WotLK gear replacement, revisited

This is a post-launch followup to my earlier look at gear replacement. My best guess at that time (late September):

T4 gear doesn't start to get replaced until fairly late in the first zones, and will be relatively decent even into your mid-70s. T5 will last to your late 70s, and T6 won't be replaced until you get into heroics or the new Naxxrimas.

WoW Insider had a post on upgrading to greens, where the poster points out that it's not happening, flirts with complaining about it, but then counsels patience.

So what's the scoop? Blizzard did this on purpose. Flash back to the release of Burning Crusade. There, the design was that pretty much everyone would replace their gear with early quest rewards. Only Naxx raiders held on to their gear beyond even Hellfire, and even that T3 gear was replaced from midlevel quest rewards. For everyone else, their hard-won raid gear was gone by the time they dinged 62 or so.

New gear is cool. But this quick replacement had a few consequences:

• It devalued the hard-won raid gear, leading to a "what was the point?" reaction.
  
• The nicely matched tier gear was replaced with mismatched greens, resulting in the dreaded "clown suit" look.
  
• By amping up the equipment values so quickly, it created an inflation effect where each subsequent level — later quest rewards, dungeon drops, and BC tier gear — had to be more and more overpowered.

The experience wasn't good for players and created headaches for the developers. So they changed it.

Here's my graphic from the last post, showing the relative item values from various types of gear:


There's two big changes. First, the early BC purples are more comparable in value to the midlevel WotLK greens, so you'll hold on to those much longer. And second, the easy access to Badge gear means that even non-raiders will have some good gear that should last for a long time.

You will replace your gear eventually; how quickly depends on what kind of gear you had. Here's a quick summary:

Gear source	Replaced with:
BC quest rewards	early WotLK quest rewards
BC instance drops	early-mid WotLK quest rewards
BC Tier 4 gear	mid-level WotLK quest rewards
BC Tier 5 gear	late WotLK quest rewards, WotLK dungeon drops
BC Tier 6 gear	WotLK Heroic drops or Naxx gear

So what's been my experience? My starting point was a combination of T4-level and BoJ gear. I replaced a ring fairly quickly with a quest reward, but otherwise I wasn't very tempted by any Howling Fjord gear. Last night, I replaced my first decent purple. The [Life Binder Talisman] replaced my [Voodoo Shaker]. That was a bit sad; the Voodoo Shaker was a recent pickup, my last BoJ spent. But it is nice to have some new gear for a change. The two items aren't far apart, and that's probably true for a lot of the rewards I'm starting to see. But something like my [Grovewalker's Leggings], a 100-BoJ pair of pants, will probably last until I start running Heroics.

Have no fear; you'll get upgrades. Just be thankful that the transition is a lot smoother this time around.

Leatherworking: time to give it up?

First, the good news. Leveling Skinning is about the easiest thing you can do, at the launch of a new expansion. There's tons of dead animals all over the place, just ready to be skinned. I'm already at 450 skill for that, with probably about 150 Borean Leather in the bank so far. It's nice.

But I haven't made a single new leather item yet, and I'm starting to think that it's time to quit Leatherworking. That's really a shame, because I like it. The irony is that Blizzard has said that the profession changes were designed to route you to something you enjoy rather than something you felt you 'had' to take. I enjoy Leatherworking, but the available items are so bland and boring that I'm not seeing any use from the profession.

Leatherworking has always suffered (along with Tailoring and Blacksmithing) in that many of its products aren't consumable. Yes, you can make armor patches and leg armor. But the bread and butter of the profession — the leather or mail armor — is unlikely to sell for much. People just get better rewards from dungeons, rep, and badges. There are a few high-end items that you can sell, but those are pretty rare. Most things aren't worth the material cost. And the patches, while not bad, compete with enchants and aren't a huge money-maker.

The Bind-on-Pickup leather items used to be great, at least for me. I worked hard to craft my Windhawk set. It was a bit better than T4 and lasted me through all of Burning Crusade. (I didn't get out much.) Raiders got some good BoP patterns too. But it appears that Blizzard won't do anything this good any more, which really kills the attraction and value of Leatherworking for me. Even if there was comparable gear, I took pride in wearing something that I'd made myself; it marked me out as a leatherworker (though the models were crappy) and made me feel that the profession gave me something unique. Without that, my motivation is much less.

Drums were a Burning Crusade addition designed to make Leatherworking more attractive. And they did! The effects they added to battle were great and were a big advantage. Too big. Advanced raiding guilds had many of their players convert to Leatherworking so that they could chain-drum their way through challenging encounters. That is specifically what Blizzard wanted to combat (and rightfully so). So, they changed drums so that all drummers in a party or raid are subject to the same cooldown. Not a bad change, but as my normal party has three leatherworkers, we're really overstocked with drummers now.

So, Wrath has another answer: fur linings. These are crafter-bound wrist enchants, like the ring enchants that enchanters get. They're not bad. Compare Fur Lining - Spellpower to Enchant Bracers - Superior Spellpower. The fur lining gets you almost 125% more spellpower than the enchant. The attack power advantage is about the same, while the Stamina bonus is huge. There are also fur linings for resistances. It's all pretty nice.

But that's what Leatherworking reduces to: +37 spellpower for me. That's it. Beyond that, I've lost my unique (and pretty good) armor; any value from my Tribal Leatherworking specialization, and much of the utility of my drums. It's depressing.

I haven't looked at it, but I suspect that Blacksmithing is in much the same boat. Enchanting is probably about where they were before, as are the consumeable professions of Alchemy and Jewelcrafting. Tailoring at least gets their flying carpets, and Engineering gets their choppers and a host of other unique and cool items.

So will I switch? I'm reluctant, since Alamein has been crafting leather her entire career. I'm still hopeful that I'll see some useful changes with future patches. Besides, I don't have time to level another profession while I'm leveling up. So I'll probably hang on to Leatherworking for now, at least until I reach level 80 and/or the 3.1 patch comes out (and we see more recipes). But if things stay as they are, Alamein may have to become an Alchemist or Inscriptionist.

Quests to catch in Howling Fjord

Yesterday, I got up and collected Eric at about 6:30 to head to Fry's. I wanted to get the Collector's Edition of Wrath, so I wanted to line up early. It turned out that there were about 25 or 30 people there, but almost 100 copies of the Collector's Edition, so we were safe. Still, it was fun to participate.

I had to work, but after I got home I quickly logged in and got cranking. Alamein had logged out in Menethil, so I headed to Howling Fjord and got busy.

I'll give a more detailed look at my thoughts eventually. But for now, it sums up as wow. My jaw hit the floor again and again as I came across new elements. I want to talk about the art and design in some detail eventually, because it absolutely kicked me in the teeth. It far surpasses my hopes.

