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Shifting Perspectives: Karapalooza 2010
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, after saving the world, we end it for others. They were in our way. Every so often I get the hankering to go stomp a place that previously rode my ass like Zorro, and I nominate Karazhan as being among the better places to do it. After wiping to heroic Icecrown bosses for a few hours, there's something wonderfully therapeutic about venting your frustrations on the tenants of an older raid, particularly when they cough up 1,000 gold, mounts, enchants, and gear that looks delightfully silly on a level 80. You remember Kara, right? It's that place that used to be hard. Doesn't narrow it down? It's the big building occupied by crazy dead people. Also doesn't narrow it down? Harumph. The place with the long hallway full of undead concubines? I see that jogged your memory.
Shifting Perspectives: Changing Nature's Grace
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we're heading back into the world of nasty, little over-budget talents bothering balance druids as we fight to save our 1 keys from total disaster. It's been a harsh week in my little corner of the world. Between attempting to get up for work, falling back down to sleep for 5 more hours, taking medications that I can't even pronounce the names of, and several other unpleasant things that have been plaguing me for the past five days; there's been little time for actual coherent thought in my life. So forgive me if this week's article is a little short (I can already hear people cheering) and slightly confusing. I promise to try and make this post as readable as possible, but I am bound to ramble on incoherently at some point; though I'm not entirely sure how that's any different from normal. Last week, Shifting Perspectives took at look at the various possibilities for changing Eclipse. This week, that trend will continue as we explore ways in which or other problem, if less vilified, talent can be adjusted. Yes, folks, I'm talking about Nature's Grace. This long-standing talent that has been a staple in balance builds since WoW was released. Much like Eclipse, Ghostcrawler has already stated that Nature's Grace is high on the list to be changed. Also like Eclipse, many people wonder why Nature's Grace hasn't already been changed as it is so problematic. While Ghostcrawler mentions it's a big deal, many people fail to understand how big of a deal Nature's Grace really is. Nature's Grace is an awesome talent. It is a tad over-budget, but not nearly as much as Eclipse is, and, honestly, having an over-budget talent here or there isn't necessarily a terrible thing in of itself. The only thing that plagues Nature's Grace is how easily it allows for Wrath to be GCD capped. Again, though, this isn't so terrible of a prospect in of itself. After all, this is a mechanic that balance druids have been dealing with since haste was introduced into the game. Wrath ramming into GCD issues like the Titanic hitting an iceberg only became problematic when balance druids also failed to turn just a little to the left during patch 3.2. Prior to patch 3.2, Wrath was maybe only 10% of our overall damage done, so any scaling issues that it had was fairly trivial. When patch 3.2 came around and Wrath jumped from 10% of our damage, or less, to being 40% or more of our damage, the scaling issues became a real problem.
Shifting Perspectives: Tree 1, Arthas 0
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we save the world (of Warcraft). Originally this week's article was going to concern stomping Karazhan from top-to-bottom as a feral/resto druid, and then I got Big Bad Wolf for the opera event. Suffice it to say that the stomping took an abrupt U-turn, and I never got pictures or video of the other Kara fights that I've successfully solo'd on dozens of other occasions (though I grant they were all occasions that did not include humiliating wipes to an overgrown dog). If I weren't in the middle of a time crunch it probably would've been doable, but regrettably I will have to run a feature on how to make 1,000 gold soloing Karazhan on a later date. In the meantime, Alaron's managed to solo Big Bad Wolf successfully, but my main is in the somewhat sticky situation of not being a night elf. With the upcoming Icecrown raid buffs going all the way to 30% damage/healing/health/absorbs eventually, more and more raids are going to find their way to Arthas. Buffs aside, a lot of Arthas' difficulty lies in execution, and I started jotting down a few notes that I hope might be helpful to other druids likely to attempt the fight. We were fortunate to get both the 10- and 25-man version down, and I got astoundingly lucky on one 10-man attempt with back-to-back selections as a Harvest Soul target while I was running a video capture. I've seen a lot of comments online that caster druids aren't well-suited to dealing with this, and that's just not true at all.
