Upcoming Releases

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I try to keep the stuff that I discuss with you guys fresh. I know there’s already a group of websites dedicated to ‘news’ from WoW and I KNOW there’s enough bloggers out there dissecting every single piece of WoW information under the sun. I try not to follow the trend because I want you guys to come here for something else. Be it looking at build trees, me rambling on about leveling or my guild or even the movie of the week.

I’m going to break this trend today because there are two things that have me really excited about the upcoming future of WoW.

The First: WoW Miniatures.

I came late into the WoW mania. I would say that Comics was my gateway drug. I’ve been collecting comics for close to sixteen years. In that time my collection has been destroyed twice and rebuilt twice. I don’t like to think about the amount of money that would be overall. I do enjoy reading the books that I collect though. A few years ago there was a small business owner that was opening a shop; the shop was going to be games and comics. During my time of hanging out, reading comics and talking shop I got into card games. I’ve never been one for Magic. I know that it’s a HUGE thing in some places but I didn’t like the mechanics of the game and just walked right on past it. When the Versus Game System came out, I got caught up. They were using Marvel and DC characters in the cards and the mechanics seemed simple enough. I even went to a few of those card game tournaments. It was fun. Unfortunately the VS gaming system didn’t really catch fire in the great Northwest like it did in the East coast, so I never was able to really get good games going.

Then came the miniatures. I didn’t get heavy into it. It’s been around for a while if you following gaming. There’s table top for just about anything you can think of. Warhammer is a table top that’s making the jump over to a MMO later this year. WoW is going to be invading tabletops by year’s end. While I’m not much into going out and finding a group of people to play against, I love collecting figures that I think have a cool look to them.

Blizzard is really snatching up two different type of players by putting out this little marvel. First, obviously, is the table top players. It’s a bit of a coup as they are trying to steal away some Warhammer veterans and add them to a new stable, it’s something that will more than likely happen considering the number of players that are currently paying a monthly fee to visit Azeroth whenever they feel like it. The second demographic is the collector. I know that Fingerprints or whatever is making a figure that is supposed to look like your in game character for 100 smackers, this is a luxury that many of us will not be able to pay for (Or will want to pay for) this is a nice way of getting something similar. I know that I may not buy the unopened packs but I’ll search through the singles for the ones that strike my fancy once they are available.

The Second: Patch 2.4

Bosque is sitting pretty at 67 and my hope is to get him to 70 before week’s end. This means a lot of questing and killing and hopefully, instance runs. I will be honest and tell you that the last instance I ran I believe I was level 64. It was Slave Pens and since then I haven’t had a nibble at the instance apple. Of course most of the reason for that isn’t because I’m not looking, it’s because you’re either a real lowbie or you’re a 70 on my server. While I have the other 70s at my disposal I’m tunnel visioned to get to 70 with Bosque, he’s pretty much become my main and besides, I want FLIGHT FORM damnit!

With 2.4 there are no changes to Moonkins at this time. That may change, you never know, what I am excited about is being able to hang out in BT or MH without having to do that insane amount of running around to get attuned. While I understand the reasoning for making someone become attuned, I have to say that it’s pretty ridiculous. I don’t want to have to do twenty five steps to be part of a twenty five man that isn’t always going to run and where I have as little as a 1:25 chance of receiving a drop that’s going to be worth wild for me. That’s just me!

The other thing that excites me is that with 2.4 we’re going to have a new region to work on for money, reputation and nice upgrades. I’m hoping that Moonkins aren’t forgotten too much in this situation.

Now while Gamgam and Luciel will ALWAYS have a spot in my heart, looking at some of the things that are changing for the class really don’t make me want to RUN onto them and get them geared. Likewise for McGregor, tanking is fun but expensive and get one bad run under your belt and suddenly you’re the WORST tank in the world to the rest of the server. That’s not something that I’m looking to doing. You think about it, healing and tanking are the two things that are either congratulated or blamed for the success of a run. DPS is always needed and honestly, to stress yourself over a game is not what I’m looking to do, hopefully neither are you.

So while both still exist, they will be seeing the light of day a little less as time goes on.

2.4 does promise to change some things but I’m looking forward to being able to run some new five mans and see some nice new upgrades. While PVP has been very good to Bosque, I’m not wanting to spend the rest of my months between now and WotLK in Battlegrounds grinding away honor.

What about you guys? What are you looking forward to in 2.4? Are you leveling alts or are you working on something more? Have you considered how many of your toons you’re going to level up to 80 when the expansion comes out? I wanna know!

MotW

"Get away from her you BITCH!"

Who doesn't know that line? If you don't then RUN, don't walk, RUN to the nearest store that will carry this, buy it and then play it over and over again until you have the lines of the movie burned into your brain for life!

A movie that has stood the test of time. It's got action, suspense and some AWESOME one liners. Recently they released a version that carries an additional 17 minutes of play time, including some scenes that flesh out what the people on the Alien planet were living like before the attack.

A great movie to have playing in the background while you're out killing stuff.

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.