming spell damage bonus. Thanks, Nhara!

Note: Normally, I like to embed these sorts of videos in my blog so that you don’t have to leave to view them (unless you want to). However, the DivX web player is giving my Vista system fits and crashes my browser when I attempt to preview the video. I do not, however, have any issues viewing the video through the DivX site.

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