The Scratching Post

Fishing in Patch 3.1

2009-04-20T17:00:00.001-07:00

Patch 3.1 is here! ... and there are many new things to see and do. First and foremost, I want to touch on one of my favorite things in WoW; fishing! Fishing has changed DRASTICALLY this patch, and in my humble opinion it is all for the better. The most notable change is that you can now fish anywhere, so long as your fishing skill is at least 1. Now, if your fishing skill is 1 and you choose to fish in Northrend, you can. No fish will get away anymore. In exchange for this, you catch grey junk items that vendor for a few copper. Personally, I would much rather chill in Dalaran fishing up junk than to go back to old world and fish up Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper. Perhaps that is just me. The good news is that you will also gain skill from fishing up junk. Before now, you did not gain skill because your catches simply got away if the area was too high for you to fish in.

Now, my fishing has been maxed on Riven for a long time, but I've dreaded having to finish leveling it up on Itami and other alts because it is so time consuming, and because I would not be able to fish in Northrend for quite awhile yet. With this change, I've nearly maxed Itami's fishing (it was at 325 when the patch hit) in a couple of days and I'm almost finished the achievement at the Dalaran coin fountain again. Awesome! Also, I can do the new fishing dailies on her as well. Two chances a day at new fishing loot = awesome!

I plan on catching the new sea turtle mount on both Riven and Itami. Granted, Riven has the Glyph of Aquatic Form which makes her swim very fast already, but having a cute turtle mount is too irresistible! For this reason, however, I'll probably attempt to catch the turtle on Itami first. Perhaps it's just what I need on Riven, though, to finally win the STV fishing tournament and get Riven her Salty title!

In the PTR, some datamining found not only new and adorable fishing poles, but also cute bobbers! One looked like a rubber duck, one like a murky head, one like a gnome head and more. Unfortunately, nobody has figured out where these come from yet, but I am hoping and hoping that they will be discovered soon because they are sooo cute! Not only that, but they will make fishing in a tight spot like the Dalaran fountain a lot easier when there's a lot of people there. Last night there were so many people at the fountain, I had to trace my fishing line to figure out which bobber was mine!

To top it all off, the fishing cast time has been lowered from 22 seconds to 17, thus making it that much faster to level your skill and get the fish you need for cooking. The only downside is that the pools most likely respawn at the same rate, so if you happen to make rounds in a particular area, you may find yourself waiting a bit for pools to re-pop once you fish them all.

If you like making Fish Feasts, Wintergrasp now has fishing. Everything you catch in Wintergrasp is fish that are used in Fish Feast, with the exception of the new giant clams. These clams contain ~3 Succulent Clam Meat or Northsea Pearls (perhaps even a Siren's Tear if you are very lucky!) and they stack even if you don't open them up. Huzzah!

All and all I'm thrilled to death with the fishing changes and really excited about collecting all of the poles, the sea turtle mount and the many flavor items that you can get as rewards. Let's not forget you can also get epic gems too, which is hella cool since they haven't put any new player crafted epic gems in game yet with the exception of Dragon's Eyes. W00t.

And then there was WRATH...

2009-04-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

I live! It's true! .. and I do apologize for not having posting since Wrath of the Lich King came out. Needless to day, I've been a bit busy since the latest expansion.

There's so much to write about Wrath that I don't really feel I should talk about it all in one post. I suppose I should just give an overview of what I've been up to the last few months.

Raiding
As of right now, my guild has essentially conquered all 5 and 10 man content in Wrath of the Lich King, including Naxxramas, the Eye of Eternity and the Obsidian Sanctum. At the time of my writing this, we have complete all but one of the Heroic Glory of the Raider achievements. The only one we are missing is The Immortal, which we are trying desperately to complete before the drake reward is removed in patch 3.1.

Questing
I actually have not done all of the quests in Northrend yet. I have been a bit lazy since I got 80 on Itami and am basically just going through Icecrown at my own leisurely pace. I made it a point to do all of the Northrend quests with Lukahn, so I only do them when we are both unoccupied by other things.

Heroics
Heroics have long been one of my favorite parts of WoW, so naturally, I have been doing a lot of them. I'm happy to say that I completed the Glory of the Hero achievement on Itami a number of months ago. It was a fantastic challenge and of course it rewarded my favorite color of the proto-drake mounts: red!

PVP
While I do not PVP on Itami, I do greatly enjoy doing so on Riven. I have not PVPed much in Wrath outside of Wintergrasp so far, and it is just as well. Wintergrasp is a ton of fun and probably the best thing Blizzard has ever done with PVP. Strand of the Ancients is also new, but I have only played it 2 or 3 times so I can't really give you an opinion on it just yet. :) Thus far, I have not really found any motivation to do arenas since BC.

Etc.
And that right there is my quick overview of Wrath of the Lich King so far. I do have to say that I am extremely pleased with the expansion and overall I think it is a lot better than the Burning Crusade. Perhaps it is just nice to be back on Azeroth. What's my favorite part of WotLK so far? It's hard to say. I'm really happy with the extra goodies they added to both primary and secondary professions, the zone designs (Howling Fjord is without a doubt my favorite zone.) and the option to do all dungeons as both 10 and 25 man raid groups.

I've got some plans for this blog. Maybe I'll get around to designing an actual layout for it. At the moment I'm playing with The Valiant's website design. I'm thinking of maybe using blogger to give TV a "real" update blog. We'll see!

In the future, I'll make a new Feral Druid DPS guide (since my old one is obviously obsolete) as well as an Enhancement Shaman guide since I've never written one up before.

Stay tuned!

Wrath, Character Doodles & Brewfest

2008-09-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

The Lich King is coming! Not so long ago the release date for Wrath was revealed, and I feel fairly confident that Blizzard is set on meeting this deadline. Beta builds are changing constantly, and while things still aren't balanced, I know that it is constantly being worked on. So, on November 13th, we will most likely be playing Wrath. I'm pretty stoked because this date is 4 days after my birthday (November 9th!) so it's like a slightly belated birthday present. And what is better than that, knowing that my birthday is always completely uneventful? :)

I haven't played Beta quite as much as I would like to due to constant server instability. Every time I log on I have to re-allot my talent points, and then I spend some time in Dalaran and then go to a zone to do some quests and test out my skills. Usually by the time I get to said zone, the server is going to shut down or has crashed. Yes, that's life on the Beta. Oh well! I'm still very lucky to be testing it!

So this coming Sunday I'll be heading to California and staying there until after Blizzcon. I'm really stoked about seeing all my friends and also meeting my guild master. (In fact, his birthday is tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Austin! Even though you don't read this blog. I don't think anyone does. Haha.) And since I am on this topic, I drew this picture of his toon for him as a gift:

I'm trying to figure out why I didn't actually post any pictures in this blog before. I think I just didn't realize I could upload images onto the Blogger server. I'm a nub, right? I mean I have Photobucket and my own domain and all that crap, but I just didn't feel like using them. Since I bothered to post that here's my druid and my shaman:

I had a really good time drawing those, so I'm starting to think I should sell them or something! I don't know if people would pay me for my doodles, though.

