Epic Moments: Episode 1

I promised I'd have a story time session with you guys and here it is.  Grab a seat and cozy up by the campfire with me.

SWEET! +4 Spirit!!!

Let's start with Heroic:  Deadmines.  This was the first heroic I've ever tanked in Cataclysm.  Suffice to say it was a little rough, but at least I have an idea of what to do...Okay, I still really don't but I have a better idea now than I did before.

There were a few rough trash pulls.  Feral Charge got me in trouble a time or two and I really need to work on pickup tanking, where CC pulls are involved.  I went with a group of friends and we somehow managed to get to the end.  That's where Epic Story #1 takes place.

We did really well on Ripsnarl, so when it was time to face Cookie, I was feeling pretty relaxed about it.  I mean, really there's no tanking him as much as blowing him up before he blows you up, right?  No adds to worry about.  No ungodly damage spells to worry about interrupting.  Just RAWR-FACESMASHING-TIME.

I love face-smashie time.  It's one of my favorite things to do...So we engage Cookie...


Before I get into how our encounter went, let me first explain the basics of this fight.


Basically, you engage Cookie and he hops into a little pot in the center of the deck.  From there, he tosses out two types of "food" onto the deck.  There are swirly green foods of AoE damaging doom and heavenly halo food of epic haste.


The idea here is to have each dps pick up 2 green foods, let the debuff wear off, then go back in and pick up two more.  This keeps the deck from getting totally covered in a swirling green death cloud of...well...death.  The dps is also supposed to pick up as many of the heavenly halo food as they can as it increases their haste exponentially.  With the increased haste buff on your group, the idea is to blow up Cookie before the AoE damage overwhelms the group.  Sounds easy enough, right?


Yeah...


When we engaged him, it seemed like only myself and the enhancement shaman were grabbing up the swirly green plates of destruction.  Everyone really SHOULD be doing it, but alas, it just wasn't happening in our group.


It wasn't too long before the deck was covered in swirling green death, the shaman and I had almost 8 or more stacks of the green death food debuff each (which is hell for the healer because it applies a dot to whoever eats it that stacks...it gets nasty fast), and people started to die.


Eventually it was only our healer, Kon.  As much as I despise paladins most of the time, I gotta give him kudos.  He ran, frantically, around the deck to avoid the green swirls of agony.  Most of us, myself and two dps I think, released and ran back to rejoin the fight.

Just try to imagine him running around a pirate ship like a sissy girl...healing for all he's worth!

And there's nothing more LOL inducing than running back up to a fight only to see your healer racing around the deck of a ship like a chicken with no head.  It's also sort of awe-inspiring.  Most healers would have just stopped healing and given up.  Not Kon.  He won't go down unless he absolutely has to.


Well, I threw an innervate on him and immediately ran back to smack Cookie around a bit more.  He still had a considerable amount of health left (roughly 40%), but Kon apparently wasn't ready to give up so I hopped over and started picking up green stuff so I could berserk and FACE-SMASHIE-FUN-TIME on Mr. Cookie.
 

Unfortunately, it wasn't too long before our dps was down again.  I popped whatever cooldowns I had and just went to town.  I'm not really sure how he kept me alive, but he did and we downed him.  And it only took us almost 8 minutes!  GO US!


Kon just piped in and said this fight lasted 7min 45sec exactly.  Apparently, it traumatized him so much that the fight time will be burned into his mind for the rest of his life...lol.


Crazy stuff happens to us all the time in Azeroth, but I've gotta say that this was one of the craziest things I'd seen since Cataclysm's impossible to deal with Heroics arrived.  I suppose I should throw a shout out to the entire group for not only putting up with me tanking (and struggling with it most of the run) but also for being a part of one of the craziest runs I've experienced so far.  So, special thanks to Sack, Pick, MK, and Kon for that.  


Moving on...

Epic Story #2 takes place in The Stonecore (heroic).  I bet half of you just cringed at that.  I know.  I did, too.  No love for Stonecore.  It's so...ugh...

