Submission Requirements

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

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

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

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Contents

• History of Changes
• Mechanics Changes
• Spells, Talents, and Abilities
• Tradeskills
• Player vs. Player
• Miscellaneous

History of Changes

• 11/15/2008: Added “What is the best way to raise my faction with D.E.H.T.A. (Druids for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)?” under Miscellaneous.
• 11/15/2008: Added “Which of the two starter zones has the better healing-oriented quest rewards?” under Miscellaneous. Question from Flawlless.
• 11/15/2008: Added note about Cat Form + Drink + Prowl under PvP. Credit to Willowbear.

General Mechanics Changes

• WAAAAAAAHHHH!! What happened to my beautiful 2000 +Healing?!
  Blizzard combined +Healing and +Spell Damage and Healing into one stat called Spell Power. +Spell Damage and Healing converted over at a 1:1 ratio, but your +Healing was multiplied by 0.532 or roughly cut in half. The coefficients of healing spells were increased accordingly so that there should be no net loss in throughput.
  Spell Power, +Healing, and Coefficients
• If spell power affects both damage spells and healing spells, how do DPSers know to pass on my gear?
  While I can't make others pass on "your" gear, there are certain stats that are more appropriate for you, the most clear-cut of which is Spirit. Avoid anything with hit rating since there are no rolls "to hit" with healing spells. Spell crit, while still somewhat beneficial, is really just gravy for a Resto. Haste is nice, especially for builds that use a lot of direct healing, less so for builds that focus primarily on HoTs.
  Balance vs. Restoration Gear
• Were any other stats merged?
  Yes, spell hit and melee hit are now simply "hit rating." Spell and melee crit have also been merged, as well as haste.
• Am I crazy, or did the cost of my Lifebloom go up when I leveled to 71?
  Blizzard changed the mechanics of all spells so that their mana cost is measured as a percentage of base mana. This change was made to prevent downranking, a process whereby the caster used a lower level spell, often a direct heal like Healing Touch, in an effort to conserve mana.
• Why did they want to eliminate downranking?
  Essentially, developers were struggling to balance content while having to take into account the effects of downranking since the resulting mana expense was too difficult too variable.
  Wrath Recap: Downranking No Longer Possible
• What happened to my Tree aura?
  In an effort to standardize the buffs and debuffs provided by the various classes, Blizzard changed Tree of Life aura to provide a flat 6% bonus to healing done. This aura is now applied raid-wide, which means you no longer have to be assigned to the “tank group.”
• Does that mean my aura stacks?
  No. One tree is sufficient to provide the maximum +Healing aura benefit. Paladins with Improved Devotion Aura (a 3-point talent requiring an 18 point investment in the Protection tree) can also provide a 6% healing bonus, and the two do not stack with one another. This change was made with the intention to decrease the emphasis on bringing specific classes to a raid.
  Blue: Changes to Buffs and Debuffs
• So with the changes to mana regeneration, how many mana potions should I expect to carry around? 20? 40? 60?
  Blizzard introduced a Potion Sickness debuff that's applied on an encounter basis that prevents consumption of more than one health or mana potion per boss attempt. Therefore, you should plan a number of mana potions equal to the number of boss attempts you think your raid will make.
  Beta Patch Changes (Build 8681)

Spells, Talents and Abilities

• Is that my Lifebloom or did someone just use a [Heavy Mageweave Bandage]?
  Sadly, that's your Lifebloom. Lifebloom had its mana cost increased and its effective healing decreased. For more about this change, see Commentary on the Great Lifebloom Nerf (of Build 8962). Essentially, the HPS of Lifebloom took a considerable hit, but, by increasing its duration to 10 seconds via Nature's Splendor and the [Glyph of Lifebloom], its HPM is mostly unchanged.
  Koraa: We hope to tone down Lifebloom in WotLK
• What happened to my roots? I feel so much faster!
  Blizzard removed the movement penalty of Tree of Life. This should make many encounters requiring movement much easier for Restoration Druids.
• I just decursed someone in Tree of Life without being shifted out! Whoa.
  They also lifted the restriction on spells that can be cast, allowing the use of Healing Touch and Remove Curse without having to shift to caster form. Heals over time, however, are the only spells that receive a mana cost reduction. This includes Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Wild Growth, and Tranquility. It excludes Healing Touch, Nourish, Rebirth, Innervate, Abolish Poison, and Remove Curse.
• Do Druids finally get an out of combat resurrection spell or can I look forward to being rejected for 5-mans again?
  We do! Blizzard finally understood that not being able to resurrect our groupmates was an unnecessary handicap that really had no effect on game balance.
  Ghostcrawler Defends Druids’ Out of Combat Rez
• HAHAHAHA!!! WE CAN HAZ REZ!! Is there any point at all to those other healers now?
  Not at all. They should all respec for DPS and leave all the +Healing gear for us. Oh … wait.
• Hey, where’s that new Flourish skill I’ve heard so much about? I can't wait to cast it and yell, “TADA!”
  Flourish was the original name for our 51-point AoE HoT talent. It has since been renamed to Wild Growth and been nerfed considerably from its original inception.
• What?! That’s so lame!
  It is lame, but it was admittedly pretty overpowered in its original form. It was nerfed into the ground at the time it was renamed but has since been buffed back up to a more respectable amount.
  Wild Growth … Grows a Pair
• What other awesome Restoration talents can I look forward to?
  Well, in summary there’s Gift of the Earthmother, a 5-point talent that shaves a total of 0.3 seconds off the global cooldown when you cast Rejuvenation, Lifebloom or Wild Growth. Replenish is a 3-point talent that has a 15% chance to restore a marginal amount of mana, rage, runic power, or energy for each tick of Rejuvenation. Finally, Living Seed applies a buff to the recipient of one of your critical heals. This “seed” will pop the next time the target takes damage for 30% of effective healing from the original heal that planted it. This means that if your critical heal only does 100 points of effective healing, the seed will have a healing value of 30 HP. In general, I consider the talents at the bottom of the Restoration tree to be underwhelming and overpriced.
• With all these new changes, should I plan on sinking 61 points into Restoration?
  The Balance tree also got a significant revamp, making many of the introductory talents an attractive option for healing Druids. New talents such as Genesis and Nature’s Splendor are both good options, and Balance staples Nature’s Grace and Moonglow have seen increased accessibility by being moved down a few tiers.
  Balance Tree … Uprooted and Transplanted
• Indoor roots? Really? What are we, houseplants?
  It’s true! Entangling Roots can now be cast indoors, finally giving Balance Druids the viable form of crowd control they’ve been asking for. Just remember that it’s only useful on melee mobs rooted outside of melee range or spellcasting mobs out of line of sight. And if that means we're houseplants, I totally call gardenia.
  Indoor Roots and Mark(ed) Improvements

