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Phaelia The Sprout(ed) Seed

Published on September 25, 2009 by Phaelia
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A few readers have inquired about whether or not we’ve sprouted, so I thought I’d share a few photos of our recently expanded family.1Our son Colin was born on August 28, 2009 — almost a week before his due date, weighing 7 lbs. 11 ounces. I was lucky in that my labor only lasted 5 hours, 3 of which I slept through and the other 2 of which were under the effects of an epidural. <3 <3 modern medicine

I am delighted by our decision to invest in a digital camcorder. And so is Grandma. :-)

3Here Mr. Phae is posing with Colin at two weeks old, showing off the Huff v1.0/Huff v2.0 shirts I made him for Father’s Day earlier this year. Never mind the fact that Colin’s shirt is designed to be worn by a three month old, and that he’s practically swimming in it!

Thank you to everyone for their warm wishes and kind thoughts over the past few months. I hope you are all doing well and are enjoying both Azeroth and the Druid class!

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Currant Bear with Me

Published on December 21, 2008 by Currant
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Currant had known deep in the pit of her stomach, that the moment the giant mounted its drake that things were about to get bad.  Had she known just how bad, maybe she would have run back the other way.  As it was, she was committed, along with the unlucky souls she was trying desperately to protect.

Her massive paw crashed down on on the skull of yet another unliving Vrykul and she could feel it collapse like the shell of an egg, spatter and all.  She bared her bloodied teeth and shook her muzzle back and forth as Valenna left a dagger in the corpse at her feet taking the fallen Vrykul’s spear.  She turned and threw in a single motion that defied Currant’s ability to figure out how she’d bothered finding her target, and the shaft sped upward, barely arcing.  All about them, the steaming corpses of the Vrykul’s companions littered and stained the snow, bones jutting upward like the broken stalks of rotting plants.

Valenna’s eyes narrowed in critical appraisal of her throw and she panted, her breath turning to mist as she did, "That’s the last spear."  The sound of worry in her voice was unmistakable, even through the filter of Currant’s ursine senses.  Currant could hear the drake screaming in pain from the spear, watching as its wings folded and the creature began a deceptively lazy drift toward the ground, black blood trailing behind it like streamers.  Valenna bent and retrieved the blade she’d left in the corpse and wiped the gore on the leg of her armor.

The ice-crusted thing on the drake’s back – Skadi if the informants were to be trusted – merely grunted in annoyance and leapt from it’s back as if it were any other surface and slammed into the ground, shifting bodies and snowpack alike with the impact.  Snow sprayed about its fur-bound feet and settled around it, obscuring for the briefest of moments, its features.

When the snow settled, Currant found herself gazing into the visage of hate.  Skadi was slicked in the rime of Northrend, from the bristle of the fur on its armor to the glowing blue spots that stared out at her from the blackness beneath its horned helmet.  It opened its cracked lips and bellowed.  The sound that issued forth was nearly visible, the air seeming to shake.  While her companions winced, Currant roared in challenge, and charged forward just as it did the same.

Valenna seemed to ripple and fade as she dashed through the corpses of Skadi’s minions with the grace of a dancer.  Valenna’s war-sister Khat and an insane gnome with spiked red hair approached less gracefully from Skadi’s sides, their heavy armor slowing them some, and they lashed out at the giant’s legs, their massive blades biting deep, but not deeply enough to slow it.

Currant slammed into the giant, the mass of her bear form almost overwhelmed by the mass of the undead hero that met her, and its hammer crashed down on her head.  She felt it through the heavy fur that covered her, and even caught the crack of the hammer hitting her skull and her world faded to a blur.  Her ears stopped working and something inside her head was violently trying to get out.  Behind her eyes it threw itself from side to side, pushing at her and scraping at her ears, threatening to split them with the repetition of contact, scrubbing her insides raw.

