Resto yay!

Last night marked my first night of heroics that went well with Grufft healing. It was only my second set of attempts. I was thrust into them a bit soon for my liking the first time. I knew I was getting into instances, just not Heroic ones. I had done almost no healing in the new instances and didn't yet have a feel for WotLK resto druid healing. Kydic and I had just hit 80 a few days before so my toon was outfitted in quest greens and a couple of quest blues. All-in-all I would say that it didn't go poorly... it went horribly. I lost people on trash pulls (it was usually Udderlybeefy which may have been a bit of his own fault not letting the deathknight tank build up a little threat). We finished whichever instance it was (they all look the same to me, like 5 little green bars) and headed over to the new CoT instance, the Culling of Stratholme. This one smoked pole. It was really cool leading up to it and seeing the story line but healing the first boss gave me a fucking ulcer. We never did beat it.

That depressing night lead me to rethink my heal order and read up a bit on Nourish which I was trying to use as a spot heal. I think Nourish was my biggest downfall that night. I now have regrowth glyphed and it seemed to work well for me last night. There's not a ton of use to the glyph, an extra 20% healing from regrowth if regrowth is already active on the recipient. Nourish is slightly less mana than Regrowth and a slightly shorter cast but significantly less healing since I crit Regrowth about 70% of the time. /toss Nourish

The other new heal is Wild Growth... or some such. It is a talent from the resto tree and is quite nice. It's a 5 person HoT that ticks for about 550 hp at the moment. It does have a range aspect so some people may be missed if they're spread out but I don't typically find this to be a problem.

So far from instances, I have walked away with some nice blues. Feral DPS blues :S
Oh... I can't forget Emblems. I'm up to 11 so far. I hesitate to look at how many I need for a piece of gear but I'd venture 30-45 per piece of armor. I hope I'm not far off.

It's been a while

Well I took a break and have returned to play WoW again. My return was due in part to patch 3.x.x which presented some early expansion material. The biggest introduction was the new talent trees. I had done no research except looking over the hunter trees a bit. A reversion to beast master was imminent with the introduction of exotic pets. BM hunters can now tame such previously untameable beasts as devilsaurs, wasps, core hounds and silithids. /cheer Throw in the introduction of pet talent trees and specs... /drool
In honor of red-head Max, it seems Blizzard introduced tanking pets. These guys are great. Upon respec'ing to BM I grabbed a devilsaur, silithid, core hound and gorilla. The dps pets seem the same as before with the introduction of pet family specific abils. The utility pets are cool but I don't see myself using them. This is the pvp'ers pet. Tanking pets are pretty darn cool, depending on breed. I grabbed a bear first to try out tenacity. He sucked. At level 65 he seemed to lose aggro instantly. I dropped his furry butt in exchange for the gorilla and oh my. Not sure what causes the difference as they were similarly spec'd on their talent trees, but can he tank. Before respec'ing BM and before I quit, my level 70 DPS (cuz that's what they all were basically)cat lost aggro fairly readily to my survival hunter. Ranged crits were plentiful and two in a row meant I was going to tank the rest of the fight. The level 65 gorilla can hold aggro most times. Silently in the background to this is the much lower crit rate and lower dps of my hunter and the increased pet dps but still...
Since I played around with the pets I didn't do much else on Lÿnn. My time with Grufft in the expansion consisted of spec'ing him feral, trying out the new pounce, spec'ing him resto and healing Magtheridon and Gruul and then letting him sit. Sadly, he is the toon that interests me the least at the moment.
Now we come to Desconocida, the rogue. She is where I have invested most of my week and a half back so far. I signed back in to a rogue that had two epics, the druid chest piece Shadowprowler's Chestguard and the Merc Glad offhand sword. After that she was almost completely quest greens and some instance blues. With a combat spec and a +hit over 250 she was developing some nice dps but still had a long way to go. This is what brought me to focus on her, she had a lot of easy upgrading that could be done.
Since coming back, I have taken her through several heroic instances. I got lol's at my HP every time but the DPS charts at the end spoke well when I was only 1-3% behind the DPS leader of many parties. I picked up a few more epics and BoJ's and got the two trinkets I was aiming for, the Abacus and Hourglass. I was collecting BoJ's to get the Isle of Quel'danas fast offhand dagger or the Angelista's ring. A random call from guild chat to run a guild Zul'aman run piqued my interest. I would never have dared take my rogue there before but the lolhammer befell ZA and it is now retarded easy. We made it all the way through and never wiped. Hexlord or whatever his name is dropped a nice dagger that no one cared for so I rolled and got it. Finishing the instance brought me enough badges to buy the offhand dagger. Immediately I regretted it. I had the fast offhand and my thought was to get ano0ther dagger so I could spec Subtlety for leveling in Wrath and if I wanted I could try a mutilate build... Did I mention it was the fast offhand. I had forgotten that mutilate rogues want a slow offhand. I would have been just as well off with the merc glad off hand I had as the offhand has no effect on Ambush damage. Meh...
I took my new daggers, which Alenko enchanted for me (thanks Max), and ran off to respec. Ambush crits that take off 50-60% of the mobs HP... oh how I missed thee. I practised on the Isle and fights typically go as follows: Ambush>Hemorrhage>Eviscerate>dead. To do my DPS justice, I really should replace hemo with Sinister Strikes as I'm not getting the full benefit of hemo. Some fights last about 3 seconds... they make me giggle. Just don't take a sub rogue into a raid or instance. Huge openers are great but my dps hits the floor after the first 3 seconds.
Two more days until Wrath of the Lich King is released and maybe another one or two after that I will buy it. I can't wait to make a chick death knight haha!!

