Results tagged “Druid” from From the Abbey to Outlands

I have asked before about preparation and plans surrounding Wrath before, but I thought it might be a good time to check in again, since when I asked before we were a long way off from Wrath's launch, coming in three days. So the first part was asking what you will be doing in the last 24 hours before Wrath launches? Will you be trying to get a few last items sold on the AH? Will you be grinding out some rep? Doing a few dailies whole they still return gold? Working to get your professions up to 350 in order to bring your skills up to where they start in Wrath? Respeccing or regemming to more leveling friendly specs or stats. Or maybe you just plan to farm for lowbies or your planned Death Knight? Me, I have plans to increase my xp gain right away on install.

Now to after the expansion hits. What are your plans for after the expansion goes live? Will you choose to be a servant of the Lich King? Will you hop a ride north and begin taking our fight to that very King? If so, will you be hitting up Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord? Going to Northrend to learn new levels of gathering skills, but going to Outlands to get skill ups? Working on Outlands or Azeroth to do old stuff to scour lag? Or are you pretty new to WoW, or too low, for Wrath to really matter to your game play? I also wonder how many just won't be getting the expansion, and instead will spend the day of and those after the expansion just reveling in how quickly Outlands cleared out? I will take all my 70s to Northrend for training but at least my Druid will keep farming Outlands for herbs to level alchemy and inscription.

The air has grown chilled, the waters stilled. The signs point to the event that has been anticipated with bated breath. Prepare yourselves, for... 3.0.3 is nearly upon us. The downtime is extended right about the same length of a usual patch maintenance, and people are preparing. While it is hard to know what the patch will actually hold, since even WoW Insider is only quoting the PTR notes, which could have changed in the 3 week or so run that the PTRs had.

We know that many Ret changes were hot fixed, which Siha points out were done without PTR testing, and other changes are so small, like the Hallowed Be Thy Name change, that they are unlikely to not make the patch. The Druid talent reset is pretty much a given, along with many of the changes to their talents. Other than that? Well, anything could happen. WoW Insider got something right, though, that Patch 3.0.3 is most likely going to happen, even if we haven't seen the typical 'thanks for testing' message on the PTR forums. 

Note: WoW Insider is using guesses and labeling Test Realm info as confirmed patch info. This should be noted, but isn't. PTR notes at launch can differ wildly from live patch notes.

The patch 3.0.2 has been out for about a week now, and I have taken a close look at the trends of what people have been doing since the patch hit. I think I have discovered what the 1 month between 3.0.2 hit and the expansion comes out will be for. I have seen guildie after guildie heasd back to the old world, you know, that content that is dead and gone? Yeah, the Achievements, the Inscriptions, the Hallow's End, and eventually I am sure in a few weeks we will see the Wrath events lead us back to the old world of Azeroth and Kalimdor to face off against the Lich King as has been hinted to in the sound files.

True, the patch did bring us new talents and some new profession abilities, but even those brought us back to the old cities to train. I am really beginning to be convinced that all about this, these events, are a ploy to push us all back into the old world content. Sure, there are Outlands acheivements, but there are more people running pre BC dungeons, for acheivements, for events, for exploration, than I have in the last two years. What do you all think?

Patch 3.0.2 has been out for mere days and already we have word of tweaks and hot fixes incoming. Based on the list compiled by MMO Champion, every class including the Death Knight are getting tweaks in coming builds/patches, with 3.0.3 coming out this Tuesday or next. Some of my favorite tweaks are Paladin Auras no longer activating the GCD, instead having a built in 1 second cooldown, Moonfury and Earth and Moon down to 3 ranks from 5, but keeping the same overall benefit. That buys you 4 extra talent points to get more utility or fun talent, ans Instead of getting new ranks of Hawk at level 75 and 80, you now get the new Aspect of the Dragonhawk, not to mention Hunter Aspects coming off cooldown as well. This powerful aspect combines all of the effects of Hawk and Monkey. These will help all 3 of my played classes, and I hope make the my playtime more enjoyable.

While many of watch the crawling progress bar of our installs for patch 3.0.2, I thought I would let you know what talents I recommend for a couple of my classes. These will be for the specs I choose to play, and are not necessarily going to reflect what you will, or may choose to select for your characters. Next up, I am going to shift to my roaring Doomkin Druid, and their Ret build. This will be a 61/0/0 build.