She looked again and Valenna had appeared behind the hateful thing that had landed in their midst, and was lashing out with her glistening wet blades, severing tendons and straps of leather with equal abandon.  The gnome shoved a blade of his own through Skadi’s leg, only to be backhanded and sent sprawling through the snow and cutting a miniature furrow that only stopped at a stone wall.  Khat ducked under the whirling storm of Skadi’s weapons and backed out to a temporarily safer distance.

Currant could taste blood in her mouth and feel it seeping from her ears, the sticky treacle matting her fur.  A small song coursed through her mind, like the distant hum of bees.  Soon it turned to the creaking of branches and the rustle of leaves.  The taste of blood became the clean crisp sensation of an icy stream and with sudden clarity, Currant took in the sounds of battle around her: the creak of leather, the gentle roughage of metal on metal and the soft thunk of weapons biting flesh.

With a suddenness, the bright blue in the depths of Skadi’s helmet shifted and Currant could see it looking past her and toward the last of her companions, Phaelia.  It too, had heard the gentle songs of restoration her magic brought, and somehow even its dead mind knew she was the most dangerous of its opponents.

It lifted its bloody hammer from Currant and turned toward the singer.

Currant blinked and lunged forward, a black-clawed paw catching the giant’s pelvis and pulling it to its knees.  It turned back, rage filling the air, and the three warriors pressed their attacks.  Currant dug her claws into every rotted opening she could find, holding the monster still while Khat and the gnome brutally hacked off its legs at the knees.  Currant bit hard into its chest and it began to thrash, knocking Khat to the ground but exacting a much higher toll from the gnome.  The poor thing’s skull broke apart messily as Skadi’s blindly thrashing hammer struck home.  His corpse fell spraying to the ground, painting the snow much differently than the zombies that had fallen before him.

One of Khat’s massive blades severed an arm at the elbow and Valenna managed to find enough of an opening to break in and nearly sever the thing’s head with two precisely executed slashes.  It was all the opening Currant needed.  She lunged forward and grabbed Skadi’s head in her mouth as it lolled about uselessly and she wrenched hard, pulling the entire thing to the ground.  She held it there while Valenna and Khat finished dismembering it, working her powerful teeth over the helmet to the weaker faceguard.  When she had it solidly in position, she bit down hard.  The helmet bent and broke and the gut-wrenching taste of dead flesh filled her mouth.

She shook it free and stepped back, her form flowing backward from that of a bear to that of a night elf.  She turned and spat out what was left of Skadi.  Phaelia was breathing heavily and when their eyes met, she shook her head, "I…I couldn’t…it was…too fast."

Breathing more heavily than she realized, Currant nodded, "It wasn’t your fault.  I’ll see to him."  She turned toward the fallen gnome and began to call on Elune.

A lot is being said these days about Druid tanking viability.  Some of it is well-informed, some of it is apologist, and some of it is downright lunatic fringe.  We all have opinions and insight and math but sadly, many of us seem to be thinking similar things.

Since hitting 80, I’ve only tanked a handful of encounters and fewer instances, spending most of my time as DPS.  This isn’t really a problem, it just isn’t what I expected.  I spend most of my time as a cat and was pleased to find the other night that I was competitive with other DPS in a raid.  I was only pulling 2200 DPS in my mostly pre-heroic gear (crafted epics and leveling blues mostly), but I was pleased to beat out more than one hunter.  Our career DPSers still did better than I did because they really know what they’re doing, but hey, not bad for a mostly-tank, right?

At any rate, I’ve been complaining recently about a lot of the changes, but though I whine and cry to my friends, I’m usually very tempered in my actual responses.  That said, there are some issues that still need addressing.  Commonly cited on the forums recently are issues with AoE tanking in general and Swipe in particular, itemization, and a lack of tanking tools.

Let’s look briefly at each:

AoE Tanking.  Swipe.

By some measures, Swipe allows us the greatest AoE TPS of any single AoE tanking ability, and few of us will contest that.  The problems with the ability are tactical, really, and much of it can be solved with less spastic DPS.