Tradeskills

• What’s this Inscription thing all about?
  Inscription is a new production tradeskill used to create Glyphs, which are essentially items that can be used to temporarily modify (as long as you have them “equipped”) various skills and abilities. They come in two flavos: Major, which provide significant improvements to core abilities, and Minor which provide lesser improvements or aesthetic changes to abilities.
   Inscription for Druids
• So I TOTALLY dropped my very lucrative Jewelcrafting tradeskill to pick up Leatherworking for Drums ‘cause my guild leader said I had to. I am such a team player.
  Actually, Blizzard introduced a new debuff called Tinnitus that is caused every time someone in your group uses a set of drums. This prevents you from using another set of drums until the cooldown of the person who caused the debuff has expired. This change was made to prevent drum rotations because so many guilds (like yours) were requiring guild members to pick up. On the bright side, you can still make [Heavy Leather Ball]s with your new skill!

Player vs. Player

• Should I still expect to cast 5 second Wraths when being attacked by a Rogue or Cat?
  Taking damage while casting a spell will now delay your casting by a maximum of 1.0 seconds, generally in 0.5 second increments for each of the first two hits. This makes it much easier to deal with fast-hitting Rogues and Cats.
  Spell Pushback Changes
• Will tried-and-true tactics of “pillar kiting” be effective in Wrath?
  While these techniques can still be employed in three TBC Arenas (Blade’s Edge, Ruins of Lordaeron, and Nagrand Arena), two newly introduced Arenas (Dalaran Sewers and Orgrimmar Arena) will introduce obstacles and fluctuating terrain that will make the use of line of sight more complex and potentially dangerous.
  Teh Pee Vee Pees! from Blizzcon Summary
• So if I can’t pillar kite, what are my options?
  Improved Tree of Life is a 3-point talent at the bottom of the Restoration tree that affords an additional 100% armor from gear when you’re in Tree of Life. Unfortunately, Tree of Life loses access to Cyclone and Entangling Roots, two spells that can greatly reduce the need for additional armor. It also leaves you susceptible to a Warlock’s Banish. Honestly, until we see how the addition of Death Knights and their anti-HoT mechanics play out, we probably won’t have a good idea of the best way to play a Restoration Druid in Arenas.
  Death Knight Degeneration to Convert HoTs to DoTs
• Why does my Shadowmeld have a 3-minute cooldown?
  Shadowmeld was fundamentally changed so that it can be used in combat and essentially functions as a temporary aggro wipe. If you happen to be alone and enter combat with one or more mobs, using Shadowmeld causes the mobs to lose their interest in you, leashing back to their original spawn point or path. Unfortunately, this puts a real damper on the tactic of sitting to drink and using Shadowmeld. However, the same thing can be accomplished using Cat Form, sitting to drink (now available in forms), and using Prowl (credit to Willowbear).
  Night Elf is to Ninja as Tauren is to Giant, Stompy Cheeseburger
• What’s all this crap on my PvP gear? Spuh...Spee...Spirit?
  The PvP sets in Wrath have been itemized with Spirit/Intellect-based mana regeneration in mind. Gone are the gobs and gobs of MP5 you found on Restoration and Balance PvP sets in Wrath. Your Innervate will thank you. As long as you hide behind a pillar to protect it from being dispelled, of course. Unlike the Arena gear in TBC post 2.4, the presence of Spirit on PvP gear in Wrath has the side effect of it a viable choice for PvE. This is even more true if your guild typically falls behind on the PvE curve.
  Wrath Build 8820: PvP Itemization

Miscellaneous

• Eek! I have to do damage to level, don't I? Is that what these non-tree buttons are for?
  While you might be fortunate enough to have one or more sla— friends to help you level up to 80 in Wrath, why not empower yourself with a few points in Balance? There are several talents that provide synergy for both healing and DPSing, including Nature's Majesty, Moonglow, Nature's Grace, Nature's Splendor, and Lunar Guidance.
  Moonfire Spamming Your Way to 80 in Wrath
• I'm not 70, yet, and I won't have time to get Honored with Lower City to be able to run Heroic Sethekk Halls! Does this mean I'm out in the cold for Swift Flight Form?
  Not anymore. As of Patch 3.0, Druids will be able to train Swift Flight Form at level 71— of course, you still have to have trained Artisan Riding for 5,000 gold before you can! For those looking forward to the quest, it will still be available.
• I heard that Druids are getting "polar bear form" in the expansion!
  While not specifically a Resto question, Trees like to look cute, too. The original idea was to provide Minor Glyphs to change the appearance of Druid forms. However, there was much public outcry to the effect that Druids shouldn't have to sacrifice a potentially useful Glyph slot to get the character customization that everyone else gets, so they're looking into alternate solutions. Blizzard has indicated that they plan to have this customization available with the first major content patch following Wrath's release.
• Which of the two starter zones has the better healing-oriented quest rewards?
  While Howling Fjord is definitely the prettier of the two zones, Borean Tundra trounces it with regard to healing-oriented rewards. Here’s a breakdown:
  • Borean Tundra has 8 Blue, 55 Green quest rewards with spell power. Of those, 1 Blue and 12 Green items also have Spirit. 8 of the total rewards are leather, and 2 of those leather rewards have Spirit.
  • Howling Fjord has 35 Green quest rewards with spell power. Of those, 10 Green items also have Spirit. 6 of the total rewards are leather, and only 1 of those leather rewards have Spirit.
• What is the best way to raise my faction with D.E.H.T.A. (Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals)?
  Unfortunately, D.E.H.T.A. isn’t actually a faction so much as a quest hub in Borean Tundra. The quests they give are essentially disruptions to Hemet Nesingwary’s efforts to exploit the fauna of Northrend. Caution should be taken not to aggro the wildlife when traveling through Borean Tundra because killing animals such as the Wooly Mammoth will result in a debuff that makes D.E.H.T.A. members temporarily aggressive towards you. Time to map that Soothe Animal ability!

