(Over) Half way there

The questing continues and having blitzed through Grizzly Hills and heading into Zul'Drak, Crash finds himself at level 76 with some new abilities to try out and Cold Weather flying within stabbing distance.

I am going to be hitting up an instance with my guild so Tricks of the Trade is going to get some testing (and may be a life saver given I'm a few levels above the tank) so a macro is going to be required. Most people have recommended setting the tank as the focus target and then having a macro like this:

#showtooltip Tricks of the Trade
/cast [target=focus] Tricks of the Trade

However if I'm going to be sapping things, I tend to set the Sap target as the focus target so that Class Timers can show me how long is remaining on the crowd control. In this situation the following macro may be more useful:

#showtooltip Tricks of the Trade
/target "Tank"
/cast Tricks of the Trade
/targetlasttarget

The only disadvantage here is that there will be some loss of white damage whilst I'm not targetting the mob, and will need to be careful about how combo points are preserved when switching targets.

Finally I'm planning to switch back to mutilate, a blacksmith in guild has agreed to make me two Saronite Shivs which appear to be awesome for PvE so it'll be fun to go back and see how the changes in the Assassination tree pan out.

(Thanks to One Rogue's Journey for the details on the macros)

Catch up time

Wow, where does the time go. I've been busy working on a project in Poughkeepsie for the last two weeks and totally forgot to update this blog with what's been happening in game.

The cunning plan for getting me into the expansion kinda worked, it turns out you can't hack a US install to talk to the EU servers, but having already updated my account with the CE key I was able to download the expansion overnight on the hotel wireless. Finding that my hard drive didn't have enough space did cause a slight panic but the game runs just fine from a USB hard drive.

Anyways having logged in to find Shattrath deserted I retrieved Frosty from the mail box and headed to the Undercity ready to catch the blimp to Howling Fjord.

Having arrived in Northrend I was struck by just how different the landscape was. The buildings were more details and the zones seem more alive. Watching the wildlife fight each other as you run past makes a massive difference to just having everything wander along it's patrol routes. The detail in things like burning forests and snow capped mountains is a huge step up from what we've previously had.

The quests are also a lot more interesting, Crash is currently level 74 and been through most of Howling Fjord and Dragonblight and there's only been one or two quests that I've been frustrated by. I do like the way that quests become available once others have been completed, it feels a lot more story like and much more development. Also they're nicely grouped for you, so you don't have to spend huge amounts of time working out the best way around the zone to avoid retracing your steps unnecessarily.

One of the things I was looking forward to was running instances at the right level, unfortunately time zone differences mean that this isn't really possible at the moment, but I am pugging a lot of the group quests when someone asks in General chat and so far I haven't had a single problem.

My deathknight has escaped and is currently sat in Ogrimmar, not sure when or if he'll get levelled but I was very impressed with the starter zone and the quest chains that you go through.

So I'll carry on with the levelling, trying to keep a few professions up at the right level whilst getting my sneaky backside up 80 and enjoying the quests and lore involved with the zones.

The cake really isn't a lie

Again the achievements have driven me to get some more completion in things. This time it's cooking and the possibilty of being an 'Outland Gourmet'. I discovered I had most of the recipes already, and a quick trip to Worlds End Tavern and the Sporregar got me the last of the ones that could be bought. Switching my quest reward from the crate of meat to the barrel of fish picked up two of the extra recipes from there, leaving me with just the delicious chocolate cake recipe to get.

Well having picked Mana Berries again for the Rokk the crate of meat the final recipe dropped which meant I could complete two cooking achievements. Bring on the expansion which means I should be able to get a third title to go along with the Shattered Sun and Hallowed ones I've already picked up.

It's all in the timing

Nearly everyone who hasn't been hiding under a rock for the last few months will have spotted that the new expansion comes out this week. I decided to pre-order the collectors edition, mostly for the free pet, but it nicely ramps up my playing of wow. Original game got as a free giveaway with a newspaper, TBC bought quickly and as a normal edition so I could play an elf on horde with friends up to where we are today.

So the plan was sorted and ready to go, when work gave me the opportunity to do a residency for four weeks in the United States. This wasn't an opportunity to pass up so I'm currently blogging this from my suite in Fishkill, NY with plans afoot on how I can get hold of the game key from my collectors edition and some installation media ready to make the journey to Northrend (even if it's a few hours different to the rest of the guild).

So far playing from the US to European servers over the hotel wireless doesn't seem too awful but my plan of being able to do instances whilst levelling at the right level may have to be slightly delayed due to time differences.

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.

WTB: Patch 3.0.3

Hallows End has been a lot of fun again, the Headless Horseman remains a loot pinata with the added bonus of a new mount and sword. Plus there's all the extra achievement fun from flying around all over the world getting candy from the buckets and trying to get all the wand transformations.

Thanks to some help from willing Guild members I managed that (didn't realize you couldn't use them to transform yourself) and winning the helm meant the Sinister Squashling I won last year didn't have me hoping for two rare drops. However getting a second squashling on the same character is not fun and slightly depressing as you're forced to delete it from your inventory.

Anyways once the patch hits and the slightly crazy mask achievement is removed as a pre-requisite I can choose whether to be known as

Crashandburn of the Shattered Sun

or

Crashandburn, the Hallowed

I think it will depend on the situation, but having got a lot of stick for buying the title (it fitted my character to have it) having one that I've earned is going to be just as sweet.

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 :)