First, let's discuss the group makeup.  I was on my druid, healing.  Kon was on his druid, tanking (so, Roars...I'm still not sure which he considers his main right now, so he can just be RoarKon or something), then we had J and S as warrior dps and D as our death knight.

See any issues there?


Yeah...absolutely NO crowd control and NO ranged dps.  From a healing standpoint...it was HELL.  We struggled with trash pulls because most of the trash pulls have spinning slash and other various AoE damage that normally would only hit 2-3 group members, but in our case was hitting 4/5 of us.  It was almost impossible to heal through, they weren't able to see and avoid it really...yeah it was just...yeah...


We managed to get through the instance though.  We downed the first two bosses.  I'll say that every fight in there is DEFINITELY harder with only melee dps.  Try it sometime.  It will make you want to curl up in a corner and cry, but we managed.


Then...we got to Ozruk.


I'm not going to post the strat on this because the strat actually explains it as if the group had ranged dps.  We didn't.  We had melee only.  It wasn't TOO hard to heal at first because with melee, they get a dot put on them just from hitting Oz, so they don't have to deal with the paralyze.  What they DO have to deal with is the Shatter ability he has.


I'm not entirely sure how but, one by one, our dps died.  Ozruk was still at or above 30% health...part of me just wanted to give up and wipe it out and try again, but I looked over and Roars flashed me a little teary-eyed, sad panda face so, well, I couldn't just give up on him, right?   


And then there were TWO...


Yep, just Roars and I were left standing to face Ozzy.  I just assumed we were going to wipe anyway, but I was curious to see how long we could go.  I innervated myself twice and I know Roars hit me at least once.  I threw a battle rez to J, but a serious of unfortunate events happened and, well, J got hit by either a shatter or a ground slam and died again pretty quickly...

And then there were STILL two!

Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs

Between Roars and I, we managed to actually two man this boss from about 30%.  I know he was popping cooldowns whenever he could.  There were a few times when I was totally OOM and couldn't even cast a moonfire on Ozruk during his Elementium Bulwark to avoid the paralyze and thus the spike damage from Shatter.  I'm not sure what all was going on on his end, but I know I was staring at his health bar, my mana bar and every "omg!" button I have available to me in the way of quick, efficient healing, mana regeneration, or other various life-saving yumminess! 

There was a point where I was totally oom, had no cooldowns left, no mana potions available, no trinkets to pop, was precariously low on health and then got paralyzed.  I thought for sure we were doomed...but SOMEHOW the spike damage after Paralyze didn't kill me.  I only had about 5k health left, but had regenerated just enough mana for a quick stack of Lifebloom for Roars and my lifeblood (Herbalism HoT FTW!) came off of cooldown.  It was as if the BlizzGods were smiling down upon us...

^ blizzgods smiling down on us, see?

And then...Ozruk went down!

I was SHOCKED when he finally died.  Again, Kudos to RoarKon for using his cooldowns intelligently and being extra careful to avoid damage.  Had he been a "typical" tank, well...I wouldn't be writing this here today.  



I have a feeling that there are many, many more epic adventures in store for us in the future and when they happen, I'll share them with you here.  Until then, take care and GG guys!

Take out the TRASH!

I'm not going to pretend for a second that I spent the weekend mastering tanking and am the best tank on server.

Far from it, actually.  

For one thing, I realized that I don't have a clue what I'm doing.  For once, I'm not even just referring to my rotation.  I'm referring to a general knowledge of the mobs I'm facing, how to mark them for crowd control, which abilities to interrupt, and how to get them to do what I want them to do without being overly rambunctious.  Oh...and feral charge?  Still gets me into trouble.  (Sorry Kon).

Anyway...AoE tanking seems to be something along the lines of this rotation:  charge > hit any and every button you can and hope you get all the mobs on you > taunt - wipe > apologize. 

If you'd argue that I'm wrong...well...You'd be right...sort of.

Unfortunately, Heroic groups are very unkind to new tanks, especially tanks that have gear that IMPLIES they've been tanking all along...

Dear DPS, 

Just because I look like I know what I'm doing...doesn't mean I do.  L2patience plz?

