Tag Archives: Druid

Shifting Perspectives: 2011 for feral druids

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!

Just like last year, this December brings both new beginnings and endings. A new raid, with new toys, but the end of an expansion, with likely no significant changes to mechanics until the release of Mists of Pandaria. As we sit around the fire with mugs of cider, enjoying (or loathing) our new sweaters, let's take a moment to look back at the events of 2011. Those of you who have already set them on fire, feel free to follow along from outside. (Bad cat! Bad cat!)

Patch 4.0 blues

Let's face it: Life was not so hot in early Cataclysm for us ferals. It's long enough ago that it's hard to remember, but our AoE damage was just pathetic. Swipe hit so weakly that our best AoE strategies revolved around multiDoTing, which was quite difficult and even then wasn't very powerful. Heroic Maloriak really brought this out; feral was consistently the lowest DPS spec, a good 10% below the next spec and almost 50% below our fellow balance druids. While most of the balance issues are typically ironed out quickly, this one persisted for quite a while.Thankfully, our single-target damage was passable, but only just.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: 2011 for feral druids

Filed under: ,

Shifting Perspectives: 2011 for feral druids originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 2

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid.

And we're back once more! In our last edition, we went into some of the tricks that you can use in order to boost your DPS in the first four encounters of Dragon Soul. This time around, we'll be rounding out the rest of the encounters from the instance. Overall, the second half is a bit more challenging than the first half, both in terms of DPS requirements and raid coordination. This is where you're going to have to push yourself the most, so be prepared to pull out all the stops.

Ultraxion
  • You'll need two tanks for Ultraxion, which will taunt off each other as they get Fading Light.
  • There have to be three players who stay out for every Hour of Twilight. These players will have to use heavy damage reduction cooldowns or immunities, or they will die.
  • There are three different crystals that spawn for healers, each that have their own unique buffs to help the raid survive. Let them fight over who gets what.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 2

Filed under: , ,

Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 2 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 1

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid.

Overall, the first four bosses of Dragon Soul are a fun lot that focus more on your ability to raid overall and less on your specific capabilities. There is a solid chunk of movement in them, so you should be prepare to deal with that. Practicing how to drop Mushrooms while on the move is a huge asset in this raiding tier. Styling this week's advice after McCurley's 5-second strats, I'll briefly detail the encounter and any tricks that you should know about heading into the game. Keep it simple, after all.

Morchok
  • Morchok should be tanked relatively where he stands. After each Blood phase, the tank can just pick him up where ever he happens to end up. No real positioning is needed unless you start to wander too far to the sides.
  • The raid team should all be grouped up within 25 yards of the boss as often as possible.
  • A dedicated group of ranged DPS should run out to every crystal that spawns. You need seven players for this in 25-man.
  • Run and head behind spikes once they've spawned, positioning yourself either between two spikes or just at the side of one so that you can continue to DPS.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 1

Filed under: ,

Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 1 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 1

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid.

Overall, the first four bosses of Dragon Soul are a fun lot that focus more on your ability to raid overall and less on your specific capabilities. There is a solid chunk of movement in them, so you should be prepare to deal with that. Practicing how to drop Mushrooms while on the move is a huge asset in this raiding tier. Styling this week's advice after McCurley's 5-second strats, I'll briefly detail the encounter and any tricks that you should know about heading into the game. Keep it simple, after all.

Morchok
  • Morchok should be tanked relatively where he stands. After each Blood phase, the tank can just pick him up where ever he happens to end up. No real positioning is needed unless you start to wander too far to the sides.
  • The raid team should all be grouped up within 25 yards of the boss as often as possible.
  • A dedicated group of ranged DPS should run out to every crystal that spawns. You need seven players for this in 25-man.
  • Run and head behind spikes once they've spawned, positioning yourself either between two spikes or just at the side of one so that you can continue to DPS.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 1

Filed under: ,

Shifting Perspectives: Balance druid guide to Dragon Soul, part 1 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: Guide to druid leveling in Cataclysm

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we steal from our colleagues.

All three of WoW Insider's druid columnists have collaborated on a Cataclysm-era druid leveling guide, because we love you very much. Also, Alex Ziebart made us do it ... but mostly because we love you very much.

If you're looking for a comprehensive piece on why X talent will give you a 0.072% increase in awesome at a particular level, this guide is not for you. If you're interested in getting a druid from 1 to 85 and successfully convincing everyone that you know what you're doing, this'll be more up your alley.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Guide to druid leveling in Cataclysm

Filed under: ,

Shifting Perspectives: Guide to druid leveling in Cataclysm originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: Lunar Shower update and Celestial Alignment

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests to tyler@wowinsider.com or @murmursofadruid.

