While the number of Hunter blogs once rivalled the Druid blog community, I think we’ve now pulled ahead by a fair margin. Clearly, Druids are jabbermouths. I have three new blogs to share today, all of which hail from friends across the Atlantic.

• // erumel; Niniel of Kilrogg (EU) is apparently a C# programmer, though I’m not sure why he’s opted to comment his blog out! While the majority of her blog postings concern World of Warcraft, you’ll find more than only that with posts on music and his life outside the game.
• Deeply Druidic Deeply Druidic is a brand new blog written by Mauritius of Burning Steppes (EU). Mauritius has experience with all walks of life as a Druid as well as PvE, PvP, and raid content.

One more, this time from an American player, Razorbaxftw of Medivh:

• Three Druid Noob One player, three Druids, one from each spec (Feral, Balance, and Restoration). This blog is destined to be an interesting one to follow! Plus, he has a really cool picture of one of his Druids in the sidebar.

I’m also adding Druid Tips of the Day, an article by well-known PvPer Hafu published by PvPSource, to the resources section of my blogroll. It details strategies for dealing with specific 2v2 matchups, and here’s a snippet of what she’s written:

Warriors: After the Intercept, Travel Forming away is great. Be ready to shift quickly out and into Travel Form multiple times as most good Warriors will be ready to Hamstring and Piercing Howl. If the Warrior got out of combat, feel free to rank 1 Moonfire them — and run. It’ll take them a second to switch back into Berserker stance — and that’s if they have Intercept up.

Oh, and this is a sleeker, faster alternative to using the WoWArmory. You can read Amanna’s very detailed writeup on the various features over at Adventures in Azeroth. Neat!

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Realm History, a site which aggregates a variety of population data for all realms in the US and EU, is providing a breakdown of Arena team population by class, aggregating by bracket and by teams ranked 1850+ and 2200+. Surprisingly, Druids are doing very poorly so far, even in the 2v2 bracket in which we have generally excelled. It’s likely that these numbers will shift around as different team compositions “settle out” into their more-or-less predestined ranges (since everyone’s been thrown into the same pool, so to speak, Druid teams facing problem matchups may see their progress halted until those teams move out of their range). Definitely a set of statistics worth watching over the coming weeks and months.

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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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Well, actually that honor likely goes to the 10-hour match between Jbangalanga, Weaslelawd, Spiked and Deunan, but this story from Ermengol of Shadowsong (EU) was too fun not to share:

I was the other day in a 2v2 Arena Druids against Druids when, because of some terrible healing of mine, my mate died. I was all alone saying “we’re done,” “sorry,” etc., when I realized their DPS was so low they couldn’t surpass my heals. They tried everything (one time they waited for full mana and spammed Moonfire, another one the Resto went cat, etc.), but they just couldn’t. I even went Tree of Life a few times to save mana (/dance included). Hilarious!

How did “we” win? Balance went AFK, Resto got disconnected… and the rest is history. Probably longest arena ever.

Was it worth it? Yeah! Not because of the rating (that’s for sure), but the picture!

Congratulations, Ermengol!

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Edit: This change has been reversed. Carry on being unable to play a healer relying solely upon easily dispelled insta-cast HoTs that bear little consequence when purged due to a combination of silence, interrupt, and crowd control:

After further discussion about the change in patch 2.3 which adds diminishing returns to silencing effects, we’ve decided to revert the change. Though we do feel that being chain school locked is a problem and plan to address it at some point in the future, we weren’t comfortable with the amount of testing this particular change received.

Original Post:

In a surprising but exciting change to the PvP game, Blizzard has announced plans to make silence and interrupt effects subject to diminishing returns in the same way that other forms of crowd control are subject to DR. I.e., the first silence/interrupt will last full duration, the second only half, the third one quarter of the original duration, and the fourth eliciting an immunity message. No other silence/interrupt will be able to be used on the target in question for 15 seconds after the third silence/interrupt has elapsed. While this is a change that will affect all casters, it’s likely to have the largest effect on healers, who are frequently the target for Pummel, Kick, Counterspell, Silence, Feral Charge, Spell Lock, Deadly Throw, Earth Shock, and post Patch 2.3 Maim (with Feral Arena gloves).

It’s unclear whether silence and interrupt effects will share the same diminishing returns or whether each will be tracked separately. If the latter is the case, these abilities will be broken down in the following groups of DR:

• Silence: Improved Counterspell (Mage), Improved Kick (Rogue), Spell Lock (Warlock), Silence (Priest)
• Interrupt: Pummel (Warrior), Earth Shock (Shaman), Counterspell (Mage), Kick (Rogue), Feral Charge and Maim with Feral Arena gloves (Druid), Spell Lock (Warlock)

And for those who aren’t clear what the difference between the two types of effect is, a silence is an ability that can be used at any time (casting or not) and renders the target unable to cast another spell for a certain amount of time. An interrupt is an ability that only works when the target is casting a spell and renders the caster unable to cast another spell within the school of magic interrupted by the ability for a certain amount of time. Interrupt effects generally last longer than silence effects. Many 4 DPS teams are built around the concept of having multiple silences/interrupts available at the start of the match to completely incapacitate one or more of their opponents’ healers, allowing them to insta-gib individual opponents, turning the tide in their favor right out of the gates. This change can be seen as a huge reduction in the viability of such a strategy and will help make Resto much more … 4Life.

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