Life Post 2.4

2.4 has not been good to me. Not in the sense that it’s not fun because it is, but because honestly I don’t have the time to grind dailies. Well not exactly true, I don’t find dailies FUN. Add to that the fact that it’s a little island that all 70s that are sick of the other content are there and the fun kind of seeps away in seconds. I’ve done the bombing quest a couple of times but the rest of the dailies? They don’t spawn fast enough to really make it worth my while to sit around and wait. Someone made note that if you did all the dailies, including the ones originally gives at the onset of BC you could make roughly 300g a day.

That’s an impressive number but you have to the desire to do them regularly. I don’t.

So instead I went and did a couple of other things.

First let me say this to all Alliance players that were gripping about AV before the patch hit, you shouldn’t have said anything. Since 2.4 I have not won ONE contest in AV, which is shocking to me since I got my entire honor that way for the pvp gear that Lubacca is currently wearing. The reason I know this is because I decided to respec Luciel back to enhancement and I thought, I’ll grind some honor, get some tokens and get him some decent gear….well that’s going to be made probably twice as hard now due to the fact that the honor and badges will take longer to get. Sure you get more honor from kills now but if you lose AV you get nil, which still means minimal return.

My days look like this now:

Log in #1: Lubacca
I log into Lubacca for several reasons. First, he’s my main and if someone wants to get a MrT run going, that’s who I’m going to use. Secondly, he’s got all my money and is my cash cow with Alchemy. At some point I’ll get the reagents for the alchemy stone, as well as the rep eventually, I’m not worried about it. I go out and do some herb gathering (that whole, Fel Blossom will drop more stuff? Yea, that’s not true.) make some pots, put them on AH and log out.

Log in #2: Luciel
Now that he’s Enhancement again I find it fun. I’m not nearly as much of a DPS guy with Luciel for some reason, I don’t think I have enough spell hit or something but I still have fun in the BGs. I run about four a day, enough for about 1k honor and some badges. Not much else with this one really. If someone is running a regular instance…which is rare, I might jump in with Luciel and hope for some nice loot.

Log in #3: Lubrona
Currently sitting at level 31, this is where I start to feel the drag of a toon until about 40. It’s the hardest time for me and I don’t know why. I’ll try to bash out as many quests as I can but honestly, I am currently finding it exhausting to deal with this one. Once I get the mount that will get better, plus I’ll start hitting some areas that I actually enjoy, like Tanaris. I’ve started to use the Drain Tank Method and it works, I just end up not having enough space for the stupid stones from draining….if I don’t use Draining Life. Suggestions?

Log in #4: McGregor
Strictly to just sit around and grind some leather in hopes of getting enough to maybe make some Drums of War for Luciel or just to put up on AH. This one has really just been mistreated.

Note: I’ve spent roughly 7k gold on getting flight for my characters.

For the Enhancement Shamans out there that enjoy PVP, what do you find will help you most with getting out the most damage against your opponents?

Honestly I knew this was going to happen, it’s the lull before the next big thing. I know that WotLK is coming around the corner, but between now and then, what? I don’t want to switch guilds but I just might with one of my toons long enough to see something fun.

How about you guys? What are you up to now that 2.4 has dropped?

Learning your Roots: Down the Feral Tree Part 3

It’s been too long since I sat down and hammered this out. I apologize to those who have been following this series because I know I left right in the middle of a tree branch and honestly it’s been like three weeks since I tried to finish it up. This installment shall hopefully finish the Feral Tree and leave me open to do the Restoration Tree.

So when we last did this Savage Fury was the last talent we looked at. Moving on from there we go to Faerie Fire (Feral), Now it doesn’t matter if you’re going to be a dps kitty or a tank bear, this is a must have for either as it allows you to cast Faerie Fire without having to shape shift into caster form. This weakens the armor of your target and obviously gives you agro without having to be obnoxious about it or pull extra mobs by accident. It’s a strong talent and you really need it, every group will be counting on you having it since you don’t have any range pull weapons at your disposal.

Nuturing Instinct is the next talent available but many feral druids will tell you that it was placed there by accident. It gives an increase to your healing spells dependent on your strength. This falls into Blizzard’s ‘We’re trying to make you in a hybrid class’ mentality. By giving the Feral Tree a healing boost this is supposed to make it a little more viable for the tanks to also back up heal as needed, or at least heal themselves. I have yet to see ONE Feral druid with points in this talent (Now that I’ve said that there will be at least one that posts). The talent is self-explanatory, feral druids don’t need plus healing or plus damage, they don’t work with spells. So this talent is to give your healing a boost, albeit a weak one. Pass it up.

Heart of the Wild is one that you fed into by taking Predatory strikes. It’s built to give a boost to all three of your top forms. The limit is 20% Intellect, 20% Stamina and 10% Attack power (Caster, Bear and Kitty respectively). This is a good one to deal into since it gives you a boost on all the important stuff without having you have to go out and buy gear to get it done. Never pass up something that’s going to make it easier for you to do your job.

Primal Tenacity is a stun blocker basically. Increasing the ability to over look when a mob tries to stun you. I know that there are some in PVE that do this but I think it’s more of a PVP gift really, trying to overlook that kidney shot that the last Rogue hit you with. It’s a choice on this one really more than anything else. You decide whether you feel it’s something that’s going to make you a better player.

