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

Here 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!

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).

The Sprout(ed) Seed

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.

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).

Bear with Me

/facepalm

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

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).

Our Exciting Wrath Release Plans!

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:
   
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. 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:

  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

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).

Phaelia, Guardian of Cenarius

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

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.

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).

Build 8962 Changes

You may remember a while back how excited I was when MMO Champion discovered the presence of unicorn-esque Zhevra mounts in the game files. I previously had reason to believe that these mounts would be acquirable through quests from the Hemet Nesingwary expedition in Northrend. It turns out, however, that these amazing ground mounts are only available to those who can convince a friend who is not already playing to play the game for two months or more. I find this incredibly, ridiculously frustrating for a number of reasons.

First of all, everyone that I know that would enjoy playing World of Warcraft already has an account, active or otherwise. This program should extend to encouraging canceled accounts to renew. Why should a friend who tried the game, became disenchanted with the leveling curve (or quests, or hair selection, or whatever), and canceled have to purchase an entirely new account? This new program should have been added onto the lackluster Scroll of Resurrection program already in place for renewals. A returning player should be viewed as at least as valuable as a new player.

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since the first day of release. In City of Heroes/City of Villains, they issue Veteran Rewards at various playtime milestones, both to encourage and reward their long-term subscribers. While I thought that was really neat for CoX, I didn’t really expect for Blizzard to follow suit … until they implemented a new program that makes me think they value a potential new customer more than they value my years of past and future dedication. Every year that you play should afford a percentage-based experience bonus for alts that you create.

As you may know, I play with my husband. Shouldn’t we be able to "link accounts" to help us level new characters without having to buy a third account? This “linking” could be available to any two accounts from which character transfers would be allowed (same last name and/or billing information). To obtain the same benefits that a new player would, not only would we have to purchase a new account, but we’d later have to pay $25 to transfer the character onto one of our existing accounts or continue paying an additional monthly fee. I understand that Blizzard is in business to make money, but surely encouraging the creation and advancement of alts will make them money in the long term.

As it stands, Blizzard is essentially charging $X for 300% bonus experience, 30 free levels, and a special mount not available through any other means. In my mind, this puts them a step away from allowing players to purchase gear directly from them. All in all, it feels very much like receiving a fantastic pricing offer in the mail from my cable company/ISP but when calling in to switch to the new plan with all its bells and whistles, being informed that only new customers are eligible for the deal and that I shouldn’t have received the offer in the first place (true story).

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).

Refer-a-Friend? What about Marry-a-Gamer?

By the time I got home from work yesterday and got the beta client installed and patched, it was 11 o’clock, so I didn’t have as much time to play as I would have liked. I managed to convince myself not to call in sick to work today, but I’m watching the clock for 5 PM! In my so far limited time in Northrend, I did discover a few things I thought worth sharing:

• Playing with the default UI is painful. Most addons aren’t WotLK-ready, yet, including any of the mainstream action bars. Luckily, WoWInterface.com has created a whole new category for those addons that are working in the WotLK beta, including a new action bar addon called N52Bar that’s modeled after the layout of my Nostromo game pad. That’s all I’ve installed so far, but I’m going to add a few more tonight, including agUnitframes, Outfitter, and hopefully Baggins.
• There are a lot of monsters in Northrend. A lot. And they all want to eat me. Also, much like fiery ground effects, floating ziggurats = bad.
• Phaelia looks much better with no marks on her face. I’m so happy that they’re allowing us to remove/change them. I ended up picking the Dwarven hairstyle with the hair pulled loosely back to the nape of your neck with a single braid. Very Gaelic chic. I’ll probably change again tonight. At 12 gold a haircut, it’s a good thing I brought a bunch of money with me!
• Respecs only cost a copper on Beta. That made the accidental misclick of 2 points in Natural Perfection a LOT less frustrating. It also means that I’ll get to play with lots of different talent specs.
• I love the new learned pets and mounts system. It was really nice to be able to clear out so much bank space, though a bit disconcerting when my Frost saber POOFED on me when I went to mount for the first time! (I seriously freaked out before I remembered that he had been added to my mounts list.)

