Psynister tagged me to do a “Warcraft – year in review” post a couple of weeks ago, but being in Christmas whirlwind mode, I decided to save it for an almost new year post (I figured it was apt anyway).

Here are the questions/topics:

My Warcraft Year in Review
1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?
2. What was your favorite new place that you visited?
3. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
5. What was your biggest failure?
6. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
7. What do you wish you’d done less of?
8. What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?
9. Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.


1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Levelled a druid for something different (hahaha – just kidding!)

I embraced 10 man raiding. Back when I was raiding 25s “hardcore”, I had no time for 10s. They were not progression for me, so I had no interest in them. I got angry when people tried to make me do them; why would I want to do the same fights AGAIN but in a smaller raid – for lesser loot, and no progression recognition? I didn’t care about 10 man ladders, or even 10 man achievements, so why would I bother?

But then my guild fell apart, and reformed later as a close group of friends, to do 10 mans – and I discovered how much fun that size raid can be. Now I enjoy doing both size raids.

2. What was your favorite new place that you visited?

Hmm. I love “green” zones – like Howling Fjord, the basin, etc. I adore the music in Storm Peaks, I can’t even tell you how much. The phasing in Icecrown is exciting to progress through. I was impatient for the Culling of Stratholme instance because I love Caverns of Time instances where you can see how the landscape once looked (I was just disappointed that it doesn’t allow you to wander, as you can in Old Hillsbrad). It’s tough to pick a favourite.. but I think I’ll go with Storm Peaks. The music, the quest lines.. and even the Hodir quests – I love it all.

3. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

Guild stability.

4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Bringing Inexorable back.

5. What was your biggest failure?

Not blogging consistently. Two jobs and reforming a guild makes it difficult. In 2010 I’d like to be more consistent with the timing of my posts, even if I can only post once a week.

6. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I absolutely love the new dungeon finder system, I think Blizzard have done an amazing job with it. I love doing random groups with people, but I always hated that I would get an invite, then start heading to the instance, only to find that the others haven’t left Dalaran yet, so after they finally get a wriggle on and get out there, it’s 10-15 minutes later before we can start. This way, I can hit a button, find a group, and zip straight there (and straight out). No more waiting for stragglers – which was what I hated most.

I NEVER used the old LFG tool, ever. I was unsure about using the new one – but as soon as I tried it, I fell in love. Good job, Blizz!

I also got very excited for Ulduar’s release, because I’m in love with titan architecture, and couldn’t wait to see if the inside lived up to the outside.

7. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Stressing over guild dramas, and being the guild mother. I want to be a guildmaster, not a guildmother.

8. What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

There are a few that I really enjoy, I like Restokin for all things druid (leaning more to the theorycrafting side), Matticus for general healing and guild relations.. but there are a whole bunch on my blogroll that are a great mix of beefy content, random musings, gorgeous site design, wit and humour, etc. It’s hard to pick a favourite because I like them all for different reasons

9. Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

1. Never let your raid team fall into the habit of relying on a single person to push them through content, to the point where if that person is absent, the group falls to the floor and people claim that they can’t go on (and that the officers are failing because they’re not stepping in to start pushing people again). I’m talking about seasoned raiders who could do Naxx25 in their sleep, but whining that the raids are horrible/bad/messy when one person isn’t there to lead. I’m not buying that anymore. You can’t do Naxx25 without someone telling you what to do? I want raiders who don’t need to have someone holding their hand to know the trash pulls, or get through frogger, or run back and buff up.

2. Bite the bullet and get rid of the bad eggs before things get worse. Basically, I’m not going to tolerate people acting like jerks this round, no matter how good they are at raiding. I don’t often put my GM hat on, I like to think that the guild can mostly run itself, but if I see you treating people badly, acting like a jerk, or giving us a bad name, expect to cop an earful, a benching, maybe even a boot. The health and atmosphere of my guild is more important to me than having a “top DPSer” on the roster.

I don’t expect people to hold hands and sing songs, but I won’t put up with people stirring trouble, talking others down, or generally acting like idiots. No more Mr Nice Keeva!


Farewell 2009, onto 2010!

Possibly Related Posts:

• So, what’s going on?
• Blog tools: Wibiya
• Oops! I may have missed your message.

