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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.
Community class review from the EU: Druids
The EU community MVP Schwick is really great at compiling lots of good info. In the past, he's done compilations on issues raised by the community for Hunters, Priests, and Rogues, as well as a bunch of other stuff. Now he's come up with the first draft of his compilation on Druids. He asked forum-goers what their main problems with the Druid class are, sifted through all the responses, and put them together in a very readable format for the Blizzard devs (and other players) to have a look at.It seemed to me that most of the Druid issues had to do with items and abilities not scaling so well in endgame raids after Karazhan. There were some points that addressed other general issues, as well as arena PvP, but overall casual druids seemed pretty content. There wasn't even any mention of the graphical updates to the shapeshifted forms that many druids have been asking for.Keep checking the thread to see what additional thoughts the players had, and to see future drafts of the compiled suggestions.
Tauren cat form updated a little in patch 2.3
We just talked about this issue in Shifting Perspectives a week ago, but it appears Blizzard is already doing something about the tauren cat form -- albeit not very much. Many tauren have long complained that their cat form is much uglier than the night elf version (compare for yourself here), and while these changes aren't comprehensive, at least they're a tiny step in a new direction. Beaux on the US forums showed everyone how, in patch 2.3, Blizzard has modified the tauren cat form's face to look more like a lion and less like a monkey, and changed the neck of the lion so that it doesn't look so hunchbacked as it moves. It's not as pretty as the tauren cat form suggestion submitted in Blizzard's art contest, but it'll do for now I would think.[Update]: Our reader tmklein supplied us with some interesting links for what the EU player Andrige thought the various forms should look like -- all with a distinct visual style. Would you like this sort of change? Dire Bear Forms Worgen Forms (to replace cat form? I don't know about this one...) Travel Forms
Another option for new content: factional class flipping?
Last week I talked about mid-level content and as expected, many of you expressed an opinion. One comment in particular from autumnbear got me thinking. Autumnbear writes:"How about updating the overall lore for the game, and allowing more class choices for the current playable races. Still waiting for the Night Elves to teach my Human how to be a Druid, especially since he's Exalted with both Darnassus AND the Cenarion Circle."Now that's something I can chew on. What about quests that will allow you to make race/class combinations that are not otherwise available in the game? I think this is a tremendous idea if the process is sufficiently difficult to prevent everybody and their uncle's cat from doing it. The original Everquest had epic quests that took some players months to complete. Everquest 2 had the betrayal quests which allowed you to change factions which took a really long time to complete.Why shouldn't a human, in Autumnbear's case, who has earned significant faction with Darnassus not be able to learn the finer points of being a druid? Gnomes have no healing classes. Why not create a very difficult quest line for those gnomes who are exalted with Stormwind that would allow them to become a paladin or priest?I know I'm going to get a billion comments about game balance. Admittedly this would likely not count as "mid-level" either, but I think that if it was properly implemented it could be a valid source of that new content that everybody is craving.
Shifting Perspectives: The same old animal posterior
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.Some people say that Blizzard is lazy. Players tend to start voicing this sort of opinion when it seems like Blizzard hasn't done something they think should have been done a long time earlier, such as adding new dungeons they won't visit, or new features they won't use. Sometimes there's just one particular thing that grates and grates on the players' nerves so much that they simply cannot understand why Blizzard hasn't done anything about it yet.Even I have been guilty of this sort of thinking now and then. But ultimately, it becomes apparent that, whatever the status of Blizzard's list of flaws -- laziness is not one of them. Indeed, we simply do not realize the massive extent of work that is required to achieve some things, especially the things we don't personally desire, and therefore fail to give credit for hard work done where we don't realize such credit is due.The topic at hand today is a prime example of such a problem, a druid pet peeve which has gone on for a long long time. Exhibit A, above, is the Tauren Cat Form, or rather, what some of us might wish the Tauren Cat Form looked like -- a player's own suggestion submitted in Blizzard's own art contest of 2007. The Tauren Cat Form that Horde druids have been seeing since 2004 is pictured to the left here in Exhibit B [Update: Tauren cat form has been slightly updated in patch 2.3]. Whether or not Exhibit A is the perfect replacement for Exhibit B can be left up to the good judgment of the reader, but for the purposes of this article, it is sufficient for us if we all agree that something must eventually be done about the feral druid's monotonous appearance problem. That's to say -- we tire of staring at the Same Old Animal Posterior (or SOAP).
