Joel's Scattered Thoughts

Notes on things that interest me

Posts Tagged druid

Overcoming the Fear of Tanking

Dec 17

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Spinks had a good post on  Overcoming the Fear of Tanking.  This is a great time time to learn how to tank or heal if you haven’t already.  Here’s why:

  1. Tank and healers are in demand! You will have as much opportunity to run instances as your little heart desires.
  2. Effort to find groups is pretty much nil. Click the Dungeon finder icon, sign up, keep busy with the usual stuff till your dungeon pops, run the dungeon and get a free port back to continue on your way.
  3. Tanking or healing lower level instances is easy. If you lack confidence, join the queue for specific dungeons 10 levels lower than you are.  Even if you screw up big-time, you’re still likely to keep your group alive.  Run instances progressing in difficulty till you reach instances at your current level and you’ll be more than ready for those.
  4. If you fail, you can try again. Sometimes you’ll just be off – DPS is AOE pulling every mob in an instance, the healer or tank is sleeping,  or you just can’t remember which button does what.  No big deal.  No-one in the group is likely to remember you tomorrow and finding another group is a cakewalk.  Analyze your mistakes, shake it off, do a few quests, and try again with a new group.

My current goal is to run my death knight through all regular Northrend instances, then move through the heroics.  By the time I finish that I’ll be more than ready to tank anything on him.  Depending on my level of enthusiasm, I’m thinking of doing the same thing healing on my shaman and tanking/healing on my druid.  My warrior and paladin have already done their tanking through instances and I’m not very interested in straight up DPS in a group.

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Dungeon Finder reactions from players

Dec 11

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I was shocked at the Dungeon Finder reactions from players.  Almost all the reactions I’ve seen so far have been positive.  You don’t see that too often when a new feature rolls out.

I’ve only run one random dungeon – I happened to be on my best geared toon and didn’t feel like switching so I gave it a shot.  We got heroic Utgarde Keep and we blew through it.  The only hitch was on the first boss when no-one freed the healer from her frost tomb.  Oops.

I now have four max-level tanking toons (though I haven’t properly geared my death knight and druid for tanking yet) and a max level healer.  If I wanted to I could run dungeons all day long thanks to this feature.  Unfortunately, I’m not really interested in running too many dungeons right now, so I’m not taking full advantage of it.  Christmas holidays are coming and maybe then I’ll be more into random runs.

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The disappearance of the bear

Oct 22

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Shifting Perspectives has a  fascinating look at The disappearance of the bear.  Allison Robert looks at 8 reasons why bears are the least popular tank class.  I’ve barely done any tanking on my druid as I’ve been more interested in leveling alts lately, but there are a lot of good points here.  I agree that the argument for playing as a druid of a different spec, particularly resto or boomkin is probably the biggest reason why we don’t see more bears.

I’m still planning to gear my druid up for tanking, but I think I’ll start looking more seriously into a resto spec.

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Druid Ding 80

Jul 25

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druid_80 After a long stretch I finally got my druid up to 80.  For a while there I thought I was going to be leveling him just through the daily fishing quests, but I ended up doing a good chunk of Northrend after all.  I finished off in Sholazar Basin which I had never completed before, so that was a nice change.

Now, to decide if I want to level my hunter, warlock, or death knight next. 

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Death Knight Leveling Builds (58-68)

Jul 20

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I’m almost done getting my druid to level cap, so there’s a decent chance that I’ll start leveling my death knight.  It’s been long enough since I’ve been through Outlands that it might be more interesting than running through Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord yet again.  If I decide to start leveling a death knight, this looks like a good resource Death Knight Leveling Builds (58-68) – Patch 3.1 | gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight.

One of the things that I like about the leveling game is that I can play when I want to and stop when I want to.  If I get bored or distracted it’s not a big deal to hearth and start again another day.  With endgame stuff, you can’t do that.  Hearthing out of a raid or instance because you’re bored is out of the question if you want to do anything with these people again.  Skipping a day of dailies cannot be made up and extends the grind to reach whatever reward you’re grinding for.  It’s been fun to just play and enjoy myself – if I happen to get another toon to level cap before the next expansion that’s great, if not I have a couple toons at cap ready to go.