Your Bear

It's got to be pretty misleading for a group to come in, see a tank with a handful of epic pieces and heroic drops and not be able to unleash their full fury because the tank is incredibly rusty.  So, to any random puggers I've allowed to die or otherwise annoyed:  I'm really sorry.  I'm trying my best...at least in most cases I'm trying my best.

Rotation?

Oh, right...before I forget...I mentioned in the last post that I was going to share with you my thoughts on rotations.

Here's the thing...I tend to panic a bit on bigger pulls.  So the rotation I posted earlier where I said to just hit every button you can find and pray everything wants to hit you instead of your dps?  That's, unfortunately, how it's going for me right now.

The correct thing to do is tell your dps to sit back and give you a sec...seriously.  Have them get their CC's cast and give you a sec to gather everything up.  Remind them that their dps will suck if they're licking floor the whole time.  If you get a couple that are overzealous, just go back to the old classic/BC mantra:  "If you pull it, you tank it."  Generally, after a few deaths, your dps will calm down and give you a quick second to at LEAST get a swipe in there.

Mr. OMG-GO-ALREADY needs to sit back and stfu, too (I know you've either BEEN the omg-HURRY person or you've at least run with one of these darlings).  Chances are the one saying that is a hunter anyway and well...we all know my feelings on hunters, right? (If not, I'd LOVE to share with you my stance on hunters...really...I would.)

Anyway...back to what we were talking about here.


Wait...what were we talking about?  


OH!  Right!  Rotations and threat and...well yeah!

A fellow bear, Roars (aka Kon), let me copy a few of his Maul Macros.  Right now, I only have Lacerate and Mangle connected to Maul, mainly because I find that it just eats up WAY too much rage.  I'm thinking about dropping the Maul from Lacerate...rage starvation makes aoe tanking incredibly difficult...

Anyway...I'm finding that when you gather up a bigger group, Swipe > Mangle > TAB > Thrash > Mangle > TAB > Swipe...etc seems to work alright...at least...it worked in my first full on PuG last night.  (Assuming the dps let's you throw that first swipe...doesn't fail at CC...and you, as the bear, don't feral charge into a group that's next to some neutral mobs, swipe, then pull them along with the NEXT entire group of mobs...again, Sorry Kon.)

Well, that rotation seems to work when I'm calm enough to make it work.  If I'm feeling extra jittery (which is always on trash pulls), I tend to mess things up a bit, I'll blow a Thrash cooldown too early or I won't tab before I hit my second mangle.  I need to get a group of folks willing to just run and hang back a little bit so that I can go in, start my rotation and get used to using a trash rotation instead of running in, hitting swipe, having everyone target something OTHER than our primary mark and then scrambling to regain aggro.

I try to remember to throw Demoralizing Roar up on trash pulls, but since my first priority is getting everyone's attention and DR has not so much threat benefit, I seem to forget it fairly often.  Maybe I'll try to find a macro for it.  We'll see.


Anyway, single target tanking is pretty easy.  Pull with Faerie fire or whatever works for you, mangle, laceratex3, Pulverize, maul maybe - doesn't really matter what order as long as you get your boss/mob focused and don't lose him to a hyperactive dps.  Unless you're incredibly undergeared versus your dps, you shouldn't have any issue with single target threat.  Just blow it up quick in the beginning and then it's a matter of maintenance.  :D

Oh, and if anyone tells you it's "noobie" to throw out a Demoralizing Roar...they're wrong.  Any reduction in damage you can get is worth it.  I've been standing in the healer's shoes since the launch of Cataclysm and stuff hits HARD.  Do your healers a favor and throw up DR whenever you can.

Also, I've got some pretty epic Deadmines and Stonecore (Heroic) stories to share.  I'll try to get those posted in the next few days.  I'll need to get with Roars/Kon to make sure I'm not leaving out any details of the epic (and terrifying) moments.  

Until then...happy face-smashing!

Answers Regarding My Current Guildlessness

Okay, blah blah blah and I don't want this to turn into a rant so I'm going to try and be careful to avoid that.  This is sort of a touchy topic, so I'm going to try to be gentle with it.


