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Shifting Perspectives: The new face of balance druid PVP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. It is fairly common knowledge that I am not an avid PVPer. It isn't so much that the balance spec is weak in PVP (even if it is); nor is it a matter that I find the system frustrating. It more has to deal with my having to be exceptional at what I do, or I won't do at all. Sure, I may not be an instant superstar at everything, but normally I feel I can learn, improve. The PVP learning curve is steep, further complicated by playing a very difficult spec in that environment -- so for me, I avoid it. That being said, I do throughly enjoy watching PVP, theorizing on the balance of PVP, and keeping up with the scene in general. This week, I want to bring my newest PVP observations to you in hopes that I can help those out there who want to give balance PVP the shot it deserves. We aren't as terrible as people would lead you to think!
Shifting Perspectives: On the matter of Moonkin Form
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Glory to the moonkin! Since the initial release of information, transmogrification has pretty much been the dominating topic around the WoW sphere. Naturally, being a druid, I really didn't care much about it. That's untrue. In fact, I went through what I've coined as the five stages of druid patch notes: Excitement Realization that it doesn't matter to me Deep depression Angry resentment Giving up, defeated Any time that Blizzard makes some new fun, silly project for the game, these are the exact steps that I follow. All those neat transformation items? Worthless. Pretty new mounts? Please, I already have Flight Form keybound and it's instant; why would I need anything else? Suffice to say, druids always do seem to get left out of all the reindeer games -- that is, of course, unless you're a restoration druid. Trees don't, well, have to be trees. They stay unshifted, which is the downfall of all other druid specs. I'm not alone in this, and the introduction of transmogrification has brought about a new surge of players asking for the removal of Moonkin Form. This week, we'll lend an ear to those complaints.
Shifting Perspectives: Comparing T12 boomkin gear against T11
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Last week, I allowed the unthinkable to happen: I allowed myself to be out-DPSed by an elemental shaman. It was a terrible day, one from which I don't think I shall ever recover. It happened the day that I had finally gotten my new, shiny four-piece bonus. I was eager to try it out, estatic that I finally got myself out of that god-awful dress. Then something just fell through. This week was more of a redemption, but I will still never forget losing out that one time. If anything good did come of it, at least you could say that it got me thinking. Upgrading from tier 11 to tier 12 should be a pretty big deal. The set has more and better itemization, the set bonuses are pretty spectacular -- so what could possibly be the issue? This week, we'll be talking about how tier 12 is great but not the bundle of roses that you might think it is. Depending on the encounter in question, which tier is actually better can change on you. Given that, should you ever go back to your old tier 11?
Shifting Perspectives: What to do once you've hit level 85 as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. There are times when it can be slightly awkward writing for two different class columns. While all of us strive to bring the best information for whatever it is that we write about, there are loads of tidbits that really do span across the entire game, stuff that people really do need to know. I find myself in this predicament at the moment. This past Monday, I did a piece for warlocks regarding this very same topic. Writing the same thing for balance druids as I do warlocks? Lazy? A cop-out? Nah -- well, maybe ... but probably not. Much of the information in that article holds true for balance druids as well, although there are itemization differences I'll be covering here; further, it's about readership. It is good information; it's stuff that everyone should know, and I want to make sure that everyone does get it. Just because I write about warlocks doesn't mean all of those who read Shifting Perspectives will also read Blood Pact. This week, I'm stealing one of my own pages and bringing you what to do once you hit level 85. Enjoy, perhaps even for the second time!
Shifting Perspectives: Murmurs' moonkin Twitter feed!
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. I haz a Twitters! Like most everyone else these days, I too am a part of the social revolution that is sweeping the globe. Originally I was against the idea, but I've been a part of this network for some time now and I figured that it was finally the time to put that fact to work. This week, I'll be pulling questions from some of my followers on Twitter. @xvkarbear Should I be waiting to pop starfall until I have a lunar eclipse? Use mushrooms during solar eclipse?