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Cat Gearing

Mar 25

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One of these days I may get around to leveling my druid to 80.  When I get there, WoWInsider has a very thorough guide to Gearing your Cat Druid (part one and part two).  My one caveat would be that when 3.1 comes out, the best in slot BOE will probably change. 

 

funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

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Mommy, Where Does QQ Come From?

Mar 8

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Malgayne on the WoWHead blog has an interesting point in his post: Mommy, Where Does QQ Come From?. As Leo Buscaglia put it, “The opposite of love isn’t hate – it’s apathy.” People don’t QQ if they don’t care. I don’t think that Malgayne’s statement: “People don’t QQ about things they think are bad. They QQ about things they think are good, getting worse.” covers all the reason for QQ, but it’s a good starting point. One obvious other source of QQ can be a persistent flaw, e.g. druid models. There are many sources for the mighty river of QQ.

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My WoW Resume (early 2009)

Feb 23

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

resume I was reading Matticus’ post, What GMs Want to See on Your Guild App, and I stared thinking about some of my accomplishments in WoW.  Since many of these were pre-3.0, I don’t have the achievements for them which makes me a little sad.

Healing

  • Raid healed all of Zul’Gurub and Molten Core, and most of AQ-20 at 60 and roughly the first third of Kara at 70
  • Leveled a holy priest from 1-60 in vanilla WoW, then to 70 in BC
  • References: Anath, Legionofone, Balm

Tanking

  • Tanked Naxxramas-10 (Arachnid Quarter, Plague Quarter, Patchwerk, Grobbulus, Thaddius) and Sartharion 0 drakes.
  • Leveled a protection warrior and protection paladin from 1-70 in BC, then to 80 in Wrath
  • Tanked Karazhan and the first 3 bosses in Zul’Aman in BC
  • Tanked BC Heroics with bear druid
  • References: Mazzarella, Beeferino

DPS

  • Progression raided Naxxramas with Retribution Paladin
  • Raided BC farm content on BM Hunter, Enhancement Shaman,  Warlock
  • References: Shamaniac, Jusy

Raid Leading

  • Helped organize a guild alliance
  • Raid led through Karazhan, part of ZA, and Naxxramas-10
  • References: Zurdante, Mornal

PvP

  • Obtained Knight title in classic WoW
  • Hit Exalted with Stormpike Guard back in the days of 12 hour AVs
  • I don’t PvP anymore

That’s all that comes to mind right now.  It’s fun to look back on the stuff I managed to get done.  I would say that raid leading is probably the most challenging part of the game – not the fights themselves but all the dealing with people and their issues, balancing things so that it all works out. 

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So You Want to Rip Some Face?

Jan 9

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Karthis has a guest post on Resto4Life covering druid cat form DPS, So You Want to Rip Some Face?. I really like the way he’s gone through the stats and broken down the important ones to show why and when they’re important. He also includes a Pawn scale for evaluating kitty DPS gear.

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Bear Tanking Specs and Gear Pre-Naxx

Jan 5

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My druid is only 71 or so (and he’s only that high due to doing dailies), but if I decide to tank with him Big Bear Butt Blogger has me covered with Bear Tanking Specs and Gear Pre-Naxx.

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Pawn Scales for Wrath

Dec 28

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 2 Comments

pawn Here are the Pawn scales I’m using for my toons in Wrath of the Lich King.   As always, Pawn is for quick comparisons, not for squeezing every last point out of your gear.  Read Skeleton Jack’s post on Pawn for some of the things to watch out for.  I have tweaked some of these scales and I have no strong theorycrafting proof behind their effectiveness. 

