simplegifts

My own healing output has improved drastically since I joined my guild last July when we were working on Ulduar.  I recently became an officer in my guild and succumbed to temptation, taking a peek at my own application thread from those days to which I now have access.  I found that the other Restoration Druids in the guild were scratching their heads over my performance when I joined the guild.  They knew that I knew my class, but were puzzled by my low healing output and my spell casting decisions.  It seems that I was focusing very narrowly on my healing assignments and relying on a wide variety of spells, rather than filling my rotation with the spells that had the highest throughput and efficacy, Wild Growth and Rejuvenation, and showering the raid with the HOTs.  I remember having a couple of conversations with them at the time and learning from them that what they wanted from me was to diversify my healing in terms of targets, while narrowing my healing in terms of spells used.  Eager to please, I learned this lesson well.

Last night, in a 3.5 hour run in which we cleared 10 bosses, 71% of my healing came from 2 spells, Rejuvenation and Wild Growth (76% if you count the Rejuvs that “jumped” to new targets from my t10 4pc set bonus).  75% of my heals were overhealing.  I don’t think I needed an innervate the entire night.  I have become an expert in the topping off of everything around me that moves.  My other spells have been relegated to “situational,” while these two spells are my bread and butter.  The results in terms of my performance on a numerical graph have been phenomenal.  The results in terms of the joy I take in healing have been pretty flat.

I remember raiding at the end of BC and the constant push to roll Lifeblooms on the tanks.  I remember the trepidation that I felt when I learned that in WOLK the developers were jacking up the mana cost of Lifebloom to the point where it was out of the question that this would be our role in raids going forward.  As the expansion opened, I embraced my full compliment of spells and truly enjoyed spinning out a web of spells to sustain my raid members.  When I learned that some of the strands of the web were much weaker than others, I jettisoned them one at a time.  Lifebloom became an afterthought as the expansion released.  Nourish was out when I left behind the 4 pc bonus from T7 gear.  Regrowth got dusty as my raid leaders stopped assigning me to anything but our strength, raid healing.  My wonderful toolbox got smaller and smaller.

Don’t get me wrong.  I still use all of my spells situationally, and I heal much differently depending on whether I’m in a heroic or a 10 man or a 25 man raid.  But my true passion in the game is healing raids, and it is there where I am the most limited in terms of spells to use to maximize efficacy and throughput.

Am I nervous about the upcoming changes in Cataclysm for Restoration Druids?  Sure.  There is not nearly enough information yet to have any solid idea of how strong or weak we will be as healers.  It is scary to come from a place of dominance and eagerly step into one of uncertainty.  But as a class that is both hugely powerful in some ways and hugely limited in others, I think our class is broken in its own way.  A tree that is too top heavy cannot bend in the wind, lest it become overbalanced and crash down. It is true that the goal of  making all healing specs at least viable in all situations and widening us out of niches will inevitably work better for some classes than for others.  We might end up with the short end of the stick for a while.   But if the developers are, in fact, successful in their bid to make our full toolkit of spells viable, it will be, in my opinion, liberating and exciting.   I don’t want to be a one-trick pony.  I want the fun of thinking on my feet, making quick decisions, having an array of choices for an array of situations.  I want to learn from mistakes how to approach things in a different way.    Of course I hope that the changes don’t weaken me to the point that I’m not a viable choice to bring on a raid.  But I trust that there will be enough testing and observation that if I’m unbalanced, the developers will do their damndest to set me back on my feet.   I believe that is just what they are trying to do now.

Arthas shows his feminine side. (Image by ValsWife at DeviantArt.com)

Last night as we were kicking Sindragosa’s ass, the 88% of my raid that is male started discussing in vent why it was obvious Sindragosa is “a woman.”  Ahem.  Reasons that they gave amidst their guffawing and chortling were along the lines of her emo outbursts, her Frost Breath ability (they also made up names for her abilities like “Bone Freeze.”   /snort), the fact that she sucks you in and spits you out… I’m sure you get the idea.  Their glee was beyond their power to contain, bless their little, pointed, Y-Chromosome sporting heads.  I suppose they may have had a point or two in there.  However, turnabout is fair play, little men. 

I now present the 25 10 sure signs that Arthas is a man…

10) Super cool Skullz fashion accessories.

9) Whenever he tries to fix something, it ends up inestimably worse.

8 ) Although Sindragosa is ready to sucker punch you the second she shows up on the scene (Hell hath no fury and all that), Arthas has to have a little cock fight with Fordring first. I’m shocked he doesn’t ask if anyone brought a ruler.

7) If NPCs could install an EPEEN meter, Arthas would be first in line.

6) Whereas the furies that hang out with Arthas are efficient and precise, simply picking you up and dropping you off a cliff, Arthas has to play with every toy he has to try and kill you.

5) He has a consuming obsession with being served.

4) His room in the castle is overrun with plague, vermin, and infestation.

3) He spends the entire expansion telling you he’s going to kick your ass and enslave you, while sending every possible minion and employing every possible stalling  tactic he can before getting off his lazy ass and actually fighting you.  (Odds are 1,038,909,831,043:1 that this is exactly how he handles Jaina telling him to take out the trash).

2) Daddy issues.  Big ones.