So anyway, Brewfest is going on. It's definitely one of the most fun WoW holidays. They nixed the ram mounts for tickets this year and now if you want one, you have to farm this boss in BRD. The cool thing is they added a Brewfest kodo mount that you can get too. After a couple of days of Brewfest so far, I've killed this guy literally about 20 times a day. So far I've seen 4 rams drop and 1 kodo, and of course tons of the trinkets. Everyone wants the kodo, of course, since it is new and we're alliance, so whenever the ram drops it's like an effort to get someone to take it. Haha. Well, I'm hoping to get my druid a kodo before I leave for California, but I don't know how good my chances are. That doesn't mean I won't keep trying! :)

Since my last post, my shaman has been lucky enough to score a few of the things I was hoping to get before Wrath. Namely my T6 chest, Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape and (at last!) an Amani War Bear. All that's left now is Cursed Vision of Sargeras from Illidan, which continues to elude our guild completely. I still wouldn't mind Mounting Vengeance from Sunwell trash, but it's not a huge deal either way.

I'm really looking forward to Blizzcon and to the ExPac release in November. Huzzah!

Wrath On the Horizon

2008-08-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

Wrath of the Lich King will be out sooner than later, and I'm really starting to think about what I'd like to accomplish in game before I begin my ascent to level 80. I don't think we are going to get to see much of Sunwell; much like what happened with the old Naxxramas, but I'm hoping that we'll at least get to kill Kalecgos and Brutallus. We're also still farming Illidan and hope to complete at least one set of Warglaives. Personally, I'm after 3 more items from Black Temple before I'm basically content until Wrath. My T6 chest, Cursed Vision of Sargeras and Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape. The cape I could probably live without, as the ZA haste one is very good for me too, but we'll see!

I've been doing Zul'Aman bear runs for a few months now and have yet to win the roll on one. We've gotten 8 bears so far. We try to keep the same group of people but it keeps changing, and new people come in and win the roll.. but oh well. That's how the cookie crumbles. Regardless, I really hope I can get a bear mount before Wrath, because once Wrath comes out, it'll no longer be attainable.

That set aside, my guild leader, Austin, who is awesome, gave me a beta key, and I have been checking out beta for the past few days. It's been a great experience so far and I've hardly done anything! I did all the death knight starter quests and they are incredible in every way. Every single person should at the very least level a Death Knight to 58 so they can experience some of the most fun and lore-rich quests in the game. I cannot stress it enough!

The main city in Northrend, Dalaran, is extremely beautiful. It is my new favorite city in WoW. It will not disappoint. It is full of rich details and vibrant colors. The shops and objects are incredibly ornate. I spent hours just exploring and zooming in on objects. It is really wonderful. Get a port there as soon as you can.

I have not been to every zone yet, and I am unsure if I will level my shaman to 80 in beta. I want to save some discoveries for when the expansion goes live, of course, things are subject to change drastically in the beta to live transition. Right now, I am enjoying breathing in the fresh air of a new land. There are too many exciting things to talk about in just a few paragraphs.

I am elated to say that Lukahn and I will be attending Blizzcon. I spent two days trying to buy tickets with no success during the huge debacle, but Austin, who I have mentioned is awesome, managed to get through and get tickets for the both of us. Huzzah!

Illidan Down, Resto Fun & Other Goodies

2008-07-06T23:08:00.001-07:00

The guild has reached a new milestone, so it's high time I wrote about it. Last month we completed Black Temple. Yes, we finally killed Illidan! It still hasn't really sunk in for me. To be honest, it was kind of anti-climactic. I think the reason for this is because we worked on him for two solid nights, and then he was dead. For our guild, Illidan proved to be much, much easier to kill than Kael'thas and Archimonde. Granted, Kael'thas is still considered the most complex fight in game pre-Sunwell, but he honestly makes all following encounters seem simple in comparison. Poor Illidan. Regardless, I'm thrilled that we completed BT and we have many Illidan kills in our future. I'm sure we won't stop farming him until we have at least one set of warglaives for our warriors and/or rogues, and I won't rest until I've scored myself a delicious Cursed Vision of Sargeras for my shaman. :)

Since I stopped raiding with my druid, I decided to mix things up a bit and play her as restoration for awhile. Riven has been feral for about 2 years and previously she was restoration for about one year, but this was when there was no treeform or lifebloom, and my main heal was Healing Touch rank 5 (with lots of +heal gear stacking!). Oh, the good old days. How I don't miss them! Seriously, I remember pvping as resto back in those days and it was utter hell. Now if you PVP as resto, it's freaking amazing. I don't even have any resto resilience gear and I run into BGs feeling practically invincible. Then again, there's a lot of dummies in BGs, and it is almost too easy to avoid being focus fired when you're hiding in the crowd throwing up HoTs. Arenas? Probably a different story entirely. I'm willing to give arenas as resto a shot as soon as I get some gear for it. Right now all of my PVP gear is feral. I have to say resto PVP is extremely fun. I just wish I could switch between feral and resto with the push of one button. ( I hear that's a possibility for the expansion! ) I think I still prefer feral for PVE purposes, but damn if I'm not having a blast healing as well! Speaking of druid specs, I haven't tried balance since pre-moonkin ( Hurricane as 31 pt talent ftw? ) so I'd like to give it a go again someday just so I can dance around as a fat bear-bird. The only problem is I really don't have room for the gear! ( Oh, the bane of being a druid! ) I want a 51 point talent that gives me some sort of unlimited bag space... I'm totally serious. T_T

The summer festival was pretty fun this year. I got Itami the Brazier of Dancing Fire Sluts and a Summer Dress, as well as the blue skies tabard (Although I'm wishing I got the Flame one instead.. matches my piece meal gear better but oh well.) We farmed for the scythe and the pet from Ahune and I never did see either, but we did get about 20 of those healing cloaks. I also got Riven that neck that's identical to Choker of Vile Intent. Since she's not raiding anymore, she's glad to not have to spend the badges on a "for when I need to substitute in some more +hit gear" neck. What's silly is that even with T6 equiv gear for feral in her bags, she's still stuck with Mithril Chain of Heroism from Karazhan as a neck piece. It's really the fault of poor itemization, and the fact that we never killed Kael enough to score the only AP+crit upgrade pre-sunwell ( Telonicus's Pendant of Mayhem or whatever it is. ) There's always these items that seem to last us forever despite their lower iLevel. Shard of Contempt is just damned ridiculous for being a heroic drop ( and I am so very grateful for its existence! )

In other more useless news, I scored a Phoenix Hatchling on Riven last night. I've lost the roll on at least 3 of them so far so I'm very glad. I'm a pet collector although I've really been slowing down because Riven is plum out of bank space and still "needs" a bunch of PVP gear. Still, the baby phoenix is a must-have. I honestly really wanted it more for Itami, but I don't know when I will be taking her to Magister's again. She's exalted and has everything else she wants from there, while Riven is after Shattered Sun rep, badges and a couple more trinkets. Healing that place sure is a bitch, but it's great practice for me as resto spec and I have very understanding guildmates! Overall, though, Magister's Terrace is an instance where keeping control over the enemies is key. ( Alas, it was still a pain in the butt keeping our bear tank alive through Kael's constant 5k fireballs and zero forms of interrupt. )

Oh yeah, I opted into Wrath of the Lich King beta this past week. I'm crossing my fingers that I get the opportunity! I've been playing long enough that my input is actually valuable. C'mon Blizz!

Life in 2.4

2008-05-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

The past month and a half or so has been a fairly busy time for me. I'm happy to say I've had a lot of success with changing my main character and I don't regret it in the least. Some people are annoying about it because it is "EZ Mode" but that doesn't really matter to me. I've been having a blast and I'm so thankful for it.

