I’ve noticed a few people on my feeds lately, frothing about Frozen Orb ninjas. The whole thing is actually really interesting to me.

Previously, servers were islands, in their own bubbles, with their own particular loot rules that were shaped over time.

I’ve seen some weird ones. Like “pass on everything that drops and then just /roll” – which I find bizarre, considering blizzard’s UI has a built-in rolling function and there’s no wasted time re-rolling and then physically picking up your loot. I’ve managed to get myself into some heated arguments about this, with people getting REALLY nasty at me about it, because they genuinely believed it was the fairest system. I really, REALLY don’t get how it’s a good idea to pass and re-roll on every little green that drops in a group – it strikes me as a huge waste of time, rather than using the built-in tool. The buttons are right there! But hey, to each their own. There really is no point arguing about it.

The point is – over time, servers will develop their own loot systems, with their own quirks. Although to outsiders these systems may seem bizarre, it works well enough for them. Much like Australia invented the platypus, yeah? An animal that looks like someone cut and pasted a bunch of other animals together into some weird amalgamation that surely can’t work – but it seems to do alright for itself. I’m certainly not going to argue with one, at any rate.


LFD and bursting the server loot bubble

When the LFD system came in, I noticed some people Needing on Frozen Orbs. On my server, Greed was the norm, so at first I was annoyed at these “ninjas”, being greedy and taking the orbs when the rest of us were Greeding. But, as it kept happening, I realised that they weren’t stealing from me – they were just used to rolling Need on their server. It was the normal system for them. A quick look at the web and WoW forums confirmed my suspicions – it was a fairly widespread phenomenon. So I started rolling Need, too, so that I wouldn’t miss out. No biggie.

It wasn’t what I was used to, but if I wanted orbs, I had to adapt my idea of how loot is handled in groups. I could either continue to roll Greed (and almost always lose), or adapt and start rolling Need with the others.

If I want orbs, I am basically forced into adapting to rolling Need.


Evolution of cross-server, intra-battlegroup loot systems

Now, maybe it’s just me, because I’ve always been interested in evolution. But I think it’s pretty cool to think about how these different loot systems settled in – and why they’re causing problems at the moment.

I suspect that gradually most battle groups probably settled into either Need OR Greed as the norm. Not every server/group settled into Need – I think there are a number of them out there that still use Greed.

Basically, either everyone on the server/battlegroup stuck with their system of Greeding, or more and more people started to Need until eventually the Greeders were weeded out by natural selection. That is, “If everyone keeps Needing, I’m going to roll Need from now on, too!” .. until gradually everyone on the battlegroup becomes a Needer, because it becomes pointless to roll Greed anymore.



The evolution of ninjas


Over time, if there are enough Needers around, then the battlegroup will eventually tend towards being predominantly Needers. Particularly, of course, if everyone is interested in the orbs (I’ll go over this later). Whereas if most people don’t care about the orbs, they might just hit Greed as an “I don’t really care” button.

If orbs are desirable, more and more people will become Needers, and the Greeders will either be forced to roll Need to compete, or simply accept the fact that they can never win with a Greed roll, and give up rolling Greed. The Greeders must adapt and become Needers if they want to compete for orbs.

So, on battlegroups where Needing is prevalent (or gathering momentum), Greeders will be in decline; and, eventually, will likely become extinct.

However, pockets of Greeders will continue to exist on battlegroups that remained isolated and never adopted the system of Needing the orbs.


Orbs: from vendor fodder to coveted item overnight

Now, previously, orbs were all but useless to many people. I know that many were just being vendored, because the AH price was so low that it wasn’t even worth selling them. So I suspect that the only people still Needing were those who A) still needed them for professions, or B) didn’t particularly need them, but were clinging to the principle of the matter – that they deserved the 5g vendor price as much as anyone else in the group.

To be honest, I started passing on them because I didn’t need them, and I figured maybe someone else did. I just didn’t care about them.

But in the near future, you’ll be able to use orbs to buy lotuses and eternals (and a new flying carpet recipe wheee!). Prices jumped from 5g to 30g literally overnight. Suddenly everyone wants orbs – because they’ll be worth a lot more than 5g in the patch. Whether it’s because you want cheap flasks for raiding, or you want to make a buck selling cheap flasks for raiding, or you need eternals for crafting (etc) – almost everyone “needs” the orbs now. And that “need” cropped up literally overnight. BAM.

