WotLK: Balance druid abilities

Here's a new catchphrase for Alamein: "Balance for show, resto for dough."

Feel free to quote it! I may be goofy, but that's a pretty accurate way to describe my druid experience. Resto is the real payoff for a mana-using druid; it fills the biggest need in either PvE or PvP. But Balance is a lot more showy. I mean, come on... lazer chickens! Don't get me wrong, I love healing, and it's going to be my first preference in groups or raids. But I really have a lot of fun switching back to Balance.

So I did my look at Resto already, but now I want to spend some time with Balance. To be honest, I've spent less time with this, because I think it's easier to learn on the fly, simply because I can't learn healing skills in solo play. (Even with tanking, you can try your stuff for a while on your own. But there's nothing in solo play that's comparable to healing a group — your only practice option is to run battlegrounds.)

New Balance Abilities

There's only two new Balance spells, both coming from talents. I still don't feel like I have a firm grip on how to use them, but they both look like they'll be pretty cool.

Typhoon (talented): This is an instant cast cone attack; it does both damage and a knockback effect. (They should have named it Tsunami, which makes a lot more sense. The visual effect even looks like a wave.) It requires 40 points in Balance, so it's comparable to Force of Nature — deep Balance. It's got a chunky mana cost (36% of base mana) and does moderate damage; it's on a 20-sec cooldown.

This is a killer spell for PvP. The instant-cast damage is good, but its biggest use will be to knock away melee attackers. It'll also be good for interrupting spell casts. The knockback also has potential to be deadly if players are near an edge or cliff; I shudder to think of the carnage on the bridge leading to Dun Baladar, for example.

I'm less sure of its use in PvE. From a pure damage perspective, you'll want to save it for groups of mobs. Against single targets, Moonfire will do a bit more instant damage for 60% of the mana cost. So you about break even on 2 mobs, and get ahead of Moonfire against 3 or more. You'll have to be tactical about the knockback effect. I can imagine a Typhoon-Roots combo being useful against single mobs, or using it as an escape mechanism when you're jumped by a pack. But you'll have to be careful about where the knockback will take your mobs — don't knock them back into another group or (egads!) over a bridge in an instance. They'll come looking for you, and drag half the instance with them.

Starfall (talented): This is the new crowning 51-point talent: the ultimate Balance ability. It's another instant-cast effect, doing pure damage. It operates in a circle around the caster, dropping up to 20 stars on targets within 30 yards. If you move, the effect will move with you. The stars do direct damage to the target, and then splash damage to targets 5 yards around the target. Overlapping circles! Costs 35% of base mana &mdash about like Typhoon — and it's on a 3-min cooldown.

The interesting thing is that this is both an AoE and a single-target spell. If you have one target in range, it will receive hits from the stars every second. (I believe half the stars are 'lost,' however.) But if you add more mobs, the stars spread around, and you also get the splash damage effects. If everything is tightly packed, the synergy will grow quickly, as each target will get its own star and splash damage from all the other stars falling nearby. Damage will fall off somewhat if you can't get things packed in around you, but the stars will do good damage.

This will rock in both PvP and PvE; the only challenge will be the cooldown. It'll mostly be used to deal with groups, but I can also see popping it to up your DPS against a boss or other elite target. It'll be very cool for AoE grinding, except that it's only up once every 3 minutes. And don't forget, it's an instant-cast buff, so you can do other things while it's working. Even better, it uses Celestial Focus just like Starfire, so you can talent for a chance to stun the targets it hits (especially nice for PvP).

There you go — two new abilities. Pretty cool stuff! But there are big changes to our existing abilities too.

Changed Balance Abilities

Entangling Roots (baseline): This now works indoors. Wow — you'll be able to CC using roots in your instance runs. This burden will mostly fall on Balance druids; a druid who can kite and chain-root a mob will be really useful. Also nice in PvP of course. But remember, the target is still awake and active. Don't bother rooting a caster, and make sure everyone stays away from rooted melee.

Hurricane (baseline): Pretty simple, really: no cooldown. Hurricane still uses a big chunk of mana, so it's not like you can endlessly chain-cast this. But it's there when you want it. Nicest for AoE grinding and battleground PvP.

Hibernate (baseline): Now works on Dragonkin, which should help you CC in some of the WotLK instances. No PvP impact.

Nature's Grasp (baseline): Yeah, Nature's Grasp is now baseline. It's also bumped to a 100% chance to proc — no more Improved NG to worry about. This will be great for PvP and somewhat situational for PvE. It also means the damn button will stay on my action bars when I respec. Yay for that!

Soothe Animal (baseline): Now affects Dragonkin too. Um... might be slightly situationally useful in a few pulls in dragonkin-infested instances? I'm struggling here. The only time I use Soothe Animal is when I'm fishing in Terrokar Forest and want the wolves and warp stalkers to leave me alone.

This should really have been with the Resto stuff, but:

Barkskin (baseline) is now useable in Tree form. It's a great change for trees, and also removes the biggest source of druid irony.

So: some significant changes for Balance druids. The new spells are pretty cool, but the biggest effect is going to be indoor roots and dragonkin CC. These won't make Moonkin into CC kings, but they do make us a lot more useful, and will really change our playstyle.

