On Hiatus

Hello all. My apologies for the lack of posts here. A combination of real life tasks and lack of in-game excitement has left me with little to say and no time to say it. Such is life!

I may return and post here in the future; we'll see. Until then, best wishes for your Azerothean adventures -- and your real-world adventures, too.

Emblems and Badges

I've struggled some with posting, mostly because I'm still not sure how to react to the Lifebloom nerf. It's pretty clear that it will be a major change to Druid healing in raids, if it goes through. On one hand, we've had a well-defined niche for a long time now, so I'm not sure how it will land to move to something different. On the other hand, rolling 3+ sets of Lifebloom gets to be both stressful and boring. Lag in particular starts to be a real pain in the butt, and forces earlier LB refreshing.

On the gripping hand, 3.1 is still on the PTR and subject to a lot of change. So no point in worrying about it a lot yet. I think I'll go ahead with the Raid Heals chapter anyway, since that's not going to be a Lifebloom-centric thing anyway.

As we contemplate this (on the Tree of Woe), we can consider some other changes that are incoming. One that I wanted to mention a bit is the upcoming addition of the [Emblem of Conquest]. Basically this adds a new tier to the boss emblem system, as follows:

• Emblem of Heroism: heroic 5-man dungeons and normal (10-man) Naxx/OS/Arch/EoE; gives iLvl 200 items
  
• Emblem of Valor: heroic (25-man) Naxx/OS/Arch/EoE and normal (10-man) Ulduar; gives iLvl 213 items
  
• Emblem of Conquest: heroic (25-man) Ulduar; gives iLvl 226 items

The Emblem of Conquest approach is consistent with the method taken by Blizz with the first WotLK emblems. However, I have a good deal of concern, mostly centered around heroic 5-man dungeons.

In short, I think this change is going to render them obsolete. There will be little desire to run heroics any more. Even the daily Heroic is a lot of work for the gold reward involved; the only advantage it really provides extra badges.

In Burning Crusade, there was a lot of desire to run heroic 5-mans, because you could get some great gear with Badges of Justice. Gear started out at iLvl 110 and kept adding up to iLvl 146. There were almost 250 different items you could buy for your badges. The [Grovewalker's Leggings] I eventually bought cost 100 badges, and were close to the best healing Druid legs in the game.

The result was a lot of incentive to run heroic 5-man instances. Raiders would do this in their off time, while more casual players had incentive to keep going back too. Even the most maxxed-out raider would still get value from a few badges; if nothing else, more high-quality badge gear would show up with the next patch.

This led to mixing players in some good ways. It provided rewards for the raiders who helped out others. You could PUG a heroic and find high-level raiders mixed with newer or more casual players. It gave raiders some variety too. Meanwhile, casual players could gear up well enough to prepare for raiding, if they wanted to, through running 5-man content. If nothing else, they knew they always had more and better gear to get to at some point.

In WotLK, it's different. The tier system means that the gear available for any given badge is limited. I already don't have much that I can get with EoH that's useful, except for PvP gear, and I'm not all that dedicated. What's more, with this system, I'll never get better gear for those EoH. They're going to stagnate, just like the few leftover BoJ I still have.

That's me. What about casual players? They'll soon lose any motivation to play 5-man content too. Why bother? They can't get any better gear. The best chance to upgrade will be to run daily quests and build up gold, with the hope of buying high-level Bind on Equip gear that the raiders — eventually — put up for auction.

I firmly believe that the 5-man game is key for a majority of players. It's vastly easier to get 5 players together together than 10, let alone 25. Start with you and a friend, and you're 40% of the way to a 5-man group. Try that for 10-mans and you'll still need 8 more players, including at least a tank and/or a couple healers. Besides that, there are 12 5-man instances available in WotLK. That's a lot of good content, and it would be nice to have some reason for running it.

I worry that this direction is going to turn off a lot of more casual players, and open wider gaps between the 'casuals' and 'hardcore'. And I throw those quotes in for a reason. Many of those 'casual' players are quite skilled and very good at what they do; they just don't have the time or inclination to work at raiding, either because of the time commitment, the detailed organization involved, or the drama that can come with high-pressure content.

