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.

Tanking to 68

McGregor has made it to 68. If you look real close at my last post about him it said that I was just starting work on him in earnest, he was 65 at the time. Now about half a week later, he’s a level 68 and he’s tank several instances in the mean time. If you click on his name you’ll notice that his gear is….alright. He’s over 10k armor and about 9k HP, so he is built to last a long time with elites. He usually runs about three or four mobs at once in an instance and the same out soloing. It’s a BIG difference from watching everyone’s bars to just watching my own. So far I’ve been able to tank: Underbog, Mana Tombs and Crypts. I did Tombs a few times, in hopes of getting that shield to drop from the first boss but to no avail. Rather unfortunate but what are you going to do.

The other endeavor that I tried to take on last night was helping another paladin get their epic mount. Now let me just say that the invite was out of the blue by a player that I’d never met before. I tried to be polite enough to pitch in considering that they were at the end of the chain.

Once we got to Scholo, where they are supposed to summon the horse and we’re supposed to destroy five waves of mobs, then fight a death knight to gain the ability to free the warhorse, it was obvious that this crew had a bit of an issue.

Example: A common term like, “Wait for the pats.” Was completely disregarded and the group went for a standing mob that was then joined by a pat, that was then joined by ANOTHER standing mob. After the fight was over I read, “What do you mean ‘pat’?”

Now take into account that these are not low level characters. The lowest level that was with us was a level 63 Warlock. So we had, 65 and two 68 Paladins, a 66 Hunter and a 63 Warlock. This is a high 50s to level 60 instance. We should have been sweeping the floor with these mobs, I mean SERIOUSLY not having any type of issue at all with this area.

We had one wipe.

Once we reached the basement, which is where the event is supposed to take place, this group was lost on what to do next. They ran around for while, and then decided that they were going to go to a completely different area of Scholo. I was done.

I hate leaving a group; really I do, because I hate leaving people in a situation that they are going to have a hard time taking care of. Still, with this group there were a couple of things that didn’t sit well with me. First off, they knew I was a tank but didn’t want me to tank a tanking role. They wanted me to hang back and let the hunter take agro. Huh? Right. The second thing that didn’t sit right with me was communication, as in, there was none. So they would leave a room and you were just to follow but no explanation was given.

Those, to me, are two factors that must be done well for any instance. I spent an hour with them, they didn’t even know about the event, and once they left the basement and decided to do something else, I bolted.

I pray that won’t come back to bite me on the read but you know what, that’s life.

Today I will put up the Elemental Tree, or at least the first part. So you have that to look forward to.