a druid in world of warcraft
Today my little druid made level 40. Yes I am leveling a second druid. Very slowly but today she reached an important point: so far I leveled her as a cat but today I respecced to Moonkin. So now I have a tiger to ride, Innervate and Moonkinform. So much fun. I am still questing around Dustwallow Marshes.
My big druid is sad to hear that transmute procs have been broken for a while. I did notice … but now it is confirmed.
Good night every one.
I just saw the first infos on the next (and final pre-WotLK) patch on WoW Insider.
There are two things in the article I find interesting: more dailies. We will be able to do up to 25 daily quests. Which must mean more dailies and shorter ones as well otherwise I cannot imagine doing 25 dailies ever. I have so far enjoyed them a lot and like how some of them reward doing stuff you might have been doing anyway. I am still not sure if it is a good direction overall to emphasize dailies so much. While they are fun, they do streamline play in a certain way and make some people feel like they need to do them.
The other tidbit from the article that sounds very interesting is the following (spoiler alert!):
The town outside the instance will start as a camp, and as more quests are done, it will grow into a full town, with some buildings being “retaken.” Kaplan says it’ll work just like the opening of the AQ gates, but on a smaller scale.
It finally sounds like a bit of dynamic content, stuff we crave for in our static World of Warcraft. But I remember well all the fights that broke out on our realm surrounding the AQ Event. It also gives reason to hope, there will be more dynamic content coming with WotLK.
Speaking of WotLK is anyone besides me wondering where all the rumors around WotLK are? Blizzard has given as a surprisingly little amount of information so far. Ok the heroclass and lots of screens. Then there’s level 80. But we have no idea when the addon is coming and little idea about anything concerning future gameplay, emphasis of content etc.. I sure hope there will be more info soon.
PS: is there no way to make a “cut” in the post? I would really have liked to hide the spoiler behind a “more” link.
I am sure everyone knows this: the feeling that some kind of statistical voodoo is behind some of the drops in instances. And not only that. Let me relate a few of the anecdotes that come to mind:
I really wanted to go to Scholomance back in the good old days and so I asked around, opened a group and organized the run. We had leather drops that entire run. My T0 helmet dropped, I got 4/5 pieces from the leather scholo set, the leather belt from Ras Frostwhisper and the leather shoulders from him as well. It was an absolutely crazy run.
For a while it seemed like every group I opened would have leather drops only. So now somehow in my mind there’s this thought that won’t go away, that whoever opens the group and remains groupleader will be favored with drops for his class. To this day I keep watching for this and try to organize groups for instances that I want drops from the most, instead of joining groups. Doesn’t always work though.
Another one – nothing to do with loot – just last night right before Moroes I talked to our frost mage and said to him how I was sure, I would be garotted instead of him because he could iceblock out of it and I would have to counter it with healing. He laughed and agreed. First garotte: the frost mage. Second garotte: the mage again. Third: garotte on a warrior. Fourth: on the tanking pala but the fifth and final garotte hit me finally. But then the fight was over anyway. I am sure it only happened that way because we talked about it before 
My current healing gear is definitely my best gear set at the moment. I have been specced Resto for a while now, done some instances, heroics, PvP and even Kara yesterday.
So here’s what I have and what I want. T4 would be upgrades for most, but are pretty unattainable for me considering how we do not raid usually. I want to get some PvP Items for my PvE gear simply because the PvP items are better than the PvE upgrades I could get.
One thing that may not be obvious: of the blue items I have, most are really the best that drops from normal instances, I was very lucky to get Mantle of Autumn from Laj the one time I was there, I was lucky with the Boots of the Gladekeeper and the Cloak and the Sleeper’s Cord. All of these I got with a maximum of visiting a boss 2 times. On the other hand I do not have a single piece of the Moonglade set.
Current Key Attributes (unbuffed)
* health = 6707
* mana = 8019
* spirit = 430
* healing = 1214
* MP5 = 132
[Hood of Primal Life] (crafted) – still missing the HH enchant.
[Diamond Prism of Recurrence] ()- I’d rather have the PvP Amulet for more +heal and the yellow socket.
[Mantle of Autmun] (Laj, Botanica) – I also have the S1 shoulders for PvP.
[Cloak of Scintillating Auras] (Arkatraz) – would love to get one of the 2 heroic badge cloaks, preferably the 60 badge one.
[Lifewarden's Breastplate] (quest reward) – I am planning to substitute this with the S3 chest piece.
