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Shifting Perspectives: Lifebloom is like broccoli, and other lies my mother told me
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, Lifebloom prevents vitamin deficiencies. When I was a small child growing up on the mean streets of a rural farming community, my mother used to hector me into eating my vegetables. "You'll get rickets if you don't eat your broccoli," she said. "Children in some parts of the world would kill to have string beans," she said. "You'll flunk your SATs if you don't eat zucchini," she said. So I'd choke the stuff down in resentful silence, assuming that dessert would be forthcoming in the typical quid pro quo of the childhood dinner table. (My lawyer father lived to regret teaching that phrase to small children.) It took me until freshman biology to realize that my mother was exaggerating the odds of developing scurvy if we didn't eat a sufficient quantity of vegetables at every meal. And you know what? Playing a resto druid on the beta is kind of like being a small child getting Lifebloom and Harmony endlessly stuffed into your face. In the meantime, there's a bowl of deep-fried, bacon-crusted, chocolate-dipped Wild Mushrooms just ... out ... of ... your ... reach on the table. I ate the green stuff, Blizz. Now where's my dessert?
Shifting Perspectives: Beta build 12803
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we ponder change. Beta build 12803 dropped late Friday, and with it a number of changes to the feral and restoration specs. Some are what you'd expect after some recent forum conversations with Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer), and others came out of left field. We'll take a look past the cut.
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: Tree 1, Arthas 0
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we save the world (of Warcraft). Originally this week's article was going to concern stomping Karazhan from top-to-bottom as a feral/resto druid, and then I got Big Bad Wolf for the opera event. Suffice it to say that the stomping took an abrupt U-turn, and I never got pictures or video of the other Kara fights that I've successfully solo'd on dozens of other occasions (though I grant they were all occasions that did not include humiliating wipes to an overgrown dog). If I weren't in the middle of a time crunch it probably would've been doable, but regrettably I will have to run a feature on how to make 1,000 gold soloing Karazhan on a later date. In the meantime, Alaron's managed to solo Big Bad Wolf successfully, but my main is in the somewhat sticky situation of not being a night elf. With the upcoming Icecrown raid buffs going all the way to 30% damage/healing/health/absorbs eventually, more and more raids are going to find their way to Arthas. Buffs aside, a lot of Arthas' difficulty lies in execution, and I started jotting down a few notes that I hope might be helpful to other druids likely to attempt the fight. We were fortunate to get both the 10- and 25-man version down, and I got astoundingly lucky on one 10-man attempt with back-to-back selections as a Harvest Soul target while I was running a video capture. I've seen a lot of comments online that caster druids aren't well-suited to dealing with this, and that's just not true at all.
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.
Shifting Perspectives: 5 observations from a reluctant battleground healer
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we gingerly step back into battlegrounds and discover that the world can be a very unfriendly place. I love writing this column, but there's one thing that bugs me about it -- the druid class is tailor-made to defeat a sole writer's efforts to cover everything she can. No matter how hard I try, I'm never going to cover each spec and playstyle with up-to-the-minute and in-depth experience, because it would require the simultaneous mastery of ranged DPS PvE, ranged DPS PvP, tanking, off-tanking, melee DPS PvE, melee DPS PvP, healing PvE, and healing PvP. Even with all that, I'd be leaving out all the hybrid and kooky specs people dream up. This has been getting to me lately. Consequently I thought that, before we get to some end-of-year and patch 3.3 business, it might be a good idea to spend some time on topics that -- to be frank -- I haven't been that great about covering. Balance as a whole needs some love and so do our kitties, but before I do that, I'd like to address a topic that, in contrast to Balance and Cat, I've been willfully ignoring -- PvP. It occurred to me that roughly a year after Wrath's launch, it might be a good idea to pop back into battlegrounds and see how the class' most common PvP spec (Restoration) is faring in combat these days, so I dumped badges and gold into a PvP set and went for broke. And, well...a lot's changed.