Patch 2.3: A buff for feral druids
It looks like feral druids will not be denied their bit of love in patch 2.3. The feral talent Heart of the Wild, will be changed to gain +10% attack power in cat form rather than +20% strength as shown in the current version above. As Vorox notes for us in his forum post this is a buff for feral druids.It may be a nerf for those druids who have stacked as much strength as possible to the exclusion of other stats, but especially considering that they plan to raise the attack power on items that buff druids' attack power while shapeshifted, having this talent to make them even more powerful seems pretty nice to me. It also makes agility scale even better for cat druids than it did before, and in many cases it enables us to get more bonuses from many buffs and items (such as Blessing of Might, and... rogue gear!).For the mathematically inclined amongst you, here is the formula for calculating your new buffed-up attack power from the original poster Vorox (who translated from German): (Current AP - (Strength in cat form - Strength in caster form)*2)*1.1
Glove enchants for the discerning Druid
Earlier today, Karthis over at Of Teeth and Claws responded to a question from one of his readers regarding which glove enchant was best if you're a tanking Druid. In case you missed it, despite our massive coverage of the last patch, some old world enchants made their return -- including Enchant Gloves: Threat, which previously dropped only in Ahn'Qiraj.He examines the current options players have available for glove enchants, and backs up his opinion with solid math and theorycrafting. If you're wracking your brain trying to figure out which enchant suits your Druid best, I recommend going and checking out his post!
How do you measure the performance of your healers?
With DPS, this question is simple. You can take a glance at your damage meter of choice and see how much damage they've done, perhaps combined with how much damage they've taken (hitting the top of the damage meters may be impressive -- but if the only way to do that involves being a major drain on your healers' mana, it might be better for your group as a whole if you cut back), and can have a pretty good idea of how they're performing. On the other hand, measuring a healer's performance is a bit more ethereal, as discussed in depth today on Priestly Endeavors. Of course, you can watch the healing meters, but they don't tell the entire story of a good healer. What about mana management? The 5-second rule? Heal timing? (Heal too soon and you're overhealing and wasting mana -- but heal too late and you may not have anyone to heal at all.) Kirk on Priestly Endeavors breaks it down into the data you'd want to see to completely determine healer effectiveness: The health of every party member over time. Information on every heal that was cast and when it was cast (including things like Power Word: Shield which usually aren't counted). The healer's mana over time. But while having a spreadsheet showing off all of this information for the duration of an instance run would certainly tell us exactly how our healers are doing, this much data would be heavy information overload. (Fascinating to sort through when you have specific questions, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it every day.) But seeing as we don't currently have access to such detailed information, I'm throwing the question out to you -- how do you measure the performance of a healer? What extra information would you like to have in measuring the performance of a healer?
Shifting Perspectives: PvP is hard
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.Every class has its pet PvP problems. Some whine a lot about how many times they've been nerfed; others just whine about warlocks. But most of these classes have a pretty clear idea about what they're supposed to be doing. Sometimes they whine that they don't like "what they're supposed to be doing" and would rather remake their class into something completely different -- but that's another issue.Here's the generally accepted conventional wisdom on what each class is supposed to be doing in PvP: Rogues: Kick buttocks (by surprise) Hunters: Shoot buttocks (from a distance) Mages: Freeze and burn buttocks (and sheep) Priest: Melt buttocks (or heal) Shaman: Shock buttocks, drop totems (and heal) Warrior: Charge in and smash buttocks (with a healer in tow) Paladin: Stay alive (and heal) Warlock: Laugh maniacally (a lot) Druid: Mix and match your healing, damage absorption, and buttocks-destruction by being in the right form at the right time to do the right thing that needs to be done based on whoever is around you and whatever is going on at any given moment (lol wut?)