Shifting Perspectives: Changing Eclipse
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we're going to be looking at the most common gripe of the balance druid. That fickle little talent that every balance druid loves to hate: Eclipse. What's really wrong with it? How can we make it better? Why do we misname the procs? Every time that I visit the Damage Dealing or Druid forums, I often feel like I am back in Wrath of the Lich King beta. During that time, every day there was some thread about some balance druid issue that needed to be addressed, usually it was Eclipse. For those that currently take up an issue with Eclipse, I want to personally apologize for the state that it has come to today. Although I am not a design for WoW, nor do I have any direct influence on the design philosophy of any class, I can't help but thinking every day that I, along with several other notable figures, paved the way for Eclipse to become what it is today. For those that do not know what I am talking about, let me explain. During WotLK Beta, Eclipse was a terrible talent. By terrible, I don't mean that it was on par with Genesis. No, it was worse than Genesis. Eclipse was so bad during the early stages of Beta that there was more than several incarnations of the talent where it was a DPS loss to spend any talent points into it. Eclipse started out where you could only gain one proc every minute and the proc was either 10% increased damage to Wrath or 10% increased crit chance to Starfire. I shouldn't say it was all Eclipse's fault that it sucked, at the time the Glyph of Starfire had no extension limitation which certainly complicated the matter as well. Even without that, though, Eclipse simply wasn't worth it. There was no point in proccing Eclipse to buff Starfire at that point because 10% was too at the mercy of RNG to have a noticeable effect, and Wrath did not play well enough with Nature's Grace at the time to make its Eclipse proc viable.
Shifting Perspectives: Tanks and the barrier to entry
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we have cause to reflect on something written by our esteemed colleague Archmage Pants: "Tanking is an interesting thing. It makes you hate everyone else in the party." It comes as no shock to a longtime player that WoW's social culture is riddled with a number of real-life counterparts, and one of the more troublesome is something called the barrier to entry. In real life, this refers to the difficulty of becoming a qualified professional in a given field, and there are some jobs where the barrier to entry is very high indeed. Take neurosurgery, for example. Ideally, you want to be completely sure of someone's aptitude for the job before you let them take a buzzsaw to your skull. Society relies on the grueling education and residency required to be a neurosurgeon to weed out anyone prone to use of the word, "Oops." While there's nothing in WoW that comes close to the seriousness of getting a competent surgeon, most players would acknowledge that there are similarities between the RL and in-game version of the "barrier to entry." I'd argue that the comparison is strongest when you're discussing tanks. Tanks, and more importantly, beginner tanks who could potentially ease the tank shortage that causes lengthy queue times for DPS in the Dungeon Finder, have to hurdle a series of problems in the effort to become geared and experienced. Some of these problems are the result of deliberate design choices on Blizzard's part, but the larger share is the consequence of a playerbase that needs tanks but is (ironically) hostile to beginners. Everyone wants an experienced professional. Nobody wants to be there for the learning process. And if you're a beginner tank, there's a lot of crap in your way that Blizzard didn't put there.
Cataclysm: Stats and system changes for balance druids
Moonkin form may not be able to fly, but this balance druid is still up on cloud nine. It's another bright new shiny day in the World of Warcraft, and our feathery friend (you did know that Eyonix plays a balance druid, right?) made a post of epic proportions. How does it fair for us? Well, let's have a gander shall we? Spirit is being completely removed from caster DPS gear in the next expansion. Caster DPS will no longer have to rely on the atrocious spirit stat for their mana regeneration, instead non-healers will have other methods of regaining their mana within combat. The latter part of this change is already true for PvE balance druids. Instead of spirit, we rely entirely on our crits to keep our damage flow pumping. I would expect that this is the type of system that Blizzard is going to go with, although it will probably be heavily adjusted since total dependence on the mana return from crits wasn't obtainable until higher levels of gear. More after the break.
Shifting Perspectives: Are DoTs worth it?
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are going to explore the issues surrounding the use of damage over time effects in a balance druid's rotation, as we figure out if they are pewpew worthy, or just plain peew. If you are like me and have played a balance druid since before people knew that druids had a spec that wasn't restoration, then this question isn't a new one to you. The sad truth of the balance spec is that a vast majority of our damage potential is tied up into our main nukes; Starfire and Wrath. Moonfire and especially Insect Swarm have, for the most part, always been at the bottom rung of our damage potential. Back in The Burning Crusade, when balance was first considered to be 'viable' by the mainstream, Insect Swarm was never used in a raid setting due to its poor damage. Although Moonfire held strong, by the Sunwell level, balance druids were able to get so much haste and crit that even our staple of staple spells was left in the dust. Swing around to Wrath of the Lich King, and there have been some major strides to fix this issue. When the expansion first came out, there were two key talents, Nature's Splendor and Improved Insect Swarm, added to boost our DoT damage. Even then, Insect Swarm was falling too far behind by the time players were in Naxx level gear, but this time around there was some quick work on the part of the development team to remedy the situation. Insect Swarm had its scaling and base damage increased to be viable once again. Not to mention that our three standard issue PvE glyphs have all centered around our DoTs. However, we are no longer in Naxx, we are now in Icecrown Citadel, and the issue of DoT damage is coming up once again. Are Insect Swarm and Moonfire holding up in terms of damage? Is their scaling sufficient to keep them in our rotations? Let's take a look.
