Goten stale? Maybe you missed the point where blizz started pissing on the flavor of the month. That m friend does not create a stale flavor, it's more like . . . . you know . . a flavor that is now . . .. .mixed with the flavor of say . .. . urine? Warm, yellow Blizzard urine?

I deleted a few druids. My first druid (and first 'high lvl' toon) was a druid that I got to level 41. I discovered a person in a furbolg outfit dancing in IF. I asked where he got the costume.

He told me about a quest chain in Ashenvale (Ranye's Cleansing) Havng completed that chain and never transformed to a furbolg I realized I had accepted shared quests and skipped 50% of the quest chain, This was back when you could share about any quest regardless. I started looking and figured I had missed 10-20 quests through skipping ahead accidentally. I decided to delete and reroll my druid because I could never go back and get those quests (Call me OCD, but now that the Acheivements are intergrated I woulda been partially screwed on quests in kalimdor).

So my next druid of the same name was on a PVP server (they just opened WSG, and I really wanted to go full on PVP to get a greater sense of adventure. When lvl 60 orcs stalk you accross a whole zone, it adds more danger to leveling and feels more like a real World of Warcraft.

So getting that druid to 43 I found that my fiance (now wife) had gotten a toon up to lvl 40 (on my account) we wanted to play together, and it took her 40 levels for me to convince her we needed two accounts, I got her an account and we both ended up sharing the two, it didn't work because we both ended up wanting to play our mains, which were on the same account, so after creating another druid of the same name, I deleted my lvl 43 druid. Now #3 druid is alive and well and lvl 80 and has downed most of existing 10 and 25 man content in Wrath expac.

Now if I could ever fall in love with a lowbie paladin I would quit rerolling them every few months and getting to lvl 16-18. I played a pally in Wrath beta and enjoyed Retadin super OP edition. I just can't seem to drag myself to level 20 with a paladin. Seal, judge, melee, melee sleep, afk, wake up log in seal, judge etc.

I have to say that I have always relished in the idea of combos of abilites to perform tasks and make abilites that seem dumb wonderful.

My two biggest realizations came with a walock and a druid.

On the lock you have a few options for AOE but usually when solo/farming you get alot of adds even using a void or felquard tank. . . so the solution was void - sacrifice for sheild and then hellfire until my heart was content. To me hellfire and the void sheild were made for solo-farming. . .you take 0 dmg while really dishing it out.

Similar tactic for druids. . .esp moonkin druids. . . barkskin + hurricaine.Druids do have AOE!!!!

Barkskin for the damage reduction and the resisting the spell interupts. Moonkin has extra armor. Use a trinket to get some extra spell dmg, and if they are up use treants. THe other part of the equation is thorns, creeps beat on you and hurt themselves, add the hurricaine and the treants and you can easily down 5 or 6 mobs your own level (melee mobs) ranged mobs and/or casters are more difficult to kill this way.

Druids are like a handy man, they can fix your car, repair your plumbing and build a shed, but they just don't have all the tools of the other professions.

Sure a druid can do almost as much DPS as a mage, tank almost as well as a warr, and heal like a priest.
I humbly sub,it that the same player playing a druid could do a better job in those respects if playing a non-hybrid class. If I were magically able to duel myself and pit warr against bear, or mage against Moonkin. . .I know that I would be able (in equivalent gear) to defeat the druid when only using the single form.

A druids main specialty is the fact that they are the most spectacular hybrid in the game. If I am fighting a mage that is beating my moonkin. . . I can healmyself and maybe use bear or cat to stun them a bit and beat on them, If I am losing as a bear to a warrior, I can go caster and heal/roots them. If I am losing to a priest. . . well, a shadow priest is always going to pwn me unless I pop trees on them.

Their are two major areas in which a 'pure' class has the advantage over druids, crowd control and gear.
A mage doesn't need to swap gear to effectively polymorph, a priest doesn't need to swap gear to go from shadowpriest DPS to some decent healing (I know people will argue this one, but I have a shadow priest who is a good healer too, A rogue doens't have to swap gear to sap or use poisons, and a warr doesn't have to swap gear to toss out a shout.

Druids limitations have always been in the fact that they hae to switch forms to accomplish different feats.

I fondly remember being resto specced, stealthing around at lvl 35 ganking mobs in cat form.

But now, my cat is more like a lvl 50 rogue with no weapons, no poison, no blind, and no vanish, my bear tanks like a lvl warrior with lvl 50 health and damage.

