Hello all. My apologies for the lack of posts here. A combination of real life tasks and lack of in-game excitement has left me with little to say and no time to say it. Such is life!I may return and post here in the future; we'll see. Until then, best
We've had two days of 3.1 and I've only had a small chance to test it out. Part of that of course is the result of server instabilities. I know, it sucks. But it's got to be better than the alternative. Do we really want Blizzard to be less ambitious
It seems 3.1 will drop today, at least by what Zarhym says. Realms are down for extended maintenance, and the devs have communicated on clean-up details like why Equipment Manager won't make 3.1. At this point, it's safe to assume that 3.1 will arrive
This is Part 4 of my Intro to Druid Healing series. The five parts are:1. Base Concepts2. Tank Healing3. Raid Healing4. User interface5. Special ConsiderationsOne of the toughest things to learn about healing is how to set up your user interface. Blizzard
I talked a few weeks ago about the caster Druid changes for 3.1; that information is pretty much still accurate. However there are a whole host of other changes in the works. What else is going on?I'm not going to talk about the new content yet —
Guild changesAfter much thought and debate, I changed guilds last week. My original guild was created by my RL friends and myself, so this was not an easy choice. The core group is still in regular contact, and in fact more may join me in my new guild;
So, when is 3.1 going to arrive? The current tea leaves are a bit mixed. It feels fairly close, as the PTR builds haven't seen major changes lately. We heard yesterday that Arena Season 5 will end on 14 April, and Noblegarden is currently scheduled to
(The UI post is coming along. I'll try to keep it from getting too out of control...)Over the weekend we ran a heroic Utgarde Keep and the [Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt] dropped. Mattoo (our Bear tank) already had it (or better, I forget) and nobody else
There's lots of changes coming up for Resto Druids in 3.1. It feels like we've been discussing this forever — the base ideas go back 6 weeks or more — while there are new changes coming out all the time. I fully expect more changes (and changes to
This is Part 3 of my Intro to Druid Healing series. The five parts are:1. Base Concepts2. Tank Healing3. Raid Healing4. User interface5. Special ConsiderationsRaid healing at its base level is pretty simple: keep the healers and DPS from dying. Because
I've been playing my rogue a lot lately. I like rogues and she's fun to play. But I've also kept her around as an enchanter, specifically to disenchant all the greens that I get in the course of play. She had been stuck at level 40 during BC — which
I know Lifebloom, regen changes, and dual specs have occupied my attention with patch 3.1. But there's a ton of other stuff going on and some is very interesting. I saw the T8 set bonuses today on MMO-Champion and they're pretty sweet.DISCLAIMER: All
Only time for a quick post today — my apologies!I've been giving a lot of thought to Lifebloom and the potential changes. I haven't come to any conclusions yet, though I'm closing in on them. However I wanted to quickly call your attention to a
Raid healing. That post is coming Soon. No really!Before I take that topic on, though, I want to explain one common raid healing issue that I'm not going to discuss. That's the issue of different healers sending heals to the same raid target — and
I've struggled some with posting, mostly because I'm still not sure how to react to the Lifebloom nerf. It's pretty clear that it will be a major change to Druid healing in raids, if it goes through. On one hand, we've had a well-defined niche for a long
Can't I leave you people alone for a week? I go on vacation, and look what happens...The biggest news of course is both happy and sad. I'm referring of course to Phaelia's upcoming blogtirement. She has great news, with an upcoming noob gnome baby on
I wanted to launch part 3 of my healing series this week, but it's not going to happen. As Crash Davis said, "We're dealing with a lot of sh*t!" I was going to zip it out, but I'd rather it be worth the time. I'll be out on vacation next week, so you'll
No time for a long post today. Thanks for the great response to the two intro healing posts; I have good plans for part 3.There is a great thread ongoing on the official forums about the incoming nerfs to mana regen (through the five second rule) and
This is Part 2 of my Intro to Druid Healing series. The five parts are:1. Base Concepts2. Tank Healing3. Raid Healing4. User interface5. Special ConsiderationsTank healing is the closest thing we get to a rotation. Your tanks should take, depending on
Blizzard just released a Q&A Session on Dual Specs. If you're not familiar, this is the long hoped-for capability to have and switch between two talent specs. This is currently in development for the 3.1 patch, and the Q&A between Nethara and Ghostcrawler
I see a lot of referrals that come from people searching for "druid healing rotation" or something similar. Think of this post series as "Intro to Druid Healing" — it's first-semester calculus, but designed for math and physics majors and not liberal
Hi folks! Just a quick post to say hello to all the new visitors coming over from Resto4Life. Thanks for the link, Phae!I hope you find something useful here. But I wanted to say something about where I'm coming from. Our guild is 10/15 in normal Naxx,
Patching has been weird of late. Last week we had 3.0.8a, which didn't do much other than fix a few bugs and tooltips. Now, today we are getting a 3.0.9 patch. This hasn't been on the PTR at all but as usual MMO-Champion has the goods.There are a handful
Last time out I posted about key Balance stats, and in particular hit rating. If you've read that, you know why Hit is important.Suppose you're a resto druid who's decided to switch to Balance. Maybe you've got Naxx on farm now, so you need fewer healers.
This is another followup to my post on stat weights for trees and Moonkin. Last time out I dug deeper into Resto stats, and I wanted to do the same for Balance.Here are my current Balance weights:Balance weights:Spellpower: 12.1Hit: 11.3MP5:
I wrote a post last week with stat weights for both trees and Moonkin. Today I wanted to go into the qualitative reasoning behind the numbers.Here were the weights I had for Resto:Resto weights:MP5: 10.0Spellpower: 9.4Intellect: 5.8Spirit: