Holy Loot Batman!

So tonight we went in and started wrecking the place again. Ring of Reclamation dropped, passed to a priest. Bunch of nothing dropped. Then we killed Thorim and he gave me Intensity. I know I know, but Nota, it has HIT on it... WTF?!!?

Let me explain. HIT is a secondary stat. Interchangable with haste and crit. While it is preferable to get one of the other two as hit is wasted in resto, sometimes it just isn't in the cards. No DPS wanted it so it was gonna get sharded. There's a crapload of int/spi/sp on it, not to mention an 81 SP enchant, so it easily blew my mace/offhand combo out of the water. So I took it, you know, what the hell. Means I don't have to swap weapons to go boomkin. Plus it's sexy.

Next we killed The Iron Council and I got my helm. It wasn't as amazing because I already got the 10man tier piece equivelent from trash days ago, but an upgrade non-the-less. Same graphic as well. MooooooooooN on the forehead.

Then we went to Freya and the last trash pack dropped the Nourish Idol. Baraingan and I looked at it. Then looked at each other. Then we shrugged. The convo went something like this:

Me: Meh, I uh, guess we should take it?
Bara: Pfft. That thing sucks.
Me: But its just gonna get sharded.
Bara: I know, but, its NOURISH! I outheal everyone and I don't even use it.
Me: I use it... sometimes. I think. I guess I could take it.
Bara: For when you don't tank heal? lol.
Me: PvP?
Bara: hrm. Maybe. I don't want it.
Me: Alright, I guess I'll take it.

WTB USEFUL IDOLS!

Anywho, Freya responded to our disdain, by dropping the REAL healer staff. Bitch. It went to a priest. *sigh* Ah well. This place is pretty easy, I'm sure I'll see it or better again.

But, I have my consolation prizes. Earlier today i got my Strand Crawler from the daily (^_^). It looks like GhostCrawler. Means I can symbollically drown him in fire we he nerfs me again. Plus it blows bubbles. Oh yeah. I also got my turtle mount 5 minutes later while waiting for the raid to start.

He's so cute. Matches me completely. I know he's slow and all, but every time we had to run back, I was puttin along on him. I got so many angry looks. >.<

At first he didn't want to have his picture taken.



But he warmed to the idea! Or tried to eat my crab. not sure which.

Figured since I was posting pics, I might as well share this cute GEM:



And what better way to unwind in Ulduar than some fishing?

First Fragment goes to a fellow druid.

Grats to Baraingan on his Fragment. Loot was decided via arbiters in this case. The general consensus was that a pally should get it. However, I pushed for a full time healer with perfect attendance. As the pallies are always switching to ret for fights, the fact that Bara is always there in tree form ready to rock, stood out. Plus, it is always nice to see a druid get something smexy. Grats buddy.

Glyph of WTF?

I tested the new glyphs last night and here's what we discovered:

Glyph of Wild Growth is HoT!

Glyph of Nourish is not.

GoWG is a must have, while GoN is only for MT healing.


You should consider getting Glyph of Swiftmend, Glyph of Rejuvenation, and Glyph of Wild Growth. You'll understand by the time you get to Mimiron.

Ulduar Gets Buffed

Ulduar

* Several changes to the Razorscale encounter have been made including the range and damage of the Dark Rune Watcher’s Chain Lightning being reduced, and the radius of Razorscale’s Devouring Flame being slightly reduced.
* To increase the challenge, Hodir’s hard mode should need to be completed faster than before and the bonus of the Moonlight buff that NPCs provide to players should be decreased.
* The damage done by Thorim and Sif in hard mode has been increased in multiple ways.
* Freya has had her health and damage increased in hard mode in multiple ways.
* The Ignis the Furnace encounter has received several changes. To make his individual hits less devastating, we reduced his overall melee damage by about 15% but he swings faster now. In normal mode we increased the cooldown of Activate Construct from 30 to 40 seconds. We also decreased the damage of the Scorch ground effect by 20% on both difficulties.
* XT-002 Deconstructor’s health and damage has been slightly increased in hard mode.
* XT-002 Deconstructor will no longer cast Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb while channeling Tympanic Tantrum.
* For the trash leading up to Ignis the Furnace Master, the Magma Rager’s Superheated Winds have had their speed reduced. The normal mode Molten Colossus have had the cooldown of Pyroblast increased.
* The trash mobs leading to Mimiron can now see through stealth/invisible, no more sneaking past.
* In the General Vezax encounter on hard mode, the Saronite Animus’s Profound Darkness will now hit harder.
* Ignis the Furnace Master should no longer melee players he is grabbing.