The quest design too is amazingly cool, though there are a few rough spots and ho-hum "collect 4 pieces of meat" quests. (The latter are actually important in order to make the special quests stand out, but still: boring quests are boring.) But I'll highlight a few of the don't-miss quest lines that I came across so far.

Harpoon operation

This chain begins in Valgarde with The Path to Payback. The first parts look pretty standard, but at the end you get to take control of a couple harpoon guns and rain destruction on both buildings and attacking drake-riders. At one level this is simple training in operating siege machinery... and that's important. (Hint: look for the folded arrow icon on the right when you want to 'exit' the harpoon.) But it's also fun and cool. And there's an amusing coda at the end; as Eric described it, it's a real Dr. Strangelove moment.

The spirit world

This one begins in Valgarde with Into the World of Spirits. The first quest has you go diving for a bag found on a sunken ship, and I know that those quests can be annoying and skippable. Don't. The next two steps have some very cool stuff involved.

In the second step, The Echo of Ymiron, you enter the spirit world and observe a conversation. This is cool for a couple reasons. It gives you background on what's happening with the Vrykul, but it also just looks incredibly cool. But, there's more! I don't want to give spoilers, but while in the spirit world, you should wander around until you find an... important figure. It starts a cool scripted event that's well worth the price of admission.

The third and final step is similarly cool and informative. Well worth the time.

Falcon quests

This starts in the Explorers' League Outpost with the Trust is Earned quest. The first couple steps are pretty easy and harmless. The third step, Falcon Versus Hawk, is pretty annoying, because there aren't enough hawks around, so it takes forever. I almost skipped it, but the last phase is a lot of fun, and teaches you more about the new vehicle/minion control mechanism.

Iron Rune Constructs

This is a long chain, starting all the way back in Valgarde with The Human League. After a lot of work in Wyrmskull Village, you end up heading to the Explorers' League Outpost, where you'll eventually get Tools to Get the Job Done from Walt.

Walt will send you all over the place to get materials. (This includes the amusingly named We Can Rebuild It and We Have the Technology.) After that though, Walt will build you a small siege vehicle to finish the quests with. It takes a little work to learn how to control it, and it's pretty slow. But the quest is otherwise easy, and gives you a very cool experience at learning more of the new vehicle interface. Have some fun with this one.

So those are just a few questlines to look for. But I haven't found anything yet that I'd say you should skip anyway, so just do it all!

Wrath: Where to start?

Here we are — one day away from Wrath of the Lich King. I'm eager to start exploring new zones, attempting new quests, and running new instances. But that all starts with traveling to the starting zones and invading Northrend.

With Burning Crusade, it was pretty simple. You jumped through the Dark Portal and hit Hellfire Peninsula. A quick quest would fly you to the starting city (either Honor Hold or Thrallmar) and you'd start picking up quests.

But Wrath will offer you a choice, because there are two starting zones this time around. Both Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra will start you off with level 70 quests, so you'll have to pick which one to head to first. Of course, it's not a major commitment (like Aldor vs. Scryer); you can switch back and forth between zones. Yet one way or another you'll have to pick a starting place.

I did a bit of research into it, to decide where to go. As far as I can tell, they're balanced quite well; it won't matter which zone you start with. I looked up quest rewards in both zones, and they shouldn't matter a huge amount. Most are green items at iLvl 138, which will probably not replace anything better than BC dungeon blues. Borean Tundra has quests that will give you one druid idol and a selection of blue weapons that might be more useful, but overall things look pretty comparable for druids.

So, it comes down to aesthetics I think. Here's a quick look at both zones, to help you choose.

Borean Tundra

Borean Tundra is on the west end of the Northrend croissant. Alliance can get there from the Stormwind harbor, while Horde will take the zeppelin from Ogrimmar. The Horde has a stronger presence here, but both factions have towns and quest hubs.


Borean Tundra is a grassy, barren environment. (It's... tundra, actually.) You'll see caribou, wolves, and mammoths wandering the plains. It's populated by Tuskarr, Taunka, Naga, and dragonkin. Oh, and you'll be working with the Murlocs too. D.H.E.T.A., the anti-Nesingwary group, has a strong presence here as well.

Howling Fjord

The Howling Fjord is on the other side of Northrend from Borean Tundra, on the easternmost peninsula of the continent. Alliance travel there from Menethil Harbor, while Horde will catch a zeppelin from the Undercity.


Howling Fjord is rocky and mountainous. Wildlife is dominated by herds of shoveltusk, and odd, stocky combination of bull and caribou. The NPC population is focused around the Vrykul, a viking-esque half-giant race. There's also a strong Scourge presence, leading the Forsaken to attack here in strength.

I really don't think there is a strong advantage to either starting zone. It all comes down to aesthetics and experience. I expect that I'll end up spending a good bit of time in both places, but Howling Fjord looks like the most appealing area to me. (I'm also a bit concerned about the effect of D.H.E.T.A. on the skinning profession in Borean Tundra!) My best advice is to pick whichever zone looks like the most fun, and don't worry about it too much.

I'll be logging out in Menethil tonight. See you there!

Weird stuff in 3.0.2

I spend a lot of time keeping up with WoW news. I'm usually "that guy" who has details about what's changing, how to prepare, and when it's likely to happen. As usual, I was well informed before 3.0.2 dropped, but still there were some things that surprised me.

Some were details that I'd known but forgotten. A good example is the use of Entangling Roots in instances. Sure, I would have told anyone about it days before or after 3.0.2. The problem is, I've never remembered to use it in instances. I just don't have that habit yet.

Another example is the new entrance in Caverns of Time. This will eventually be the portal for the Culling of Stratholme instance when WotLK drops. I knew that was there, but I hadn't worried about it much, and eventually I just forgot. But last night we jumped in to CoT to do a quick run at Escape from Durnholde. (I was 500 points from Revered and the guys offered to help me out.) I was riding around to find the entrance, and noticed the new stuff there. Pretty cool!

Other details I just hadn't heard before. I didn't know that the battlemaster for Strand of the Ancients was going to be in Shattrath already. I'm already registered with his faction, too. And I hear that the boat that used to go from Menethil to Auberdine is no longer running; I hadn't realized the routes were changing that much.

I was surprised to start fishing up rank VI scrolls in Inscribed Scrollcases. I also heard similar stories about Froststeel Lockboxes. Those are even more surprising because nobody can open them yet; it requires more skill than is possible at 70. At least the scrolls are useable!

Even more surprising was the new food and drinks. I was in Ironforge and happened to visit the innkeeper. I was shocked to see that he's selling Pungent Seal Whey and Honeymint Tea. The tea isn't drinkable until level 75, but you can drink the whey (ugh) right now. Out with the Purified Draenic Water! They're also selling comparable food items, so if you're a non-healer you might pick up some of that too.