[Vindicator's Kodohide Bracers] (PvP) – the first decent healing bracers I encountered in BC
[Mitts of the Treemender] (Maiden, Kara) – just got it yesterday, very nice upgrade for me
[The Sleeper's Cord] (Soccocthrates, Arcatraz) – nice, but I am saving badges for the 60-badge belt, I am half-way there.
[Pants of Living Growth] (Worlddrop) – no plans to update these.
[Boots of the Gladekeeper] (Cache of the Legion, Mecha) – planning to upgrade to Vindicator’s as soon as I have 17k honor.
[Cosmic Lifeband] (Nethermancer S., Mecha) – no plans to upgrade, maybe PvP Ring
[Witches Band] (Halloween Event) – no plans to upgrade (identical to 25 badge ring btw)
[Lowercity Prayerbook] (Lower City, Revered) – I have not thought about trinkets much, too much other stuff to upgrade
[Bangle of Endless Blessings] (Warpsplinter, Bota) – I love this trinket. No plans to upgrade.
[The Essence Focusser] (Worlddrop) – I am hoping very much for one of several upgrade options (Maiden, Sha’tar Exalted, S2, maybe even Prince …), I do not like the look of this mace and would much perfer anything else.
[Netherwing Spiritualist's Charm] (Quest) – still very nice, if after other upgrades are through I have badges/time left I may upgrade to the Voodoo Shaker.
[Harold's Rejuvenating Brooch] (Quest) – I’d like the Lifebloom one from Shadowlab or one of the badge/pvp ones, but I am not sure what would be best.
So this is all my healing stuff and my plans to update it to even better stuff. Even now I have nearly all the important healing enchants.
Last night we had hoped to get enough people to go to Gruul. If any of the tanks of ours or our allied guild would have been on, we would have had enough people. As there were no tanks with equip to last more than 5 seconds in a Gruul fight, we decided to do something else. As we discussed our options the group shrank until we were down to about 12 people and near Kara size.
I have wanted to go to Kara badly since I have not been in many months. To tell the truth I have been to Kara on our very first raid there and that was it. Back then we killed Attumen, needed 4 tries on Moroes and wiped on the Maiden.
This time it felt like we were doing UBRS with some well-geared 60s. Except we were of course well-geared 70s plus a totally over-equipped holy priest from another guild and our own freshly respecced protection paladin who seemed to have some fun tanking. So we did Attumen and Moroes. Noone even died. On some of the trash people died … mistakes happen. On Moroes we had to exchange one of our prime DDs because he had to go offline. We got a former member who now is – after some guild odyssee – with our allied guild. An off warrior who promptly won 1 of the two tanking pieces that dropped from Moroes. The actual tank didn’t win either of the two items. I felt quite sorry for him because he was tanking really good and would have deserved something for it.
We then made it to the Maiden with me pulling some extras while chatting to somebody. “Yashima still needs some more faction points for Violet Eye it seems”. Oh yes I do indeed. I am only at 3k/6k Honored. But since I chose the tanking ring way back when I am not really profiting from those points anyway.
Before we go to the Maiden another player had to leave us and so we downed her with 9 people. I was hoping for the nice 1H healing mace as I already knew that the only other person for whom it would be an upgrade would pass since he has the exalted Sha’tar 1H. Instead she dropped me the Treemender’s gloves. Which is funny because just yesterday I finished collecting the mats for the Gloves of Living Touch I wanted to get crafted. I was quite happy that I would not be looking for a crafter all over the place. It was 11p.m. then (we got started around 9p.m.) and most people wanted to go to bed so we called it quits for the night. I got myself the healing enchant for the gloves and a couple of nice gems (well one nice one and one sucky one because I couldn’t decide for a yellow one) and went on to win an AV for the Daily PvP.
For a late-night goodie I finally leveled my mage to 66 and got Ice Lance.
not much time to play lately, too much going on in preparation for xmas.
On monday night we had our guild christmas event including duels, snowball fights and a weird raid on the tauren city. Someone already posted a few pictures on his new flickr account. I have not even looked at my screenies yet.
I did a duel against another tree druid. After what seemed like forever I just ran away and quit, frankly this duel will only end if one of the trees falls asleep. Maybe if he had worn his really good cat gear he could have vanquished me. After the duel he told me that he used Teleport:Moonglade in the Arena the other day because only he and another resto-druid were standing.
I too did my 10 Arena matches this week. I am paired up with a fire mage for 2vs2. I still have to learn a lot. But we won consistently against teams without a healer and we lost consistently against teams with a healer. I really do not know what is worse: a paladin, a priest or another resto-druid. I hate warriors I am getting good at running away again.