If you also happen to have a beta key and have an active character on the PvE server, please say hello! My character name there is THAELIA (the name “Phaelia” was taken /shakes fist at her impersonator). Maybe if there are enough of us that are as-yet-unattached, we could form an all-Druid, all-the-time guild. If we do, we’re totally getting a rabbit tabard to symbolize our ongoing dedication to acquiring Critter Form! We could even call the guild, “Critter Form or Bust” I’m soooo not getting tells now, am I?

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).

Phaelia v3.0

• Koraa Follows up on Lifebloom Change
• Downranking No Longer Possible
• Spell Pushback Changes
• Feral Summary

Koraa Follows up on Lifebloom Change

Developer Koraa went on to respond to further questions about the previously reported coefficient reduction of Lifebloom, asserting that Blizzard rarely nerfs an ability for the purpose of PvP balance if it effects PvE, confirming that this is an intentional PvE nerf. She goes on to explain that Flourish, Nourish, and talents like Living Seed are intended to help compensate. It appears that she did, in fact, misspeak in her earlier post about the intention for Druids to be high throughput healers, which is comforting.

I’ve noticed many players use the "PvP excuse" as a way to dismiss that abilities or spells are too good in PvE. For example, Illumination… that wasn’t nerfed for PvP reasons (like many believe).

Whenever we change abilities we always consider the outcomes for all aspects of the game, very rarely will we change an ability that will reduce it’s effectiveness in PvE or PvP for the sake of the other. And if we do, it’s intended.

In the case of Lifebloom, it’s too good in both aspects of the game. Again, it’s not our intention to merely just reduce the effectiveness of Lifebloom, but to also introduce new healing mechanics (Flourish, Nourish, talents like Living Seed and the improvements to Tree of Life) to compensate.

HoTs are intended to be effective in HPS and efficient, but have the drawback of requiring time to heal. The issue today is that you’ll HoT a player who got hit by a big AOE, and some other class will use a downrank direct heal and cause you HoT to be ineffective. This is being addressed through downrank penalties. We want other classes to say "Hey, I could heal that guy back up who just got hit by that AOE, but I’ll let the Druid do it instead and preserve my mana." Note that I’m not saying random AOE damage is not what HoTs are only intended to be for, I’m just using that as an example.

Of particular interest is the quote, “The issue today is that you’ll HoT a player who got hit by a big AOE, and some other class will use a downrank direct heal and cause you HoT to be ineffective.” which speaks directly to another important change coming down the pipeline …

Downranking No Longer Possible

Developer Wryxia explained a significant change to the game’s spellcasting system that’s coming in Wrath of the Lich King:

As you may have noticed, in this latest build we have updated spells and abilities using mana. These no longer cost a fixed amount and instead they’re a percentage of your base mana, not including any mana increase from Intellect. For the most part this should mean mana-based spells and abilities are costing roughly the same amount as they do in the live game, though there might be some slight changes either up or down. But we have tried to keep them as close as possible to the same mana cost for a level 70 as they are now in the live game.

What will change though is that lower rank spells will lose their appeal. We have made this mana cost change purely to prevent downranking, which is an unintended technique that we were not at ease with. We’ve previously tried ways to discourage it, but have decided that we’d rather find a solution than continue to find ways to penalize those who choose to downrank. The solution we chose was to make downranking obsolete, encouraging people to always use their highest rank of each spell and nothing else.The highest rank of a mana-based spell or ability will now remain the most powerful effect, but at the same mana cost as earlier ranks.

We’re certain that for some people this will cause a period of readjustment. Hopefully removing a few more of the extra buttons you’ve been pressing will eventually be seen as a good thing; it might also be easier for some people to do their role without having to learn to downrank. We are anticipating such a big change may have some teething problems, perhaps causing balance issues, and we’re all set to deal with them as they arise. In the meantime, we appreciate any comments and feedback related to this change.