  As a side note, completing the D.E.H.T.A. quests is worth around 4,000 reputation with the TBC faction, Cenarion Expedition, making the acquisition of the "Guardian of Cenarius" title (available at Exalted with both Cenarion Circle and Cenarion Expedition) that much easier.

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There was some guy in a big sheet of ice. And he froze some other guy. And now we have to fight ‘im.

Sometimes I’m not really sure why we’re on a roleplay server.

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We’re So Heroic by Nicole Chartrand

Here are a selection of my favorite writings from other blogs:

• The Day the World (of Warcraft) Stood Still
  Posted just before the recent Presidential election here in the U.S., Rhoelyn provided a wonderful parody of the conflict between Azerothian “politicians,” Saurfang and Vargoth! Loves it!
• Despair
  Aendi provides an RP-based perspective on the recent zombie invasion. A must read for anyone who found nothing but aggravation in this world event.
• Moonkin Builds: Leveling to 80
  Don’t just take my word for it. If you’re looking to go Balance, Graylo has you covered with his recommendation of how to Laser Chicken on your way to 80!
• Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak
  Runycat shares her secret recipe for this very meaty Northrend delicacy that combines Rhino steak with Wyrm meat! Wash it down with some dangerous-sounding Kungaloosh!
• ThinkTank’s Bear and Cat FAQs
  Kalon has compiled two great FAQs for both Cats and Bears looking to enter Northrend in the coming weeks!

Druid Dance Revolution

Alice from Aman’thul (US) sent in a series of images from a recent Druid dance party in front of the Aldor bank in Shattrath. I especially like the obvious mixture of Tauren and Night Elf Druids. Like moths to a flame, so too are Druids drawn to /dance with one another, regardless of race or faction:

I wonder how many players instantly reroll Druids after bearing (lulz) witness to our delightful class cohesion. Thanks, Alice!

Comic by Eggo

This week, reader Eggo brings us a new comic about the upcoming nerf to Wild Growth, whereby they’re considering adding a 6-second cooldown. It’s enough to make me want to whip up some delicious Ghostcrawler Gumbo (+20 to “Class Balance”). Be sure to click on the panel preview at right to view the whole comic!

Blogs Both Great and Small

• Adventures of Desdarii
  Desdarii of Blackwater Raiders (US) mixes RP with out of character posts on this beautiful blog about her Draenei Mage!
• Casual WoW
  Byaghro is an “extremely competitive casual gamer” who happens to play a Restoration Druid on Hellscream (US).
• The Delicious Druid
  OM NOM NOM Druids! Cusper plays a delectable Restoration Druid on the Muradin realm (US).
• Furry Bear Ass
  I don’t name them; I just share them! FBA is written by Ylee and Steaky, a Feral/Resto pair from Terrokar (US).
• Healer Envy
  Ayeba of Earthen Ring (EU) is one of those Restoration Druids that dabbles shamelessly with a Priest, Shaman, and Paladin. Hopefully, it’s only to better learn their weaknesses!
• Holy Discipline
  Thoughts from Anea, a Holy/Discipline Priest of the Exodar realm (US).
• Kaliope’s WoW Crafting Blog
  Kaliope writes about all things tradeskill-related on this unique blog about the Crafts of World of Warcraft.
• A Moonkin and His Blog
  Macbook of Stormscale (US) (clearly not a roleplay server) managed to snag Moonkin.info for his home on the web. Look for lots of PvPing chicanery here!
• Screen Shots by Jezi
  See Azeroth as you may or may not have seen it before with this unique photoblog from Jezibel of Kilrogg (US)!
• Tree’s Blog
  Charlotta of Scarlet Crusade (US) like to fish naked in Orgrimmar, and she has the screenshots to prove it!
• Trials and Tribulations of Tree Form
  With the byline “it ain’t easy being green,” Emanee speaks to the difficulties of playing a Restoration Druid!
• World of Snarkcraft
  Joveta and Seri are two cynical Priests from Scarlet Crusade (US). Their blog is filled with information and tips for players of all types, not just Priests!

The Herbalist’s Bulwark: A Macro

Here’s a handy macro from Vreenash of Dragonblight (US) that incorporates three protective abilities in one, two of which are herbalist-specific:

#showtooltip Lifeblood
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Barkskin
/use Fel Blossom
/cast Lifeblood
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

A Peek into My Inbox

This is a look into my personal inbox, which I’ve integrated with my Resto4Life account. You can see that I make liberal use of colored labels to try to stay organized (this often does not work, but at least my inbox looks cheerful). Allow me to explain the various labels and what they’re for:

• Purple – Contact Inquiries
  These are e-mails sent either through the contact form on the site or to my e-mail directly. I try to get to these within seven days of receiving them, but sometimes they slip through or require more time to respond to (I’m looking at you, Silvergulch). I archive all contact inquiries once I’ve responded to them.
• Gold – Mailbag Possibilities
  These are contact inquiries that I flag as potential fodder for a new post. These typically have responses that I think could be valuable to more than the original sender. These get converted to contact inquiries and archived once I’ve used them.
• Orange – Community Spotlight
  This includes links to new sites, new utilities, artwork, and more. New sites to highlight also go into my Google bookmarks under the “Blogroll Possibilities” label. I archive all community spotlight e-mails once they’ve been posted.
• Green – Comment
  These are comments on a recent post. GMail generally does a good job of stacking comments from the same post together so that my inbox isn’t filled with them, but sometimes I have to prune duplicates. Once I’ve responded to all of the comments on a given thread, I delete these e-mails. You can see from the above that I’m way, way behind right now.
• Light Blue – Tree Shirts
  This is anything to do with the Tree Shirts store.
• Gray-Blue – Advertising
  This is anything to do with advertising on Resto4Life. You may have noticed that I’ve recently added some ads to R4L. I’m not entirely certain what I’m doing, yet, but we’ll see how it goes!
• Dark Blue – General Resto4Life
  This is stuff that relates to Resto4Life that doesn’t fit under any of the above categories.

I try to keep up with my email such that I don’t have more than 50 items in my inbox at any given time. Lately, however, I’m onto page 2 of my Gmail, so apologies to anyone who’s still awaiting a response. I admit that I was feeling overwhelmed until I came across this perspective-inspiring post from Lorelle, professional blogger and apparently all that running a large blog entails. I envy the fact that she makes a living completely from her multitude of blogs, but I admit that I don’t envy the overhead that comes with it!