Ulduar Revelations

So Ulduar is rough. Not hard per say, just rough.

We brought a few trees to the raids, all different specs. Here's what we learned.


#1. Living Seed is garbage. Pure and simple. Those points are better spent elsewhere. We opted for Celestial Focus. It accounts for less than 3% of our healing. 3% haste is better.

#2. Revitalize is best on melee. This means WG is best used as a melee heal. You are guaranteed to hit 5 people, unlike ranged, who, when spread out, will net you maybe two.

#3. Nature's Swiftness is better used with regrowth than with healing touch.

#4. Rejuvenation is our most effective heal. Its cheap, fast, and with the glyph, very effective.

#5. Lifebloom is great for MT cushioning and to net you some mana when you really need it. Not much else.

#6. Nourish is great, but with all the direct healers in the raids, it mostly goes to overheal anyway.

#7. HoTing the MT, WGing the melee, and using Rejuv as a raid heal, popping SM when needed, puts a druid at the top of the meters. Easily.

#8. Here it is boys and girls. The numbers are in. the mana regen nerf is... a joke. Seriously, specced as I was for longevity in 3.0, I now finish fights with 60% mana still. That's mana that could have been used for SP.

So, I did what any reasonable tree would do. I dropped my beloved spirit. I replaced ALL my +spi gems with either Runed Scarlet Rubies, Luminous Monarch Topazes, or Purified Twilight Opals. Reenchanted my gear for SP, except my weapon, which is still Spi, because the mats are expensive and I is need money. Need to swap my Spirit World Glass for the Mortal Egg, sadly, but we're talking NO mana issues.

The biggest mana strain we encountered was the healing on Ignis the Flamer and that's with Brezes and Innervates going to other people who got meleed on their way to the slag pit. Still, we're talking 40% left over mana. No pots, no innervates.

Here's another secret. Ignis the FlameBroiled Whopper, is by far my FAVORITE healing fight in the game. Hands down. Its just so, hectic and fast paced, so much going on, so many people needing heals, moments when you can't heal, getting sent to the slag pit, RAWR!

My advice, go back to the BC mindset. Spirit is out, SP is back in. But don't forget to stack that int.

Ulduar Play Time

Well, assuming the servers ever come up, I'll be trying out a variation on the original raid spec. I took points out of Nature's Grace since I kept clipping my spells on the ptr. I took Revitalize to make progression easier and left Natural Perfection on the floor. I'll most likely respec 5-6 times throughout the week so I was thinking of using my 2nd spec for another healing spec, but I'll likely need more money for Ulduar, so I'll stick with Farmkin as my dualy.

The other two trees I raid with will most likely come differently specced as well, so I'll use WWS to compare the numbers. We have one tree that builds around haste, one who builds around crit, and myself, building around longevity. It is nice to see that we have so many options to play with. I'm thinking one of us will be a nourish bot, one will be a bloomer, and one will be Revitalizer.

Nourish bots will be using nourish to top raiders off/tank Heals.

Bloomers will cushion the tanks and raid heal.

Revitalizers will use Rejuv and WG liberally to get the procs.


Once the dust settles and I've had a good week or so of numbers, I'll be able to get a nice big picture of what I require of my druids. For now though, it's fine to play around. I've even seen talk of a GlyphedHT spec over at WoM.

Poor Kitty

My cats dying. Probably only has a month left. (-_- )

May be a little slow with posts in the future, but I have a wealth of posts coming soon. Just taking care of the little fuzzball while he's still around.