/silly: Dire Straits
Greetings, my brothers in arms! Once again it is time to delve into the land of my artistically rendered personal views on this walk of life we call World of Warcraft. A few hours of private investigations deep into my inner psyche brought forth this small one panel sight gag, aimed at those sultans of swing, the Feral Druid. Since this ended up being a mere one panel affair, I invested extra time into the quality of the art, so no one should feel that they wasted their money for nothing. Addendum: Check after the jump for a nifty bonus pic!
A spoonful of sugar helps the Fel Mana potion go down
For those that aren't familiar with Fel Mana potions, they restore 3200 mana over 24 seconds, but also reduce your spell damage by 25 and your healing by 50 for 15 minutes.On the surface, this seems like a bad deal, at least to me. I've intentionally not used them because of their negative side effect. Besides, a Super Mana potion will restore 1800-3000 mana instantly -- so why wait for the mana and incur a spell penalty?Phaelia over at Resto4Life recently did some math that may or may not change your mind about using them, if you use them at the right time.Mostly the article is aimed at discussing when healers should pop a Fel Mana potion, but good news for all you hunters out there that may not have thought of this yet... there's no downside if you use them!
Shifting Perspectives: The human druids
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.Druids weren't always night elves and tauren, you know. Well, in World of Warcraft they were, but centuries before the first snowflakes started to form in the clouds of Blizzard's creative minds, the authentic human druids actually walked around casting regrowth, shapeshifting, and spamming moonfire.Or did they? How much of the class that we know and love in WoW is actually based on the real life druids of old? How did the word "druid" come to refer to our fantasy fighters rather than some ancient wise men in robes?
Around Azeroth: Racing across Tanaris
Reader Sanari of Khaz Modan sends in this nicely composed shot that really catches the speed of the Druid's travel form. Here we see a Druid speeding across the Tanaris desert towards the moonrise. (I want to say towards Un'goro, but with the landmarks in this shot, it could just as easily be running the other way.)Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
Getting the most threat out of your Druid
Karthis over at Of Teeth and Claws has posted a great new article about druid threat generation. It's a good read, supported by some solid math, so if you're into theorycrafting, or just want to squeeze every drop of threat out of your Druid, I recommend stopping by and reading up.Be sure to check his archive, too -- he's got some very good posts up there, as well as some useful links to up-and-coming druids looking to better their gear.
WoW Moviewatch: Solo runs of Ramparts, Blood Furnace, and Mana Tombs
Lately there's lots of people running old world instances solo, as well as some people attempting runs of Burning Crusade instances alone and ending up victorious. I even saw a Paladin tank solo Hellfire Ramparts once.But in this video a Tauren Druid named (perhaps appropriately) Immortal, kills all 3 bosses of Ramparts, all 3 bosses of Blood Furnace, and the 2nd boss of Mana Tombs -- all on his own. Definitely worth a watch!Previously on Moviewatch...
Around Azeroth: I can fly!
One of my favorite games at the Darkmoon Faire is the cannon that you can shoot yourself from. When you launch from the cannon, you will have a lovely set of wings (as seen above) which come with a quite handy slow fall effect. However, this is the first time I've seen the cannon launch cats into the air... or perhaps this shot, sent in by reader Donna, is a preview of the upcoming Druid Gryphon form? Only time will tell!Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth. %Gallery-1816%
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Breakfast Topic: What one buff would you give your class?