Yesterday, I was removed from my main's guild because I applied to another guild without first talking to the officers and guild leader.  I got a private message on our guild forum where I was told that I should have spoken to them first about my issues/concerns and tried to work it out and at least warned them that I intended to leave.  I was also told that what I did was disrespectful.


Any of you who know me personally know that I never ever intend to disrespect or upset anyone.  Ever.  It's just not what I'm about.  Even after being removed from the guild, I don't have any grudges really toward the guild as a whole.  For the most part, the folks in that guild were amazing people.  There were just a few personalities that I just could not work with anymore.  The guild leader, unfortunately, fell into the latter category.


Now, let me first say that I agree that it's shady to apply out to another guild without really talking to at least an officer or your guild leader.  But I also think that there are certain circumstances that create exceptions to this rule.  I think you should definitely try to communicate with your guild leadership..but sometimes, when you're done...you're just done.  In my case, I was just...done.  It was a really sad moment when I realized that I was done, too.  

You all know by now that I just don't handle guild changes well.  I don't like leaving friends behind, especially if I've spent a considerable amount of time with that guild.  I don't like leaving the guild in need if I've been filling the role of a tank or healer for them either.  I hate the feeling of turning my back on people I have spent so much time with, had so much fun with, and grown attached to (in-game friendships...you know...nothing perverse).  I mean, I agonized over every single guild change I've made so far.  There are a few posts here where I've confided in you the hell I go through when I'm thinking of moving on.


I know, you're all dying for the juicy details.  I'm not going to get into anything specific, but I will explain why I made the decision I made when I decided to apply to a new home.  

First of all, during our Wrath raiding, there was a LOT of tension, especially toward the end of that expansion.  The guild had decided on running two raid groups:  A Progression Team and a Non-Progression Team.  When you call one team the Progression team, then the Non-Progression Team - you're just asking for issues.  Egos got involved, the non-progression team felt like they were being completely left behind, not getting the attention or the push they needed and deserved, there were a lot of rumblings going on.  Suffice to say, things came to a pretty big explosion in the guild.  People began to leave and move on from the guild we were in.  It was really sad in some ways, but enlightening in others.


It began to open my eyes.  Post-explosion guild was just strange.  I really started to take note of peoples' attitudes toward each other, how they were treating one another and interacting and I really started to notice a huge rift between what a former guildie called "The Good Ole Boys" and "The rest of us."  That rift began to grow even more, it seemed, once Cataclysm dropped and I began to realize that I was just...done there.


I don't have any hard feelings toward anyone really.  Sometimes you just get to a point where you need a change of scenery to refresh you, rejuvenate you, and help you find what you feel like you're lacking.  I wish that the members of my former guild could see it that way.  It's nothing personal and my decision was not based on any sort of resentment toward the guild.  I just needed to find some fresh fields to roam in, so to speak.  So, if any of you guys are reading this:  I'm sorry it ended as it did.  You know how to reach me and if you don't, just ask the man-mage.


I'm not sure it would have done any good to talk to the leaders about it anyway.  A friend of mine had done so via our forums and ended up getting kicked out anyway.  I'm not sure of all of the details surrounding that whole fiasco because I had only gotten his side of the story really and it wasn't much of my business anyway.  So I really can't say what exactly happened.  But after hearing from him, I guess I just didn't feel like talking to them about my need for change was going to get me anything but a boot out the door.


Anyway, looking back...If I had known it was going to cause such hard feelings and drama and be taken as a sign of disrespect, I would have handled things differently on my end.  My druid is currently homeless, but I'm pretty sure my application was accepted for her new home.  I'll update you on that when I find out for sure. 


I wanted to post this today though because after yesterday's random gkick (while I was logged out, mind you - they didn't feel the need to confront me in person about this...so I guess it was an eye for an eye) I got quite a few questions.  I guess there's also been a pretty feisty discussion on their guild forum about this little saga.


I'll leave you with a few thoughts:  First, It's just a game.  Guildies come and go, situations change, peoples' wants and needs change, goals change, content changes...but in the end, it's just a game.  You really can't take anything personally.  Don't take it personally if we leave your guild, won't join your guild, won't invite you to our guild, etc etc.  It's just a game.  There's a place for every player in the grand scheme of things.  There's no point in staying someplace where you feel tense and you don't enjoy playing and there's no point in letting things get you down.