Shifting Perspectives: A 3.3 miscellany
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we root around our inbox and herd a series of scribbled notes across our desk, trying to get what we actually know about patch 3.3 in order. Also, Zach Yonzon's PhotoShop skills for the win, but we already knew that. This week's column is going to be a little bit of a grab bag in much the same way that our patch 3.1 miscellany post was, because there have been a few changes on the PTR recently that we haven't yet discussed. Before we get any farther, I'd also like to give a shout-out to our readers and commenters on last week's column, "The disappearance of the bear." I was a little antsy over how it was going to be received (lengthy articles on what's going wrong with a spec can get derailed into QQ-fests pretty easily, and that wasn't my intent), but was heartened to see so much quality discussion. One of the things I realized after reading through the comments was that Blizzard may actually have succeeded a little too well in their quest to make tanking more attractive and fun to the average player. WoW's four tanking classes (warrior, paladin, druid, and death knight) comprise 4 of the 5 most popular classes in the game right now. As I've written previously, the druid functions as the proverbial canary in the coal mine as a harbinger of class balance concerns, and with each of the game's plate classes numbering among the most played at 80, it's impossible for this not to have an impact on druid spec choice. Anyway. For the moment, we are going to turn away from this rather depressing situation, and concern ourselves with what's going on in patch 3.3.
The Daily Quest: Prizes, pumpkins, and paper zeppelins
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. All Things Azeroth is having a bit of a celebration this month, seeing as its National Podcast Post Month. Did you know that was a thing? Yeah, I didn't either! If you want a chance to win some sweet prizes, head on over to ATA. We're coming up on Halloween pretty quick here, and this recipe from Nourish is, perhaps, more delicious than even all of the holiday candy. Runeforge Gossip proves just how overpowered Death Knights really are in just a few screenshots. One Rogue's Journey details what a Rupture-less rotation would entail. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Squash
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Tower Defense in WoW? It's true! Sort of. Doctors of Philosophy helps you build a Paladin for AOE grinding. Nourish brings us another wonderful recipe for winter. Does anybody else think squash is really weird? I mean... squash. How absurd. MMO Musings compares The Light of Dawn and the Wrath Gate. Which do you think was the better event? Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Addons, haste, and tea
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. World of Raids highlights the Caith UI, a widescreen UI compilation. Runeforge Gossip gives a quick walkthrough of Rawr. WoW players that weren't around for Onyxia 1.0 might not know about this pretty sweet trick from OutDPS. Blessing of Kings asks... is Spell Haste bad for the game? We're coming up on Winter here in the States, so we might want to buddy up with this recipe soon. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Booze and bacon
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Skeleton Jack covers a pair of dual wield builds for Death Knights in Patch 3.2, when dual wielding will make a comeback for the class. Nourish has yet another tasty treat for us: Broken Isles Iced Tea. I'm a little confused, though. I think they forgot the booze! Runeforge Gossip thinks that WoW's PvP could learn a few things from DotA. This link has absolutely nothing to do with WoW whatsoever, but it has inspired me to make a few strips of bacon with whatever I decide to have for dinner tonight. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: I'm hungry
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Nourish is back to regular updates again, and has already given us three more delicious recipes. Alterac Volley explores ways to profit from PvP. This one is for you roleplayers out there. Do you use personal NPCs? Check out some of the great contributions to the latest shared topic from Blog Azeroth. Righteous Defense explores a few possible talent specs for Protection Paladins in patch 3.2. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Patch 3.2 Druid changes