Shifting Perspectives: In defense of a glyph everyone hates
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we make a dangerous segue from curling to the issue of Healing Touch in raids, shattering our once-promising career with a finger cramp. I'd be the first to admit I don't take the game quite as seriously as the hardcore theorycrafters at EJ. To be fair to WoW, it's hardly the only game in that position; with the Olympics on, I've had the opportunity to acquaint myself with many questionable pasttimes like curling. Someone even went so far as to set hipster music to a series of clips featuring expert players crouching on the ice, staring down the run with the coiled alertness of a Serengeti hunter. The athletic grace is impressive until you consider that they are watching a large rock slide down the rink at the speed of a miniature dachshund while teammates scrub frantically at the ice in the hopes that the rock will travel a few more inches. One realizes: a). the fundamental absurdity of the human condition, and: b). that the effort to maintain a dignified façade has caused you to soil your pants. The inability to treat what is meant to be a fun hobby with the gravitas due, say, a shuttle launch or an Irish wake, has occasionally resulted in problems when readers take material more seriously than I do. The official forums have also convinced me that any deviation from the standard imposed by theorycrafters and spreadsheets is going to be greeted with hostility by anyone who decries the notion of individual choice in a game, which makes today's topic -- finding a place for the druid's worst heal in progression raiding -- a bit touchy. I am required by law and contract to be sensitive to the needs of the differently-minded in our community, and as such, I am going to borrow (read: steal) a technique first employed by the humorist Dave Barry in a 1991 column. Yes. The following article has been closed-captioned for the humor-impaired.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance 101 - A PvP primer
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are taking a giant leap into the black hole that has come to be known as balance druid PvP. Brace yourselves, my feathery friends, the ride is about to get bumpy. I don't have a silly introduction this week. Instead, I have my serious hat on. Before I begin to write this, I want to say a few things about myself. I am no longer an avid balance PvP player. I do PvP on my balance druid, but only in BGs and no longer in Arena. I did do Arenas in The Burning Crusade, where I ranked rather high in a 2v2 with a rogue, but I understand that experience is no longer relevant to today's Arena. I did not give up on balance PvP because I feel it is too hard, I didn't give up on balance PvP because I feel it is broken, I quit playing balance in Arenas because it requires a lot more time investment than I am able to give it in order to succeed properly. I raid pretty much six days a week, not just on my druid but also on several alts, so I haven't the time to properly give to balance PvP, and if I can't do something fully then I don't do it. I have not been blind to the state of balance PvP though. I follow every single higher rated balance player, and I follow the vocal PvP players as well. I do play Arenas off and on with one of my alts, and I have played against balance druids. Sometimes I beat them, sometimes I lose. For all of its shortcomings, balance PvP is viable, but if you have any interest in balance PvP then you need to be prepared for what is ahead. It is going to be hard. You are going to struggle. There are going to be times where you want to throw your computer off a cliff and scream until your face goes red. For all of that, if you really put forth the effort, if you focus, and learn how to adapt, then you can succeed.
Shifting Perspectives: Bear 101
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we rage against the dying of the light, the nearest raid boss, and the Gunship battle chest until it barfs up a Corpse Tongue Coin. UPDATE: This article has now been updated for Cataclysm as of January 2011. Please go here for the new Cataclysm bear 101 guide! Titles rejected for inclusion in Shifting Perspectives this week: Shifting Perspectives: I will &%#(% kill the next *#%%(%) hunter who *#&%*% rolls on my &#%*#% polearm. Shifting Perspectives: Design successes: Why combining the visual hallmarks of the yay-trees-protector-of-nature-class with the I-kill-defenseless-people-class was totally an amazing idea. Shifting Perspectives: Paladins suck. Editors: You tried to use that last week. Allison: They still suck.
Shifting Perspectives: Balance 101
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we're preening our feathers, practicing our dance moves, and polishing up on our slaughtering skills. There has recently been an in pouring of requests to make starter guides for all of the various classes and specs. Originally I refused such a topic on the standing that any player that wishes to play a balance druid is already 100 times more awesome than every other player out there and wouldn't possibly benefit from such a things. Then a guild mate of mine showed me the light. Balance druids themselves are quite an amazing bunch, but balance druid alts are a completely different story. In all honesty though, even the veteran balance druids cannot agree on talents from time to time. I figured, after a few threats of maiming, that a beginner's guide would actually be a really good thing; providing the caveat that some of the more controversial talents be explored more in-depth.