But there's just a lot of weird stuff going on too. I'm not talking about server instabilities; I'm talking about stuff that appears to be happening in game, and might or might not be intentional.

The first thing I noticed is that when I shapeshift, my size is... off. I'll shift from cat to bird form, and my bird will start out tiny and grow to normal size. Or I'll shift from bird to elf, and my elf form starts out huge and then shrinks to fit the room. Quite odd. Is it intentional? A known artifact? A bug? No idea.

Hunters are dealing with a more serious issue, though it's one they can work around. Pets are taking off after a mob as soon as the hunter fires a shot. Before, they would wait until the mob was in melee range. The new behavior is dangerous when a hunter is trying to pull a mob away from others, because the pet will be close to aggroing more mobs. Hunters can work around it by setting their pet on Passive, but that's more work. I can't believe this is accidental but it must be difficult to adjust.

I'm also seeing some strange behavior with daily quest drops. Take for example the daily fishing quests. Previously, I would fish for a while before getting the special fish I wanted. Sometimes it would be in the first couple casts; other times I'd catch 15 or 20 fish before I got what I needed. Since 3.0.2, I've caught the special fish on the first cast, every time. Even weirder, I'll catch two things at the same time — the special fish and some other normal fish.The same thing is happenening with skinning and the Nether Residue collection. Before it seemed like about a 25% drop, but now I'm getting it every time. It's kind of nice, but I'd like to know if it's intentional or not so I don't get my hopes up if not.

The honor calculations for battlegrounds have changed quite a bit too. It's actually a bit annoying to me because I'm seeing myself with a lot less honor than before. My fear is that it's because I'm healing and doing other useful things rather than killing. I am usually good about sitting on a flag until it's captured. That's something that needs to be done, but it's time when I'm not fighting; I'd hate to lose honor for it. And there was a fight where I was #1 in healing, yet I took less honor than about half the raid. That's kind of annoying, and I hope that more adjustments are still to come.

Overall, 3.0.2 went down quite well. I'm glad however that I can still be surprised by things even when I do follow the discussions so closely!

Druid healing in 3.0.2

I had my first chance to do serious Resto work last night. I'd healed a run in heroic Underbog for a paladin tank a few weeks ago, and we friended each other. Last night, he pinged me and asked if I wanted to heal a Karazhan run. It was a great chance to test out druid healing, so I took him up on it.

I respecced into full resto. (I really wish they had reset the respec fees along with the talent point refund.) Here's the 5/0/56 Resto druid build I took. My one change from my earlier intent was that I skipped Improved Tranquility and the one point in Empowered Touch, in order to take Replenish. This was only because I wanted to give it a real test, and not because I thought it would be helpful.

We had a pretty good pick-up group. Four or five players were from the tank's guild, including my friend Hazek. In about three hours we were able to get Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera (Big Bad Wolf), Curator, and Illhoof. We had one wipe due to an accidental trash pull, but were able to one-shot all the bosses. That was surprising, especially with no crowd control on Moroes; we had no priests along. It's pretty clear that the bosses have been nerfed quite a bit.

We started with two tree druid healers. I don't remember the other guy's name. His skills were fine but he was undergeared; I healed a little less than double his amount. (Due to this, I pulled a lot of aggro and had about 8 deaths.) After the Opera, he had to leave, so we brought in a Holy paladin instead. He said he was a 'raid noob' but he did a great job. I reset my Recount stats when we brought in the paladin, so that I'd get some clean numbers. So these numbers reflect Curator, Illhoof, and the trash in between. This is a good test, because it's got a good bit of raid damage due to the flares on Curator and the mana worms.

I didn't use Swiftmend at all during the run. Just forgetful on my part! I have been healing as Restokin for a long while now so I'm just out of the habit. After the first half though I made a point of using Wild Growth whenever it made sense, so that I could get an idea of how well it worked. Also, I haven't glyphed for anything yet, so nothing to account for there.

Overall healing: it was good. I did 838.9 HPS which accounted for 47.0% of the healing done. The holy Paladin did 34.0%; #3 was the paladin tank at 6.7% — healing after rezzes and so forth. That number is mostly due to better gear on my part, but it supports the point that resto is still very good.

Healing breakdown:My strategy was fairly basic. I used Lifebloom stacks on the tank and off-tank. I also kept a Rejuvenation up on the tank. When someone else took isolated damage, I'd use Lifebloom and/or Regrowth depending on how bad it was. On raid-wide damage I used Wild Growth, followed by other heals as needed.

Here's how that sorted itself out:

Spell         %-tot  count
Lifebloom     59.9%  1294
Wild Growth   14.9%   481
Rejuvenation  11.9%   132
Regrowth      11.6%   108
Healing Touch  0.9%     2
Living Seed    0.7%    10

The first thing I saw is that Lifebloom is still working pretty well. Now I'll note that I outgeared the instance, which may have affected things. And I'd say that Lifebloom was definitely less powerful than before; I had to use more other heals than I'm used to. But LB still gets the job done.

Next: Wild Growth is cool. It does a good chunk of healing and it is an easy fire-and-forget quick heal. The biggest problem is its randomness. I don't think Grid knows enough yet to track who's been hit with it, and so I was guessing on who needs supplemental heals beneath it. I'd kick out a WG and then start dropping LBs on whoever looked in danger. But even with that limitation, it did a lot of healing. I can live with it!

On the other hand, I didn't get a lot of use out of Living Seed. That's mostly an effect of my healing tools — I didn't use much that could crit. I didn't cast enough HTs or (any) Swiftmends, which left just Regrowth to proc it. Now Regrowth is a great spell to use, because talents get it to crit something like 60% of the time. I'm a big fan. But even if LS procs, it won't take effect unless the toon is hit again within 15 seconds. So for isolated raid damage, it'll be lost a good portion of the time. But I can see some places in the stats where it probably helped keep a toon alive. I'll place this in the "continue to watch" category.

Finally: Replenish. I started out optimistic about the spell; it's a very cool concept. But the numbers looked bleak and I turned skeptical. How did it play out?

I tried to keep Rejuv up on the tank all the time, for Replenish as much as the healing. And the result? Over two boss fights and a good chunk of (mana-draining) trash, Replenish gave him 1134 mana. This was 1.9% of his total mana gained. Of course a paladin gets a lot of mana from Spiritual Attunement, but in any case Replenish just didn't make a big difference. I'm guessing that in the budgeting process, Blizzard decides that adding 2% to the mana returned (or rage or whatever) is worth 3 talent points. But in practice, it's so small as to be unnoticeable. If the tank is going to go out of mana, that extra 2% is unlikely to make a difference.