Leader of the Pack is an aura that rocks much like the Moonkin Aura rocks. It gives ranged and melee classes around you a 5% critical strike chance, what’s not to love about that? (Most fun thing is having a Bear and a Moonkin in group, disgusting Critical chance for party members. Improved leader just makes it so that when there is a Critical hit, the party that got it also gets healed for 4% of their total heal, it can only happen every six seconds.

Predatory Instincts can increase your damage from Critical Strikes by up to 10% and gives you the chance to avoid AOE damage by 15%. Again this is a two fold advantage. Obviously you can really enjoy extra damage from Critical Strikes in PVE and PVP but the avoidance of AOE is VERY good for PVP when you’re up against Shaman Totems and Paladin Consecrations. It’s a neat little talent but it will cost 5 points to max it out.

The Cherry on the top of the Ice Cream is Mangle. It’s a spell that can only be learned through the tree and all Feral Druids love completely as it’s a spell that really causes some serious damage.

The other thing to think about it this; when 2.4 gets dropped when you respec you won’t have to buy over the spells you’ve paid for once. So if you went all Feral for a while and decided you wanted to try Resto and then go back to Feral, you won’t have to re-pay for Feral Spells, you already know them.

So there you have, the often late but always good for a read, Tree breakdown.

Man, my wrists hurt.

A Cry for Help

I've got several high level toons but Bosque is the one that I want to see more content with. To that end I have begun to PVP religously. (More about that in a later post.)

The question is: Aside from some of the gear in PVP, what other places would be suitable for me to get some gear to take me into Karazhan and beyond?

I leave this to you druids who are hiding among us, as well as awesome players that know alot about everything!

Learning your Roots: The Feral Tree Part 2

Okay, some of the cobwebs have been knocked loose and I’ve managed to post some smart and interesting things, however we need to get back to business don’t we? So, here’s the second part of the Feral Tree. Remember that this is the spec that most Druids swear by to level their toon; I myself was a Feral until 40 and then my Moonkin adventures.

Shredding Attacks is a two point talent that reduces the energy spent for Shred and rage spent for lacerate. These are two of your main attacks as a kitty and bear respectively. Taking down the cost of those two so that you can toss out other attacks as well isn’t a bad thing. It’s probably the best thing that you can do for yourself; especially low level like you would be (Level 28 or so). It’ll help make sure that the battles you find yourself in will continue to be short and concise.

Predatory Strikes is 3 points but something that’s wanted for two reasons. First, it bleeds into another talent later on and I don’t have to tell you that it’ll be something you want. The second is that it increases your attack power in all of your shifted forms with the exception of travel, flight, aquatic and caster. If you put three points in it you go from normal attack power to 150% higher attack power. Who doesn’t want more attack power?

If you paid into Sharpened Claws you can get Primal Fury, a sweet little talent that will only cost 2 points to max out. It’s a critical strike bonus talent, you get crit you either get more rage or the possibility of an extra attack point when you’re a kitty. Imagine the amount of HURT you can put into someone with this one maxed out. That’s why a lot of druids that stay feral use kitty for fighting, you’re going to be flying through your rage and getting some hits that will pay out for you in the long run.

Savage Fury is a kitty talent for 2 points. With it you would get increase damage by 20% on your Claw, Rake, and Mangle. Again these are three key strikes that you will depend on regularly when you’re in cat form. It’s the best way to get that opponent on his knees.

I will let you know that I tried to work on this for four hours and the interruptions were just too great. I’ll try to pick this up again tomorrow.

Bosque reaches Maturity!

Yes I know I’m bombarding you with posts today but this is what happens when a creative person gets sick, you end up having this HUGE release that never seems to stop and the people around you either love you for it or end up wanting to strangle you. The difference for you guys is you can just click out of my topics and move on to something else; think about the people around me!!!!

So as you all know my latest toon has been Bosque. A Druid that had been asleep in the Emerald Dream for close to a year before I came back over to him and gave him the breath of life again. Having decided to make him a Moonkin I traveled through Azeroth and later the Outlands with him, trying to figure out just how long it would take me to get him to where I wanted to be. On Saturday night, as I lay awake with a dull throb coming from my upper back, Bosque hit 70. He completed part of Cipher of Damnation and then went around and killed Ogres to try and get more rep with the Nagrad faction for his mount. He hit 70 in the middle of being swarmed by three Ogres.

I have decided that as much as I love McGregor and Luciel, Bosque will be the one that sees more end game content with me for the foreseeable future. The reasoning is quiet simple, I haven’t stopped having fun with him. Nor do I see myself not having fun with him in the near future.

So welcome Bosque to the crowd of 70, though there seem to be a plethora of us around as not as exclusive as it once was.

The only toon that will see anything remotely close to leveling is part of the Anti-Pug and ours is not a race but a leisurely stroll together through this content.

Learning Your Roots: Feral Tree Part 1

So this time around I’m going to focus on the tree that most Druid players consider the fastest way to level from 1 to 70. Within this tree you have the ability to Tank or to do dps with your Bear and Cat forms. Let me be clear in saying that honestly, I feel that even if you want to go Balance or Restoration later on, the best and most fun way to level a Druid, at least until level 40, is to play through the Feral tree. Not only will it give you boosts in speed, strength and additional attacks, but it will also give you the chance to see what a tank has to go through as well as melee dps. You will find yourself having a better affinity for both. While they may not be up to your play style, you will at least spend some time in both pairs of shoes.

