restoration-druid-talents
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Shifting Perspectives: Making life hell for groups with Mists of Pandaria druid talents
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we are delighted to discover that we are still able to create localized black holes in the next expansion. To me, the best thing about Mists of Pandaria talents is how they benefit me so much more than the rest of my colleagues on this column. Tanks and healers do not, as a rule, care about anything that affects their damage. They care about survivability and a lot of stuff that looks suspiciously like what we call utility and -- perhaps most of all -- outrolling the hunters on Kiril. To see a talent tree full of things that do not improve anybody's damage gives me great pleasure. After finishing this article, I realized that I had considered many of these talents largely in the context of how annoying I could make life for a 5-man group by using them. Hmmm. We meet again, Mr. PuG. But this time, the advantage is mine.
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: Restoration talents in 13066
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, we eschew the future in favor of the present, and are also delighted to discover that the Mac video capture bug appears to have been fixed on the beta. Many thanks to Raylis of Wyrmrest Accord for putting together a guide to troll form associations and allowing me to use it. We'll have a worgen version up once the barbershop starts cooperating! Resto's picked up a lot of interesting stuff recently. Whether these changes survive to patch 4.0.1 intact is anyone's guess, but today's column is a comprehensive look at all restoration talents as of build 13066 on a level 85 premade druid (average ilevel 335). Because the subject matter's on the dry side unless you're a healer, I've also included: Some notes concerning Cataclysm questing Why Anduin Wrynn is awesome Video of male worgen interrogation techniques (now that my video capture is actually working, you'll see more videos popping up soon) Video of said male worgen casting most of our heals with the user interface active to give you a sense of the numbers and efficiency you'll see at level 85 with pre-heroic blues
Shifting Perspectives: Healers, selfishness and trouble ahead
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we stress the importance of pattern recognition. Cirocco: I enjoy a healing model based around triage, quick reactions and maximizing output. I very much doubt I'll enjoy a healing model based around parsimoniously doling out mana and yelling at people who snipe my HOTs. I've been guilty of a little pessimism concerning the restoration tree in Cataclysm. Many of my experiences healing on the beta haven't been good, and while I'm willing to allow for the likely possibility that that's just because I suck, it hasn't escaped my attention that a lot of druids have had the same hard time. Normal Cataclysm instances aren't bad if people are well-geared and play sensibly, but when things go wrong, it feels like you're emptying your mana into a group with nothing to show for it. To be frank, it really is too early to evaluate whether the 5-man experience is representative of what we can expect in raids at 85, but I'm not worried about the numbers themselves. As Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) has reminded us, numbers are pretty easy to fix. What worries me is more systemic; right now, it's hard to escape the conclusion that what made the restoration spec succeed in Wrath of the Lich King is a bad fit for Cataclysm, and a lot of our effectiveness is going to depend on player behavior that I'm not sure is going to change. EDIT: Naturally I had to finish this article shortly before new information concerning beta build 12857 became available. It's not live on the beta servers yet, and may not be (12857 might be a purely internal build, in which case I wonder who Boubouille paid off), but there are a few things there that would have impacted how I wrote this column.
Cataclysm Beta: Restoration druid specialization and talents
So it goes that we've had another beta patch -- and it's been a highly exciting one, to say the least. Not all that long ago, Blizzard announced that they would taking the current 51-point talent trees and trimming them down to 31-point talent trees, much as what players had when WoW was first released. Further, players will no longer gain a talent point every single level; instead, it will be approximately every other level, and a level 85 character will end up having a total of 41 talent points to spend. The purpose of these changes is to make all of the talents more meaningful to players, in an effort to get rid of those talents deemed boring or flat. It's quite a lofty goal, but Blizzard seems to be pulling it off nicely thus far. Further, once players hit level 10, they will choose a tree to specialize in, granting them new abilities and bonuses which assist in their chosen role. Restoration druids, specifically, are getting some pretty major changes already in Cataclysm, causing this change to push things even further. The big change, of course, is the highly controversial Tree of Life change, wherein the form will now act as cooldown ability instead of a standard shapeshift -- yes, it had to be mentioned at least once. All that aside, the more interesting aspect is how Blizzard is going to handle restoration druid leveling. Although it's often brushed aside as a trivial issue, having a healing spec that is able to quest and function on its own is fairly important; with a majority of a class' damage potential being shifted to the new specialization model, it's going to be interesting to see how Blizzard balances and differentiates between the damage capabilities of a DPSer and a healer. Regardless of design philosophy, Blizzard did push a new beta patch this week that introduced the new 31-point talent tree as well as the specializations for each class. Before we go about taking a look into these changes, let me start by warning you not to get upset over anything that you might see. Blizzard listed in the patch notes that the druid class as a whole isn't very far along in the development for the new talent trees, and multiple things are still likely to change once another pass is made.
Shifting Perspectives: Restoration 101
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, a quick and dirty guide to raising one's tree from a young sapling to a mighty oak, or other suitably impressive arboreal species. Whenever other columnists here write really good columns, I sit at my computer and swear a blue streak, for I am a jealous god. Sacco, damn him, turned out a great article on the basics of elemental shamans, and for a while I've been kicking around bits and pieces of 101-esque columns for all four druid specs. This was the last shove I needed to get that done. While I expect our new balance blogger (a.k.a. Murmurs, the person I will be forcing to do all my number-crunching in the future with bribes or, when necessary, threats) will address moonkin, I'll cover bears, cats, and today, trees. A quick note on what I want to accomplish here: I'm addressing this to people with no prior knowledge of the spec who want the tools to become reasonably competent healers quickly. By necessity, that means we're going to gloss over a few finer points; this is a cheat sheet, not an encyclopedia. When I say (for example) that Improved Tranquility needs to be dragged out behind a barn and killed with an axe, I'm not going to spend paragraphs explaining why that is, or examining situations where you could actually get some use from it. If you think I've glossed over something truly important, please drop a comment and I'll direct readers to anything they really need to know.
