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Shifting Perspectives: Where have all the feral talents gone?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin! Last week, I broke down the new druid talents that were released at BlizzCon with lots of discussion about how this may lead ferals in a new direction. I've had a week to think about things more, and I'm still blown away by the magnitude of the changes Blizzard is making to the specializations. Much of the fundamental assumptions about what drives our characters is being reworked, and we're not discussing the implications because OMG pandas! (For the record, I have a 3-year-old. Team Pandaren > Team Worgen.) To quickly review, the traditional model of abilities has always been strongly tied to classes. If you were a druid, you got all the druid abilities as you leveled, regardless of what talent points you invested. There were a few key abilities for each spec that were unlocked via talents, but that was it. With Cataclysm, Blizzard took its first swipe at reducing talent trees by introducing specializations. This served two purposes. First, it let specs have "cool" abilities earlier, instead of waiting until they were near max level to unlock them. And second, it once and for all eliminated the ability to have hybrid specs, such as the Dreamstate resto druid from The Burning Crusade. Previously, you were merely limited by your talent points; now, if the ability you wanted existed in another specialization, or below tier 2 in an off-spec tree, it was completely inaccessible.
Shifting Perspectives: Druid tanking and healing in End Time
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we reach End Time. Every so often as a tank or healer, you get the uncontrollable urge to scream various profanities at your group and ragequit in the middle of a pull just to show the bastards who's boss. Unfortunately, there's not much content that's really forgiving to this approach, and it's kind of a jerk thing to do on its own. Most of the time, you either have to suffer in silence as the group blames you for everything that has ever gone wrong with their lives, or else drop group and eat the Dungeon Finder cooldown. But that is no longer true. In patch 4.3, Blizzard has bestowed upon our little world a heroic boss known as Murozond, who upends the traditional responsibility to our groups and encourages us to care about nobody but ourselves. The developers have given us the greatest gift that any tank or healer can get: Revenge.
Shifting Perspectives: Reconsidering Wild Growth
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we are still mulling over last week's subject. When you blog professionally, you get used to an unfortunate truth: Most of the time, you could have written a better column if you'd had the advantage of reading the comment section first. Unfortunately, none of you jerks had the decency to comment on Shifting Perspectives: When healers run out of options before I published it, so I was stuck writing it without that advantage. Bad commenters! No biscuit. Suffice it to say that people wrote a lot of interesting stuff on last week's article, and I've been mulling it over ever since. In news unrelated to this or any other article, I would just like to state that the name Nosferatmoo (glimpsed on a tauren death knight from Misha-US while I was pugging on my goblin priest for the Low Level Tank Project™) is pretty much the best name ever.
Shifting Perspectives: When healers run out of options
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, the upcoming Wild Growth nerf gets us thinking. As with our previous Shifting Perspectives on tanking and healing the Zandalari 5-mans introduced in patch 4.2, I'd like to run an edition on tanking and healing the new Hour of Twilight, Well of Eternity, and End Time heroics. While I prep that, we've been left with an unpleasant but perhaps not totally unexpected nerf to Wild Growth as of last week's PTR patch notes. Let us be frank, my brethren. Is Wild Growth overpowered? Yep. Is it doing too much healing for too little effort? Probably. When even I can keep your ungemmed, unenchanted premade group's collective ass alive on my first trip into a new heroic despite getting lost and arriving at the group a minute late, a spell is way too good. But is that completely irrelevant to why Wild Growth is really a problem? Yep.
Shifting Perspectives: Player thoughts on bears and trees
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we find ourselves scrambling to read 100 pages on the forums in time. Yes, I used a Troll kitty at the top of a bear and resto article. It was pretty and I liked it. That's my excuse. Blizzard has an unfortunate habit of either invalidating everything I write shortly after it's been published or rendering an entire column out-of-date before it's even gone live. This past week was a unique variation on this practice, with the class feedback threads going live a few hours after I'd sent Shifting Perspectives: Rolling a new bear or restoration druid in Cataclysm to the editors. The druid class threads (on both the US and EU forums) had already started filling up by the time I reached a computer. Ack. Make no mistake: These threads mean that the developers are starting to kick ideas around for class changes in the next expansion, so they'll be interested in any common concerns that result. Let's see if I can summarize what players believe really matters to the bear and tree specs.