A Druid breaks down like this. From levels 1 to 10 you are a caster, period. At level ten you get bear form and you learn to tank. At level 20 you receive cat form, dps machine from then until 40. Once you hit forty you have the opportunity to respec to one of the other trees or you can wait until 70 to do that, most Druids do.

Let it be known that this is considered one of the two main specs for Druids. Laser Chickens are off spec, so that means that I’m odd….but you knew that :P.

Ferocity is a five point talent that reduces the cost of Maul, Swipe, Claw, Rake and Mangle. These are different spells for either a bear or a cat, so you’re getting the benefit of it in both of your main forms when you’re still a young druid. The thing about the two forms is that they take from Warrior and Rogue in that they use Rage and Energy. So you need to keep both up to be able to have the strength to finish a fight and the ability to switch between spells to get it done quickly. This is a talent that will really help you in making sure you don’t run on empty too fast.

Feral Aggression is another five pointer that can boost your Demoralizing Roar and you Ferocious Bite. First thing about it that turns me off to it is that it’s only for bear form, while that might not seem like a big thing, Ferocious Bite isn’t that great of a spell to begin with. While Demoralizing Roar is great, you can’t use it in close quarters because you can agro other mobs within the area and it eats up a chunk of rage to boot. I’ve played with Druids for a while before I got serious about Bosque, one in Horde and like 3 Alliance, I never once bothered to put points in to this talent, hasn’t ever bothered me.

Feral Instinct is a three point talent that is a must have for two reasons. First, it gives you that extra attention since it will give you up to 15% more threat when you’re in that form. However the other reason is the one that called to me the most, it reduces detect ability when you are prowling, so when you go stealth. Let me tell you, there are going to be times when a quest will just call for you to go touch something or read something that you’re going to be GLAD that you have this talent, it will save you the time and effort of fighting through a group of mobs higher level than you to get what you need. This is a MUST HAVE for this tree.

Brutal Impact is a two pointer. It can increase the time for stun time for Bash and Pounce by up to 1 second. I never put points into this one and I had reasoning for it. If you’re in a group, the stun that you have already is enough to keep a mob messed up long enough for your dps to do the serious damage they can inflict and if you’re going solo and doing the pounce, you have enough attacks in your book to take down a mob before they come to and seriously threaten you.

Thick Hide is three points well spent as it increases the Armor from items you have on up to 10%. I don’t need to tell you just how important something like that is especially when you’re leveling and don’t have the money to go run to the nearest AH and buy new gear every level. One of my Druid friends is a tank and he has about 24k armor, this one of the talents that he truly loves.

There are only two classes that get a travel form. Shamans get Ghost Wolf at level 20 and Druids get Travel Form (Cheetah) at level 30. Before those two however, you’re hoofing it. Most Druids find that once they get cat form, that’s the form they can most often be found in. Feral Swiftness is a talent that gives cat form a little extra running speed. For 2 points you get as 30% speed increase while also giving an additional 4% dodge rating to your bear form. It’s a great talent that will see you moving through zones a bit quicker and give you the ability to run for you life when you’re attacked by several mobs, a little faster.

Feral Charge is the first spell that you can learn specifically from this tree and in no other way. Like I stated before, bears are like Warriors. This is a spell that really makes it true as it gives your bear form the ability to charge a mob. This stuns the mob for a second and gives you the chance to rip into them before they even know what hit them. The downfall is that when you’re starting a battle cold you’ll have to use Enrage to really get this started, still very little to have to pay to use this great talent.

Sharpened Claws is a great little three pointer as it gives up to a 6% high chance to get a critical strike when you’re in animal form. It also bleeds into a talent a little ways down the tree. Really though even without it bleeding into something else it’s a great talent as it raises that critical strike which gives you more agro as a bear and keeps the attention of a mob as a cat.

There’s obviously more to the tree but I want to take this a bit at a time as it gives both you, the reader, and myself enough time to digest exactly what it is that each talent can do. Plus and more importantly, it doesn’t bore you to tears. There’s a couple of other things that I might post today but this does it for the first part of the Feral tree.

Learning your Roots: Balance Tree Part 3

Okay I’m feeling a little better today. I’ve got twelve stitches in my back from a biopsy that they did this last week. I’m a bit of pain because it’s in my upper right shoulder and the skin has been pulled taunt to try and make it heal together. However, I owe you guys that are reading this latest Tree so here I am.

Moonfury is a talent that you can only get if you fed Nature’s Grace. It increases the percentage of damage done from Starfire, Moonfire and Wrath spells up to 10% if you feed five points. That’s an amazing little bit of explosive-ness. It’s a talent that you would be remiss in not taking if you’re building a Balance Druid.

Balance of Power also feeds into just blasting away your opponents. It raises the chance to hit your opponent and reduces the chance of an opponent hitting you! Come on, how awesome is that? Not only do you get a higher chance of hitting him and avoiding a smacking from either a mob in PVE or a player in PVP. Yes I understand that the chance is slim only 4% maximum but still, we all know that those percentages add up.