Every now and again, I have to stop and take a look at the many “projects” I’ve accepted responsibility for (and I don’t mean the ones at work, which lately suffer more than they probably should) and pick one or more to politely withdraw from. This is why you may have noticed that my name no longer appears as the Druid moderator at Plus Heal, why my activity on the Blog Azeroth forum community has been intermittent, or why I don’t participate much on social sites like Twitter or the new gamer-equivalent, Raptr. It’s also why I’ve shied away from creating a Druid-based forum community, despite several visitor requests and an already-purchased domain.

Who am I kidding? Resonant post from Lorelle or no, I’m still feeling overwhelmed!

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/facepalm

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

Original Post from Resto4Life | Resto4Life Tree Shirts! The only shirt slot with +20 Spirit!

So it was that Phae showed me Talent Chic and I noticed that my spec is nowhere on the list.  My initial reaction was that I must have missed the boat.  Somewhere, somehow, people were seeing things I wasn’t and suddenly, I had to rethink my spec.

But as I started looking it over, I realized that were I to respec, I’d likely pick the same points all over again.  Why?  I’ve read the arguments for and against certain talents and I’ve looked at the math involved and I know that not all my choices are optimal, so why did I pick what I did?

Well, let’s look it over and find out.

First, I think it’s important to understand the realities of the way you play.  What content do you find yourself in frequently and what content do you need to be able to perform well in?  What sort of role do you play in said content and what are the classes and capabilities of the people you’ll be grouping with?  How much do you solo, how much do you tank, group, quest for dailies or PvP?

For a long time, I’ve been the big bad Druid tank of my guild.  My playtime is limited, thus my raid time is also limited and based in part on my performance (I’m really not trying to be arrogant, I’ve just done it for a long time and several cited me as an inspiration), several others have also taken up the mantle of the Dire Bear.  As such, my capabilities have been eclipsed in no small measure.  Most of them are my statistical equal or superior at this point and are accomplished tanks in their own right, independent of any guidance or inspiration I may have been.

Many of the others have followed Phae Phae into Resto while a few more than that have gone the route of the Laser Chicken, confidently calling death and destruction from the heavens.  To whit: DPS and Healing, when not covered by “pure” classes, are as well and truly covered as Bear tanking.

As has been discussed many times over, there is a fundamental lack of tanking Mains in the world, something our guild never really felt until daily Heroics were implemented.  In and of themselves, they didn’t – of course – cause a tank shortage.  What they did, with their lockouts and badge bonuses, was make it so that only about half the guild had ready access to daily Heroic runs.

So the net result of all this is that I am still needed to tank frequently, but just as frequently, I find myself soloing dailies, filling in for a DPSer that drops from a run in progress, or some other task that requires a generalized Feral Druid.  My role, as I approached my build, was one of MT/DPS/OT, about in that order.  I must be able to drop into an MT role in a raid (I can and have, even for one boss fight I made it to in MH) just as easily as I must be able to become a purple kitty (please, FSM, please let me be a Snow Leopard soon!).

So first things first.

Furor, while nice, is really just a speed bump to Naturalist and Omen of Clarity.  I happen to be one of those who shifts a lot even in PvE content, moving between encounters in Elf form and shifting to Dire Bear during a pull.  My typical pull involves Moonfire on a secondary un-CC’d target, then shifting and going to my tanking rotation.  I hate looking at my big fuzzy ass all the time so I shift.  It’s likely not the most efficient method.  Sue me.  I still like Furor for its mechanics, though.

Naturalist provides me with both threat and damage and as such, is a nice payoff, even if you consider it’s essentially 1% per point if Furor is useless to you.  2% per point if you make active use of it.

Omen of Clarity.  Oddly, this talent has seen a lot of discussion as to its relative worth on the boards.  I still see it proc a lot and free rage and energy is hybrid utility in a talent at its best.  I also get endless amusement at having it go off when I’m crafting.

Now here’s where, in the Resto tree, it gets a little dicey.  I shift enough and occasionally PvP such that Natural Shapeshifter is immensely appealing, and the crit from Master Shapeshifter is also tempting to the point of salivation.  However – and you knew that was coming because you are far more astute than any Druid Pundit credits you with – we are now looking at slightly less than 1% damage increase per point for MSS if we factor in the cost of NSS.  This discounts the bonuses Cat gets talented from critical hits, but you get the point.  It’s a pair of skills that would increase my combo point usage and increase my quality of life (not to mention my PvP viability for those rare times I PvP), but that come at a cost of 5 points quite possibly better spent elsewhere.

It’s important to note that I am not a believer that any and all talents should be valued on their ROI (Return On Investment) but on a broader spectrum of form, function, and perk.  So take it with a grain of salt when I say something isn’t worth it.  Even though I’m probably right.  =P

That said, anyone who tells you Feral Aggression should be taken over Ferocity needs to go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure and never look back.  ‘Nuff said.

Now is when we really get to the meat of my odd little spec and I attempt futilely to defend and explain my choices.

Feral Instinct gives us tanking utility and a measure of padding for both soloing and PvP while Savage Fury gives us a damage boost to the most commonly used abilities we have, increasing our DPS and threat.  That’s got to be a no-brainer.  Zombie players of Druids probably have the sense to spec that.

Thick Hide is purely for tanking.  With our armor lost from items, it’s even more critical for players that want to tank to snatch up this talent in its entirety.  For an end-game Druid it’s worth more than 2000 armor.

Feral Swiftness is as much for moving faster unmounted as it is for the dodge bonus, though the dodge bonus is how we justify this talent because even I wouldn’t touch it if all it did was let me run faster.  I don’t PvP enough for me to get a skill that’d only do that.

Survival Instincts I almost skipped.  Before you groan at my stupidity, let me explain myself.  I’m a Druid tank.  To date, my only emergency tools in tanking form have been, in order of access: Frenzied Regeneration, a potting macro, and a couple trinkets.  I am flat-out not used to tanking with any way to stave off the inevitable and I’ve been remarkably successful for it.  My first reaction to it, thus, was to wonder if I’d even remember to use it, let alone use it effectively.  But when I realized that it’d bestow an emergency 6k (or close to it) health for 20 seconds, it was really hard to keep telling myself the point would be wasted.

Here’s hoping I remember to use it.