Shifting Perspectives: Rolling a new bear or restoration druid in Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, there can never be enough druids in the world. Our editors have asked us to write a column or two about leveling new characters in Cataclysm, as we've been getting lots of requests and, uh, we haven't updated our leveling guides in a while. I was horrified to learn that my own were written two years ago. So, without further ado, here's my comprehensive guide to druid leveling in Cataclysm: Go anywhere. Do anything. Ding! Go anywhere. Do anything. Ding! I suspect this is not going to pass the laugh test with our editors, so let's see if I can rustle up some slightly more useful advice past the cut. Update: A few hours after this column was submitted on Monday morning, Blizzard went live with its class feedback series on the forums, seeking input from players on potential changes to their classes. The last time they did this was around the time they were tossing around ideas on class updates that later appeared in the Cataclysm beta, so this is your chance to weigh your experiences in this expansion and write suggestions. The druid threads are here (US version) and here (EU version), and we'll talk about this next week.
Shifting Perspectives: Not seeing your gear is no excuse
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, hunter polearms are tossed into the trash bin and are then very quickly retrieved. As many of you know, transmogrification -- from the ancient Greek trans, meaning "To make one's gear look better," and mogrification, meaning "Than it actually is" -- is coming to the game in patch 4.3. As such, we are joined again by Letitia, the official fashion consultant and Snark Passenger to the Shifting Perspectives column. Some of you may already know her from Shifting Perspectives: Fun with race choice, in which we pronounced one particular human model a perfect in-game example of Stalinist realism, and Shifting Perspectives: The druid of 2010, in which Allison was scraped off a bus station bathroom floor in order to write the article. In the interests of not seeing a flood of druids run around in uncoordinated ensembles, we have assembled a set of suggestions you may wish to review. They were compiled and ranked according to the scientific rationale of not wanting to flinch whenever I shifted out of form. Our priorities are the helm, shoulder, cloak, and chest slots -- the ones that really define an outfit -- and I'll revisit the series on some future date, or whenever I can get Letitia away from her chosen career of throwing garbage at Los Angeles stylists. Oh, and as an important aside -- Anne's World of Wardrobe series has a lot of good tips for anyone looking to put together a complete tier set. Reddit's WoW Transmogrification subreddit also has a lot of good tips, as do Wowhead's blogs on unique items and NPC sets to copy. The Visual Roleplay Gear List is also an incredibly addictive site, though not all of the sets it features will be possible to use for "mogging."
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a restoration druid in patch 4.2, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we finish gearing up in Firelands. Greetings, my fellow trees. This week we're going to finish off our series on gearing a restoration druid in patch 4.2. Part one included headpieces, neckpieces, shoulders, cloaks, chestpieces, bracers, gloves, belts, legs and boots. Today we'll address rings, trinkets, weapons, off-hands, and relics. Yes, the tank threat changes from this past week merit commentary as well, but before we do that, run -- don't walk -- to your nearest tier 6 raid in search of Thunderheart. Aaaaaand ... transmogrify! With God as my witness, I will never wear a hunter polearm (or at least give the appearance of doing so) again! As before, if your druid is brand new to level 85 or still leveling, you'll probably find the older series of guides a bit more immediately useful: Helm, neck, shoulders, and cloak Chest, bracers, gloves, belt, legs, boots, and rings Trinkets, weapons, offhands, and relics Read: Gearing a restoration druid in patch 4.2, part 1
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a restoration druid in patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we turn our attention to intellect leather. As a quick note, I'm going to revisit our bear gearing guide over the next few weeks in order to add PVP gear and to split normal/heroic versions as per the request of our commenters; I agree that the present version probably isn't as convenient as intended. I'll drop another note in the column once I've finished with that. There's lots of new gear for restoration druids to look for in patch 4.2, so -- as with the bears -- it's high time to update our gear lists. Once again, I've split the guide, and the ring, weapon, offhand, relic, and trinket column will run next week, as they require more discussion. As this guide addresses gear that's been added to the game from the Zandalari heroic level through Firelands, it's probably most helpful to people who are already sitting on a few epics (or at least heroic blues). If you're a fresh level 85 restoration druid or still leveling, you'll probably find our previous series on gearing a resto druid more immediately helpful, but please keep in mind that stat priorities have shifted more toward mastery these days: Helm, neck, shoulders, and cloak Chest, bracers, gloves, belt, legs, boots, and rings Trinkets, weapons, offhands, and relics
Shifting Perspectives: Developer Q&A touches on resto druid issues
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we turn our attention the most recent developer Q&A ... and we all know what happened the last time we did that. I spent the weekend being a trifle distracted (and then heartbroken) by the Women's World Cup, but at least we can feel good about the winner. Oh, and for all those of you who utilize musk deer glands in your health regimen, please remember to check them for steroids, in much the same fashion that one would check flour for boll weevils and rice grains for moths in one's pantry. This has been a public service announcement by your friendly local World of Warcraft blog, which takes an interest in this matter because a commenter once accused it of fomenting unrest in North Korea. What the hell is this column supposed to be about? Oh, right. Anyway, the final developer Q&A was published this past Friday, and within it were a few nuggets of interest to restoration druids. We didn't get any questions that specifically dealt with our spec, so I am not required to Hulk out over the lack of answers that Blizzard has traditionally provided to such questions, so let's spend today being happy and relatively sane.