First, it’s a targeted frontal cone.  Most of the time, this fact is immaterial and it seems to me that the ‘cone’ is nearly 180-degrees, making it a VERY nice frontal cone.  It strikes EVERYTHING in that area.  Again, very very nice.  It can crit like crazy given the typical Feral’s crit chance and means that when tanking multiple mobs using Swipe, we are pretty much never Rage-starved.  It does nice damage, to boot.

Problematically, it is targeted.  In theory, this is a null-issue as we can simply re-target and keep on that Swipe button.  Realistically, I often lose sight of my target and it’s not unknown for me to fail to notice that my target has moved out of range and I’m just sitting there for several seconds.  As any tank knows, you can lose mobs in those seconds depending on the situation.

A far more pressing problem is mob pathing.  Far too often a mob will run behind us and out of Swipe.  While no tank actually wants a target behind them, those with true AoE abilities can afford to ignore them if they need to, in spite of the hit to mitigation they’ll take.  It’s usually trash that does this and therefore the loss of mitigation is merely annoying.  For the Druid, however, a mob behind us is a mob that is literally not being tanked.

More commonly cited is the frequency with which a Druid tank loses mobs in a pack to the DPS, especially when there’s AoE DPS being thrown about with reckless abandon.  While I’m of the opinion that the above-mentioned positioning issues are largely to blame, it has been pointed out that this could be avoided by allowing Swipe more front-loaded threat.  Such a change was recently announced.

This runs the risk of giving us far too much threat, but does allow for our laying off the Swipe button long enough to work in Barkskin, Demoralizing Roar, Mangle and other abilities without materially impacting our threat.  Interesting.

There is also a noted lack of tanking tools.

In general, I don’t think this is a huge problem.  I’m seriously pissed off that Warriors have appropriated some of my abilities (Enraged Regeneration and Damage Shield in particular – especially since both appear to be improved versions of what Druids have, at least in some ways) it’s probably only fair, with a short cooldown Barkskin usable in forms and Survival Instincts being given to Druids.  Still, it rankles.

But Druids do have fewer tanking tools.  The common retort is that "Druids can heal and buff and DPS."  Really?  As the player of a Druid I didn’t know any of that.  Seriously.  I’m glad you guys are here to tell me these things.  :eyeroll:

This is not the post to debate the merits of Druid utility.  Suffice it to say that Druids sacrifice breadth of utility in a role for breadth of utility in a class.  Warriors do the reverse.  Druids have fewer tanking tools.  Period.  End of debate.  This is true.  I don’t need a lot of tools to tank and I’m not actually concerned with asking for more.  Would a true AoE ability be nice?  Absolutely.  Can I make it work without one?  Absolutely.

This, however, leads us to itemization.

Because we have so few tools to tank with, we also have fewer statistics we can use.  Bears have Agility, Armor, Stamina, Dodge, Expertise and Hit to worry about in our tanking gear.  Warriors and Paladins add in Strength, Parry, Block and Defense.  Because all tanks share rings, trinkets, cloaks, and necklaces, this often puts us in the unenviable position of using gear with a lot of wasted itemization.  This is especially true if, as many posters have said, the armor items will still be best in slot, just by smaller margins.

True, we can use Strength to raise our AP, but it’s more efficient and practical to get that other places.  Strength is like Haste: it’s okay if it’s there, but we’ll never go looking for it.

Add in that we’re using Rogue gear for our leather an we see a near pathological resistance to itemizing for Bears at all.  Holy Paladins, Moonkin, Restoration Druids…all have specialized itemization needs as well, and continue to get it.  Cats get by just fine using Rogue gear, so it’s not totally bleak, but Dire Bear is increasingly looking like something we’re only supposed to do when there aren’t any willing plate-wearers around.

We still tank and we still tank well, don’t misunderstand me.  But when the spec and role you want to play has gone from picking up the scraps from other classes (pre-BC) to getting targeted itemization (pre-Wrath) and then back to picking up scraps from other classes (now), all while some other specs continue to receive targeted itemization, it makes you wonder what the game wants you doing.