Balance druids everywhere are currently rejoicing. Why, might you ask? Well, you see, the Eclipse energy portion of Lunar Shower has finally been removed from the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator. That it took this long is something else entirely, but that isn't even really the point.

First, I wish to express a slight personal issue with this revelation. When the Pandaria talent calculators were originally released, it was stated directly that Lunar Shower would be "working differently in the future." While I suppose accurate on the most technical levels, reverting a broken talent to the slightly less broken state that it was already in before it was made worse is not working differently.

A bit harsh? To say that Lunar Shower is a broken talent, to suggest that it was always a broken talent? Well, I would apologize or choose better language -- however, this is the case. Lunar Shower has never truly fulfilled the function it was intended to serve, to offer balance druids a mobile DPS option. In defense that the current Lunar Shower on the live servers now is broken, I don't really think I need to put forth much evidence. After all, no one specs into it. Every single guide tells players to avoid it. And there's at least a thread a week complaining about it on the official forums. The issue speaks for itself.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Lunar Shower update and Celestial Alignment

Filed under: ,

Shifting Perspectives: Lunar Shower update and Celestial Alignment originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: The best and the worst of patch 4.3

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we chortle our way through 5-man trash.

Oh, patch 4.3. I didn't know what to expect from you after so many bad, ugly, or just plain bizarre PUGs on the public test realm, but you turned out to be pretty cool. I don't have to wear ugly gear anymore, the Dragon Soul raid is live, Vengeance blows up like a grade school volcano science experiment, and Deathwing no longer roasts all my archaeology dig sites with the sadistic glee of an NPC who knows that I will never get the Crawling Claw if I am dead.

On the downside, I have to deal with Echo of Tyrande trash ("Hey, where'd the healer go?"), and Thrall still does not seem to have realized that the rest of the world moved on to epic mounts several years ago.

You win some, you lose some.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: The best and the worst of patch 4.3

Filed under: ,

Shifting Perspectives: The best and the worst of patch 4.3 originally appeared on WoW Insider on Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: Patch 4.3 gear list for balance druids

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or on Twitter @murmursofadruid.

Hail, druids, and welcome to the wondrous world of a new patch! This patch didn't hold much for us in the ways of personal meat. We got a wicked-awesome new Hurricane animation and a neat new Wrath one as well, but otherwise, things trudge along as normal with our lot. That's perfectly dandy in my book. We're still going along strong as a solid DPS choice, and things are good.

This week I'm dedicating to gearing ourselves up in all of that lovely new content that has just been released. Whether you're a dungeoneer or a hardcore raider, there's tons of new loot to look at, and that's exactly that we're going to do. As a side note, I do have to say that I am super-excited about having patch 4.3. The content so far has been gloriously fun, and though I'm sure I'll change my mind once I've done enough of these heroics to last a lifetime (as with the troll versions of last patch), I'm content to make do with what we have. Let's get to work, shall we?

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: Patch 4.3 gear list for balance druids

Filed under: ,

Shifting Perspectives: Patch 4.3 gear list for balance druids originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Raid Rx: Checking out level 90 talents

Posted on by
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

That new Mists of Pandaria talent calculator is out. Had a chance to look through it? You might've been alarmed at the fact that several key spells appear to be missing from the list of skills and such. Not to worry, though, since Bashiok clarified that it was still under development. Anything missing is (hopefully) unintentional. A few classes are given previews of new skills trainable past level 85. The classes that don't have their stuff created yet are presumably still being worked on.

Continue reading Raid Rx: Checking out level 90 talents

Filed under: , , , ,

Raid Rx: Checking out level 90 talents originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Shifting Perspectives: The matter of Mists talents and abilities

Posted on by
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat , bear , restoration and balance druids. Balance news comes at you every Friday -- learn how to master the forces of nature, and know what it means to be a giant laser turkey! Send questions, comments, or requests for something you'd like to see to tyler@wowinsider.com or on Twitter @murmursofadruid.

Druids, friends, brothers and sisters, we need to have a right good talk. Earlier in the week, Blizzard released the ability list and talent calculator for every class and spec in the next expansion. As we all knew, there were many significant changes that were made in terms of what abilities each spec received and, in some cases, how these abilities worked. Oddly enough, this seemed to cause something of an uproar within the druid community over several choice changes. It's strange to me that a community preaching patience quickly froths at the mouth, but fret not, nothing is nearly as bad as it seems.

The changes are massive -- of that there is no doubt -- but at the core, everything that we've known is still there. The majority of the balance druid spec as it exists today is virtually intact; as far as changes could go, this is close to the best that we could have hoped for. There are still tweaks that should be made, but those shall come in time. For now, allow me assuage your fears.

Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: The matter of Mists talents and abilities

Filed under: , ,

Shifting Perspectives: The matter of Mists talents and abilities originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments