I’ll be on vacation for the next week. No WoW, no internet (probably), no posting. However not free of the digital life style as we are taking all the cameras and a laptop to see the photos on after the day. Mostly the vacation is for skiing though. We’re going to the Swiss Alps.
Monthly Archive for January, 2008
Bellwether from 4Haelz just wrote a post on how her habit of keeping everybody in the group healed to full encourages her groups to develop bad habits.
Unfortunately, due to my obsession with not letting people die and my fear of being yelled at, I cover for others’ purposeful mistakes as well as innocent ones, as I’m sure many do.
The other day I did Arka(normal) with a totally over-geared group (our purple pally healer is around +1600 Heal). I was freshly respecced to feral and had not tanked an instance in about 5 months. My tanking gear is enough for Kara and I know I can tank. I justed needed practice on trash pulls … which I didn’t get because just about everybody tanked.
We didn’t wipe except for one stupid pull which happens to the best of groups every once in a while. What bugged me however was that despite trying to really do a good job tanking the DPS would just bounce around and do whatever they felt like because they knew the healer would fix it. We had people die because they would not let me tank “Hey I’m a moonkin I can take it.” “Hey I am Mr Aggro-Kitty, can’t help it!” (Yes we were three druids).
For me as tank it was not one of the most fun runs and I was glad when it was over. I had hoped to be able to regain some of my former tanking skill instead we just steam-rolled the instance with our gear. I don’t feel like taking on heroics yet.
More often than not runs are like that. People are over-confident that they can take on whatever happens … but you never learn to do the harder stuff if you always have to wait until you are over-geared because people prefer to play sloppy. I know that these specific people can do better. We have done so many instances together I can’t count anymore.
Yay! I’ve been linked to and by none other than Resto4Life 
This is a first for this little druid blog.
Now that I am feral again I’ve been practicing my fighting style as kitty again. I used to farm the Ethereum mobs for the keys to get a bit of rep when not instancing. They are good practice. Since getting a few upgrades in Kara (yay Terestrians Stranglestaff) I have also been practicing on the Horde. I have always been terrible in a 1on1 situation. I knew part of it was a question of equipment. The other day I tried my favorite technique in the Eye of the Storm and was very happy to succeed on a bunch of different players … so here’s my favorite way to kill:
1. Pounce (bonus points for watching your energy tick for best timing)
2. Fairie Fire
3. Mangle
4. Shred
5. Maim
6. Shred
7. Mangle
8. Rip
9. Bearform (normal mobs should be dead by now)
10. Bash
11. Mangle (this is the point where players start dying)
I love improving on it, timing it better and keeping my target stunned Of course in PvP many classes can get out of my stuns or are not impressed at all by my damage or fear me. But these are the basic steps I try to follow. It does not work against multiple targets of course unless their damage can be ignored and they don’t heal. It does not work if you have help (Maim breaks on damage). It’s my little solo dance – not really optimized. Just the way I like to fight or farm.
The only real cooldown this uses is Bash with a minute so I can use this quite a bit.
I’d love to see other people’s sequences for druids or other classes.
PS: I am not using a macro / castsequence for this.
After my vacation the guild will probably go to Zul Aman to check out if we’re good enough. As a druid I have a lot of options. My tank gear and my healing gear are about equal quality and it is a double waste to put me in a dps spot when the guild is low on everything but DPS (which guild isn’t?) and I am a terrible DPSer. So I will have to decide in what role I would like to accompany the guild on it’s second (we downed Nalorrak in a brute force attempt way back when ZA was patched in) foray to the troll instance.
I will have to decide which gear to push over the limits as I am not playing that much and I’ll have to concentrate my assets.
Well I am not even sure I’ll make the roster for a Zul Aman run. There’s a lot of interest and there are enough people that are geared better than me. We usually do not make a point of selecting people by any kind of merit but I would like the run to be successful and so maybe I’ll stay back and see how they fare. On the other hand not everybody thinks like me. I tried to encourage people to only go when they feel they are ready and are going to be an asset to the group not a liability but this is what makes as non-raiders to not select that way and let people take spots on a first-come-first-serve basis for such events. This is why we go way slower than other guilds. We are doing very fine in Karazahn currently (well I have heard nothing yet from last night’s run which makes me very suspicious) but I think we’ll are not yet ready for Zul Aman to be the same.