I am Moonkin, (42/0/19) and as such I can reach mage-like DPS, and still do some good healing on the side.

Sure I have higher armor than a mage (in form) and healing spells, but I have no polymorph, no frost nova, only one AOE, (unless you count treants and/or thorns).

The major problem for me is the gear discrepancy, I would have to have 3 sets of armor to really be able to have all my roles be truly viable, and even though I can swap froms in combat I can't swap armor.

Blizz aught to take a cue from the feral talent tree, gear that does +spell crit in moonkin, +armor in bear, +attk power in cat, +healing in tree, or something of the like.

The 'Heart of the Wild' talent in the feral tree is a one size fits all talent, not all at the same time, but changes your benefit based on your form.

In WOW, 2 years ago all my forms were viable, in WOW today only Moonkin and caster are worth while in combat/groups.

I agree that druids should be able to at least use all our forms and powers. A non disc preist can still have a decent sheild spell and fort buff. A non forst mage can still freeze crap in place with frost nova.

But let a druid who is feral start trying to heal in a group or a moonkin try to tank in bear form . . .

When did Blizz make non-feral druids in cat/bear more like a Marksman hunter's pet?

Maybe if I stay in cat form and don't go moonkin a beast mastery hunter will tame me and use his talent tree to beef me up?

10 years earlier : Kelthuzad stands up in the middle of the creative writing qroup, "Hey guys, Let me read this poem entitled 'Hellfire'."

Um. . . . . dead zone? Wait don't hunters have pets? Wait my lvl 69 hunter has a pet. . . .

So when are they going to eliminate the 'dead' zone for rogues, warriors and pallies? You know the dead zone which is about like 4 yards to infinity. . .

Nih - Your powers of sarcasm are wasted on the lesser flesh-beasts. Having been dubbed 'NBE-1" by similar flesh-beasts I would have to say that it is time for me to utterly subjugate them. I will end the reign of Optimal Prime and the so-called Autobots.

ok so maybe I don't know for sure . . . but I tend to think that to render a blizz map it takes a buttload of polygons that form the basic shape of the land, then the comp loads the major items in the map like buildings or specific landmarks. Next you have some layers of 'color' to the gorund and then you have all the 'permanents' like trees etc then last of all you add the npcs and creeps.

Seems to me you take something like map_loch_modan and then you load texture_barrens_ overtop of it and then load maybe a thing like structures_barrens

(forgive me I wouldn't begin to know any of the vars or DB addresses, but I hope you get the point)

Imagine making your bed and putting a different colored sheet on it. . . then take a 3D pop-up carpet and roll out over top of the sheet(trees) then boom. . .there you go.

I surmise all this from the standpoint of slow comps. . .crap for graphics cards and high latency. . .. anyone else ever flown over a white field of polygons? Seen it replaced by a 'sheet' of color?

Every flown through an elwinn with no trees only to have them pop up all of the sudden in front of you and under you?

I have a hard time thinking that this guy really took any genuine skill. . .the sakura elwin was the only thing that I was awed by. . .didn't know where the white blossums came from. . . . if he 'made' those then more power to him. . . .

My only problems with Vista regard trying to interface with older windows OS, like XP and Mobile 2003. . . .with a little bit of work and a few minutes spent downloading both problems were resolved, all in all I think Vista is fine, I don't use all the pretty bells and whistles, I turn off a lot of the 'eye-candy' and just use it as intended as an OS not a computer environment. I open and close progs, I surf the web, I download, I process words and insert functions into my cells. I netwrok and fileshare. . . .

All in all I am just happy that the taskmanager has more info for the running processes so it is much easier to get rid of crap. .. . . HPSYDV.exe - on XP = HPSYDV.exe ,system, 9443K, on Vista HPSYDV.exe = HPSYDV.exe, system, 9443K, 'Hewlitt Packard updater'

(the example used is not 100% accurate butyou hopefully get the point.)

All in all I am pleased with Vista as many more things are simplified and placed in the background from a novice to medium user's standpoint.

I have to say that with computers I don't want to have to know a lot about them in order to efficiently use one. . . having to use regedit is teh suxors. . .

Keep on trucking MS, Apple and everyone else. . . make a computer that requires little time and effort to perform the tasks I do today, and make the OS so intuitive that no one has to go to a community college for two semesters at the age of 45 in order to send an email (not me but I am related to her).

"Transfer notes and sketches to a computer " click on the READ link above this is where I gleaned that little nugget. It links to the EPOS site where there is *GASP!* more info.