Magtheridon down!

Another post about Grufft's raid progression. I healed for Magtheridon's Lair. It was our first Mag kill and put Colombian Necktie to 15th on our server for Horde-side raid progression. We have yet to down anything in Sunwell, TK or SSC. The fight seemed really easy. We needed multiple tanks at the onset to tank the summoner orcs and then just one main tank for Mag himself. We wiped the first try due to inexperience with the cubes but the second time he was worm food. The fight posed no real problem for me as a healer. I can still cast while being bounced around by the bubbling floor and adding hots before the ceiling crash helped keep Garrus's health up. I ended up top of the healing list despite not having a tank assignment. I was relegated to spot raid heals and covering one person that was clicking on a cube.

One of each chest token dropped. I rolled a losing roll on the druid/?/? token but the roll was overruled since it was a huge upgrade for me. Now, if I had turned in one of the two t4 glove tokens I got for healy gloves, I would have had a set bonus. Oops. The tree-mender mitts are about the same so I took the balance gloves first and the feral gloves after. Well no worries. The set bonus is just a chance to get 120 mana from a beneficial spell I cast. I tend not to have MP issues /knock-on-wood

I am now 12 badges away from getting the 100 BOJ pants from the Isle. I really should start running some heroics. Mike has been running Bot on a daily basis he said. If I run those I get a chance at nice blue healing gems (+5 SPI, +9 Healing) and of course the druid staff from the last boss. It would replace my current feral staff which was from Bot also. With my new Malorne chest and those pants... can't wait to check Be.Imba.