There's nothing wrong with giving better gear to the raiders; that's as it should be. But there's nothing wrong with helping the more casual players move along that same path, even if it's at a reduced pace. In the end, they also need to have something to look forward to.

Phaelia's Retirement, and some small 3.1 news

Can't I leave you people alone for a week? I go on vacation, and look what happens...

The biggest news of course is both happy and sad. I'm referring of course to Phaelia's upcoming blogtirement. She has great news, with an upcoming noob gnome baby on the way. Understandably this will cut into her blogging time, so she's scaling back. While that's great news for her and Mr. Phae, it's of course a loss to the Druid community and for WoW blogs in general.

I wanted to take some time to give Phaelia her props. She's been the single best resource for me about all things Resto, and I owe my rare instances of doing things right to her tutelage above all else. Druids all throughout the world (of Warcraft) have learned from Phae. She's done that with a blog that's been both informative and entertaining; Resto4Life can serve as a role model for any WoW blogger. Beyond that, Resto4Life is probably the best-designed and most functional WoW blog. We'll carry on, and other bloggers will sprout up in her place. But her tree will still cast a mighty shadow long after it's stopped bearing fruit.

Phaelia should stand proud; she's done a tremendous service for Druids everywhere. She's earned her retirement many times over and I hope her blog 401K has treated her well. I just hope Phaelia finds herself blogging again soon — whether or not the topic is WoW or MMORPGs. She's got a talent for it and she'll be missed.

Thanks, Phaelia! Congrats on your imminent parenthood, and best wishes in all your future works!

3.1 on the PTR

Oh yeah, there was some WoW-news too, as the 3.1 patch has arrived on the test realm. Not to be coy; there are big changes afoot for Resto Druids. 3.1 will be a serious change for us; in some ways, even bigger than WotLK itself. I will have to update my Tank Healing guide for sure, and I'm going to have to decide how to target my Raid Healing guide.

The first change is to Regrowth, and yeah, it's a nerf. On live, Improved Regrowth grants you a 10/20/30/40/50% added crit chance to Regrowth. On the PTR, this talent is changed to Nature's Bounty. The bad is that it's cut in half, with a 5/10/15/20/25% added crit chance. The good – such as it is – is that it now affects Nourish as well as Regrowth. Clearly this is designed to dial back Regrowth while helping Nourish. The latter has always struggled to find its niche, and this should bring it forward — especially now that mana efficiency will be a bigger concern.

Lifebloom has seen big changes too. The changes are a big nerf to rolling stacks of LB, but we have a couple small carrots to go with the big stick. Here's how it shakes out:

• Lifebloom's mana cost is doubled (!)
  
• The bloom heal now stacks too (so a 3x LB stack gives 3x the bloom effect)
  
• When it blooms, you also get a mana refund of 50% per application

The mana cost change is the big nerf, hitting the HPM of Lifebloom stacks right in the gut. Put simply, you probably won't roll more than one stack in most situations.

The buff component will require some adjustment. Today, if you're rolling a Lifebloom stack, you hate to see it bloom. I mean hate. The good news with this change is that the mana refund can be useful, and you have a potentially huge heal with a 3x bloom. Today, a bloom (in PvE) is usually accidental, and is a wasted heal more often than not. With this change, we're going to have to be more mindful of whether the bloom will be useful or not.

There are other changes too (Revitalize, Intensity, and of course mana regen), so there will be a lot to talk about. I've transferred Alamein to the PTR, so I should be able to try out some of the new stuff. And I expect further changes. That's why it's the "Test Realm," after all! The numbers I mention above (especially on Lifebloom) are very likely to see at least a bit of change.

I'll post deeper thoughts and updates as I experiment a bit, and as we learn more. One thing I promise: I won't go emo on you. I fully expect trees to be powerful healers through 3.1 and beyond. We'll have nerfs and (scary!) changes, but we'll get through them. Hang in there!

Tiering Up

I wanted to launch part 3 of my healing series this week, but it's not going to happen. As Crash Davis said, "We're dealing with a lot of sh*t!" I was going to zip it out, but I'd rather it be worth the time. I'll be out on vacation next week, so you'll see the series pick up early in March. Thanks for your patience!