The Balance talent tree has seen a pretty big overhaul too. I'll talk about that next.

WotLK: new resto druid talents

Yesterday I looked at the new resto abilities, including Wild Growth, the new 51-point talented spell. Today I wanted to look at the other talents, and how they will affect the way we heal. I'm going to focus mostly on PvE, since that's what I know best.

In BC, PvE Resto talent builds were pretty easy: take just about everything in the Resto tree. There are 68 possible talent points in Resto. With 61 points to spend, you'd think you'd have some choice, but not so. Nine of those points are found in Furor, Natural Shapeshifter, and Omen of Clarity, which have almost no relevance to healing. So you could take 59 points in Resto, have all the healing-related talents, and have two points left over to spend wherever. (Natural Shapeshifter was the usual best bet, in case you had to shift out of tree form to cast a Healing Touch.)

That's... kind of boring, really. I would sometimes take 11 points in Balance to get Insect Swarm, to help mitigate incoming tank damage. But the other 10 points in Balance had zero relevance to healing, so really a 61-point resto build was the only worthy option.

That's going to change in Wrath of the Lich King. First, the basic math. You have 71 points to spend, with 78 points in the tree. Similar to BC, except there are a few more options now. First, the new talent Master Shapeshifter has benefits for healing: with two points, it adds 4% to your healing power in Tree form. Not shabby, but you'll have to invest 3 points into Natural Shapeshifter as a prerequisite. I think that most pure PvE builds will skip this, but it's at least viable; 4% additional healing isn't too horrible for 5 talent points.

The other big change is that you'll really debate putting points into the Balance tree. In the first 3 tiers, there are 14 points that improve your healing ability:

• Genesis (5 points): This adds up to 5% to your periodic abilities — in other words, your HoTs. Pure added healing power.
  
  
• Moonglow (3 points): A 9% reduction in the mana cost of several spells, including Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth. That's a reasonable mana cost reduction.
  
  
• Nature's Majesty (2 points): Adds 4% to the crit chance of Nourish and Healing Touch. That's mediocre, but at least it adds to healing. But this gets you to 10 points in Balance, which opens up...
  
  
• Nature's Grace (3 points): Formerly a 21-point talent, this is now accessible as an 11-12-13 point talent, ultimately giving you a 100% chance on spell crit to cut your next cast time by half a second. Doesn't help your staple Lifeblooms or Rejuvs, but it really helps with HT and especially Regrowth. When you factor in the added 50% crit chance for a fully-talented Regrowth, you're looking at a lot of Nature's Grace procs. That can make for some interesting Regrowth-focused builds. And there's one other useful talent in early Balance...
  
  
• Nature's Splendor (1 point): This adds duration to your HoTs — Rejuv gets 3 seconds, Lifebloom gets 2, and Regrowth gets 6. That's one extra tick for Rejuv and two for Lifebloom and Regrowth. You can count this two ways. If you figure a fire-and-forget HoT, like you might drop on a damaged DPS, you'll get a simple increase in healing done of 20% for Rejuv, and 28% on the HoT portion of Lifebloom and Regrowth. Or if you're keeping the spells active on a tank — casting a new one when the old expires — you'll instead get a comparable mana cost reduction because you cast the spell less often. It's not a simple percentage increase; you don't get the benefit if your HoTs are overhealing, if you Swiftmend them away, or if you overwrite them before they're done. But this talent has the potential to really add to your healing power in a subtle and interesting way.

So that's the Balance tree. With those talents, there will be some Resto builds that take up to 14 points in Balance, which means more choice on the Resto side. But what do those choices entail? Here are some of the new or changed talents that are worth considering.

• Omen of Clarity (1 point): This used to be the bastard stepchild of Resto: great for Feral builds but useless for healing. No longer! It now has a chance to proc on spells as well as melee attacks, making your next spell free. It's gone from a must-skip to a must-have.
  
  
• Improved Tranquility (2 points): In addition to its old effect, this now reduces the cooldown on Tranq down to 4 minutes. I think this is a big difference, because you'll be able to count on Tranq a lot more.
  
  
• Living Seed (3 points): I'll just quote the text:

  When you critically heal your target with Swiftmend, Regrowth, Nourish or Healing Touch spell you have a 100% chance to plant a Living Seed on the target for 30% of the amount healed. The Living Seed will bloom when the target is next attacked. Lasts 15 sec.

  I think this can be really powerful, but it will be very situational. If you're just using Lifebloom/Rejuv on a tank, you'll never see it. If you top off a DPS-er who's no longer under attack, the seed will expire with no effect. But if you're madly healing a tank with everything you've got, or if you're racing to heal widespread and ongoing raid damage, this is going to get you a 30% extra heal on a regular basis. It's the kind of talent that won't help unless you're really in trouble — but then, it could save your bacon.
  
  
• Replenish (3 points): I used to be excited about this, but now I'm not. Again, to quote:

  Your Rejuvenation spell has a 15% chance to restore 8 Energy, 4 Rage, 1% Mana or 16 Runic Power per tick.

  The problem is that it's a low chance to work and a low amount returned. Normal Rejuv gets 5 ticks. That means, on average, your targets will get 6 Energy, 3 Rage, .75% Mana, or 12 Runic Power from a full-duration Rejuv. (Increase that by another 1/5 if you take Nature's Splendor.) That's almost nothing — it won't even be noticed. If this isn't boosted, I think it'll be skipped in most builds.
  