But so what is the best role for me in Zul Aman, Healer or Tank? Last time I was a healer with way too little +heal and mp5 (had to down Mad Alchie pots all the time *g*). We have a loot rule that spec > non-spec for rolls, so I am wondering which spec gets the better upgrades ? (any loot from ZA is an upgrade for me for sure)
Via Matticus I found this nice community for WoW bloggers which was just freshly founded by one of my favorite druid bloggers resto4life:
http://www.blogazeroth.com/
Of course I am already registered
Last night we did our first 5v5 games with the new team. We even won 1 of 10 games. Considering none of us has any resilience/PvP equip, we only started using me as second healer after 5 games and most of us had never done 5v5 before, we did ok. The weird thing is we faced only 3 different teams for our 10 games. Which is helpful on the one hand in having knowledge about their play, but so do they and knowing we lost before …
I find 2v2 a lot easier, less people leads to less confusion for me. Plus my 2v2 partner has a lot of arena experience and the last 2v2 games I was still specced healing and I do a lot better in PvP healing than anything else.
In a 2v2 team it is also much easier to see who failed at what and learn from that. 5v5 it is much harder to see what is happening. We rarely managed focus fire and most often did not get their healer down fast enough while trying to protect our healers.
Btw our group consisted of a Holy Pala, Warlock, Mage, Moonkin and me – a feral druid in healing gear with feral weapon.
A long long time ago Blizzard announced that they would be introducing hero classes at some time in the future. They never specified what they meant with hero classes and there was quite a bit of speculation.
Then one of the first features announced for the 2nd expansion was the introduction of a single hero class the Death Knight. So it seems like I will need to complete a quest – probably really difficult and ‘heroic’ – to enable me to create a new character with the Death Knight class afterwards. Too bad I already have 9 alts on my main server. The gameplay of the Deathknight and it’s lore does not sound so appealing to me either. So I am definitely not interested. I feel cheated in a way. They promise content … big epic heroic stuff and then it is only for a very narrow crowd, there is not even a second option.
A few days ago we discussed what we would have liked for Hero classes and what problems there are with the design as it ’seems’ now (there is way too little information to say anything but ’seems’). It may not be the most revolutionary idea on the market for hero classes but I always strive to be “realistic” and stay with the way WoW is designed now.
My problems with the Death Knight
* a completely new class is going to be a balancing nightmare, we will all suffer nerfs for it
* only a single new class where people expected multiple
* having to create a new character
* this class does not appeal to me at all, I feel cheated of content
What I expected
* hero classes to enhance current classes/races
* customization for my current main
* interesting concepts with something for everyone
* lore to tie in with the new concept
* a really hard quest line to get my hero class
I guess even though having a new class is hard to balance it is probably easier than introducing what I expected from the first descriptions …
Classes are already enhanced by their talents, there are already different paths to go. A hero class should not simply be the same as additional talents. At the same time a hero class must be viable even when more levels are introduced or Blizzard would have to extend hero classes with each extension which would again liken them to the normal talents and abilities.
A hero class must not necessarily provide a lot of in-fight gameplay options. Those are especially hard to balance and Blizzard surely would like to reducing balancing issues (they’ll have enough of those with 10 more talent points).
I would like hero classes to be tied in with the rich lore of the game. I imagine my character choosing one of the heroes of her race or class or even her faction and becoming a follower of them. Another reputation grind comes to mind. But maybe a bit more complex, with more reputation levels and nice fluffy titles associated with each level of hero-reputation. Each level may grant item rewards, abilities and customization options for my character. Personally I’d be happy if each hero class had two or three special abilities and a lot of fluff and customization to make my character stick out among her peers. The good thing about reputation grins is that Blizzard already has experience with this kind of content to build on, there are some existing mechanics that could be used to do something new. Or is it just more-of-the-same?