Another Blizzard poster by the name of Zarhym commented on this change, as well:

In the latest WotLK beta push, we made a large change to the mana cost of spells. All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost. Base mana is a special value determined by the player’s level and class, regardless of any effects or items that increase intellect. It is the size of a player’s mana pool if the player has zero intellect.

This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it’s a technique that was never quite intended. Rather than continue to find ways to penalize players for casting low-rank spells, we decided to essentially make doing so obsolete. If rank 5 and rank 6 of a spell cost the same amount of mana, but rank 6 does more damage/healing, then there is no reason to consider casting rank 5.

So, each spell line (eg. Frostbolt, Shadowbolt, Greater Heal, Rejuvenation, etc.) has a fixed percentage of base mana that it costs for most of its ranks. That means each time a player gains a level the cost will go up some. The percentages were picked to attempt to keep the costs relatively similar to what they are currently in World of Warcraft. For most spells, that percentage will drop some when the player receives their highest-rank spell in existing Burning Crusade content. This was done to better fit the existing cost curve, and to keep the mana cost for level 70 players as close as possible to existing costs. Level 70 characters will see most of their maximum rank spells change in cost slightly up or down, but not by significant amounts.

We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.

This is a significant change to those healing classes who rely on having multiple ranks of their largest heal available to them, adjusting their selection based on their target’s current health, most notably Priests who frequently downrank Greater Heal. Healing Touch-based Druids would also be affected by this change, but I suspect that HT-based builds may be going the way of the dodo in Wrath with the introduction of Nourish and improvements to Regrowth. What this will effect is the downranking of Lifebloom. While in live we only have one rank to work with, Wrath will introduce two new ranks of Lifebloom. While mana costs aren’t yet set in stone, our third rank of Lifebloom is projected to cost about twice the mana as our first, representing a significant increase in the cost to maintain a stack. This combined with the reduction to its heal over time coefficient will likely go a long way toward bringing Lifebloom down a couple of steps in terms of efficiency.

According to an earlier quote by Koraa, Blizzard was concerned about HoTs being overwritten by downranked spells. It seems that Blizzard’s intention is for HoTs to see a greater percentage of effective healing done. An admirable goal, but the main reduction to effective healing from our HoTs is not because Priests, Paladins, and Shamans are actively downranking single target heals but instead because of AoE and multi-target heals like Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Chain Heal. With the addition of the Paladin AoE heal, Beacon of Light, and Flourish, these “fire and forget” group heals are going to be even more prevalent in Wrath.

Lifebloom is currently cheap enough to throw on a target on the chance that something else doesn’t “overwrite” the HoT. Nonetheless, Regrowth is already often a better choice for raid healing.This will exacerbate the difference, and this makes using a slow-acting Rejuvenation and the HoT-portion of Regrowth less viable for raid healing. While the stated intention is to allow heals over time to be used for raid healing, the combined effects of increased mana cost, a decreased HoT coefficient, and more widespread group healing will have the reverse effect.

This change will make using an addon that displays incoming heals practically essential, and I hope that we’ll see something built into the UI that makes this process smoother and less resource intensive. Non-Druid healers may also want to consider configuring their raid frames so that heals over time — even those they didn’t cast themselves — are displayed since mana conservation is going to be a much larger concern. Of course, this would have been helpful to the raid as a whole before the downranking change, and it’s certainly not a widespread technique. Healers are often too concerned with not handicapping their own stats.

Finally, the elimination of downranking will have a significant effect on one of our deep Restoration talents, Replenish since it will no longer be possible to derive its benefits by casting a 20 Mana (assuming Tree of Life) Rank 1 Rejuvenation.