As soon as 2.4 hit I hopped into the 25 man scene with my shaman. On my first trip to Hyjal, the same night of the patch, I scored a Claw of Molten Fury. It may have even been a server first! What luck I had there. I was dual wielding Fool's Banes at the time. On my first trip to Black Temple I got myself a Rising Tide which I offhanded for a few weeks until a Syphon of the Nathrezim showed up. I'm still using this combo and it works great, though my long term goal is to get a 2nd Syphon and dual wield them. It's not a huge loss if I never get a 2nd as Yo's Sim says my current combo is fairly similar in terms of DPS output, but I can dream, can't I? ;)

I've had great luck with loot; more so than I deserve. I'm going for all non tier 6 gear since piece meal rogue gear is superior for Enhancement at this point in the game. Most of what is the best for me is stuff other classes want to throw to the DE pile, so in that respect things are often in my favor. I get great upgrades without stealing what other people want (most of the time) and I save stuff nobody else wants from being Disenchanted. The only item that severely eluded me was Bow-stitched Leggings, which we never saw after a hojillion trips to Hyjal, but we finally got them just this week, on the same night I hit exalted with Scale of the Sands. (Take note, my previous raiding character was just a little bit from exalted and we never saw them drop when I was raiding as her.)

Enough about gear! I spent a lot of time doing the Shattered Sun dailies. What a fantastic way to get gold. Right now I'm completely burnt out on said dailies, but I'm grateful for the gold I got from them. I think I will really need it when Wrath of the Lich King comes out. I am terrified to know how much it will cost to 'activate' epic mounts in Northrend. My current guess is 10,000 gold, but it could end up being more.

Jewelcrafting has been a boon since 2.4. Everyone is getting new gear and the price of gems skyrocketed. The cost of superior quality patterns, however, has stayed about the same. Most are 300-500 gold while certain ones (such as Teardrop Living Ruby) are close to 1,000 gold. Since I made so much gold doing dailies, I decided to invest in a lot of blue patterns. I have all the Living Ruby patterns except Teardrop now, and of course I have all the Hyjal and Rep patterns. Being able to get patterns from Hyjal rather than Shattered Sun also saved me a lot of gold. There are people asking for Jewelcrafters in trade channel pretty much non-stop, and I've gotten as much as 15g for cutting one blue gem in terms of tips, so I feel the patterns I've purchased were worth the money. Since we just got the epic gem vendor recently, I'll have to keep an eye out on how the price of blue gems fluctuates and whether or not I can make a significant amount of gold cutting epic gems over blues. Time will tell!

Also on the subject of Jewelcrafting, the price of green gems has gone up quite a bit as well. At first I used the Brilliant Glass recipe until I ran out of green gems to use. Of course, after getting a few talasites, which sell for about 9 gold now, I stopped using the transmute. While you can't do much with Deep Peridots, you can pretty much guarantee a good 4 or 5 gold for some of the Blood Garnet cuts. Since Brilliant Glass takes 3 of each green gem, getting a talasite is an enormous loss. As it stands I can get more money for 3 cut Blood Garnets alone; not even counting the other 15 green gems it takes to make! Sure there is the chance to get an epic gem now, but it's probably a very small one, and not worth it if you have a surplus of Badges of Justice, anyways.

On the raiding front, we're currently working on Illidari Council. It wasn't too terribly long ago (after 2.4) that we downed Reliquary of Souls and Mother Shahraz for the first time. For us, Reliquary proved to be quite a pushover. We were so stoked over our success. This happened after we lost some folks, had some mains changed and things changing around, so there was a lot of tension in the atmosphere about our progression. Since then, I think that things have smoothed out some, though we seem to constantly have people leaving now for real life issues. The answer seems to simply be to recruit more people for back up, so we have a lot of new people coming in lately. I think this will help to stabilize our progression for sure, but we have to teach a lot of new people the ropes, and of course get them geared up with Shadow Resist for when they get to go to Mother Shahraz with us. I think the thing I admire about my guild is their determination and persistence. I'm the type of person who, alone, could be crushed under stress fairly easily. I'm not a leader type but I do quite well at following directions from those who are. I sincerely want to do my best for myself and for my guild, so I will always strive to improve how I play and to help my guildmates to do the same. If I make a mistake, I generally know about it and I feel horrible, but I do my damnedest not to ever make the same mistake again. I consider myself a 'competent' player although I sometimes wonder if other people think otherwise. I believe that's mostly just me being paranoid. I want people to feel that I'm reliable. I try very hard to be!

Class Change and New Stuff in 2.4

2008-03-14T21:43:00.001-07:00

It's been awhile, so time to write in the ole WoW Blog again. Lack of posts has nothing, of course, to do with lack of play time on my part. In the past couple of months there's been some big changes in the game for me. Most importantly I decided to change my main character. Rather than make a 'current' alt my main, I created an entirely new toon.

I already had a 70 tauren shaman, who I enjoyed greatly, but found little opportunity for anything other than solo play with. (As far as I am concerned, the horde population on Silver Hand is practically dead outside of a bunch of super casual players and like 1 or 2 hardcore raiding guilds.) I finally decided "oh the hell with it" one day and rolled a draenei shaman on alliance, who I vigorously leveled to 70 in something like 9 days and 4 hours of played time, over something like 2 and a half weeks. I now have an itch that my tauren shaman's destiny is to become a bank alt. It's really too bad because I love horde and I love tauren, but there is just not enough life on my server's horde side. But yes, my main is now my draenei shaman.

As far as the main changing decision goes, I still love my druid. I just can't enjoy 25 man raids as one anymore. There's no room for my play style. It's the way Blizzard has designed BC raiding and classes. 40 mans kinda gave more room for group customization, but they are now a thing of the past.

Now, to talk about something slightly more interesting, I'm really rearing up for patch 2.4. These days, since the majority of my guildmates are pimped out in T5/T6/etc+ gear, it's sort of hard to convince anyone to take my nooby shammy into a normal 5 man. Heck, people don't even want to do a heroic 5 man because it's so easy to get a bunch of badges from Kara or ZA, and it will be even easier when they drop from 25 man bosses in the new patch. One thing I can look forward to, however, is the fact that EVERYONE is going to head to magister's terrace 5 man when it comes out. Magister's has some amazingly great gear on both regular and heroic modes, including some of the best new trinkets in game. And we all know about how much people salivate over trinkets. Ra-kaww! Trinkets! Power in trinkets! Yes, I admit I have a weakness for trinkets, too. It is probably because epic instance drop trinkets are so damn hard to get. In fact, if I could have any item in the entire game on my druid, it'd be Tsunami Talisman, which I know I will never ever get because dps trinkets hate my guild so much that we are usually lucky to get each one to drop maybe 2 times ever. They might as well be legendaries!

New dailies, and a new limit of 25 dailies per day. Crazy! I just hope they're fun. I have to admit I enjoy bombing run dailies, but a lot of others I don't like. Monstrous Kaliri is probably the most annoying mob in the entire game. They are unnecessarily obnoxious by design. Why, Blizzard, why? I think most of the Ogri'la dailies are annoying and lacking in the fun department. Of course, my idea of a good quest is "go pick up 10 glowing fungus" and "kill 5 regular bird and 5 dire bird". Sure they are simple, but they're not -annoying-. They don't have some mechanic to them that makes me hate them after doing them 5 days in a row on a daily basis. Daily quests are done frequently so they shouldn't be painful. That being said, I really hope the Isle of Quel'Danas does not have the blood elf equivalent of Monstrous Kaliri. You know a good daily quest? Booterang. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's the best daily quest ever. Oh and the cooking quest to pick Mana Berries.

