Day 377 of waiting for Cataclysm.. the natives grow restless.

Snippets of what’s going on with Keeva:


Real life stuff

Swapped jobs; no longer working two jobs, but ironically, will have less time for raiding in the future because of this. My new job finishes later than my old job, and during DST times, I’ll have literally no time between getting home and doing essential tasks (feed animals, shower, eat) and raid invite time.

This is not a terrible thing – I had planned to drop back to weekend “casual” raiding in Cataclysm anyway. It pains me a bit, because I used to be a “hardcore” raider – I still have that desire inside me, but my life just isn’t going to allow me to raid for 4-5 hours, 4 nights a week anymore.

I still intend to raid though, and I figure that there should be plenty of raids happening on weekends, if only the alt/casual runs. I’m not sure how well I will cope with this if I start to feel as though I’m missing out on the opportunity to do hard modes, and I’m worried about being able to create good guides for TBJ if I am unable to face all of the bosses first-hand. However, with 10 mans being easier to fill than 25s, my hope is that I will be able to do progression raiding with a group on weekends. Fingers crossed.


My characters

Not much to tell, really; my guild has dropped back to doing 10 mans for now; I’ve been drawn into a really great group for HM LK, and I have to say that I am quite enjoying it. There’s no raging, no whining, no cajoling, and no tension after wipes.. I went into it feeling tired (RL stuff), but came out feeling refreshed.

I also levelled a newbie druid on another server, just to start from scratch. She has epic flying and Cold Weather Flying, a few BOE epics, and still has 1500g. Not bad for starting with nothing. I don’t know if I’ll do anything with her in Cataclysm, she was mainly just something to do to kill some time.


Cataclysm stuff

MMO has a few unreleased snippets – not in the beta yet, so they could be incomplete/bugged/etc.

Innervate now regenerate mana equal to 20% of the casting Druid’s maximum mana pool, down from 33%.

Lifebloom now heals over 10 sec, up from 7 sec. Costs 7% of base mana, up from 5%.

Omen of Clarity is now properly flagged as Passive.

Regrowth HoT effect reduced by 60%, now heals over 6 sec instead of 21 sec. Cast time reduced from 2 sec to 1.5 sec.

Natural Perfection is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 6.

Swift Rejuvenation is now a Tier 6 talent, up from Tier 5.

Revitalize revamped – When you periodically heal with your Rejuvenation or Lifebloom spells, you have a 8/16/24% chance to instantly regenerate 3% of your total mana. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 sec.

Heart of the Wild no longer increases maximum mana by 5/10/15%, now increases Intellect by 2/4/6%.

On Innervate: I’ll have to reserve judgment for now; it’s hard to judge without first-hand testing. My instinct is to say “not a big deal” – I’ve taken every regen nerf in my stride and I’m not particularly scared when I see them, now. I certainly don’t treat nerfs in a flippant way, but I just prefer to wait until I get my hands dirty to decide whether it’s something I can or can’t handle. And so far, so good.

Honestly, I don’t like having unlimited mana, it feels wasteful in a way. Yes, I’d like to be able to give my innervate away, and I suppose it’s nice to have one less thing to worry about – but I do miss having to manage my mana. Yeah yeah, I know, I’m a masochist! I just feel so.. -dirty- when I am spamming inefficiently (say, out of boredom or over-gearing) and my mana doesn’t dip below 90%. Call me crazy, but I do miss the days of having to be careful with mana.

Revitalize looks good, though.. 24% is quite high. I wish I could test for myself, though.

On Lifebloom: The duration change is just a replacement for our old Nature’s Splendor (plus a bonus second). So really, it’s basically a 1 second buff. I’ll take that. Again, on the cost – I’ll have to wait and see how it feels. With Nourish refreshing our Lifebloom, it may balance out anyway (unlike now, where you have to break your Nourishing to quickly refresh – in Cataclysm, it will refresh while you Nourish). So that’s another thing I’m not particularly worried about.

I don’t really understand why we’re restricted to a single target – they could have just made Lifebloom’s cost too restrictive to be able to toss it around the raid (as it once was), but once you get it rolling on a tank, it would be refreshed “for free” when you Nourish anyway – so there are no ongoing costs unless you let it bloom. But a) I’m no theorycrafter and b) no doubt that would suck in some way for PvP, so I’ll let the devs handle things. I just feel sad that we’re restricted to one target only – it was often too expensive to have on more than one person – so why the need for another restriction? Oh well.

On Regrowth: Wow, that’s a big change. There’s our “flash heal” cast time reduction that we’ve all been waiting for. My immediate thought was, “ohnoes, my long-HoT.. /mourn” – I like that long trailing HoT – it’s our longest duration HoT spell – but a) I knew the flash-heal Regrowth was probably inevitable, and b) I can appreciate the fact that this change will make it more useful for spot healing, and not simply our next blanketing tool.

I have always loved Regrowth, and use it where I can; but obviously in many/most situations, it’s just not appropriate to raid heal with Regrowth. So I’m looking forward to it getting more air time in Cataclysm. My only gripe is that I am getting a little tired of having to switch to different pet spells every period; HT in vanilla, Lifebloom in TBC, Rejuv in WotLK.. Regrowth in Cataclysm?

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Regrowth and I would embrace it as our new healing overlord, I’d be excited to, but I wish the devs would pick something and stick with it, I’m getting dizzy, here.

I’m hopeful that our days of raid-blanketing are over – with Rejuv expensive and Regrowth a short HoT, it won’t be practical to blanket anymore. Part of me says “yippee!” but another part wonders what the long-term plan is and how it will pan out.

But – no sense mulling over it too much – it seems that there’s still a LONG way to go before we have a good handle on what things will be like for us in Cataclysm, considering that they are still making pretty big changes, not just minor tweaks. Back to sitting on our hands and waiting for more info!


Projects

Something shiny is coming…….



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