1) His power is all focused on Frostmourne, his big, shiny, magnificently erect…er… sword.  Frow WOWWiki: 
“Its hilt is never far from his hands; its ghostly whispers constantly ring in his ears.”
Uh huh.

And there you have it.  Don’t let the long, flowing locks of hair fool you.  Arthas is 100% man.  More’s the pity.  =P

My new friend Foreluney wants me to write about him.  This is sort of challenging since I’ve known him for all of 3 days.  But I like the guy, and I like challenges, so… what to say about Foreluney?   There’s something about the way that we met that seems important to me, so let’s talk about that.

I knew OF Foreluney for a month or two before I knew Foreluney.  I think the first time I became aware of him was when I was helping out with guild recruitment for my guild and ran across this post on the Khadgar forum, which asked people to list who they thought was the best alliance player on the realm for each class.  More than one person tossed out Foreluney’s name as the best alliance resto druid on Khadgar, a topic which piqued my interest.  Apparently, I filed his name away in my head, because a week or so later I took a look at WOW-heroes and ran across this:

I immediately remembered having seen Foreluney mentioned as “da best” on the Khadgar forum thread, and registered in my head that he was certainly the best geared of us.  /nod nod.

And so, as will happen with me from time to time, I began to develop a touch of reverence for Foreluney, whoever he may be.  Mind you, I had no idea what kind of person he was, had never seen him play, did not remember ever seeing him chatting in trade, etc.  The only things I knew about him were that he was very geared, was in the most progressed alliance guild on my server, and that many people agreed that he was a very good restoration druid.  But still… these things are enough to impress me on some level, although I’m squirming a bit when it comes down to admitting it.

See… I’ve never been much good at video games.  That makes me laugh to write it, but it’s true.  I’ve always been interested in them to some degree, and I’ve always liked to play them, but I’m not the type who picks up the controller and instinctually maneuvers through games like they are an extension of myself.  Most games I’ve played, unless they were pretty basic, I’ve either not been able to finish, or have remained a pretty average player despite hours of practice.  I’m ok with this, generally speaking.  I leave the XBox to the good players in my house, like my husband and my 4 year old daughter.  Never touch the thing.  But I’ve always had this sort of envious awe of the people who can just step into games and master them.

Now, I would argue, albeit humbly, that for the most part I have risen above my innate luddite tendencies when it comes to World of Warcraft.  I may not set the world on fire, but I can hold my own as a raid healer.  I’ve helped my guild to defeat a lot of content, including some hard modes (although we’re not at ICC hard modes yet), and I do a pretty good job most of the time.  But I’m much stronger after I’m comfortable in an encounter, and will never be a cutting edge raider in progressive content.  I do ok, but I’m usually flustered to some extent and not at the top of my healing game until I’ve worked through the encounter several times.   And so for those players who excel at progression, who are at the top of the raiding game, I still feel that twinge of impressed respect.  And that feeling pretty much sums up how I felt about Foreluney when we met. (Why do I get the feeling he’s going to tease me about this mercilessly?)

I also should add here that I’ve only been on my server for nine months, so I’m still learning about the communities there.  And Foreluney’s guild has something of a harsh reputation from what I’ve picked up.  What I’ve heard about them is that they are “hard core” raiders with a punishing raid schedule and rather large egos.  This image of them, which may or may not be true, has been reinforced for me on a couple of occassions when I have pugged with members of the guild who have been merciless in vent to people who made mistakes or were not the strongest of players.  Now, I get as frustrated as the next person by outright stupidity, but I tend to be pretty forgiving of ignorance and never like to hear people being called out in a cruel or callous manner, which is one of the many reasons I truly love my current guild.  We will do everything we can to help people raise up their raiding game, and we will try to handle it behind the scenes without embarrassing anyone.  Does our tolerance hold us back from server first epic awesomeness?  Of course it does.  But we are sympatico, we are peaceful, we are family.  So, in addition to having this touch of awe in regard to all things Foretluney, I also had an idea that he might, in fact, be a total dick.  lol…

Anyway!  I finally got my hunter, Harmonie, geared enough that she wouldn’t be insta-kicked from an ICC pug, and joined one this week to get her a bit more geared up and experienced.  We had 9 people and were short a healer, when someone said that they knew a resto shammy who had healed up through hard modes on his druid and could come.  The shaman’s name was Forey.  “Hmm…” says I, “Forey… Foreluney?  Could it be the same person?”  So I asked in raid chat if this was, indeed, Foreluney, and my guess was confirmed.  Forey/Foreluney joined the raid.

And I had a conundrum.  Did I want to out myself as a semi- fan girl and meet this person, or did I want to melt from their memory as soon as the raid ended (if, indeed, I ever registered on his consciousness as more than a health bar?  I think the fact that I have actually made a couple acquaintances in his guild that were actually fun to talk to tipped the scales.  Don’t get me wrong here… I didn’t agonize over whether to introduce myself or consciously weigh out any of what I’ve written here.  But the idea of whispering came to me, and in a second or two I decided that of course I wanted to say hello.  I adore making Resto Druid friends to chat with, and this was a person that, should he respond positively to my whisper, might be able to teach me more about the game and the class that I love. 

So, I whispered to him that my main was a resto druid and that I had heard of his druid on the forums.  He responded very warmly to me and we chatted back and forth all the way through the raid.  I put him on my friends list, he put me on his, and we’ve chatted a couple of times since.  I find him to be warm, friendly, charming, and very funny.  And so there it is.  I have a new friend. 