Blizzard has given us new talents, allowed us to be competitive for the leather we do use, and made many fundamental changes we’ve needed for ages though, so I can’t help but feel that the state of the Druid as a class is pretty good.  I even think the upcoming armor change will ultimately be beneficial in freeing up itemization options (though I have some real issues with the implementation – it feels too much like a Band-Aid).  I just want reassurances that I won’t be hearing: "This is so much easier with a Warrior/Paladin," when I tank for much longer.

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Phaelia Our Exciting Wrath Release Plans!

Published on November 10, 2008 by Phaelia
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7-11 So while other bloggers are coordinating awesome pre-release parties – some immediately prior to the few Blizzard-sponsored launches – Mr. Phae apparently reserved our two copies at the local 7-11.

/facepalm

Doesn’t he know that it’s too cold in Northrend for a Slurpee?

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Phaelia Phaelia, Guardian of Cenarius

Published on October 22, 2008 by Phaelia
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I’m sure that this is probably old hat to many of you — especially those of you who spent long and arduous hours smushing bugs in AQ20/AQ40 — but I finally reached Exalted with the Cenarion Circle last night after discovering that the Guardian of Cenarius achievement carried with it a very smexy Druid-oriented title by the same name. Prior to the release of TBC, Mr. Phae and I spent two months in the sandy wastes of Silithus, running quests and collecting … stuff … required to raise our reputation. He was after something at Exalted, but I was only after a reward at Revered, the [Grace of Earth], then the only on-use threat reducer. Various AQ runs pushed me to about 13/21k toward Exalted, leaving me 8,000 reputation left when I headed back to Silithus last night.

In all, it probably took me 3-4 hours to grind out that last bit of reputation, which was so much less painful at 70 both because I could kill mobs in 2-3 spell casts and because they’ve quintupled the reputation gain from turning in sets of 10 x [Encrypted Twilight Text] to Bor Wildmane, from 100 to 500 reputation. If you’re after the title yourself and are curious about the method I used, here’s a brief summary:

  1. Run to the area marked in yellow on the map below:
    Silithus Map with Marker for Twilight Prophet
  2. There’s a Twilight camp around this area. You’ll want to stand on the south end and kill Twilight NPCs, collecting both [Encrypted Twilight Text] and the various articles of clothing ([Twilight Cultist Robe], [Twilight Cultist Cowl], [Twilight Cultist Mantle]).
  3. Be watching for the spawn of the Twilight Prophet and her two cronies from some rocks to the West.  Tag her as soon as you see her. She can drop 7-10 [Encrypted Twilight Text] by herself, saving you tons of time. Once you’ve killed her (or someone else has), you should expect a respawn 25-35 minutes later and are free to move about the camp causing mayhem and destruction until that time. If you should ever need to return to town (to sell or turn in), be sure you only do so between Prophet respawns.
  4. Silithus Wind Stone As you complete a Twilight ensemble (collecting a hat, robe, and mantle), use one of the two Lesser Wind Stones in the camp to summon a Templar. Each of these that you kill will drop an [Abyssal Crest]. 3 x [Abyssal Crest] can be turned in to Bor Wildmane for 150 additional reputation.

There are probably faster, more complex ways of gaining reputation that involve summoning Dukes, but as I only needed 8,000 reputation, it wasn’t worth the effort to investigate for me.

Here are a couple of pictures of the happy result:

Guardian of Cenarius Achievement Phaelia, Guardian of Cenarius Having acquired the title, I finally gave into my long-standing urge to buy a [Cenarion War Hippogryph], the Exalted reputation mount from Cenarion Expedition. He’s a flavor addition to my very small mount collection since I’ll probably still primarily use Swift Flight Form, but Fedryen Swiftspear practically foisted him on me for a mere 1,600 gold. His name is Tairneanach, and he enjoys chasing Warriors, eating apples, and having his beak scratched.

Additional Resources

  • Cenarion Expedition Reputation Guide via WoWWiki
  • Cenarion Circle Reputation Guide via WoWWiki

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Phaelia Build 8962 Changes

Published on September 18, 2008 by Phaelia
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I seriously need to work on my title for these types of posts. Of course, I guess you know exactly what you’re getting into if you clicked through!