I keep trying to find arguments for Replenish, because it would be a sweet capability to have. But one night's trial just reinforces my existing opinion. I don't think many druids are going to take Replenish. Even at level 80, I think we'll use those points to get into Balance for Nature's Splendor and Nature's Grace. I'd love to be proved wrong!

Edit: I forgot to say something about my mana observations. In short, I noticed a difference, but I could live with it. I had to watch mana but never went OOM. I had the most trouble on Moroes, as we had no crowd control and a lot of Garrotes to heal through. But with a potion and an Innervate I was fine.

Other random thoughts:
Revive still rocks! We had a Feral druid as off-tank and DPS, so we had several chances to use it, including a few where the paladin tank had died and Soulstones were on cooldown. LOVE IT!

Similarly, it's really nice to have a tree that can move at full speed. It felt funny... but in a good way! I'm sure that arena druids are thinking through all sorts of new tactics.

Very nice to have Gift of the Wild hit the whole raid. It's a simple convenience that makes life a lot simpler. I'm going to love it in AV.

I really miss Blessing of Salvation. Of course, 8 deaths due to healer aggro will do that to you. I'm going to have to get in the habit of waiting for more incoming damage before starting my heals.

So that's the story. I think we might try for the last half of Kara tonight; if so I'll post more complete thoughts later.

3.0.2 Fire Mage Build

I didn't do much productive last night — still playing around with all the new stuff. I need to get Alamein out into the battlegrounds, but last night I needed sleep more.

For the first part of the night, we were bugged. All of Outlands was down for Shandris, so we were limited to any toons that logged out in old Azeroth. I took the time to respec my lower-level toons. The most advanced is Gazala, who's a level 43 rogue; everyone else is a lot lower level than that. So the respecs weren't very informative — though it is interesting to see what talents have moved in each tree.

Once Outlands were back, I logged on to Sali and respeced her too. I know much less about the mage talents — either old or new — than I do about druids. So I'm much less confident that I've chosen a useful spec in any sense. Still, I wanted to share my thoughts.

I don't have my exact spec available, but I chose something pretty close to this: Level 70 Deep Fire Mage: 0/61/0. As with Alamein's talents, I consciously focused on a deep Fire build so that I could understand the available abilities. Based on about 10 minutes of testing, here are my initial impressions:

Firestarter is awesome. It gives you a natural combo of Blast Wave -> Flamestrike, limited only by the GCD. This will be great for AoE farming or damage as a fire mage, providing you can survive a few hits. The knockback on Blast Wave is fun too, and a bit more useful as a mage (compared to Typhoon on a Moonkin druid).

On the other hand, I couldn't really use Living Bomb, because I was testing on lower-level mobs. They would just die before the bomb went off. I suspect this spell will be rather situational, so I'll have to understand more about when to use it. Similarly, I never had a chance for Hot Streak to proc, so I'll have to test with that some more.

Burnout is a weird talent, particularly when you combine it with Master of Elements. Spell crits refund 30% of their cost due to Master of Elements but then lose 5% of that back to Burnout. It works out in the end, which is all that matters I suppose.

Burning Soul is a nice addition. Fire mages never had a lot of pushback protection, so this is a big help. I was also very tempted to take Burning Determination but ended spending the points elsewhere; this is probably more useful in PvP than PvE but still could be nice.

I think in a real build, I will be inclined to take some points in Arcane. Unfortunately none of the Tier 1 arcane talents are very appealing for a fire build, but beyond that there's some nice stuff. Arcane Concentration is a good talent, and Magic Absorbtion looks like it will be powerful. Spell Impact is a nice chunky damage boost on a lot of bread-and-butter spells. Focus Magic looks interesting, but unfortunately only works if you're partied with someone. No benefit for soloing.

So that's a quick look at fire-based mage talents. I'll test them out a bit more and report back!

Echoes of Doom: First impressions

Pretty chaotic last night! Shandris was several hours late coming back online, and seemed to be unstable at least early on. (I got a 5-minute "World Server Down" while in Ironforge at one point.) But by the end of the night, everything seemed to be working as intended.

Addons were a bit wonky. I got enough running that I could live with — Pitbull and Clique, plus some of Tekkub's pieces and a few other random parts. Some were pretty wonky. For example, Fubar was mostly working, but putting the wrong titles on the drop-down menus. And I'm still coming to grips with the new Cartographer — nothing to do with 3.0.2 though.

But with all that, I was able to get going. Here are my first impressions.

Druid abilities

I specced Alamein into Balance as planned, with a slight variation. I decided to take 3/3 in Nature's Focus, giving me 58/0/3. The resulting spec looks like this. If I were serious about doing damage as Balance, I'd spec differently, but this gives me a chance to try out just about everything in Balance.

I did a couple different things in my play time. After traveling to Moonglade to train and respec, I traveled to Winterspring and killed a few furblogs to try out my damage spells. Then I grouped up with Cargarios, Wyrmm, and Firegrin to take a stab at heroic Ramparts. I was healing with a Balance spec and we only had four people, so it wasn't going to be a clean run. But all of us were also trying to figure how to deal with the changes. Suffice to say: it wasn't pretty! But we learned a lot, which was the goal.

Subjectively speaking, I felt like I was doing a huge amount of damage. My Starfire crits were hitting for 4000+ damage. TopScoreFu wasn't working, but I'm almost certain that's about 30-40% higher than anything I've seen before. I don't know if that's due to talents, changes to the spell, or to the conversion from +heal to +spell power on my DPS gear (which actually uses a lot of my healing gear). From what I heard, everyone else was seeing similar improvements.

Starfall and Typhoon both were fun to play with. They do feel rather situational, and I'll have to play with them a while before I understand when to use them best. Starfall is probably the more powerful of the two. Hurricane is a better pure AoE spell, but Starfall is both instant cast and moves when you move, so it works when you're on the move. That will be nice, but the 3 minute cooldown will keep it very situational. And they key to Typhoon will be understanding when to use the knockback effect, which I'm not firm on yet.

With the passive talents, I was actually impressed with Eclipse. One point makes the proc too infrequent to be worthwhile; I think this will be either 3 points or 0. But the graphic on the proc makes it easy to notice, and it's powerful enough to make it worth following. I was also impressed by Improved Moonkin Form, at least subjectively. I felt like my casts were significantly faster and the GCD change really helped.

Earth and Moon was less showy, and for soloing furblogs it's not really useful. I typically couldn't get off more than one or two casts before they were dead, so no real chance to take advantage of it. I'm sure it will pay off for instances however.

Nature's Splendor made no obvious difference to my DPS — not against furblogs anyway. But in healing it was a huge improvement. The 8-second Lifebloom gave me a lot more time to cast other healing spells before refreshing my LB stack. I really think that a level-80 PvE healing build will spec into this more often than not.

I was surprised by the new audio effect for Insect Swarm... but I like it!