Is he the best resto druid on the server?  I don’t know.  I suppose that the answer to that question depends very much on how you, personally, define “the best.”  But he strikes me as being very down to earth, which I did not expect.  I like him.  I’m convinced he must put his pants on one leg at a time.  We have chatted a bit about our class, and I look forward to many more discussions on the topic. And any friend who makes me laugh as much as he has in 3 days is a good friend to have, no doubt about it.  It has been a good lesson for me about making assumptions, and a good reward to me for reaching out and hoping for the best.  Not the best player, the best possible result for taking a chance on someone as a person and being rewarded with something worthwhile and good.

I watched the Blizzard Developer chat unfold on Twitter last night and thought there was some pretty good news for us trees coming up in Cataclysm.  Tranquility, for example, will be raid wide, last as long, but gain additional tics from haste.  Hoorah!  The New and Improved Tree of Life On a Cooldown TM (Batteries not included.) will “morph” existing spells making them behave differently, with some possible examples given such as Regrowth being instant cast and Lifebloom applying a 2 stack upon cast.  All of our spells are getting the once over to make sure they have defined niches.  But the one thing that really caught my attention and imagination was this: 

 Tree of Life is getting a whole new model (think Ancients of War)

Now, I’m sure it won’t go down this way, but the first thing I thought of was how HUGE those Ancients are out in Zangarmarsh, and how FUNNY it would be if we got not only something like that shape, but something like that SIZE for shifting into TOL.  Think of the advantages… we wouldn’t have to take any crap for standing in fire because we wouldn’t be able to help it.  We’d get all the best loot because we could threaten to shift into TOL and squash the entire raid if we didn’t get our way.  We’d do MASSIVE boss damage when we shifted and our butt pinned the boss to the far wall like a bug.  Awesome.  Awesome sauce.

Although I love Sylly dearly and raid healing on her is easily my favorite thing to do in WOW, I absolutely have my limits with her.  She’s a skinner and leatherworker, so she’s generally no good for farming gold (the endless slaughter of animals for profit doesn’t much appeal to me).  She’s so crazily over geared for heroic instances that they aren’t much fun at all to run on her.  She’s Resto/Boomkin, so she’s capable of a degree of DPS, but DPSing as Boomkin is not my favorite way to pass the time (wrath wrath ECLIPSE cast starfi… DAMMIT!  had to move!  etc.).  So I’ve been playing some alts for the last few months to keep things lively.  I still have Frivolous, the mage who was 70 when WOLK came out and who I actually leveled to 72 before I started bringing up Sylly to the new level cap.  However, poor Friv is still just level 75 and may rot and die at that level for lack of love, although I depend on her to remain my mining and jewelcrafting slave.  I feel bad for her that I despise playing her so much, and I’m not completely clear on where this distaste came from, but it is what it is.  I got to the point, though, that Ivery much wanted to understand fights from a DPS perspective, but would rather have not played at all than play my mage. To that end I leveled Harmonie, a hunter who I very much enjoy playing, and who is starting to have an ICC gear set of her own at this point.  She’s my flask maker and herbalist, so between these 3 toons I’m quite the industry unto myself.  The gold is piling up, too, because I have far fewer things now I actually need to buy.  So this unit of 3… druid, mage, hunter… along with Mr. Moneybaggins, bank alt extraordinaire, had me quite satisfied for a while.  The mage does nothing but the JC daily, gem cutting, and mining, but I was raiding on both the druid and the hunter when time and opportunity presented itself, and enjoying the more rounded understanding of the game I was beginning to have.

Then I got the idea to roll a tank. 

 If this rounded understanding of game mechanics reallly was the goal, shouldn’t I have a toon for each of the 3 major roles?  I thought so.  Thus, Whimsy the Warrior was born. Whimsy does not have the utility of needed professions that the other toons do.  I decided to make her an engineer because it looked fun, and a miner because she was an engineer.  And I made the decision to level her as prot and really REALLY try to learn to be a good tank with her.  So it has come to pass that, at level 50, Whimsy has done a mere 102 quests, and virtually all of the experience she has gained since level 15 has been from chain tanking random dungeons.  I fully intend to tank her right through to level 80, but I don’t know if it will be in an uninterrupted stretch.  Tanking nonstop randoms is both an incredibly fun thing to do and an unbelievably frustrating thing to do.  I recognize that I have not level capped, nor even begun to think about tanking a raid boss.  Even so, in 35 straight levels of tanking, I certainly have learned a great deal about tanking about which I had heretofore been utterly clueless, or had only vague notions.  I am certain that this knowledge will improve my overall gameplay, regardless of which role I am filling.  Here are some of the things I have learned:

1)  I can actually do this.  I really never suspected that I could tank.  The whole idea seemed bewildering to me, and I sort of expected Whimsy to languish at level 18 or so forever after having tried tanking on her.  Not only have I in the past chosen toons that were not tanks, they were all casters.  My comfort zone has definitely been standing at the back (often in a sissy robe.  <3 Tam!),  casting heals or nukes, or sending in a pet to do the dirty work while I flung deadly missiles from a safe and sterile distance.  To be right up there in the middle of the gnashing and clawing and stabbing was not anything that ever appealed to me in any way, and I was fairly certain I’d be a miserable failure at it if I had the temerity to try.  Happily, I have learned that not only can I do this, I can do it reasonably well.  I remember very few corpse runs since I started tanking, definitely less than five.  A healer has never died on my watch unless I, myself, died first.  And from time to time a DPS or a healer will casually drop the words that make me smile from ear to ear, “nice tanking.”   I understand what I need to do and how to get it done.  I try to minimize headless chicken tanking and maximize purposeful, well positioned tanking.  My rotation is clear to me.  I know what resources I need to be successful.  Overall, I am pleasantly surprised that I can get this job done, and get it done well.