Zul'jin Down

I have been part of downing Zul'jin for a second time. The first time, I was on Lÿnn and this time I was healing with Grufft. With the group we had, most fights were fairly easy. Garrus was main tank and from our guild we also had Mulgorn, who tore up the trolls somethin fierce. The remainder was made up of FDL and Pandemonius people. I believe we one shotted the eagle, bear, and lynx. The dragonhawk was the only one to provide much of a problem and of course it was the hatchlings. With three healers, none of the fights were all together difficult to heal. Hex Lord and Zul'jin were a little more challenging. Sadly we cheated on Hex Lord. It would be nice to say we defeated it normally but we did it with no adds. Shadow bolt is a bitch to heal through, although I did learn that a stitch in time saves nine. We had one guy that was very low on hp and as such died or almost died every shadow bolt salvo. To help this I dropped 2 stacks of lifebloom on him before it began and that worked wonders.
Zul'jin was a real bitch to me the first attempt. Walking to my position, I was the recipient of the first Grievous Throw. Bastard! The hit was half my hp and 2 ticks later I was dead. Max berated me a little for not healing myself (I dropped one lifebloom on myself before dying) but in truth I died too damn fast. The other two healers didn't even hit me with any heals so... Our fourth attempt was very solid and I lasted through to the lynx. I have the same issue there, in a few hits I was dirtnapping. The toon is only half Kara geared and as such has shitty HP.
I walked away with 13 badges and one burning question: Why the hell don't I get any heals during the hawk stage? Lÿnn has seen Zul'jin twice and Hawk stage was always a bitch as I try to bandage myself between getting ping-ponged against the wall. As a healer I was dropping continuous healing. As long as I was in the fight people were getting healed well. I would Regrowth one person, then Regrowth myself, Regrowth two others and then swiftmend myself. I'd be at nearly full health and three people had HOTs helping to keep their HP up. Getting hit for 900-1200 each cast is not that bad. I guess I just see the fight through druid colored glasses but...
It will be a while before my up and coming rogue sees Zul'jin but it will be fun to see another aspect of this fight: melee DPS.

The Money Pit

Holy crap! I must stop respec'ing!

So SSO dailies rock. Well they suck, but they rock. They're damn near free money and I have already forgotten what it was like before them and how long it took to get enough gold to do anything. Now, I can raise 100G in about 2 hours of super easy quests. I know there's tons of people that claim to make millions of gold per hour farming or crafting or cybering... well let's just say I don't believe them and leave it at that. Doing one toon's dailies is sufficient for me. It's not like I'm trying to raise funds to buy the Black Temple. Besides it's not for sale.

Sadly this loose money has fed a respec'ing habit that I must now beat. Cat druid is a riot to solo. Tree is not!! So for a quick 50G (about one hour of dailies) I trade in my Regrowths and Rejuv's for Pounces, Mangles and Shreds. <3 Inevitably I get a guild invite to go heal something in that same hour and off I go to respec back to tree.

Well... that's it. I'm going cold turkey. No more Cat DPS for a long long while. I have a dps class that can quite efficiently complete the dailies. Gone are the days of doing both Grufft's and Lÿnn's dailies. I don't need that much anymore. This means that I can still complete some of the SSO supply bags quests for the occasional free BOJ but the vast majority of gold shall come from Lÿnn.

The first step is admitting you have a problem :(

We merged

We have merged with End Result, upping our numbers greatly. We should have nearly enough people to run Gruul's and Mag's now. We also have a funky new calendar add-on to help coordinate Kara runs and such. Having additional runs will keep people in the guild longer and help gear more people, faster.

The other healing item I got from Kara is a healing belt. It replaced my Sash of Mercy which was long overdue for a change. With my new additions, BeImba puts my healing gear to the end of Kara for functionality. Pretty cool considering I have only 1440-ish bonus healing. I still have some upgrades from Kara itself I could get but gear has at least taken a couple more steps forward.

I did change things up a bit with my current spec. I had taken in the past a few things to help do a little more DPS when I was solo'ing. Things like Swarm and Naturalist. I have completely neglected them with my current spec, instead dropping the points into the increased spell crit/decreased incoming damage after being crit talent from resto and Improved Tranquility. I almost neve use Tranquility, but at least now if I do, I won't worry about my imminent death afterwards/during.

Resto gear... Yay!!

What luck. CN had a Kara run this passed Wednesday and I was able to get a DPS spot for Grufft. They had sufficient healers so I didn't need to respec. I nabbed the Shard of the Virtuous, very nice healing mace, and two new dps pieces including t4 gloves. I nabbed another piece of leather healy gear but what it was escapes me now. My healing set now provides more than 1400 bonus healing so it still has a way to go. I may invest 20 badges in the Everbloom Idol to augment my cat dps gear. Sweeney mentioned to me that it's the best dps idol for raid cats. I would firmly agree. I had invested in the Idol of Terror to help solo'ing, as it is clearly the winner there. By the end of the raid, I was in second to last place for dps, but we had a high DPS group. We even took the Maiden down in a little more than a minute and a half. It was kind of comical. I'm pretty happy with my DPS finish as this toon still has quite a way to go for gear. I still have several blues including The Dreamer's Dragonstaff (no clue if that's near to correct) which has half the AP bonus of the new badge staff. Hmmm... Maybe I'll save up for that. I think I need only 70 more badges or so. :(

Still Feral After All These Years

Despite a general lack of Karas and Heroics, Grufft is coming along nicely. I've neglected him recently due to my new pets and new spec on hunter that I was trying out. I've been running anything I can to raise the levels of my new pets since instances are a great area to raise their xp.

Since I have been out of groups and dungeons, I have spent more time recently balance spec'd. I thought it was nice to get a different feel for the class and it seemed to do well. It let me roll on caster things the couple of times I did go in dungeons, but sadly I came up with nothing. I fell back into my old ways yesterday and respec'd feral.

I have better gear for feral than balance. I know how to play feral better. It was just the right choice... and boy am I happy about the change. There's nothing quite as rewarding as killing an even strength mob in 8 seconds or less, before my prowl CD is even up. No more worrying about haplessly aggro'ing more mobs while I'm out in the sticks fireballing away. I'm right in their face.(I iz up en yur greel, manglin yur fase. LOL!). To reward my choice I picked up the Idol of Terror or some such. On nearly every mangle I do, as long as I don't already have the buff, I get a buff of +65 AGI. I f'ing less than three this new idol. That's more AP, more crit (over 2%!!), more armor and more dodge with a proc that keeps it up almost continuously. I don't think my healing days are over. In fact, Max told me I should be able to heal for any Heroic now without much ado. I was fairly confident but that made me more so. This was after healing for heroic Magister's Terrace (Wow that second boss's overload is a bitch).

Apart from the new idol, which was super cheap at 20 badges, I already have the much beloved Hourglass from Black Morass. I was lucky to be healing a caster, pally group run once and won with no competition. I think there is a nice ring in Auchenai Crypts I should get... maybe I'll start to run some instances as cat DPS. /eager

An end to Raiding

Wow haven't posted enough for this toon. Without looking at old post, a quick update.
Grufft has been to Kara 2 or 3 times now and has gotten some pretty good upgrades. Most notable Mitts of the Treemender and a nice healy ring. I have gotten some good cat gear too but feral days seem far away. I do miss them though, but feral dps is just not as useful in raids I'm at currently. 5% crit aura is nice but that can be fulfilled by a bear tank.
Sadly raiding will be greatly diminished now as today is my first day back to work in three months after the birth of my daughter. Raid time for my guild has shifted an hour earlier and will most likely completely preclude me from raids. I get home around 7:30 most nights. just in time to see my children for a half hour before i put them to bed. :( Raids have been starting at 7 PM my time now. I may have a chance if I work out a DPS spot for my hunter but we'll see. Colombian Necktie may join up with Hordecore soon. This has been in the works for a while but I think Hordecore is dragging their heels. We would have enough for 3 Kara groups and 25 man raids (if we coordinate everyone that is). In light of that, I'm sure I'd be out as there would always be enough DPS to fill the Kara runs instead of reserving a spot for a latecomer. I'm not totally bummed because the next step in progression is Gruul's and Magtheridon. Both 25 man instances and both considerably shorter than Kara meaning a possible later start time. Grufft is screwed for that as he is not well enough geared but Lÿnn is. In fact, according to BeImba.com I should be okay to raid Zul'Aman. I have taken great care to keep my crit and hit up so I put out a lot of damage, usually topping our Kara raids. Hopefully I'll see Gruul's, Magtheridon or ZA soon.

Resto Druids Are HoT!!