A few more points to note:

1. Each rating is relative only to itself.

Some pawn users assume that if they have two strings, that the rating that has the higher value is what the gear is better for. This is NOT the case. You should only use a rating to compare two items together, rather than using ratings to determine what an item is better for. (Note: This rule can be counterfeit, but that requires balancing points)
2. A rating that gives you numbers in the 100’s is no better or worse than one that gives you points in the 10,000’s
Remember, this is a relative comparison tool. So 900 – 1000 may be better than 90,000 to 95,000.
3. Pawn doesn’t account for everything
Raid buffs, gear changing, and Talents factor in here as well. These are static values to help determine relative value, but raid buffs, talent changes, and changes from blizzard will affect the relative value of these statistics, so these strings will more than likely be dynamic.

Warrior

Protection

Balanced

(Pawn: v1: “Balanced”: CritRating=0.89, Agility=8.47, ExpertiseRating=9.22, DefenseRating=11.13, BlockValue=4.86, ArmorPenetration=1, Dps=3.56, Strength=3.84, ParryRating=8.24, BlockRating=8.42, DodgeRating=9.61, HitRating=1.98, Stamina=14.29, Armor=1, HasteRating=0.62, Ap=0.43 )

Survival

( Pawn: v1: “Survival”: BlockRating=8.49, Strength=2.91, ParryRating=8.56, Agility=8.02, ExpertiseRating=7.22, DefenseRating=11.61, Stamina=14.25, Armor=1, DodgeRating=10.09, BlockValue=4.98 )

Threat

( Pawn: v1: “Threat”: ArmorPenetration=4.54, CritRating=4.03, Dps=16.15, Strength=4.66, ParryRating=0.41, Agility=3.26, HitRating=9.56, HasteRating=3.02, ExpertiseRating=9.56, Ap=2 )

Based roughly on Elitist Jerks Tanking Spreadsheet.  Needs to be edited for sockets.

( Pawn: v1: “Heavy”: RedSocket=16, CritRating=0.8, Strength=1, MetaSocket=8, ExpertiseRating=0.7, BlueSocket=16, YellowSocket=16, ColorlessSocket=16, HitRating=0.7, BlockValue=0.9 )

Based roughly on Matthew Rossi’s post,The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Heavy.  This is for leveling as a Prot Warrior.  Vene has a good post for Raid DPS as a Prot Warrior.

Fury

See this post for Fury Warriors.

Paladin

Mostly from this thread on Elitist Jerks. 

Protection

Mitigation

( Pawn: v1: “ProtMit”: DodgeRating=18, BlockRating=1, Ap=1.2, CritRating=0.6, Strength=9.5, ParryRating=14.5, ExpertiseRating=1.5, Agility=14.5, HitRating=1.1, Stamina=19.1, Armor=1.2, SpellPower=0.8, DefenseRating=16.5, BlockValue=16.5 )

Threat

( Pawn: v1: “ProtThr”: Intellect=0.2, DodgeRating=15.1, BlockRating=0.9, Ap=4.7, CritRating=2.4, Strength=18.8, ParryRating=12.8, ExpertiseRating=6.1, Agility=12.2, HitRating=4.2, Stamina=16.8, Armor=1.1, SpellPower=3.1, DefenseRating=13.9, BlockValue=17.4 )

Holy

( Pawn: v1: “Holy”: Intellect=2.25, RedSocket=24, CritRating=1.1, MetaSocket=75, HasteRating=1, BlueSocket=14, Stamina=0.1, SpellPower=1.2, Mp5=2.5, YellowSocket=30 )

Shaman

Enhancement

Based on a run of EnhSim, DPS simulator

( Pawn: v1: “AEP Calc”: Intellect=1.14, CritRating=0.64, Agility=1.39, ExpertiseRating=0.67, OffHandDps=4.33, YellowSocket=32, ArmorPenetration=0.52, RedSocket=32, Strength=1, MetaSocket=16, HitRating=0.68, BlueSocket=32, MainHandDps=8.82, HasteRating=0.81, ColorlessSocket=32, Ap=1 )

Restoration

Based on this post.