2)  Being a tank can be punishing.  There are very often mouth breathing ohmadauns wandering about the WOW universe.  They do not discriminate as to class or role.  As a healer, it is most stressful when the fools are tanks.  As a tank, it is most stressful when they are DPS (admittedly, it may be only my BOA heirloom gear and the great advantages it provides me in terms of my own stats that is keeping idiot healers from becoming more stressful than idiot DPS.  Pally healers who consecrate before the tank can do damage will be summarily lumped in with idiot DPS.).  But DPS are just so often horrific players that they top my personal list of irritant extraordinaire.  An idiot DPS can be spotted  easily.  They will pull, either with their slackjawed face or their giddily preemptive spells, often while the healer is drinking to restore mana.  They will exhibit complete ignorance of, or ignore completely, their own threat on any given mob.  They will blame the tank, who is working with a handful of abilities on cooldowns for threat generation, when they have pulled threat away and subsequently have begun to be pounded into the ground like a ha’penny nail.  They are fond of exclaiming, usually in capital letters, such witty repartee as :  GO GO GO GO GO!  and ZOMG AOE RAWKS!  and WTF TANK!?!!!1! (this last is usually mumbled as they are lying face down and dead on the floor for having pulled a berzerking big bad ugly whatever down on them like the wrath of doom).  They will gleefully launch an AOE on 15 mobs roughly .032 seconds after the tank has pulled by tauntinig just one of those mobs.  Like a river through a canyon, they wear tanks down.

3) Tanks are moody and crabby for good reason.  See #2.

4)Although healers may get irritated at tanks for chain pulling, there is often good reason they are doing so.  This one does not apply to Paladins or DKs, but it does apply to Bears and Warriors.  When combat has ended, two things happen which, in some ways, are almost in opposition to one another.  Mana classes start to regenerate the resource that thay need to continue on.  Warriors and Bears (and rogues and Cats) begin to LOSE the resource that they need in order to continue.  Rage falls off over time.  So there is this tension I feel when waiting for caster mana to regenerate.  I know that they need it, but it is at the cost of me having what I need.  I do have a cooldown that will allow me to generate rage out of the sky before a pull, but the mechanic is not always available to me.

5)  I now know the geography of the places I’ve been. I don’t know about you, but as a healer when moving through an instance between pulls, I am generally completely oblivious to just where it is I’m going.  I’m sort of like the horse at the end of the line on a trail ride.  I follow the butt in front of me and might try to sneak a bite to eat when no one is looking.  As a tank, I’ve actually had to learn my way around.  This part probably doesn’t seem relevant at all if you are thinking about WOLK instances that, for the most part, are like being on a track in an amusement park ride.  The fun is up ahead and there ain’t nowhere else to go.  But in the Vanilla instances?  Very, very different.  So, although I’ve played through these dungeons before on 4 toons, it is only now that I have a pretty clear idea of the layout of places like Mauradon and Sunken Temple (I’m learning BRD now, God help me!).  Sure… I don’t HAVE to figure out where I’m going and remember it for the next time.  But I find that group confidence in me drops immediately if I admit that I don’t know my way through the dungeon I’ve found myself in.  Taking on the role of tank is, by its nature, taking on the role of leader.  Hi Ho Hi Ho it’s dragonslaying we go!

6) Tanks help healers.  Although I’ve been aware of tank cooldowns and their functions in a vague sort of way in the past, I think that much of what my tanks have done along the way to take care of themselves has escaped my attention.  As a tank, I pay as much attention to my own health as I pay to the tank’s health when I’m healing.  When things get hairy, I do what I can to ease the burden on my healer.  I’m sure that tanks have done this for me endlessly over time and I was almost completely unaware how often they do so.

7)  Tanking is FUN! I’ve spent 2 and a half years playing WOW now, and always, always, ALWAYS it has been alarming in a high degree if I do anything that might come close to aggroing anything at all.  Healing, and DPS to a degree, is a reactive endeavor.  It is just a blast to run headlong into a huge group of slavering beasties like Captain America and spend the next five minutes continually pissing them off so much that they are actually killed off without even noticing.  There’s this feeling that I have never had in another role that the show unfolding is all around me.  I charge in, flex my muscles, make jokes about mob’s mothers, and they eventually fall dead at my feet.  There is a sense of power that goes along with playing a DPS class, where nothing can stop you from ripping through it like butter.  But it’s a different feeling, because in this case, not only am I the hero standing literally toe to toe with the dragon, I am also protecting all of those around me from its ferocity.  It is… so… damn… fun!