Usually I go left to right but in this instance I’m going to start in the middle of the next three because by now you should be 40 or 41. For one point, you get Moonkin form. In Moonkin form you become pretty much unstoppable if you play your toon correctly. Usually you would get Dire Bear Form if you were Feral or Tree Form if you’re a Resto. For Balance it’s Moonkin. If you’ve ever had to deal with an Owlbeast, that’s what you’re becoming. You get a 400% increase in Armor, which I don’t have to tell you is ridiculous. This means that a mob can’t just come up and three swat you, they REALLY have to work at getting you down. Already, this is enough for any caster to just jump for joy, but the form has additional added benefits. Your attack power is increased by 150% and you get Moonkin Aura. Moonkin Aura gives a higher chance to get a critical strike, by 5%. Also added to this, if you do run out of mana and go Melee there’s a chance on hit that you will regain the amount of mana that you have in attack power. So there are SEVERAL reasons to take this and run with it.

Let me point out something just so you know how much damage Moonkin Form can do. When I’m in BGs, which I find myself in at least once a day, I usually have three or four attackers on me at once because they know that amount of hurt I can do to them if I set my mind to it. I’ve been one of the top ten damage makers in AB and AV consistently, so I can put out some serious hurt in this form. The ONLY drawback in it is that I can’t HEAL in Moonkin form, you’ll be bounced out to caster form when you do that, which makes you an easier target for those gunning for ya, so be warned.

Dreamstate is a caster must. You feed it three points and it will regenerate mana equal to 10% of your intellect every five seconds, casting or non. So this means that you already have mana regenerating from your gear and Spirit and then you have this on top of that. If done right, you could very well never go without mana. Of course, as a Moonkin I don’t think that not running out of mana is an option.

Improved Faerie Fire is the next talent and while it’s great for when you’re in a group, it’s a talent that you will not find yourself using much when you are in solo mode. I didn’t put the three into this talent and honestly haven’t ever thought “Man I should’ve!” However this is a choice thing since some players love to just be in a BG all the time, having Improved Faerie Fire would be great for those players you’re in with to take advantage of. Personally, I skipped this but like I said, it’s up to the player as far as importance goes.

Wrath of Cenarius is a five point talent that adds even more damage to your Starfire and Wrath. Max it out and you get an extra 20% dmg on Starfire and an extra 10% on Wrath. If you’ve been reading about this tree you know it’s all about quick damage, fasting casting and great critical strikes. You can’t pass up this five pointer and shell out the type of damage that other Moonkins are doing.

Force of Nature is a choice, again. This is the pinnacle of the tree. It gives you minions to summon and assist you for thirty seconds. The minions in question are Treants. I would have loved to have owlbeasts, personally but Treants work just as well. Two drawbacks are that it takes up 12% of your Base Mana pool, so it’s not like there’s a set amount, say 600 Mana for every time you call on them but instead the price of calling them rises as the amount of mana at your disposal rises. The other downfall is that there is a three minute cool down on the summoning. The up side is that the three Treants do damage to any target you send them on. So if you have three mobs on you, the Treants can easily deal with one while you work on the other two or root one and finish another. It’s a great tactic really. Like I said though, to each his own.

That concludes the Balance Tree. Next we will tackle the Feral Tree and show you the tree that every druid I know feels will get you leveled the fastest to 70.

Bosque is 64.

Learning your Roots: Balance Druid Part 2

Bosque is about three bubbles away from 63, I’ve split time between doing PVP and leveling, hence the slower climb to 70. Still enjoying it though and I managed to hit 375 Herbalism and sitting pretty at 315 Alchemy. I’ve already got some of the high level plans for Alchemy that should garner me some money, hopefully enough for swift flight form.

Alright let’s get down to it. When last we spoke, I began to talk to you about the Balance Tree, today I aim to continue that conversation.

Brambles is the first talent that you’re going to see in the third row. This talent will affect the damage done to a target by both Thorns and Entangling Roots. Thorns is a self cast spell that gives out damage to anyone attacking you. I have Thorns on me all the time, its second nature to have the damage ticking off of a mob. While Nature’s Grasp is a totally wasted talent, this is one that serves two good purposes and shouldn’t go without some love.

Insect Swarm is a spell exclusive to Balance and one that is actually an instant cast spell and incredibly useful. While Farie Fire is great when you’re a melee beast or when you’re working with a group, Insect Swarm is the best when you’re soloing. Two reasons, first it does give a small chance that the target may miss when aiming for you but more importantly, it does some damage over time. So in theory, when you get this talent, you could do Entangling Roots, Moonfire, Insect Swarm and then Wrath. This would give the first spells time to work on the health of the mob while you spam Wrath.

Nature’s Reach is a gimme, you HAVE to have this talent. It increases the reach of your Balance spells. So any casting spell will basically have a longer reach. This is great for those range pulls. It gives you more time to take down a mob before it even reaches your front door. A great way to make sure that your caster loving self has enough time to bring that mob down to a manageable size before they make you caster worms.

Vengeance is the talent that you have access to if you put points into Focused Starlight (which you should have done). It’s a five point talent that increases the critical strike damage bonus of your three bread and butter spells as a caster. You drop the five points and it’s a 100% increase, which is absurdly wonderful for the Moonkin in all of us. I’ll tell you why it’s all sorts of goodness further down the tree.

Celestial Focus has two uses. The first it gives up to a 15% chance to stun a target when hit by Starfire. I know that’s not much but it’s the second thing that it does that you want to put points in here for; you can have up to a 70% chance to resist spell interruption when casting Wrath. So if you’re running around and a mob is hitting you, you can still get Wrath off and cause serious hurt to the target causing you grief.