And finally, I had a few chances to use Revive. That felt really good! I used to feel a lot less useful when I had to ask a player to run back rather than get rezzed. No longer!

Achievements

Of course I knew this was coming, but it still captivated me. I'm sure I'll spend a lot of time on these. I am at heart an OCD completist, and this is a mechanism to feed that part of my personality. I was surprised to have slightly more achievement points than my friends, though in retrospect that's probably because I'm inclined to engage in exactly these sorts of quixotic pursuits.

I started down the path of completing some of the easier achievements before coming to my senses. I did however get the Going Down? and Captain Rumsey's Lager achievements before logging out. At some point I know I will spend a few hours crossing off fishing and exploration achievements.

I also like the announcement in guild chat. It's a nice way to share your activities with guildmates. I just wish there weren't so many achievements that require WotLK.

Other impressions

It was very nice to log in and find my PvP tokens gone from the bank — and into the Currency tab. I was disappointed however that things like Spirit Shards and Arcane Runes weren't included. They're soulbound tokens, used to purchase goods. They should be included!

It was also nice to get my mounts and pets out of the bank. I bought four more pets when I was in Stormwind; I'm sure I'll accumulate a lot more. I'm going to have to find an addon or macro to spawn random pets. I'm not sure whether I'll grab a whole slew of mounts or not. I will probably avoid flying mounts since Flight Form is so much better, but ground mounts are a different story. But that could be a real money pit.

The barber shop is fun, but the hairstyles are very limited. I wish there was a lot more to do with it. I did however get a haircut for Alamein... for the achievement, of course!

I'm disproportionately happy with the new loading screens, title screen, and title music. We spend too much time staring at these, so it's very nice to see some changes.

Finally: Stormwind Harbor is huge! I think I'd be disappointed if I played Horde — they kind of got shafted.

That's a lot of stuff going on. I will soon respec to Resto to check out the new spells there. I still want to visit the sites of Dalaran and Naxxrimas to see what's changed up there. And I'm most excited about the prospect of world events that lead to the launch of Wrath. Lots to explore!

First draft talent builds: Druid for 3.0.2

Well, it's official: 3.0.2 will arrive today. Official 3.0.2 patch notes are now available, and we'll definitely see all the new stuff when the realms come back up. Remember, all your talent points are refunded — on all your toons. So all those alts will have to respec too. And you'll want to visit a class trainer to learn new spells; some of them are available even at quite low levels, so everyone should train up.

Also: barber shops!

I spent some time last night taking photos around Dalaran and the old Naxxrimas; I'll post some comparisons later on. I'm curious to see how they change things. It was a little wistful, even though I'm looking forward to the new stuff. And that goes for talents as well as terrain; all my familiar specs and builds are out the window. What next?

I specced out three talent builds that I might try using in the next month. I'll share the details, but here are the constraints I used:

• 61 points: I built for level 70, as I'm only expecting to use these specs for the next month.
  
• All spells: I made a point to build out all the way to Starfall in Balance and Wild Growth in Resto. Part of what I want to do is learn how these things work, so I built all the way down.
  
• Casual play: I don't expect to do any raiding in the next month, so I'm less concerned about optimizing. When in doubt, I took talents with new mechanics (Living Seed) instead of generic boosts to healing or damage, so that I could learn how they work.

So: my specs.

Balance: 61/0/0

I am still not sure whether the change to Moonfury and Earth and Moon will be in effect for this build — will they be 5-point or 3-point talents? As it stands though, 3 points in each is enough to understand the effects, so I'll stick with that either way.

I didn't take Genesis, because I think that solo play won't give me enough chance to see the effects of more-powerful DoTs. I also didn't take Natures Focus in Resto, even though that's probably an important talent, because I want to understand more about how the new pushback mechanic will play out.

I was very tempted to take points in Resto. Eventually I think it might be important to build down to Omen of Clarity, and maybe even Natural/Master Shapeshifter. Furor could be very nice too. But I couldn't spend those points and take all the possibilities in Balance too.

I suspect that eventually I'll decide to skip Eclipse, and maybe some other talents too. But for now I want to understand how it works, and what proc-watching will entail. So I'll give it a try.

Resto: 5/0/56

This would be the spec I'll use to heal through some heroic instances prior to WotLK. So it's designed to both test out spells but also to make sure I can heal well enough.

I took 5 points in Genesis — unlike in my Balance build — because it should be a major boost to HoT-based healing. At level 80, I fully expect to try a build that goes into Nature's Grace/Nature's Splendor, but I can't spare the points just yet.

I'm a little worried about mana management — it's going to be worse than today, but I'm not sure how much worse. If it's really bad, I might regret skipping Tranquil Spirit. We'll see.

I didn't take Replenish. I'm inclined to second-guess that, because I'd really like to test it out. But I just don't see any way that the talent will pay off. Maybe I'll change my mind and give it a try — to make sure.

Restokin: 31/0/30

I also decided to take a stab at a level-70 Restokin spec. There's a good chance I'll choose something like this as my leveling spec when WotLK hits.

It's nice to see Dreamstate a tier below Moonkin form now. On the one hand, that means you can get 3/3 in Dreamstate with only 31 points in Balance. On the other, it means you could get a non-boomkin Dreamstate/Nature's Swiftness build that only takes 28 points in Balance. It really opens some options.

With both Intensity and Dreamstate, I'm less worried about mana management, so I feel OK about skipping Tranquil Spirit. I'm less sanguine about skipping Furor; I might move the points over from Improved MotW and Nature's Focus. I also might try for a build that takes Natural/Master Shapeshifter. But I'd probably have to skip Naturalist to do that, and I don't think I can give up the half-second savings on HT if I want to heal instances as I level.

So, there's some quick thoughts. I'll probably spec into Balance tonight to try out the fun new toys, but move back to Resto as soon as I can get an instance group together. We might try for an easy heroic tonight to test things out; Cargarios in particular is going to have to learn how to run his Paladin again as they have major changes. Should be fun!

WotLK: new balance druid talents

OK, I need to complete my four-part series. This time, I want to look at the new talents in the Balance tree. Get a beverage, because this will take a while. The Balance tree has changed a lot.

(I already discussed a few of the talents in my Resto talent post. These are all very relevant to healing, but they're also good for Balance of course.)

Tier 1

Changes start at the top: Nature's Grasp is gone, now available as a baseline ability. Gone with it is Improved NG, as the spell now has a 100% chance to proc. Very nice. This is basically replaced with Genesis, which boosts our DoTs — Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and (I believe) Entangling Roots. Meh, it's decent for mana efficiency.

Tier 2

Control of Nature is gone too. In its place we have Moonglow, reducing mana cost for a host of spells. Another spell that will greatly help your efficiency, but isn't an attention-grabber.

Nature's Majesty is really just the old Focused Starlight, but now also applies to Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch.