Balance

Talents

  • Earth and Moon (Tier 10) changed so your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 100% chance to apply the Earth and Moon effect. It now also increases your spell damage by 1/2/3/4/5%. (Previously had a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to apply the Earth and Moon Effect)
  • Eclipse (Tier 9) changed so when you critically hit with Starfire, you have a 33/66/100% chance of increasing damage done by Wrath by 10%. (Previously 20/40/60% chance)
  • Improved Moonkin Aura (Tier 7) gives 3% spell haste for all ranks and now you gain 5/10/15% of your spirit as additional spell damage.
  • Improved Faerie Fire (Tier 7) increases your critical strike chance against targets afflicted with Faerie Fire by 1/2/3%.
  • Nature’s Splendor (Tier 3) changed to – When you cast Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth or Lifebloom you have a 33/66/100% chance to increase it’s duration by 3 sec.

Overall, some excellent changes to Balance. Still no bloat reduction yet, though, and the improvement to Eclipse certainly isn’t making things easier:

  • The change to Earth and Moon is really nice and means that Balance Druids will be able to apply the 13% increase to damage taken much more quickly. The additional spell damage is also awesome, of course.
  • Eclipse is obviously an improvement.
  • The percentage haste granted by Improved Moonkin Aura used to ramp up with the number of points invested (1/2/3%), and the spell damage based on Spirit is, in my opinion, a fantastic change since it means Blizzard won’t have to design separate Moonkin and Tree leather (though we still don’t benefit from spell crit as much as we do from other stats).
  • Improved Faerie Fire formerly only affected the chance to hit the target with spells but has also been given a self-only buff to spell crit against the target. This gives Moonkin a better reason to pick up this spell again.
  • Nature’s Splendor has been changed once again. If you remember, it was originally a scaling, percentage-based increase to duration (10/20/30%) and was then changed to a constant increase of 1/2/3 seconds. The change so that each point increases the chance of increasing the duration of your spells is probably going to make having just 1 or 2 points in the ability annoying when it comes to maintaining a Lifebloom stack. It also no longer affects Flourish (renamed in this build to Wild Growth). /cry

» Read Graylo’s impressions of the Balance changes

Feral

Skills

  • Shred – Effects which increase Bleed damage also increase Shred damage.
  • Maul – Effects which increase Bleed damage also increase Maul damage.
  • Bash now interrupts spell casts for 3 sec.
  • Barkskin is now usable in all forms.

Talents

  • Berserk (Tier 11) no longer causes your Mangle (Bear) and Maul attacks to hit up to 3 targets
  • Predatory Instincts (Tier 8 ) reduces the damage taken by area of effect attacks by 3/6/9/12/15%. (Previously increased your chance to avoid them)
  • Protector of the Pack (Tier 8 ) damage reduction is now at 3% for each party member across all ranks.
  • Improved Leader of the Pack (Tier 7) – In addition, you gain 4% of your maximum mana when you benefit from Improved Leader of the Pack heal.
  • Feral Charge (Cat) (Tier 5) – Causes you to leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 sec. 30 second cooldown.
  • Faerie Fire (Feral) (Tier 3) now deals damage and causes extra threat while in bear form.
  • Brutal Impact (Tier 2) now reduces the cooldown of bash by 15/30 sec in addition to its previous effect.

Glyphs

    • Glyph of Swipe has been removed.
    • Glyph of Maul has been added – Your Maul ability now hits 1 additional target.