Lunar Guidance is great. For three points you can increase your spell damage and healing by 25% of your total Intellect. As a caster you’re going to be looking for any type of gear that’s going to have intellect on it to begin with. So this is a nice bonus to reward you for making sure you have enough intellect to get a high mana pool.

Nature’s Grace. This is a one pointer that’s going to be feeding off your critical strikes as a caster. Your point will gain you an ability that will produce with each critical strike you achieve. It reduces the cast time of ANY spell by .5 seconds. That, that’s a GREAT little trick. As a Moonkin you’re going to have an aura that gives a 5% chance to crit. Your gear will be set up to give you a better chance to crit as well. Case in point Bosque currently sits just over 16% crit chance. I’ve already gotten 2k crit hits, I’m only level 62.

Moonglow is a mana reducer. It reduces the cost of just about all your spells by up to 9%. As a Balance Druid you’re ALREADY going to have issues making sure your mana pool doesn’t go dry after every fight, getting this will help making sure the pool stays somewhat steady.

::WHEW!:: Okay, I think that’s it for today. I wanted to try and crunch it all down to just two entries but you’ll have to wait for tomorrow for me to finish this bad boy out. I will say this though, aside from maybe one or two talents on this tree, I feel that all the talents on here are not only viable but essential for a Moonkin to be good at what he/she does.

So, there you go.

Learning your Roots: Balance Druid Part 1

Blog Azeroth is a new tool for bloggers, someone requested that I do more of the tree breakdowns for classes. Since I’m currently working on my Druid and that build is FRESH in my head, I’ll work with that for now.

Learning your Roots: Balance Druid

A Balance Druid is a fun build. A friend once called it, “A Mage with Plate Armor” and that’s exactly what it is. Consider this, if you build a Druid when you get bear form you get a 400% armor boost. This enables the bear to tank for a 5, 10 or 25 group as well as solo. At level 40 a Druid that has run the Balance tree gets Moonkin Form. Moonkin is a highly armored form that allows you to cast nature spells. So you have high armor and severely high spell damage. I’ll explain more as I break this down for you.

Let me disclaimer something to you right now. When I built my Druid I leveled as Feral for the first 40 levels. The reason being is that while you do have good spells as a druid, doing it as a straight caster the entire time puts you at a disadvantage. First because you don’t get Moonkin until level 40, this means that you’re not better than a Mage or a Warlock in the sense that it’s two swipes and you’re down. The other part of it is that you will have a harder time leveling because you can’t take out two mobs at once. So remember that if you are going to Balance from level 1, you will more than likely have a lot of graveyard runs in your future, you’ve been warned.

Starlight Wrath is going to be one of your main attacks as a Balance Druid and will also be a main attack when you’re a lowbie. It’s great high damage but it takes a while to get it cast on the mob that you’re trying to take down. Putting five points into this talent brings down the cast time of this attack, something you really want since it’s basically the start of any attack you’re going to do.

Nature’s Grasp is the second talent at the start of the tree. “While active, any time an enemy strikes the caster they have a 35% chance to become afflicted by Entangling Roots. Only useable outdoors, 1 charge. Lasts 45 sec.” This is a waste of a point to me for several reasons. First, you have to be STRUCK before it’s activated, so you have to suffer damage before it becomes active. Problem with this is if you’re struck and get dazed, your time to runaway is cut down severely and you don’t do much with it. The second is that it can only happen once a battle. So there’s no promise that it will happen at the beginning of the fight, it may very well happen as you drop your killing blow, highly annoying. The most important thing to me though, that makes it useless, is that it’s only outdoors. I don’t know if you noticed but you have to run INTO a lot of places, caves, hovels, houses, crypts and instances (Which are considered INDOORS) so if you begin to rely on this talent, it’s going to be useless to you in most situations.

The last talent at the top is Improved Nature’s Grasp which gives a higher probability of your target getting entangled but doesn’t give you more charges and doesn’t allow you to use this talent indoors, so to me this is a wash.

So firs five go into Starlight and that opens up the next three which are basically must haves.

Control of Nature is the first one that it’s the second segment. It begins by giving you a 40% chance of avoiding interruption by damage when you’re casting Roots or Cyclone and maxes out at 100%. So no matter how strong the attack being sent against you, you’ll still get your cast off. Cyclone you don’t get until level 70 but if you go to the forums you will see other classes are always highly upset that you can do it with no cool down. Might be something fun if you’re into PVP.

Focused Starlight. As a Moonkin you will depend HIGHLY on the ability to get a critical attack on a mob because it allows some of the other abilities available to you to activate. You put two points into this talent and it increases the possibilities to get a critical strike from Starfire and Wrath by 4%, these are going to be two spells you will use regularly and I can’t begin to tell you how important it is that you have them up as high as possible. This talent also leads to another one further down the tree that I’ll talk about later.

Improved Moonfire. Again this is a talent that you want to spend points on because it elevates the critical strike opportunity for one of your bread and butter spells. It gives a 10% chance for your Moonfire attacks to be a critical strike. Very tasty if you’re a caster.

I’m going to stop here for today. I don’t want to overwhelm you right away. I’m going to attach an image, hope it comes out...

Moonkin on the brain

I found some older Shifting Perspective articles that I thought would be helpful for the moonkin gear.


Awesome Moonkin Gear Part 1

Awesome Moonkin Gear Part 2

Awesome Moonkin Gear Part 3

I'm setting this up for you, the reader, as much as for myself since I begin Outlands tonight.