Tanking makes me a better DPS, and a better healer.  I know a great deal more about boss mechanics and the tools in their toolboxes than I ever knew before, so I am getting better at thinking like a tank when I’m healing and thinking like a healer when I’m tanking.  And I sure as hell wait longer to launch nukes when I’m on my hunter, use misdirect more often, keep feign death handy, and generally try to be as polite a team mate as I can to help my tank out.

Tanking is a whole new way to play and to see the game.  I am confident that I will get Whimsy to 80 and, later, to 85, and that she will become a well worn old soldier full of tales of gore and glory that would leave Sylly scratching her head.  I’m certainly glad that I had the chutzpah to start this experiment in the first place. I am hoping that my embrace of my inner meat shield won’t leave me an illiterate knuckle dragger, but I suspect that even it it does, it will also leave me happy.

Did anyone else see this post from Ghostcrawler in response to a post saying that, now that Heroism/Bloodlust was going to be given to more than one class, Blizzard should now remove the remaining buffs exclusive to one class?  Hold tight, this is a little painful…

Obviously things like Rebirth can’t just be handed to out to more classes unless we did something like a second exhaustion mechanic for battle rez or whatever. For now we’re going to try the cooldown at 30 min again. In Icecrown’s world of limited attempts, a 30 min cooldown likely meant you just cooled your heels until the cooldown was available again. In Cataclysm the hope is sometimes you’ll have the benefit available but not every time, which scales back on how much of a game-changer it is.

So… it looks to me like they are considering not only keeping battle rez exclusive to Druids in order to limit its use, they are also planning to extend the cooldown not by doubling it, but by tripling it.  This makes me so sad.  I understand why they may not want it to be ubiquitous, but it has been SO nice when learning new boss fights that our druids have had their battle rezzes available for virtually every attempt.  This 30 minute thing?  Well that just sucks. 

Edit:  GC has been posting on the thread more today, adding this:

Also keep in mind that Rebirth is much more useful in today’s game where people tend to die from massive damage. In a world where people sometimes die because the healers have run out of mana, then Rebirth doesn’t buy you quite as much.

In a 25 player raid, you’re most likely going to have a druid of some kind. The challenge is the 10 player raid. We don’t want a druid to be required (just like we don’t want a shaman to be required). You can argue that using Rebirth to recover from a death is just inherently harder in 10s since the opportunity cost is larger when 10% of your group is down, and yet another player is going to have to donate some time to bring that person back up. Beneficial, definitely. Mandatory? Maybe not.

Sylly prepares to play a tree at the masquerade ball

 Hey, hey, everyone!  It’s been ages and ages since I’ve posted here.  I enjoyed the break for the most part, and was considering letting my account with the hosting company lapse and letting Rolling Hots roll right off into the sunset.  But there were many, many topics over these months that I considered posting about while I was away, and several that I sort of framed out in my head, as in, “this is how I *would* post about this if… you know… I were blogging.”  Then I got an email that told me my bank account was charged via the convenience of automatic renewal with the web hosting service I use and, without necessarily meaning or deciding to, I had purchased my blog for another year.  So I’ve had that rolling around in my head for a couple weeks.  And then the Cataclysm class previews started rolling out and I, like so many others, sat on the edge of my seat waiting for the druid preview to come out.  I was also asking myself in the back of my mind if I would be motivated to write about the changes.

I read all of the unfolding class previews with a great deal of interest and enjoyment.  Not only are some of the new abilities for other classes going to be fun for them, they are going to make playing alongside of them more fun and interesting.  Healing rain?  Camouflage?  Dark Intent?  Bring it, Baby, bring it!  So when the time came around for the druid preview, I was practically salivating with excitement.   Our preview was finally posted, I tore through the content of it, and, admittedly, my first reaction was a sinking heart.  No new toys to play with, a new talent that wasn’t explicated enough for us to do anything but guess how it worked, a mastery bonus that seemed questionable, and no healing in tree form.  I felt like someone stole my Easter Basket. 

As I am wont to do, I started reading voraciously around the internet on the topic.  I read expansively on the official forums, looking at the reactions of other players.  I read each of Ghostcrawlers responses on the topic.  I read all the Resto druid blogs I could get my hands on to see what bloggers were saying.  Although much of what I read out there completely backed up my own initial response, I have to admit, timidly, that my opinion began to change.  And while I saw some posters on forums feeling the way that I was starting to feel, I do not believe that I ran across a single blog post from a Resto Druid who wasn’t either lamenting or lambasting the decision to move tree form to a cooldown. 

 It was this silence in the blogosphere that finally led me back here to my own blog, which, by the way, was a mess.  I had dozens of comments that had never been approved, tons of spam comments that needed deleting.  My Word Press had not been updated to the newest version, nor had 14 of my plugins.  I had to reset passwords and update my Hostmonster account.  I then had to download and install WOW Model Viewer in order to monkey around in photoshop and create an image for the post.  In short, I decided to write a post and it took me just under 24 hours of work before I could write the first word.  Please remind me not to stay away so long. 

Want to know how I feel about the changes?  Pretty good, overall. 

Now wait.  Before you start lobbing rotten tomatoes at me, hear me out.  Am I bummed that I won’t get to heal in tree form all the time?  Well, sure I am.  I love being a tree.  I identify with being a tree.  I love that “mmmBLUARF! sound I make when I shapeshift into tree form, dancing as a tree, running as a tree, the casting animations of tree… all of it.  I like that being a tree makes me a special and unique snowflake in the world of WOW healers.  But, here’s the thing.  More than I like that, I like playing a healing class that has a very well defined role and the tools that it needs to do it well.  If tree form were essential to that, I’d jump on my sword for it.  But, as Ghostcrawler has pointed out, it is not. 