However, lest you deride the 3/3 talent mercilessly, consider the fact that assuming assuming a 20k mana pool in Wrath of the Lich King, we can use a Rejuvenation to gain an average return of 120 mana:

Mana /Tick = 0.15 * (0.02 * Total Mana)

In Tree of Life, Rejuvenation is projected to cost around 516 mana. This change will make a Rejuvenation effectively cost 120 less mana when cast upon oneself, which is a 23% mana cost reduction. This mana is effectively “transferred” to someone else if you cast it on them. However, this gets back to the basic problem that Rejuvenation is too slow acting to not get overwritten by another healer. Even if a healer opts not to overwrite the Rejuvenation that’s been cast on her, another healer almost certainly will, at least in a 25-man raid.

Of course, the obvious solution to this problem is to modify the talent such that it reads, “Makes the target immune to group heals.” Heck, I’d just settle for making them immune to Brain Heal.

Spell Pushback Changes

A change with tremendous PvP-implications is that being made to the way that spell pushback works. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, spell pushback refers to the delay incurred while being hit and casting a spell. To quote the current description at WoWWiki:

The first attack will set your casting time back by 1 sec. Any [subsequent] attack will set it back by a lower amount. The amount decreases by 0.2 sec with every attack, down to a minimum of 0.2 sec per attack. However, no attack will actually increase the casting time. For example if you cast only 0.2 sec. of a spell, it would only be set back by that amount.

This means that three successful hits could delay your spell’s casting time by 2.4 seconds; four would delay it by 2.8 seconds. In Wrath of the Lich King, this dynamic is being changed:

• When casting a spell:
  • The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time.
  • All hits after the second will have no effect.
• When channeling a spell:
  • The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each.
  • All hits after the second will have no effect.

This means that the maximum pushback for any number of hits will be 1.0 seconds, making it much easier to deal with fast-hitting pets, Rogues, Feral Druids (sorry, guys), and a group of melee whose interrupts all happen to be on cooldown. While this may initially seem like a buff to healers and spellcasting DPS of all sorts, keep in mind that one of the strengths of a Restoration Druid is their ability to use insta-cast HoTs, both to “heal on the run” and to guard against spell interruption and pushback. This change will be make Priests, Paladins, and Shamans more competitive relative to Druids. Despite this, I view it as a positive change that will make healing less tedious and frustrating in PvP.

For a Warlock’s view on this change, I invite you to visit Horns’ post, Spell Pushback Gone.

Feral Summary

There are way, way too many posts regarding Feral tanking for me to post on a blog labeled “Resto4Life", and this post is already growing like the opposite of a shriveled up, rotten broccoli-looking Tree of Life, so I’ll try to summarize what I’ve read so far:

• Bears will become more viable MTs at the expense of some of their OT ability. It will still be possible to OT if that is your desire.
• With the addition of a new tanking class and improvements being made to Bears and Paladins, a Protection Warrior will no longer be required for a raid to be successful.
• Bears will not see the high armor values they saw in TBC due to the desire to streamline the items dropped in raids.
• Ferals they will get potions and weapon procs and are intended to be able to perform better than in TBC.
• Blizzard does not consider the "convenience" of a hybrid tank/melee DPS to be a compelling enough reason to bring Feral Druids to a raid. By forcing a Feral to choose between a primarily tanking spec or primarily cat spec, they hope to make each character more desirable overall.
• "We will be really disappointed if there aren’t bears main tanking Naxx and later raids, and cats that, if not consistently as high as Rogues, are at least a lot closer than they are now. "
• Druids are not yet considered "finished" and are due for a review before ship. "We’re not done with Ferals" is stated about 4-5 times.
• Blizzard does not intend for "talent bloat" (among existing talents) to be the way to force Druids to choose between Cat and Bear, but instead wants to introduce new talents that will strengthen one role or the other.
• Feral tanks need more attention to bring them up to par with Paladins and Warriors.
• Ferals may see an increase in utility to make them more viable, though no concrete information is available.
• Bears will have larger health pools and Warriors will have higher mitigation.

Finally, kitties can rejoice in their newfound faster feet with Feral Swiftness now active indoors. Just be careful as I’ve known a few cats to have difficulty avoiding walls indoors!

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).

Wrath Recap

Thanks, Andrige!!