I’m rushed off my feet at the moment, it’s 10:30pm and I’m just about to finish work for the day. While my stuff was saving/compiling I cooked my sushi rice and wrapped more presents, and earlier today I managed to squeeze in time to weed the back lawn and put fresh straw into the chicken pen. Tomorrow I’ll probably assemble the sushi while my hair is colouring..

TLDR: super busy, got lots to write but no time to do it!

However, here’s some blatant filler content, courtesy of Drucie, who is now 78, and last night noticed something a bit funny on the ground in Storm Peaks. I decided to fly around and see what else I could find.



Code on the ground near Dun Niffelem – weird.


Crystalsong looking a little more colourful. Patriotic, perhaps?


Merry Christmas from all of us here at Voltarus!


The Bay of Keys in Howling Fjord (with icebergs painted bright blue and green for high visibility)


This water code was blinking on and off.


Sadly, these worgs don’t survive long in the wild, as they have little capacity to blend into the underbrush, making them easy prey for predators.


This one was my absolute favourite – instead of steam rising up from the anvil area, lines of code wiggled upwards – it looked awesome!


(By the way – it was just a random WoW hiccup – not my graphics card having problems, as I first thought. A restart of WoW fixed it)



Happy holidays everyone, back in a few days

Possibly Related Posts:

• Slayer of Dragons
• BETABETABETABETABETABETA
• What keeps you coming back to Druids?

Q: It’s summer here and my computer seems to be overheating a lot. It’s slow to respond, and makes a grinding noise sometimes. When I play World of Warcraft, sometimes my game locks up and I get stuck on loading screens for ages.


There seems to be a little bit of dust on the case – when is a good time to clean it out?

A: Oh, right about now is probably a good time, I would imagine.





Look how festive! It’s a little snow scene!

*whistles Winter Wonderland*



Edit: In response to a question from a guild member – yes, Azjol Nerub is actually located inside my home computer:



Possibly Related Posts:

• Slayer of Dragons
• BETABETABETABETABETABETA
• What keeps you coming back to Druids?

Sorry for the lull, guys – I have a handful of posts I want to put up, but I’ve been really sick for a few days. I’m still not entirely sure what I caught, but I figure when it’s summer in the tropics and you have to go to bed with a hot water bottle because you’re so chilly – maybe you picked up a little bug somewhere. Not very nice. Still feeling not-so-great, but I should be ok after a weekend of rest. Where’s Cure Disease when you need it?

Anyway – I was going to get back on track and post about some other things, but I was going through my RSS and got distracted.

Gnomeaggedon started this ball rolling, and Wow.com picked it up. The question posed is,




Wouldn’t it be easier if everything was shared between all of your characters?


I’m not sure that’s such a great idea..

The immediate problem that springs to mind for me is multiple alts + raid lockouts. Wouldn’t it mean that you could do as I have – level up 5 druids (heh) – and do this:



• raid on 1st character, pass outfit to 2nd character

• raid on 2nd character, pass outfit to 3rd character
• raid on 3rd character, pass outfit to 4th character…


Obviously not everyone has a set of 5 characters that share the same armor class and role (leather/healing) like me, but you get the point, I’m sure. You would essentially only need one set of epic gear but you could potentially raid on up to 9 extra characters. It’s highly unlikely, of course, that anyone would have the time to do this, but if you consider that TOC takes <1hr to clear, that's not an excessive amount of raiding to a hardcore raider. I think they'd do it.

I imagine this would then lead to hardcore raiders doing "dry runs" of tribute-style raids with their "alts" (wearing their main's epics!) for practice, and then when the strat is solid, swap to their main characters (after reclaiming their gear from the alts), to kill the boss. I dunno, maybe that's an extreme example - but when you consider all the guilds that server-hopped for extra attempts in TOC, I don't think it's too much of a stretch.

But that stuff aside, it would basically mean that you could earn 9 more lots of emblems each week (time constraints permitting). You would be drowning in emblems, and be able to share them through your alts, too. You'd be able to deck yourself out in the top tier of badge gear very quickly - is that really the way we want to go?

I mean - don't get me wrong - I'm impatient and I wish I had more Emblems of Frost right now - but I don't want them to just land in my lap in the first week. There's no fun in that. This game is all about improving your character, and if you improve it instantly and have nothing left to earn, it's dull. Honestly, I still feel sad that I have nothing left to do with my triumph badges except trade for gems - and with the new random dungeons, the "useless" Triumphs keep piling up.

But, on the other hand - I'd love to be able to hand those badges over to another character to help it get a little more geared...