Well, flash forward a few months and Grufft is now level 64 and spec'd resto. Balance was not my cup of tea so around level 14 I switched to feral. I worried that I would want to stay feral once I got to 60+. It really is fun but I re-spec'd at level 58 or 59. Garrus and I were very close in level and he changed to prot. Having a tank and healer makes pugs go a lot better.
On the way up to Outland I saved some caster gear. By caster gear I mean anything that had INT and/or SPI and maybe even some +heal/spell. By the time I re-spec'd, I had some pretty random crap but that all changed with Outland gear and running instances. Ramps and Blood Furnace yielded some pretty nice upgrades which quickly put me over +500 healing. Quests in Zangarmarsh seemed to provide more gold than gear but I have had upgrades, none of it instance gear sadly. Upon reaching honored with Cenarion Expedition, I purchased a healing mace that looks like utter crap. I swear I stole a Shaman's totem and I am using it as a weapon now. O well. It won't be for long I hope.
Khanjin has been a raid healer for a while now and has an urge to try out elemental dps. We have talked a little and once Grufft reaches 70, he may respec and then we will essentially switch roles. I will take Grufft as healer in place of Lÿnn, my hunter, and he would re-spec elemental. I hope this takes place so I can get some decent Karazhan gear for both healer and feral specs.

Only Usable Outdoors

I like the title so much, It's becoming the name of the blog. Druids are undisputed kings of HoT's so that part made sense, but they have only a handful of DoT's spread across feral and balance. It wasn't truly fitting like "Only Usable Outdoors".


The title refers to one big problem I may have with balance druid: I can't root indoors. This poses little problem at my current level, 12, but could prove more annoying in later levels when I'd rather not have mobs beating on my while I try to cast them to oblivion. I now have a little better opinion of Nature's Grasp. For one thing it's not low cost, it's free. The downside is the one minute cooldown, so this could be used on every other mob more or less. It's still nice to root normally for now, but I may experiment with switching off between Entangling Roots and Nature's Grasp.


At this point, I'm looking forward to a few things about balance druid. At the forefront is Moonkin Form. The idea of being a heavily armored nuker is pretty cool. I believe Moonkin Form gets 400% armor, the same as Dire Bear. Moonkin Aura(?) also provides a crit increase of 5% for all party members. This being the caster equivalent of Leader of the Pack. Sadly there is no 4% of total HP heal with each crit (no more than once every six seconds, of course). Next on the list is the trio of treants. I think this is the level 50 (after 40 points in Balance tree) abil and should be pretty neat. They last a short 30 seconds and I imagine they have a 5 min cooldown. The only other thing specific to Balance is the insect swarm. I will then have Entangling Roots, Moonfire and Insect Swarm, three DoT's... yay! Lock, Jr. I am not :'(

I am a little undecided if I would remain Balance ultimately or switch to Resto which was my initial plan. A switch would have to come late since Resto does not lend itself well to solo'ing.
It's a long way off and of course I'm not even sure if the day will come.

Your Feral Spec has been resisted

As predicted, I have put little time or energy into Grufft, instead focusing on Lÿnn my BElf hunter. That char is now up to level 65 and merrily stomping through the Outlands. Grufft has made it to level 10 and is officially balance spec 1/0/0. I took the Entangling Roots shield abil. When active, there is a small chance that mob will become rooted, one charge. I can spend more points to improve the percentage, but I'm unsure as of now. It seems like a nice abil, it's a low cost back-up root... it's just not dependable and it's short-lived. taking a look at the balance tree makes me want to cheat and log on Xyln and re-spec just for a lark. It would be much easier to find out my thoughts on balance by doing that, but sometimes the easy way isn't the most fun.

Grufft does have some other small competition for being my first true alt on Stormrage, Coregiss a level 10 rogue. Between Alenko, Buru and I, we have no rogue that can open our boxes on this server. To be honest, I have vendored a few boxes because they were lower level. Playing rogue or cat druid seems less fun on a PvE server so I think Grufft still has a better chance. The healing factor still seems more attractive than burst damage. I've been there. It gets aggravating once you burn all your energy and have to wait for it to regen. Rogue at least has some better energy building talents than druid but... meh.

All this rhetoric is currently moot. I'll probably focus just on Lÿnn until 70 and once I hit 70, I'll be more interested in doing level 70 activities than noobish crap.