Although I started playing Warcraft during the Burning Crusade expansion and distinctly remember dinging 50 and dancing around happily in my newly acquired tree form on the floor where all the Dragonkin pulls are in Sunken Temple, I know now that tree form was not original to the game, but was  added in BC.  So there is that. 

But I also remember that tree form in BC was pretty damn gimped.  It had a snare effect that slowed down your movement speed, and, although it was a healing form that buffed some healing spells, it completely prohibited you from casting others.  In fact, you couldn’t automatically shift out of tree form to cast, say, Moonfire, or even Healing Touch!  You had to click on caster form, then cast, then click back on tree form.  There was a tradeoff for tree form.  There were compromises.  And Resto druids did not always use it.  It was a choice.

When WOLK came out, many of these restrictions were lifted.  We were able to cast our full healing arsenal in this form, making all of our spells benefit from the buff.  The snare was removed.  Somewhere along the line we also got the ability to autoshift out just to cast a damage spell.  And, because we could fully heal in this form, our healing and boss encounters were balanced around the assumption that we were in this form always.  The Tree of Life buff stopped functioning as a buff and started functioning as part of our healing composition.  It became a given.

Now, I don’t really agree too strongly with Blizzard’s rationale for moving Tree of Life to a cooldown from its current iteration.  They want to have one spec showing off the armor they design?  Ok, fine… pick one of four.   Or… wait… who cares?  Do YOU look at your own or your raidmates’ armor while healing?  I sure as hell don’t.  The argument that each of the druid forms unlocks some unique resource ability (i.e. rage for bears, energy for cats) but Tree Form doesn’t?  Bullshit.  Neither does Moonkin. 

 The argument that we have to give up too much to have access to damage dealing abilities, while other healing classes do not… well… that is true to an extent.  A Holy Priest doesn’t have to rotate between gimped damage spells and gimped healing spells if they feel like DPSing a mob at some point.  If they are bored and DPSing and someone takes a collosal hit, they can pop off a full strength heal without having to use an extra click to get into their healing form.  But that doesn’t hold as much water for me as the fact that our Crowd Control requires a shift out then back into tree form, because Crowd Control is something I actually use, believe it or not, and not just because I’m bored.  I Cyclone mind controlled raid mates on Deathwhisper; I occassionally root a blood beast on Saurfang.  And I don’t PVP.  I am certain that I would use this sort of ability, and damage spells, far more often if I did.  Although I’m usually up at the front of the line grumbling when some PVP issue accounts for changes in my own abilities, I do recognize that the game and specs have to function for both PVP and PVE players.  It’s not my favorite part of the game that this is so, but it is what it is.  So, in the end, this argument from Blizzard is, for me, stronger than the others.

But that argument is not compelling enough for me to feel good about the preview.  Certainly not.  So… what has changed my feeling?  These five six things:

1)  Because our healing is now balanced around us being in tree form, and all of our spells are also balanced around us being in tree form, but in Cataclysm they will not be and tree form will be moved to a cooldown ability, we ARE getting a new toy.  We’re getting a new cooldown.  As I have said, I love being a tree, but when it comes down to it, what I really love is healing a raid and doing it well.  If I have to give up some pixels for part of the time I’m healing in order to get a new mechanic that has the potential for awesomeness?  I’m sorry to say it, but /target pixels, /wave.  Of course, I’m very eager to see where they go with this change and what the cooldown looks like.  If it’s lackluster and not a good trade, I’ll be pissed.  But what if… just what if… it’s something really cool?  really fun?  really engaging?  really interesting in terms of theory crafting and game play?  If that’s the case, then it might just liven up our healing experience in unexpected and energizing ways.

2) GC did say that they would consider a minor glyph allowing people to keep in tree form for those who really just want the damn art, dammit!

3) HOTs benefiting from Crit and Haste? OMG yes PLEASE!  That change is just awesome!  I don’t know about you all but I tried Glyph of Rapid Rejuv and dropped it like a hot potato.  The shortened time between Rejuv ticks was not nearly enough of a benefit  for me when the Rejuvs fell off so fast that I was jumping around like an idiot to reapply them constantly.  But if those Rejuvs had ticked more often for the same duration of time?  Pure… freakin… win.  And Crit benefitting HOTs is just as tasty.  No longer will I feel like Crit is a waste if I’m not using a very specific sub set of my spells.  It will always be good.  Oh, so good.  Om nom nom.

4)  The Mastery Bonus, when I first read it, left me depressed.  Who cares if HOTs increase in effectiveness on low level targets?  Isn’t the point of HOTs to keep people topped off?  But then I remembered that I had read that one of the changes that they are moving toward in Cataclysm is larger health pools and that healers would no longer need to keep people topped off just to keep them alive.  I have a feeling that we are going to have to get used to seeing health meters somewhere between the two extremes of topped off and Holy Shit! that we are now accustomed to.  I believe that HOTs will function less as a means to keep people topped off, and more of a means of keeping incoming damage mitigated.  Now… I am almost exclusively assigned to raid healing in my guild’s 25 mans.  And I do a very good job of it.  All the druid healers in my guild do.  We’re insanely good as raid healers.  But… it makes me a little giddy to imagine how much of a benefit we would be with these larger health pools and more steady damage.  I don’t know about you, but a ridiculously large amount of my healing is wasted, either in overheals, or when other healers stomp my HOTs.  I think we may just have a very solid, and very fun healing niche in Cataclysm to look forward to, and the Mastery Bonus will help us to be strong not just as topper offers, but in a real healing crisis.