There's lots of new badge loot. Some of it is to fill in itemization gaps, and some isn't. The most exciting for me, of course, are the new fist weapons. Honestly, I hate fist weapons, but these are so good for enhancement shamans, and so easy to acquire, that I am willing to set aside my hatred of them for now. In the meantime, I will probably be working to farm myself 2 very sexy Poor Man's Netherbanes (i.e. - Breeching Comet) from heroic sickly-Kael'thas in Magister's Terrace. And did I mention I like trinkets? Shard of Contempt is nothing short of amazing. I think I was supposed to be talking about badge loot. Oh well. Here are Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality and Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality.

I've just stooped to gushing over new loots now. It's extra exciting when you're gearing up a fresh character, though. :)

It's always stoked when a new content patch is about to come out. I am not, however, looking forward to updating my addons. That's a whole other beast to tame. The point is, stuff like the introduction of the new island and instances are like miniature expansion packs. This time, they're not just adding an instance a small fragment of the player base will see (Black Temple), but a new regular 5 man, new heroic 5 man, new dailies, new 25 man and more. That's not even counting some major class changes. I think 2.4 will be a much busier patch day than the last few. It's kind of like when they added AQ and all the Cenarion Circle stuff into Silithus. It basically was there to tide us over until the Burning Crusade, and it worked like a charm. Everyone was in Silithus all the time for months. I just hope the servers can handle it!

Remember When..

2008-01-16T11:54:00.000-08:00

Today I got to thinking about old times. Not real old times, but the old times of Wow. It's kind of fun to reminisce; to think about how things have changed since the game's release, and since beta.

WoW was my first real MMO. I was using a Mac and couldn't play FFXI with my friends, so I felt really left out. I purchased Warcraft III so I could play that with Lukahn online, but I sorta sucked at it. Then my friend Lin said "Hey, check this out; World of Warcraft - an upcoming MMO is in beta and you can try it for free." So I downloaded that, and had Lukahn download it and we romped around together for a week or two. I got to a shocking level 14 before it closed down in prep for the retail release. Having never played an MMO before I also had no idea what to expect with classes. So I picked druid somewhat blindingly. I thought "Sweet, I can turn into animals! This is the class for me." It was either that or hunter, because I could have an animal as a pet. Looking back on it, if I had to start over for the beginning I doubt I would have picked either class as my main character. I would have more likely been a shaman or a rogue. If my shaman or rogue alts were alliance characters, I probably would be playing one of those two as my main instead of my druid now.

It is funny to think about how much we didn't know how to play the game back then. I melee'd stuff all the time, in caster form. I won the Toxic Revenger dagger from Viscous Fallout in Gnomeregan. I am pretty sure there was also a rogue in the group. Everyone said 'grats' though, since I don't think any of us really knew any better at the time. If it was blue and you could equip it, you had to have it. I put beastslaying and demonslaying on all my weapons. Lukahn had crusader on his Dal'Rend's once (he is a hunter, and a good one mind you). I used to be really obsessed with the Scarlet Monastery quest reward dagger that has a chance hit your enemy with a shadow bolt. I even had Meiyuu craft me one of those shadow masks that has +shadow damage and effects, boasting that it would make my shadowbolting noob dagger do more damage. I was some kind of horrible balance spec and I whacked away at things between moonfires and wraths. I died an awful lot. My 31 point talent was Hurricane. I thought it was the bomb. I remember using it on Troggs in Uldaman. Man, I hate Uldaman. I think when I was in my 40s I respecced to resto and suddenly I lived a lot more and was really thankful. I raided as restoration for a long time, using regrowth as my main heal. Later I realized it was all about Healing Touch rank 4 and stacking healing gear, but it didn't matter because my FPS on my computer was so bad in raids that everyone thought I was just a really horrible player. Basically I had one frame every 5 seconds or so in MC and BWL. Leveling all of my other characters compared to my druid ended up being much, much easier.

The first time I ever looted a green was the last day of beta. I found a malachite. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I was also really upset that beta was ending that day, meaning I would lose my precious, precious malachite. My first uncommon treasure. My first blue was Emberstone Staff. I loved that staff so much. It was my pride and joy. I don't think I vendored it until long after I got to level 60. I also spent many moons and suns coveting the amazing and incredible epic Staff of Jordan. I farmed for it, day and night, even though it was a world drop and basically impossible to farm. I eventually bought one from a really creepy gnome warrior for 70g. It was a huge investment. I had to borrow money from my guildmates to get it, and I was so happy. The creepy gnome warrior that I bought it from continued to message me for months after. He acted like he'd done me a huge favor selling me the staff, so it gave him some sort of excuse to flirt with me in tells for ages. I put him on ignore after awhile and he got on an alt asking me why I ignored him and I played dumb. He eventually went away though. The moral of the story is to not buy anything particularly valuable from gnomes, especially if you are a female night elf. If you do, make sure he knows that you are a male gameplayer, even if you in fact, are not one.

I have so many fond memories of old times, like when Furyan taught me to solo Devilsaurs at 55 with root + nuke, and going to UBRS every single night with Frozz for ages to get my Wildheart chest. Stealth LBRS runs, my first Onyxia kill, getting mowed over by Tarren Mill guards in our sad redundant attempts at world pvp on an RP server. Those were the days.

I recall how we prepared for days for the treacherous walking journey from Darkshore to Ironforge, and eventually, at last, to the grandiose kingdom of Stormwind. There were casualties. My friends were eaten by crocolisks. Corpse runs, close calls with orcs and venomous spiders were the norm. It was an adventure. And now Twiddles the level 1 gnome who hasn't even picked up a frayed robe yet wants me to come give him a free port to Shattrath. I don't think so, Twiddles.

Having played from the start, I find myself exceedingly grateful for the many changes that have been made. After all, feral druids didn't have innervate, warlocks were practically the worst class in game and to the alliance, totems were only something to use rank 1 moonfire and wand damage upon. Times have changed, for the most part, for the better, although I do so miss killing Edwin Van Cleef.

Add-on-O-Rama

2008-01-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

Today I want to talk to you about add-ons! If you're not using add-ons, you're probably not getting the full game experience you could be getting. While some add-ons do a retarded amount of work for you, others just make simple tasks a little bit.. well.. simpler. With add-ons you can change your entire User Interface, or just make throwing an item in the mail easier by doing it with alt+click. I think even if you're a "naked UI" kind of guy or gal, there's at least one add-on out there that once you download, you'll suddenly wonder how you ever played the game without it.

Now these mods come in many varieties. (I'm going to refer to add-ons as mods a whole bunch, since it is quicker to type.) They are usually categorized into different sections like "Class", "Combat", "Tradeskill", etc. There's also things called "UI Packages" which are basically a potpourri of mods that some leet dude downloaded and clumped into a package for you in advance so that you don't have to do any sort of thinking of your own. I've never used a UI Package, but some people like them so that they don't have to download a bunch of mods separately. I don't really like the idea of using a bunch of pre-selected mods, so I'm going to recommend you pick them out yourself. That way you get only what you really want and nothing more.

Now if you're totally new to the UI modification scene, you might want to just browse one of the many UI download sites, read descriptions and try out what sounds interesting, but if you're one of the masses who already use add-ons and are just looking for some suggestions of new ones to try, I'm going to go over a few I really enjoy or can't live without.