Other possible problems

Some other cons (mostly speculation):



• Enchant mat prices go up as fewer items are disenchanted because they are snapped up for alts or "just in case I start playing my mage again"

• A flood of over geared, under-experienced alts, levelled in a week with the RAF system, dressed in top tier epics, but with virtually no knowledge of how the heck that class is played..
• "I'm rolling on this for my alt"



Alternative BOA system

Commenter Mr Crow on Wow.com had an interesting idea - don't make everything BOA, just make the lower level emblems BOA, for example just the Heroism badges. That way, you can gear up your alts with Heroism gear easily, but it's not as ridiculous as being able to throw the top level gear at your alts.

I would probably suggest allowing the tier below current (or perhaps two tiers - T8/Conquest gear), and have this follow along with patches in a similar way to how Blizzard changed instances to drop Valor, then Conquest, and now Triumph, so that alts and rerolls have quick access to the previous tier of gear.

So, if BOA tier gear was 2 tiers behind current, you could get your newly minted alt into Tier 8 to get started running your random heroics for triumph and frost emblems. I think this would be perfectly adequate; you'd have a solid set of gear to get you started in heroics and lower level raids, but it wouldn't be over the top.

Allowing alts to piggyback around on mains for Tier 10/current tier gear is a bit much, I think.


What I'd love to see go BOA



• Bags

• BOA profession patterns - eg a scaling tailored item that I could give to my alts to wear - like the current BOA items, but something I can make myself. Ditto for the leatherworkers, blacksmiths, etc. It would be an additional "perk" for being a crafter - something that you can send to your lowbies to help them.
• Keys, particularly for dungeons.
• Special items like TCG loot.
• Mounts.. I'm not sure. I suppose it would be nice to have my TCG mounts on my other characters, and my rare drops available to them - especially the fast ones. It would also make me more inclined to want to raid on my alts for a chance at say, Onyxia's mount - I would hate to see that drop while I was playing Kiiva and not Keeva! And I would definitely love to have my mammoth (with vendors) on my alts.



Let us share achievements!

Ok, this isn't really related, but I do wish Blizzard would implement a way to share your achievements across all characters, but still show the individual character's achievements as well.

So say for example if I have 100 pets on Keeva but 5 different ones on Kiiva (say, the TCG pets), my "Overall" achievements would say 105 pets, but next to it, it might say "(Keeva: 100)". That way, we could have the sum total of our achievements across all characters - but still show the "real" value of our current character, so it's not like we're "cheating" by claiming them all as our own. I'd love to be able to add in my vanilla stuff from Caoimhe - the reps, the raids, old feats of strength - things that stung when I left them behind.

And hey - it would help as your personal raiding resume - because you could show your entire raiding history/experience across all characters. How many times have I told people that "this is just my alt, I've done XYZ raid on my main"? Just thinking aloud, really..



I'm really not sure about making everything BOA. Obviously it has its merits, it would make playing alts easier, fielding raids much easier (down a healer? Just have someone throw a bunch of emblems at an alt to gear it up in a few days!), and generally reduce "the grind".

But isn't that grind part of the sense of achievement? If you suddenly have 5 epic characters and the ability to produce 300 emblems a week - if all you ever had to do was level a character to 80 and it was instantly able to put on your epic gear - and if your characters were all geared within a few weeks of each patch - wouldn't that make things pretty boring?

Or am I weird for thinking that way? Masochistic?



It's not that I want to grind out 5 different characters to epic gearsets and enough badges to go around - like many other people I wish I had more time to play my alts, and I lament the fact that I don't have enough time on my hands to gear them up better, faster.

But really - if you take away the process, if you make it super quick or virtually nonexistent..

..then what's left in the game to do?

Possibly Related Posts:

• Super quickie: Cata glyphs observations
• So, what’s going on?
• A little bit of history repeating itself

For those not in the know, Gift of the Earth Mother has been redesigned, and the upshot is that we need a whole lot more haste to get to the haste soft cap – which is very important if you spend your time tossing out HoTs on as many people as possible.

It means that you now need more than double the haste that we used to aim for (in order to get our GCD down to 1.0s). Because we now need so much more haste, some players are opting for 18 points in the Balance tree to be able to pick up Celestial Focus, which awards you 3% haste.

It’s a temporary shortcut to the soft cap, basically.



How do I know how much haste I need?