If hero class choices are tied to your class, hero classes must be spec-neutral. This means every hero class choice a class has must work with every talent spec, otherwise when you respec your talents you would automatically want to respec your hero class and a hero class would be nothing more than a few extra talent points and that is not very interesting, heroic or epic. Another option is to tie the hero classes to your faction. There might be a handful of hero classes for each faction and every class can choose any of those to follow. Of course then there would be “optimal” hero classes for certain talent specs but at least it would be more interesting because of the many different combinations that were possible. If hero classes provide anything beyond fluff I want to be able to respec them!
I have a few ideas what I would love to see:
* a hero ability granting a true out of combat rez without a cooldown (druids would love this)
* a hero ability giving me the option to tame a special mount (maybe hunters only …)
* a hero ability allowing me to summon a familiar
* optical enhancements to my shapeshifting forms or my armor depending on my hero class
* further optical enhancement with tattoos, hair styles, glows, auras etc.
* special crafting options depending on my hero class
* buffs or just longer lasting buffs
* perhaps meta abilities like an additional talent point, reduced cooldowns, an additional profession (all very very powerful and very unlikely)
* a druid hero ability could grant access to the Emerald Dream
* hunters could gain additional tracking abilities or maybe the ability to track 2 things at once (disclaimer: my hunter is level 24)
Any more ideas?
If I think of any, I will add them.
Disclaimer: I am well aware that Blizzard already has a concept of what they are going to do with hero classes, I do not think that any of this is ‘realistic’, I just wanted to write down some of my thoughts and ideas.
I have done it for my healstuff, now I’ll try to list my tank gear. My tank gear is still rather sucky. I got myself everything that was needed for tanking normal 5-man instances half a year ago. Then I specced to healer. Now I am back to tanking … after a few nights in Kara I got some upgrades, but I am not sure they truly are upgrades all of them. Let’s see, I’ll just list all my options.
* Head: [T4 helm] vs [Stylin' Purple Head]<
* Neck: [Mark of Ravenguard] vs [Strength of the Untamed]
* Shoulders: still [Assassination]
* Back: [Cloak of the Valiant Defender] (green quest item oO), only 12 more badges for the 35 badge tanking cloak!
* Chest: [Heavy Clefthoof]
* Wrist: [Bands of the Swift Paw]
* Hands: [Verdant Gloves] vs [Gloves of the Unbound] (still ungemmed and not enchanted unsure whether they really are that good)
* Waist: [Manimal's Cinch] (green) vs. [Girdle of Treachery]
* Legs: [Heavy Clefthoof]
* Feet: [Zierhut's Lost Threads] vs [Heavy Clefthoof]
* Ring: [Violet Signet], I actually have no good second tanking ring, waiting for 25 badges
* Trinket: [Moroes Pocket Watch], saving gold hoping to catch the Badge of Tenacity (currently wearing [Mark of Tyranny])
* Weapon: [Braxxis] vs [Staff of Natural Fury] (no Earthwarden yet …)
* Idol: no tanking idol beyond the green quest thing that gives +dmg to Mangle or the blue +crit aura from the Flightform quest
Of course I am still hoping for a couple of drops besides the Badge items. I always have to keep in mind that I will not be going to anything beyond Kara and maybe Zul Aman. I am also still thinking to invest some more time in PvP and Arena. At the same time I may be respeccing resto as soon as it happens that the guild is low on healers and I prefer PvP-ing as healer I think.
One of these days I hope to have hybrid mechanics in a game that will not force me to collect 3 sets of equipment while still enabling me to be flexible.
I have not been specced for tanking for about half a year now. Now that I am back, I have to get used to that role again.
I find it hard to tank instances that people are “over”-equipped for. This past Monday I tanked first Arkatraz and then Steamvault both non-heroic. I find that people give me little to no time before they start damage on whatever mob they please. It worked quite well, we only wiped once in each instance both accidental pulls of multiple groups …
Working, yes: but … big but: this does not mean that I enjoy tanking chaotic runs like that. I do prefer to play it perfectly safe and orderly all the time.
Oh well it wasn’t that bad and I finally did get the Gloves of the Unbound from Arka and my very first D3 piece from Steamvault. Not that I still need those shoulders, but I may yet collect the set one of these days.
Monday night there were 19 people online in the guild, this must be the absolut maximum since the first days of Burning Crusade.