Bartender - If you are a noob like me who is easily confused by some bar and unit frame modifictions, you will find that Bartender is refreshingly easy to use. You can customize your bars any way you like with it. Resize them, make them into columns, make them only appear when you hover their cursor over them, etc. It's so user-friendly that I love it to bits.

Cy-Circled - I use this mod alongside Bartender and it's purely for aesthetics. What it does is change the appearance of your buttons. You can make them round, glossy, shaped like Hello Kitty heads, gears, etc. Some of them are silly and make your buttons hard to see, but some will actually make it much easier for you to see and use your buttons, so try different ones and see what works for you!

Pitbull - This mod is for changing the appearance and utility of Unit Frames, which are the windows that inform you of a person's health, mana, name, etc. It's highly customizable to a point that it can become almost maddening. You can display all kinds of information about your target, your party, your target's target's target, etc. You can also just make your unit frames look prettier by using a skin or adding animated portraits. If you've ever used AG Unit Frames, this is almost the same exact mod, but personally, I like it a little better.

Grid - Even if you can't heal, I'd recommend that if you raid, you download Grid. In fact, Grid is a great set of raid frames for those that can't heal because it displays information about your whole raid's health in a very small amount of screen space. Basically, it is a little set of colored boxes. Each box represents a raid member. You can set the colors to reflect the class of that person, and you can set the box to either fill up or empty of color depending on that person's health. Conceptually I think Grid is one of the coolest mods ever, but for some people it can be very difficult to use for healing. You can set the borders of boxes to change color depending on different variables, as well as each of the boxes corners. For example, if a person is low on mana, you can set it so that when they are low, a blue border appears around their box, and you know that that person would appreciate an innervate! You could also set the top right corner of that person's box to turn purple if they are cursed, etc. I think while going from something like ct raid frames to Grid can be a daunting change, there are ways to make Grid very similar in appearance to other raid frames (for example, you can change the height and with of each box to make it more like a bar if it helps!) while still saving loads of screen space and being very glad you switched to this mod.

Fubar - It wouldn't be a list of cool add-ons if I didn't mention Fubar. If you ever used Titan Panel, Fubar is the same thing, but it's an Ace mod, so it's a lot less bloated. If you're still using Titan Panel for some ungodly reason, switch to Fubar now. With Fubar you download all kinds of little extensions that display information on small bars that you put at the top or bottom of your screen. Most of these end with "-fu", so that you know they are Fubar mods. (Ex: AmmoFu, MoneyFu, DPSFu, etc.) Some Fubar mods I like are MoneyFu, FactionsFu, EXPfu, ClockFu, PerformanceFu, DPSFu, among others.

ItemRack - I would die without ItemRack. It would be like owning 10,000 shirts and not owning a closet. ItemRack allows you to create gear sets and to change them at the press of a button. I have a tanking set, a pvp set, a pve dps set, an RP set and more. And it only takes a second to switch into each one, thanks to ItemRack.

Now, that's just a snippet of the add-ons I use that I really like. There are hundreds of thousands of add-ons for you to choose from, and many that do the same thing in different ways. I highly recommend any addons from WowAce as well as their super spiffy application called "Wow Ace Updater" which makes updating your addons regularly really easy.

Here's a list of some other add-ons I use regularly, and love:

AtlasLoot - Information on all dungeon drops, rep & pvp rewards and more.

Cartographer - A map mod with coords that saves locations of herbs, mining nodes, etc. Also shows recommended zone levels. All kinds of cool options!!

Enhancer - A really sweet class-specific mod for shamans. Totem timers, ability cooldowns, loot ratings and other sweet things.

Chat Link - Basic mod that allows you to link items in channels other than trade.

CraftList - An easy way for other people to see what tradeskill patterns you know and what materials they take, on all your characters! I also use it to check and see what patterns my alts already know. :P

Decursive - The classic mod for cleansing people of poisons, curses, magic effects, etc.

Fishing Buddy - Right click casting, fishing gear sets, drop percentage info for different fishing zones and more.

Omen - A threat meter that you really need for raiding!

SmartyCat + SmartyCat Mana Bar - I use these two addons to keep track of my mana while I am in cat or bear form.

Possessions - Use this to look up which of your characters own which items and how many.

WhoHas - Like Possessions in your tooltips! Hover over an item and if any of your characters on that faction side have that item it will say which character has it and how many of it in the tooltip.

Rating Buster - "Rates" gear for you in its tooltips. Set it up to show how much damage, crit, healing, mana regen etc. are on that particular item. One of my all time favorite add-ons.

Quartz - Customize your casting bars! Change their appearance and location to your liking. The swing timer in particular is really awesome for hunter shot rotations.

Class Timer - Keeps track of time remaining on your buffs and debuffs. I use this for keeping an eye on the remaining duration of mangle, rip, faerie fire, etc.

Scrolling Combat Text - While there's now a built-in version of this in WoW, I much prefer the original add-on, for it is insanely customizable. :) Scrolls damage and heal information across your screen so it's easy to see.

Well, that's enough about my add-ons. Remember, there's a bajillion to choose from, so try everything that looks interesting to see what you like. Try to keep an eye on the memory usage of your addons with something like PerformanceFu, that way if your game feels bogged down you can check the list to see what is taking up so much memory. Some addons, like Auctioneer (or any other add-on that creates a database of item information), are extremely bloated. You may wish to only load them on a mule character where you sell things. And of course, if you're using a class specific mod, like Enhancer for shamans, set it up on the addon screen so that it only loads for your shaman. This will save memory and loading time for your other toons. Get a feel for how much memory usage you should be using for addons; it will vary depending on your computer specs. If your game gets slower and your FPS lowers, you may be using too many and will have to cut back or find some that are less bloated.

To those of you who were looking for something a little more interesting and in depth, I will pledge to make the next entry a bit more... um... hardcore, I suppose. I do hope, however, that perhaps I've helped other long-time WoW players to discover a new add-on or two that they hadn't used before and will be able to appreciate. And to all the newbies out there, go pimp out your UI!

The Cat Form PVE Super-Post!

2008-01-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

Today I'd like to write about something I vastly enjoy discussing, and that's.. drum roll please... cat form! *collective groaning ensues* Now, now, this blog is relatively new and it's best I start with something I'm familiar with, and if there is one thing I am familiar with, it's druid cat form. I'm going to tell you a bit about my experience with it and how I use it to the best of my abilities.

First off, if you're going to dps as cat form you need to have the right talents. While a few of the talents in the feral tree are preferential, you'll find that some may be a waste of your points more than others. Before I tell you what to take from the feral tree you need to know right off the bat that you want 11 points in restoration because these 11 points are going to give you at least 10 percent more dps flat out. What you want is full points in Furor, Naturalist, and Omen of Clarity, like this. Now, in case it isn't obvious from the tooltips let me tell you why. Furor ensures you that you have at least some energy to do -something- flat out when switching into cat form. It also increases your dps through the use of powershifting, should you choose to do that as part of your dps cycles. (Powershifting is something I will talk about later on.) Five points in the Naturalist talent in the second tier of Restoration is a solid 10 percent more physical DPS. I don't need to explain why you need that. Omen of Clarity is a gem of a talent that gives you a chance on hit to use a special move or spell free of energy, rage or mana cost. You want this spell. It will add to your dps, in addition to giving you an opportunity to shift out of form and heal yourself for free if the need arises. This is more useful in pvp because in a raid dps or comfortable 5 man group situation, you should not have to shift out to heal yourself during combat. (When out of combat, however, feel free to save your healer some time and mana by topping yourself off, kay?) Well, that's 11 talent points right there that as a cat form druid, I wouldn't go without.