The basics:

25man raiders will often/usually have Boomkins/Ret pallies and Shamans to provide their respective buffs (Imp Moonkin, Swift Ret Aura, and Wrath of Air – remember though, boomkins and pallies don’t stack). If this is true, you will need 735 haste if you have 3/3 CF, or 856 haste if you don’t have points in CF.

10 man raiders may find themselves without one or both buffs, so you may need to have higher haste to compensate for these times.

Everyone’s situation and gear varies – so to see how much haste you’ll need for various combinations of talents and buffs, here’s the full breakdown.



Do I really need that much haste?


To put it very simply – being at the soft cap will allow you to HoT more people. HoTting more people = more healing = a pretty big deal.

We’re not talking about trying to top meters or snipe heals here – it’s about being able to cover as much of the raid as you are used to covering. If you’re used to being able to cover a dozen people with Rejuvs, plus toss the occasional WG and maybe a heal to the tanks, if your haste is low (post 3.3), you’re not going to be able to heal that many people anymore, because you have to wait longer for the GCD to finish before you can HoT the next person.

What effect will this have on your healing and the raid’s success?



Figure 1: Sometimes I exaggerate a bit


If you’re chasing some anecdotal evidence that you need to bump up your haste value – I took Kiiva (my other healy druid) into heroics last night to get her started on some new gear. Problem: I totally forgot to respec her for 3.3 with CF. Trying to get through the whole group with HoTs on Loken felt SO SLOW. I could still do it, definitely, but even on a 5 man group it felt slow and as though it was really hindering me. I definitely wouldn’t want to heal a 10 or 25man raid without more haste!



What do I need to give up to be able to take Celestial Focus?

This is mostly personal choice. I chose to drop 3 points in Revitalize and 1 further point in Living Seed (now 1/3).


There’s not really a right or wrong way to choose the talents to pluck your points from. Most people will drop Living Seed, Revitalize, or Empowered Touch to be able to get CF. There’s not really a “cookie cutter” CF spec – it’s up to your personal choice and style to dictate where to borrow those points from.

• If you tank heal quite a lot, you’ll likely want to keep Living Seed and Emp Touch, but drop Revitalize.
• If you raid heal more, and particularly if you mostly do 10s and can’t always guarantee a Replenish in the raid, then you’ll probably prefer to prioritise Revitalize.
• Points in Empowered Touch is entirely personal choice; many people say that they “hardly ever use Nourish” and only ever use Healing Touch with Nature’s Swiftness, so losing Emp Touch is no big deal. You need to weigh it up against ther others and decide which is more valuable to you, your style, and your situation.


Personally – I love Revitalize, but I chose to give it up because it is less valuable in 25s than in 10s, and I value it less now. I still love it – but if it’s not going to get as much mileage, then I can consider dropping it (for now).


I originally decided to take 2 points out of Empowered Touch to give to Revitalize, but my basic (no-HoT) Nourishes were losing about 1000 healing, and I didn’t like the thought of 1000hp smaller Nourishes. I do use Nourish quite a bit, and in situations where you may need to “spam” to top people up in a hurry, I wouldn’t want to be losing 1000+ healing off each cast. So I weighed things up and decided that I could do without Revitalize for the time being, in favour of beefier Nourishes (should I need them). I love bringing interesting utility to the raid – boosting melee DPS with Revitalize – but for now, I’ll keep my slightly larger Nourishes.


I’ve also lost a point in Living Seed, but since I will likely be (mostly) raid healing, that’s also not the end of the world. If I pick up more haste gear, I’ll probably put points back into Living Seed first (but this will depend on how much direct healing I’m finding I need for IC).


All up, I don’t think I have sacrificed too much in order to temporarily squeeze Celestial Focus into my spec.


Need help choosing a CF spec? Try Lissanna’s 3.3 healing guide – here are her suggested specs.



When can I take points back out of CF and get my old talents back?

Taking points in CF can just be a temporary measure until you get more haste gear to reach the cap with haste alone. Then you will be able to remove points in CF and go back to your old spec, if you like.

Use this list to find out how much haste you will need in order to drop back to 2/3 CF, keeping in mind which raid buffs you are likely to have. Remember, for example, that if you don’t have any shamans dropping Wrath of Air, you’ll need higher haste than someone whose raid does have a shaman.