Last night was a milestone for Alamein because she got her first piece of T7 gear, the [Heroes' Dreamwalker Robes]. In itself it's a minor upgrade over the [Robes of Crackling Flame] I was wearing previously, but my hope is to add more T7 gear to it over time. The set bonuses will make a significant difference in its value.

The odd part about getting that piece, though, is that I bought it with Emblems of Heroism rather than getting a drop. In some ways that's a bit cheesy; you'd rather know that the gear represents a raid accomplishment. Some players will complain that you can run 20 heroics and get the same gear that requires a full raid otherwise.

There's a couple of sides to this. One is that I can say that I've killed Four Horsemen (who drop the token for this) a few times now. We always have at least another Death Knight and Rogue in the raid, plus we usually have either a Mage or another DK along. I don't remember how often the token has dropped, but the others have won rolls on it when it did, and frankly everyone who's won it has needed the gear more than me anyway. Token drops are a nice way to mitigate the randomness of drops, but they're still random, and especially with the plethora of DKs around, I think your odds on the Lost Vanquisher token are slightly lower (despite its increased drop rate).

The other side, though, is that I have no patience for the arguments about how you earn your gear. When I hear complaints about 'welfare epics,' I hear people who need to define their success externally. I don't care how exclusive your gear is, it's never going to be the single signifier about your skill or accomplishments.

You and your friends and your guildmates know what you accomplished. They know if you were dead in the first 30 seconds of the fight, if you are #1 in DPS in your guild, or if you have been around for every Naxx run plus helping newer players run heroics for gear. Or all of the above. The external signifiers should be treated as a bonus, not as the evidence.

I like having current tier gear on Alamein. We never raided seriously in BC, and I never had any T4 drops until people started PUGging raids late in the game. But it's more important for me to know that our guild has worked hard on Naxx. It took us a few tries to get Four Horsemen down, and when we did, that felt really good. I didn't need to win a roll to make the effort worthwhile.

Welcome!

Hi folks! Just a quick post to say hello to all the new visitors coming over from Resto4Life. Thanks for the link, Phae!

I hope you find something useful here. But I wanted to say something about where I'm coming from. Our guild is 10/15 in normal Naxx, and we typically PUG in two players for our raids. We wipe often (currently on Hegian and Four Horsemen sometimes and on Grobbulus a lot). I'm not as strong at theory as Phaelia or World of Matticus or the crowd at Elitist Jerks. I spend as much time on Festival achievements as I do on raids.

That said, I believe a few key things:

• A casual player might not have the gear that a hardcore raider does, but there's no reason the casual can't have the same skills.
  
• The casual player often has to work a lot harder and needs more skill than the raider in a guild that's farming heroic Naxx and EoE every week.*
  
• There is an amazing amount of heavy-duty theorycraft and good analysis that's out there.** But it's a very steep learning curve, and casual players often have to spend a lot of time to process and assimilate that knowledge.

That's what I'm trying to do with this blog: connect some of the dots for more casual players — specifically Balance and Restoration Druids — to help you upgrade your skills.

So most of my posts will be pretty elementary for the hardcore players. But hopefully they're useful to a lot of people also. I sometimes simplify stuff, and I'm sure I get a lot wrong too. Call me on it! And if there's anything you want to hear about, let me know.

*The hardcore raider may well be more skilled; that's what got him or her in the hardcore raids to begin with. But those raids are going to see shorter fights, less damage, and fewer mistakes. Casuals by definition are going to have to deal with a lot of crap, so they use their skills more.

**I can't emphasize this enough. The available resources are astonishing. There are whole disciplines of IT that should be so lucky.

Catch Up

I feel like I might blog some more. So as a placeholder - and with no discussion - I'll give an update about what's happenened in the past year.

In short, I've kept playing. A lot! The highlights:

• I leveled Alamein to 70. She's done a lot. While leveling she was Restokin spec (moonkin/healer hybrid). On reaching 70 she's mostly alternated between full Resto and various full Balance specs. Recently (within the last month) I've also experimented with a feral tank spec. But if you asked me what Alamein is, I'd say "healer" without question.