Now, lets talk about the big ole feral tree! It's so vast that for a first time feral druid you may be at a loss of what to do. However as cat PVE DPS there's some bare bones talents you'll definitely want; and those are the following:

Ferocity - Anything that involves spending less energy means that it's more energy that converts into more damage.

Sharpened Claws - Much of a cat druid's damage comes from our special crits. The more, the better!

Shredding Attacks - Shred is your main pve dps move. You want this. Again, energy conservation, and the ability to shred more often, is what makes this a must-have.

Predatory Strikes - This is just an extra chunk of attack power. Take it.

Primal Fury - One of the best talents for both cat and bear. Free combo points on your crits! This means less time between when you can use your finishing moves and allows you to keep rip up full time on bleed vulnerable enemies.

Faerie Fire (Feral) - This armor decrease seems small, but it can make a big difference in the damage output of your entire raid group. Also a must have for pvp to help you keep track of pesky rogues.

Savage Fury - Despite the general uselessness of Claw and Rake, take this puppy for an increase to your kitty cat mangle damage. It will help soloing as well as those situations where doing front side damage is unavoidable. Unless you have a druid tank who is keeping bear mangle up for you while you dps, you'll welcome any increase to the damage of your own mangles. You can get some pretty good crits on them, too!

Heart of the Wild - One of the best druid talents, bar none. Switch into cat form and this talent increases your attack power by 10%. (It also increases your intellect in caster by 20%, and stamina in bear by 20%). This talent used to increase your strength in cat by 20%, but was changed to 10% attack power to give cats more flexability with gear options. (I.E. - To make rogue gear better for us means less feral itemization labor for Blizz. Kudos!)

Leader of the Pack - Everyone will love you, including yourself, for this sexy 5% crit aura.

Predatory Instincts - Extra crit damage? Yes please. And the more crit you get, the more this talent will benefit you.

Mangle - The 41 point feral talent that you have to have. It does instant damage and increases the damage of your shreds and bleeds by 30%. In cat form you want this debuff up full time.

Some other very good talents that aren't as so focused on DPS but are DEFINITELY recommended by myself are:

Feral Instinct - Great for pvp, stealth runs, and bear tanking!

Improved Leader of the Pack - Heals you when you crit. Works for your party members crits too. Awesome all around.

Feline Swiftness - Incredible for pvp and incredible for your dps in outdoor instances. Less time spent running means more time dpsing and more time dpsing means more damage output overall from you, rawrrrrr! (Oh, you'll love it if you're leveling up and don't have a mount yet, too!)

And if you are planning to have to tank, ever, please, for the love of God and for your own sake take:

Feral Charge - I don't even need to explain how good this is, especially with furor.

Thick Hide - Retardedly high armor is the trademark of bear tanks.

Survival of the Fittest - Not only is it excellent for pvp (free resilience anyone?), but it's a nice chunk of defense that you don't need to acquire through gear. With this talent, a bear only needs 415 defense to become uncrittable.

And just because it is awesome, I like to take:

Primal Tenacity - Resisting a fear or stun means more tankage or more dps-age from you, m I rite? Also quite fanciful for pvp.

Now that I just listed most of the feral tree, what did I leave out? Well, I personally do not take Feral Aggression, as I feel that 5 points are too much for an increase to damage on what is currently a rather crappy finishing move (Ferocious Bite), at least in comparison to how much more use you will get out of the talents I've listed above it. If they made Feral Aggression into a 3 point talent instead of 5, or improved Ferocious Bite it -might- be more worth it from a dps standpoint. While the demo roar can aid tanking you can -definitely- tank just fine without it. I've also skipped Nurturing Instinct as I feel it is strictly a pvp and soloing talent and a talent for people who are passionate about frequent role shifting (this can be excellent for 5 manning, but if you have a stable 5 man group with a good healer, you probably won't be seeing yourself turning into super emergency feral healer all that often.)

Whew, that was a lot of talk about talents, but I've barely brushed the service of my discussion of cat form here. Next lets talk about how to gear yourself. It's really quite easy once you know what stats are best for you. Strength and Agility are what growing kitties need, and raw attack power and crit rating to a lesser extent. You'll also want stamina of course, but that comes on pretty much all of the gear so you won't have to worry about it really.

Now I'll start by saying that Strength has always been THE cat stat, however, over time, agility has become more and more useful. It used to be that druids did not gain anything but dodge from agility (crazy, right?) and yet there were druids everywhere in all this strength-less rogue gear, due to lack of understanding cat mechanics and overall dreadful itemization for ferals on Blizzard's part. Later on, Blizzard said "And let cats have crit, armor and attack power from agility!" and suddenly agility got a lot sexier for us. So, agility became a real cat form stat and we became happy, critty little monsters. However, some people still forgot that we get 2 attack power per point of strength, and it remained our main statistic. With the addition of Heart of the Wild, Blizzard increased the usefulness of Strength even more by increasing it 20% in cat form. From then on, it meant that we got 2.2 attack power per point of strength instead of just 2. Excellent! Then they changed Heart of the Wild again, so that instead of 20% strength in cat form, we got 10% attack power. While being a slight nerf to strength, it was a buff to agility and raw attack power, so now we get 2.1 attack power per point of strength and 1.1 attack power per point of agility. That's not to mention 1.1 attack power per point of.. well.. attack power! Anyway, it was a worthy trade off, and now all of that strength-less rogue gear isn't quite so blah for us, while our pure feral gear is also still really darn good. We suddenly have a lot more good options for gear!

Much research has been done on the topic of strength versus agility. Like other classes, we must seek a balance between our attack power and our crit. The big appeal of agility is that it adds to both attack power AND crit, but that doesn't mean strength is no longer important. The more crit you have, the more valuble your attack power becomes. The more attack power you have, the more valuble your crit becomes. The two support each other and make each other more effective, so don't say "I want to get 50% crit and I don't care about my attack power!" or vice versa. You want both, and as you acquire gear you will gain a sort of instinctual ability to decide which one you need more or less of. Overall, the value of strength over agility or agility over strength depends on your current attack power and crit. For a really great write-up on this subject, take a gander at Tossk's Feral DPS Gear Methodology and become enlightened.

Like any melee class, we have a chance to miss, so when we're fighting those big honking level 73 elite bosses, we need to get some hit rating. If you're decked out in full rogue gear, you're going to find it really easy cheese to max your hit. If you're not, it becomes a bit more challenging. You may have to socket your tier gear with hit gems (Glinting Noble Topaz is your friend, but if you're desperate for hit, you can also put a Rigid Dawnstone in your yellow sockets) or get necks, trinkets or rings with hit rating on them. While theorycrafters seem to frequently change their mind about what our real hit cap is, it's somewhat safe to say it is, high end, around 9 percent or 142 hit rating. The amount of hit rating needed can be lessened by gaining Expertise (formerly weapon skill or feral combat rating), which many druids decide to acquire in the form of a rather formidable little ring called Shapeshifter's Signet (available to purchase from the Lower City quartermaster at exalted). A total of 20 expertise rating (which is equal to 5 weapon skill) decreases the amount of +hit you need from 9% to 6%, making the Shapeshifter's Signet a formidable investmest.