( Pawn: v1: “Resto (EJ)”: Intellect=7, RedSocket=105, HasteRating=3, BlueSocket=86, YellowSocket=112, SpellPower=5, Mp5=10, CritRating=3 )

EDIT: There is something broken about these scales for weapons. Do not use them to decide which weapon to use.

Hunter

Beastmaster

( Pawn: v1: “Beast Mastery”: Intellect=7, RedSocket=128, CritRating=5, MetaSocket=168, HitRating=10, Agility=7, HasteRating=2, BlueSocket=128, YellowSocket=128, ArmorPenetration=6, Mp5=8, Ap=4 )

From this thread

Druid

Cat

( Pawn: v1: “Cat (Toskk)”: ArmorPenetration=1.0161, RedSocket=37.312, Strength=2.332, CritRating=0.83, ColorlessSocket=37.312, MetaSocket=103.21, FeralAp=1, Agility=1.6992, ExpertiseRating=1.0362, BlueSocket=18.66, YellowSocket=26.92, HitRating=1.0334, HasteRating=0.7236, Ap=1 )

From Flyv

Bear

( Pawn: v1: “Bear (Toskk)”: RedSocket=113.7, YellowSocket=101.3, ColorlessSocket=172.4, MetaSocket=329, Stamina=7.185, Agility=3.429, Health=0.411, BlueSocket=172.4, Armor=1.066, DefenseRating=1.885, DodgeRating=2.685, ExpertiseRating=1.306 )

From Flyv

Resto

( Pawn: v1: “Resto”: Intellect=5.79, HasteRating=2.87, CritRating=2.05, SpellPower=9.4, Spirit=5.13, Mp5=10 )

From this Elitist Jerks Post

Death Knight

Unholy

( Pawn: v1: “Unholy”: ArmorPenetration=0.544, RedSocket=39.7552, CritRating=1.12, Strength=2.4847, ColorlessSocket=39.7552, HasteRating=0.621, Agility=0.7336, HitRating=2.474, BlueSocket=17.3929, YellowSocket=25.2329, TwoHandDps=7.567, ExpertiseRating=1.391, Ap=1 )

From Skeleton Jack’s Post.  

Other

Other specs, Warlocks, Priests, Mages, and Rogues are out of luck here.  I suggest Elitist Jerks as a starting point. Good luck in your search!

 

NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All software is supplied as is, without guarantee.  The user assumes all responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features, including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion, hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components, windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.

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Who Are My Characters?

Dec 27

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I was talking with Jaimie yesterday about our Warcraft characters in a roleplaying sense.  I don’t have much of a backstory for any of them, but I do have a decent idea of their personalities.  It’s conversations such as these that have me considering an RP server if I reroll again.

Despite being a warrior that uses rage, Tristam is very calm.  Solid and reliable are words that come to mind when I’m thinking about him.  He doesn’t get angry and is very relaxed. He sees himself as the shield for the group.  “Is a shield false and only a sword true?”

Merddyn is a warlock because it’s convenient and easy.  He’s very self-centered and barely recognizes the existence of an outside world.  He’s not looking to rule the world (far too much bother), he just wants what he wants and sees no reason why he shouldn’t just take it.  “I’ve divided the world into two types of thing:  The ones I can kill with impunity, and those I have to be more circumspect about.“

Anzu is a very angry shaman.  I have no idea what he’s angry about. He quests so that he has a socially acceptable way to kill things.   Merddyn will kill you if you get in his way, but otherwise doesn’t care about you.  Anzu wants to kill you but won’t unless it’s acceptable to the Horde.  “In the beginning, the Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.“

Early on, Andromache would have preferred to be an alliance paladin working with the Naaru rather than stealing the Light’s power.  She wants to do what’s right.  After having gone through Outlands, she has retained her strong moral and ethical sense, but no longer trusts the Naaru. “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through every heart – and through all hearts.“

Arthemis wants to take things apart to see how they work.  She’s chosen to be a hunter because people in cities tend to get upset when you take apart magical or mechanical things and you can’t quite put them back together.  She’s happiest out on her own thinking.  “Most things run on smoke. If it leaks out, they don’t work.”