• We started a guild, Talon Guard. We grew rapidly, built to raiding Karazhan a bit, and then ran into too much tension between aggressive hardcore raiders and more casual players. We couldn't raid enough to please most and lost most of our members in one week. On the other hand we've kept some of our most mature and fun members and have formed some close friendships.


• I leveled a second toon to 70: Sali, my gnome mage. She just dinged 70 last week, and I'm having a lot of fun with her. She's been Fire spec the whole way, and I'm still enjoying that. She's now venturing into the world of daily quests with the goal of getting her epic flyer. Just last night, she completed the quests to run Sha'tari Skyguard and Ogri'la dailies.


• I've PvP'd a little. Alamein has done a good bit of battlegrounds, especially Alterac Valley -- she's Exalted with the Stormpike Guard. On the other hand she's only run a handful of arena matches, and has yet to spend her first arena points.

So that's what I've been up to. I'll post more later about what I'm doing on a daily basis. But suffice to say, it's now about getting ready for Wrath of the Lich King. I'm excited about the expansion and am hoping to do a lot of things when it arrives. Should be fun!

Halfway

So, a little while since last post. It's been busy and I haven't had a chance to put any commentary online. Much has been happening in the game however.

Most notably, Alamein, Cargarios, and Wyrmm all dinged level 35 in the past few days. There's nothing particularly important about that milestone -- no new spells or cool items. But it's important nonetheless: it means I'm halfway to 70, halfway to the max level.

It'll be interesting to see if the second half takes less or more time than the first half. On the one hand, I know a lot more about what I'm doing and how to be successful at it. On the other, my impression is that there's a lot more content built for levels 60-70. So we'll just have to see what happens.

Most of that leveling has come from running quests, mostly around Darkshire, Wetlands, and Hillsbrad. But we've also tackled a few more instances. We started into Blackfathom Deeps, but we had already outleveled it and it was frankly boring us, with no real sense of challenge or danger. So we hearthed out of the middle of it, and returned to Stormwind to do Stockades instead.

Stockades was interesting enough, and we were close enough to the right level that the mobs were reasonably tough. Its biggest failing though is that there isn't much variety to it. Partly that's because it's fairly small, and the mobs are all about the same. But mostly it's because the layout is essentially identical throughout. That fits with the backstory -- you're invading a prison -- but it makes for repetitive gameplay. Once you've figured out how to handle a battle in a room, you're pretty much set. Anyway, it worked fine and we cleared it in about an hour. No seriously good loot dropped but we still got some useful experience out of it.

Gnomeregan is pretty much the opposite of Stockades. It's long, and complex, and has a wide variety of mobs. It's also got an unusual ambiance and several amusing details. For this instance (and Stockades too), we didn't consult a guide or walkthru before starting -- a change from our Deadmines efforts. We did fairly well through most of it. Handling the standard elites was fairly straightforward, but we did have to watch for troublesome pulls or alarmbots. The bosses didn't present too much trouble, and we had things pretty well figured. The washing machines and grime-encrusted objects were an amusing surprise -- especially because I got four gems out of my first five objects. For the most part, we did well.

We did wipe in the end, though. It was the Arcane Nullifier X-21 that did us in -- and specifically, the fact that we hadn't checked any walkthru guides. We went up against our first one, and it was surprisingly tough... because we didn't know about its spell-reflecting ability. So we were happily burning mana to nuke ourselves. We could have probably survived that... but we went too close to the edge of the ramp, aggroing another X-21... which ran around the ramps to get to us, bringing another three X-21s with it. Five at once was just laughable, and we wiped in short order.

So we'll give it another go, and now that we know about the X-21s, we'll be OK. Plus we have the backdoor key so that will keep it shorter. It was enjoyable enough, much more so than Stockades. But while the technology theme was amusing, it just doesn't appeal to me. So I have to say that Deadmines is still the champ for atmosphere.

The start of an obsession

Short version: I can blame it all on my brother.