Let me start off by saying that, while I thought Ret was hard to choose, this tree is so full of the awesome talents I have always wanted, there is too many for a mere level 70. Hell, there are not even points at 80 to get everything, though I suppose that's the point. I would have loved to take Improved Paw, but I think it will be a struggle at 80 to scrounge 2 points to fill that one out, so at 70 I had to ditch it. In tier 1 I chose Starlight Wrath over Genesis because I don't often find myself using moonfire spam to bring something down. If I have that much mana, especially now that pushback is better, I will just Wrath or Starfire something to an early grave.

There were a total of 4 empty talents and 1 partially full talent left in my Balance tree when I was hitting on 70; Genesis, Improved Faerie Fire, Wrath of Cenarius, and Eclipse. Earth and Moon was the one talent only partially filled up in my level 70 tree. At 80 I will only have the first 2  empty, as I will fill out Earth and Moon, and pop the rest of my points into Wrath of Cenarius and Eclipse. I may scrounge a point here or there in the tree, like I said to improve my paw, but at this point I am not sure I really need to do that, especially with the diversity the trees get and the ability of a Resto Druid to actually stay Resto through the leveling process.

Some of the key talents I hit on were Brambles, Dreamstate, Owlkin Frenzy, Typhoon, Gale Winds, Earth and Moon, and of course, Starfall. All of these abilities either boost my DPS or lower my threat, which will only help me as I level through Northrend, and in the pre Wrath month it will help me a lot in raids. Typhoon has a nice knock back which, while it won't give me time to do a HoT or two before going back into Moonkin, might just keep those mobs off me that one or two seconds I need to use a Fel Blossom and Wrath them down.

I will point out that in beta I have done almost no work on my Druid, choosing instead to focus my early beta days on Medros, since I have two characters who use his leveling spec, but from the stats alone this spec should rock the house. It boosts just enough for other classes to make a Balance druid worthwhile in raid, and much nicer in soloing. We will see what happens in the coming hours, days, and weeks as we learn the new way of things in the Wrath era of Warcraft. Patch progress: Complete. 

I have noticed while reading the latest Blue Posts that we are beginning to see a list of stuff mentioned at Blizzcon '07 and WWI '08 that I noted that has been added to the 'Not at ship' list. So far I am noticing new Druid form art, already changed from a promised Dire Cat Form, will now not happen until after Wrath ships. I would note they don't seem to be doing it half assed, which is nice, but this makes me wonder if some of the data mined Minor Gyphs that would have changed the look of cat form will actually make it into the game at launch. This also makes me wonder how many minor glyphs, if any, will actually ship, since I am not yet seeing any in beta and only a handful of potential minor glyphs data mined.

We also know now that the former 11 point talent, Trap Mastery, will now be a 41 point talent and is currently broken. Something that saddens me more, though, is that Koraa has stated that the talent will not be improved before Wrath ships, instead getting some changes 'in a future patch', which could mean 3.1, 3.5, or somewhere in between. Add on to this that the shaman ability Riptide will not ship with proper sound and animations, causing complaints from Shamans that caused Tigole, a Dev, to ban at least two players last weekend.

We already knew that Icecrown Citadel would not be in Wrath on the 13th of November, as they have stated all along that it will be in an early 3.x content patch, but I have to wonder what else will change to 'will not ship'. Will many of the minor glyphs change? I would imagine, based on the blue post, that any texture changes to the Druid forms will not be there, so no polar bear tanks in Wrath. Don't get me wrong, I love the level of detail they are aiming for because the Swift Flight Form, for druids at least, looked absolutely awesome, but I just wish that they would stick to their guns on some of the promised coolness.

When I began working on this post, I will admit, the only thing I had was the Druid skin thing, but this post on WoW Insider brought several more issues to my attention. Zach Yonzon, the author of the post, points out, and rightly so, that this is not the usual 'When it's Ready' we get from Blizzard. This has the feel of an expansion being pushed out on a deadline that simply must be met. Is this the result of Activision Blizzard? Devs banning people for complaints that are more plentiful than mosquitoes in July? Titles shipping come hell or high water by a certain date, unfinished or not? I think the poll on WoW Insider says it all about what the fans think, with a 2:1 ratio of folks who want the expansion When it IS ready, versus on the date that was set.

