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Shifting Perspectives: Your first steps as a Druid
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, sometimes known as the Big Bear Butt Blogger, starts his series on leveling a new Druid from 1st level all the way to 70th. Before I begin my series on leveling your new Druid from 1st through 70th levels, I'm going to start with some of the things you can do to prepare. Why not just leap right on into level 1? My reasoning is simple, just like me. When you have been watching Druids claw face as bears or cats, or as a new player you read about the description of the class and the shapechanging capabilities Druids enjoy, you might just expect to walk in and start doing the same yourself right from the start. The promise of the class is the fun of shifting from one form to another, depending on your playstyle. Well, when you start your new Druid at level 1, you won't be clawing faces. Instead, you will be leveling as a caster... a ranged DPS caster for levels 1 - 10, and likely on towards 20. Just as Hunters don't get the ability to tame a pet until level 10, Druids do not get the chance to learn their first form until the Bear quest chain becomes available at level 10. If, as you were sitting at the character creation screen, you were thinking you were going to be a kitty, all up in the face of the bad guys right from the start, it can be a bit of a let down. Especially if you don't care for playing a caster class in the first place. Hopefully, however, by knowing how to set yourself up in advance with the in-game Options, useful User interfaces and Addons, you'll find yourself leveling up as a caster painlessly, and may even come to enjoy the versatility of some of the Druid's powerful casting abilities. While the focus of this series of articles will be to help guide a brand new player into the fun of playing a Druid, hopefully there will also be some suggestions that an experienced player trying the Druid for the first time will find useful.
Shifting Perspectives: Some handy addons for your druid
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.Two weeks ago we had a look at how macros could make your druid lifestyle a little easier, and today we're going to look at some addons which were specially made for druids. These addons help you solve a couple problems that many druids are likely to face, helping you get at important druid information that isn't easily available in the standard interface. First is the problem of druid mana while in feral forms. It's tricky to keep track of this without any addons; you have to remember your mana in your mind while you look at your rage or energy bar and do other things. Sometimes you might shift out of a feral form to cast a heal only to find yourself without enough mana to do what you had planned. There are actually several addons which can help you with this, and we'll take a brief look at each of them so that you can choose which is best for you. The second problem has to do with comparing the best druid gear without having to shift out of World-of-Warcraft form and into Browse-the-internet-for-15-minutes form. Several addons are out there which can give you the lowdown on gear quality right in your item tooltips.
Reader UI of the Week: February 14 - 20
This week, Krool (of the guild Heartless, on Daggerspine US)shows off his pre-TBC UI, so think of this as one of those flashbacks you may see in LOST or Jericho or whatever show is doing flashbacks this week. I remember using Charcoal's unit frames and fonts way back, but could never develop an appreciation for, or understanding of, Discord Unit Frames. I'm really digging the borders around the UI elements, separating them from the rest of the screen. Is there any way to do something like this without Discord? Anyway, I digress, and here's Krool to tell you about his UI: Here's a screenshot of my UI. Unfortunately Charcoal isn't working any more and I'm so sad. It was my favorite bar auto-configurator of all time. As far as basic action bar, player and target bar geometry flexibility, Charcoal pwned everyting else I've ever seen. Crash said he's working on it, but it's going to take some time. But having said that, the screenshot enclosed is my UI the way I like it best of all at any time since the original beta when I started playing.