For raiders with both Moonkin/Ret and Shaman buffs, you’ll need the following haste to be able to drop points in CF:




Example: Keeva has picked up a couple of nice haste rings, plus upgraded her helm, and is now at 764 haste. That’s pretty darn close to 775, so if I wanted to, I could drop back to 2/3 CF to be able to put a point back into Living Seed.

I’m going to wait a little while though, just in case I take a big upgrade that has no haste on it, and my haste drops down. I like to have a little bit of wiggle room.


What about gemming for haste?

Some druids choose to gem for haste rather than taking points in Celestial Focus. You can either use Reckless Ametrine or Quick King’s Amber to boost up your haste a little.

If you’re gemming instead of taking CF, I believe you need about 100 haste to offset the 3% from CF (please someone correct me if this is wrong – you know how I am with numbers). If this is true, then you’d need to swap in 5 King’s Ambers into your gear. To me, this is a little much, but it will depend very much on how attached you are to those 4 or so extra points in the resto tree.

I’ve opted to use Reckless gems in some of my yellow slots, but I’m not aggressively gemming for haste at this point. My haste has already jumped from 617 to 764 in the last few days, and I’m sure it won’t take long for me to get enough to be able to drop CF and return to “normal” gemming.



Where can I get more haste gear?

Tree Haelz put together a list of the haste gear available in 3.3 – check it out if you’re not sure where to get your next piece of haste armor.



I hope this helps the trees out there who aren’t sure what to do with their haste and talents.

Possibly Related Posts:

• So, what’s going on?
• Resto Druid calculator!
• Power Auras exports – Ruby Sanctum

Quick update before I head to bed.

Icecrown is a breath of fresh air. I’ve quite enjoyed it, although I do feel as though Lady Deathwhisper is a bit of a zzzfest for healing. Bit spammy. Gunship was much more fun than I anticipated.

We didn’t get Saurfang down, which is disappointing – would have been nice to clear it the first night, but we had a lot of issues with disconnects, and we were a healer down for the fight. Being undergeared (going in with mostly 10 man gear, rather than 25 man gear) and down one healer made it slightly too difficult for us. Hopefully we’ll get him tomorrow though. I’m hoping we can get him, despite being undergeared.. then it’s off to do 10s

But here is the absolute highlight of the evening (and may or may not have attributed to a little bit of time lost on Saurfang attempts..):



Holding up the raid to bounce around as a rocketbear is VERY NAUGHTY.

(But I couldn’t stop laughing)

Possibly Related Posts:

• A little bit of history repeating itself
• Casual Kingslayer
• Slayer of Dragons

Here’s the final list of 3.3 changes that are relevant to druids.


Latest patch notes can always be found at
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html.

Implemented/current patch notes can be found at
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/.




Restoration



• Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

• Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.
• Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.
• Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.
• Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation: This glyph allows for the druid’s haste to reduce the time between the periodic healing effects of Rejuvenation.
• Idol of Flaring Growth: Now has a detailed combat log tooltip.
• Nightsong Regalia Set: The bonus to Rejuvenation from this set will now work properly with the Idol of Rejuvenation equipped. In addition, the instant heal provided now has a correct combat log tooltip.
• Rejuvenation: Druids will no longer get a more powerful spell error message when attempting to overwrite a Rejuvenation they cast.


Balance



• Nature’s Grace: The tooltip now correctly indicates that it will not be activated from periodic spell critical strikes.

• Force of Nature: Health on the treants has been increased.
• Pet avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
• Idol of Lunar Fury: Now has a detailed Combat log tooltip.
• Glyph of Hurricane: Now modifies the spell tooltip on Hurricane to indicate the spell also applies a movement slowing effect.
• Hurricane: When cast from Bear Form, Cat Form, or Dire Bear Form, this spell will now channel properly instead of stopping the channel as soon as the shapeshift is cancelled.


Feral



• Prowl: This ability no longer has multiple ranks and penalizes movement speed by 30%.

• Predatory Strikes: The Predatory Swiftness buff from this talent now has an 8-second duration.
• Idol of The Corruptor: Now has a detailed Combat log tooltip.
• Warmth of Forgiveness: Now grants mana properly to druids in Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form.
• Infected Wounds: This ability is no longer considered to be in the magical defense category; therefore spell hit no longer applies to its activation. Tooltip error corrected.
• Swipe (Bear): Tooltip corrected to display 8 yard range.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Super quickie: Cata glyphs observations
• So, what’s going on?
• A little bit of history repeating itself





General Vezax down: 24 April 2009
. . .
Yogg-Saron down: 7 December 2009


Well done, Inexorable – only 8 months behind



It’s worth noting though that we are now 6/9 Ulduar hard modes in our first 2 nights of raiding, with the new Inex taking just 6 attempts to do Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood. Colour me impressed and excited!