Sharpened Claws is our crit boost and good for both bear and cat, but for obviously different reasons.  Slaved to Primal Fury the efficacy of this talent is enough to kick me in the face.  More please.  The other talent opened up with Sharpened Claws is Primal Precision.  Now, there appears to be a significant amount of Expertise gear in the game later on, so this could be something I spec out of later, but for now, the boost to Expertise is outstanding, not to mention the energy return portion of this talent making it really nice for cats, too.  I wonder how much of the benefit of the refund is negated by the other portion of the talent, though (that’s idle curiosity, nothing more really).

Feral Charge should be obvious, and Survival of the Fittest has significant value even if you don’t need or want the crit immunity (though why you wouldn’t, even if you aren’t a tank, is beyond me) just for the stat boost.  Predatory Strikes and Heart of the Wild boost threat and damage.  Good deal.

Nurturing Instinct was skipped because… well because it’s garbage.  I wouldn’t even put that in a PvP build.  Brutal Impact looks tasty for both forms, but I’ll be honest and admit I don’t use my stuns much.  2 points saved.  Shredding Attacks is nice, but I need to be group DPSing to really get the mileage out of it I’d want, so I skipped that, too.  I do DPS in groups, but not enough to warrant the talent.

Ah, Leader of the Pack.  Gateway talent to awesome.  The crit bonus, Mangle, and Improved Mangle are all reason enough to get this talent, but there are the other ornaments I’m also interested in.

I have serious issues with Protector of the Pack, but it’s the best thing we’ve got of its kind, and I can’t really pimp Thick Hide if I’m willing to skip this one.  Improved Leader of the Pack isn’t really a necessity, but I like it and the soloing longevity I get from it, as well as the rather miniscule cushion it provides my healers.  The mana regen mechanic is interesting, but I’d still like to see something more fundamental to the form to handle that, since it seems we’re not getting mana on our gear anymore.

Finally, I put 2/3 into Infected Wounds.  Widely regarded as primarily a PvP talent, the tanking applications and even soloing application should be obvious.  It’s more damage reduction.

King of the Jungle, Rend and Tear, and Berserk are juiciness I skipped.  Why?

The easy cop-out answer is that I don’t have enough points.  So juggle some around, you might say!  After all, many of those I picked (after all Infected Wounds, Improved Leader of the Pack, Feral Charge and Survival Instincts are more luxury than necessity) can be dumped to make room, and some would make the case that all the points I put into Resto are wasted.

Perhaps.

King of the Jungle is a damage boost in bear and an energy burst in cat.  God that’s tempting.  I really do want it.  Tiger’s Fury finally useful?  Wow.  I’m in shock.

Rend and Tear speaks directly to how we do our damage, through bleeds and abilities that augment or are augmented by them.  It also makes Ferocious Bite… bite less.  Overall, a very tasty talent.

I fully intend to grab both of those when I level.

So… Berserk.  51 points.  I’m not sure what to think of the talent, to be honest.  I have a tendency to forget cooldown abilities and I’m unnaturally tied to Omen of Clarity, too much for my own good, I think.

A few things that stand out to me is that Barkskin is okay for tanking, but the damage reduction is fairly underwhelming in the few situations I’ve used it while Frenzied Regeneration is my new best friend (especially glyphed).  Survival Instincts is interesting and something I’m trying to learn to use effectively.

Overall, I’ve been pretty underwhelmed by the patch in general, though I am starting to suspect that my spec is part of the issue.  I think I’ll be trying out a full Cat and full Bear spec in the near future to see what happens.

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• Glyph choices for Restoration Druids
• The Scourge Invasion
• Our opinions of who the best healer is right now
• Our plans for picking up a copy of Wrath and what we plan to do at release
• The awesomeness that is [Glyph of Levitate] — /jealous Priests
• General talk about Resto4Life

From the show description over on WoWInsider.com:

It was all healers all the time this past week on the WoW Insider Show. Special guest tree Druid Phaelia joined us from her site, Resto4Life.com, and our good friend Matt "Matticus" Low brought his priestly insights from World of Matticus (and our own Spiritual Guidance column), and our producer Elizabeth Harper brought some Paladin judgment to the table. We chatted about how healing is going lately in the game, which classes are doing well lately (and which are doing not so well), and what Ghostcrawler might do for healers to make things more fun than whack-a-mole. We also talked about the 3.0.3 patch, and where we’ve been in the beta, and where we’re going first on launch day.

It was a wonderful honor to be invited, and I hope you’ll give it a listen!

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Circle of Healing and Wild Growth are definitely on our radar. This would be a good time to discuss them.

Our concern is that they are turning two classes with a large arsenal of healing spells into single-button healers. Meanwhile, ironically, the other two healing classes have fewer heals to use in the first place.

We have seen raid parses where 75 to 90% of a priest’s healing is through CoH. It’s a good spell, useful in a variety of situations. But I think you can understand our concern.

A Priest said to us the other day "Please nerf Circle of Healing so I can push another button!" He’s even thinking of going Disc.

This statement comes quickly on the heels of a statement Ghostcrawler made the day before that:

We decided rather than try to make CH a bad spell, we’d just leave in those new talents to get you to cast other spells once in awhile. The difference is we think you’ll still cast CH 90% of the time or whatever, but maybe that remaining 10% will require you to think a little differently about what to cast (and at least it’s not 100%).

I’m at a loss as to why it’s considered acceptable for one healer to be based 90% around a spell that requires an extraordinarily low amount of cognitive awareness but Druids were considered to be too dependent first upon Lifebloom (subsequently beaten soundly with the nerf bat), then potentially Regrowth (/mourn [Glyph of Regrowth]), and now upon Wild Growth. Blizzard clearly wants to encourage a diversity of spell selection among Priests and Druids and will nerf our various spells until they’re all equally handicapped!

The development team is apparently contemplating limiting the spell’s use by applying a 6-second cooldown:

Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.

We’re less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it’s not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.

(In contrast to Lifebloom which must be consciously targeted, heals one person at a time, carries a heavy penalty if allowed to lapse, and must be maintained even if the target is at full health, leading to a large amount of overheal. Clearly, this spell needed to be nerfed!)

At 6 seconds, you would still want to use CoH/WG in the right situations (though hopefully not *every* time they are up), but you’d also want to use other spells during the cooldown. To be fair, a lot of priests and druids are asking to push other buttons.