You might be wondering now about the value of crit rating. While we love crit, the best way of getting it for us is through agility. 1 point of crit rating, for a druid, is a mere .005 more crit than 1 point of agility. Yes, it is more, and you might say "more is more", but remember, you're also getting 1.1 attack power, 2 armor and ~.07 dodge, which I think I would value over .005 more crit, wouldn't you? Some druid gear will come with crit rating (particularly pvp gear) because it is a 'cheaper' itemization stat than agility, but most of the time, it is not a druid stat, and is more beneficial to rogues, dps warriors, enhancement shamans, etc. The one place you really want crit rating? Trinkets. ( You'll never get crit on a trinket in the form of agility unless you're an alchemist and can make an Alchemist's Stone. ) Some of the best cat trinkets in game are items like Tsunami Talisman ( God, I'd give my left front paw for one of these!! ) which give boatloads of delicious crit. If you're not a raider you can get crit trinkets like Bladefist's Breadth, Hourglass of the Unraveller, Battlemaster's Cruelty (acquirable through heroics OR pvp!) or Skyguard Silver Cross.

Now, to decide on gems, bear in mind what I've told you about stats above, and consider the following gems.

Red Socket - Delicate Living Ruby (+8 Agility) and Bold Living Ruby (+8 Strength)
Yellow Socket - Glinting Noble Topaz (+4 Hit Rating and +4 Agility)
Blue - Shifting Nightseye (+4 Agility and +6 Stamina) and Sovereign Nightseye (+4 Strength and +6 Stamina)

So, now you know how to gear yourself. I must now teach you kitty fu. Let's start with what should be obvious. If you have Claw on your hotbar, get it the hell off. Mangle is a total replacement for Claw, like Mutilate is for Backstab on Assassination rogues. Take Rake off your hotbar if you don't pvp, or put it somewhere out of the way if you do. The only reason to ever use rake is to aid you in bleeding high armor enemies in pvp or to keep rogues from stealthing in pvp. Otherwise, don't use it. It won't benefit your pve dps at all. Okay? Also, you probably won't ever be using Tiger's Fury except for right before a Ravage, and that is only an opener, so I won't be discussing it as part of the DPS cycle. It is also assumed that you are always keeping up the Faerie Fire debuff on the target.

The basic cat attack rotation is simple to remember, but can be surprisingly difficult to master depending on a lot of variables. This includes the hp of the mob, the armor of the mob, whether or not the mob is vulnerable to bleeds and more. But I won't make it too complicated yet. Here's what you do, plain and simple:

Mangle
Shred to 4 or 5 Combo Points*
Wait until your Energy Bar is at least 2/3rds full
Rip
Repeat

Simple, right? It is very simple. Execution of the cycle flawlessly takes practice and patience and it is ultimately where "skill" comes into play. On boss fights where you literally never have to do anything but repeat this cycle, you will find it most feasible to do your best DPS, however, most fights involve running around, halting DPS and possibly emergency tanking. You will lose your combo points for various reasons, or you'll have to mangle more often than you want to in order to keep your Rips doing their maximum damage ticks. You never want to shred without a mangle up, ever, but it will happen, and you will cry out "D'oh!" and then remind yourself to be a lot more careful and observant and to make sure you keep that sodding mangle up so that your shreds stay at their most potent. Yes, you can get lucky and steal a killing blow with a shred that has no mangle when you would have otherwise done less damage, but TRY to resist it because it will potentially breed a bad habit. You want to get into good habits. And good habits are keeping up mangle, waiting for your energy ticks before using a finishing move, and generally being patient. In the long run, these things will without a doubt effect your dps and total damage output. Thank me later!

*Note that Rip damage scales with attack power, but only for your first 4 combo points. This means that the 5th combo point adds only a bit more damage to rip than the 4th. You may find it more within your personal style to Rip at 4 points instead of 5. It can make the cycle itself 'easier' to maintain. Try both and see which you like best!

Now I want to discuss finishing moves for a moment. You always want to use Rip. Period. Unless the target is immune to Bleeds, in which case you curse and cry and sigh at Blizzard's creation of stupid bleed immune bosses and then you most regrettably must use Ferocious Bite. Now, Ferocious Bite is pretty awful. At least it is when you don't have Feral Aggression, which is a talent I refuse to waste points on. Without that talent, my best ferocious bite crit, on a non-vulnerable mob, is usually between 4 and 5k. Let's also bear in mind that my best shred crit, on a non-vulnerable mob, is also between 4 and 5k. That alone should tell you something. Quite frankly, my mangles crit more often than my Ferocious Bites, and my mangle crits are about equal to my Ferocious Bite non-crits. You must be screaming by now "Get Feral Aggression so they don't suck so much!!" but I won't, because I am convinced those 5 talent points remain better used in other talents right now. The biggest problem with Ferocious Bite is that it takes all of your combo points AND all of your energy for an amount of damage that really isn't all that great comparitively unless it crits. I avoid using the move as much as possible, but it is simply unavoidable on mobs that don't bleed. I've found the best way to help make up for the loss of DPS from having to use Ferocious Bite is to powershift right after using it.

Powershifting is the act of shifting out of a form and back into it immediately in order to gain an instant burst of energy or rage from Furor. When used correctly (such as when you are at zero energy, which will always happen after you perform Ferocious Bite), you will see a DPS gain. Powershifting after a Ferocious Bite correctly will allow you to more swiftly get back to your mangle + shreds dps cycle. Bleed immune mobs are when you will be most grateful for crit as you will not be able to benefit from the sustained damage you would normally be putting out from Rip. Need a Powershift macro? Easy.

/cancelform
/cast Cat Form

That easy macro will allow you to shift directly from cat form into cat form, or from bear form into cat form, with one press. Note that you WILL be in caster form for a brief moment. Depending on any lag you have you may or may not see yourself in caster form for that brief moment. If you have no lag, you'll just see a poof of smoke and you'll still be in cat form. Either way, don't panic. All this costs you is a moment and the mana cost of shifting into cat. Powershifting is, essentially, a mana to dps conversion, so make sure you watch your mana bar with an addon such as Smarty Cat Mana Bar which you can pick up at Wow Ace. It'll allow you to keep track of your mana when you're in forms.

The Powershift macro is useful for other stuff too, like removing snares with the press of one button. (I freaking love it on the last phase of the Vashj fight!) You can rewrite the macro and replace Cat Form with Bear Form or Travel Form so that you can run around and hit that button whenever someone snares you in Warsong Gulch. All the other classes will hate your guts! Try it. It's bloody awesome!

Finally, I think I've touched on all of the basics of cat form and some of the more depth aspects of it. I've laid out the information you need you become a super kitty warrior and now it is up to you to use it and master it and show all those saucy bastards that you can dps as good as the rest of them and sometimes better. I promise that with enough practice, patience and of course great gear, you can stretch cat from dps to its limits and it can be downright shocking to other classes who didn't think it was even possible. I don't claim to have mastered it and I think every time I get out there and do some damage I am gradually getting a little bit better at it. Learn what gear you need, practice perfecting your dps cycles and know when it simply isn't your turn to do DPS, and you will become a respected kitty form master!

Leveling Alts, Grinding Rep & Keeping the Game "Fresh"

2007-12-22T06:39:00.000-08:00

As I have previously mentioned, I have played World of Warcraft since release. How, you may ask, do I keep from getting tired of the game? WoW remains a sort of social network for me even when I don't feel like playing, but I am also constantly seeking various ways to keep from getting burned out on it all. While finding reasons to keep me playing WoW is somewhat of a counter-productive activity (if anything I should be looking for reasons to quit and get a hobby that doesn't involve extended hours on my posterior), I continue to do so through many outlets.

