The one where Crash writes a catch up post

By the Sunwell, where does the time go when everything appears to be happening at once.

Real life has been intruding quite a lot recently which has meant I've not had the time to write as much and playing has been mostly in fits and starts as and when time has allowed.

Some notable stuff that has happened:

• I finally got round to sticking my head in Obsidian Sanctum and have defeated Sartharion.
• I've defeated every boss in Naxxramas, and picked up a piece of T7.
• Chef Crashandburn has been seen around the place adding cooking, to the list of professions at 450 (Skinning, Leatherworking and First Aid being the others).
• Medrare has dinged 80 and has successfully tanked a heroic, grabbing a staff at the same time.
  

I've been hitting a few achievements as and when time allows, plus I need to stay ahead on points against a certain obsessive shaman, but at the same time taking a relaxed approach given there isn't a set of holiday achievements to grind for the shiny mount.

Our guild is moving on to attempt Malygos at the moment, and once I get another couple of upgrades then I'll be aiming to stab the big blue a few times.

The only other big decisions at the moment are whether I'll go for dual specs on both characters, or just Medrare in case I decide to scratch an itch to try healing, plus working out how the class changes will affect how I play each of my characters. I've avoiding getting too attached or repulsed by any of the changes as they get announced as chances are they'll change before ever hitting the live server.

Catch you soon....

Time to switch main?

The rogue has been a class close to my heart. My very first character on a trial account was a rogue, and my first level 70 and 80 character has been Crash (I started playing just after TBC came out so 60 wasn't a massive milestone). However now I've got there and started hitting the heroics and early Naxx I don't find myself enjoying the class as much as I did back then.

It's great to play daggers again, and when soloing I'm an unstoppable killing machine as everything dies whilst stunned, but the constant button pushing to keep HfB up, the lack of AoE when dealing with trash and the feeling that using stealth just hampers dps rather than adding to it means I'm not enjoying the group play as much.

Whilst it's been quiet over the Christmas break I've started levelling Medrare again and am remembering how much fun druid is. Plus as a hybrid class I could tank (which I've done a bit of), dps (rogue with less issues) or once the dual specs thing comes in heal, though Elune help anyone who takes me as a healer initially.

This might make things a bit tricky to start with as we currently have some high level tanks who have been running stuff for weeks and so have lots of the tasty badge gear but I don't think this will be too much of a problem as we go on as there's always plenty of dps looking to do runs.

I'm not making the decision just yet, especially as I'll have to go through the whole levelling and gearing process again, but with the alchemy trinkets available and Crash already able to make nearly all the leatherworking stuff it might be a bit easier this time around.

Watch this space...

Another feral armor change

After the change to feral armor and the removal of the big green numbers from things like the clefthoof set other items such as rings, trinkets and weapons still kept them and still provided a huge boost when shifting into Dire Bear Form.

It appears now that while these items will still have the large armor values it won't be multiplied by the shift into bear form, giving the same benefits as to the other tanking classes. Obviously the lack of shields means that a bear needs some other way of staying alive rather than just mitigating the damage through massive amounts of armor.

My personal guess is that it will be through dodging (as opposed to Death Knights which will parry, or dodge as well) especially with the change that gives rage everytime we dodge. I'm not too worried about this change given the developers wish that all tanking classes are able to tank end game content but it does mean that it appears that rogues and feral druids are going to be rolling on the same armor items almost constantly.

Hitting the heroics

Having got used to the new druid spec, keybound all the new abilities to something useful and checked out the changes to armour etc. I felt that if there were enough willing volunteers in the guild it was time to hit up some instances for fun (and achievements).

Fortunately the normal and heroic instance of the day was Black Morass so there were a few takers so in we went. Once the group was formed and I was given lead to mark up I duly set the difficulty to heroic and in we went and cleared the beasties the patrol around. I started the event by running towards Medivh and then swiftly moved onto the first portal. The group consisted of feral druid, enh and resto shaman, ret pally (seriously how my damage are these guys doing at the moment) and a shadow priest. So I tanked the big elite next to the portal and the pally used consecrate to pick up all the adds allowing me to swipe for more aggro.

After the 3rd portal went down with no real problem, questions were asked as to whether we were truely running this on heroic mode (in fact I had to check the settings in the difficulty menu). Everything said we were doing the right thing so we pushed on to the first boss who promptly died, saved us to the instance and dropped a badge confirming what everything else was telling us. The rest of the instance went just as smoothly and again Medivh was able to bring the Orcs to Azeroth whilst we were able to complete the quests for extra badges.