Moonkin Battleground Diaries and Macros!

I’m almost positive that I’ve mentioned before my disdain for PVP. Now that doesn’t mean I turn my nose up at people that play PVP. I honestly think it takes a certain mentality to play PVP non stop and I respect the players that can do it day in and day out for hours on end. I inspect a lot of the players that I run with and admire and notice that many of them have gone out and spent time in the battlegrounds because its PVP related gear.

I’ve tried to PVP. Honestly I have. I tried with Luciel, that didn’t go too well. I tried to McGregor but since he’s protection specced it’s not the best way to PVP. I know that there’s certain ways to spec for PVP but am I willing to spend 10, 15 or even 50g to respec every time I want to do something? Um, that would be a no.

So Bosque is close to 60, 56 at the moment and certainly 60 within a matter of days. I decided that I wanted to get him a PVP mount. Why? Well, I have a cat mount and I’d like something different for him to set him apart from the pack, so I want to get him a Ram. It’s 30 battle tokens from each battleground that’s available to me at the moment, with no honor points being spent. Have I mentioned that there’s a nice staff that I want to get him once he hits 70? Not to mention some nice idols that would be perfect for him?

So the last three nights I’ve gone into the battlegrounds. I’ve gone in with some hesitation because honestly, I feel like I suck at PVP. Even dueling friends I get schooled constantly. So going into PVP, you either have it, or you don’t. I love to play PVE because once you memorize the way that the script is written, well then you’ve got it beat. With another player controlling a toon it’s different because you don’t know when they’re going to pop a pot or when they’re going to stun you, backstab, backstab, pounce, evade, pot and then backstab again. There’s no rhyme or reason to his game play that you can see and then not only are you stuck figuring out what your own strategy is going to be but you’re forced to figure his out as well in the short amount of time that you’re going to be confronting that person. (Is it me or am I over thinking this completely?)

With Bosque, I’ve found that I’m a pretty decent at PVP when I’m working with Bosque. The reason being is that I’m a hybrid. While I am specced Balance and I TOTALLY love it, I still have available the other skills of the different trees available to me. I’ve been focusing on two battlefields Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley. Before I had focused on Warsong Glutch but I’ve begun to notice that it’s almost like a solo battleground when you’re doing WSG because everyone is doing, whatever. You have fourteen people on offense and one person on defense, the flag is almost always taken and we, Alliance, have this RETARDED sense of having to turtle when we have the opponent’s flag!

The first Battleground that I did with Bosque, Alterac Valley, we won. I mean we straight just won. Three tokens in my bag right off the bat. I think I ended up in about five battlegrounds for the day and had about 150 kills. Pretty decent for a first day try at least I think.

Yesterday though was the kicker. I work late on Tuesdays, until 8pm and then have to turn around and go back into work at 8am. So my time is short Tuesday evenings. The missus is still recovering from her hospital stay so she was sound asleep. With little time to really do quests, I turned to Battlegrounds again. I ran Alterac Valley three times last night because I want to have the experience of some one on one fighting as well as taking some bases.

I wish I had a screen capture for what I’m about to tell you but you’ll have to take my word for it. We won two I believe, but on the second one, the one that lasted the longest, when the totals came up I placed tenth on damage. Tenth out of thirty. Remember that I’m still a 56 and there were more 59s than anything else on the board and I out damaged twenty of those players.

Can you say shock? Can you say awesome?

With the love of PVP in my heart at the moment, I decided to throw the druids that are Balance and mosey on in here a bone with a quick script.

/castsequence reset=5 Entangling Roots, Moonfire, Wrath

This is a PERFECT battleground macro. It puts the three bread and butter casts that you’re going to use at the touch of one click. At least, if you’re a caster. After this you can just Wrath, Wrath, and Wrath away. It’s the one that uses the least mana and the quickest cast you’re going to find in your repertoire

For Feral, it could go either way.

/castsequence reset=5 Prowl, Pounce, Shred, Claw, Rake, Claw Rake, Rip

If you don’t have pounce yet you can just omit it and just use shred as a starter. If you don’t want to deal with prowl or being behind someone just use Claw, Rake, Claw, Rake, rip.

For the Bears.

/castsequence reset=5 Charge, Faerie Fire, Maul, Swipe, Demoralizing Roar, Bash, Swipe, Maul

Again, if one of the first two aren’t available to you yet, you can change those out or even add on as you get higher in level, likewise with Cat form. The joy of these kind of macros is that the spells cast are incredibly interchangeable and allow you the flexibility to switch them on the fly. So, say you try this combo but you don’t have Ravage and you want it, simple, if you get dusted, which you will with a battleground, as you’re waiting for the spirit healer to bring you back quickly open your macros window and write it in.

Let me know Druids if these work for you. Like I said, I know basic macros and I know there are other macros to switch forms on the fly but damned if I know what they are.

Think I might have to change my logo to, what do you guys think? I want some responses or emails or something, geez!

Boomkin say what?

As you know I had a hiatus, if you didn’t know it says so on my OTHER post today….scroll down.