So all of these sudden orb ninjas are probably just people who have read about the changes, and have decided they had better stop passing/greeding on orbs, because they are now quite desirable.

As a result, I think what we are seeing is a sudden, massive shift towards Needing orbs by default.





Needing will probably be the norm

There’s really no point in getting upset about it – unless you come from a battlegroup where everyone continues to simply Greed (and I think this will be rarer and rarer as time goes on), you’re going to come up against people who Need. They’re not necessarily trying to ninja from you; it may be that they have always used Needing as the default way to deal with orbs; or, like many people, they realise that orbs are now useful and they want their fair share of them.

I genuinely believe that a TINY minority of those Need rolls are people who are actually actively trying to maliciously ninja the orbs.

My advice: roll to match the highest roll in the group. If someone rolls Need, you can roll need too. If everyone is rolling Greed, you should probably do the same to be courteous.

Of course, if you’re first to roll, and you roll Greed, then you could lose out if someone rolls Need later – which is precisely the reason why many people just roll Need to be “safe”. For most people, it’s simply the path of least resistance; everyone roll Need and nobody can “ninja”. To them, it’s second nature. Or the Needer in your group may be someone who is tired of missing out “doing the right thing” and Greeding, and has given up to become a Needer from now on.

In a world full of Needers – if you stick to Greeding, you won’t be able to compete for orbs. Will you give up and die out, or will you adapt?

And so the wheel turns…


(oh man I’m such a nerd, I’m laughing at myself right now..)

Possibly Related Posts:

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• Lich King weapons: crit and mp5 axed for haste

Today’s WoW developer chat on Twitter is now complete! The selected questions and answers are here.

They answered my question straight up – which is awesome, since last time I posted the same one but it got skipped over.

Q. Is the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter a deliberate move towards making WoW more “fun & interesting” for healers? Will we see more encounters like this?

A. We want to make healing more fun, yes. Part of that is letting healers use their whole repetoire instead of just their best spells. Part of it is trying to get healers to look at the battlefield a little more and unit frames a little less, that of course means a little more time in between spamming heals so you can do stuff like that.


I suppose it was mostly a rhetorical question. I kinda expected them to say “yeah, sure.. it was totally deliberate.” Although, they didn’t actually say that it was a deliberate move with healers in mind.

At any rate, I will be very interested to see how they can make things more interesting by having us heal less – because logic, to me, dictates that a fight that requires less healing will become a fight that people simply take fewer healers to, and that would be BAD.

That is, if we’re spamming less, and running around more, won’t people just lean towards taking fewer (but skilled) healers who can spam a little more than intended? And then stack the group with more DPS?

It’s an age-old problem though. Making encounters harder usually means we have to spam harder. If they want to make things more “fun” and have us look at the fight more, that (apparently) means spamming less. But will that make us feel bored? Will it make the fights easier? Will it just encourage raids to stack more DPS and fewer healers?

I dunno, I’m happy staring at my coloured boxes, for the most part. But I know there are lots of people out there who want to enjoy the encounter more, rather than just staring at frames. So how can the developers keep things challenging while satisfying the healers who want more immersion?

While I don’t particularly feel like campaigning for “more interesting” healing, I am VERY interested to see how they can make things challenging AND immersive for us. Because I have no idea how they are going to manage that.

(Please, WoW gods, don’t ever consider the horrible suggestion of “let’s heal people through their nameplates!” Because whack-a-mole + LOS + range + jostling nameplates is NOT my idea of super funtime raiding..)

Possibly Related Posts:

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Seems that during this week’s maintenance and tweaks, the “just go farm Ulduar derp derp” strategy (I use the term very loosely) has been nerfed and no longer works. You can no longer use vehicles in Ulduar, on bombing runs, or to trample Icecrown skeletons to get your charms.

In addition, healers are reporting that they are passively receiving Lovely Charms in instances, without doing any damage to the mobs. They are receiving charms for contributing to the group, but don’t have to deal any killing blows in order to be eligible. This is how it should have worked from the very start. No more Holy Nova spam for Mephitik.


Farming Ulduar wasn’t cheating – but it wasn’t right, either.

So now the healers are happy, and the Ulduar farmers are crying. Awww. It’s tragic when Big Bad Blizzard steps in and stops people from trivialising achievements. I shed a single glistening tear for all those people who can no longer “farm” charms in bulk.

(Not really.)