There’s more to tell, but I need to get back to work.
I have had more than one discussion about how nice it would be to have player created content in the game. Of course there are a lot of pitfalls for such a feature and so we do not have this.
Last night I logged on for a bit and saw that one of the guild’s warlocks was in Shattrath and asked if he would summon my little druid to Outland so I could take her to the Leatherworker trainer to learn how to make Knothide Leather from Scraps – which fill up my bank. At first he didn’t feel like looking for helpers which I totally understand. But all of a sudden he goes “log on your druid alt” and just a minute later I am standing in Shattrath amongst 3 of my guildmates – except my druid alt is not in the guild
So next I had to get to Honor Hold. Taking the flight route is a) boring and b) I didn’t know I could. So my plan was to ghost travel to Honor Hold and ressurrect at the graveyard. Instead the Warlock(70) and the Priest(61) offered to escort me to Honor Hold. It took us about 20 minutes to get there. My little druid is 39 and she aggroed every single ravager on the way and several wolves and enough of the demon pigs to hold a big demon barbecue party. But I got to Honor Hold alive after a very interesting adventure. Best escort quest ever.
To my horror I discovered I had not been to the Leatherworker teacher for about 20 or more skillpoints and had to be about 15 recipes and … no gold. But the nice Priest(ess) helped me out there as well. Well now I have a 39 druid I can use to turn scraps into leater. And in just one more level I can finally spec her for Moonkin
Another day/evening of fun was had.
My first attempt at the PvP Daily with Yashima yielded the desired result: a secure win in Alterac Valley. Not quite as expected anymore as it used to be for some time.
Then I went questing with my little mage for a bit. Shortly before I knew I would be logging out, our own Cpt PvPowers was complaining (no really) in guildchat how he and his level 56 mage girl-friend had wiped in Blackrock Depths. He is protection now and just couldn’t do enough damage to those healing mobs … since I am the official guild mentor for his girl-friend – she just joined us last week – I decided it would be a good time to play a little bit with her and went to help them with Thalya (my mage). I enjoy bombing mobs of any level so the mage is a good character to help out lowbies.
Hilarious chaos ensued … I think I secretly always wanted to do that, run through BRD and aggro all those mobs at once. That’s what the paladin did, collected them around himself and then we started bombing. Does anyone remember the horrible room before Lord Argelmar with his golems? The one with the many many big mob groups containing some non-elite and the tons of patrols and those Arcane Smiths?
“You two wait here and do nothing!” Just moments later we saw the paladin running zickzack amongst the columns followed by a true mob of mobs. I have never wished more that I could have made a movie of something in-game. He nearly died as well …
Too bad that after accidentally aggro-ing the tavern I had to leave, or I could have completed my Molten Core Attunement for the mage.
So last evening I get on to farm some motes for my hopefully soon to be crafted gloves and someone asks if anyone wanted to do a heroic instance for the night. So I go “oh yes”. Then went to the gym and come back and well the group consists of 4 damage dealers and me. So the hunter who asked originally logs onto his main a paladin who is a very good tank except he had just switched to holy for arena. So obviously no tank. Then the mage asks wether we can to Arkatraz. “Heroic?” I ask incredulously. “No, I just need the Kara Pre, can you tank?” I am still resto, I do not like playing off-spec very much, especially not tanking. We start on Arkatraz anyway. 2 mages (fire and ice), a warlock (whatever kind *G*), a holy paladin and a resto-druid in her slightly lame tank gear.
First Room: accidental add pull, mage disco = wipe. We wiped a bit. Then we got used to me being a sucky non-talented tank (pun intended^^) and it worked out quite well for a few pulls. Enter Boss #1 the stupid Beholder with that insane shadow damage. 4 or 5 wipes later we decide to first do the fragment as the mage that needed it had to leave at 10p.m.. So we wipe again on the way there (add pull oO) and finally he has the fragment. On returning to the boss we make it finally and he drops the Idol of Feral Shadows. Not that I need it, but I didn’t yet have it in my collection and so snatched it for my bank
As the group starts dissolving I notice my favorite druid tank seems to be out of work because of earlier disconnect problems with the raid he was with. So I try to recruit him to replace me. But when I finally tell the others I have a tank, the group is all but gone to Warsong (daily pvp) or bed.