Shifting Perspectives: Letting go of DOT-based AOE
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com. Firelands comes and goes, boss strategies are created and refined -- and with each passing encounter, players come up with different ways in which they can push the mold. What may be true for one raiding tier can quickly become the wrong way of doing things in the next, without any changes or direction from Blizzard. While we can sometimes point to spell scaling as the root cause of these alterations, often it is the changes within the design of the encounters that actually force players to adapt in ways that go against conventional wisdom. In the past raiding tier, using DOTs as our AOE has been the one and only method to perform. Our more traditional AOE was mocked due to the constraints that were placed upon it. That has not changed in the least; what has changed, however, in AOE in general. Throughout the first raiding tier and even into Firelands, Blizzard has made changes to the mobs that we AOE and the strength of other classes' AOE abilities, all of which impacts the way we perform. This week, we take a look at the new face of balance AOE.
Shifting Perspectives: How to kill Shannox as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. There was a little bit of an update for balance druids in the most recent hotfixes. Finally, Blizzard has come to its senses and allowed Moonfire to generate Lunar Energy when traversing from a Solar Eclipse to a Lunar Eclipse if you have the Lunar Shower talent. Awesome -- this should have been done back on the PTR, but whatever. Helps PVP druids; PVE still doesn't have much of a reason to take it. Get to work on that, Blizzard. This article has nothing to do with that, though, mostly because I'm over the whole Lunar Shower business. If Blizzard wants to dig in its heels on the matter, well, I'm not interested in pushing. Instead, I want to make stuff go BOOM! That's what we're talking about, taking out one of the first four bosses in the Firelands. Prepare yourself, soldiers ... There are battles to win!
Shifting Perspectives: How to raid as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. If there is one thing that avid readers may know about me, it is that I have a huge tendency to push players to become less single-minded. In any game that I play (particularly MMOs), I despise the one-sided nature that most players fall into. The mind set that "I am a DPSer, I am here to DPS, all I do is DPS" is highly pervasive within the gaming community -- and frankly, I want to break that concept so hard that it hurts. No matter what class or spec it is that you may play, you always bring more to the table than your prescribed role. DPSers especially have far more utility than they realize. It's time that players wake up to this, and that is exactly what I intend to facilitate in this week's article. Playing balance is exceptionally fun. You bring fantastic damage to any raid group, but you also bring so much more than that. Want to be a better raider -- no, want to be a better player in general? Then read on!
Shifting Perspectives: The druid personality test
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we are impressed by the scientific rigor of human interest publications. So I was in line at the grocery store the other day when the array of magazines at the checkout stand caught my eye. Useless People Weekly was running a quiz that promised to tell you things you already knew about yourself if you would consent to answer several questions and tally the results. "Huh," said I. "What a marvelously scientific approach." But it gave me, as they say, ideas. If you've never played a druid before, are you interested in knowing which spec best suits your personality? If you play a druid, are you interested in being told things you already know about yourself?
Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid gearing from Firelands
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. A few weeks ago, we talked about the various items that you can get from the new daily quests as well as items that you can get from the new raid faction, all of which are really good things. This week will be about new valor point items and items that you can get from boss drops themselves. While gearing is a little bit different in this expansion than it has been in previous expansions, there is still a little bit of choice and options involved. Before getting started, the first thing that we need to keep in mind is not to forgo items from the previous tier. Tier 11 gear is still really, really good, and if there are slots that you could still use from that raid, then I would highly suggest trying to find ways to go back and get them. Firelands isn't a cakewalk for most guilds out there, so it is important that you gear yourself as best as you possible can. With the change to justice points and the nerf to the actual raid content, it shouldn't be too difficult to get your hands on a lot of the items.