Cassandri over at HoTs and DoTs wrote a great article on exploits and how we define them. I don’t think the Ulduar trash farming was an exploit as such; I’m sure Blizzard would have jumped in much faster if it had been. But I do believe it went against the spirit of the event – mass farming charm bracelets in bulk and then listing them for 20g a pop on the AH.

Those bracelets are supposed to be special, people – not mass produced in some cheap dwarf sweatshop! Where’s the love?

I don’t think the developers intended people to jump into vehicles and blow up hundreds of mobs a minute to procure bagfuls of bracelets. The fact that it has been nerfed confirms this thinking – it wasn’t working as intended.

As an aside – what made me laugh was all the people whose counter to the healers was “onoez, you have to work for your achievements.. QQ”. Yet they were trivialising the achievement themselves by farming 50 bracelets in a siege engine, instead of working for them in the way it was intended….

It wasn’t against the rules. But it was a bit dirty. Call me a carebear or a goodie-two-shoes – I don’t like doing things that go against the spirit of the content, and yes, I do look down my nose at people who think it’s ok to do it. I believe that most reasonable people have an inkling that maybe something isn’t really the way it’s meant to be done. I just think that as grown-ups we can tell the difference between intended and unintended, and then make the choice not to take advantage of these temporary oversights by Blizzard. They didn’t intend us to be able to farm 500 charms in half an hour and then flood the auction house with them.

Was it cheating? No, of course not – the mechanic was there – kill high level mobs, get charms. People thought, “where can I kill as many mobs as I can, in as little time as possible?” It was pretty smart, in terms of efficiency.

It definitely wasn’t in the spirit of the event, though – and I wouldn’t participate in that, because it falls inside the boundaries of what I personally consider cheating.


Smug Keeva is oh so smug.

Obviously, some people aren’t too happy that Blizzard took away their ezmode bulk farming strat. Someone wrote in the WoW forum thread:

yeah you could have gotten 100x more charms from the ways you were told but atleast you ruined it for everyone else


Oh boy, I just couldn’t help myself… I HAD to respond:

In the spirit of the past 20 pages, there really is only one response to this.


Don’t worry, you can still get charms by grinding mobs or doing your dailies!

*smiles*


Oh man, if only they could have seen the enormous shit-eating grin that I had on my face when I posted it.


PS: The healers didn’t get the Ulduar strategy nerfed, and it’s pretty dumb to pin that on us. We were talking about a completely different issue – most didn’t even care that you could go into Ulduar. I don’t think I ever saw anyone asking for the Ulduar method to be shut down. We just wanted the imbalance in dungeons to be fixed. The healers said “we can’t get them in heroics, please change this” and the response was “go to Ulduar”. We weren’t the ones who brought it to Blizzard’s attention

Anyway – hooray for Blizzard listening to us and doing the right thing!

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Via mmo-champion:

Some of the weapons from the Lich King are not as good as we had hoped. To encourage you to want these new weapons, we have decided to change some of the old combat ratings over to better ones. We have obtained a preview of these changes, for your perusal, on behalf of the Beijing development team.

Royal Scepter of Terenas II: MP5 replaced with haste
Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas: critical strike replaced with haste


This is a welcome change; suiting up with 4pc T10 creates a bit of a haste deficit, and I know that many people were concerned over our lack of decent weapon choices. It’s nice to see the gear guys are apparently paying attention to what we need.

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A quick change to the 4pc bonus on our Tier 10 gear (source):

The rejuvenation procs from the Druid Tier 10 will now work better in a raid group and not avoid targets that have any rejuvenation spell on them though it will continue to avoid targets that have the casting druid’s rejuvenation on them.

Also, Trauma has been buffed slightly; the proc is no longer limited to one party. I think though that many people will still consider this proc underdone, and would ask for either the 10yd range to be extended, or the proc rate to be increased.

Perhaps now that it’s on their radar, they will consider another small tweak. Have to wait and see, I suppose.

Possibly Related Posts:

• The evolution of loot systems across servers
• WoW dev chat – Twitter: on making healing “more fun”
• Lovely justice: Charms now dropping for healers in instances

Finally, we have some clarification about our Tier 10 4pc bonus.

Ghostcrawler has confirmed that our 4pc Tier 10 bonus does NOT mean that Rejuvenation will jump and leave our original target, to land on the random target. It will stay on your original target, but basically pop up on another target as well.

When it procs and “jumps,” is the initial Rejuvenation (the one that caused the proc) consumed, or does it continue to tick normally?