Shifting Perspectives: Cat 101
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are polite, professional, and have a plan to kill everyone we meet. There's a bit of a gentlemen's wager going on here behind the scenes at WoW.com; the author of the weekly feature that gets the most hits by the end of the month will get cookies from Elizabeth Harper. And I like cookies. The following is a list of titles that were subsequently rejected by the editors for inclusion in this week's edition of Shifting Perspectives: Shifting Perspectives: Naked women playing Cataclysm alpha. Shifting Perspectives: Paladins suck. Shifting Perspectives: Everyone should be nerfed but me. Shifting Perspectives: Gear Score is amazing.
Shifting Perspectives: The state of balance address
Every week, Shifting Perspectives on Fridays explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we brush the tip of the iceberg on the intricacies of our larger, feathered kin; exploring what makes them tick, and how the clock might be tuned too tight. Friends, beasts, strange owl-bear-man-pig creatures; patch 3.3 has been a troublesome time for balance druids. Things have been in utter chaos, there have been reports of a rioter in the streets flailing a giant fish around. There is no order, no law - there is no balance. At least, if you are a frequent visitor to the World of Warcraft Forums, that is what people would have you believe. I take a little bit of different perspective on things. Since the release of Icecrown Citadel, there has been an out-cry from balance druids. They claim that the ability for balance to remain on a competitive level in a raid environment has plummeted off Azeroth. While the recent buff, and the current listing of balance druids on all of the top parse websites, is a good source of credit to these claims, they are still more speculation than they are factual. I am going to say right here, right now; balance druids are, at current, perfectly capable of bringing their fair share of pain during a raid encounter. This is not to say that we are not without our issues, which is what I am going to take time to outline. Beyond our issues, however, there are methods to work around all of our failings, and I will outline those as well.
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.
Ghostcrawler on AoE tanking: "The paladin method...is probably too good"
In a follow up to the thread we discussed recently, Ghostcrawler discusses where the buff to protection warrior DPS will come from (sorry, guys, but it sounds like a buff to Devastate to me, yay for spamming) and a whole lot more. The discussion indicates that while they're interested in single target DPS increases over AoE increases that they don't think tank DPS is that big a factor in boss fights (and to be fair, he's right, it isn't a major factor although the fact that players will overreact to minor factors and stress out their tanks over their DPS, that is) and moves on from there. The discussion about Devastate (that it's an easy ability to adjust) is fair enough but ignores the even easier solution of simply reducing the defensive stance penalty. To be honest I'd like to hear why there's still a penalty there when abilities like Righteous Fury and Frost Presence suffer none. I find the idea that buffing defensive stance would cause big problems for PvP balance kind of absurd. Battle stance grants 15% ArP and Zerker grants 3% crit, at most people would pop into d stance when focused, like they do now anyway. But we're likely to see buffs to Devastate, so just get used to it. My suggestion? While we're buffing Devastate, also have it queue Heroic Strike for us so that's one less button to spam and I can retire my macro.
Shifting Perspectives: Druid healing strats for Icecrown Citadel
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we look at Grid and realize that the dumb buggers are dropping like flies again. Before I write anything else, I want to send a shout-out to Kalon, who is ending the influential feral theorycraft blog ThinkTank. Like many of you, I've been reading ThinkTank for a while and fell in love with both Kalon's analysis and the theorycrafting that he made understandable even to Luddites like myself. To this day I've been experimenting with an idea he suggested concerning Bear DPS (no, really) that I've been planning to devote a column towards for a while, and I now regret not doing it earlier. So, to my druidic colleague -- /hug and /salute. Kalon, you will be greatly missed. For strategy articles, I've gotten into the habit of trying to describe all four roles, and have arrived at the conclusion that it's more efficient to take matters one spec at a time. With all of the Icecrown raid content clocking in at a little more than a month old under the best of circumstances, I'm better off describing the roles I've done personally therein (tanking and healing). Because we've already covered Lord Marrowgar, we're going to take the rest of the bosses necessary for the Storming the Citadel achievement, and cover them from a restoration point of view.