As a druid, Emerys feels a deep connection with nature.  He fits the stereotype of the hippie druid.  He’s calm and quests because he wants to help maintain nature’s balance.  “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences.“

I don’t know why but I like having some idea of who the characters I play are. 

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Recognizing Bear Loot

Nov 24

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Still no Bear Tank Pawn scale, but if you’re sick of waiting this is where I’m going to start research for building one: Recognizing Bear Loot.

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WotLK Restoration FAQ

Nov 15

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Resto4Life has a WotLK Restoration FAQ up for druids. I doubt I’ll be going resto anytime soon on my druid but it’s good to have a reference in case I decide to heal.

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Shaman Healing Kara

Nov 6

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 2 Comments

healing We ran the first part of Kara pretty much spontaneously last night.  There were four druids itching to tank the place and we only had one healer, so I decided to respec my shaman resto and help heal.  This is the first time I heal anything on my shaman and it went pretty well.

I was woefully unprepared, but with the way they’ve nerfed Kara it really didn’t matter.  I grabbed a spec off of WoWWikki and pulled my gear with the highest spellpower out of the bank.   Any spells that looked like they’d help out with healing were dropped onto my action bar and I spent the evening trying to figure out what to use when.  Hopefully next time I remember to consult resources such as Resto Shaman vs. Karazhan – a Healing Guide.

A lot of gear dropped for me, mostly enhancement stuff.  When we started Kara we had an enhancement shaman who couldn’t stop getting resto drops, so I suppose this is to balance that out?  Due to the inordinate number of druids there were only three people who could use the axe from the holiday boss, so I got it by greed rolling.  (From what I can tell you have to be able to equip the axe for its use effect, so hopefully there wasn’t a druid who wanted to try it.) 

I don’t know if I want to go back to healing at all.  This was a heavily nerfed Kara, an instance I’ve been raid leading for months, and I still spent all my time making the bars go right.  I really didn’t see any of the fights, I just focused on standing in the right place and keeping people healed.   As a tank, I’m very aware of what’s happening around me even when I’m standing there staring into a demon’s crotch. 

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[Druid] Bear FAQ for 3.02/Wrath

Oct 28

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ThinkTank has a Druid Bear FAQ for 3.02/Wrath. It’s so nice to have all this information summed up concisely, especially given that I’m new to druid tanking. Now I need to dig up something similar for druid healing.

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Item point scales

Oct 27

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Warrior Best item point scale to use going into Wrath? looks like a good point scale for rating items in Pawn for Warriors.

Looks like something similar for paladin tanks.

I’ve missed having a Pawn Scale. Now I need something for a resto druid, tanking druid, and resto shaman.

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Epic Flight Form

Oct 25

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druid_flight The quest to get the druid epic form is amazingly well done.  I wish there were a quest line like it for every class.  Apart from having to run Sethekk Halls, it’s a beautiful example of a quest line that proves that you know how to play your class.  Ideally I’d have it instanced so that you can’t get help from others (I had help with the essence quests).  Anyhow, thanks to a fine group of people, my druid finished his Sethekk Halls run and got his epic flight form.  (I couldn’t find my item to summon Anzu, hearthed out to go talk to the quest giver, and realized that it was in a bag I hadn’t opened.  Oops.) 

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Stupid bear tricks with swipe

Oct 20

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ThinkTank has a post talking about Stupid bear tricks with swipe that take advantage of swipe’s infinite targets. Despite six or seven months of farming him, Moroes has yet to drop Mongoose. I may get Battlemaster on my Ring of Blood staff for fun in farming.

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Druid DPS Stats

Oct 19

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I’m using the stat values from this Elitist Jerks post for building a Pawn scale for druid DPS till someone theorycrafts something better. 

As I stated before, hit and expertise are the best stats till the cap (1.3 AEP), followed by agility and strenght (1 AEP) then Crit, AP (about 0.9-0.8 AEP) and finally haste and APR (0.7 AEP).

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