Buoyed by our success we decided to go for another one with the same group and decided on Shattered Halls. If I'd been nervous about doing BM as a heroic, I was very nervous about Shattered Halls, especially given the amount of crowd control the group didn't have. Oh yeah, roots works in doors now, and is a great way to initiate a pull providing you pick the right add. Also the change to feral faeire fire to act as a DoT (which can crit) means that you can easily break crowd control from range (our Pally was using Repentance as another form of cc) whilst mopping up the adds.

There were a few deaths along the way (including mine) but at times we were just taking the whole pulls of 5 or 6, marking the skull and then just taking down all the rest having swiped for England to keep the rest off the healer or the dps. We even managed to take down all the bosses in time for the timed event for the Trial of the Naruu.

Other than the changes for swipe, faeire fire and swipe there are some other fun things in the feral druid arsenal.
Survival Instincts - Health boost for those 'Oh S***' moments handy for trying to survive those extra few seconds should you end up with more than you can handle or the healer gets incapacitated.
Beserk - Wow, just wow. Mangle hits 3 mobs at once and has no cooldown other than the global one. Unfortunately didn't make me immune to the Death Coil of one of the bosses but does provide a chance for a massive threat lead if you use it at the start of a fight.

There's still plenty of things to get used to and remember, potions and the herbalism heal being the main ones but there's some more finesse required to the tanking in the game now and more judgement calls. Currently the fights and instances might seem a little easy but once we start hitting Northrend and the fights our new abilities are tuned for it's going to be a whole new ball game. Can't wait :)

Didn't see that coming

Wow! The patch notes for the 3.0.3 PTR have been made available and there's an interesting entry in the Druid section.

The Swift Flight Form is now available on the trainer at level 71, requiring 300 riding skill, and Flight Form learned.

There are similar announcements for warlocks and paladins who can get their epic land mount at level 61. I can understand the reason for the change, as people level up it's going to be trickier to get groups together for instances such as Dire Maul or Stratholme, heroic Setthek Halls is more of a challenge given the need for a heroic key. When Medrare got his quest complete we had to spend some time grinding Arrakoa feathers in order to help a willing victimvolunteer get the heroic key in order to get in.

At least they're not removing the quests so you could still go back and do them, especially with the extra chance of a land mount from Anzu for druids. For druids I would recommend doing the quests even if you don't do the last part mainly for the fun of having to play every part of your class and being involved with some of the basic lore of being a druid.

Druids after 3.0.2 or where the heck did all these skills come from

Having mucked about with Crash mostly since the patch hit I thought it was only fair that Medrare got a chance to learn some new spells and play with the new feral talents.

I've followed BBB's lead and sunk enough points into the feral tree to pick up Beserk at the cost of Omen of Clarity. With feral charge now available in Cat Form, Survival Instincts, Berserk ready for use in feral forms, Nature's Grasp now trainable I've run out of space on the 1-= action bar for everything I want to use. This isn't a massive problem as I'm used to keybinding extra abilities on other action bars for Crash it's just going to be a case of sorting out what abilities are going to be key regardless of bear and cat form and binding them easily.

The obvious ones are those that require either of the forms, so that'll be charge, survival instincts and berserk. I could also add Feral Faiere Fire but that's been on 0 for so long that changing it will most likely cause more confusion whilst trying to tank.

Anyways, druid posts are likely to be a bit fewer and farer between over the next few weeks and months as Crash gets levelled but I'll try and keep an eye on things an may well tank some of the early stuff if people are really desparate.

Oh yeah it does that...

When putting together the previous post I initially was going to state that druids didn't have any interrupts. Fortunately I was asked to tank Arcatraz (all the way through which was a novelty) for one of our mages who was keen to get his Sha'tar rep to revered for the glyph.

Whilst tanking Dalliah the Doomsayer our plan was just to dps through the heal due to lack of rogue/shaman. As I got out of Whirlwind range the dps did the best thing whilst the boss isn't being actively tanked, and continued nuking. So to get back in quickly I used Feral Charge hoping to either keep the stack of lacerates up, or get it back quickly enough. The mechanics of the fight mean that she always casts heal straight after the whirlwind, and as I shot back in faster than the average bear I noticed the heal fail to complete.

D'oh, /facepalm, time to cut up my tanking licence, I forgot about the interrupt component of the charge, mostly because of the amount of times I charge at something that isn't casting, or is immune to the effects. I'm sure there's been others, and it's probably only going to get worse as the next expansion (and probably the following ones) introduce new abilities.

Things I miss when playing the other character

We had another of our weekly Karazhan runs last night and due to a surplus of tanking specced classes Medrare got to go as dps. With no other feral druids in the party I had the extra challenge of keeping Mangle and Faerie Fire up on the mobs being focussed on. It was a lot of fun especially as I was acting as raid leader again so had to run tactics as well.