During my time at home, with the kids asleep and me already having caught up with my wife, I took the time to kill stuff on my Druid. If you look over you’ll see that I went from forty-six to fifty-six. Yep, you heard right since the last post to last night I leveled 10 times. That just tells me that the fix that Blizz put in with 2.3 actually works and it makes it a lot faster to level. Now the question becomes, how many times are we willing to go through that content for these characters? Personally it’s been a blast with Bosque but that’s because the build is so much fun and because I’m learning a new class. I don’t know that I’d have this much fun with a clothy though I have three in the wings that are looking at me like I’m crazy for not having leveled them sooner but honestly, they don’t hold a huge draw for me.

Bosque has already begun to get critical hits for over 1k in almost every battle. What’s not to love about that? The one complaint that I have is that roots doesn’t work indoors and that sometimes the mobs resist and that drives me nuts. Usually though I can have a mob down even before it reaches me, which is awesome. Being an Alchemist is also good since what it does it allows me to have pots all the time.

I ran him through BRD this weekend and while I didn’t really get any drops for myself, I got some good xp and managed to complete all of the quests down there.

At this rate he should hit seventy in the next few weeks. It’s been slower going with some of the areas because I’m rusty but with Outlands so fresh in my mind I should blow through those with no problem whatsoever.

The other thing that I’ve begun to do is PVP. I’m not one to really PVP. I find that the mechanics are clunky and I don’t want to just build a toon for PVP as I know I won’t spend HOURS in a battleground. However I find myself being much more useful with a Moonkin as I can just go ahead and blast everything around me, or root people to the ground that love to jump around so that they aren’t being smacked around. In the two days that I’ve gone ahead and PVP’d I’ve gotten over 1000 honor points and several marks. My goal is to go ahead and get enough marks to get a pvp mount when I hit 60 or so and then horde the honor points for when I hit 70 and I want to get some nice gear. There’s already a staff that I’ve got my eye on so I know that I can accomplish this.

Any of my fellow druids enjoy the moonkin love or is it just me?

Topping the Charts!

Last night I pugged it with an interesting group. Three of the members were of the same guild a shaman, a rogue and a hunter (Sounds like the intro to a bad joke) and the Shaman let me know not far into the run that the other two with him, well this was there first toon for each. They had never been to ZF, which was what we were doing, and needed to get the experience of playing in it and finishing the quests.

Let me say that I was impressed by the Shaman taking these guys under his wing, I even told him so, to which he replied that they were real life friends and he didn’t have much of a choice. (heh.) Still they managed to do a decent job. We only had one group wipe in the entire time. Bosque and the hunter were left up during the event at the steps, we managed to down both the troll boss and Sergeant Bly by ourselves.

Bosque topped the damage meter.

I have to admit that I’m loving being able to nuke the crap out of everything in sight. It’s much different from having to heal or get up close and tank. Standing back, rooting something and just blasting away at it is more fun that I could have realized. While running around in ZF Bosque went ahead and dinged 47. Outlands are closer than ever on my druid.

I haven’t put together that Marco like I threatened but I think, knowing the spells that I use, that it would look something this:

/castsequence reset=5 Entangling Roots, Insect Swarm, Starfire, Moonfire, Wrath

This would be for a solo situation, by the time you hit up Wrath the mob should be close to being dead and the Damage over Time from the other two spells is still taking effect. I use insect swarm because Farie Fire when I solo because I’m not doing melee damage, remember that a Moonkin is a caster form. Now if you were a Kitty this wouldn’t work at all and you’d want to focus on the cat attacks for your Macro. The same rule applies if you’re a big bear.

Other thing that you should always remember, buy your reagents before you go into an instance. I don’t care WHAT you play; buy your reagents because you never know what you might have to do.

On the Divine Forsaken front things are slow. I know they’re planning a raid for tomorrow, Kara of course, and together with our sister guild we should have enough people to get that accomplished. I’ve been focusing on the Druid and a lot of the players that I run with have just switched to playing alts. I think they have the same mindset; we play for fun, not to break our heads against ten man raids. I’ve already experienced it several times and it’s ‘aight’.

How about you guys? You finding yourself reaching for that Purple Pixel disease or are you satisfied with the accomplishment of having hit 70 and then moving on to a low level character that needs your love?

Also, anyone else have a useful macro they want to send over?

New Goings on

So I’m on Bosque last night grinding away the last of my STV quests, getting good XP and learning the mechanics of an excellent caster character when I get a whisper from a bud, Nineheals, who tells me We’re clearing Slabs right now, get on your tank and wait outside. I don’t have to tell you that I parked my feathered ass and switched over. Nine is a paladin like McGregor but he’s my healing counterpart and he’s been further along the end game tree than I have on Alliance. So I take his advice and his assistance with open arms.

Divine Forsaken has a sister guild now, Celestial Storm, and some of their players were getting keyed with me as well. So we’re all standing around Slabs and waiting to be invited into group to get our keys. We get the invite and run into the instance, they do before I do and I ended up getting attacked by a respawn. I run out to lose agro and then run back in. Nine is waiting for me by the steps leading to the second door and we start jogging further in, Wait until we’re there to open anything. Nine Says.

Oops.

One of the CS guys opened the key box before I was in the area. So we tell them don’t kill it, we get there, kill it and what do you know…NO FRAG!

I can’t even begin to tell you how pissed and frustrated I was with the whole blooding thing. I was ready to just chunk my laptop into my television screen and never play again. I know that this sounds A) Childish and B) Retarded but honestly, I’ve been trying to get both of these characters keyed for a few weeks and to never get one fragment? I’m sorry that’s screwed.

