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Shifting Perspectives: Balance gear in patch 3.3
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we boom-boom-pow our way through Icecrown. If Moore can yank out the Imogen Heap, I'm going to retaliate with Sigur Rós. Years from now, when the bloody YouTube wars on this site have slackened, people will point with hushed whispers to this week, saying, "It all started with the British synthesizer chick versus the Icelandic nonsense-syllable group." Anyway. Where was I? Moonkin gear in patch 3.3! Right. Do we know everything that's going to drop in Icecrown Citadel and the new 5-mans? Nope. I'm not going to pretend that the article in its current form is anything other than an extremely ambitious placeholder. That aside, I did want to get a preliminary list running on the gear choices that we do know about so far, and I'm just going to keep adding to it and revising as we see and confirm more items. Any additions to the list will be noted in future druid articles on the site in addition to notes here, so keep checking back. Gear rankings are standard for the Balance spec, prioritizing +spellpower, then +haste, +crit, +intellect, and finally +spirit. I am not looking at +hit in the rankings quite as much, as most moonkin at the point of raiding ICC will be spending time trying to drop it from their gear sets rather than packing it on.However, if you find yourself in danger of falling below the hit cap, then pieces like Sightless Crown of Ulmaas will be superior to items higher on the list without +hit. Remember -- as with all gear lists, what's actually best-in-slot for you will depend on whatever else you're wearing.
Shifting Perspectives: Why effective health needs to die, part 2
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the issue of effective health in more depth. We've discussed in the previous column why effective health is important; here, we're going to discuss why it's not as important as you might think if you had nothing beyond the collective opinion of the Tanking forum to go on. While this has something to do with the mob mentality of the forums themselves, it has more to do with how the concept of effective health isn't usually placed in context. Tank death on hard modes is quickly attributed to EH discrepancies, with rather less discussion on encounter mechanics, inappropriate gear, or that great but frequently unacknowledged bugaboo -- player error. It is for this that I say effective health needs to die. What is effective health? I neglected to put some hard numbers on this in the last article, but calculating base effective health is actually pretty simple. It's your health as modified by the damage you'll take after armor contribution (AC), or Health / (1 - AC%). A 50,000 health tank with 25% armor contribution has 66,666.67 effective health (50,000 / 0.75). A 50,000 health tank with 50% armor contribution has 100,000 effective health (50,000 / 0.5). A 50,000 health tank with 75% armor contribution (the maximum functional AC) has 200,000 effective health (50,000 / .25).
Shifting Perspectives: Why effective health needs to die, part 1
Every week (usually), Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we brace ourselves for the howling pack of tanks likely to descend upon us, but -- as we have previously observed -- we are used to staying at the top of someone's hate list. If you've tanked at all over the course of Wrath, you've probably become familiar with the phrase "effective health." It's a concept that's cropped up with increasing frequency on the tanking forums, and not necessarily in a good way. If you knew nothing of the idea beyond how players tend to use it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that "effective health" is the only metric by which all tanks are measured, and proof that Blizzard either can't (or won't) balance the game. There are very real differences between the tanking classes when it comes to average EH, and this has resulted in some angry discussion when the term is thrown around by players who either don't really understand what it means, or don't know that it was meant to be used in context. Consequently, "effective health" as used on the tanking forums has become an endlessly parroted phrase that's not only starting to lose all meaning, but is also guaranteed to derail a thread once it makes its inevitable appearance. When I say that effective health needs to die, I don't mean that the concept itself is intrinsically wrong. It's not. But the twisted version of it so frequently used to bludgeon players over class differences is getting more ridiculous by the day, and it prevents or distorts more reasonable commentary on things that are much more likely to kill tanks on hard-mode content.
