It’s another pre-expansion slowdown. Interest in Northrend is waning. Personally, I find it quite difficult to blog when there isn’t much happening in-game, since that is where I draw my inspiration from. For the time being, there’s not much to write about in terms of news, changes, or advice – since we’re approaching the end of another expansion. It’s also hard to write guides and explanations when you know that in a short time, things will change. So I find myself grasping for blog posts that aren’t purely “here’s what I’m doing right now.”

But I’m really looking forward to Cataclysm. Possibly more than expansions past. I think this one has a lot of potential because of the shift in my play style recently – while I’m still serious about raiding and want to progress, I’m no longer “hardcore” and I don’t want it to be my life’s goal to “win”. I’m content these days playing with good friends. And, more and more, I’m enjoying alts and offspecs, levelling and exploring.




I think that Cataclysm will be the expansion that sees me levelling and playing a range of different classes.

Anyway, here are my pre-Cataclysm plans, if anyone is interested – in no particular order.


Take pictures

I intend to hoof it around all of my favourite places in Azeroth and make sure I get some nice snaps. I want to be able to look back and compare. I’ve already done Orgrimmar – and the alpha leaks showed massive changes there. It made me glad that I’d taken the time to remember Orgrimmar myself. Of course, I could just look up other people’s shots, but it wouldn’t feel the same.


Stockpile for my alts

I thought about stockpiling to sell for $$$, but meh. I’ve always made plenty of cash and I’ve never had to scrape. I don’t really feel the need to have 100k+ gold sitting about. However – I do intend to put away the materials necessary for first aid and any professions that my newbies might need, such as alchemy etc. I don’t want to have to mess around waiting for someone to put 5 Mageroyal up on the AH.

Oh, and of course, grab them plenty of bags, and get some appropriate BOA gear organised.


Do MC and AQ20

I still don’t have these finished on Keeva.


Finish as many other achievements as I can

This is pretty low priority. I can never “win” on achievement points since I don’t ever PvP/arena. I do enjoy doing achievements.. but it’s not something I care very much about these days. I’d like to get some of the old raiding ones finished, but I doubt it will happen – so I’m content to do what I can, but let the rest go for now. I did get my Ironbound Drake yesterday, though!


Level my three high level alts

There was a time that I said I would never play anything but resto druid in a group or a raid. But since I’ve stepped in as guild boomkin, I’ve loved it. Not enough to do it full-time, but I do really enjoy it. And that opened up my mind to playing other DPS characters too. I guess I was scared – I’ve been a healer so long that I was worried I would be terrible. Truth is I do pretty good – so I bet I could play another DPS character without too much trouble.

With Cataclysm raids being one raid per lockout, I suspect many people will be alting it up on weekends, with alt runs, pugs, and GKP. I never really had the chance, since my 80 alts are druids, and after a week of raiding on on resto druid, I’m not particularly keen to do it on the weekend. But I could totally see myself being a mage or priest (or whatever) in some weekend GKP runs. I enjoyed the couple of GKP runs I went on, so I’m definitely looking forward to this.

My three high (60+) alts are hunter, mage, priest.

The priest was going to be Disc, but healing on her just didn’t feel right. I like shadow a lot, though – so maybe that’s the way to go.

Thawm, my mage, is basically a JC/enchanter mule. But y’know, I miss playing mage. The only problem is that he’s a male BE, and he just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I’ve decided that when we’re able to race change to goblin, he will become a female goblin mage. I suspect he/she will be my main alt in Cataclysm – I’m really having a blast.

Earka is my hunter, and I love her too, although I’m not particularly confident with her yet. I love orcs – I desperately wish there were orc druids, I would be there like a shot.

Earka’s pet is Trotters, a black pig from Durotar. I don’t like fancy pets; it’s the RP in me. Earka is salt of the earth, and her pets are plain but loyal. And whatnot. Of course, I’ll grab a wolf (a prairie wolf from around Thunderbluff – nothing fancy) for raiding. But Trotters is her loyal pet.

Trotters has been UPGRADED! He is now EPIC TROTTERS. It makes me giggle. But I really love it – it’s the same model pig, but the pigs in Razorfen have an armored look. So as Earka has progressed through the world, so has Trotters become bigger and better.




Yay trotters!