Getting Ready For Bear

I was going to try and concoct my own little list of gear for Pre-Raid and Pre-Heroics for you up and coming bears out there...but why spend my time doing something that's already been done VERY well?

Oh and we all know that I ramble, so I'll switch to a different font color when I'm done rambling about random nonsense and actually get down to the nitty gritty...saves your time and sanity. 

First, let me tell you that I'm very much not a numbers person.  I hate math when it comes to my "game time" and I really don't think I could stomach sitting here trying to tweak this and that and make it all add up to perfection.  That's sort of why I rely on research that tells me what I want to know (or in some cases need to learn) in plain English.


I've always been a HUGE fan of The Big Bear Butt.  Seriously.  This guy is brilliant, informative and great fun to read.  I really, really dig this blog.  In fact, if you wanted to buy me a T-Shirt...well that'd be the bestest thing ever!

Alright, so moving on because obviously I'm rambling about things that are pretty much unnecessary (but no, seriously, buy me a Big Bear Butt t-shirt, plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz?)...

As I began to look at the beginnings of my tanking set Wednesday night, I got that all too familiar feeling of:  "Oh my gawd, I have NO idea what I'm doing now!"   And thus began the frantic race to learn everything I could as quickly as I could...Generally, when I'm stumped on being a bear, I turn to BBB first...and for the first time ever, he didn't have the answers I was looking for.  It was a sad day...but wait!  There...on the side of his blog...a bird?  A plane?  Oh my golly no!  A link to another blog!  Sweet deal!


I immediately began to scour Eao's blog for info.  Let me first say that I love this blog already.  Very, very informative without a whole lot of fluff and wordiness...you know...like my blog here.  Okay, I won't go there.  But I think Eao's blog is brilliant.  

THE PROMISED FONT COLOR CHANGE HAS COME

Alright, Eao actually created a pretty solid list of "pre-raid" and "pre-heroic" gear COMPLETE with enchants!  How awesome is that??

Here's his list:  Gearing Your Druid Tank in Cataclysm. 

It starts off with a Stat Priority list.  While I agree with what he's saying to some degree as far as his stat priority goes...I definitely think Agility and Stamina are pretty important but in my experiences tanking...You can't generate threat against something if you can't hit it.  So I'd slide hit and expertise up toward the top of that list, rather than leaving them at the bottom.  Getting hit capped shouldn't be too hard (I'll let you know after I've started getting my gear put together), and getting parry-capped on Expertise shouldn't be impossible.  At least get as close to the hit cap and soft expertise cap as you can, then go nuts with agility, stam, dodge, crit, and mastery. 

My personal thoughts on Mastery vs. Dodge?

Hot debate for sure, right?  I know a lot of bears are still on the fence with this question, and frankly, so am I.  Both sides have some pretty excellent arguments, statistics and reports and...well you get the picture.

I tend to learn better through trial and error, so for now, I'm siding with Team Mastery.  I'll reforge my haste to mastery and see how it goes.  If I find that my TTL is on the low side, I'll switch some over to dodge and we'll see if my TTL gets better or worse.  I'll post once I've run a few fights to let you know how I feel about mastery, savage defense procs and all that other stuff.

No, I won't run any sort of numerical report because I hate math.  I.  Hate.  Math.  But I'll come back with a quick babble about how it goes, changes I've made or want to make, etc etc.  Groovy?  Groovy.

Now, he has an entire list of gear for every slot, except for the neck.  I'm not going to list you're Pre-Heroic neck pieces because really, just use whatever Agility/Stamina neck you can get.  Doesn't matter.  You'll be fine.

For heroic drops, however, here's a quick list (ranked based on stat priority):

Mouth of the Earth - Heroic: Halls of Origination, Drops from Earthrager Ptah 

-  Doesn't this just scream "BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"?  It's got agi, stam, and a sexy helping of both hit AND expertise.  If you're already hit/expertise capped, there are other options though.