Shifting Perspectives: Patch 4.2 impressions as a balance druid
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. The patch has been out for a few days now, and surprisingly, it went extrodanarily well. Not saying that Blizzard is bad or it sucks at patching, but I don't think there was ever a major content patch, especially one that introduced a raid, in which everyone was actually able to raid that day. Not only that, but maintainence wasn't even extended for hours upon hours. Everything went well, at least on the technical end. For druids -- well, it was a bit of a different experience. Going into this patch, we knew that we were in for some changes, but there was some hope that Blizzard might at least do those changes correctly, that it would at least attempt to address the problems it sought to fix. Alas, we were not so lucky. Despite that, balance druids adapted, evolved, and carry on as we always do. Here's how.
Shifting Perspectives: Faction rewards for balance in 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. So, I guess there is going to be this whole patch thing coming out soon. It's great and all if you haven't heard about it: tons of new daily quests, a new faction, a new raid. There's also this awesome legendary staff involved, although I'm really not a staff person. It's not that I dislike them so much as I really prefer my one-handed weapon and off-hand. Maybe it's some residual shaman rubbing off on me or something. Past the staff gripe, I need to bring another issue forward. This patch brings in two new "grinds" that players will be involved in. Both of these are essentially druid factions in one form of another, and frankly I find it offensive that we have to bother with gaining reputation or gather marks like the other, lesser classes. We're druids, they're druids, isn't there some kind of code that says we should just be given these things? Totally not fair. See if I defend Moonglade next Lunar Festival. With that in mind, let's take a look at some of faction rewards that you can get in the next patch to help with our goal of destroying critters. In the name of nature, of course.
Shifting Perspectives: Building a better AOE balance druid rotation
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Last week, we talked about the fine art of gaming Eclipse, annoying as it might be. To play a balance druid is an excessively fun experience; to try and deal chart topping damage as one is going to leave you pulling out your hair. Although the so-called "skill cap" for balance is prohibitively high, never let it discourage you from actually playing the spec. Getting getting to the high damage part of the spec takes some work, but after time it becomes second nature; tweaking Eclipse to work for you just becomes a habit that you do without thinking. That aside, this week we'll be getting into what's honestly the best part of playing as balance. AOE takes just as much work as balance, but it's a fun type of work and comes with a really sweet pay off. Balance has some of the strongest sustained AOE in the game; now you can enjoy it too.
Shifting Perspectives: Building a better balance druid rotation -- gaming Eclipse
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Out of all of the emails that I get, out of all of the posts that I see on the official forums and other sites, the single most common problem that people have as a balance druid is damage -- which for as a damage-dealing spec only makes sense, right? I mean, it would be a little bit weird if the largest problem we saw from balance druids was that they weren't tanking well enough or something. The thing is, most of these people aren't "bads." More often than not, these aren't people who haven't a clue how to spec, gear, or enchant. They probably do follow the rotation that's listed on the official forums sticky or in one of my guides. All in all, these aren't bad players -- they just can't seem to get something right. Something isn't clicking. Well, let's talk about what that something is.
Shifting Perspectives: Why there are moonkin in the world
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Owlbears, I spend an awful lot of time discussing Eclipse and the various ways that I'm just a little bit unhappy with the system of DPS that we have. To be quite honest, I'm tired. For one day, can't we all just be faceroll arcane mages, casting nothing but Arcane Blast, maybe a Missiles here and there? I'd really like that, really I would. I don't think anything would quite make my day as that would. Alas, it is not to be. The real question is why anyone should bother their pretty little heads playing possibly the fattest characters in WoW. Face it, folks: Moonkin are huge. And despite what some people may have been saying lately, it seems we do have friends -- or at least people who are willing to keep our fluffy feathers around. Which, you know ... I'll take that.