5) This may be too optimistic, as they have had trouble balancing our full arsenal of spells in the past, but it is exciting to think that, because it seems to be a goal not just for us but for all healing classes to make healing about interesting, engaging choices, they might actually fix our toolbox of spells to the point that they are all fun and interesting to use.  Ghostcrawler talked about using Lifebloom as a tank healing spell again, possibly allowing Healing Touch to renew a Lifebloom stack (!), and changing Tranquility to act more like Divine Hymn instead of just pouring healing only on the druid’s own group.  Those are interesting and exciting changes and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they play out in the Cataclysm world.

6) Because of the current balance around us always being in tree form, Tree of Life is currently wasted space in our talent tree.  My hope is that it will be removed, freeing up space for options that add utility and help us to improve our game.

If these things don’t motivate you past your sadness of losing tree form, I am sorry.  I am Sylly Sad Tree for you.  Even for myself I am sad about this change.  But I guess for me, while I love being a tree and being in tree form itself, the majority of the fun I find in the game is not in the art of my toon.  Don’t get me wrong, I do find tons of fun there.  But most of my fun comes from raiding, from pulling together with a group of friends and solving the steps of the puzzle and executing them perfectly in order to beat a boss, bring him down.  I LOVE the mechanics of healing on my druid.  The way our class meets the challenges of the game are nothing short of elegant.  It is a joy.  That is why, although I wouldn’t be happy about it, if I had to assume the guise of a naked male leper gnome in order to heal raids as a Restoraion Druid, I would.  And, though it makes me shudder now, I strongly suspect that, given time, I’d develop some affection for my pathetically ugly avatar.   So, in the end, I am sadly willing to trade out my constant tree form for flashes of tree laced with super awesome.

/ducks from incoming rotten tomatoes

Mr. Moneybaggins. Ironforge, 09.

Forward:

In the last 24 hours I have emptied completely the personal bank, guild bank tab, knapsacks, duffels, backpack and wallet of one Mr. Moneybaggins, Gnome Banker, Khadgar-Alliance.  I  depleted in one moton his carefully laid aside stores, built up since just about 10 days before Hallow’s End. 

There’s some irony in the fact that he is, by way of class, a rogue.  The fingers plundering his bank vault were mine alone.  My Great Grandpa stood on the street in Coffeyville, Kansas while Jesse and Frank James rolled into town on their way to lighten the coffers at the Coffeyville bank.  This isn’t quite that kind of story, though.  We’re in cahoots, Moneybaggins and I, having conspired together for months in regard to our own bank caper. 

Indulge me here by defining “caper” as a light-hearted frolic which, in the instance at hand, was motivated exclusively by good will and overflowing holiday spirit.

In truth, he’s probably relieved to see nothing but packing peanuts and scraps of ribbon on the floor of the  banking organization he maintains.  I’m sure after his morning coffee and a look through the financial section, he’ll start to tidy the place up a bit.  Dust.  Lots of dust.  For months the little banker toon has been stacking, storing, and categorizing whimsicalities and wonders from the far ends of the globe (and others, besides!).  He has been most busy in his capacity as  my Winter’s Veil warehouse manager while preparations for holiday gift giving in Azeroth have gone forward.  Moneybaggins, you should know, is an affable sort of fellow who, in faith, has been tickled from his cufflinks to his toes to be minding the store.

While I’ve sent him large quantities of items I have gathered on my own, he has proven to be a great help in keeping a lensed and astute eye on the daily offerings in The Auction House.   Further, I have been blessed tremendously to have the help of guildmates who have engineered and farmed many of the wonders I have gathered.  Faelwen made Steam Tonk Controllers until they spilled out of her bags.  Composite took my mats for 18 fireworks and sent back to me about 80 fireworks, all told.  Yamie tried valiantly with me to farm Voodoo Heads and, when none dropped for Project Winter Veil, donated her own Voodoo Head toy to the cause.  Good friends are good.  I am thankful for mine.

Now at last the holiday has arrived!  Gifts have been wrapped (wrapping paper, for use on non-stackable inventory items, is available daily from many general goods vendors, and comes in different varieties from Greatfather Winter’s attendant buskers).  Countless parcels and packages filled with holiday gifts have been posted from us with love and affection to some of the finest players and people in the World of Warcraft.  The bulk of our work is done, the joy of the holiday is here. 

For me, the moment when Winter Veil truly began came last night while Apatheia discussed the strategy that led to our one shot of Deathbringer Saurfang.  Gathered together, riding a wave of tremendous progression (3 TOGC hard modes and 4 ICC bosses have fallen to us in the past 14 days), listening to our captains lay out the battle plan, my guildies and friends filled my screen with eruptions of celebretory silliness as they played with the toys and gadgets I had sent them for the holiday.  I laid out casks of wine, pastries, and fruit, while spontaneous firework displays erupted, remote control vehicles whizzed and popped along the floor, paper zeppelins and happy fun rocks tossed up among us all across the platform where we would soon bring this minion of Arthas to his knees.  It was a wonderful, soul brightening thing to behold.

