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Shifting Perspectives: Restoration 101
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, a quick and dirty guide to raising one's tree from a young sapling to a mighty oak, or other suitably impressive arboreal species. Whenever other columnists here write really good columns, I sit at my computer and swear a blue streak, for I am a jealous god. Sacco, damn him, turned out a great article on the basics of elemental shamans, and for a while I've been kicking around bits and pieces of 101-esque columns for all four druid specs. This was the last shove I needed to get that done. While I expect our new balance blogger (a.k.a. Murmurs, the person I will be forcing to do all my number-crunching in the future with bribes or, when necessary, threats) will address moonkin, I'll cover bears, cats, and today, trees. A quick note on what I want to accomplish here: I'm addressing this to people with no prior knowledge of the spec who want the tools to become reasonably competent healers quickly. By necessity, that means we're going to gloss over a few finer points; this is a cheat sheet, not an encyclopedia. When I say (for example) that Improved Tranquility needs to be dragged out behind a barn and killed with an axe, I'm not going to spend paragraphs explaining why that is, or examining situations where you could actually get some use from it. If you think I've glossed over something truly important, please drop a comment and I'll direct readers to anything they really need to know.
Patch 3.02 for Restoration Druids, part 1
The single biggest change for most restoration Druids with patch 3.02 will be the disappearance of at least four commonly-used PvE and PvP specs: 8/11/42 (the traditional resto PvP spec) 11/11/39 (Resto PvP with Insect Swarm) 13/11/37 (Resto PvP with Insect Swarm and Nature's Reach) 11/0/50 (PvE Tree of Life with Insect Swarm). The first three are kaputski because Feral Charge is now a 21-point talent in the feral tree, and the last three are bye-bye because Insect Swarm is now a 21-point talent in the balance tree. If you still want talents from the balance tree especially, you'll have a ton of stuff to play with (frankly I ran out of space here to discuss the new restokin specs but we'll cover it as soon as we can), but for the moment we're only going to concern ourselves with stuff squarely in the Restoration tree. Shifting Perspectives later today will have a full run-down on moonkin in patch 3.02 and Wrath. Otherwise, there's still a ton of new stuff for tree Druids in this patch, including a resurrected Tier 3 set bonus, a vastly-improved Tree of Life form, an out-of-combat rez, and an insane +haste buff to two of your most-used spells. If you also want a look at what early 5-man healing in the beta is like as a resto Druid, head here.Read on for a comprehensive look at the new healing and mana regeneration mechanics, Restoration abilities, talents, and glyphs!
Exploring Wrath as a Druid: A Feral Cat in Borean Tundra
I've been poking around Northrend the last few days with my Alliance druid and wanted to share some of my discoveries with other Druids wanting to know what to expect in Wrath. I started in on the quest lines in Borean Tundra, one of Wrath's two entry zones, so today's observations are centered on Cat Druid solo experiences. In the future I'll be soloing Howling Fjord in Balance spec and running instances in all four Druid specs, so I will save those observations until then.If you have specific questions about Druids in Wrath, leave a reply on this post and I'll see what I can do about answering them. Remember, I'm not level 80 and I won't be raiding in beta, so try to keep your questions to areas I can play in potentially. First impressions, after the jump!
Wrath Beta patch notes: Feral and Restoration Druids
Continuing on from the analysis of the changes to the Balance druid talent tree, as shown in the first patch notes for the official Wrath of the Lich King Beta, we'll now examine the Feral and Restoration trees. Feral treeThe Feral tree is seeing changes to limit the benefits that the other two trees, specifically Restoration, can gain from investing a few points into the first few tiers. We are also seeing changes to the ways in which bears will be generating aggro. The Faerie Fire (Feral) and Feral Charge swapFeral Charge is currently an 11-point talent into the Feral tree, which contributing to the advantages that Restoration druids currently have in arena. It allows Restoration druids the ability to charge, immobilizing their target and interrupting spells for four seconds. Instead, Faerie Fire (Feral), which is not something that a Restoration druid would likely spend 11 points to get, will take up the 11-point spot, with Feral Charge taking its place in the tree 21 points in. In addition, Feral Charge will be usable in cat form, dazing the target and moving the cat behind it. This will help address the concerns that cat form is not especially viable in PvP, although their crit dependency is still a weakness. It will also be useful in dungeons to catch runners and other out of place mobs.
The strong bond between healer and tank
We often post about the bonds created with this game -- there are some terrific bonds between guildies, and Arena teams and battleground groups have some strong bonds as well. But Omen of Clarity and Resto4Life, two great Druid blogs, recently took a look at an even more intimate bond ingame: that between tanks and healers.Omen started it off -- after stepping into a tanking role, he noticed that a certain Paladin healer had really bonded with him in terms of keeping each other up and running, and it really made them both better players -- the tank was more willing to step up when aggro got lost, and the healer had more reason to keep up buffs and rely on the tank, even at his own expense. Resto, from the other side of the spells, agrees -- even out of raids, the healer there will send the tank potions and go out of their way to keep both together. And from my time raiding as a Resto Shaman, I was always thrilled when I got to be in the same group as the tank I was healing, and got to Earth Shield them and spend my trinkets just to keep them up.It's not the only major relationship in the game (there's also a nice relationship between the tank and the rest of the melee and DPS, as well as the buffers and the buffed in a raid group), but it is an interesting, minute one, and it's something pretty specific to these MMOs that we play. Playing together isn't just fun and games -- by building bonds with other players in other roles, we both become better at the roles we play.Update: Just in case, like Ratshag, our little hint on the picture wasn't enough for you, the two characters in the pic above are another fairly well-known tank and healer combo, Tree of Life and Pretty in Plate. You try to hide a subtle little easter egg in there for those of us who read all these WoW blogs, and Ratshag won't let you get away with it. Thanks for keeping us honest.
Shifting Perspectives: That special versatility
It's often been said that druids are the three-in-one class: we can mimic warriors, priests, rogues (and even mages), but can't fulfill their respective roles as well as they themselves can. While in recent times druids have been able to gear up and perform as well as their parent classes in many respects, we are far from "warriors with stealth" or "rogues that can heal" or "priests that can off-tank in a pinch."Our problem as druids is that we cannot but neglect the full breadth of our abilities when we must specialize in only one aspect of our class. Of course, any class works best in situations where most or all their abilities might be needed to succeed, sometimes even in the course of a single fight -- it's just that for druids these abilities include tanking, damage, and healing all together. If you're playing with an experienced group, each player is likely specialized to one of these three roles, and his or her whole purpose is to minimize the chance that backup tanks, healers, and damage-dealers will be needed. That leaves druids trying to compete with warriors, rogues and priests (and mages), trying to do just as well at the same task, but with fewer abilities to call upon in the fight. Locked into these smaller roles, we must gear up and spend our talents in such a way that even if we were to shift out of our main role into another when the need arose, we wouldn't be able to do very well at it at all. This brings me to the adventure at hand: Today we will go on an journey of the imagination together, exploring the potential future of druids, considering how this problem of specialization versus versatility might be approached. Indeed, as I gaze into my crystal-ball-shaped paper-weight, I see two possible futures: one, called "The Path of the Pandering Pedant," seeks nit-picky perfection in a class designed for breadth and scope, while the other, "the Way of the Multitudinous Master" brings the full manifest of all our abilities into harmonious use with one another.