This sounds like a potentially scary change because it has a lot of ramifications — one of the reasons we are mentioning it so early is to get feedback. We don’t want Resto shammies to push other healers out of raids. We would change some of the encounters knowing that CoH spam was no longer possible.

Druids asking to “push more buttons” have termites for brains. Asking to push more buttons is what got Lifebloom nerfed to begin with, and while I concede that maintaining a Lifebloom rotation on 3 or more targets was not my personal definition of fun, I have long advocated for focusing on mana regeneration so that Regrowth could be used more liberally. Not only was this more effective, but it was less tedious and, therefore, more fun.

Ghostcrawler goes on to discuss a few other nerfs that were considered:

We don’t like the stacking mana cost solution in this case, though we did talk about it a lot. We suspect that would actually lead us to the land of priests saying their mana regen sucks because they have to spam CoH to be competitive, and I’m not sure we can count on all you guys to be around to explain the logic when that happens.

We don’t want to just nerf the healing throughput on the spell because then it won’t be able to do its job. CoH was in this state before when Holy just ignored it.

A cast time might work, but the instant nature of both spells is part of what makes them so useful in emergencies.

We’re not crazy about reverting the smart heal aspect, though that is still on the table. Having too many spells that favor party over raid forces you back to having to worry a lot about your raid composition. "Oh, sorry hunter, we can’t bring you because we need another melee for our melee group or else CoH won’t reach you." PoH isn’t as big an issue, because honestly it’s just not such a big contribution to total healing. Though we could consider pushing it raid wide.

Cooldowns are a reality of a lot of damage rotations and they generally work as long as the system isn’t too complicated. You typically have the spell you really want to use in a given situation and then the others you fall back on when the favored spell is on cooldown.

I’m glad they eschewed these potential nerfs in favor of a cooldown. The idea of adding a cooldown or cast time to Wild Growth is amusing in the context of the recent change to Gift of the Earthmother so that it affects Wild Growth, allowing the spell to be “cast on more people faster.” I wonder if they will revert this change. (P.S. The cooldown on WG would make GotEM even less useful. Elune is apparently a person who takes her gifts back.)

Though to be honest, because of the nature of Wild Growth (an AoE HoT that tapers off over seven seconds), this nerf will affect us less than the same change to Circle of Healing, because while we could spam Wild Growth for the initially stronger ticks, it was considerably less efficient since it would frequently target the same people, overwriting the spell and invalidating the later ticks. This isn’t to say that I’m happy about the change, especially given the recent trend of nerfing every spell in our retinue to make them all similarly weak, but I’m less upset than I would be if I were a Priest.

Additional Reading

• Lume the Mad: Now is not the time to evaluate CoH and WG
  Includes an encounter-by-encounter look at which spell(s) excel. Especially helpful for people who haven’t seen the dynamics of Black Temple or Sunwell Plateau (myself included).
• Tree Bark Jacket: AoE Heals under Fire
  Kheeva warns against CoH and WG to Chain Heal based on currently skewed Sunwell Plateau parses.
• The Nyxes: Druids’ Moment in the Sun
  Nyxilyn laments the fun that she feels will be lost if a 6-second cooldown is applied to Wild Growth.

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For those of you unfamiliar with the Nostromo SpeedPad, it’s a computer peripheral that rests under your left hand and mimics the key commands of the keyboard. The keys themselves are laid out as follows:

• 14 keys in 3 rows (the last of which only has 4 keys)
• A rectangular thumb button
• A circular thumb button
• A clickable scroll wheel
• An analog directional pad

The 14 base keys are where you map your primary abilities. The four fingers of your left hand rest on the middle row of keys (6-9), and there’s a home row marker on key 8 so that you can quickly find your hand position without having to look at the pad. The Nostromo SpeedPad works by mimicking key presses from your keyboard. So your first step is to configure your gamepad so that each of its keys corresponds to a key on your keyboard.

What You Will Need:

• Bartender4 (via Curse.com)
• Belkin Nostromo N52 TE (via Amazon.com)
• Paper and pencil

Quick Links

• Configuring the Nostromo N52te
• Laying out Action Bars with Bartender4
• Key Binding with Bartender4
• Pagination with Bartender4
• Planning Your Macros
• Sample Role-Based Layouts
• Key Binding Character and Camera Movement
• Key Binding Shapeshifts
• Macro Help: Mouseover Healing
• Macro Help: Heal Self
• Macro Help: Form-Specific Abilities

Configuring the Nostromo N52te

Install the drivers and software that came with the Belkin Nostromo SpeedPad. If prompted to restart your computer, be sure to do so. Now we’ll want to map the keys on your Nostromo to keys on your keyboard. I have my keys mapped in the following way:

You can, of course, map your keys however you want, but avoid using keys that are bound to common interface functions you’ve grown accustomed to using (such as C for the Character screen). I’ve bound my thumb key to ALT since that’s the “alternate” key I like to use in my macros (since it has the fewest number of characters) and my red thumb button to "jump" for interrupting spells or just hopping around to annoy people. Note that in my configuration, I use F1-F4 for shapeshifting, but I’ve never used the keys to target group members as is the default configuration.

Laying out Action Bars with Bartender4

By default, Bartender starts with several bars enabled and displayed in the center of your screen. We’ll want to start by hiding all but two of these. To do this:

1. Open the Bartender4 configuration by typing /bt.
2. Click on Bar 3 in the lefthand pane.
3. Uncheck the Enabled checkbox to hide this bar.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for bars 4-10 if necessary.

Because each action bar within Bartender4 is limited to only 12 keys, we’ll have to use two bars to simulate the key layout of our Nostromo.* We’ll set up the first bar as 5 columns by 2 rows and place a second bar below it that’s 1 column by 3 rows so that it looks like this:

* Note: There are multiple configurations that can work, but this layout is one that will give you the most flexibility when it comes to activating automatic paging based on shapeshifts.

To configure bars 1 and 2 to resemble the layout shown above:

1. Open the Bartender4 configuration by typing /bt.
2. Uncheck the Lock checkbox at the top of the dialog box.
3. Click on Bar 1 in the lefthand pane.
4. Set the Buttons slider to 10.
5. Set the Rows slider to 2.
6. Click and drag Bar 1 into position, leaving enough room to position a second bar beneath it.
7. Click on Bar 2 in the lefthand pane.
8. Set the Buttons slider to 5.
9. Set the Rows slider to 1.
10. Click and drag Bar 2 into position beneath Bar 1.
11. Check the Lock checkbox at the top of the dialog box.
12. Optional: Check the Button Grid option for Bar 1 and Bar 2 so that you can easily see which buttons are unfilled.
13. Close the Bartender4 configuration by clicking on the Close button.