Then I remember that I have the Ikiss Heroic Daily still in my questlog and ask my druid buddy if we could do that then maybe. He says yes and off I go to Moonglade to do something I have wanted to do for some time. I know have an 8/11/42 pvp spec including improved stealth which is needed for Ikiss if you want to stealth him on heroic without a rogue.
Since somehow the druids homing beacon was still on cooldown we decided to do a warsong first for our daily pvp to get him to Shattrath. It was the worst Warsong ever. I have rarely seen the like lately. We lost 0:3 and it took us half an hour to do that. I will not go into more detail.
After some whining in guildchat about the horrible alliance tactics in warsong we go off to chase down the Headfeathers of Ikiss. It’s really incredible how easy it is to stealth through there with a few stealthlevels more (plus the talent is wonderfull in pvp as well, people just don’t see me until I hit them, not that I do all that often).
We decide to have the tank die on the first boss, since my inventory was too full to get naked. The first boss has stealth detect and in order for anyone to stealth through one needs a decoy and a battlerez. Everything works wonderful and we get through the instance very fast. One AoE group on the upper level is a bit risky to stealth through so we kill that as well. Well I heal, the tank kills. (as opposed to me he does raid and do arena and has much nicer gear than I do otherwise all that would not have worked).
Finally in about 10-15 minutes we stand before Ikiss. Downing him would mean 3 badges, 24 gold, some faction on both Lower City and Consortium, probably – as the other druid is an enchanter – some materials for costly enchants and maybe maybe that nice staff which I could use for solo-ing or pvp as a good damage gear option and of course the Primal Nether for the tank (Leatherworker as well).
So we are motivated. Off goes the tank for the pull after telling me three times what to do. While I have stealthed Ikiss before on heroic and normal, we have never before done him with only 2 druids. In the beginning all goes well and I find a nice rhythm for my Lifeblooms to heal up myself from the stupid arcane bolts while keeping the tank alive. On the first nova though I am too slow because I didn’t shift out of tree and of course I die when Ikiss comes after me. Lucky for us the tank still had his battle rez and rezzed me. I down a Mad Alchemists Potion, get sheeped, heal up and shift out just in time to start healing the tank again. I use up Innervate pretty early in the fight. The second nova I manage to evade in nightelf form and get sheeped by Ikiss directly after that, very nice because he aggroes the tank immediately instead of me. By the third nova I have no trouble getting away behind one of the columns at all. All in all we used up one rez, two Innervates and 3 Mad Alchemist’s Potions and finally after about 8 minutes or so Ikiss is down. We shard all the drops – even the nice epic cloth bracers – and share the loot.
After this profitable endeavour we decide to try on warsong again. This time we have much more luck … the game starts out with only 5 players on Horde side which motivates the Alliance team^^ This game turned out to be an easy 3:0 win … so easy we decide to honor farm the horde who are sitting bored at their own graveyard.
So those were my adventures for the night.
As I do not raid – not even Kara or Zul regularly – my gear upgrades must rely on all the alternate sources I can find in the game, after all at 70 that’s all of the progression I will get and WotLK is still a long time away.
So I am happy that in BC there are more venues for gear upgrades than there were in classic wow:
* Heroics
* Heroic Badges
* Epic Crafter Gear
* PvP
* Arena
* Factions
Plus optimizing gems and enchants.
Since my time is very limited and I want to both play PvE and PvP, I must evaluate how to best spend the “coin” I gather. Plus I try to eliminate the hope for drops, because I just hate re-running an instance again and again just to get some stupid item …
So hear’s my plan to get (nearly) all-purple healing gear with the least time investment.
* will need 1875 Arena Points, I want to buy the chest
* will try to get me Gloves of Living Touch crafted
* want to get Exalted with Sha’tar for the Weapon
* need 41k honor for amulet, boots and off-hand
* need 110 Badges of Justice for the belt, a cloak and a ring, more if I want the 60-badge cloak
After that I am still missing epic trinkets and a nice idol. I would prefer the rare one from Shadoww Lab but somehow it will not drop for me. Trinkets, well I like my Bangle of Endless Blessings … but I could do with an improvement over the Lower City Prayerbook.
I think it will take me about most of the time until the addon gets out to assemble all this. Currently I have 4k honor, maybe 700 Arenapoints, missing 14k faction on Sha’tar, have 23 badges and still need to find a willing crafter for the gloves. Plus I need gold for the mats for enchants and gems.
If I ever obtain all that stuff I’ll start on feral gear again. Of course if I respec to feral the plan is obsolete anyway.