Shifting Perspectives: 5 observations from a reluctant battleground healer
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we gingerly step back into battlegrounds and discover that the world can be a very unfriendly place. I love writing this column, but there's one thing that bugs me about it -- the druid class is tailor-made to defeat a sole writer's efforts to cover everything she can. No matter how hard I try, I'm never going to cover each spec and playstyle with up-to-the-minute and in-depth experience, because it would require the simultaneous mastery of ranged DPS PvE, ranged DPS PvP, tanking, off-tanking, melee DPS PvE, melee DPS PvP, healing PvE, and healing PvP. Even with all that, I'd be leaving out all the hybrid and kooky specs people dream up. This has been getting to me lately. Consequently I thought that, before we get to some end-of-year and patch 3.3 business, it might be a good idea to spend some time on topics that -- to be frank -- I haven't been that great about covering. Balance as a whole needs some love and so do our kitties, but before I do that, I'd like to address a topic that, in contrast to Balance and Cat, I've been willfully ignoring -- PvP. It occurred to me that roughly a year after Wrath's launch, it might be a good idea to pop back into battlegrounds and see how the class' most common PvP spec (Restoration) is faring in combat these days, so I dumped badges and gold into a PvP set and went for broke. And, well...a lot's changed.
Shifting Perspectives: A 3.3 miscellany
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we root around our inbox and herd a series of scribbled notes across our desk, trying to get what we actually know about patch 3.3 in order. Also, Zach Yonzon's PhotoShop skills for the win, but we already knew that. This week's column is going to be a little bit of a grab bag in much the same way that our patch 3.1 miscellany post was, because there have been a few changes on the PTR recently that we haven't yet discussed. Before we get any farther, I'd also like to give a shout-out to our readers and commenters on last week's column, "The disappearance of the bear." I was a little antsy over how it was going to be received (lengthy articles on what's going wrong with a spec can get derailed into QQ-fests pretty easily, and that wasn't my intent), but was heartened to see so much quality discussion. One of the things I realized after reading through the comments was that Blizzard may actually have succeeded a little too well in their quest to make tanking more attractive and fun to the average player. WoW's four tanking classes (warrior, paladin, druid, and death knight) comprise 4 of the 5 most popular classes in the game right now. As I've written previously, the druid functions as the proverbial canary in the coal mine as a harbinger of class balance concerns, and with each of the game's plate classes numbering among the most played at 80, it's impossible for this not to have an impact on druid spec choice. Anyway. For the moment, we are going to turn away from this rather depressing situation, and concern ourselves with what's going on in patch 3.3.
Shifting Perspectives: The disappearance of the bear
Every week (usually), Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, confused bears everywhere ask themselves, "Why is no one playing us if we're so awesome?"I've had an article on this subject percolating for a while. Why people play what they do is a question that endlessly fascinates me, and Nick Yee made a business out of examining the various factors that influenced people's class and role choices in games. Unfortunately, with only fan site numbers to go on, it's sometimes tough to figure out exactly what's happening with demographic shifts ingame. For a while now we've had the sense that, while Feral has lost population since Wrath hit, it's bears in particular who've been hit hardest, and as I've written previously, they've all but vanished from my own server. Because most Armory data sites don't distinguish between bear and cat specs, I never figured out whether all the stories I heard about a shrinking bear population were an accurate gloss on what was going on.Sometimes, though, Blizzard cuts through the confusion and bluntly states that a class or spec just isn't being played that much. Witness, if you will, the gradual extinction of the bear.So Xariks on the Tanking forum poses the question; why are bears so underplayed? Any well-designed spec that's a PvE or PvP powerhouse and the frequent target of nerf demands has historically resulted in a huge influx of players (e.g. rogues for most of classic WoW and warlocks in Burning Crusade, among others). In Feral, we have before us a spec that had a 50% share of the druid population in BC and, in the transition to Wrath, received considerable buffs to many of its historic weak spots, the removal of prejudicial encounter mechanics, the addition of another weapon option, and the tanking community's hatred for its highest effective health on average. Yet they've been singled out for especial commentary for being, per Ghostcrawler, an "unpopular spec" in modern raids. Druids, tanks, and developers all want to know -- what gives?
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 71-80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we reach 80. It is not the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.Hail, druids. This week, we're finishing our leveling guide, and after that we're going to be addressing any subject as long as it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with leveling. I'll be revisiting this guide as Cataclysm approaches, as we've already been told that spell and ability ranks are going the way of the dodo, which was really the only depressing announcement from BlizzCon as I was in the middle of formatting and linking hundreds of same.To wrap up the full guide: Why (or why not) to play a druid Getting started and leveling 1-9 Leveling 10-20 (and how to spec) Leveling 21-30 Leveling 31-40 Leveling 41-50 Leveling 51-60 (with bonus video footage of Allison achieving 366 DPS versus a level 79 whelp!) Leveling 61-70 And today's column, leveling 71-80
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 61-70
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we gain all of the abilities that went live during Burning Crusade and wonder why the hell Lacerate can't be trained earlier than level 66, because the Bear spends 16 levels Mangling things it can't actually put a bleed on. Weird.Only one more leveling guide after this, and then we'll be heading into an array of new articles I've been planning for a while, and a Druid perspective on tanking issues raised by Matt Rossi's article. I will probably be turning some of this material into just plain Druid posts rather than Shifting Perspectives columns, though, as otherwise it'll take longer than I'd like to get them all posted.LEVEL 61In Outland and Northrend, you'll be training new ranks each level as opposed to every other level, so don't forget to hit your trainer promptly with each level-up. Shred, rank 6: standard upgrade. Wrath, rank 9: standard upgrade.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 51-60
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we haul ourselves to Outland and are shocked to discover that +spellpower sometimes comes on leather.The above video is the result of an idle question I was asked recently by a friend: "So how much damage would you guys do in caster form meleeing?" I started to answer and then realized I had no idea. The notion of actually hitting something with a weapon is utterly foreign to the class. We have claws and a can of celestial pain for that nonsense if provoked, but still, the question was pretty interesting, particularly because after seeing Prinnygod's comment from last week I started to wonder about all the different ways you could level as a Druid if you deliberately avoided Cat and Moonkin. Sure, you'd be a gibbering wreck at the level cap, but that's beside the point. Blizzard once had a talent called Weapon Balance in the Balance tree that improved our melee damage with weapons by 10% -- they were expecting us to hit things. I wondered how that would have worked out if Druid talent trees had never been overhauled.So I took my main to the mobs outside the Argent Tournament and smacked stuff while running a stopwatch. What you'll see here is a level 79 Frostbrood Whelp with 12,600 health which took me 34.4 seconds to kill, with two global cooldowns devoted to casting a Rejuvenation and then a Lifebloom. I'm currently on a Feral (Bear) spec and thus wearing gear that does help one's melee damage, mind you, but that still works out to a godawful 366.28 DPS. The moral of our little story can be found at the end of the video. Master of Arms is going to be a real trip.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 41-50
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, Mangle, Barkskin, and an enraged pack of mobile woodland things are headed our way. We advise stealthing.Hail, Druids. This week, we continue the long march through levels 41 to 50. Due to some recent RL events I haven't had much time to get on the 3.2.2 PTR, but when I do, I'll try to see how Druids are shaping up on the revamped Onyxia fight and how much use the new Predatory Instincts is getting.Without further ado:
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 31-40 and notes on PvP servers
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we reach our 31-point talents and rejoice, for leveling is now...pretty much the same as it was before we got our 31-point talents, but nonetheless, level 40 is a milestone.In the wake of the announcement concerning the upcoming abolishment of spell and ability ranks, I'm wondering whether it's worth our time to continue noting and linking the presence of new ranks while leveling. For now, I'm going to keep linking them; when Cataclysm hits, it shouldn't be too much trouble to go back and delete them, because I'll be revising the guides anyway to reflect any changes Cataclysm makes to the class. Also -- werewolves. Who saw that coming? Have you seen those racials? Sweet Sister Mary Clarence, those are overpowered. And the transform animation? Well, don't we all feel stupid now for rolling something that barely manages a weak whumph when it shifts. But I'm an optimist at heart, and I firmly believe that Blizzard has something special in mind for us. Maybe a bigger whumph.On a completely unrelated note that I am going to write here just because I can, I was tanking a VoA-25 PuG earlier this week and we lost our offtank to a disconnect right before Emalon. We then spent the next 30 minutes trying to find another tank...with 7 Death Knights in the raid. Hero class, my giant furry newly-improved butt.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 21-30
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we slog through levels 21-30. Also, werewolves.Once the news broke on Troll Druids (and, I would guess, Worgen Druids as well, assuming that Blizzard isn't in the middle of a giant hoax), I sat back in my chair and held the following conversation with my subconscious, as I am so often wont to do:ME: Troll Druids make no sense. Neither do Worgen Druids.SUBCONSCIOUS: This is not about sense. This is about expanding your readership. Trolls + Worgen = MOAR DURIDS = more people reading Shifting Perspectives.ME: That's not a valid statistical assertion.SUBCONSCIOUS: Cool story, bro. Everyone will be rolling a werewolf Worgen when the expansion hits. You know you will be.ME: (silence)SUBCONSCIOUS: Werewolves! How badass is that, is all I'm saying.ME: But the Trolls hate the Elves! They wouldn't be caught dead in Moonglade! And how the hell did the Worgen learn Druidic magic that took thousands of years to develop while some nutcase locked them behind the Greymane wall for 10 some-odd years?SUBCONSCIOUS: Who cares?ME (faltering): But...lore...wibba...wubba...SUBCONSCIOUS: F%@k the lore! Now's the time to make a mad bid for power! Grind the rest of the class columnists under your questionably-itemized i-level 239 boot!ME: Screw you, I need to go write the column for this week.SUBCONSCIOUS (shouts after me): WEREWOLVES WEREWOLVES WEREWOLVES!
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 10-20 and how to spec
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we begin to enjoy our brand-new Bear and Cat forms in earnest.Hail and well met, Druids. I apologize for my lack of comments on the last Shifting Perspectives, but I was away that week on vacation with abysmal hotel wireless. After spending 20 minutes trying to send a single reply, I gave up and decided that my time on vacation was better spent gorging myself on the offerings of the resort's culinary school. 4 days of coquilles St. Jacques, filet mignon, and venison sausage in puff pastry left me unable to move, but fortunately I have recovered sufficiently to roll myself, Violet Beauregarde-style, in the direction of the laptop for today's column.Levels 10 through 20 will be among your most interesting and frustrating as a Druid, and they're certainly among the most volatile; as of patch 3.2, you will gain 4 of the Druid's possible forms within these levels, with the biggest alteration to your playstyle likely to occur at 20 with Cat form. Be forewarned that this resulted in a fairly lengthy, 3-part article.Ready to go?
Shifting Perspectives: Getting started and leveling 1-9
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we begin at the beginning, and we will go on until the end. Then we will stop. Then we will ask ourselves why we are taking advice from 19th century children's literature rather than the books that are relevant to our interests, like Why Buying a House You Have No Idea How To Renovate Is Probably a Bad Idea, or Smoked Salmon and You: A Guide To Not Eating Yourself Into a Coma.Greetings, Druids. I took the liberty of rolling a few new Druids to test out the improved leveling process, and if possible I'm going to level a brand-new one all the way to 80 to make sure everything in the guide's been personally tested and accurate as of the 3.1/3.2 game world. Today we'll start off with a baby Tauren Druid on the PTR who's now level 9; later I'll be switching between a Night Elf and a Tauren.Level Feral.This is the single best thing you can do for yourself, at least for leveling in classic content. As we've previously discussed, the Druid is still hobbled by its initial design as an endgame secondary healer, but you can skip a certain portion of this early weakness by leveling feral. Piggybacking off all of the DPS leather that went into the game to support the billions of people who rolled Rogues is a nice advantage, but the real attraction of leveling Feral lies in the ability to DPS in forms that don't require mana. Being able to save your mana bar for healing and buffing decreases downtime enormously (more so as you gain levels, as our mana efficiency and damage aren't that great early on).
Shifting Perspectives: An Ulduar class preview, part 4
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, another Ulduar boss dies to moonkin nukes, feral claws, and tree slaps.Chase Christian from Encrypted Text recently started a series of guides on doing Ulduar as a Rogue, and I must admit that the relative ease and simplicity of describing the role of a pure DPS while raiding is enough to make me sob quietly into a hanky. Meanwhile, I'm driving myself to the nuthouse trying to describe four entirely different roles for a single class. Pardon my saying so, but this column was the hell of a lot easier to write back when we sucked at everything that wasn't healing. Damn you, multi-spec viability! Damn you to HELL!Before we get started, I'm going to continue what I did with the last Ulduar preview column, link to general strategy guides, and assume you have a basic familiarity with the encounter before delving into more Druid-specific advice. Today we're going to confine ourselves to Freya, as it's one of the few Ulduar fights I have now seen outside of the PTR. With luck, my computer is going to cooperate for a full clear this week plus a few hard modes, so I will be revising (and, as necessary, expanding) our current Ulduar Druid guides to reflect changes that Blizzard has made to the fights and a few notes concerning hard mode issues. Any changes made will be noted in next week's column.