So I just said, forget it and switched over to Bosque. Nine whispered me again and said he was getting together an uber group to clear Slabs AGAIN so I could get my fragment.

It took them about an hour and a half.

McGregor got his first fragment. I went and picked up the next quest and figured, I’ll get to them this weekend. Nope. I was told to get back on my Tank and wait for the next TWO fragments that they were going to get to NOW.

So within two hours, I had all three fragments. Now I’m supposed to go ahead and do Black Morass but unfortunately I still haven’t done Old Hills yet on McGregor and as you know, it’s about progression. You have to do the Old Hills to get a crack at BM to get keyed.

That’s what appears to be my merit for the day, getting that done. Should be interesting if nothing else.

Bosque is on the CUSP of 43 (Like 2 bubbles) and I’m going to try and hit that today. My guild has already talked about a ridiculous run of ZF, me and three 70s. Good way to get all the PHAT loot from the bosses. I already have the kilt and helm from ZF (A run done a couple of levels ago). I’m enjoying the dynamic of a Moonkin and don’t see myself going back. I’ve found a couple of online resources that have been useful in helping me understand a little more about it.

I’m going to try and get some screen shots of my characters for all to see and tomorrow I will do my first MotW! (If you’re a reader, you’ll understand the acronym)

Balance Druids Rejoice!

As I have gone ahead and gone Moonkin, Laser Chicken is my friend. Delos of the Cenarion Circle writes good good articles on his playstyle.

This here has got to be the BEST post I've seen on how the mechanics SHOULD work for a Moonkin and what to expect.


Moonkin PvE DPS



If you don't want to be a tree and don't want to be a Big Butt Bear Druid, then this post should show you what you should expect to be doing.



Good job Delos!

Frustration at 70

Yes I keep putting off the Restoration Tree but there’s a reason for it this time. I’m actually quite pissed at being 70. Since I started this blog I’ve gotten two characters to hit 70, Luciel, my Shaman, and McGregor, my Paladin. I went ahead and specced them completely different to be able to help out the guild and to be able to have either a healer or a tank when needed.

Last week, while training at work, I would go home and work on McGregor. My think was as follows: everyone is always looking for a tank. The important part of having a 5 man run is having a tank to distract the mobs while DPS just runs around and kills everything in sight. So I went out and plunked some serious gold into some nice gear, I went ahead and enchanted some other gear that I already had on and brought my defense up to about 426. Desired defense number to run Kara is 499 so I felt that I had a pretty decent defense up. I have a good mace and shield to smack and whack things with and I have the mechanics of being a Tankadin down.

Then there was Shadow Labs. My goal for the week had been to try and get my three key fragments. After that try to do Old Hills and be prepared for when BM would be run by some unfortunate fools with me. I figured a couple of things would happen. I would get some nice drops that would help me down the line to get up to 499. I would get to tank these instances and learn the things that I needed to be able to be useful to other guildies when the time came.

None of that happened.

Divine Forsaken is in a lull at this moment. Because people already know there is an expansion planned for this year (Honestly who DOESN’T know that there’s an expansion coming out?) so guess what just about everyone has done? Yup, re-rolls. I can’t say that I blame them. The ones that have been seventy for a while have accomplished the things that they set out to do already. They have their epic flying mounts. They have their Talbuk mounts, Kara keyed and have mostly purples. So they resort to other things namely Re-rolls or the ever painful PvP.

When saying some thing like, “Hey I need Slabs for Frag, any volunteers?” I feel like Elmer Fudd when he talks to Bugs Bunny, ain’t no one listening to a word I’m saying. O end up having to resort to pug groups. Do you know how many pugs I completed last week?

Twelve.

Out of those twelve do you know how many Kara Attunement Fragments I got out of those?

Zero.

You read that right, Z E R O. I got a whooping Bumpkiss for all my time in Slabs. Cause that’s all I could run you see. Shadow Labs has become the enemy in a way that I can’t even begin to describe to you. I tanked all twelve times. We got to the third boss 11 out of 12 times. Once we only got to Mister “Time for Fun!” and had to call it.

I spent 100g in just repairs.

By Saturday I had had it. I was done with 70s for a while and I still feel that way. I really just have stopped giving a shit about Kara and that whole mess. The more I talk about it with some of my running buddies the more we agree. Why bother breaking our heads open with purple pixels if by level 71 the greens that we get from Northrend is going to be much better than the end game stuff. So why break out heads open? Seriously.

So I’m taking a break from my 2 70 characters. I feel like I’ve hit a wall that I can’t climb and frankly I play the game for fun. We all should. I kept getting people asking me, “Is this for Heroic?” I would say no and they would pass. I can understand that because you want to get further into the content but seriously? You’re going to turn your nose up cause it’s not heroic? Oh Noes! Come on!

So instead I’m turning my attention to Bosque. He’s my low level druid and he’s now sitting comfortably at 41. He’s gone Boomkin and I’m enjoying the mechanics. Nothing much will change with the blog. I’m just frustrated with the elitist mentality that a lot of 70s have and it’s not about fun as much up there. If anything else it’s about heartache. And I HATE heartache.

Guess this means that Luciel and McGregor may never see the inside of Kara, or if they do it’ll be when Kara can be taken out by a five man time of 80s.

You guys ever hit your heads against the wall and just wanna say screw it and move on? Cause this week certainly did that to me.