Moving

It was bound to happen at some point, but I’m going to move my WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted WordPress blog. I exported everything, and as a bonus I even added fancy Thottbot and Wowhead links.

Sorry about the mess, I’ll leave this blog unharmed, but I won’t be updating it anymore.

I moved to http://partouf.inaspro.nl/

It’s possible the website will be slightly less available than WordPress.com, and it won’t be as fast, but so be it.

WotLK: Respec moment

With the opcoming WotLK expansion (or probably a patch before that even) the new talent trees will appear, and you’ll have the opportunity to rethink your spec. Now, normally you would take that opportunity to make a nice quest-and-level-up-solo-build to race around through Northrend, but my plans are a bit different.

Our guild is currently thinking about continuing to schedule some raids now and then to Outland instances, to keep us together and to see a bit more of the content we were supposed to see. Now, one could figure that leveling up, getting to 71 to throw away crushes, getting some green superior questgear and be done with it. I say nay, that’s not going to cut the cookie the way I want it. And since the talent tree changes are coming with a pre-wotlk-patch, I wanted to see if I could make a cookie-cutter that wouldn’t require me to start questing like a madman just yet. (just filling up space and trying to look like I’m talking about something interesting, while I could’ve just said all of this probably in one sentence)

So, the raiding resto level 70 build I will prefer and try out, will be this one.

What did I select, and why didn’t I take that fancy thingymabob!

The import part of the build, is Flourish. I’ve seen a lot of raid damage when visiting TK/MH/BT/SUN and I’m not exactly pleased with the way I have to spam and rush Regrowth on everyone like a madman just because we lack CoH priests. Flourish is a spell to Nourish, I reckon. (although the actual Nourish spell will only appear at lvl 80 unfortunately)

Master Shapeshifter is a NoNo in my books. It’s 4% healing modifier is not going to cut the cookie with the ‘low’ amounts of healing in comparison to what we could get out of it when we’re in lvl 80 gear. The more we level of course, we are going to put points in it, but as long as we’re in 70′s gear it’s not going to make a difference.

Gift of the Earthmother is one fancy talent. Not only has it a pretty Tree icon, but with 5 points you’re going to shorten your GCD for Lifebloom and Rejuvenation Without investing anything in spellhaste. (2/4/6/8/10% – without additional Haste, your GCD’s will be as followed: normally 1.5s, 2% 1.47s, 4% 1.44s, 6% 1.41s, 8% 1.38s, 10% 1.35s)

Living Seed sounds fun. With only 3 points you get the guarantee to seed the target after a direct heal that blooms and heals the target when it gets hit. So, hello Druid PoM. (although we have no clue about threat ofcourse, it’s certainly going to be fun)

Replenish, is something for the future. Energy, rage, runes, mana to others? Odd talent, but will certainly be worth taking. But not just yet.

Omen of Clarity, yes we know it’s not going to cut the cookie really. But a free spell is a free spell, even though we know we’re going to get the Clearcasting buff mainly after when we actually needed it…

What about the Balance talents?

Genesis a direct 1-5% boost to your HoT healing, no strings attached and its available for everyone. The problem about this talent is, again, scaling. It’s not going to scale as much on your lvl 70 gear than at lvl 80′s gear. Still, it’s a nice talent, and if you want more of a resto-balance-hybrid-build, go for it.

Moonglow is going to save you plenty of mana, but question is, do you really need it?

Nature’s Splendor is rocking the socks off of some people, and I can certainly see its worth as well. However, at the current time, I’m pretty used to the length of my hots, and seldomly rely on their full length. Maybe that makes me a bad druid, but I know I’m going to regret not putting the points into restoration.

Nature’s Grace is well, cool. Ah well…

And most importantly, let us not forget to rush to the trainer and get our OoC rez, quick raid recovery here we come!

And then the raid is over, we did it, but back to questing

And back to feral.

Yes, I’m back

I’ve been leveling up my mage forever, but the last 10 levels were extremely quick. I even went from level 66 to 70 in only 2 days.

So now I’m a proper mage with green and blues, and the Shadoweave Boots & Shoulders. Its going to take a few more days before I can make the Robe, because I need to skill up tailoring first and collect the needed materials, but I’m sure I’ll make it someday. So currently I’m walking around with about 560 Frostdamage, 74 Spellhit and somewhere between 13% spellcrit. It’s not exactly top notch, but I’m sure that along the way to get the Karazhan key I will get a few upgrades that will set me up to be able to kill Attumen in a raid with fellow noobs.