Key Binding with Bartender4

Now that our action bars resemble the key layout above, we can bind the keys of our Nostromo to their corresponding action bar buttons within Bartender4. To do so:

1. Type in /kb. This will put you into Key Binding Mode.
2. Mouseover each key on your action bars and press the key on your Nostromo you want to associate with it. For the sake of symmetry, I like to bind the fifth button on Bar 2 to a key on the side of my mouse. I generally map this key to emergency ability such as Barkskin.
3. Exit Key Binding Mode by clicking the OK button.

Pagination with Bartender4

Druids have many abilities that are form-specific, making stance-specific pagination (automatic bar swapping when you shapeshift) especially helpful. I recommend paginating your action bars as follows:

1. Open the Bartender4 configuration by typing /bt.
2. Click on Bar 1 in the lefhand pane.
3. Click on the State Configuration tab in the righthand pane.
4. Ensure the Enabled checkbox is checked.
5. Under Bear Form, set the paging dropdown to Page 3.
6. Under Cat Form and Cat Form Prowl, set the paging dropdown to Page 5.
7. Under Tree of Life and Moonkin Form, set the paging dropdown to Don’t Page.
8. Click on Bar 2 in the lefthand pane.
9. Click on the State Configuration tab in the righthand pane.
10. Ensure the Enabled checkbox is checked.
11. Under Bear Form, set the paging dropdown to Page 4.
12. Under Cat Form and Cat Form Prowl, set the paging dropdown to Page 6.
13. Under Tree of Life and Moonkin Form, set the paging dropdown to Don’t Page.
14. Close the Bartender4 configuration by clicking on the Close button.

Planning Your Macros

Since your default action bars will be those available to you when in caster form, you’ll want to map all those abilities you want to have easily accessible to buttons 1-14. Note that how you lay them out will probably depend upon the spec you play primarily. A Restoration Druid will probably reserve her home row of keys (6-10) for healing spells while a Moonkin will probably use those keys for her Balance spells. Because we’re limited to only 14 keys for the spells and abilities that are available from caster form, we’ll want to create macros that “pair” abilities based on the use of an alternate key such as Shift, Ctrl, or Alt (whichever key you’ve bound to the thumb key under Configuring the Nostromo SpeedPad). To do this in an intuitive way, I like to categorize my spells and abilities based on what function they perform and what they require:

I will often create a macro that combines two skills within the same category, with the less frequently used (or sometimes the one that feels more powerful) version set up as the alternate ability of the more commonly used one. Such a macro looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt] Ability2; Ability1

The above macro will activate Ability1 by default and Ability2 when pressed and the alt key is held down. The #showtooltip line will automatically display the appropriate tooltip for the ability that will be activated (and icon if you chose the icon when creating the macro). Example pairings that I like to use include:

Obviously, many of the above pairings are spec-dependent since a Restoration Druid won’t have access to Starfall, Typhoon, or Insect Swarm (in which case, she might instead pair Moonfire with Faerie Fire), and a Balance Druid won’t have access to Wild Growth, Swiftmend, or Nature’s Swiftness. Ferals tend to have fewer abilities available to them within a given form, so it isn’t as important to pair them up like this. However, by doing so, a Feral frees herself to keybind abilities that will shift her out of form when necessary. It can be helpful while soloing to have heals readily accessible, especially when you have “heal self by default” enabled. (Note, however, that a Bear might not want to risk accidentally popping out while tanking.) These are just to give you some ideas of how you might choose to set up paired abilities.

Sample Role-Based Layouts

Caster Form

Caster (Basic) Caster (Alternate)

Row Column Base Ability + ALT   1 1 Innervate Self Innervate Target   1 2 Entangling Roots Nature’s Grasp   1 3 Cyclone Hibernate   1 4 Remove Curse Abolish Poison   1 5 Shapeshift: Tree of Life /cancelform   2 1 Lifebloom Activate Trinket   2 2 Rejuvenation Swiftmend   2 3 Regrowth Nourish *   2 4 Wild Growth Tranquility   2 5 Healing Touch NS + Healing Touch   3 1 Moonfire Faerie Fire   3 2 Wrath Starfire   3 3 Hurricane     3 4 Mark of the Wild Gift of the Wild   3 5 Barkskin Shadowmeld

Cat Form

This layout assumes level 75+ for Savage Roar and Maim (but was created on my level 62 Feral Druid, hence the icons):

Cat (Basic) Cat (Alternate)

Row Column Base Ability + ALT   1 1 Prowl     1 2 Tiger’s Fury     1 3 Cower Nature’s Grasp   1 4 Feral Charge - Cat Dash   1 5 Shapeshift: Dire Bear Form /cancelform   2 1 Ravage   2 2 Rake     2 3 Mangle - Cat     2 4 Shred     2 5 Rip     3 1 Feral Faerie Fire     3 2 Savage Roar     3 3 Maim (nostealth)*, Pounce (stealth)   3 4 Regrowth Self Rejuvenation Self   3 5 Barkskin Survival Instincts

Bear Form

I tried to match abilities between Cat Form and Dire Bear Form to make the learning curve between the two a little less steep. For example, the Bear Form stun, Bash, is mapped to the same key as Pounce/Maim for Cat Form, and Barkskin/Survival Instinct remains the same. This layout assumes level 51+ for Berserk (but was created on my level 62 Feral Druid, hence the icons):

Bear (Basic) Bear (Alternate)

Row Column Base Ability + ALT   1 1 Growl Challenging Roar   1 2 Enrage     1 3 Frenzied Regeneration Nature’s Grasp   1 4 Feral Charge - Bear     1 5 Shapeshift: Cat Form /cancelform   2 1 Maul     2 2 Swipe     2 3 Mangle - Bear     2 4 Berserk     2 5 —     3 1 Feral Faerie Fire     3 2 Demoralizing Roar     3 3 Bash     3 4 Regrowth Self Rejuvenation Self   3 5 Barkskin Survival Instincts

And to help you plan your own custom layout(s), I’ve created a printable template in Acrobat Reader.

