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Shifting Perspectives: State of the class, part 1 - Balance
Every Tuesday, or possibly Thursday when the writer votes on Tuesday and spends Wednesday screaming and beating her laptop over formatting errors, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week Allison Robert steals John Patricelli's column once again, secure in the knowledge that she will never be forced to atone for her crime as long as she writes something nice about ferals and keeps a respectful distance from Dan O'Halloran's whip.I hate Tauren cat form.Good. I got that out of my system and can write something productive. Although, believe me, if I could get away with it, an entire Shifting Perspectives would be devoted to just how much I hate Tauren cat form. I mean, just look at it! Look at the angle on the horns! The cat can't bite anything! Christ, I just -- hi, Dan. Yes, I'm totally writing the column! Look at me go!This week, mindful as always of American election-year politicking, I'm going to borrow a page from presidential duties and write a little something I like to call "State of the Class." Druids have undergone a number of changes in the transition to Wrath of the Lich King, and will acquire even more as they level to 80. We are one of Blizzard's primary targets for both gear and role consolidation, which raises a few questions over how comfortably we're going to scale in relation to pure classes and what we can realistically expect on the march to a new level cap.The TL:DR version of this article -- I believe our future is generally bright, the Druid community continues to have a few concerns over certain aspects of the class, our focus in PvP seems to be changing the most, and I hate Tauren cat form. This is a three-part post, so let's get started with balance. However, if you want to jump ahead to feral, you'll find that here; and the third part, restoration, is here.
Breakfast Topic: A knock on knockbacks
The game-changing Echoes of Doom patch brought in a slew of new abilities and some of them included this nifty little feature called 'knockback', which effectively knocks back enemy players and NPCs. It's a whole lot of fun, particularly if you're knocking them off the bridge in Dun Baldar. I've been on the nasty receiving end of a knockback that sent me to my death in Eye of the Storm. I think it's a lot of fun, and it really does create some interesting conundrums in Arenas. Of course, not everyone is thrilled by them. Our very own Allison Robert, bear tank extraordinaire, has torn out about half her hair (poor Allie!) in frustration from knockbacks messing with tanking. She implores you to use these abilities with restraint for the sake of her sanity. It's a level-headed request that Blizzard hears. They've recently hinted at new Glyphs that will remove the knockback effect from certain spells such as Blast Wave, Typhoon, and Thunderstorm. How's your experience with knockback effects? Have you used it to kill enemies in Battlegrounds? Used it to escape some pesky Rogue slicing and dicing your butt? Maybe you've even used it in *gasp* an instance and rearranged the mobs that the tank so painstakingly positioned through the pull. How have you been (ab)using knockbacks? What's your take on the new mechanic? Yay? Nay? Art-fay?
A plea on behalf of frustrated tanks everywhere
Several classes and specs have gotten "knockback" abilities as part of patch 3.02 and the game's transition to Wrath of the Lich King, and I've had fun watching these skills be deployed in battlegrounds to extensive and quite possibly evil use. It's pretty funny watching an elemental Shaman defend AB's lumber mill now, and the AV bridge? Even funnier. And yet...as I laughed, I started to cry inside, because I knew that these skills would also be deployed in 5-man groups and raids to much less amusing effect. And man, it's a real burden being right so often.
Shifting Perspectives: Moonkin in 3.02 and beyond
Every Tuesday, or possibly Thursday when the writer realizes that nobody writing about moonkin DPS on the internet agrees with each other, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week Allison Robert, having Hibernated John Patricelli and run away as fast as her laser-chicken legs will carry her, examines the new moonkin talents and glyphs in 3.02 and Wrath. I do apologize about the wait here, folks. There's been a lot of contradictory information from both the beta and an array of Druid bloggers on how moonkin are shaping up for Wrath. While a lot of this is just the normal ebb and flow of changes in the alpha and beta, most of it is fueled by a few new talents and the set of glyphs that will become available. All of these have the potential to seriously impact your gameplay and rotation choices, so Balance DPS is going to be (at least, from current appearances) a lot twitchier and more proc-dependent than its counterpart in the feral tree. In addition, you'll probably have to make a few hard choices that will be affected by what your raid's going to need from you (although there is a truly amazing talent deep in the balance tree that, no matter what else you pick, is going to be a significant raid DPS contribution). As Balance is the only spec that I haven't gotten to raid on, I didn't want to go live with this until trying to figure out which pieces of information were accurate and which ones weren't. Bear in mind that Blizzard is still tinkering with Balance as I write this. For the guide to feral in 3.02, head here; for the guide to resto in 3.02, head here. You'll probably want to be familiar with the resto changes, as balance has traditionally depended on a few key talents in that tree, some of which have changed. Otherwise, read on for a comprehensive look at balance's new talents, updated skills, and glyphs!