Given that running around in Cat form is a lot like playing a rogue it got me thinking about what I miss from one class whilst playing the other. So here is a non-definitive list for each of them:

Rogue
Heals - Relying on food, bandages and natural regen can be slow and expensive at time. Linked with this is Improved Leader of the Pack with it's improved crit chance and heal every so often when you do crit helps you to do the Duracell Bunny thing and keep on going.
Instant pulling - Whilst stun locking and getting the first blow in from stealth is the way of dispatching a mob 99% of the time. That other 1% requires you to pull 1 away from the group to dispatch away from his friends who might be slightly upset with you. Throw or Shoot take time to happen plus the travel time which means that the bad guy has the opportunity to wander. Something like faiere fire means that you use it you know you're only going to pull the mob you're interested in.
Variety - When raiding or instancing the rogues job is usually the same in every fight, do as much damage as you can whilst not causing the tank a headache, an occasionally preventing a spell cast. Whilst you can tweak and perfect your rotation to try and eek out those last 1 or 2 dps after a while it can become a bit samey. With a druid, even a feral one you've got all the tools to heal and provide ranged damage, it's not the best but whilst raiding I've provided a combination of tanking/dps and healing all in the same run.

Druid
Interrupts - There is nothing more annoying that seeing a mob casting something that would cause a lot of pain should it complete. Whilst Maim can be used it does rely on not just having spent all your combo points on Rip and having the energy to use it. Having something else in Cat Form such as Kick would be fantastic.
Vanish - Not only great for dumping threat should you need to during a fight but when things get a bit tricky due to running mobs or things wandering in during the middle of your fight being able to trick them all that you're not there can be a big life saver.

Now this isn't a wish list for either class, just trying to highlight some of the key things each class can bring by noticing them when they're missing when you play a different one.

Stats for the young feral druid

Rakhman from Flameshock added a comment to a recent post asking whether AP or crit would be better for his baby druid as it levels through the mid 40s.

There is a quick answer which I could just give but that might lead to more questions, so in the style of all the best exam questions I'm going to explain my answer. Now this is my first real theory-crafting post so should there be any errors etc please be kind.

The druid in question is level 45 so I'm going to assume a build something like this, which is based on the leveling guide put together by BBB.

Looking at the talents alone, 2 points in Primal Fury provides an extra combo point every time one of your special moves crits. This does mean that you can build up combo points quicker and execute more powerful finishing moves.

Before we get all giddy and start stacking crit let's look at the moves we'll be using and how they work. A good rule of thumb would be to prowl up to a mob, pounce on it, Shred 1-3 times depending on energy and OOC procs. Once the mob is facing you it's time to use a combination of Claw and Rake. Once you have 4 or 5 combo points Rip, or if the mob is very close to death, Ferocious Bite. As an aside we use the finisher at 4 points as if the next combo point generating move were to crit you would lose the bonus combo point.

Digging into the description of these talents we can see a repeated phrase, "scales with Attack Power", which as it suggests means the more attack power you have, the more damage you do when using it. Attack power also increases the amount of white damage you do, which will be a lot in cat form due to the 1.0 swing speed of your claws.

So in answer to the orignal question I would take the AP increase even if it meant losing a small amount of crit. It is also worth remembering that in a few levels it will be worth respeccing to pick up mangle and at the same time you'll get Leader of the Pack which will increase your crit chance by 5% whilst in cat or bear form.

Whilst looking at gear from quest rewards and possible from the auction house it's worth remembering which stats go directly towards attack power.
Bear Form: 1pt of Strength == 2AP
Cat Form: 1pt of Strength == 2AP, 1pt of Agility == 1AP

So there we go, take the AP increase and have fun clawing the faces off all the mobs in your path.

Is it a bird...?

Due to a lack of sign-ups our Friday raid was canceled and in it's place our veritable raid leader suggested that we head into Sethekk Halls and defeat Anzu so that Medrare could get his Swift Flight Form. Our party for this mission would be two feral druids, a resto druid, hunter and mage.

Our start time was slightly delayed by the discovery that our Mage didn't have the Auchenai key due to a lack of Lower City reputation. The Arrakoa of Terorkkar didn't know what had hit them as 3 of the party went to grind feathers whilst the mage and healer looked for quests which could be completed for extra reputation. A couple of hundred feathers later we were ready to go.