Key Binding Character and Camera Movement

Movement — including strafing — is important in many PvE encounters and especially in PvP content. To facilitate this, I keybind my Nostromo like this:

• Analog Down: down arrow key, back up
• Analog Right: F2, strafe right
• Analog Left: F3, strafe left
• Analog Up: up arrow key, move forward
• Round Thumb button: spacebar, jump

Then I use the in-game key bindings (Escape> Key Bindings > Movement Keys) menu to bind F2 and F3 to strafing.

Note: you may find the analog directional pad to have a non-intuitive orientation (where the up/forward key feels like it should instead be right/strafe right). If this is the case, feel free to shift your directional bindings clockwise one position.

To maneuver the camera, I hold down the right mouse button, and to turn without strafing, I hold down the right and left mouse buttons and move the mouse left or right.

Key Binding Shapeshifts

Even pairing up abilities as described above, you may find yourself short on space when it comes to being able to map your different forms. Over time, I’ve settled on using the scroll wheel for shapeshifting. I use "scroll down" for Dire Bear Form and "scroll up" for Cat Form. I then reserve key 5 for my spec-specific form — either Tree of Life or Moonkin Form. This macro won’t shift you out of the specified form unless you hold down ALT:

#showtooltip Tree of Life
/cast [nomod,nostance:5] Tree of Life
/cancelform [mod:alt]

Because my bars are set up to switch to another page when I’m in a Feral form, I use key 5 to switch between the two forms. In other words, if I shapeshift into Dire Bear Form, key 5 is set up to let me switch into Cat Form and will shift me back into Bear if I’m in Cat Form. The Bear to Cat version of this macro looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [nomod,stance:1] Cat Form;
/cancelform [mod:alt]

And the Cat to Bear version of this macro looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [nomod,stance:3] Dire Bear Form;
/cancelform [mod:alt]

Macro Help: Mouseover Healing

Mouseover techniques are worth mentioning here because of their potential when paired with a gamepad like the Nostromo SpeedPad. By setting all of your heals (and decurses) up as mouseover macros, you can heal raidmates and groupmates by simply sliding your mouse over their unitframe and pressing the corresponding key on your gamepad, all without ever having to click to target. This is a particularly great technique when paired with the Grid addon and is often used in lieu of a mouse-based healing addon like Clique. I personally prefer this technique to Clique-based healing as the number of our heals increase. This also gives you increased visual feedback on what heal you’ve selected rather than requiring you to memorize which of the 5+ buttons on your mouse perform which function. A simple mouseover healing macro looks like this:

/cast [target=mouseover] Rejuvenation

And when we pair it with an alternate ability, it will look like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt, target=mouseover] Swiftmend; [target=mouseover] Rejuvenation

If we want to get really fancy (and we do), we can build a macro like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt,target=mouseover,exists,help][mod:alt,target=target,help][mod:alt,target=player] Swiftmend; [target=mouseover,exists,help][target=target,help][target=player] Rejuvenation

The above macro will do the following:

1. If ALT is not pressed and the target under your mouse is one you can help, it will cast Rejuvenation on her.
2. If ALT is not pressed and the target under your mouse is one you cannot help but your current target is one you can, it will cast Rejuvenation on your current target.
3. If ALT is not pressed and both the target under your mouse and your current target are ones you cannot help, it will cast Rejuvenation on you. (This is particularly helpful for healing on the run via insta-cast HoTs in PvP!)
4. If ALT is pressed and the target under your mouse is one you can help, it will cast Swiftmend on her.
5. If ALT is pressed and the target under your mouse is one you cannot help but your current target is one you can, it will cast Swiftmend on your current target.
6. If ALT is pressed and both the target under your mouse and your current target are ones you cannot help, it will cast Swiftmend on you.

It’s a long macro, so it helps to cut-and-paste into notepad, make modifications for applicable spells, then paste it into the macro creation window. You can do something similar for other paired heals like Wild Growth and Tranquility or for Remove Curse and Abolish Poison.

Note: While you could opt to use the interface option for “Heal Self by Default”, this option won’t attempt to heal you should you have someone harmful targeted. The above parameters are necessary to achieve the PvP-friendly behavior described above.

Macro Help: Heal Self

A Feral or Balance Druid might find these macros useful, whether for soloing or PvPing. They’ll shift you out and cast the heal spell on yourself:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=player] Rejuvenation

Macro Help: Form-Specific Abilities

Because Druids have so many form-specific abilities, it’s easy to run out of character-specific macro slots. Save on macro space by building one macro that performs an action based on your current form then map that macro to the same position in either form! For example:

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:3] Feral Charge - Cat
/cast [stance:1] Feral Charge - Bear

You might be wondering why you would want to make such a simple macro when you could just as easily drag the two different abilities to your paginated action bar, but you can add alternate abilities onto this macro like so:

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:3,mod:alt] Dash; [stance:3] Feral Charge - Cat
/cast [stance:1] Feral Charge - Bear

I like to call the above macro my "Go!" macro. For your reference, the Druid forms/stances are:

1. Bear / Dire Bear
2. Aquatic Form
3. Cat
4. Cheetah
5. Tree of Life/Moonkin

Original Post from Resto4Life | Resto4Life Tree Shirts! The only shirt slot with +20 Spirit!

Not sure if anyone has picked on this yet, but Thorns has been changed to include about 6.5% of your spell power as bonus damage. The amount of damage that is done can fluctuate during a fight due to spell power procs and such (idols, trinkets etc.).

I have 1097 spell power at the moment, and it’s putting out about 102 damage, as seen in the screenshot. Offhand hits seem to lessen that amount by 10%, once again as seen in screenshot as 92 damage. When I use [Essence of the Martyr] (which increases spell power by 158) it adds 10 damage to Thorns.

I’m headed out to a party (I respecced Feral and am going as a Cat!), but I wanted to share this with anyone whose sitting around waiting for trick-or-treaters. Let’s hope it’s a treat and not a trick!

Edit: It appears that the damage scaling is based upon the recipient’s spell damage and not the caster’s. In other words, a Restoration Druid would be more prickly than a Feral Druid because the Restoration Druid stacks spell power. This caveat makes me suspect this may, in fact, be a bug, but I’ll take any kind of bonus to my Thorn Bush leveling spec I can get!

Original Post from Resto4Life | Resto4Life Tree Shirts! The only shirt slot with +20 Spirit!