cataclysm-changes-for-druids
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Shifting Perspectives: The forest and the trees
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we ponder the end of an era, and Allie kicks herself for not recognizing something she should have. When the news hit on Tree of Life form going bye-bye, I didn't know what to think. To be perfectly clear, chopping the tree down is something that Blizzard's been kicking around for the better part of a year, if not more. We ran a Shifting Perspectives on it in May 2009 in the hope of drawing more attention to a forum thread where Ghostcrawler asked druid players if they thought the Tree was fun. To anyone who's new to the class and thought the developers pulled a fast one, that's not the case; they were open about the possibility that this would happen. When the discussion ended and nothing seemed to come of it, I (foolishly) assumed they had decided to leave well enough alone. The tree wasn't really adding anything to the druid's restoration spec, but it was a harmless addition to a class that considered shapeshifting its raison d'être. Then the class announcement hit. Like I said, I didn't know what to think. I sat back, thought about it, read the announcement thread again, thought more, reread the May 2009 thread, read through all of April 2010 class announcements again, noticed a fairly obvious trend, and finally realized something: What Blizzard is doing with Cataclysm has almost nothing to do with what players have trained themselves to expect after Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. Pavlov's bell is ringing, but it ain't dinnertime.
More Cataclysm change details for druids
Fear not, my fellow druids; your feral analysis post is going live later tonight, and resto sometime tomorrow. Daniel Whitcomb and I have been talking about the incoming changes to the spec, and particularly the decision to change the tree of life from a constant form into a cooldown. I honestly didn't know how to feel about it at first. But before we get to that, Ghostcrawler stayed up hellaciously late last night to answer questions from druid players about the Cataclysm changes currently planned, and we've collected all of them here for you.
A quick and dirty guide to rage normalization for bears
I started playing after Burning Crusade launched, so I don't have any personal history with the rage normalization fiasco that happened in the transition to BC. I'm told by old warrior hands that it went something like this: Blizzard: We're normalizing rage. Warriors: What does that mean? Blizzard: It means that normally you won't have any. Warriors: ... oh. Right now, all of what we know concerning rage normalization for Cataclysm can be found in this post here. I won't repeat stuff we already know but try to look into how the changes will affect bear tanking. Rossi covered the expected effect on warriors yesterday, and while we share a number of these changes, there are a few wrinkles that I expect will have a specific impact on bears.
Shifting Perspectives: The bear's wish list
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we gnaw on Alex until he's convinced that we tank, and then restrain ourselves from penning a letter with the salutation, "Dear Santa..." Today, druids, I crave your indulgence for wading into a potentially volatile topic, but I think the time has come to address an issue that's divided the druid community into two embattled camps: Can beast mastery raid? I kid. I don't know who beast mastery is, and whether he raids or not is a matter between himself and his God. So, rather than pestering some poor bastard over his existential crisis in ICC, I figured our time might be better spent with some observations on how the druid class has fared in Wrath of the Lich King, and more particularly on the things that haven't worked out so well for us. Before Cataclysm's beta starts, I figure it'll be cool to air a class wishlist and get some feedback. UPDATE: And Blizzard has pre-empted me on this. To be frank, there's something a bit fool's-errandish about the whole enterprise, because we have no idea what kind of content awaits us in Cataclysm, and today's problems may not even exist there. It's an old saw that generals like to prepare their armies to fight yesterday's war, and I'd be lying if I said there weren't an element of that here. I guess it might be more accurate to describe this article as "Things I wish I'd written two years ago" -- when Wrath's beta was on the horizon -- but one of the irritating things about hindsight is that things actually need to be behind you.