3.2 approaches! Sort of. The PTR itself isn't up yet (at least, not as I write this), but nonetheless, 3.2 approaches on little cat feet.I'm going to examine the 3.2 PTR patch notes line by relevant line, just because there are several changes that impact Druids while not being class-specific. If you want a quick summary without being massively spoiled, Balance is getting a huge and welcome change to the functionality of Eclipse, Cats are getting bonked by the nerfbat, and PvP-Restos are really getting bonked by the nerfbat. Bears, well...not much is going to happen to bears this patch, which is a little demoralizing given the improvements being made to Pally tanks, but that's OK. We still have our, uh, amazing Tier 8 set bonuses and...um...the best -- sort of -- tanking cooldowns in, uh, the...uh......Oh, screw it, just stack the hell out of stamina and pray to the gods of RNG if your guild's dumb enough to try Ulduar on hard-mode. Congratulations; you have now done all you can possibly do to prepare yourself for modern tanking.Sad lolbare is sad. But cough syrup for everybody! Is nise! Now let's take a look:
The Daily Quest: Wokka wokka
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Episode 48 of the Twisted Nether Blogcast is available for download. Their guest this week is Cadistra of WoW, Eh? Slice and Dice has basic tips for Rogues trying to get into PvP and the arena. Mangle-ian Beef is the latest addition to our favorite food-for-gamers blog, Nourish! You do own a wok, don't you? Defeat Dragons, a guild/raid management blog, discusses boosting the performance of your raiders. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Nourish, a WoW recipe blog
Blogger and WoW.com friend Pixelated Executioner has introduced a brand new blog project -- he's working with a few other folks in the community on a new blog called Nourish, dedicated to providing some fun and relatively easy WoW-related recipes for real food. It all originally started over on Twitter, where a few of them decided to come up with some WoW-themed dish names, but eventually it escalated into the idea of an actual set of recipes, with the added bonus of getting some WoW players some real homemade food to eat as well (you can only go so far on Doritos and Mountain Dew, after all).There's only two recipes so far (both submitted by another friend of ours, Cadistra of WoW, Eh?), but that spice bread does look pretty tasty. If you're a foodie or just have been looking for a way to use something other than the microwave in your kitchen, it seems like a great place to start. And if you need more than the few they've got up so far, don't forget our old Well Fed Buff column -- it's retired now, but we've still got plenty of great WoW-related recipes to try making there as well.
Shifting Perspectives: A 3.1 miscellany
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, our author ferrets around her inbox for several unanswered questions concerning patch 3.1. Greetings, Druids. For a while now I've been adding to a list of questions I've had for the upcoming 3.1 patch. Some of these are questions I got from other players, some are questions that occurred to me while reading various versions of the 3.1 PTR patch notes, and others are mostly-illegible bits scribbled in the middle of testing Ulduar fights -- dasiewlerjewDIFEEIRKdfklsd? 3349FHDFHDIOJKfkdsfadioer. REIOWEL? Must've written that one on Kologarn. I believe it is a super-secret, devilishly clever guide to the fight that brilliantly exploits group positioning to produce a clean, one-shot kill on the first attempt, but alas, we will never know. Such are the dangers posed by bad handwriting, people. Study your Palmer Method! This evening, I will attempt to answer all of the following questions, or to point you in the direction of other bloggers who have. These deal with all three Druid specs, so let's get started!
The Daily Quest: The new Restokin druid blog
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.The name Lissanna is well-known to many Druids. She has been posting quality feedback and guides on the Official Forums Druid class section for years. Now she has started her own blog, Restokin, to post her guides, analysis and opinions on the many different Druid specs. Here's a sampling of what she already has up: Druid Leveling Guide (alt link) Feral leveling Balance leveling Low level Battleground advice Q&A and links to additional resources Additional advice & What to Wear Bear tips: AE pulling with Hurricane How to heal in 3.1: Restoration PvE healing (alt link) Tank healing – Nourish supported by HOTs Tank healing – Lifebloom strategies AOE raid healing – Wild growth and other HOTs Recommended talent spec(s) Glyphs for tank & raid healing Nourish testing on the Patch 3.1 PTR She also has many articles about the recent PTR changes and links to the community response on the Official Forums. Stop by and leave a comment.EDIT: As you can imagine, her site is getting a lot of traffic at the moment, so if you can't get through, try again in a little while. Alternative links to the Druid Leveling Guide and Resto Healing Guide are added above. Submit a guide, post, podcast or resource for inclusion in TDQ, by using our tip line and we'll consider it for a future TDQ post.