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: Haste and you -- a guide to not wanting to kill yourself
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we had to Google the Goldilocks story because we kept getting it wrong. Once upon a time, a blogger ventured into a magical forest in search of a stat known as haste. In the forest, there was a cottage where a family of three bears -- Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear -- all lived. So the blogger -- "Hey, wait a minute," said the bears. "We don't care about haste. Haste is terrible. Clear off." So the blogger left the bears' cottage and ventured deeper into the forest, eventually finding a family of trees, which was interesting insofar as the forest was itself comprised of trees, and by all rights, this made no sense. Like the bears, the trees were a family unit with the requisite Papa Tree, Mama Tree, and Baby Tree. Fortunately for the blogger, the trees were out on a walk (just work with me here) when she arrived, and she sat down to sample the dinner they had left behind. "Haste!" said the blogger, delighted at her discovery. "The trees like haste!" She sat at Papa Tree's plate. "He has too much haste," she said. She sat at Mama Tree's plate. "She has too little haste," she said. She sat at Baby Tree's plate. "This haste is just right!" she said and gobbled it up. "There's no such thing as too much haste," said Papa Tree outside the window, observing the loss of his offspring's dinner. "And do you have Dark Intent? I think you'll find that my wife's haste is -- " "You can have too much haste," argued Mama Tree. "How much do you have right now? Didn't you just pass the breakpoint for a ninth tick of Wild Growth? Why aren't you focusing on mastery? It -- " And so the blogger sprinted out of the magical forest and threw herself in front of a magical train, sobbing on her way to mortal oblivion, "I was told that there would be no math in this expansion!"
Shifting Perspectives: Guide to patch 4.2 for bear and tree druids
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we've returned from the Angry Dome. Well, after pissing off Blizzard for the millionth week in a row, today we're going to turn our attention to slightly less explosive concerns. By the way, "Tank Q&A sucks" is a top search phrase for last week's Shifting. Just thought I'd mention. As long as we're on the subject of the developer Q&As, I might as well make an uncomfortable segue to observing that Blizzard's now taking queries for the Q&A on healers. Go ask questions! Personally I am very interested in hearing if they're going to update Tree of Life form, or make Innervate a baseline ability rather than the 31-point talent in the restoration tree. Ha ha! I kid because I love. On the off chance that patch 4.2 hits today (which it probably won't, but eh), this is a quick and dirty guide to the patch notes that'll concern you if you play a bear or tree druid. If the patch hits next week, we'll keep ourselves occupied making daisy chains or something. Or, if the healer Q&A gets published sooner than expected, I'll write another enraged diatribe for everyone to enjoy.
Shifting Perspectives: Examining the tier 12 set bonuses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we preview tier 12. Hey, folks. Today's going to be a slightly shorter edition of Shifting (say that three times fast), as I'm a little under the weather, but I've been wanting to take a peek at the upcoming tier 12 set bonuses for bears and resto. As a quick update to a previous post, I occasionally get into trouble in this column by assuming that feral changes are only ever going to concern bears. We were spoiled by having Chase Hasbrouck (also known as Alaron of The Fluid Druid) around recently to cover the cat portion of Shifting Perspectives. The strength nerf in patch 4.2 is in fact a noticeable nerf to our cat brethren, even if it's not going to affect bears quite so much. Kalon's comment is a good explanation as to why. On that note, we're now looking for a new kitty columnist, so please apply if you're interested!
Shifting Perspectives: The future non-suck of mastery
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we contemplate the possibility of writing a future article on predictions that came true, because goddamn, we're amazing. One of these days I really ought to write an edition of Shifting that's nothing but a smug-a-thon on how much I've been able to get right. That this necessitates ignoring the 95% that I get wrong is somewhat troublesome if you're one of those people who gets hung up on the ephemeral phenomenon sometimes known as "accuracy," but a good writer never lets the truth stand between herself and a great story. On this occasion, I am pleased to say -- to a legion of people who could reasonably have expected an upcoming change anyway -- I told you so. Booyeah!
Shifting Perspectives: Mana wars, crowd control and patch 4.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we swap Innervates with a new air of defiance. The most interesting part of the proposed patch 4.2 changes is arguably what's being done to crowd control, but that's not the only addition to the game that's going to affect us. At the moment, there actually aren't a metric ton of changes in store for druids, but I expect that itself will change. As a quick update to my ongoing TankWatch project, I returned to some dungeon-running on my alts between the patch 4.1 and 4.2 PTRs. As of evening Monday on May 9, this is what I've seen of tank representation through the low-level dungeon finder: Druid 9% Paladin 60% Warrior 31% My goblin priest should hit Outland soon, so we'll see what impact death knights wind up having on the statistics.