  
• Improved Tree of Life (3 points): This has two effects. For one, it doubles your armor when you're in Tree form. Nice; it makes Tree very useful in PvP which is cool. But more importantly, it increases your healing power by 15% of your Spirit.
  
  In some ways, this covers the nerf to Tree form that came with raid buff equalization. Formerly, Tree gave your party members a bonus to healing received of 25% of your spirit. Now the Tree aura covers the whole raid... but it's limited to a flat 6% healing bonus. The improved Tree talent gives you a reason to like Spirit again, and really adds to the power of Tree form.
  
  I'd like to do the math to compare the two. But you start getting into the Healing to Spell Power conversion, spell coefficients, average spell rotation... in short, it's complicated. That may be a post on its own.
  
  
• Gift of the Earthmother (5 points): This is deceptively simple: it cuts the GCD on Rejuv, Wild Growth, and Lifebloom by 20%. With no Haste gear, that cuts the GCD on these spells from 1.5 sec to 1.2 sec. That will basically get you one more spell stuffed into your Lifebloom maintenance, which is pretty cool. You can't get the GCD beneath 1 sec, so if you're really stacking haste gear, this might become redundant. I don't know whether that will be realistic given the WotLK gear that's available.
  
  
• Wild Growth is the new 51-point Resto talent, but I talked about that yesterday.

So that's it — the big changes in our talent tree. I think the new talents have the potential to change druid healing in WotLK by a fair bit. If you grab Nature's Grace or Omen of Clarity, you'll be watching for procs and adjusting your casts accordingly. Improved Tranquility might lead you to cast Tranq more often. And Gift of the Earthmother could give you time to do more between refreshing stacks of Lifebloom.

More importantly, those interesting Balance talents will lead to more diversity in Resto builds. The default 0/0/71 build will be viable, but so will anything from 5/0/66 to 14/0/57. I think there's some good possibilities for healing builds that go deep Balance too — new Restokin builds and others. More to come on that!

WotLK: new resto druid abilities

I read a lot of beta discussion posts. Normally I focus on anything with an official Blizzard 'blue post', through the MMO-Champion BlueTracker. Recently, I've started wading into the WotLK beta druid forums directly. It's painful due to the whining found in every beta forum for every class, but if you're willing to overlook the tears, there can be interesting discussions from time to time.

I don't have a beta account, so I can neither test beta tools nor post in the beta forum. I could test on the PTR, and I've been tempted... but I haven't yet. (Maybe in the next cycle.) But I still have thoughts about the upcoming talent changes, and I wanted to write those out. I'll focus on the Restoration changes here.

Overall — and despite the crying — I think healing will be OK. The developers have explicitly decreed that a) every spec should be competitive, and b) hybrid classes will no longer be gimped a bit just because they're versatile. I don't think they're clueless enough to go live with major druid healing deficiencies, and I think they'll address minor deficiencies in an early patch.

(Some history on patches. Burning Crusade launched on 16 January 2007, based on patch 2.0.5. Patch 2.0.6 (23 January) had a few balance fixes, but the big balance patch for was 2.0.10. It dropped on 6 March 2007. So: some quick fixes were released one week after launch, and the serious rebalancing work came about 3 months after launch. I expect a broadly similar cycle for WotLK, but the 'big' balance patch will come sooner — say, early to mid January.)

In other words: druid healers will be viable. How could they not? So for me, the WotLK questions come down to a few different worries:

• Will Resto druids be better or worse healers than in BC?
  
• Will Resto be more or less fun than in BC?
  
• What tools or talents will be mandatory or useless?

I'll look at the talents in detail. But today I want to look at our new Resto heals, and how we might end up using them.

Revive (base) will finally give us a standard rez spell; it only works out of combat, and returns toons with minimal health and mana, but there's no cooldown. This will make druid-healed runs go faster than before. It's not going to win more fights for us, but will make life much more pleasant.

Nourish (base) is a new direct heal. It's broadly comparable to a priest's Flash Heal: it's a direct heal (not a HoT), with lower cast time, mana cost, and healing output than Healing Touch. It's designed for situations where Healing Touch will either take too long, or will cost more than its worth. It also has a bonus component if you already have a HoT running on the target; unlike Swiftmend, it doesn't consume the HoT.

The challenge is to make Nourish work alongside Regrowth. Regrowth has all the same components: a direct heal with shorter cast and lower mana cost than HT. But it also adds a small, long-lasting HoT, and with talents it has a big (> 50%) chance to crit.

So why would you use Nourish over Regrowth? It's a tricky balance and one that Blizzard has wrestled with a bit. The biggest factor is that Nourish is a faster cast, by .5 sec. That's not much, but it's designed for the "oh crap!" moments in a healer's life. The other piece is that Nourish now has a significantly lower mana cost, so you can spread a few around without seriously depleting your mana the way Regrowth would.

This is going to be the toughest spell to work into the rotation. Right now, I'll drop Regrowth on any non-tank toon who's taken a chunk of damage. After 3.0.2 I'll probably try to use Regrowth if I expect more incoming damage, and Nourish otherwise. The key question will be whether I trust Nourish to heal them enough for me to go do other things. We'll see if that works as intended.