Do you know of anything else that has been stated as 'not when shipped'? Dance Studios? Dual Specs? Dire Cat Form? What features of the game do you fear are at the high probability of being put off to a later patch? Let me know in the comments of the blog here at From the Abbey to Outlands!

Having finally spent time recording your searches in my client, I have a more thorough list to pick and choose from in my searches to answer for you today. I hope that some of these answer your query to your favored search service. Let's do some quickies first.

where are paladin trainer in outlands - there are none
wow "gold medallion" "spirit of competition" -win Battlegrounds
how to 2.4 to 3.0 0 - Get into the beta, or wait until the pre release patch
outlands jc design vendors - all over
tree form through outlands - Have fun!

Now for the longer ones:
all tameable pets in northern in wrath of the lich king - I don't know about northern, but Northrend and the hunter pets are I think not done yet, as just this past patch brought them 2 more classes of tameable pet. I would check out Petopia for more current data, though.

alchemy in wrath of the lich king - I hope it is incomplete and unpolished, because there feels like there is not much there, and what there is, takes too much to make. I will say no more for now, only that you wait. In the meantime, go to the Alchemy page on WoWHead's Wrath section for the latest. Just hit Last, and then Previous to see the newer stuff.

New Dire Bear Model wrath of lich - Nothing showing yet, but I would rather suspect it will be Glyph based.

netherwingquest line removed in wrath of the lich king - I have heard nothing about this, but there are some things that are being removed or changed for Wrath. I will look further into this once I have a toon on the beta realms who doesn't already have their drake.

leveling in outlands - ...is very fun, and will get better in wrath when you need to do about 3 of the zones to be Northred ready.

Lastly: abbey outland - Glad you found me!

We are currently in the beta phase of the next expansion, as you are all well aware. All of the classes have new talent trees, and some have spectacular abilities that totally kick ass. Some, not so much. I understand that some all players want those OMFG abilities to be seen. Not all will get them. Some may get them eventually. Everyone wants a Divine Storm, a Titan's Grip, a Beast Mastery, a Typhoon to be given to their class. Not everyone can. This is a fact of life that we will just have to struggle to accept and live with.

The way I see it, having a Hunter, 2 Paladins, and a Druid at 70, is that the big skills are being given to those classes and specs within classes that really, really need them. Hunters have long been the mockery of gaming. Ret Paladins too have suffered being the butt of all DPS jokes. Many raiders seem to feel that Moonturkey are carried, not doing real damage or contributing much to a run other than the aura. I play all of this. I see why we are getting the OMFG talents. We need them.

In a most recent Ask the Beta Tester segment on WoW Insider, their rogue columnist said that Rogues aren't getting any must have talents. He admitted that they will still do massive damage in any raid or group. No doubt rests in my mind that without the changes to Paladins in Wrath, Rogues would still be the hands down favorite for any raid or group. As it stands now, I have a small chance I could win out if their was a choice in a raid, especially with buffs to auras which make them raid wide and the talents and improvements to Retribution Aura that I have taken in the Retribution tree.

Changes to spell power will definitely affect Arita, my druid(renamed Aritas due to name change), but I am trying to get Medros to Dalaran in order to see the amazing city of magic. He only just dinged 71 last night, so it will be a bit until he hits the 74 minimum, but I will then spend some time learning the druid abilities to see how they do in solo and group play. I pretty much stuck to the prospective talent tree I posted about, and I will be sure to report here when I begin doing more than mere fedex quests on the Doomkin.

Hunters. Huntards many call us. Too easy to play, too streamlined, too anti group. We are the most insulted group, and the least wanted in groups. In fact, I think that if a raid were to choose between a Hunter and a Doomkin, they would likely choose feather over fur. Not to mention that hunters are almost never allowed to bring out their biggest asset, their pets, in most raid or group encounters. While Beast Mastery will undoubtedly be the most popular hunter spec in Wrath, cause let's be honest, who doesn't want to tame a Devilsaur, but Chimera Shot and Explosive Shot seem to have some promise. I will be looking at my Hunter last in the line of alts I will bring to the beta.