Can’t wait for this week when we can either jump into Icecrown (if it’s out), or try our hand at TOGC together for the first time.

Possibly Related Posts:

• A little bit of history repeating itself
• Casual Kingslayer
• Power Auras exports – Ruby Sanctum

When I reformed the guild to do 10s and socialise, I said no more 25s. Weekend PUGs are fine.. but the stress and strain of running a 25man raiding guild is too great, and we wanted to avoid that.

But since then, people started itching for 25s again. Our 25man PUG (part guild, part PUG) has killed Faction Champions in TOGC. The guild got a taste for raiding again, and a ripple of eagerness went through the ranks.

I wasn’t sure. But I didn’t want to pull up my GM boots and flatly deny them. So we put it to a vote. Evidently a lot of people have been wanting to get back to 25s.. and so here we are, preparing for 25man Icecrown..




I’m excited, a bit scared too. It’s no secret that we’ve split and reformed several times. There’s no knowing what will happen this time.. but the enormous support and flood of quality applications is really great. People still see us as a force on the server, I suppose.

Despite having even less free time.. I believe I will blog better while raiding 25s. I always did, I think. I adore 10s, and will keep running them, but I always felt as though 25s were the real meat for me, and without them, it took away part of what I enjoyed writing about – the endgame tactics that I loved exploring, tweaking, and sharing. I’m excited to be getting that back, for my blog.

Anyway – must go – I have a guild bank to cleanup and restock (*glee!*).

Possibly Related Posts:

• A little bit of history repeating itself
• Blog tools: Wibiya
• Oops! I may have missed your message.

I’m really looking forward to the random, cross-server PuG system.

I love to PuG. Call me crazy, but I really do love it. What I don’t enjoy, though, is having to find groups. Even as a healer, even though it’s easy to “get” groups, because healers are in demand – I still find it tedious to join a group, see that we only have 3 people.. start heading to the instance, realise that the rest of the group thought they’d stay in Dalaran until the group was full.. wait for another person to come to the stone – all while the rest of the group whines for summons. Blah. It’s really what discourages me from grouping with random people – I’m too impatient for everyone else to get their act together.

So I can’t wait for the random PuG system that fills the group for you, and teleports you right to the instance. Zap!


It’s either PuG, or take off my pants

I remember my very first heroic, back playing my NE druid. It was harsh. I remember having to spam heal the tank just on the trash pulls – and that was in one of the easiest heroics, Slave Pens. I thought it was crazy difficult.

Later playing Keeva, throughout TBC we jostled for the top guild on the server, and we were pretty much geared to the teeth. Heroics became so easy that I could tab out and talk to people on MSN during fights (bad druid!), or watch TV. Once you outgeared the content, Heroics became just as easy as doing a normal instance, really.

So I started to strip down for heroics.

That is, I would remove some gear to make it more interesting. More of a challenge. Less power, smaller mana pool, etc.

My outfit of choice was usually my Blue Overalls, Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat, and Farmer’s Broom. I found that I could remove choice visible items from my set, but keep the items that didn’t show – so that it looked as though I was wearing just the RP set, but I still kept a decent amount of healing:

- Neck
- Cape (not shown)
- Belt (looked fine with the overalls)
- Boots (I’m Tauren – they don’t show anyway)
- Bracers (no gloves though, too bulky)
- Rings
- Trinkets
- Idol

I managed to keep around the 1400 healing mark, which was around about the amount of healing I started doing heroics with, which was perfect to provide a challenge.

Farmer Keeva will heal you!


Note: I don’t do this sort of thing if I think it would jeopardise the run or annoy people. Someone did blame me for a wipe once, but he pulled two groups of mobs when the group wasn’t ready, and everyone agreed it was his fault, not mine. It’s really not my style to do things “4 lolz” at the expense of the group – I just sometimes feel like stripping my character down will be more challenging and engaging than steamrolling it.