Wild Growth (talented) is the showiest new spell we'll get. It's our 51-point healing talent — the bold statement that "I'm full Resto and proud of it!" It's 5-man, semi-targeted heal: it heals 5 toons within 15 yards. It's a HoT, but the anti-Lifebloom: its biggest tick is its first, and it tapers off from there. Oh, and it's instant cast.

I still have questions about the mechanics of this spell: how it's targeted, how the AoE range works, who will receieve the HoT, and so forth. So I have only provisional thoughts right now. But this will be a very powerful spell to combat raid- or group-wide damage.

Tranquility is the interesting comparison here, since it's also an AoE group-wide heal. Tranq is a punishing spell: huge mana cost, channeled, with an AoE that players often miss. But it deals out a huge amount of healing, which can really make it worthwhile. What's interesting is that Tranquility got a reasonable buff too; with talents you can bring the cooldown to 4 minutes. That's great — it means you can use it on multiple trash fights in a row, or on several tries at a boss. It's the kind of spell that can uniquely prevent a wipe.

I don't think Wild Growth will be that powerful, but it'll be a more convenient option when there's widespread damage. Today when that happens, we have to choose between spending GCDs on healing our DPS brethren or on our tank heals. Choices include ignoring wounded DPS or risking a tank death. (Or we can pop Tranquility – once — with all the challenges that entails.) Now there's a third way: we can drop a Wild Growth, and we know that the worst-off should get some health even if we can't catch them directly. I predict it won't directly save us from wipes, but it will keep more DPS toons alive — and more DPS will solve a lot of wipes.

Where does that leave us? There's nothing seriously game-changing here, in the way that Lifebloom and Swiftmend completely altered our healing in Burning Crusade. I think that's a good thing. We'll be doing mostly the same things we've been doing before, with a few extra tricks up our sleeve (branch). We'll still stack Lifebloom on the tank, still drop LB or Rejuv when DPS takes damage, still Swiftmend to deal with spike damage. Having done that for a couple years, I'm not sure I'd want to start casting Chain Heal or Flash of Light all the time; it's not what we do. So I'm glad we'll be doing mostly the same things.

So we'll be 90% the same healers we were, but it's that extra 10% that I'm looking forward to. My belief is that Nourish and Wild Growth will give me two tools that cover gaps where previously I had few choices. We'll see how it plays out, but for now I'm optimistic.

(Next: detailed look at the talents we're getting. Builds will be vastly different!)

Restokin today

Edit: I'm seeing a lot of hits to this page from people searching for a 3.0.2 Restokin build. That's not on this post, but I took a stab at it in my First draft talent builds post.

Let's talk about Restokin. This is the hybrid Balance/Resto spec for druids. I've also seen it called DS/NS (for Dreamstate/Nature's Swiftness). The defining feature is a mostly even split of talent points between Balance and Restoration, usually taking Moonkin form in Balance and Nature's Swiftness in Resto.

I've spent a lot of time in variations on this spec and I enjoy it quite a bit. I don't remember the details, but the last third of my leveling experience with Alamein was as a Restokin. I specced into it sometime shortly past level 50, and kept it up for quite a bit after I hit 70. My first several Karazhan runs were as a Restokin. Since then, I've mostly switched between full Resto and full Balance, with a good chunk of time in Feral learning how to tank. I got tired of constantly respeccing, so last week I jumped back into Restokin.

Let's be clear: a Restokin is a compromise. In most situations you won't DPS as well as a full Balance build, and you usually won't heal as well as a full Resto build. My goal was to get to a single spec where I could heal Heroics, run battlegrounds, and run dailies with equal ease. The Restokin is great at this. I suspect it's good in Arena too, but I'm a total Arena noob so I won't presume to offer advice in that direction.

Talents

Here's my current 31/0/30 Restokin build. (Edit: Talent build link no longer works with the launch of 3.0.2.) First, I would NOT recommend this particular build; I tried a few things to be different and I'd do it differently if I tried again. I was going to show my preferred build, but it will be obsolete in a couple weeks anyway. The basic principles, however, will still be the same.

Some of the key talents:

Balance

Insect Swarm: It's easy to forget how useful this spell is. It doesn't go BOOM but it still puts out a good bit of damage, and the reduced chance to hit is helpful in both PvP and PvE.

Celestial Focus: I shouldn't have skipped this, the pushback resistance for Wrath is pretty important. I'm curious how this will play out when 3.0.2 hits because the pushback mechanism will change so much.

Lunar Guidance: Absolutely key. This talent means that I have more +heal as Restokin than I do in full Resto. It compensates for giving up tree form and the other Resto talents that add to specific healing spells. It also means that today a Restokin should stack Intellect. Not sure, but that may change some in WotLK.

Nature's Grace: Another great one to have. As a Restokin, you'll be using more Healing Touch and Regrowth than as a tree, so Nature's Grace will help you a lot.

Moonglow: This is an optional talent, depending on whether you want to focus more on pure DPS/HPS or on mana efficiency. It's actually more important for your healing side. If you want this, you'd sacrifice some points from Moonfury.

