cataclysm-druid-guide
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Shifting Perspectives: A limited number of people know the troubles I've seen
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we equivocate on the best means of filling a bottomless pit. Beta build 12759 dropped early Saturday morning, and with it the introduction of mastery and quite a few changes to the feral and restoration specs. I think Blizzard may even have fixed some of the issues with feral damage, but the newest bug on the block is making that a little difficult to tell. The default scrolling combat text is now broken -- you can't see how much damage or healing you're doing to hostile mobs or friendly players, respectively -- so at best, you're confined to guesses based on how much health the mob's losing when you hit it. For me, this requires squinting at a very small portion of a laptop screen with my nose two inches from the monitor, and I'll be damned if I'll wind up financing the purchase of another Maserati for my ophthalmologist.
Shifting Perspectives: A peek at the beta bear
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we push off from the island of Swipe spam and float toward the ominous continent inhabited by Lacerate spam. Hail, druids. I've had another week in the beta, and my main's now level 82. While I would love to tell you that all of the bugs we talked about last week have been tracked down and eliminated; that's not the case, so I'm not sure that a big analytical article on abilities that Blizzard's by no means finished with is a great use of our time. But I did tank a very successful Blackrock Caverns run, and Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) recently wrote something interesting about the future of AoE tanking, so today's post is going to take a quick peek at how bears are developing. Also, there's a great quest in Mount Hyjal where you throw bears off a tree, which naturally I recorded. It recorded upside down for some reason, so I'll have to figure out how to flip it before it gets posted.
Shifting Perspectives: Cataclysm talent changes
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, Allie hopes she is too unimportant and destitute to be worth suing. While finishing the bear, tree and cat gearing guides, I dickered over whether it'd be worth it to examine the Cataclysm talent changes. It's kind of dumb to devote a column to changes that, for all we know, Blizzard slid into the upcoming beta just to scare data miners, but I finally decided ... what the hell. I enjoyed watching Wrath's development during its beta and often wish I'd written more about the class changes as they evolved. Anyway, this is a snapshot of what we know in May 2010. There is the minor matter of the, uh, Cataclysm talent changes no longer being publicly available. As with all alpha leaks, there's the ever-present threat of Blizzard raining lawyers on your head like some Biblical plague, but then I thought -- what good is working for an evil corporation if I can't marshal our own soulless legal tyrants? And how much fun would it be to watch Blizzard legal battling Aol legal? Aol's lawyers hate life and themselves, and this is the stuff of great entertainment. Why not haul out the deck chair, pack a lunch and have the traditional American day out at the Ninth Circuit Court enjoying the Fisticuffs of the Damned?
Cataclysm Class Changes: Balance druid analysis
Attention everyone, before we begin today's lessons, allow me to indulge in a moment of temporary insanity as I squee like a little schoolgirl. SQQQQQQUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Ahem, with that out of the way, maybe we can get right down to business. As I'm sure it goes without saying, Blizzard has been systematically releasing previews of class changes to expect in Cataclysm. Other classes may have had their time in the sun to relish in whatever meager glories that might have been thrown out to them like ducks at a pond, but we balance druids are not mere ducks. No, my friends, balance druids are the swans of WoW. We are graceful, elegant and deadly. All right, maybe a swan is bad avian choice; perhaps a hawk would be better. No matter how you look at it, moonkin are amazing. With the recently announced changes, we're only going to become even more so. Past all the glitter and glitz given out to our lesser-specced brethren, the true meat of the druid changes can be found. Though there are several great discussions going on about the topic around the interwebs, allow me a moment of your time in order to given an in-depth analysis of the changes. Keeping true to our nature, each change will be rated on the Eclipse scale, using a range of "The sun is still in my eyes and it burns" to "Total eclipse!"