The latter. The Rejuv doesn’t leap off of the target you actually wanted to heal. You just sometimes get a second hot on someone else. It sounds like it was broken on the PTR for awhile, but we’re pretty sure it works correctly on Live, and if not, we’ll get it fixed.

Posted by Ghostcrawler   [Source]


See? I told you guys not to stress about it

We still don’t have all of the information required – like whether it is a smart heal – but it’s good to get that clarification that it won’t remove your original Rejuv and throw it on someone random.

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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?

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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.

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Hello Tauren and Night Elf friends.

A quick disclaimer on this one: This post is about the lack of threat-reduction abilities for druids. Night Elves have an ability through their Racial, and boy is is nice – but Taurens do not. So this is mostly about how we moocows miss out on the ability to drop a bit of threat if we need to. Important: it’s not a complaint about Shadowmeld, or a request to have Shadowmeld. It’s about the gap that exists for Tauren druids, and whether that should be filled (without detracting from the NE racial).


Remember, I have Tauren and Night Elf druids, and I love both. I don’t want my NE friends to think I’m trying to steal their awesome racial.


—————-


Somebody started a thread on the healing forums to ask if resto druids had ever wished for a Fade-like ability. Something that allows us to drop a bit of aggro – if only for a short time. I really feel that a threat-dump is something that druids are sorely missing, and I’ve mentioned it a number of times in the past.



Aggro-reducing tools at our disposal


We have a few things to help reduce healing aggro:


Innate threat-reducing tools
– Subtlety talent (10/20/30%)
– Bracing Earthsiege Diamond
– Enchant Cloak – Subtlety


Most druids don’t max out Subtlety (the norm is 2/3 to progress to the next tier of talents) because it’s really just not needed, generally speaking. Honestly, I don’t think threat is something that is constantly an issue, enough to warrant putting that extra point in Subtlety – and certainly not enough of an issue to warrant enchanting your cloak (and losing haste, spellpower, or mana return options) or giving up your meta slot to use the reduced aggro gem.


It’s not a chronic problem; it’s not as though I spend most of my time fighting off adds – but there are absolutely times that I have thought, “if only I had Fade”. But I’ll go into those later.


It’s worth noting, too, that there are situations where druids don’t want a static and innate threat reduction, for times when we need to kite things. Some druids have had to put talents into other spots in order to deliberately drop their 2/3 Subtlety, in order to perform a kiting role – for example, for constellations on Algalon. So I don’t think that buffing Subtlety or giving us some kind of extremely strong innate threat reduction is the best idea. I’d rather it was an ability that I am able to use when I need to.


Proactive and reactive threat-reducing tools
– Cower


Yep, this is pretty much it, if you’re a Tauren. Cat form and cower.


You have to be in range of the mob to do this, and chances are that if someone has face-pulled extra mobs and they are heading your way, you’d be better off dropping to bear than trying to cat+cower, especially if you’ve pulled multiple mobs.


Last-ditch tools to survive when things go bad
– Barkskin (and Improved Barkskin)
– Nature’s Grasp
– Warstomp


Barkskin is my best friend; whenever I get aggro, my instinctive knee-jerk reaction is to hit Barkskin. Unfortunately it only reduces damage – and if you’ve aggroed a boss or a pack of mobs, Barkskin isn’t going to save you. It should buy the tank a little time to pick up, if you’ve only grabbed one stray mob, though.


Nature’s Grasp is handy for stepping away from single mobs (I like it on Faction Champs), but only lasts a few seconds, can only affect one target, and is often resisted or breaks quickly. It’s nice, but it’s not great.


Warstomp is a nice AOE stun to help buy you a few seconds, whether you’re being attacked by one or several mobs. It’s ok in PVE, but really it’s mostly used as a PVP racial. I find it helpful in some situations, but not amazing. It also only works at short-range – so if you blow it prematurely before the mobs get to you, or if the mobs are staggered, it won’t help much. They have to be right up close to you to be effective, and by that time, you may already be dead.



Is healer aggro just a tank problem?


A common theme running through the replies is “get better tanks.” If something is aggroing onto you, the tank must be awful.


Is that really the issue?


Are all our threat problems caused by bad tanks, or someone face pulling an extra pack of mobs?


I see people saying things along the lines of, “lol if u get aggro, ur tanks r bad – or ur a bad healer, L2P” and that the tank should save you faster. Their argument is basically that if a druid is aggroing something, then “something is very wrong” – usually with the tank.