My current build skips most of the mana efficiency talents. I definitely feel the effects; in healing Heroics, mana has been a challenge but manageable. (Specifically: I haven't gone OOM yet, but I have been using a lot of Innervates and mana pots.)

Dreamstate: Another mana efficiency talent. This can be a huge benefit for Restokin — it's why they're often known as "DS/NS" druids. The synergy between Dreamstate and Intensity is huge. I suspect that with 3.0.2 I'll really want this back again, because mana management will be a lot more important.

Moonkin Form: This is why you're a Restokin. Great for soloing and battlegrounds. Moonkin Form + Barkskin is amazingly survivable, and is the closest thing to a short-term caster tank you'll see. Also not bad if you're healing an instance and adds come calling; it gives your tank some extra time to regain aggro.

Restoration

Naturalist: You'll choose between this and Nature's Focus. Naturalist is better for instance healing and maybe AV; Nature's Focus is better for PvP.

Intensity: A no-brainer, especially since the lower-tier talents are otherwise optional.

Subtlety: Really useful for threat management when healing instances. I usually end up with 4 points in this. If I were focusing on PvP I might be inclined to shift points into Natural Shapeshifter, but I'd want to think about the dispel resistance of Subtlety, especially for Arena. Don't steal my HoTs!

Nature's Swiftness: Another spec-defining talent — moreso for Restokin than for pure Resto builds. Use this exclusively with Healing Touch. Here's a quick and dirty macro for it:

/stopcasting
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch

WowWiki has more complex NS macros that are worth checking out. Congrats: you now have a giant instant heal on a 3-minute cooldown. I just loooove dropping this in battlegrounds — there is nothing better for frustrating the opposition — but it's a great panic heal for instances too. And you're already healing in elf/tauren form anyway so you don't have to worry about tree form.

Your remaining Resto points should be spent as you see fit. Gift of Nature benefits everything a little bit. Beyond that, you can focus on Rejuvenation with Improved Rejuvenation, Regrowth with Improved Regrowth, or Healing Touch with Empowered Touch.

Playstyle

You'll heal in elf/tauren form and DPS in Moonkin form. You've got a lot of flexibility to adjust to different situations; make sure to use it.

Solo PvE: Nothing special here: you're basically a (slightly underpowered) Moonkin, and you'll solo the same way. I usually lead with Starfire and Moonfire, use Entangling Roots and Insect Swarm, then Starfire or Wrath as appropriate. Keep an eye on your Nature's Grace procs — it will make the cast time of Wrath less than the GCD, which can mess up your rotation if you're not careful. (I believe this is fixed in WotLK.) Don't forget your NS/HT macro panic button; it should get you around half your health back instantly.

Also: think about using melee on the last 10% of a mob's health to regen mana, as melee regens mana in Moonkin form. You'll kill the mob more slowly and take some damage, but you'll be at (for example) 80% health and 80% mana instead of 95% health and 40% mana. It'll speed up your solo work.

Group PvE: Don't be surprised to find yourself using Regrowth and Healing Touch a lot more than you do as a tree. You don't have Swiftmend and your HoTs don't tick as hard; you'll make up for that with direct heals. Nature's Grace will really help with this, especially with a few points in Improved Regrowth. Mana management will be your biggest issue; expect to use Innervate a lot, along with mana pots and maybe Drums of Restoration too. If you're having trouble, try moving talent points into Dreamstate and maybe Moonglow.

One of the advantages of healing in elf/tauren form is that you can attack a bit on the side, when you can spare the mana or GCD. Your first priority beyond healing should be to drop Insect Swarm whenever you can. The damage is nice, but the -2% hit will help your healing too. You can also switch to pure DPS at the end of a fight if you're OK on healing.

Battleground PvP: You do the most good in battlegrounds if you heal, so make that your first choice. Spread Lifebloom and Rejuv around liberally. Lifebloom is especially nice because it protects your allies from Purges. Use Regrowth for people in combat with more than 50% of their health.

Use your NS/HT macro for anyone who's down around 25%, or lower if they're in single combat. They'll love you for it! Watch for line of sight though. If you target someone who runs out of line of sight, your NS will go off but the HT will fail. Your NS buff is still active: you can either regain LOS and try HT again, or find someone else to give your insta-HT.

Use Moonkin form if you're sucked into melee combat or if the healing is covered by someone else. Cyclone is a great tool; look for someone casting a big spell or with a short-term buff like The Beast Within. Save your Cyclone for someone who's not currently targeted; you don't want to cause your allies to waste their attacks. Spread Insect Swarm around liberally; both the damage and the -hit are useful. If you're not getting pummeled, use Hibernate on animals that aren't being attacked. Hunter pets are an obvious target but cat or bear druids are better. Even if they trinket out of it, you've used up their trinket cooldown.

(There are probably interesting things about running a Restokin in Arenas, but I'll leave that to someone who knows Arena better than me.)

That's the nickel guide to running a Restokin. When talents get worked out a bit, I'll take a stab at what a WotLK Restokin would look like. Hm, would I rather have Swiftmend or Force of Nature? Decisions, decisions....