Kiiva will remain, but I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with her. Another druid is fairly redundant, particularly with the raid lockout changes. I can’t bear to delete, though!

Drucie WILL be deleted. But not in vain. When my troll druid reaches 85 and has full herb/mining skills, Drucie will be deleted and reborn as a Tauren paladin! I love her name and look, but don’t need four high level druids on the same faction/server. Think of it as a career change.

Keeva, of course, will always be resto – but this time around I will absolutely be building her a boomkin off-set!


Resto guide v2.0

I’ve already started work on version 2 of my guide! I’m VERY excited. I had a brainwave about a better way to set it all out, plus more information to include, more diagrams and images, etc. Basically, an even more user-friendly layout. Did I mention very excited? I can’t wait to get more information in beta/Cataclysm so that I can update it and release it again. *bounces*

I’ll be levelling two new druids in Cataclysm; a troll to be my new feral fun character, and a Worgen – I adore their animations so far. The troll will be levelled through questing exclusively (or almost exclusively), but the Worgen will be levelled partly through dungeons. This way I can update and flesh out my “levelling as resto in dungeons” part of the guide – in case much has changed.

I think this will be a bit of an ongoing thing – it’s hard to go back and look through the eyes of a fresh druid. But I really enjoy doing it. My guide is my new love, and I intend to make it the most comprehensive out there.


Spring cleaning

- guild bank
- personal bank (it’s so hard )
- personal guild bank
- unused alts – delete and make space
- blog: clean up, update sidebar a bit, review blogroll. Update the “about me” page


And of course

Enjoy the wait with my friends!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Cataclysm: U cannot has noms.
• Cataclysm: Tier 11 set bonuses
• Cataclysm: official druid form previews

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS TALENT SPOILERS.
I respect your right to not look – so don’t read if you don’t want to know!

Also, a standard and very obvious disclaimer: These are VERY preliminary, grabbed by mmo-champion. They could be inaccurate, full of errors, incomplete, etc. Or Blizzard could change them at a moment’s notice. I’m simply going to summarise what the changes appear to be right now. They are obviously subject to massive change, so don’t take any of these as final. Nor should you take too much notice of numbers, as Blizzard often uses placeholders.




Link to the new talent tree:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid#18v87ThC4QRLU,,11927

Here’s my summary of what’s gone, what’s new, and what’s been changed. There are some weird changes in there – remember, take them with a grain of salt for now. Also – some talents seem to have different first ranks to their subsequent ranks. I don’t really understand why – it could be an oversight, something to do with masteries, or just a mistake. I suspect it applies to all ranks, but is displaying incorrectly. If you can shed some light, please let me know. Edit: As Alamein commented, it’s quite possibly the old talent text sticking around in some (but not all) of the amended talents. It certainly seems that way. I’ll make that leap and edit it for now – but if something changes, I’ll fix it up.

First up, because it’s probably what most people were waiting for:
ToL is on a 5 minute cooldown, and lasts 45 seconds (part of Imp ToL reduces this cooldown by 30/60/90 seconds).


NEW talents



• Blessing of the Grove (2) – Increases healing done by Rejuvenation by 2/4%, the direct damage of your Moonfire by 3/6%, and the damage done by your Claw and Mangle by 2/4%.
• Perseverance (5) – Reduces all spell damage taken by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Efflorescence (3) – Requires 3 points in Living Seed. When you critically heal with your Regrowth spell you also sprout a bed of healing flora underneath the target, healing all nearby friendly targets within 15 yards who stand on them for 10/2/30% of the amount healed by your Regrowth every 1 sec for 7 sec.
• Fury of Stormrage (3) – You have a 2/4/6% chance when you cast Nourish to cause your next Wrath spell to be instant cast and cost no mana, and when you Moonfire a target that is at or under 25% health you have a 0% (assume this should be 20%)/40/60% chance to cause your next Starfire to be instant cast. Lasts for 8 sec.

Perseverance looks PvPish, unless you might take it for encounters with lots of magic damage splashing around. I haven’t actually played with the tree to see how many floater points we have left over – but I’d probably at least take 2/5 points here instead of Subtlety.

I like Efflorescence – it may help fill the hole left by not being able to “spam” WG on melee. Could also be handy for fights where the raid stacks. Group hugs!

Fury of Stormrage is a DPS talent, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how many points we have leftover. I don’t mind doing a bit of DPS on trash or in small groups etc, so if there’s room.. sure, why not. Not in a pure healing build, though. But again – hard to know what’s going to be expected of us and our specs.


Talents DELETED



• Improved Mark of the Wild
• Intensity
• Gift of Nature
• Living Spirit



Talents UNCHANGED



• Nature’s Focus
• Furor
• Subtlety
• Natural Shapeshifter
• Master Shapeshifter
• Omen of Clarity
• Tranquil Spirit
• Improved Rejuvenation (tooltip updated to include Swiftmend)
• Nature’s Swiftness
• Living Seed
• Empowered Rejuvenation (tooltip updated to include Swiftmend)
• Moonglow
• Nature’s Majesty
• Nature’s Grace



CHANGED Talents



• Naturalist – effect unchanged, but now required if you want to take Nature’s Swiftness (replaces Intensity in the tree).
• Improved Tranquility – threat reduction effects unchanged. Grants 25% damage reduction while casting Tranquility, rather than a cooldown reduction. I assume rank 2 is 50% damage reduction.
• Nature’s Bounty – Increases the crit chance of Regrowth by 10% on targets at or below 25% health, and you have a 20% chance when you critically heal with HT and Nourish to reduce Swiftmend’s cooldown by 0.5sec (**Rank 1 info only – don’t have 2-5 info yet). This talent is now required if you want Swiftmend.
• Swiftmend – effect unchanged, but mana cost 12%, down from 16%.
• Empowered Touch – Your HT heals for 5% more on targets at or below 25% health, and your Nourish sell has a 50% chance to refresh the duration of your Lifebloom on targets. (**Rank 1 info only – don’t have 2 info yet)
• Natural Perfection – no longer gives crit, just reduces damage.
• Revitalize – When your Regrowth or Lifebloom heal over time periodic critically hit, you instantly regenerate 1/2/3% of your base mana. Seems to imply that it will no longer return power to your allies, just mana to yourself.
• Tree of Life – Increases healing done by HoTs by 15%, increases armor by 200%, but reduces movement speed by 30%. In addition, some of your spells are temporarily enhanced while shapeshifted. Lasts 45 seconds. 5 minute cooldown.
• Improved Tree of Life – Reduces the cooldown of your ToL by 30/60/90 sec, and increases damage done while in ToL form by 5/10/15%.
• Wild Growth – 37% of base mana, up from 23%. Heals for 686 over 7 sec, down from 1442. 10 second cooldown, up from 6. So – weaker, more expensive, and slightly longer cooldown.
• Improved Barkskin – No longer has the ability to reduce the chance that Barkskin is dispelled.
• Gift of the Earthmother – Increases the healing done by your Tranquility on targets at or below 25% health by 4%, increases the healing done by the bloom effect of your Lifebloom by 2%, and your Rejuvenation spell also instantly heals for 3% of the total periodic effect. (**Rank 1 info only – don’t have 2-5 info yet)
• Genesis – now affects Swiftmend.
• Celestial Focus – no longer provides haste (just reduces pushback while casting Starfire, Hibernate and Hurricane).
• Nature’s Splendor – When you cast Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth or Lifebloom you have a 33/66/100% chance to increase its duration by 3sec. (Partial points in this would be awful for HoT rotations, so it’s probably an all-or-nothing talent)



My thoughts

Interesting stuff. Being “forced” to take Naturalist hints at what has been implied – HT will be a more popular spell. There’s also a few mini buffs to Lifebloom, hinting at it becoming more popular, perhaps. And of course some to Regrowth, plus the addition of Efflorescence – so I’m sure that will be used more, too. That’s good, I like Regrowth. I enjoy using a range of different spells – and I hope Blizzard does stick to what they’ve said about moving us away from blanketing (but still having HoTs as our strength).

I’m not disappointed by the WG cooldown change – 10 seconds is fine by me. Nor the cost – I don’t mind if it’s a bit more expensive. But I *am* disappointed that it’s now less than half the strength (if those numbers are correct).

I’m also disappointed that Revitalize no longer seems to give power back to party/raid members. I loved bringing a unique ability – particularly for the melee. But this is probably something else to discourage us away from Rejuv blanketing.

The cooldown on ToL doesn’t seem too bad, especially when it’s cut by 1.5 mins with Imp ToL. But where are the juicy details of the spell changes? WANT.