Dark Legacy’s Donald:
If this is your tank, you’re in trouble.
http://www.darklegacycomics.com/87.html


Now – I can agree with this to a point. If a tank has something picked up, it’s VERY rare that I can strip it off. I have my moments (/flex) but generally speaking, my tree tanking flings are short and sweet. Once the tank has got the mob, he’s got it. If I am pulling mobs off a tank that is already being tanked, then something is probably wrong with the tank’s TPS. Usually.


But I’m not talking about situations where the tank can’t hold the mobs. Or where he won’t pick things up off the healers. I’m talking about situations where you have a second, perhaps two, to react and survive – because something went wrong. Evidently the people who have said it’s a bad tank issue have never been one-shot by a mob that was pulled by someone else but made a beeline for the healers in about 2 seconds flat.


All taunts down, 30 yards distance to close – sorry Mr or Mrs Healer, it’s dirtnap time for you. And down I go.


I just don’t buy the argument “the tank should have seen the aggro and saved you.” Sometimes it’s just not that cut and dried. It’s not always because someone did something stupid.


Consider:

• the tank is stunned, frozen, or otherwise incapacitated for a few moments

• the tank dies; another tank class needs to pick up the mobs in a hurry
• the tank has already used his aoe/ranged taunt/s, and needs a few more seconds to pick up
• the tank does not have instant snap-aggro on multiple mobs
• someone else pulls aggro and drops to full health; you NS+HT them to full, and pull off
• you have HoTs ticking from a previous phase of a fight, new mobs spawn


and so on.


I guess it’s easy to be short-sighted and simply blame things on other people, rather than considering whether our tools could be improved in some way. And in this case, I think it’s a tool that has missing from our toolbox the whole time.



DruidFade mileage in WotLK – a tally


To further demonstrate the fact that it’s not always about someone being dopey, or about your tank being Donald – here are some encounters that I think I could have used a Fade for:

• MC resist on Instructor, he runs for a priest, I save priest and get aggro, splat, bye bye Immortal.

• The eye-stalks in the gauntlet leading to Loatheb
• HoT aggro on Gothik’s summoned adds
• Gluth’s zombies (although I often helped to kite them, so it depends)
• KT’s giant bug adds – drop aggro so the tank can pick them up more easily

  


• Malygos P2 – buggy adds that aggro to you and one-shot you, yay my favourite

• Sartharion – how many times did I get destroyed by whelps? SO MANY. (Hint: sometimes AOE snap aggro isn’t so snap)

  


• Auriaya – initial heals on the pull – close your eyes and pray you don’t die

• Mimiron – P3 adds are simply a nuisance
• Vezax – the few seconds before the Animus is able to be picked up
• Yogg Saron – I absolutely cannot avoid pulling the faceless adds as they spawn
• Algalon – get the constellations out of my face, I’m trying to work here

  


• Faction Champions – speaks for itself

• Anub – avoiding the little bugs; helping the tank to pick up the big adds

  


• Not to mention the many, many times during trash pulls that someone does face-pull, or gets feared, or pulls aggro and needs a huge heal, or the tank is stunned etc, which often leads to me getting massive add-aggro, through no fault of my own.


The point is – aggro happens, and it’s not always the tank’s fault, my fault, or anyone’s fault.


“L2P” doesn’t hold up in these situations.


Consider the rogue mobs on the way to Vezax – I think of them as Shadow Lab Rogues v2.0. They come out of nowhere to test your reflexes. I love that, actually. They add a bit of excitement and chaos.


Now, the tank should be quick enough to pick them up – but wouldn’t it be good to be able to fade and help save yourself? Is it really reasonable to just use the tired old statement that the tank should L2P and save the healer faster – or should healers be able to have defensive mechanism to buy the tank a few seconds?


Do you think that is babying the tank? Or just giving healers a tool to help themselves survive?


If it’s unnecessary – why do others have aggro-dump abilities? Can’t they just learn to manage their threat – or learn to find better tanks?



Too much homogenisation?


Of course, some people have cried “grey blob”. The classes should be different, stop making them have the same abilities as each other, etc. But really – is giving us a Fade such a big deal? Would it be game-breaking? I’m not even being greedy here – I’m not asking for Shadowmeld (as much as I would love to have it back!), just a Fade, or some other similar and temporary drop in aggro.