Typhoon bug dominates the Wrath beta
Remember a few content patches ago, the PTR had a fun little bug where Warlocks had the spell effect of Seed of Corruption castable rather than the spell itself? So Warlocks had an infinite range, no cooldown, no global cooldown, mana free, instant Seed of Corruption? Remember the chaos that caused? Well, guess what? It happened again!No, no, it wasn't Seed of Corruption this time. It happened with the new Druid spell Typhoon. Specifically Typhoon Rank 5. It's already been hotfixed, so don't bother trying it now- you missed out. If you want to see exactly what people were doing with this spell, just check out the video above.I had a chance to experience a little of this firsthand, and it was impressive, to say the least. A Moonkin rolling up to an enemy faction's town and laying waste is just hilarious to see, though not so much after the tenth time. Remember, this thing didn't even trigger the Global Cooldown. Druids were running around with macros that cast this spell ten or twenty times simultaneously. Nothing could even hope to survive, especially when you got a bunch of them together. Five or six Moonkin in Naxx-25 was just absurd.If you want to see more of the bug, the tipster that supplied the above video has a whole bunch of them. Balance Druids, I hope as many of you got in on this as possible. Everyone gets a turn to be horribly, hideously overpowered. That was yours.[ Thanks, Bular! ]
Wrath Beta patch notes: Balance Druids
Now that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is live, and the patch notes are up, we have some solid information on Druid talents as they're being tested. Here is what the patch revealed:Balance treeIf you were to invest three points into your Brambles tier three talent, you will not only have the current 75% boost to damage caused by Thorns and Entangling Roots, but your Treants will have their damage boosted by 15%. In addition, all damage caused by Treants, and any attacks done to you while Barkskin is active, have a 15% chance of dazing the target for three seconds. Actually, Force of Nature, which summons your Treants, is having its cooldown reduced from three minutes to two. This will be a nifty talent for Moonkin in battlegrounds and arena, although it won't be enough to convert all of those Restoration druids to the ways of the Giant Chicken.
Not quite a set - Typhoon
We've looked at a couple of the Tier 2 look-a-like sets in the past (the Green Wrath and Purple Judgement sets for those keeping score at home) and I felt it was time to continue. Maybe it's just me, but I really like when my armor set LOOKS complete. My shammy is currently striding about Shattrath in his Tidefury set, and I've had quite a few nice comments on the character's overall look. So, if you're as strangely obsessed with completing a look as I am, I hope you'll find these articles on non-set sets appealing. If you prefer gear with the best stats over looks, you may not be getting that here.This time around, I'm looking at a Shaman healing set, which happens to mimic the look of the Ten Storms tier 2 set. The graphics really don't do it justice, as you'll actually get little bolts of lightning playing around the shoulders and head when you put this gear on. As everything in the set has a slightly nautical naming convention, and the colors give off a deep-sea kinda vibe, I am now dubbing this set "Typhoon". Feel free to spread that around, folks.
Tyan Typhoon 600 series reaches 256 gigflops for "personal supercomputing"
Remember that 16-core Tyan Typhoon personal supercomputer we told you about back in March? Yeah, that was before all the dual-core and now quad-core action started flooding the market. Well, we've just laid our eyes on the Typhoon 600 series, which is loaded to the brim with Clovertown chips, reaching 256 gigaflops worth of processing power from a single outlet. Of course, the Typhoon isn't exactly going to crack the Top500 list of supercomputers, but it'll probably work much better than that those decked out quad-core getups we've seen thus far. If you really need that many chips, just be prepared not to flip out when you see the £10,000 ($19,080) pricetag, which works out to about 25,600,000 flops per pound sterling.