Me, Keeva, Kiiva, Christmas, and waiting for ICC


As you guys know, I mainly do 10 man raids on Keeva these days. With ICC looming, Christmas around the corner, and two jobs, I don’t have much time to play at the moment. But I find that when I am online, I don’t care for any of the stuff I used to like to do. Farming, grinding, collecting achievements, doing dailies. I used to really enjoy that. Now, it bores me. I try to fish for a while, but zzz. I haven’t done my Argent dailies for ages, despite wanting the mounts.


I just want to raaaaaaaaaid.


In the small amount of free time that I get to be online, I want to log on, do some raiding… and then I usually have to log off. I don’t really mind what I raid.. I just want to get in and heal people.


Obviously, Keeva gets locked into TOC10 and TOGC10, so I can’t go PuG that with her outside of normal raid times. We also PuG TOC25 and TOGC25 on weekends, so I can’t take any groups through the week.


That’s where Kiiva (or “scrubby Keeva” as I have affectionately nicknamed her) comes in. Kiiva has a couple of TOC10 items, but the rest of her gear is crafted, with a smattering of Naxx gear and some blues. I refer to her as “my baby druid”.

Kiiva


I answered a call in Trade the other day for a healer for TOC10. I linked my achievement, and told them that I had also done TOGC10, and TOC25 on my main, just to give them a little more confidence in my ability. I was invited, and headed to the instance.

When I got in there, the raid leader looked at my gear, and said,

“16k hp and mana??????”


I laughed, and told him I had done it before, and it would be fine.


One of the healers disconnected very early on the beasts encounter, and the other one died partway through Icehowl, meaning I had to solo heal it. And I did, just fine.


At the end, I got a bunch of surprised whispers about my healing. It felt really good. Obviously, I knew I could heal it; I had done it before; but it was really nice to go into a group where everyone doubted you could handle it, then to have the other healers die or disconnect, and still pull the group through it (especially if your gear is pretty bad). It was great. For the rest of the night I helped the priest learn the fights through whispers, and passed a healing neck to her (Kiiva is my alt, after all.. and I had already picked up some shoulders). Another 25man raiding druid jumped in after that, and it was a really smooth run.


I love doing raids on Kiiva because her gear gives a bit more of a challenge. People look at her Charmed Cierge and think “we’re doomed.” Then, miraculously, it’s a great run, and everyone learns not to judge a book by its scrubby, scrubby cover.


It just goes to show that if you know your class (having played 5 druids over 4 years helps), if you know how to manage your miserable 16k mana, if you know the fights already (I think I could do TOC with my eyes closed).. then you know the dance, you know when certain damage is going to come in, and what to cast to prepare for that… and you can do it with 16k mana and ~1800 spellpower. And boy is it fun!


So here’s to PuG raid leaders who take chances.



We pug TOGC25


On weekends, a priest in the guild runs his own TOC25 runs. There are a couple of GDKP runs on the weekend too, but our “thatpug” runs have cemented themselves as (I guess you could say) the premier PuG hordeside. We clear everything in about an hour, very smooth. The loot is done through a standard main spec /roll (the usual deal), which is less attractive than GDKP to many people, but our runs are so smooth and quick that we still have a huge demand for spots.


With the calibre of players turning up, the DPS output and how smooth the runs were, we decided to try TOGC. At first it was almost for laughs – to see if a PuG could clear hard mode Beasts (something than many guilds are still working on), but we really started to see that there were some high quality players showing up, and we realised it wasn’t such a silly idea after all.


We killed Beasts on our 5th try – first time we had been in there. 46 attempts remaining. We also killed Jaraxxus. He didn’t drop my trinket.


This weekend, our second week of tries, we got Beasts on the 4th try – 47 remaining. We one-shot Jaraxxus, and got Faction Champs in 3 attempts.


We’re coming 6th on server progression, although nobody can officially recognise us because we’re not a guild


Note: A few people have said, “It’s not a PuG if you have the same people going each week” (ie, “you’re cheating!!!!”) but in reality, there’s really only a small core of people who go each time. The priest hand-picks the best people available, and while it does include people he knows (because he knows their level of performance), it’s not always the same group.


Some have also said “why don’t you just join up as a guild” but the fact is, we all have guilds already – and a lot of the people that we bring in are skilled, geared alts, whose mains are already saved because they belong to progression guilds. We like coming together on weekends, but we have our own guilds that we want to stick with



My name is Keeva and I love to PuG!

Possibly Related Posts:

• So, what’s going on?
• Resto Druid calculator!
• Power Auras exports – Ruby Sanctum