A couple of attempts on the first boss and we were on our way up to the main event. Our main tank had slight reservations about some of the pulls (based on when we ran this instance for his quest) but we bravely fought our way through and then it was up to face the Raven God. It was a flawless fight and soon the Emerald Dream was saved from the menace and on a slightly selfish level I completed the quest. Sadly the mount didn't drop, and we were unable to kill the final boss but I was able to ditch Flight Form and speed my way back from Cenarion Refuge to Shattrath for a fly past show.



The instance run again required a bit of everything from me, mostly cat dps, with the occasional OT role for cc, using Hibernate for cc and healing the MT should it desperately be required. This relates very closely to the whole quest chain which leads up to the instance run, which has been the most fun quest chain I've done in game. Requires a bit of everything you have as a druid and making sure you do a bit of everything a druid can do.

We can only hope that there are more quest chains like this that can be experienced in future gameplay as the expansions come out.

Expansion druid changes

So the Worldwide Invitational is currently running and a QA with the development team has listed some interesting changes for the druid class.

First what isn't changing, Cyclone, having learnt this at 70 I've not actually used it whilst questing or in an instance. So the lack of changes aren't really affecting my game style but arena players might have something to say about it.

However a fantastic change is removing the outdoor requirement for Entangling Roots. Suddenly there's more crowd control available in instances. As a feral tank it's probably only going to be used as the start of a pull, much like Hibernate, but will keep a melee unit out the way and build some threat on it. A resto druid could keep something constantly rooted until it's time to kill it, but that would be something I'd avoid on my instance runs due to the healer having higher threat than me on a mob.

Secondly, Windfury!!, I love having this buff when playing Crash in an instance/raid and the fact that a feral druid in bear/cat form can use it could be just as cool. It would be interesting to see which is better for a druid tank, windfury or the extra agility totem which adds to dodge and attack power.

Finally 3 words; Dire...Cat...Form, a new model hopefully and a chance for Tauren druids to have a really cool looking model. We don't know what this form will mean but just the thought of it is enough to make me want the expansion now rather than later this year (or more likely early next year).

Edit: It's been pointed out to me that one of the other shaman changes was to combine Strength of Earth and Grace of Air on the same totem, so it might not be a case of choosing between agility and windfury but we can have both. /hug totems

Playing a Hybrid

It's midsummer in Azeroth and the fire festival is in full swing along with a new summonable boss in Slave Pens. Trying it today for a chance on the epic tanking cloak which drops from him we had what was a less than optimum group (1 tankadin, 2 feral druids, 1 resto shaman, 1 BM hunter) but did manage it once, but required me to be switching around all over the place.

Most of the time I was running around in Cat form tanking down the tiny adds but given the length of the fight and the damage the group was taking our healer was finding mana a problem. The two innervates were in use and timed roughly the right amount of time apart, so that wasn't a problem shifting out, dropping the innervate and shifting back however when mine was on CD and one was still required the other druid was carefully tanking the spawned elite. ok shift to bear, taunt it off him and allow him to drop the innervate and shift back to cat once it's been taunted off me.

While we only managed the kill once, and the cloak didn't drop but it certainly opened my eyes to some of the extra difficulties to playing a class with multiple roles rather than just stabbing things with daggers/swords and trying not to steal aggro from the tank.

And then there were two

After a weekends dedicated questing Medrare hit the big 7-0 and equipped the rest of the clefthoof set in preparation for some end game tanking.

Interestingly the macro to check for critability indicates that I'm already uncritable which surprised me, but must be the resiliance that my rings and trinket along with the defense from gems. 13K health and 17K armor mean that I can probably do the early level 70 instances (mmm Steamvaults for CE rep) but Kara will have to wait awhile longer. Also given that our raid leader has decreed that characters still need to be keyed even though Blizzard have removed the attunement so I'll be running the 5 instances required by that.

I've certainly enjoyed levelling a druid, there's more variety in the fighting, plus being able to heal rather than relying on bandages or food reduces down time. The biggest advantage was running through stuff I'd already done but there were a few quests to try now the mobs were no longer elite, and I'm all set up to finish the Greatmother chain of quests in Nagrand, which is really cool given that I missed this on Crash the first time round.

Here's looking forward to some end game playing on a new character, and remember the suggestions for whispering druids randomly in game ;)

I believe I can fly

Medrare has dinged 68 and that means one thing in the life of a druid, a quick trip to the class trainer to get Shapeshift: Flight Form and quickly hearth back to Shattrath so you can try it out. Here he is in all his storm crow glory

It's a bit frustrating to only be going at 60% speed, when Crash is off zooming about on his epic flyer, but grinding SSO rep for the glyph and possibly the uber alchemists stone should help raise the rest of the gold. LFG Heroic Setthek Halls anyone?