Tier 3

Brambles is more exciting than it used to be. Along with boosting the damage of Thorns and Roots, it also adds a daze effect to both your Force of Nature treants and to your Barkskin buff. That's going to be extremely nice for PvP, giving us a counter for both casters (by dropping the treants on them) and melee. It also boosts the damage of your treants by 15%, which will help in PvE too.

Nature's Grace is now a three-point talent but otherwise has the same effect. Nature's Splendor, which I discussed in Resto, also adds duration to Moonfire and Insect Swarm. Another example of an ostensibly boring talent that will probably prove to help with overall DPS and mana efficiency in raids.

Nature's Reach has an important change for Balance druids: more than just increasing your range, it now also reduces your threat by 10/20%. That's key because Subtlety in Resto will no longer reduce threat from Balance spells — only Resto — so we needed a threat drain somewhere. This is it!

Tier 4

Celesital Focus replaces its old pushback protection with spell haste, probably due to the changes in the pushback mechanism. Vengeance is basically unchanged, just adding Starfall to its list of affected spells.

Tier 5

Insect Swarm is now found here, rather than tier 3. It will be more of a defining spell for Balance druids now. There's also a Improved Insect Swarm talent here, but it's a bit weird. It's a synergy talent, boosting Wrath damage if the target has Insect Swarm on it. But it also boosts Starfire crit chance if the target's affected by Moonfire. Odd — but it gives you room to play with different spell rotations now.

Lunar Guidance is nerfed by about half, only giving 4/8/12% of your Intellect as Spell Power. Still pretty powerful though.

Tier 6

Fairly stable — neither Moonfury or Balance of Power have changed much. We've been told that Moonfury will be reduced to 3 points (instead of 5) but keep the same effect, to free up some of our talent "bloat". We also have Dreamstate here, down slightly from Tier 7. Speaking of:

Tier 7

Well, here we get Moonkin Form, of course. But the lazer chicken has changed:

                Old Moonkin      New Moonkin           Nerf/Buff
Bonus armor     400%             370%                  Nerf!
Spell Crit      5% to party      5% to raid            Buff!
Melee AP        150% of level    none                  Nerf - who cares?
Mana regen      Chance on melee  Chance on spell crit  Buff!

Ultimately, this is a big buff to the form. I don't know yet how much mana we'll get back from spell crits, but it's got to be better than the melee mechanism we had before.

We now also have Improved Moonkin Form. It's got two benefits: it gives 3% haste to Moonkin aura, and it gives you spell power equal to 15% of your Spirit. Finally, a reason for Moonkin to use Spirit!

To wrap up Tier 7, Improved Faerie Fire now adds 3% immproved chance for spells to hit, as well as buffing your own spell damage on afflicted targets. It's nice that it does good for the Moonkin now, too.

Tier 8

Owlkin Frenzy looks like fun for PvP. It's a 'further improved' moonkin form that, when it procs, will give you both 10% damage bonus and spell pushback protection. Wrath of Cenarius is unchanged.

Tier 9

Typhoon was discussed in the new abilities post. Force of Nature is unchanged. But there's a lot more in Tier 9.

Gale Winds buffs both Hurricane and Tsunami Typhoon, adding 30% to their damage. It also adds 6 yards of range to your Cyclone. The latter buff is nice for PvP, while the former two will depend on those specific spells. Personally, I'm salivating over the AoE-tanking ability of Moonkin with Hurricane.

Eclipse is designed to be a tricky talent. Basically, it's designed to reward proc-watching, giving you a synergy where Wrath crits buff Starfire and vice versa. I suspect a skilled raiding Moonkin will take this and watch carefully for the right time to change rotation. For solo play or PvP this seems rather forgettable. It will however see a damage increase soon.

Tier 10

Earth and Moon is another raid-scale damage increase. This spell (which will, like Moonfury, be reduced to 3 points) procs off Starfire and Moonfire. It grants 13% damage bonus for all spell schools except, I believe, Holy. It also grants you up to 5% increased spell damage individually. This flat DPS increase would make it worthwhile, even apart from the aura affecting other raid members.

Tier 11

Finally! We've topped out on Starfall, which I've discussed previously. This is a spell which firmly falls into "wait and see" territory for me.

Resto Talents

There are also Resto talents that will benefit the Balance druid. Most notably, Omen of Clarity will now proc off spell casts, so it's very intersting to pick up. Along the way you might grab Nature's Focus, which adds 70% pushback resistance to Wrath, Entangling Roots, and Cyclone, along with a slew of healing spells. And Master Shapeshifter will give a tidy 4% damage boost to Moonkin form.

One other possibility to consider. When you reach level 80, you'll have 71 talent points to spend. That opens the possibility of a 50/0/21 build, taking Nature's Swiftness along with 50 points in Balance. You'd have to skip Starfall, but otherwise you could have a full-featured Balance build.

Summary

The balance talents are completely torn up and rebuilt. The tree is a lot better for it. I think that solo and 5-man play will be about equal to what they were before, but that was very good so we're fine. Raid play got a huge buff, with the raid-wide aura changes and increased utility. (And don't forget CC with roots!) I can't really assess PvP; it looks like we've got more tools to use but I'm not sure how well they'll stack up.

Hope you enjoyed this. Tomorrow I'll post my first-draft level 70 builds for both Resto and Balance. That's what I'll use Tuesday night when I respec.

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!

Updates

I have a few posts I'd like to follow up on.

Inscription: What will it take?

WotLKWiki now has a good starter Guide to Inscription available. It's more advanced than what I cobbled together, but only goes up through 300 skill right now. Here's the list they came up with:

• 3-5 stacks of Alabaster-giving herbs
  
• 2-4 stacks of Dusky-giving herbs
  
• 6-8 stacks of Golden-giving herbs
  
• 5-7 stacks of Emerald-giving herbs
  
• 5-7 stacks of Violet-giving herbs
  
• 6-8 stacks of Silvery-giving herbs

Based on this, my estimate of 5 stacks looks a bit low but in the right ballpark. Watch the WotLKWiki guide; I'm sure they'll update it fairly quickly as more information is released.

Current WotLK Questions

Most of these are still unanswered. We did get a bit of an update to the Resto Druid questions. So says the ever-communicative Ghostcrawler:

Here are the changes we're making next patch. See how they feel.

Wild Growth: Coefficient and healing increased. Mana cost decreased. Cost should be about the same as Circle of Healing. It doesn't heal instantly, but will heal for about double what CoH does over its duration.

Nourish: Reduced mana cost by somewhere between 15 and 20%. This is supposed to be your Flash Heal, but we recognize that it doesn't have the same versatility -- you can't just drop one on a wounded rogue or something since you need the hot up first. Hence the lower price.