The Leather Scene

Last night was quiet for me. I only completed one quest, "The Green Hills of Stanglethorn". It's different, which is nice; this is the quest where you have to collect the missing pages of the book from random mob drops around the zone. I wonder if the designers anticipated how this really works: people sell the pages at the AH. I believe I bought all but one page at AH, probably spending about 1 gold in the process. If I were so inclined, I could auction the thick leather armor kits and still make a profit -- even aside from the experience. At any rate, it was nice to finish that off and free up bag space!

The rest of my time I worked on leatherworking. As I mentioned yesterday, I wanted to make a set of armor for grinding in cat form. Alamein is still specced for Restoration (yes, that mess is a topic for future discussion) and doesn't plan to switch to Feral. The caster/healer hybrid is pretty handy; I typically act as caster/healer for small questing groups and then as a pure healer for instances.

But that leaves soloing. As long as she's outside, Alamein can grind some difficult mobs, thanks to Entangling Roots and self-healing. But that's not ideal for everything. If she's indoors, she doesn't have Roots to lock down the mob. Perhaps more importantly, grinding as a caster is a bit slow this way. Druids don't have huge nuke spells, so a mob may require a few cycles of Moonfire-Roots-Starfire-Wrath-repeat. That takes time; it also burns mana, so she has to drink after every fight or two. It's a successful but slow approach.

There is a shortcut: cat form. When fighting mobs just a bit lower in level, she can grind very efficiently that way. The key is whether she can fight two or three mobs before needing to heal; if she can do that, then she kills maybe twice as fast as she could with spells. And that's wearing caster gear. With some additional armor, and some +agility/+stamina gear, she could be even more efficient.

Plus, cat form is fun!

So that gave me a desire to make some of that fun rogue-style armor. Fortunately I was able to find some cheap thick leather on auction to make it possible. Here's what she made:

• [Dusky Bracers] (+8 agility)
  
• [Dusky Belt] (+8 agility, +8 stamina)
  
• [Nightscape Tunic] (+15 agility, +6 stamina)
  
• [Nightscape Headband] (+12 agility, +11 stamina)
  
• [Nightscape Shoulders] (+11 agility, +5 stamina)

Not a bad set of fighting gear, though there are a few pieces missing. She doesn't have any good boot or glove patterns. So she kept her [Infiltrator Gloves of the Eagle] and bought [Huntsman's Boots] of some sort at auction. (EDIT: actually they were [Insignia Boots].) For pants, she already has the [Triprunner Dungarees] which are perfect.

That completes that set. None of these items are terribly expensive in materials other than the leather -- she only had to buy bolts of silk at auction. So she made a few extras of each to sell. And that got her skill up to 215 -- so she could also make her coveted [Big Voodoo Robe]. That will help her caster gear as well, easily replacing the Guardian Armor she's been using for some time. So, not a bad night's work of leathercrafting.

I'm curious how much the melee gear will improve Alamein's melee capability, so I'll probably try that tonight. With some Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch time coming up, I'll have to decide how I want to fight in PvP. I suspect she'll use some combination of gear to give her flexibility, and might fight more in cat form than she has before. Should be fun!

Gnomer, Again

Well we finished up Gnomeregan Thursday night. It was an interesting combination -- still fairly difficult, but also somewhat anticlimactic.

We'd been far enough in before that we had the backdoor key. So that saved us some time. I don't remember anything of note in the first several battles. Most of the early to mid fights are against gangs of gnomes.

Our aggro management and crowd control isn't great. That's mostly a problem for the hunter Firegrin and for Alamein as healer. With a crowd, we'll usually have Wyrmm sap one and then Firegrin pull the next. Depending on the mobs, we'll either focus on one and take it down quickly, or maybe split them up, with Alamein focusing on healing.

That's the plan. In reality, we usually have some challenges with bigger groups. The first is getting Firegrin to shed aggro to Cargarios. So often we'll have mobs jumping out to get a run at the hunter, which puts him into melee and removes his more-useful bow attacks. Meanwhile, I'm having to heal -- at least Cargarios, and often Firegrin too. (Wyrmm is either fighting the same target as Cargarios, or else doing a good job stunlocking his opponent; either way he usually avoids taking much damage.) So as I drop these heals onto the others, I will usually pull aggro and end up with the annoying adds ganging up on me.

But for most of Gnomeregan, it's not a problem. The wrench-throwing gnomes are a pain but I was able to complete my heals without taking too much damage myself, so I could be patient and wait for the help to come. (Having points in Nature's Focus helps too.) So there were a few eventful moments, but nothing too troubling for much of the instance.

Then we got to the last hallway, the one with the X-21 Arcane Nullifiers. This was where we had wiped before, and we knew it was a challenge. This time we knew about the nullifiers, about the two levels of the hall, and about the dark iron dwarves' land mines. So at least we knew what was up. We did well for the most part. Taking down two mobs wasn't too tough. We had to be careful -- didn't want to aggro the mobs on the lower level -- but in the event we were able to work our way downward.

The challenge came when we were about 3/4 down the hall, and saw a group of 6 or so dark iron dwarves. This we knew would be tough. They hit hard, last long, and have the annoying mines. Six of them were going to be tough. And so they were. We started as best we could. Wyrmm sapped one and then we started, with Wyrmm and Firegrin taking one and Cargarios soloing another. I watched for heals and mines, trying to take out the mines before they armed. It was the best plan we could identify.

Unfortunately it still left three dwarves unaccounted for. We were OK until the damage started to add up and I started to heal. Cargarios felt the brunt of it, as expected. I did my best to stealth him with smaller heals but eventually it built up and a couple came after me. That sucked because I couldn't just wait these guys out. They did a lot of damage and quickly I had to choose between healing myself and healing Carg. At one point, I lost him, but I was able to get off a battlefield rez with Rebirth and get him on his feet again... but by that time I was low myself, almost out of mana, with potions on cooldown... in short I had no cards left to play. I think I went out first with Cargarios close behind. Wyrmm didn't last long either, though Firegrin was able to Feign Death and escape. But without a means for him to rez us, we were effectively wiped.

But we were determined to finish this one off, so back to the instance we came. The real kicker was that we couldn't come in the back door as ghosts. Pity, that. So we had to go the long way 'round and fight ourselves back to where Firegrin was hanging out. It worked well enough, though it took about a half-hour, methodically taking out mob clusters down the halls. Eventually we got back together, fortunately before we had any respawns. So this time we only had three dwarves to deal with, which wasn't too bad.

By contrast, the final boss was a cakewalk. Mekgineer Thermaplugg is pretty amusing, but not too tough for us to beat. We put Firegrin on bomb duty while Cargarios and Wyrmm took down the big guy. I helped out by Moonfiring bombs and of course healing. He went down without too much fuss. I think maybe Firegrin died -- too many bombs or something -- but that was right at the end and not much of a problem. Cargarios rezzed him and then we grabbed the loot and hearthed home.

So despite the setbacks, not too bad in the end. Gnomeregan was the first tough instance we'd had since Deadmines. But it just wasn't as engaging. The ambiance tries too hard to be both funny and menacing. It should be one or the other; the hybrid just doesn't come off. Some of the mobs are suitably challenging and interesting... but you have to kill hordes of boring gnomes and troggs to get to them. And the layout is confusing and annoying without being attractive. So in the end, not as much fun as we might have hoped.

We'll probably go back in at some point to run some of the early quests we skipped, and to clean up our final few grime-encrusted objects. But for now, I guess we'll have to look ahead to our next instance run.

Battleground Noob

I made my first venture into the battlegrounds last night.

I got online after dinner and got an instant /whisper from Cargarios: "You have to come here and try this!" We'd talked about doing it before, but that was right when we leveled to 30 and we decided to wait until we were higher in our zone. Last night, Wyrmm and Cargarios decided to give it a try. They loved it and so I jumped in too.

We started in Arathi Basin. DK was eating dinner, so Cargarios and Alamein jumped in. Compared to PvE, it was simple chaos. The Horde were attacking from all over, and it was all I could do to find a reasonable fight and try to get off some damage before death. The first couple fights quickly devolved into a desperate battle to keep the Horde off the stables, and in each case we more or less quickly lost.

Fundamentally, the Horde were much more organized and capable than the Alliance. Some of it was a better level of PvP tactics; they knew how to fight well. It's taken me time to develop my PvE skills -- the druid is flexible enough to be complicated -- and I'm going to have to learn things all over again for PvP. But a lot of it was much better team tactics. They had a plan and a mission and knew what they were trying to do; we had maybe one or two chat messages ("take lumber mill??") followed by lots of improvisation. In the end, we were just overwhelmed; we went in a second time and lost even faster.

We tried that a few times, and then switched to Warsong Gulch to see what that was like. The good news was that it was a bit simpler to figure out, and the Alliance was able to do better, but still the Horde just had better strategy and tactics. So we lost there too, but at least I started to get a better sense for how I needed to fight. I started to show up near the top of the rankings at the end of the match -- below many Horde players, of course, but at least looking respectable from an Alliance perspective.

It's amazing to me how fast these games evolve. I've played a very small amount of online FPS games against human opposition, and frankly I suck at it. I'm probably too old to have the twitch reflexes to match my opponents' speed; I don't play enough to have the tactics; and my hardware is slow enough that I can run into lag problems too. In PvE, I can find a place to stand and work from there, maybe backing up to kite a mob, but no more. In PvP it's imperative to stay constantly moving, and that in itself is a big challenge for me.

Key realizations:

• I figured out I was going to die so fast that mana efficiency just didn't matter. So: spam Moonfire. Towards the end of the night I was living long enough where this became a small issue, but frankly I didn't have a better strategy to switch to.
  
• Rogues suck. Many of my deaths came while I was stunlocked by a Rogue. Hence it became very important to keep Nature's Grasp up as often as possible. That's my best defense against stunlock.
  
• Warriors were a problem too; they would Charge me and establish stunlock from there. But if I could Root them then I had a very good chance to deal with them.
  
• I don't have a good strategy for hunters. Hibernate can be useful against the pets, but only if I have enough time to cast it without interrupution, AND if the pet is unlikely to get attacked by someone else. On the other hand I can reach out to them with Moonfire and Wrath, so at least I can fight back.
  
• The casters present unique challenges, particularly because of their DoTs and curses rather than their nukes.
  
• As much as I've played WoW at this point, my biggest enemy is situational awareness. Figuring out what's going on is challenge #1, and sometime that starts with "what direction am I facing?" and "where are they coming from?"