Pendant of the Lightless Grotto - Heroic: The Stonecore, Drops from Ozruk

-  Imho, this is a really solid neck for a bear.  Crit for threat, mastery for mitigation...it's yummy.  If you're struggling for hit or expertise, you CAN reforge the mastery here to one of those, but this is a really nice neck for a bear.

Acorn of the Daughter Tree - Guardians of Hyjal Quartermaster: Revered

-  The haste isn't amazing, but the mastery is omnomnom.  You can reforge the haste into Hit, Expertise, or maybe Dodge even...

Amulet of Dull Dreaming - Justice Quartermaster: 1,250 Justice Points 

-  Again, the haste can be reforged into something a little more delicious.

Now, maybe some of you are Jewelcrafters, have a Jewelcrafter Friend or Alt, or just have a little gold to toss around.  Here are some crafted options for you to look at:

Brazen Elementium Medallion - Jewelcrafting (525) 
-  Solid option if you can find one of these.  You can reforge some of the crit and haste into other stats you need and it gives you a red socket with a +10 Agility socket bonus.  

Entwined Elementium Choker - Jewelcrafting (525)

Elementium Guardian - Jewelcrafting (525)
-  I, personally, am not a fan of Strength for bears.  We gain 2AP for 1 point of Agility, where it's a 1-1 conversion with Strength for us...so this really isn't all that great except that it DOES give a sexy bit of dodge and expertise along with a blue gem slot (+ 10 Hit Rating Socket Bonus).  It's not maybe the greatest, but if you end up with one, I wouldn't hunt you down on your server and call you a noob.

I agree with the rest of his post really, but we're all our own bear, right?  Don't look at any gear list and think you must have those specific items, gems, enchants, etc etc or you'll be laughed out of a raid.  Eao only lists the "best in slot" gear based on some number crunching he has done.  While the Double-Dealing bracers might be the best, there's no shame in snagging the Bracers of Some Consequence from Heroic: The Deadmines and reforging off some haste.   Grab what you can and just reforge and gem for what you need.  

I really am falling in love with Eao's blog though.  I mean, he even has an entire entry dedicated to Reforging your gear!  Check it out!  "Druid Tank Reforging Choices"  


Eao and BBB are definitely worth taking a look at if you're interested.  


BACK TO THE BLUE FONT OH MY GOD SHE'S GONNA RAMBLE SOME MORE!!!! RUN!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIIIIIIVES!

Actually, no, I'm not going to ramble really.  I just wanted to thank you for stopping by...and do you remember when I said I'd make a lolpic of a Keyboard Crit?  Still working on that.  BUT!  I put an image at the bottom of this post.  It's sort of like the lollipop you get after the evil doctor gives you a bunch of shots.  What...you guys don't still ask for a lollipop?  NOOBS!

Chances are I'll be finishing up my tank set this weekend and I'll be getting some experience tanking for the first time since the one or two regular instances at the beginning of Cataclysm.  I'll uh, let you know how AWESOME I AM...

...Or how epic the fail was...heh...Okay!  Enough rambling!  Back to the real world and all the nightmares therein!

Con mucho amor,

Su Osa 

PS:  Totally forgot to talk about rotation here today, but I mean, this is already an epic novel as it is.  I'll get into the rotation, threat building and whatnot in my next post which should be soon.  I'll try to pay fairly close attention to what I'm doing when I tank and how well it works or how badly it fails and then I'll let you know.

Born Again!

Hi, no...not talking about religion here.  Remember a few months back where I had said, "OH YAY!  BOOMKIN IS SO MUCH FUN!!!"


Yeah, I haven't actually played my druid since I got her mostly geared and ready for raiding.  There's a bunch of different reasons, none of which I really want to get into at this particular moment.  Suffice to say that sometimes it's better to just throw caution to the wind and try something new.


So...what's the news?


I've applied to a new guild.  Yeah, yay right?  But that's HUGE news, considering how much I loathe changing guilds...so that's the first part.  We'll see what happens with that.  I haven't heard back on the App yet, but I did meet a few folks from the guild last night in a random heroic with a friend I have in that guild.