Finally, we see some of the changes they’ve been working on to help Ferals:

  • While not reclassified as bleeds themselves (they aren’t DoTs), Shred and Maul will benefit from talents and abilities that cause bleed damage to increase. More damage/threat is always good, right?
  • The two changes to Bash will no doubt be helpful in PvP (interrupts spellcasting and gains a reduced cooldown from Brutal Impact).
  • From earlier blue posts this week, we knew that Barkskin would be usable in Dire Bear Form and you can read more about this change over at Unbearably HoT.
  • A Bear can now forego spending three points in Protector of the Pack and just pick up the first one to get all 12% of the damage reduction (losing out on the additional 40% attack power increase). I don’t really know enough to say whether that will be desirable, but it does make the talent a little more flexible and less mandatory to max out.
  • The mana regeneration change to Improved Leader of the Pack was also expected. Thankfully, it’s based on maximum mana rather than base mana. As Currant points out, Ferals will still have to be mindful not to shift out without enough mana to shift back in since the effect obviously fades when in caster form.
  • The additional threat from Feral Faerie Fire is a nice change, though I’m not sure if the damage it deals is so that it does come with increased threat or just to keep it from being used to build threat on mobs that are crowd controlled.
  • I don’t understand what was changed about Feral Charge (Cat). I believe that it has always dazed for 3 seconds. Edit: Apparently it now causes you to land facing your target rather than facing away from them. (Thanks, Kalon!)
  • I was sad to see the Glyph of Swipe removed, but it’s nice that Bears can make their Maul ability multi-target if they want to. Of course, using the Glyph of Maul would limit a Bear to using only Mangle and Lacerate for building threat with a mob standing beside one or more mobs that are crowd-controlled.

» Read Runycat’s impressions of the Feral changes

Restoration

Skills

  • Gift of the Wild now affects the whole raid.
  • Lifebloom healing reduced. Mana cost increased. (Check Skill list for details)

Talents

  • Flourish renamed Wild Growth.
  • Wild Growth (Tier 11) – Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 350 over 7 sec. The amount healed is applied quickly at first, and slows down as the Wild Growth reaches its full duration.
  • Gift of the Earthmother (Tier 10) changed to reduce the base global cooldown of your Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells by 4/8/12/16/20%.
  • Tree of Life (Tier 9) increases healing received by 6%. (Previously 3%).
  • Improved Tree of Life (Tier 9) now increases your healing spell power by 5/10/15% of your spirit while in Tree of Life Form. (Previously reduced the mana cost by 5/10/15%)

Earlier this week, Ghostcrawler indicated that the endless mana of Restoration Druids was considered an issue:

We are still playing with deep Resto a little. One of the concerns (for us, though probably not you!) is that with all the tree talents and some decent Spirit that druids never run out of mana.

On the other hand, we’re having trouble getting Resto druids to ever run out of mana.

In an effort to redress this "problem," the base mana cost of Lifebloom is being increased from 10 to 14%, an increase of 40%. The base amount healed by the HoT portion is simultaneously being reduced from 462 to 371, ostensibly to increase the use of other spells to make up the difference. I haven’t had the chance to test the coefficient, yet, but it sounds like it’s been reduced, as well, for a decrease to total healing of 25%. This is, by far, the largest nerf to the spell we’ve seen.

Flourish has been replaced with a spell called Wild Growth. I say "replaced" rather than "renamed" because, while the core mechanic hasn’t changed (an AoE HoT that tapers off over time), the numbers are drastically different:

  • Wild Growth costs 35% base mana, up from the 32% of Flourish
  • Wild Growth heals for 1085 over 7 seconds, down from the 4410 of Flourish
  • Wild Growth is not affected by Nature’s Splendor (Flourish was)
  • Wild Growth has a 15 yard radius, down from the 20 yard radius of Flourish (40 yard range)

Beta Tester Naois is reporting that the ticks from this spell have dropped off as follows:

Before: 893, 893, 893, 1216, 1108, 1000, 893, 785, 678, 570 = 8929 Total
After: 439, 411, 383, 355, 326, 299, 271 = 2484 Total

204
Flourish even got a name nerf.

If you multiply the final amount healed by the new Wild Growth by 5 targets, you end up with a value that’s probably pretty close to what you’d expect a maximum rank Healing Touch critical to heal for… for essentially the same mana cost. Of course, a Healing Touch is a targeted spell that doesn’t have the potential to tick away ineffectually the same way that HoTs do. Compare this new spell to Circle of Healing which costs less mana and does all of its healing up front. This nerf is way, way too extreme, and Wild Growth will probably be skipped over by a lot of Druids.