The reason why I want to get the key, even though it isn’t needed anymore, is just to get a real feel of my mage in instances and see if I can do what it takes. Sure I’ve played with it some time, and I know how everything works, but the only real instances I’ve done so far with a mage are Sethekk halls and Shadow Labyrinth. Sure, SL wasn’t a piece of cake, I mis-sheeped a couple of times, failed to counterspell at vital moments, and I was mostly saved by an extremely well-geared priest – but still, it required some amount of effort and I learned a lot there which I wouldn’t learn by doing dailies or other quests. Not to mention the ability to actually walk into karazhan without any shaperon with a key, and the possibility to get the Violet Badge, which comes quite handy in a few boss fights.

In general it’s a lot of fun to play a mage though, much more fun than being an undergeared dps caster whilst in healing gear on my druid. Plus, it’s cheaper than respeccing all the time to feral when having to grind something. I’ll still be raiding and healing with my Druid primarily, but it’s nice to have another level 70 whenever you need a change.

So… Yes, I have returned to WoW after a hiatus of 3 months. I’ve been playing again for a couple of weeks now. I initially planned to only play friday-sunday, but that soon blew up in my face when I felt the itch to help out the guild in gruul/mags/ssc/tk. We even had some shots in MH, BT and Sunwell, and eventhough they’re quite a challenge, it’s still fun to see us get at whatever trashpull we are and see us progress wipe after wipe.

I’m definitely going to try and take it easy again though, but the weekend only thing doesn’t work obviously.

So there, voila, a post from scratch. I had nothing to talk about, but here it is.

Removal of Downranking

Seriously… why…

Back to the dark-ages, back to square 1.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8974837994&pageNo=3&sid=1#44

Doesn’t Blizzard realize that certain raid encounters need spamhealing or quick healups on tanks and raidmembers because they might die within those few seconds. No one needs HoT’s for those occasions, they’re not fast enough to keep tanks alive on those occasions.

I can remember those days where Priests were going OOM halfway a bossfight and having to innervate them – even from out of bearform sometimes – and sure that has changed for the better since the mana regeneration change.

But this really feels like going back in time, and there’s no remedy this time. Especially because of http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=53787

Or are we Druids supposed to arrange Innervate rotations for priests?

#showtooltip Innervate
/w OtherDruid I'm innervating %t - you're next!
/cast Innervate

Addon studio v2

I’ve used the VS Addon Studio for my ManaWarning addon, and there were so many bugs it was hardly workable, but it was still much better than having to write the XML files myself when trying to create the configuration UI.

It seems that the new version of the Addon Studio is going to be a great improvement.

Channel 9 has a preview and interview with the devs here.

Odd search

An odd search has surfing around on the blog stats; “why does bonus healing go down when in resto spec”.

My first response would be something like “What? What the… What?”

Assuming the search isn’t about Shamans (though it could very well be), I can imagine as well that someone is comparing his or her +healing on the character stats screen in Resto spec to a previous Feral spec.

If before swapping spec you were feral, probably leveling and trying out talents, there’s a possibility you got a combination of SotF and Nurturing Instinct. Nurturing instinct increases your +healing by a certain stat (now Agility, used to be Strength?), and SotF increases base stats that could increase your healing.

It shouldn’t worry you that the +healing is going down, because you’re going to increase your healing by using full +healing gear. And your resto spec is going to be the silent force behind your healing abilities by increasing its worth in actual healing. Where you had for example +100 extra healing out of +500, the resto spec will make your +400 healing be worth about +550 healing for Healing Touches, +550 for your generic HoT’s, and not to mention an extra +15% of healing done for Rejuvinations. And this will all increase as you increase your main healing stat, as opposed to the less abundant strength and agility.

So I think I can safely conclude that freaking out over the visual statistics isn’t really needed, and you can safely stay resto

/edit; See comment below from Kriyet of Bladefist in case Balance was the previous spec \o/

Despite the hiatus…

I’m always available for questions. (email to partouf at gmail)

I feel so sad everytime I see a search coming by with questions or keywords that I haven’t really answered on this blog…

But of course there’s a wealth of information out there, certainly for (and by) Druids. The links on the side should point you to the bloggers out there, check Resto4Life for her active list of bloggers here.

I certainly had much fun listening to a recent “Epic Dolls podcast” featuring Phaelia from Resto4life over here. All the basic must-knows around the Druid class can be audibly heard in american accents in just 60 minutes – without you having to read! zomg!

For other stuff, read read read. And don’t be afraid to ask, you can mail all the smart bloggers as well, just go over to their site.

Even if non-druid specific.