Druids have quite an arsenal of healing spells now, and it can be tricky to find niches for all of them. :)

That's starting to get some usefulness into these spells. I'm provisionally confident that I'll have to find space for them now, which is a good thing.

Wild Growth looks like it will be our best bet for fighting AoE damage. It's both less powerful and less costly (less mana, no cooldown, no time channeled) than Tranquility, so it will be a less-panicky panic button. I see using it for example when a boss Whirlwinds and starts cutting up the melee.

Nourish will be interesting; it's less costly and faster casting than Regrowth. Nourish will do more instant healing but less overall healing compared to the full run of Regrowth. It will probably be best used when a non-tank's been gibbed, quickly pulling him back from death's door with a Rejuv+Nourish or even a naked Nourish. It'll also be potentially useful when the tank is getting low, to get to a more comfortable zone where you can let your HoTs tick.

So I think both spells will prove to be useful; it just remains to see if they're extremely situational or if they become staples of our healing arsenal. The biggest open question is how hard Lifebloom has been nerfed and whether they'll un-nerf it a little bit.

Trinkaholic

After looking at my list of trinkets, I was able to delete 7 of them, as well as a [Cache of Mau'ari] I'd been holding. But I also ended up grabbing two trinkets I had missed: [Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry] and [Skyguard Silver Cross] They're both available at Exalted with the Sha'tari Skyguard. They're both great for solo dailies or leveling, either for casters (ribbon) or for physical DPS (cross). The key is the proc: with every kill (giving honor or exp) there's a 50% chance to get buffed with either +80 spell damage or +140 AP for 30 sec. Not quite as good as most on-use trinket bonuses, but this will be up a lot more often. So I'll use other things for instances but this for solo work. It's a good excuse for me to start running Skyguard dailies with Sali.

Current WotLK Questions

I've read a lot about Wrath of the Lich King. I'm pretty sure I've seen most of the info that's available, but I still have questions. Here's what I'm wondering about, in no particular order:

• Where should I start? I like the concept of two starting areas in Northrend. I'll probably switch back and forth a bit, and eventually level in both areas. But I'd like to focus on one or the other initially, and I'm not sure which to choose. That will depend partially on which one is aesthetically more pleasing, but I'm also concerned that there will be quest chains that give must-have items.
  
  
• How will Inscription play out? I've talked about this more in an earlier post. My main questions at this point are around the specific mats needed (will they change?) and how we will learn recipes. I might want to level Inscription, but I'd like to know more first.
  
  
• How will Resto work out for Druids? The Balance tree looks well set, but Resto is still a bit dodgy. Phaelia at Resto4Life is (as always!) your best source here. My main concerns are around the utility of our two new heals, Nourish and Wild Growth. Right now they look a bit useless. I'm also concerned about the Replenish talent. Right now it looks vastly underpowered. I have hopes that these will still be tweaked, but as it stands these all look like they'll go unused.
  
  
• How will Lake Wintergrasp work out? In concept it looks extremely cool and fun. I'm a big fan of the epic nature of AV and this looks like it could go to the next level. On the other hand, it could be a mess. The resets and timing will be a major concern. I have hopes and fears in equal measure for this zone.
  
  
• How much will the new honor items cost? Honor and marks are being reset for WotLK. I totally understand why that is necessary — the players who complain "but I farmed 75k honor!" are exactly the problem that's being addressed. But I'd like to know how much the new items will cost. I play battlegrounds because I enjoy them, so if my honor and marks are lost, I won't mind. But I'd like to put them towards something of value if possible.
  
  
• Will fur linings be useful? I know about the fur linings for bracers. They sound OK, but I can't imagine using them instead of a 'real' bracer enchant based on what's available now. They are all resist gear, which might be kind-of handy but won't compare with +spellpower or whatever. So I want to know if there will be really useful fur linings that would be a real advantage for leatherworkers.
  
  
• Will leatherworking specialization matter? So far, there's no patterns that are specific to Tribal or other leatherworking specializations. That's a shame, considering that my Windhawk set lasted me through my whole level 70 career. Some of the normal items look pretty good so I know there will be useful stuff. But I'm not sure yet if it will match Windhawk.
  
  
• Will my machine handle it? Blizzard is amazing at its ability to do wonderful games with relatively minimal hardware requirements. But I look at the new detailed models and I'm concerned that my Macbook Pro will be at its limit. It does fine now, but will that continue?
  
  
• When will 3.0 hit? We know the WotLK date: 13 November. But I'd like to know when the interim patch will hit. That will obviously have a huge impact, but I'm most concerned about auction house prices and honor points. I guess my preference/expectation would be in a couple weeks, around 7 October. We'll see if I'm right.
  
  
• Can I get the Collector's Edition? I really want it!
  
  
• Will they get some good features in quickly after WotLK? There are a couple things that won't make it in that I'd like to see. One was the option to have different skins for druid forms. The other is the ability to switch between two specs without paying a big respec fee each time. Everything I've read indicates that those are in the works, but won't be here for the launch. I'm very hopeful that they'll get there soon.

That's a pretty decent list for now. I'll update if/when we learn more!

When will I replace my gear?

With Wrath of the Lich King on the horizon, one of the biggest questions we're dealing with is "When will I replace my current equipment?"

The history dates back to the Burning Crusade launch. Experienced raiders found that their epics were quickly surpassed by simple green quest rewards in the early starting zones. The more-powerful gear was cool, of course, yet it was still depressing to replace purple pieces that represented hundreds of hours of raiding.

(Plus, the new greens didn't look as good as the epics.)

So we're all wondering: will the same thing happen in WotLK? The message I've heard from beta testers is that it won't be the same in WotLK. Raiders will hang on to their gear much longer, and even more casual players will see a more gradual transition.

I wanted to track down some quantitative info behind that. Is it really true? That involved getting down and dirty with the numbers. It all begins with this article on Item Values from WoWWiki.

There are a few key concepts in play. The main one is ilvl. This is an overall metric of item quality; Wowhead and many other information sources will show it to you. It's basically a metric that determines how strong the item can be -- how much +agility or +attack power or whatever.

The complication is that ilvl is tied to item quality as well. An ilvl of 115 means different things if the item is green or blue or purple. The relationship isn't a straight modifier — the formulas have scalar and linear components. (There's also a slot value, which doesn't matter right now since we're wondering about replacing helms with helms and so forth.) I dug into this and built some spreadsheets that break it out; I won't share my work because it's pretty boring and I did a good bit of handwaving too. (The formulas have weird results at low ilvls, such that purple items appear to have less Item Value than a blue item of the same level. I fudged a bit to get past that.)

I also went through and compiled information on key items from original, vanilla WoW, Burning Crusade, and what we know of WotLK so far. I looked at ilvls for various types of gear, and normalized those out depending on whether they were greens or blues or purples. To make a long story short (too late!) I came up with this graph.