Shifting Perspectives: DOT changes for balance druids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Oh druids, my lovely little space chickens, I am frankly at a loss. I am at the end of my rope, so to speak. For a while there, I thought I had Blizzard all figured now -- but now? Now, the developers are throwing curve balls left and right, and I just don't know what's going on any more. Things are changing. They want to change something ... But what is it that they are looking to change? We've all seen the previous changes that attempted to break our multi-DOTing and the random running around in a Solar Eclipse spamming Sunfire. Shortly thereafter (probably due to the numerous reports that the system was absolutely terrible, by all accounts), it was changed once again. Now I don't know what it is that Blizzard is attempting to break anymore, and I don't even feel like guessing. Don't believe me? Take a look.
Shifting Perspectives: First look at balance druid tier 12 bonuses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Right then -- on the off chance that you happened to miss the massive rant that was last week's Shifting Perspectives, made in reaction to the horrible, horrible changes that Blizzard had originally planned for balance ... ,you don't quite have to read it. Actually you should read it, because the reasoning behind the change is still there and Blizzard is going to try something to make it happen, but that specific method is off the table for the time being. There's already a new attempt out, but frankly, I don't think it's worth spending every single week hammering down a new flop on the same tired design. Instead, I think it's rather a good time to take a first little glance at our newest tier set bonuses that were datamined about a week ago. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of datamined information; it's nice to look at, but it can often be incomplete or missing perspective that allows it to make sense. This is a bit different, though; it's spell data pulled straight from Wowhead, so it should be rather spot on. Doesn't mean it's final though, so do keep that in mind.
Shifting Perspectives: A first look at balance druids in patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. If you keep tabs on the goings-on in the WoW world, then you probably know by now that the initial notes for the upcoming raid patch 4.2 have already been released. While 4.0.6 was supposed to be the large rebalancing patch for Cataclysm and many classes didn't see any significant changes during 4.1, it seems as though Blizzard may have broken down and changed course for this next installment. There isn't yet much information released in the current patch notes, and most classes aren't seeing any changes as of yet, but balance druids are certainly looking at something that is going to vastly shake up their current playstyle. This is the earliest release of the PTR, and things are probably going to change, but one thing about the PTR is that feedback needs to be given, no matter how absurd or unlikely the change might be.
Shifting Perspectives: How to make the switch to balance
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. It's another glorious patch week. Patch 4.1 had a few major balancing changes, but a majority of them were to address specs that were a little low or weak in certain areas. Balance druids, although taking a hit, didn't have too much going on for them this time around. Rather understandable -- we're in a good place damage-wise, and this patch was more a focus on new content and features anyway. Instead of spending gross amounts of time rattling on about such small things, I thought this would be a good time to address a question that I get asked pretty frequently. Cataclysm brought about a lot of changes, both to healing and DPS. Each player reacted differently to the new design, and there are many restoration druids out there who find they just aren't quite happy with the way things are for them any more. And I mean, who could blame them? They have to be trees -- who wants to be a tree? Trees are boring. The natural thing to do is to flow into balance; the gear is kind-of-sort-of the same, anyway. So how is it done? Well, I guess that's what I'm here for.
Shifting Perspectives: Total Eclipse, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send your questions, comments, or something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com. Last week, we talked about the mastery stat and how it influences Total Eclipse. This time around, I would like to delve into the innate concept of Eclipse itself. Mastery, as you may recall, is a rather tricky stat that has a lot of scaling potential to cause some issues in certain situations. The entirety of Eclipse hinges upon a few basic principles, the first of which is uptime. Given that Eclipse's uptime is determined by number of spells cast (which cannot be changed by any means), there is an average expected uptime that can be balanced around. When you take certain measures to extend Eclipse's duration, such as multi-DoTting or Sunfire spamming, then you effectively change Eclipse's uptime, which causes distortions in mastery scaling. But, again, this was last week. As you have probably already noticed, the same fair warning we gave last week applies: This will get deep and possibly mathy. As an additional warning: I'm rather unwell at the moment and rather drugged up on various medications that I couldn't even begin to pronounce. If you end up getting a bit lost or I'm totally off base on something ... all I can offer is my apologies.
