Druid Report For 4.01

So patch 4.01 has hit and stuff has changed a bit around.

First thing i did on wednesday when i had it installed was, get my dps spec sorted and hit a round on the HC target dummy. And it was indeed as i feared there was a huge dent in my beloved dps it was about a 60% of what it used to be. After that that a was a lot less happy with the patch.

Fast forward a bit Thursday: logged back on and reforged some of my gear so i would have some more mastery, and went back to the dummies. What a suprise i had when my dps wasnt just restored to its former glory but also increased alot, my rakes had suddenly 9k crits and rip 8k. I was kind of confused at this point. So i went online and found the blue post were was explained that they had buffed some classes/specs overnight and one of these was Feral Dps

So far for kitty :)
This had my most attention, but there were other changes aswell i had to check, so i'll list them

- Tanking as a druid has changed, Pulverize is pure win and so is the reset on mangle with lacerate ticks, aoe tanking is harder then it used to be with swipe on a 6 second cooldown and the still aoe happy dps of WotLK. Our mastery scales very well with vengeance which is nice.

- Herbalism is a bit less bad for druids now than it was, Lifebloom now not only heals but also grants you haste for 20 seconds(240 at the max)

- Resto (not of great interesst to me) has changed alot most of it of course the removal of treeform :(. I could not realy handle it atm on my mini druid. All the hots have changed mostly and it felt wierd to me. I did not play resto much before and these changes might just make sure im not even tempted to try.

- Balance is still the same old faceroll it was before even with the eclipse changes, The eclipse mechanic works a lot better then before and is totaly non rng dependable now. might pop on my mini druid for balance once in a while for some fun.

- Reforging to mastery is pure win

- If your profession is inscription, now is very good time for making money. Glyphs sell fast, are cheap to make and about worth 100-200g a piece on auction.

I have most likely forgot something but i believe thats about it for now.

Petition: Let Transformation Items Persist in Druid Forms!

rarren/vallen has got a excellent point on his blog here,
druids should be able to use shapeshift items just as much as other classes and stay functional

Finaly

its done after too long

update yey

So this monday my new computer arrived, everything was there except a key board, i looked up the details of my order and it seems i forgot to tick the keyboard(headdesk).
Didn't matter rest was there, just had to plug everything in and it worked.
so the games i was talking about, played a few yet, not completed all yet, but here is a little review.

1) Splinter Cell Conviction:
Amazingly good game, love every bit of it, its got good action and stealth with quite a good story.

2) Farcry 2:
haven't played much of it but its good.

3) Transformers 2:
Does not even come close to the quality of the former 2 games, but is a fun 3rd person shooter with all the known transformers.

4) Command & Conquer 4:
I seriously regret buying this, it is a load of shit, the only reason why i maybe would play it, would be the movies since those are always good in c&c games.

oh and not realy a review but, OMG WoW looks good with all the graphics maxed. before i had everyting at minimum on my laptop and could not realy enjoy the graphics.

thats it for now,
cya all later

Yey

In about 2 weeks i've got a new computer, wich means i can finaly play some games i still had left: Splinter Cell - Conviction, Farcry 2, C&C4 and Transformers 2(dont ask). I will most likely make some post about that.

In WoW news: ive finaly had the courage to make a shaman(ive failed it before and ended up deleting it then) its lvl 33 now and fairly fun, i lvl as enhancement, with some ocasional healing in dungeons. Not much to do with Raids and all. for the rest i have been travelling a bit round azeroth and taking screenshots.
I do like the look of what seeps through from cataclysm(wtb beta plox) am a bit sceptical on some thing tho, but all in all it seems to look fairly good.

when im not playing games or hanging out with friends i work.
work tends to be very busy since its holiday season and people want their food(i work at a italian restaurant) lots of pizza's these days with all the tourists, and we got a fair coming in a few weeks were we will be selling pizza's aswell and those all have to be made before that.

and now for some fun, i havent realy said it before but i study Art&Technology wich is a bit of everything that includes media, i myself prefer the advertising side, so here a add before and after complaints by PETA.


before


after
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cya peeps

wow hiatus, well sort off

Havent logged much on last few weeks, I still enjoy raiding and such but other than that i havent done a lot in wow. Instead i have been playing some other games watching movies and reading some books. Proly gonna get drawn back in more when i either get beta acces(ye right, more like never) or when cata hits wich is still a while away.
In the mean time i am going to have to enjoy myself with other things.

some more chicken versus kitteh

So the fight i did not cover yet in the article a while ago.

The Lich King
Even now the verdict is a little tricky, i've only tanked him so far and not dps'ed, But from the looks of it it seems to be more favored to boomers than kitteh.
Its only a guess but the fact that our own boomer is quite happy with the fight say something aswell.