ToL’s “snare” is back – I’m concerned. If we use ToL as our “OCRAP” button for boosted healing, that could coincide with times during a fight where you (and the rest of the raid) are trying to get out of bad stuff. Imagine popping it on Sindy then being pulled in – you’d have to pop out again (wasting the cooldown) in order to run out to survive. Hello Archimonde. I’m not sure whether this is going to stick – I hope not. I don’t think a snare is a good trade off for buffed heals for 45 seconds. But we’ll have to wait and see the effects of ToL before we can make the call that being caught in or out of it will be good or bad.

Imp ToL also boosts damage while in ToL. Hmm. I can only assume that some of ToL’s weird spell effects will include damage spells (say, instant Wraths for a really random example). Otherwise – why on earth would you pop a healing cooldown and then waste it by standing there, nuking? That’s all I can think of – that it will also do weird and wonderful things to our DPS abilities to become a healing AND/OR dps cooldown. Maybe?


It’s hard to know how things will effect us – without knowing more on the mechanics, health pools, encounter damage etc. But it’s interesting to get a first taste of the changes.

I’ll report more details as they crop up (and I’ll comment more once I’ve digested the info a little better) – but once again, unless it’s posted by Blizzard as final, you should take all information as incomplete and NOT finalised.

I know that some bloggers are taking the high road and choosing not to report on any leaked/ unconfirmed information – personally I think that many people want the info, even if it’s full of alpha/beta holes, so I don’t mind filing for moral bankruptcy and putting it up (E&OE). Of course, it will always be behind BIG warnings, and no titles will include specific spoilers. I do respect people’s right to not know.

Regardless, it’s important to remember that all information is unconfirmed and not finalised unless stated otherwise.

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Beru over at Falling Leaves set us a Make a Memory Challenge. I’ve been planning to jump in and do something similar for a while – I want to make sure I can look back and remember the zones of Azeroth “as they were”.

As a baby druid of only Level 30 or so, I remember swimming all the way up the coast of Eastern Kingdoms, and (cough) wall hacking my way up onto the top of the plaguelands. It was pretty boring really, just flat placeholder ground texture, with chunky, cubic mountains. But it was kinda cool, considering that in a few months, the coastline wouldn’t exist, and in fact it would be part of a new piece of the continent.




Do you remember what the map looked like, before the Blood Elves appeared? It was all rounded off and stuff. No more – now we take for granted that the northern peak of the continent is Elf Country, as if it’s always been like that.

Of course, it’s not like we lost anything important – just placeholder dirt. But in Cataclysm – it will be different. We’ll be losing towns and coastlines, new ones will crop up – it’s hard to even know exactly what to expect (other than from what we’ve seen in trailers and pictures). Have you seen the new picture of the Blasted Lands? It’s back to swampland – a la pre-portal; it looks pretty. Now, not every zone is going to be so dramatically changed, but who knows.

So I want to document what they all look like, now. Many people are doing the same thing, of course; this is no new idea. But I suppose we all need to do it in our own way. I want to make sure I record the places in a certain way, the way I want to remember them – rather than relying on someone else’s gallery. Plus, the photographer in me needs to them to be *just so*… so I’ve tasked myself with travelling around the world and documenting each zone and landmark, to file away for later.

No doubt some zones will be changed for the better, and some zones I’ll be sad for. I just want to be able to look back and remember the places I leveled in, once upon a time. And let’s face it, eventually, when I stop playing, or when the World of Warcraft doesn’t exist anymore, I’ll have a great gallery to look over fondly.

I was also inspired by Wow.com/mmo-champion the other day, showing some panoramas of Azeroth. I decided that would be the perfect way to preserve some of the broad landscapes that I love so much. So I’ll be taking some “normal” screenshots, but for landscapes that I want to preserve in one big piece, I’ll do a panorama also. The panoramas aren’t perfect, nowhere near as good as the mmo ones, since they’re my first efforts – but they’re a lot of fun to make!

I only wish we could fly in Azeroth already, so that it would be so much easier to document the zones. Ah well.

So, to kick off – here are a couple of images of Orgimmar (I took many, but will only post a couple each time). Click to enlarge.


Valley of Strength: (1914×988)


Sunset on Orgrimmar (panorama – 2200×300)

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