Long version: I am not a serious gamer. But I have spent a lot of time with various games. One of those was the original Diablo, and eventually both Eric and I spent quite a bit of time on Diablo II. So we were rather well acquainted with Blizzard through that.

When WoW came out, I was a bit confused. I was familiar with the Warcraft series, even though I'd never played it. And I wasn't sure how you could make a RTS into a MMO game. Even when I learned the details, it seemed like an odd combination. And after the isometric projections of the Diablo games, I wasn't jazzed about the first-person perspective of WoW. At any rate, I didn't have the hardware or the dedication to get involved with it. So I went down different paths.

One of the games I enjoyed during that time was Call of Duty. And I played quite a bit of it. But online play was a different beast. My brother and I played a few times, and I played on my own too. But frankly, we weren't even close to skilled enough. The curve is so steep that there was no way to compete with even normal players online. My tactics weren't good enough, I got lost in the maps, and (maybe most importantly) my reaction speed just wasn't fast enough. Not enough twitch in these almost-40-years-old hands, I guess.

So, back to my brother. Knowing me perhaps too well, he gave me WoW as a Christmas gift. It sounded good, but I was reluctant, based on my limited previous online experience. After a few days, though, I loaded it up and began to play. After all, I could try the initial 14 days and then quit if it sucked -- or if I sucked at it.

It didn't. I didn't.

Maybe later I'll post a detailed recollection of my first impressions. But I can give a quick summary. One, the UI took a bit of getting used to. It was more complex than the WWII FPS games I'd spent time with. But after maybe 5 minutes, I was moving around quite well. And oh my, but Azeroth was a beautiful place.

So, that was in late December. I've been playing WoW -- a lot -- since then. I knew that Eric and DK would be interested too, so at some point I invited them over to check it out. And they fell in love as well. Both started asking for chances to come over and play their own characters. Soon, Eric gave in, upgraded his Macintosh, and began his own WoW career. And not long after that, DK followed the same path.

And that brings us to now. The three of us will play separately and play together; we'll arrange times to meet up online and play 3-man teams. We haven't been at it long -- two weeks, perhaps. But we're having a blast.

Welcome!

Yes: it's yet another World of Warcraft blog.

You may be searching for detailed strategies, tales of epic conquest, or a how-to guide to leveling to 70 in two weeks. Maybe you're looking for the best build for your rogue. Perhaps you're searching for a good strategy for leveling your Engineering to 375 as efficiently as possible. In other words, you're looking for 133t info.

You won't find that here.

In short, Passport to Shandris is the story of Cisko, Eric and DK. We're not your stereotypical WoW players. We're all older, working adults, with mortgages and jobs. Two of us are married. We have fairly busy social lives. Oh, we're geeks all right. And we're pretty caught up in an exciting and interesting game. But we're not the stereotypes you hear about playing WoW.

What we are is a refutation of the myth. There is some truth to the myth, of course. There are a good number of WoW players who have no social lives and devote dozens of hours per week to the game. And there are a lot of teen (or pre-teen) kids running amok around Azeroth. But with 8 million players, there's a huge number of relatively normal and balanced people playing WoW.

Maybe more importantly, we're doing everything the 'wrong' way. All three of us have started a large number of characters. I have 15 characters started on four realms. I don't know for sure about Eric and DK but they're probably getting up there too. None of us are paying a lot of attention to the 'best' Talent builds or the best strategies for leveling or professions or anything else. If there's a right way to play WoW... we are doing it wrong. And with our laid-back approach, and our reasonably limited time to play, we may never get into the endgame content.

And we're pretty OK with that. If you want to get from point A to B as fast as possible, there are good ways to do it, and more power to you. But we're taking our time and enjoying the journey. We do a lot of reading online -- it's almost essential to understand what's going on and how to some things. But none of us are obsessed about finding the absolute most efficient way to do anything.

As the three of us have been playing, both together and separately, we've shared our stories with one another. This blog is designed to give us a good way to share a lot of those stories, and to keep up with what we're doing. But I'd also like to write down some observations about WoW from the perspective of a casual player.

So that's the plan. We'll drop some more posts out here soon, especially because I'll be away from the game for a week or so. (eek!)