So now for the overall icc verdict(leaving out the bosses with equal score)
Boomkin score list: Deathwisper, Valithria, Lich King.
Kitteh score list: Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut.
Final score: 3-2

So 6 bosses equal, 3 boomkin and 2 feral.
Most of the fights were won on movement or target switches, prime examples would be saurfang for feral and valithria for boomkin.

That concludes the kitteh vs boomkin for now.
how ever...

Puns Continued

how can i not publicly show this, sinker the famous cake rogue on the AC-130

Music

tunes im listening

AAAARRGH

finaly on LK and now people are not showing up and raid gets canceled
/sob

Kitty versus Chicken

Druids, the most versatile class off WoW, want a Tank? Here we are. Healer? No problemo.
Oh you wanted a dps? okey but what do you want? Ranged or melee?

Myself have been a dedicated feral for a long while, both tanking and dps. Recently i have dinged a second druid at lvl 80, this time it was balance and a bit of resto. As i raid on my feral druid, i couldn't help to wonder if for some fights balance might not be a better alterative to feral dps.

Lower Spire

Lord Marrowgar:
Depending on if your doing 10 man or 25 man its either feral or balance, on 10 mans the feral is most likely staying on the boss while the ranged finish of the spikes. On 25 man i prefer to help a little on the spikes, so here the static position of the balance would be prefered.

Lady Deathwisper:
If your on the boss for the shield, it doesnt matter what you are. If your on the adds however i'm gonna give it to the balance druid since he doesnt need to move the same distances as the feral would.

Gunship:
Not much to say, try staying awake.

Deathbringer Saurfang:
Since you realy dont want to be hit by the blood beasts, this is best suited for feral that stays on the boss, while the balance can pew pew the bloodbeasts. Though with a good timed starfall its quite possible to put out some nice numbers.

Plague Works

Festergut:
Feral, due to vomit targeting ranged targets and the need to move for spores for ranged this fight is suited more for melee than is is for ranged, this doesnt mean you dont need ranged. You dont want vomit to get into the tank group, so have atleast 3 persons stay in the outer rim.

Rotface:
Nothing special, its all about if you get lucky or not with the infections. Maybe the feral has a slight advantage for being more mobile incase of slime spray, but it wont be much.

Professor Putricide:
Movement and target changing, moving doesnt realy suit balance and target changing doesnt suit feral. Im gonna give it to the balance druid since changing targets is a bit more of a bitch than some movement.

Crimson Halls

Blood council:
Looking at this from the feral side of life, you see lots of movement and target switching(though you can predict the switches a bit since its on set times and only 2 other targets). So all in all not the best fight for feral. This fight is quite good for balance if your looking at it blank, however there is a aspect of this fight that screws up balance: Dark Nucleus. Because you should not even touch those and leave them to the keleseth tank, you cant use starfall since there is no way of telling where the stars will land.

Blood Queen Lana'thel:
Nothing special, maybe a bit of a advantage for ranged since there is the possibility that melee will be raped by blood mirror if the offtank is a bit further away after a flight phase.

Frostwing Halls

Valithria Dreamwalker:
Balance, from personal experience ranged seem to kill the adds way before melee can even reach them.

Sindragosa:
Cant realy choose here, the one getting most lucky with the RNG is the winner.

The Lich King:
Havent digged myself in this for the sheer reason that we havent come around him yet and when we do i most likely will be tanking.

Pic Mania

Recently i have been snooping around in my screenshot folder.
here are the results, enjoy.

Raid Puns

If your in a raidgroup that has almost the same composition every week, you are most likely gonna know most of the people and know how they are going to react on certain situations. And a lot of times there are going to be jokes/puns.

In my guild and raid group this in no differant, Like we got a rogue that is afk every readycheck, we shout "Cake" on ventrilo and he says: 'yeyeye im ready'. Once we were doing VoA and i was tanking, so all goes fine, at the time emalon was the last one in there, so we charge in. I took emalon the other tank the adds. Nothing wrong you would say, only problem was that i was in dps spec and gear so i took quite a beating. Ever since each time i get a massive beating, they ask me: are you in the right gear gathy?

A good pun is one that you can repeat without it getting anoying/repetitive, of course if you keep on jabbering the whole time about it, you'll make it anoying.
And these things can loosen your raid, it helps helps to relieve some stress after something like say a night of progress, where you just cant down the boss due to small things.

Tree Form

Last night i decided to play a bit with my retardin, doing some daily's, random dungeon here, titanium vein there. Just casual play. However i cant help to being inspired by a certain aspect of a retri pal, Vengeance.

So each time i critted with something i got a buff of 3% more dmg, stacking to 3.
Later on i thought if they could combine something alike and tree form.
I'll explain what i mean.

if you crit with a healing spell you get 3% more healing stacking to 3, the more stacks you get the more you transform into a tree(maybe casting dmg spells takes off the buff or something).

This would keep Tree of Life as a element of resto druids and at the same time would entirely change the way of the ability.