Disclaimer: Andrige wanted me to mention that, because he isn’t familiar with all of the existing hairstyles, that it’s possible some of these may already be in the game. Also, there don’t appear to be new hairstyles for Dwarves, yet. Some hairstyles look as-yet incomplete like the right-most Night Elf style with the bald spot.

Personally, I am a little disappointed that so many hairstyles appear to simply be crossovers from one race to another (Blood Elves appear to borrow styles from Night Elves, Gnomes, Humans, and Draenei). They look nice enough, and I can appreciate that it reduces development time to reuse previously created content, but I hope there are some new additions, as well!

P.S. For a nice preview of the new barber shop, check out Banana Shoulders’ guide, Shave and a Haircut!

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).

Wrath of the Lich King Female Hairstyles Preview!

Feral

• Primal Tenacity now reduces the duration of Fear effects by 10/20/30% and reduces all damage taken while stunned by 10/20/30%.
  Old version: 5/10/15% fear reduction and 5/10/15% damage reduction while stunned
• Infected Wounds effect now reduces the movement speed of the target by 10% and its attack speed by 3%.
  Old version: 10% reduction to both movement and attack speed
• Challenging Roar now has a 3 minute cooldown, reduced from 10 minutes.

Restoration

• Replenish now gives a 5/10/15% chance to restore 10 Energy/5 Rage/2% Mana or 10 Runic Power per tick.
  Old version: 5/10/15% chance to restore 10 Energy/4 Rage/2% Mana/10 Runic Power per tick

Flourish Amount Healed Unchanged; Nourish Dynamic Changed

MMO Champion is reporting the total amount healed for Rank 1 of Flourish as 1610, which means the overall amount healed as not been nerfed as we had feared. Everyone celebrate, but do so quietly so as not to attract the attention of the nerf bat!

As expected, a change has been made to Nourish whereby it heals for an additional 20% provided you have a Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, and Regrowth running on the target. I say “expected” because with two Restoration Druids and a Priest in the raid, you could feasibly have healed for 35% more (Lifebloom x 2 + Rejuvenation x2 + Regrowth x 2 + Renew). Gift of the Earthmother appears to remain unchanged, still restoring 5% mana cost on Healing Touch and Nourish per heal over time on the target. It’s probably safe to expect a change similar to the one made to Nourish, however.

Balance Druids to Benefit from Improved Scorch

A recent change was made to the Mage talent, Improved Scorch:

Improved Scorch – More damage types added, now your Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Fire, Frost and Arcane damage, increasing damage taken by 2/4/6/6/10% and lasts 30 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

This means that a Balance Druid can expect to receive an additional 10% damage on all Starfire, Moonfire, and Starfall spells, assuming a Mage with 18 points in Fire is present.

Changes to Energy, Mana Regeneration and Potion Mechanics

Mana- and Energy-users can expect to see an interesting difference in the way they regenerate mana. It now regenerates steadily over time rather than waiting for 2-second “ticks” to increase. The overall effect is a more constant stream of mana, though it not clear if the actual formula has changed. You can view a video of this new mechanic via Filefront here.

Say goodbye to chain-potting in the expansion. Blizzard is implementing a "one potion per encounter" debuff called Potion Sickness:

While I’m personally pleased at the idea that I may not have to bring 20 Super-Duper Mana Potions to each raid (or whatever they’re called in the expansion), I recognize that this as a nerf to Alchemists who use trinkets that afford them X MP5. Also, keep in mind that, while I’m sure at this point that most of us are accustomed to having ample regeneration and not needing to chain pot, that probably won’t be the case  when we reach level 80 and start to gear up. Mana management and personal mana-restorative abilities will become essential for raids. This also places increased pressure on DPS to complete encounters before their healing corps runs dry.

Note also that this debuff will apply to Super-Duper Health Potions, a consumable frequently brought in mass quantity by tanks. Healers will have to be more careful not to have our tanks need the use of such consumables since they are no longer going to be available more than once per encounter.

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).

Beta Patch Changes (Build 8681)