The most obvious, of course, is alt-itis. If you've never heard of this syndrome, it simply describes the need to level many, many alternate characters. I currently have 3 level 70s and 2 other characters that will be 70 soon. I am plagued by the issue of no longer having any character slots, because I need at least one bank mule on horde and one bank mule on alliance. On the other hand, I have two characters that I will probably end up deleting, but haven't, because I want to keep their names. There's also the possibility that I'll move my horde to a completely different server, but I'll talk about that some other day. While alt-itis is sometimes described as having so many alts at various levels that you don't have a main or don't get any toons to level 70, I'm not really in that situation. I just keep leveling more characters up as far as I can go and then I decide if I want to keep playing the class at end game, etc. A lot of times if I am not digging a class by level 30, I will delete it. I've deleted and re-made a warlock at least 5 times. I actually made a priest once and deleted it at the record low of level 8. I would really like a healer priest toon but I can't imagine going through leveling it unless I did it entirely with someone else dpsing. No smite spam for me, thanks.

Since the leveling pace in Azeroth has been improved it is much more feasible to level a character to 60, and also to grind reputation from Azerothian factions. Note, however, that unless you make a concious effort to get exalted with a faction (doing as many of their quests as you can and turning in cloth, etc) you still won't get it by default except with your race's faction. I learned this the hard way and am now stuck with an ugly Elekk on my draenei mage unless I choose to waste runecloth, go back and do noob quests or pvp for some other mount that everyone else is using too. The problem is that once you get to around the 30s level, many questgivers will not be part of the main alliance factions but of a neutral one or have no faction at all. You'll be doing a lot of quests for the Steamwheedle Cartel in places like Stranglethorn Vale, Tanaris, Un'goro Crater and now Dustwallow Marsh. At that point you have to look around carefully to pick out quests for a specific alliance faction. Especially with the leveling boost, before you know it you'll be in Outland and still only halfway to exalted with one other alliance faction. The only way to remedy that is to go back to Azeroth and turn in cloth or do old quests. And who wants to do that?

On that note, a widely-known and hated time killer is the grinding of reptuation with the many various factions in WoW. Burning Crusade released dozens of new factions for us to grind ourselves into zombies attaining reputation for and many of those factions you can grind without the aid of friends. A perfect thing to do while waiting for friends to log on! The good news is that daily quests have made reputation grinds a little more tolerable, as you don't feel like you're at the beginning of a road that never seems to end when you have a set of goals every single day. Of course, after a few days you will start to loathe some of these quests and maybe even decide to only do certain ones, but the bottom line is you're still getting some rep and it isn't all from farming 10 million Encrypted Twilight Texts (Memorieeees!). Also, for rep grinds based on non-BOP drops, you have the option of picking whatever toon you have is the least boring to farm with. I find that farming with my hunter is a big time saver so I used her to farm up a Captured Firefly in Zangarmarsh with success. She was also questing in Zangarmarsh at the time, so it was a good way to get exp. (It doesn't hurt that a stack of those Fractured Carapaces sells pretty well to the vendors, too.) Anyway, if you hate rep grinds, Blizzard adds more and more of them to the game all of the time, but you can get reputation through so many activities, it isn't quite as bad to gain as it once was. Personally, I enjoy questing a lot, so I think daily quests were one of the best additions to the game. Additionally, you make a lot of money doing these quests; not just from the rewards but from drops you get along the way. It's easier to make money now. I used to feel reliant on playing the Auction House to make gold and now you never have to go there if you don't want to. Just do your dailies as much as you can and eventually you'll have the money you need for your mount or Blade of Wizardry or whatever it is you need. Epic flying mount? Worth every penny spent. Time is money and it pays for itself. If you have a 70 without epic flying then you may as well work on getting it. You can thank me later!

I am a person who is very into variety. Trying new and different things makes me happy. I feel accomplished when I complete something of this nature, so I am always struggling to keep WoW from becoming repetitive. It's particularly difficult on my main because she is exalted with pretty much every faction she wants to be exalted with, has epic flying and great gear (that is at this point very difficult to upgrade because of guild progression and general lack of DKP in comparison to other people who share the same T5+ armor parts), and I basically only raid with her lately or log on to do something helpful for friends. The good news is I have plenty of time to level alts and try out different classes to see how I like them. Now, if only I could fix the problem of running out of character slots!

Welcome to Warcrack Blog

2007-12-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Hello, World!

I've decided that since I am hopelessly addicted to the World of Warcraft, and love to talk about it, that I'd whip up a blog where I can go on and on about my goings-on in WoW and not have people grow tired of it. :)

As an intro, my main is Riven, a level 70 Night Elf Druid on Silver Hand. I've played Riven since public beta and day one of launch so I've spent most of my time playing a druid. I leveled as a really horrible balance spec (back when Hurricane was our leet 31 pt talent!) and then switched to resto. I played and raided as restoration for about a year and went feral later on. Since I went full feral, I have never switched back to restoration or balance (but sometimes I get an itch to try out tree form.) Back when I healed full-time, life was all about Healing Touch rank 4 and piling on the +heal gear. Now it is.. quite different, and everything is about HoTs. I think the change they made to restoration was for the better and it makes druids both unique and powerful healers.

Ah, if only I had two druids. Alas, my greatest passion is the bane of many players' existance; cat form! I realize fully that many people hate those pesky cat form druids that jump around and try to dps or beat you up in battlegrounds when they should be healing you or baking you pie. While cat form doesn't have the same utility of other core melee dps classes, that doesn't mean we can't become as powerful with a lot of hard work and dedication. And for me, that's what playing a cat form druid is all about. I try to break the mold and be the best I can be at pve damage dealing, but I realize that's only a 3rd (or less) of the druid class and I do what I can to not let my other abilities get rusty. I'm required to do more offtanking than anything else when it comes to 25 man raids, and in PVP you can bet I spend time in every form using every ability I've got with perhaps the exception of Soothe Animal and Teleport: Moonglade. I do not particularly enjoy tanking but it is just something that is necessary to progress in the game as there really are not many people specced for tanking these days. (As least, that is how it seems!) Everyone wants to dps, and can you blame them? DPS is far more fun than tanking to me and I think healing probably comes in second.

Riven's guild history is fairly compact. My first guild was The Order of Fenrir, which I created for me and some friends. After that was Afterlight and then The Valiant; both of which were guilds I raided in. As I write this entry we are currently working on our Mt. Hyjal and Black Temple attunement and beating our heads against a brick wall trying to beat Kael'thas. (Edit: Kael died about a week after I wrote this post or something. Woot.) I can't wait to look back on this entry after we've killed the guy and moved on. I don't remember a fight so frustrating to learn since.. ever. Well, maybe Nefarion, back in the day. :)

While I aimed to make a primarily druid-centric blog, since I have so many alts I enjoy playing I figure I should just say it is a general WoW blog for now as I would like to post about other classes as well.

Some of my alts (all on Silver Hand) are:

Asteri - 68 Draenei Mage (Fire) (Edit: Now level 70 and rockin'!)
Asutra - 70 Troll Rogue (Assasination)
Minwaela - 68 Night Elf Hunter (Beast Mastery)
Terafiti - 70 Tauren Shaman (Enhancement)

.. and a little clump of lower leveled toons here and there.

So I'll be talking about my alts and their specs and professions and such in the future. The more stuff I cover the more interesting this little blog venture will be, so stay tuned!