I guess what I am trying to say is, if your class isn't broke, don't expect a fix. Blizzard is giving clothies spell power, which will automatically give you a buff in that all that juicy healing gear that used to drop will now be usable. They are still working on classes from the Death Knight on down, so don't think that just cause we might have a cinematic, that the beta is over, cause it's not. This change. Things will continue to change. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.

Take note that these are alpha talents and changes. These may and likely will change in some way between now and the live release of Wrath of the Lich King, release date unknown. Today we will look at Druids, a class I play. We will look at my other two classes, Paladins and Hunters, when they are alpha released.

Druids. Bear Butt. Boom Turkey. These are two of the common nicknames we have received in the community. Well, soon, that bear butt will look different, though we know not how. Also, we will also get a new Dire Cat, which will also look different from the non Dire appearance. We don't know what either of these will look like, nor what will make the new form so 'Dire', but I am sure most druids are excited about cross spec forms coming. This does not, though, affect the discussion I will make here. Perhaps Aly over at Bitter Roots will blog other trees(pun intended) but I will be talking balance in this post.

There are some really interesting changes coming to the Balance tree, and some even more interesting new talents coming. While there are no small number of things to mention on each side, I will go into the changes to see what points should be used on day 1 of patch 3.0, even before the expansion is launched. Before that, though, here is a link to my planned talent usage. Oh, and here is the talent build I currently use on my Druid, Arita.

Old Becomes New
Brambles - Currently: Increases damage caused by your Thorns and Entangling Roots spells by 25/50/75%. Alpha: Damage from your Thorns, Entangling Roots and attacks from your Treants increased by 25/50/75%, and damage from your Thorns and Treants have a 15% chance to daze the target for 3 sec. Thoughts: The addition of treants and the stun make this a great talent to spec in to, and with the drop of 3 trees, and 30 seconds per cast, you are nearly guaranteed to have that proc at least once.

Nature's Reach - Currently: Increases the range of your balance spells and Faerie Fire(Feral) ability by 10/20%. Alpha: Increases the range of your balance spells and Faerie Fire(Feral) ability by 10/20%, and reduces the threat generated by your Balance spells by 30%. Thoughts: Long overdue threat reduction for Moonkin druids, though for those who are used to being the aggro magnet that stands between a wayward mob and the healers, this could be a problem.

Lunar Guidance - Currently: Increases your spell damage and healing by 8/16/25% of your total Intellect. Alpha: Increases your spell damage and healing by 4/8/12% of your total Intellect. Thoughts: Unnecessary nerf to damage, though hopefully we will see some other stuff or changes coming to make up for this.

Dreamstate - Currently: Placed next to Moonkin Form on tier 7. Alpha: Placed next to Moonfury on Tier 6. Thoughts: Good spell, available earlier in the tree and allowing for earlier mana regen boost. Good change for leveling turkeys.

New Hotness
Improved Moonkin Form - Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 10 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every few seconds. Tier 7. Thoughts: This will officially make Moonkins the must-have-in-my-group part of a raid set up when working out the casters, both healers and dps.

Owlkin Frenzy - Attacks done to you while in Moonkin form have a 5/10/15% chance to cause you to go into a Frenzy, increasing your damage by 10%  and causes you to be immune to pushback while casting balance spells. Lasts 10 seconds. Tier 8. Thoughts: This will make for a very interesting time soloing on my turkey, that's for sure-

Eclipse - When you critically hit with Starfire, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing the damage done by Wrath by 10%. When you critically hit with Wrath, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing the damage done by Starfire by 10%. Effect lasts 30 seconds and has a 2 min cooldown. Tier 9. Thoughts: Might be a good spell if you opened with Starfire until this procced, then switched to Wrath once the mob was coming at you, or used Wrath on a boss to minimize threat and then near death you used Starfire for the big numbers. Should be fun!

Typhoon - You summon a violent Typhoon that does 530 Nature damage when in contact with hostile targets, knocking them back 5 yards. 20 second cooldown. Tier 9. Thoughts: I assume this is an AoE, though unsure if it will be above the turkey by nature or if it will give a location choice like Hurricane. As it has a range, I assume it is like Hurricane, but that could, incredibly, mean it would be a 20 yard from the caster circle effect, which would be.... wow!