They’ve removed the mana refund portion of Gift of the Earthmother (causes your Healing Touch and Nourish spells to refund 5% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target) while increasing the GCD reduction portion from 10% to 20%.  This means at 5 points, it will reduce the global cooldown of Rejuvenation and Lifebloom from 1.5 to 1.2 seconds. This is, of course, down from its original value of 0.5 seconds (that also included the mana reduction). This talent is now officially in the "worthless" category. Save those 5 points and put them into something useful.

Both Tree of Life and Improved Devotion Aura are being boosted from 3% to 6% which is a very nice change. Every raid will want one or the other present (but there’s no reason to bring two Restoration Druids which is their stated intent). At the same time, the 15% mana reduction on HoTs bonus from 3/3 Improved Tree of Life is being replaced with a talent to convert 15% Spirit into Spell Power. This directly parallels the change being made to Improved Moonkin Aura. I’m happy to have more reason to stack Spirit (though I was never convinced we wouldn’t want to because Intensity is so valuable), but I’m really concerned that they’ve gone way overboard with the mana efficiency nerfs to Restoration Druids.

Yes, Restoration Druids were exceptionally mana efficient. That was intended, however, to offset the fact that a large portion of what HoTs heal for is often ineffectual. To make things even more difficult to test, Omen of Clarity is bugged and proccing too frequently, making it difficult to get an idea of what kind of efficiency hit we’ve taken without dropping the skill altogether. Overall, the nerf to Flourish has gutted the skill that made healing in Wrath so much more fun for me than in TBC.

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Recent Comments

The Sprout(ed) Seed (80)

David
Congratulations! Cute baby!

Tsuki
I’m so late that little Colin ain’t swimming on his mini-shirt anymore by now. And Mr. Phae and the classic “drooling daddy” face, priceless. Grats Phae and family!

Rayvis
First I want to say congratulations on your new baby boy, albeit a little late. As a Druid myself, formerly Resto even, I found this to be pretty awesome. I had my first child in October, also a boy. He just happens to have the exact same onesie that you’re little boy is wearing in the video. It’s my favorite outfit of his because I am my son’s superhero! As a side note, I hope you’re enjoying your new seed. They grow like weeds though and you start wondering...

Snowmaidn
I certainly never looked that good when I sprouted my seedlings. Thanks for all the great advice on this site. Things have changed a lot over the years and 60 was the highest you could go when I last played before this year. I got back into the game again about 6 months ago after taking a 4 year break when I was pregnant with my daughter.
Phaelia’s Vestments of the Sprouting Seed (54)

Gammenon
Wow, a wife interested in MMO’s and Marvel?! Mr. Phae is one fortunate man. Regards
Gift of the Nerfmother (16)

Kenan
@Terrorpaw: This information is vastly outdated. Notice that the article indicates patch 3.0.8 while the current version is 3.3. The amount of haste needed for resto druids to reach 1 second GCD has been shuffled considerably. I’ve been poking around on this site and I find it likely that much of the information here might be outdated.

Terrorpaw
Not to distract from your information, but this is confuddling to me. Everyone on the druid forums just touts that with CF and GOTEM you should see 735 haste on your character sheet? Are they just dead wrong?

Ck
This is actually really useful – thanks for this! Is it still current and user friendly? I somehow managed to get up to 740 Haste without trying, and even with scrapping all haste enchants and gems – I am still languishing on 723 :(
The Belkin Nostromo N52 TE (71)

Softi
Over a year and a half later this post is still worth it’s weight in gold! Hope you and your family are all well Phae. :) *hugs* .-= Softi´s last blog ..Dum di dum di dum =-.
Ark Inventory (2)

Kengur
I’ve been using this addon since I started playing some over a year now. I can’t imagine wow without it since. To swap bags you can right click the one you wish to free up and select ‘filter’. Then drag all the stuff into another bag. Also you could just swap a bag from inventory to your bank still full of stuff.
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