Is it particularly unfair to everyone else, to allow us a way to drop aggro temporarily? Is it making the classes too much like each other?

If it was a healing spell that someone was asking for, or a major raid utility tool – something that would bring us closer to being a pally or a priest or a shaman and start stepping on their toes, then I would understand the opposition. And I would likely agree – I don’t want the classes to merge – I want us to maintain our niches. But in this case, it’s a trivial personal utility spell to temporarily drop aggro – which is something that (for some reason) we lack compared to everyone else. It won’t hurt any other class, nor will it detract from their unique abilities or roles.


Is there a genuine reason why druids don’t have a threat dump? Is it unreasonable to ask for one?



Perhaps a buff to Cower?


I don’t want to simply give Taurens a Shadowmeld type ability. I don’t want a combat-drop. I don’t want to detract from the NE racial, that’s not really fair on them. This isn’t about seeing that they have a cool new toy, and stamping my foot til I get exactly what they have. There has to be a unique benefit to that racial that isn’t available to the rest of us as an innate or trained ability. So I’m definitely not asking that Taurens get Shadowmeld too.


But a Fade-type tool would be extremely handy in a lot of situations.


Perhaps buffing Cower could be an option?

I don’t want Shadowmeld (well, yes I do.. but I’m not actually asking for it), I won’t even ask for anything brand new – buff Cower, I’d be happy with that. Let it work globally, not just on one target, and let it work at range, so that it is similar to a Fade ability. I would happily pop into kitty and cower for a second, and then back to tree. That even fits in with Blizzard’s philosophy of wanting druids to shift often in order to use different tools – and it would require us to weigh up the sacrifice of being unable to heal for a few seconds while we drop threat.


Give Cower the Shadowmeld treatment (although not quite as good as meld) – buff it to be useful for any spec of druid.


I’d love that, actually.


The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of simply taking our existing ability and making it more practical and useful. There’s not really a need for a new, standalone ability – just buff Cower to make it useful for every druid, not just the kitties at close range.

—————-


As healers, we can’t simply watch Omen and stop healing if our threat gets too high. Uh oh, I’m too high on threat, I’ll just stand here and not heal for a while.


I’m sure that will go down well.


We can certainly “go easy” on initial pulls, and try to give the tanks as much time as possible to pick up adds, but there will always be times when we have to spam heal, and generate high threat. With HoTs rolling across a lot of people at once, we are often the first person to be targeted by newly spawned adds. A tank’s taunt/s may be down, or he may die and someone else has to try to pick everything up. In those few seconds, our threat can be a big problem.


I want to stress again that this is not a chronic problem – we don’t have threat problems all the time – but an ability to drop threat temporarily would be valuable in a large number of situations.


We have high armor, barkskin, a stun, a reactive root and instant heals to try to save ourselves – which may seem like a lot – but we have no way to actually drop any of our high threat in certain situations – whether it be reactive (because we pulled), or simply to drop a little because we’re about to pull. I would definitely prefer a way to proactively drop aggro before a mob gets to me, rather than have to activate all of my reactive lifeline abilities to stay alive.


Elves have an amazing option to be able to drop some aggro, not only to save themselves, but to make their raids and groups run more smoothly – it’s a tool that doesn’t just make things easier for themselves, but for their entire group.


Being able to dump aggro just before you pull, or in the second when the mob turns, makes things so much easier on your tanks and raid, and I think it’s unfair to generalise and blame aggro on bad tanking. We could have a tool that makes life a lot easier on our tanks, by managing our threat, especially in chaotic situations.


Isn’t it time druids had a proper threat dump – or, at the very least, a temporary threat reduction?

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I’ve been thinking lately, about all the changes Blizzard makes over time – some of them are applauded, others are opposed. Some are things that we all believe that we should have had a long time ago. For example – remember when..



• HoTs didn’t stack, so the only druid who could use them in a raid was the person with the highest +healing (A more powerful spell is already active) and everyone else was stuck with HT spam duty?

• Gift of the Wild was cast group-by-group?
• Omen of Clarity was cast, and lots of new druids didn’t know it? (so they couldn’t work out why they never got any procs!)
• there was no mailbox in Nighthaven?
• we could wear costumes and use Noggenfogger?
• ToL aura used to affect healing done, not received? (mmm stacking healers)


Your turn!

How long have you been a druid? What are some of the things that you remember and look back on, and find amusing?

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