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Druid glyphs and undocumented changes
Personally the change I'm still plotzing over most in relation to 3.1 is the sheer locational chutzpah of the Argent Tournament. I'm not sure I understand why the northern portion of Icecrown is considered an appropriate spot. It's like seeing some Milwaukee strip-mall developer parachute into the middle of Mordor and exclaim over the retail and tourist opportunities within a 100-yard radius of Sauron's eye. What does the Scourge think about this tournament? Did they get a cut of the concession stand's profits as a means of buying their cooperation? Who else was bribed in order to make this happen? These are all questions to which I think we deserve answers.Anyway, I seem to be one of the unlucky souls doomed to disconnect every 10 minutes from the PTR (although I'm not anywhere near Dalaran), but I'm sure it'll get fixed. One minor suggestion for all those Druids porting to Moonglade in order to pick up dual-specs immediately; have 1,000g in hand before you do so. As we all know, getting into Moonglade is rather easy. Getting out of Moonglade tends to be rather more time-consuming unless you're willing to burn your hearth in a world newly free of ghetto-hearthing.Some of the undocumented changes we've actually already talked about, so if you don't see something here but missed our first article, you should find them here.
Shifting Perspectives: Patch 3.0.8 for Druids
Every Tuesday, or sometimes Friday when the writer's internet has gone AWOL between Sunday evening and Thursday afternoon, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week we take a look at the upcoming patch 3.0.8. while penning an angry letter to our ISP.Greetings, folks. Patch 3.0.8 is coming, bringing a few significant changes for the Druid class. Feral attack power is disappearing from the game entirely alongside bonus armor contribution from non-leather items. Restoration is receiving a nerf in the form of a 6-second cooldown to Wild Growth but is otherwise getting some buffs. Balance is also getting a few buffs, including one that will make a big difference to PvP combat versus Rogues and Hunters. But I think, dear readers, we are overlooking the most important part of patch 3.0.8:Fixed a bug with a Wild Mustard plant that was under the ground in Dalaran. Oh, thank God. That drove me nuts.(Really).(I'd also love to see them do something about the underground Tiger Lily spawn in Sholazar).(It's just south of River's Heart).(Really annoying).(Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?).
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Druid
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the nineteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. Nature is a system of life energy in constant flow, peaceful one moment and turbulent the next. All living things draw their life from it, and depend upon its balance for their existence. Druids are the protectors of this balance, who harness the energies it contains and try to live their lives according to its laws and principles. In this way, they become intimate members of the natural system, embodying the very force that they seek to protect. The druid is not merely a spellcaster who draws on nature to do cool stuff -- he is nature, in himself, completely one with it in every way. The world is his body, and he is an inseparable part of the whole. It can be rather hard for those of us living in the concrete jungles of modern city life to get a feeling for what nature really is, or what it feels like to be a part of it. Perhaps if you have ever ventured off the paved highway into the distant reaches of the world, you will know the feeling of connection to the greatness of the natural world in which the human race evolved, long, long ago in a state of mind far, far away from billboards and electronic devices, pop culture and prime-time TV programming. It may no longer be possible for human beings to simply return to its ancient state, nor would that necessarily be a good thing. Today, people look out at the world outside the closed-off bubble of material civilization and wonder their new relationship with the ancient balance of nature could be.To play a druid in WoW as a class in a game is one thing, but to try and get inside the druid worldview and understand what they might be thinking is something else. To start, it would help to look inside ourselves and see what sort of connection to nature exists there. Is there a balance? What would balance look like? How would it feel to be in complete harmony with the natural world? What would it be like to channel all the power of nature through your body or indeed feel the world itself as an extension of your body?