Shifting Perspectives: How not to be seen
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we go to pet our kitties and discover that they are not there. I am going to take a short break from stomping Moore's music selections flatter than a Kansas prairie in order to include a Monty Python video, which I think we can all agree is a necessary sacrifice this week given both our subject material and the title that was guaranteed to result. I had the pleasure of meeting a completely new player on my server not all that long ago. He'd rolled a rogue and was slowly making his way through both levels and the avalanche of bewilderment common to new players. I haven't forgotten what it was like to be tossed into a world of frequent acronyms and gamer parlance, and I spent some time giving him tips. Between making helpful suggestions like, "Wow, I guess you can't jump off the Thunder Bluff elevator at that point" and "Did you ever consider rolling a druid?", I discovered that he was in the habit of dying a lot. For new players, that's not unusual, but it was how he was dying that really got my attention. Starting most fights from Stealth, he'd sneak up to a mob, most typically from the front, and then attempt to circle to the side or rear for a Backstab opener. A good 90% of the time, the mob would attack him midway through the process, which -- as you can imagine -- is a disconsolate state of affairs for someone who aspires to be an invisible ninja. As soon as I saw this, I said, "Well, that's your problem right there." "What is?" "You are not an invisible ninja."
Shifting Perspectives: The druid of 2009
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, Allison Robert has been at the cough syrup again, without the editors realizing in enough time to shut down her access to the blogging software. No good can come of this. Lines composed more than 3,000 miles from Tintern Abbey, by someone who hated Wordsworth and thought he was a self-obsessed little prick, but managed to conceal this from her professor long enough to book it from the class with an A, and this is a run-on sentence just like the title of the original poem, which is what we call Irony. One year has past; one year, with the length Of one long winter! and again I lean My head -- back, against the perch of chair and post And snarf the Robitussin down. -- Once again Do I behold the druid class in all its glory That with the benefit of dual-specs allows Me to be incompetent in more ways than simply one. The day is come when I again repose Here, in the glow lent by the laptop, and try to keep My editors from killing me. The column, it is late. Yes, folks, it's that time of year again. Allie is sick, druids are thriving, and 2010 is upon us like the rear axel of a pickup truck on an icy road with a "Guns don't kill people, I do" bumper sticker. It's time to revisit the Year That Was, keeping in mind that the author of this article is so blitzed on cold medication that an entertaining afternoon was spent delightedly watching the screensaver.
Shifting Perspectives: How to be a good PUG druid
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, everyone discovers (as I have been saying for years, but who listens to the bear tank with an ass the size of Cincinnati? No one, that's who) that PUG's are not so bad. Moore returns with a ukulele. I'm going to pull out one of the big guns on the folk scene in the Americas -- Richard Shindell. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a high-quality version of this song available anywhere online, and I highly recommend listening to the versions off Shindell's Sparrow's Point or (more especially) the live album Courier. Yes, it starts off slow, but give it a chance. On A Sea of Fleur-de-Lis is a very odd, albeit poetic, song with esoteric lyrics, although they make a little more sense once you know they were written while Shindell was considering leaving Union Theological Seminary. Otherwise, as with many of Shindell's pieces, BYO subtext. Beat that, Moore. Anyway, after reading Archmage Pants' article on the new LFG system for mages and Daniel Whitcomb's guide on the same for death knights, I decided it wasn't fair letting a bunch of smelly DPS have all the fun. "But some death knights tank," you object. That's just a widely-disseminated myth, as all those of us on the Retaliation battlegroup know. You have tried the new LFG, right? Allow me to be the Virgil to your Dante in this new, more lucrative version of hell. Concerning tanks, by the way --
Shifting Perspectives: Druid strategy in Icecrown Citadel - Marrowgar
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we cross our fingers and hope there are more fights like the gunship battle up ahead. Hail, druids. I'll be continuing a look at Balance gear whenever the gear lists on Wowhead start behaving themselves (down, boy!), which I sincerely hope is going to start happening soon. Right now they're kind of a mess post-patch. In the meantime, I've been able to return to raiding with the benefit of a new computer, and the guild stomped through Icecrown Citadel last night (with, as I previously vowed, Jaina Proudmoore's coin in my packs because it is awesome and lore-appropriate and I could not be a bigger nerd). As with Ulduar, I'd like to do a series of class-specific tips for each encounter. Again, I go into these assuming you have a basic understanding of the fight's mechanics, and then delve into more druid-specific commentary. Before the next set of Icecrown bosses hits, I hope to have covered Marrowgar (here), Lady Deathwhisper (in which binding Remove Curse to all of your hotkeys plays a significant role in the raid's success), the gunship battle (we wanted to wipe the raid so we could come back and do it again, that's how awesome it was), and Saurfang (who, for some incomprehensible reason, lacks a Cleave ability. Maybe it's a recessive gene). We'll start with Lord Marrowgar, who will probably be the most commonly-seen Icecrown Citadel boss due to his inclusion in the weekly raid quest. Experienced Burning Crusade raiders will recognize this encounter as an unholy mating of Leotheras, Mother Shahraz, and Naj'entus. It sounds complicated, but it's really not.