Druid Preview

A bit later than all the other druids, didnt realy had to add anything special.
At first when i've read the preview i was a bit shocked.
I saw that HoT's were gonna profit from haste and crit but there was no mention of DoT's.
Later on however GC clarified that while it may not have made the preview druid DoT's are certainly gonna profit from haste and crit(phew).

Were getting some new toys aswell to play with.
I kinda like the way that Thrash looks, could use some more buttons in dungeons besides swipe.
Stampeding Roar could play out well at some fights aswell.
And how can i not mention the Fungal Mine we are going to get. I wonder how they are going to do this, 40 yard range no cooldown and instant cast, we dont know if you can put down more than 1 but so far it looks a bit OP.

There are also some sad thing in the preview, the removal of treeform and making it into a cooldown'ish thing. while i may not raid as resto i have certainly done my fair share of resto action and i dont see why they would want to remove something exential to druids: Shapeshifting.
It just sounds wrong.

Noblegarden

Pictures say more than words.













Idd say nuff said.

Music

Some of my favorites during raiding.

Kontrust - Smash Song




Guano Apes - 360 Aliendrop




Metallica - Cyanide




Proxonic - Dead Eyes




got some more of course but linking them all will make a list that might be a bit long.
what are your favorites?

Blood Princes + 2 Tanks = Dead Vampyr Elfs

So today we changed the strategy on blood princes.
Instead of using 2 tanks and a ranged tank(used to be our warlock), we went with double druid tank. I was tanking Valanar and Taldaram, and Metal was tanking Keleseth.

-first round-
Me and metal both charged in for the princes, picking them up and separating them.
Darkfallen orb on Valanar, went fine as usual, then we got in on Taldaram, went fine aswell.
In the mean time Metal was staying alive without problems.
Then the Orb went onto Keleseth....

And we did not have the Keleseth tank die, and wipe us all up.
We did not kill it that attempt but it was close, only 2 tries later the princes were lying face down in the dirt again.

Good thing i remembered the article from Kae about not having a ranged tank :))
In my opionion it was way easier to use a traditional tank and not a ranged one.

Raaawrr onto the Queen.

RAAAWR MOAR RAKE CRITS

like always on wednesdays we went 25 mans, since one of our normal tanks wasnt there i tanked marrowgar and deathwisper. but when we went onward to the trash leading up to gunship our regular 25 man tank popped online and came in for a dps.

so we had a free dps spot...
and since i just gotten my 4p t10 dps set, i said that i would do some raaawr dps.
and my god.
those rake crits are awesome. at saurfang i outclassed all the dps even our normal melee dpsers(hahaha sinker). i topped at 9477 dps and i loved everybit of it.
i will still be tanking in the 10 mans but, in the 25's its RAAAWRR MOAR RAKE CRITS.

Possible merge

Today we did icc 25 with another guild named Halycon, this was the first time of a possible alignment. We had some starting problems at marrogar, but we nailed him after some silly fails. Then we build up momentum and proceeded to roll over deathwisper and gunship, then we gotten to saurfang, as he isn't the most easy boss we had some wipes since we were not fully 1 guild, think it was either 1 or 2 wipes, cant remember(my memory is a mess :P).

But the best is in fact that these competent and nice people from Halycon are considering to join Frostfall, well see how this unfolds, im quite positive about it, just hope it pushes through so we gonna have more than 1 actual 10 man team and a nice 25 man team. oh and i got me some new shoulders(lots of thanks sinker for passing them to me).

EDIT: we took in most members of halycon, theve got some realy nice tanks, proly gonna get some dps time next few 25 mans

Good news everyone,

So we downed Professor Putricide last night. Last 2 days we consistently got him to 15-20%. The problem seemed to be either that mutated plague stacked up to high and dps died, or that my tanking buddy died thus healing PP. Last night we adjusted tactics a bit, this time we taunted each time a stack was applied, and we juggled the cooldowns better with the healers so there wouldn't be double CD's active. after getting the hang of the fight again with 2 tries, we killed him on the 3rd try. last 5% was a bit tricky because i did not see much slime free space for kiting.

And then there was a explosion, a sound explosion on vent as 10 people including myself cheered. next challenge: Blood Princes, we killed you once, you returned from the grave, we'll put you back in.

Well Hello

Mmmkay, so this should be my blog, lets introduce myself then.
Im Gathros from the realm burning steppes, i have played a druid from the start and always had a certain affection for the feral tree.
these days i am in one of the older guilds off the server Frostfall, were i mostly function as maintank.
we have some great fun while raiding, mainly jokes at cost off each other on vent.

this blog certainly wont be some theory craft and shizzle(im horrible at math), expect just rabbling about the raiding, druids, my guild and other things.

i have chosen the name, because i think the barrow dens have a great lots of lore with them, certainly the one that has been infested by the emerald nightmare, and they have always intrigued me.