Dolarhyde of the Boulderfist server posed a simple, but interesting question on the official forums today: what one buff would you give your class? The reason I almost always choose druids in the multitude of MMORPGs I play has less to do with RP and more to do with versatility. I love hybrid classes, especially the more offensive ones that can still heal (hello shammie alt!) So when it comes to what's missing from my class, it's hard for me to put my finger on it. Hybrids tend to do so well, but to give them another major ability could water down other classes. Many fellow druids believe this class is missing some serious crowd control ability, though we have it in limited forms through Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Force of Nature (aka treant pets), Hibernate (beast and dragonkin only) and off tanking in bear form. I'm not sure we need a Priest level AE fear or a Rogue sap. Other players have called for more aggro tools for druids, especially Balance druids. But the class is built to survive a beating and isn't as squishy as those with better aggro management abilities.I'm stumped on what buff I would give druids, but I'm interested to see what our readers would give their own class. Let's hear it.
Encrypted Text: Content Avoidance FTW
First of all, I must apologize. In all the cowfusion, I udderly lost track of time and thus found that many Rogues had a serious beef with me over this column being late. But not to worry, dear readers! I've finally detoxed, and many hamburgers later, I'm back and ready to dish this week's Encrypted Text. Of course, there is one last remaining bit of Bovine Inspiration for this week's column... And that would be a little thing I like to call Content Avoidance.Now, any Rogue worth their salt knows precisely what I'm talking about. The first time that you sneak past every mob in a particular area just to take out the named mob you have to get to, then proceed to sneak back out, you've experienced your first bit of Content Avoidance. Of course, many others will call it stealth running, or sneaking past mobs, etc. No matter what you call it, it equates to the highway to speedy quest completion. As hinted at above, I must give a nod to the other class that is almost, but not quite as good at stealth runs: Druids. Despite the fact that feral Druids love Rogue armor just as much as Rogues do, there is an excellent relationship that can be cultivated here if the Druid and Rogue in question are willing... I am speaking, of course of the Perfect Stealth Run Team.
Resto PvP Druid FTW!
Mookysolo of the Ner'zhul server has written a PVP guide for Restoration druids. And by "guide" I mean eight enormous posts that take up almost an entire forum page. In that marathon listing, you'll find the three best pieces of equipment per slot, recommended enchants, jewels by color, different talent builds, recommended strategies, theorycraft, mathcraft and a FAQ. To say that it's thorough would be an understatement. He also provides two movies of his PvP exploits for your enjoyment.For another perspective on the same subject, be sure to check out another Resto PvP Guide on the European forums. Many interesting strategies listed and more movies at the end of that post.EDIT: I've rewritten the tone of the post to reflect the lack of surprise on behalf of PvP players of the dominance of Resto Druids. Clearly I don't PvP, but my intent here was to pass on an excellent guide I came across. I've altered the tone of the post to be more informational and in the future, I'll put my reaction in context.That being said, I'm always impressed when players manage to excel with a "gimped" spec. I'll see if I can find such a case for PvP and post it for you guys.Thanks for the feedback..
A Druid with 122k health? She must eat her Wheaties.
As I was browsing the WoW forums earlier, I came across this little gem of a thread. A Druid named Scarmbrena from Boulderfist managed to obtain over 122,000 health (yes, you read that right) by stacking a buff called Mol'dar's Moxie. Mol'dar's Moxie, for those that don't remember the good old days of Dire Maul North "Tribute runs," was a buff given to you by Guard Mol'dar that grants an additional 15% stamina for 2 hours.Scarmbrena describes in the thread how she was able to stack this buff a total of 15 times, bringing her total stamina to 11,896 and her health to a whopping 122,394! Just to put that in perspective, Pathaleon the Calculator (the last boss in the Mechanar), has 130,000 health.Obviously, this qualifies as an abuse of game mechanics (albeit a creative one), but even more surprising is that the patch notes for 2.1 state that the Dire Maul Tribute buffs shouldn't work on a player over level 63, yet in the screenshot linked in the thread, Scarmbrena is level 70.I can't say I recommend that anyone try this since Scarmbrena almost got banned herself for it, but it is interesting to see a player amass that much health!