Gale Winds - Increases damage done by your Hurricane and Typhoon spells by 25/50%, and increases the range of Cyclone by 10/20%. Tier 9. Thoughts: Many folks were already angry in PvP about the current yardage of Cyclone, and this will only make that worse. The first part will be nice, especially if there are fights like the worms in Kara or Magister's Terrace in the expansion. 50% more damage on lightning bolts that, by the end, already leave the targets within a moonfire of death? Hell yes I'll take it!

Nature's Fury - Your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of applying the Nature's Fury debuff on the target. The Nature's Fury debuff increases Nature and Arcane damage done to the target by 2%. Lasts 12 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times. Tier 10. Thoughts: I like the 100%. All I would need to do is keep casting Wrath throughout the fight and the debuff would never die. Arcane Missiles, and I suspect some Shammy spells, would benefit from this.

Starfall - You summon a flurry of stars from the sky on all targets within 30 yard of the caster, each doing 500 to 580 Arcane damage, and an additional 170 arcane to all nearby targets within 5 years. Maximum 20 stars. Lasts 10 seconds. Tier 11(Final point). Thoughts: Whoa. We saw this in Warcraft 3 from Tyrande(interestingly a priestess) and it looked awesome. It sounds like this would not be a Volley like AoE, but more like the stars will fall on hostile targets only, not just randomly. Also, the nearby targets bit is a little confusing. It is like if you have like 5 or so targets all grouped within 5 yards, coming at you, it will not only do initial damage to each, but proximity to each other damage? I want to see this!

As you can tell, I have a... few opinions on this specific tree. As you will also notice, there is some changes over in the Resto tree. I have currently 13 points, and that will be lowered to 2. Not only because Improved Mark is changing to 2 points from 5, but I also don't think that the other spells will be that big of a deal in this current tree. I'll spend 2 over there, and save the other 11 for some of the changed, and more of the awesome new stuff coming in Wrath of the Lich King. Stay tuned, eventually, for the Paladin and Hunter tree reviews.  

So as I was preparing for work this morning, I noticed WoW Insider had an interesting post about a change in the descriptions of the three different Death Knight talent trees, Blood, Frost, and Unholy. The changes are interesting, moving away from stereotyped roles of a spec(tank, DPS, PvP, etc) to a more tagged type of description, as well as removing the description about what the presence does from that tree.

WoW Insider suggested a pretty decent guess from my perspective of why this might have been done. One of the reasons that we have the current tank shortage in the game is perspective. We have Warriors not wanting to lose the loot priority value of being the main tank in raids, and thus have complained at any improvements that could potentially see them replaced in that role, such as buff to Paladins or Druids as tanks.

Blizzard being attentive to warriors has led to a deep tank shortage, because no one wants to spec their character in a way that will make them less effective or desirable to the overall gaming population. WoW Insider points out that the change to the trees could be a lead up to a change in thinking from Blizzard. If the company stops referring to trees by the stereotypical terms, DPS, Heal, Tank, PvP, Raid, etc, we just might see players change their thinking.

I have to agree with the writer of the piece in that we could just as easily see the terms to describe something, for example Tank, change to be the new terms, control, counters, and combos. We could see 'LFC(control) DK for Naxx' instead of 'LF Tank for Naxx'. Of course, there is something to be said for the stereotypes. Which is nicer to see: 1) 'LF AoE Pal, Threat War, Swipe Druid, Control DK for <instance>' or 2) 'LF Tank for <instance>'? I think 2 will be it.

In the end, this still has the ring of a move away from the age old stereotypes and to a new way of thinking about how characters are designed and planned, as well I would think in how they are evolved as the future expansions hit. As Blizzard brings more Hero classes into the game in those expansions to be named, this will undoubtedly help them broaden the classes beyond the narrow stereotypes that have plagued them since the game was in beta.

Will changing the descriptions of the classes in the game and in the future change how you think about them? Or will it just be a matter of same crap, different pile? Do you think this will even have any effect on the game and it's instance and raid aspects? Let me know what you think in the comments!