We played for a while in Warsong Gulch, and then switched back to Arathi for a last go. And this fight went rather better than the others. I was able to do some real damage, and take down a few Horde. The pinnacle was when I came up on a single level 37 Tauren warrior coming up the road.

We saw each other and knew the battle was on; nobody had surprise. I didn't have Nature's Grasp up (still on cooldown) so it was going to be a challenge, but I got off my first Roots before he could lock me up, and from there I was able to kite him and heal myself. It worked beautifully, and I saw him crumple... a split second before my screen went black. My worst time yet for a system crash. By the time I got rebooted and logged in, the match was over. So I didn't even have a chance to check my stats. Frustrating; but I know that I did better and that we came much closer to actually winning the match.

Of course, I was exhausted and sweating by the time I finished. It was... intense. But also a lot of fun. I'll be trying that again soon.

Hard, Then Easy

A busy weekend of leveling for me. Eric and DK were gone for the weekend. So, while Cargarios and Wyrmm were quietly resting in the inn, Alamein and Firegrin set out to do some catching up.

We've had a bit of a level gap for a while. Last Thursday, Wyrmm stood at level 28, with Cargarios at 27, Alamein at 24, and Firegrin at 21. In some ways that's fine, but I know I felt some pressure to catch up. To be sure -- that was my own pressure. Nobody is pushing to get us to level quicker, and neither Eric nor DK were concerned. But I didn't want to feel like I was being 'run' through the levels by more powerful characters. With a 3- or 4-level gap, we weren't quite there... but I was a bit nervous. So with the higher-level characters quiet for a few days, it was a great chance to progress.

Firegrin and Alamein did most of their leveling separately, as we just didn't seem to be online at the same times. Alamein started by running a lot of the quests in Duskwood. She wasn't able to finish most of the quest lines -- they really do require groups -- but she was able to move most of them to the penultimate step, and that probably moved her through 3 levels or so. She then spent Sunday doing quests in Ashenvale to kick her up another level.

I believe Firegrin spent his time on Kalimdor, running quests in Darkshore, Ashenvale, and Stonetalon Peak. On Sunday night, they were both in Ashenvale, and finally joined up so Firegrin could help Alamein finish the Raene's Cleansing quest series. Alamein had been able to solo it up until facing Ran Bloodtooth. He wasn't all that tough, but fighting him (with his ranged attack) and his one Furbolg buddy was just a bit too much for Alamein on her own. So Firegrin came to help out, and together they made short work of the pair.

By Sunday night, Alamein had dinged 28, while Firegrin finished at 25. With both of us able to add four levels in a few days, that puts us all on (more) even footing, and closes the bulk of the gap. Which feels pretty good. With Cargarios and Wyrmm back in action on Monday, we were all able to spend some time running things together in various combinations, and it felt great to have everyone at roughly the same level. What was most interesting for me though was the immense difference between playing solo and with even a small group at the same level. The tactics are almost completely different, and the encounters have a completely different feel.

Alamein did quite well soloing, but that involved a lot of careful play. She's specced somewhere between Restoration and Balance, so her strengths are tied to her casting abilities. So a typical encounter would be: Wrath, Moonfire, Roots; Faerie Fire, Moonfire, then Cat Form and build Energy while waiting for the mob. When he's freed, he should be at about 50 to 60% health; it's pretty easy to take him down from there with the kitty form. If it's a caster or shooter, I might take him out exclusively with Cat Form. I can use these methods up to +1 level above my head. If it's a tougher mob, then I would recast Roots and whittle him down a bit with Wrath, Starfire, and/or Moonfire. Two mobs would be a bit tougher, but I can usually crowd control one with roots, or Hibernate if it's a beast. Failing that, I might resort to Bear form to tank better and maybe Swipe to create a bit of area-effect damage.

That strategy works pretty well for grinding mobs. I can usually make it through 3 or 4 before I have to heal and/or drink. I'll use bandages to avoid small heals, and Regrowth for bigger heals. But I have to be careful about pulls, and watch for wandering mobs who can spoil the fun. It's a very efficient method, but takes some planning and caution. I work hard to avoid fighting unnecessary mobs, since they'll make me spend more recovery time, so I make liberal use of Soothe Animal or Hibernate to avoid fights. It's a careful, steady style of play.

But as soon as I group up, it's a different story. First of all, the mobs are hugely easier with 2- or 3-on-1. Also, we can use specialized roles, combining my Roots with Firegrin's bow, for instance. And so play becomes much different. We typically don't have to take much care in the basic areas, and if we pull 4 or 5 same-level mobs, it's usually not a crisis. Plus I'm using maybe 50% less mana and losing 50% less health, so I don't have to drink or heal nearly as often. We'll pull random mobs to fight, knowing that it won't cost us much time. If I need to eat and drink, I can do it while my partners continue killing -- so I will even gain experience and maybe quest objectives. It's easy, and casual, and makes for a much more relaxed experience.

Both styles are fun; I wouldn't want to do either one exclusively. I enjoy the tactical challenges of soloing orange quests; killing the worgen in Darkshire did wonders for my Skinning skill, too. But sometimes you just want to treat it as a casual game, and not have to think so much.