 It occurs to me that, just as in the real world, there must be some denizens of Azeroth who adore gift giving as I do.  Certainly there must be others who have not yet completed their own holiday shopping and are looking for bargains, suggestions, or ideas for holiday gifts in Azeroth.  Moneybaggins and I have put our heads together and decided that our gift this season for the blogosphere and Warcraft community generally is  our own holiday shopping list of the toys, gadgets, whizzbangs and so forth we distributed as holiday gifts to our Khadgar kith and kin*.  I extend to you now, reader, this guide to the goodies which spread some joy around my little corner of the world, along with my best wishes for happiness to you and yours this Winter’s Veil, and in the new year to come. 

Sylly and Moneybaggins.  15 December, 2009

 * We have striven to ensure that items presented here will be Bind on Equip and purchasable from either the auction house (when available) or from a vendor in game.  Categorization of items at discretion of Sylly and Moneybaggins, L.L.C.

MoneyBaggins and Sylly’s Holiday Gift List 2009

Fireworks, Crackers, and other Explosive Devices

We gathered fireworks by the hundreds for gifting this season, and found them to come from three major sources:

1) Fireworks made by Engineers

These fireworks are easy to get in large quantities if you hunt down the mats and bring them to your favorite engineer to transform into magical, mustache crisping explosive good fun!  There are a number of fireworks that engineers can make for you this season, so throw them some cash (when else is their profession profitable, amirite?) and have some custom made for you.  From this category of fireworks, this year I sent out dozens of Snake Burst Fireworks that were hand made by a friend.

 2)  Fireworks sold by Vendors

There are some fireworks which are always available from vendors in capitol cities .  Others are available from holiday fireworks vendors at the end of midsummer festival.  I found the Yellow Rose Fireworks that I gave out this year on Khadgar’s Auction House, along with some Red, White, and Blue Fireworks.

3) Fireworks for Auction

On the auction house.  Mhmm.  Seek ‘em out.

One last word on Fireworks of all description and degree of wonder.  Think twice when gifting them to dwarves along with huge steins of ale and such.  Think the consequences through, mate.  Caution is yer man.  Or perhaps your only man is the pint of Plain.  Perhaps that is the way of it, after all.

Toys, Whizzbangs, Zippity Goodnesses of Various Description

Again, some organization into sub categories seems warranted, as Azeroth offers an amazing array of fantabulous contraptions to the holiday shopper this season. 

Mechanical Mayhem:

 Jepetto Joybuzz in Dalaran provides an abundance of light hearted fun and provides easy access to lots of inexpensive, silly, endearing gifts.  At his shop I purchased stacks of  Heavy Copper Racers, Trusty Copper Racers, Zippy Copper Racers,  Grindgear Toy Gorillas, and Paper Zeppelin Kits at the toy store.

I asked a friend to help me make dozens of Steam Tonk Controllers, which have many more uses and the added fun of being remote controled by their operator for small level combat operations unfolding across the toes of bear tanks everywhere.

Charms

I was tickled to find a couple of Lucky Charms on the Auction House to people who are a lucky charm to me in one way or another.  I also farmed a handful of Rabbit’s Feet one afternoon in Loch Modan.  May the road rise to meet you.

 For the need to nom nom nom

Although last year I gave out many Delicious Chocolate Cakes from my own oven, this year I focused on a handful of other culinary treats.  Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream was my confection of choice to give out this year.  I picked up a couple of stacks in Thousand Needles and handed them out liberally.  I also picked up a nice Dalaran White Wine. 

Seasonal Samplings Stored for Four Seasons 

I had a couple of stacks of holiday items in my bank that I’ve held onto for 12 months and gave out to friends.  There are always numerous seasonal items that you can store away in this manner. I brought out some Preserved Holly and Snowballs from last Christmas.  If you didn’t hold onto any from last year, these items are now available in game and quite easy to gather up for gifting.

Sylly’s Special Winter Treasures List 2009 

I watched the auction house for months for a handful of items that I picked up whenever they appeared.  These were the special treasures I gathered, my signature gifts this season, and which are now in the satchels of my friends in Azeroth.

Here is the list…

Happy Fun Rocks

Worn Troll Dice

Voodoo Skull

Dragonbreath Chili

Coal*

*by special request from Greatfather Winter

Odds and Ends 

There is the matter of a collection of other prizes that I gathered and gave along the way that ought to be categorized, but the staff has taken the rest of the day off to begin the Winter Revels in their own personal ways.  Therefore, I beg you grant me a big of license in gathering them together here in this corner.  I know we also were able to gift an assortment of Tree Frogs, and Steamy Romance Novels that found  their way into the stockings of my compatriots.   Perhaps a recent jaunt to the theatre with my daughter played some subconscious role in this selection.  I gave a bouquet of white roses to each lady on my list. 

There may have been a couple more items that have slipped my mind, it is hard to say.  However, the shopping list above is as close to comprehesive as I care tomake it at the moment, and was sufficient to lavish joy and good times on 40 friends of mine.  I hope that, in one way or another, the list brings joy to you and yours, too.

Happy Winter’s Veil!

Sylly