Shifting Perspectives: Restoration Druid 101
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we are sobbing inside now that Disentanglement has to be listed as an advantage for playing restoration. One of the things that jumped out at me while writing the Cataclysm version of Shifting Perspectives: Restoration 101 was that Blizzard really did succeed in its effort to make things a little more straightforward for players. While I cut out a few sections that didn't really feel like they were contributing to the discussion of the spec at 85, restoration has fewer caveats these days than it did toward the end of Wrath of the Lich King. Haste in particular is a far smaller rat's nest these days. As with our other 101 guides, you shouldn't consider this a comprehensive guide; it's a cheat sheet intended to get a player up and running with the spec as quickly as possible. If you're looking for a more encyclopedic approach: Elitist Jerks' guide to restoration in Cataclysm (updated for patch 4.1) is basically an extended and mathier version of this article. Restokin's guide to healing at 85 (updated for patch 4.1). Keeva's (of Tree Bark Jacket) comprehensive restoration druid guide, including tips on leveling, BoA gear, and more. Addresses post-patch 4.1 changes. Rank 4 Healing Touch's resto healing guide (updated for patch 4.1). Resto Dude's restoration druid guide (updated for patch 4.1).
Shifting Perspectives: Druid tanking and healing the new Zul'Gurub
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, Allison suffers humiliating wipes in new 5-man content so you don't have to. I got a little more experience in the revamped Zul'Gurub this week on the patch 4.1 PTR and have returned in triumph (and toting many a repair bill) with a comprehensive guide to surviving one of two new Rise of the Zandalari heroics. This guide should help you avoid the dungeon's knottiest problems as either a bear or a tree, although I've had to be less specific than I would have liked. Turns out that most boss abilities aren't up on the PTR version of Wowhead yet, and while tanking or healing, most groups frown on my tabbing out to record exactly how much damage stuff like Breath of Hethiss does ("Would you say that 26,000 damage per second is too much, not enough, or just right?"). (Cats and moonkin, I'm very sorry, but I'm not sure what DPS does. It's been my experience that bosses drop dead for inexplicable reasons, whether it's congestive heart failure, bad oysters, or old Sicilian curses. DPS is involved in some hazy manner here, but damn if I know how.) Keep in mind that I've pugged all of my groups on the PTR, so any estimates of the content's difficulty will necessarily be colored by that. If you're going to do the new ZG with guild groups on the live servers (particularly if your guild's outfitted in tier 11), you probably won't be as worried about some of the issues I encountered.
Shifting Perspectives: Bear and tree druid Q&A
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we rummage through our email. This column was originally going to be a thorough review of the new Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman experience for bears and trees, but I ran into a few issues when most of my groups caused me to consider leaving the planet. Personally, I still hope for a PTR PuG that doesn't explode in a firestorm of threats and recrimination after the tank eats an entirely avoidable 120,000 damage spike to the face after ignoring instructions on clicking cauldrons that give huge buffs to damage avoidance and didn't I mention the cauldrons at the start of the run while we were buffing because I'm pretty sure I did and here comes Mr. Ragequit. Honestly, I don't know where I find these people, if they are people. For all I know, the vast majority of characters pugging the "new" Rise of the Zandalari heroics on the PTR are disaffected bots still angry over the loss of so many brothers and sisters on the live realms, but I'd like to think that a collection of scripts and macros would have more pride in the quality of its work. Oh well. With luck, I'll have a few more successful groups to add to an article next week -- but in the meantime, we have a few reader questions to answer.
Shifting Perspectives: Dispatch from the patch 4.1 PTR
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This week, we nose around the patch 4.1 PTR. As promised, I hit the patch 4.1 PTR to get a feel for the changes we talked about last week. Naturally, the first change I ran to confirm was Prowl's new icon, which I'm pleased to report is totally kickass and addresses all our icon-related needs for the forseeable future. This patch isn't going live with new raid content, so the premade toons on offer are kitted in heroic blues (ilevel 346). This gear is all easily obtainable with a little elbow grease on the live servers, so the numbers you'll see in this column should be representative of what a pre-raid druid will look like. Just for kicks, I also copied my main over, and she's in slightly better gear feral-wise and slightly worse gear resto-wise. As an aside, when did we get that cool little swooping animation upon changing into flight form? Is this totally new, or did it happen in patch 4.0.6 and I missed it while buried under a mountain of snow and subsequent flooding in my winter-ridden hell? Or -- scary thought -- am I so used to shifting to flight form in midair that I've failed to notice it for months? God, that's terrifying.