But they don't need a resto druid...they also don't need a boomkin...


Ah shi....z 


So why'd I apply?


I'm bringing my bear back.  Boomkin was fun.  Healing is fun.  Being a bear?  Well, I miss it.  Even if I don't get into the guild I applied to, I think I'll just switch to bear and walk my own road for awhile.


BUT I AM SUPER EXCITED ABOUT GOING BEAR AGAIN!!!!!  


Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!! KEYBOARD CRIT FTW!!!


Oh, I'm totally going to draw a graphic for the whole keyboard crit thing...


Alright, I'll stop back in to update soon.  Oh, right!  I'll be posting a BiS pre-raiding gear list for you guys to check out (and debate!  NEED INPUTS PLZ), along with a listing of the gems I think I'm going with and a stat priority list.  


I don't know when I'll do that exactly, since I'm such a slacker lately on posting.  Lots of interesting things going on IRL right now and it's keeping me from being all "Happy-Posty-Update Druid" lately.


I'm sorry.  I miss you too!

Con mucho amor,


THE BEAR

The Slacker Returns

It’s been a few months since the last post and for that I apologize.  Obviously, I’m failing at my New Year’s Resolution to post more often. 

I’ll keep this relatively short (which we also know is a total fib, but anyway…). 

I’ve been busy in Azeroth.  Here are the updates:

• My beloved druid is still Boomkin/Restoration and is very well geared now.  I haven’t raided at ALL though.  By the time I got her geared through endless weeks of grinding heroic dungeons…I just got burnt out and wanted to experience some other classes.

• My darling Shaman is level 85 and decently geared now.  She needs some help in the Restoration department, as healing on her is still sort of messy.  I’m still learning, but I love her and will continue to try my hand at healing. 

•  My mage dinged 85 last night.  It was as surprising to me as it probably is to everyone out there reading.  It took a spec change to make me really love that class.  Arcane mages are SO much fun.  Lots of BOOM!  Still working on perfecting the rotation and now I need to work on getting her geared.  The reason THIS level 85 was surprising to me is mainly because I have both my warlock and my death knight at level 80 and 81 respectively, and my mage started off around level 60 when I decided to make the grind to end game with her.   I will be working on her Frost spec soon and I’ll update on that as soon as I have an idea what we’re doing there.  So far, I have no interest in fire, but that may change.

That’s the quick summary of what I’ve been up to lately.  I haven’t wanted to raid at all, which is not at all typical but there’s been so much going on that I can’t imagine wiping repeatedly on the same bosses night after night being something I could stomach right now. 

There are patch notes and random stuff I could get into, but I don’t know if I have the brainpower for that at the moment.  I guess the biggest change that should be noted is the change they’ve made to druids.  We can’t shift out of CC anymore.  Yeah…how about THEM apples???

I read a HUGE forum post where people were begging Blizzard not to make this change.  Deaf ears, my friends.  It all fell on deaf ears.  So now, if you get frost nova’d…you are just going to have to be mage food.  Not a HUGE issue for resto or balance druids.  But for ferals?  That’s death.  Oh, but don’t be too sad.  Blizzard buffed the feral damage to “make up for” this change.

Translation?  If you can actually REACH your target,  you can supposedly mess them up.  But if you can’t get out of a snare or other CC with shapeshifting anymore…you’re going to be pretty hard pressed to get up to your target to shred their face.  See how that works?  So, um…thanks…for the uh…damage buff…that…ferals….can’t use…Good game!  I don’t PVP at all right now and my druid hasn’t made the shift back to Feral just yet and we all know that when she does, she’s going back to bear anyway. 

Since I rarely play my druid as of late, I haven’t noticed how this change has affected us in the PVE world yet.  I rarely shifted to get out of anything anyway, so it’s not really that big of a deal.  Besides, Resto druids can cleanse magic effects now, so…I’m not sure how hard this is going to hit me. 

Anyway, I guess I’ll get back to the real world.  Just a quick post to let you guys know I’m still here and to say hello to everyone.

With Great, GREAT love,

Des