The bars show the relative power (Item Values) of various types of gear. I broke down quest rewards into early/middle/late, where early gear would be quest rewards from Hellfire Peninsula, for instance, while late stuff would come from Netherstorm/Shadowmoon or from the later group quests. I also broke down the drops into normal/heroic.

So what's in the graph? First, let's look at the launch of Burning Crusade. You can see that the early quest rewards, from Hellfire and Zangarmarsh, beat even Tier 1 and Tier 2 gear. So unless you were raiding Naxxrimas before BC, your gear was getting dropped within the first couple zones. Even the Tier 3 gear was out the door by the time you dinged 70.

But if you look back, it's clear why Blizzard did this. Look at the quest gear from vanilla WoW. It ends right about where the BC quest gear starts. In other words, they designed things so that non-raiders could make a nice steady progression into BC content. If they hadn't, casual players would have hit a huge wall in Hellfire — or would have received huge upgrades right away.

Now, look at the WotLK gear. But a caveat: it's still beta, and this could all change. Tweaking ilvls isn't that hard I believe; they may well do some more before launch.

Having said that, it looks like a smoother transition now. T4 gear doesn't start to get replaced until fairly late in the first zones, and will be relatively decent even into your mid-70s. T5 will last to your late 70s, and T6 won't be replaced until you get into heroics or the new Naxxrimas.

Casuals in quest rewards or instance drops will begin replacing those pretty quickly. But the mitigation this time is BoJ gear. The lesser BoJ stuff — the 20 or 25-badge items — gets replaced early. But the later, 100- or 150-badge items will last you to 80 now. I didn't include PvP gear, but for the most part that will be true as well, depending on how much of a gap there is between your PvP and PvE needs.

This is a bit of a generalization. You'll choose upgrades based on specific stats and specific rewards. My PvP healer pants might be quickly replaced by a quest reward tailored to Boomkin, for instance, even though there might be a big ilvl gap. But overall, you should be able to hold onto gear for a lot longer this time around.

Inscription: What will it take?

I'm debating whether I'll take Inscription as a profession in WotLK, so I've been researching it. I've heard a lot about the products: glyphs that change your spells, regular scrolls, other scrolls that allow enchanters to package and sell enchants at auction, and a few other special things. The WotlkWiki section on Inscription is a great resource, as is Wowhead. I think the Glyphs will sell quite well, and the extra Glyph slot for Inscribers will be nice. It's easy to understand the benefits.

The tough part has been understanding how to level Inscription. I'd like to bank the herbs I would need to level (except for the Northrend herbs, of course). But... how many do I need? I spent some time looking that the recipes known today, and the processes required. I have some very tentative conclusions.

Disclaimer: I'm not in the beta, so I'm going completely from what's available on Wowhead and WotlkWiki right now. The data is still pretty rough, and I'm sure this will all change. So the specifics here should be taken with a major grain of salt, particularly the required mats.

The basic approach, however, is pretty clear and should be set. There are a few variations, but the key cycle is:

Herbs -> Milling -> Pigment -> Ink -> Glyph

Everything begins with the herbs — the same ones used for alchemy. They're processed using milling which is analogous to prospecting for jewelcrafters. Each milling operation consumes a small stack of herbs and creates pigments, sometimes along with useful byproducts. The pigment is then used to make ink, which is a universal key ingredient for every glyph.

So to walk it back: you'll generally create glyphs to level up. You'll need ink to do that, and you'll need pigments to make your ink. For pigments, you'll need to mill stacks of herbs.

Today, you mill a stack of 5 herbs and get 2-3 pigments in return. The herbs are sorted into what I'll call "tiers". Basically, if you mill herbs from the same tier, you'll get the same pigment. The tiers are about what you expect — you'll pretty much find herbs of the same tier in the same zones. Here's how it breaks down:

Tiers of Herbs
Azeroth 1: Sliverleaf, Peacebloom, Earthroot, Mageroyal, Bloodthistle
Azeroth 2: Briarthorn, Swiftthistle, Bruiseweed, Stranglekelp
Azeroth 3: Wild Steelbloom, Grave Moss, Kingsblood, Liferoot
Azeroth 4: Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar's Whisker, Wintersbite
Azeroth 5: Firebloom, Purple Lotus, Arthas' Tears, Sungrass, Blindweed, Ghost Mushroom, Gromsblood
Azeroth 6: Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom, Icecap
Outlands: Herbs harvested in Outlands
Northrend: Herbs harvested in Northrend

Rare herbs can't be milled. These include: Black Lotus, Deadnettle, Fel Blossom, Fel Lotus, Fire Leaf, Fire Seed, Glowcap, Netherdust Pollen, Nightmare Seed, Unidentified Plant Parts, and Wildvine. Usually they're the herbs with names in green text.

So you gather a stack of herbs from some tier and mill it. Each 5 herbs milled gives 2-3 pigments, which you then use to make ink. (Just to make it more complicated, sometimes you'll get a rare pigment instead of the regular pigment. These aren't used to make glyphs; I'll skip them for now but maybe talk about them in another post.) The inks change at different levels of the profession. Here's a table, with the general skill level that each ink corresponds to.

Basic Inks

Skill lvl   Basic ink:     Pigment:   Milled from:
  0 -  30   Ivory, Silver  Made directly from Silverleaf or Peacebloom
 30 -  75   Moonglow Ink   Alabaster  Azeroth 1
 75 - 100   Midnight Ink   Dusky      Azeroth 2
100 - 150   Lion's Ink     Golden     Azeroth 3
150 - 200   Jadefire Ink   Emerald    Azeroth 4
200 - 250   Celestial Ink  Violet     Azeroth 5
250 - 300   Shimmering Ink Silvery    Azeroth 6
300 - 350   Ethereal Ink   Nether     Outlands
350 - 425   Ink of the Sea Azure      Northrend

So, for example, you'll be using Midnight Ink to make the glyphs that take you from level 75 to 100. (All very rough and subject to change.)

So, how many herbs will you need to level? This is where the uncertainties of Beta come in. The biggest one I'm worried about is that most glyph recipes today look like this:

• One ink of some kind
  
• One Magebloom
  
• Four Parchment (one of each kind); these can be purchased from vendors

These are going to change for sure, but I don't know to what. My best guess is that there will be multiple inks required for most glyphs, instead of that single Magebloom. The other alternative is that they will require unprocessed herbs — but of course these won't all be Magebloom. We just don't know yet so that makes any specifics difficult. Also, I'm not sure that we really will get 2-3 pigments for every 5 herbs we mill; that might be adjusted either for everything, or for specific herbs or tiers of herbs.

So things are still a bit unsettled and I don't see any value in being too clinical about it. But I'm willing to do some handwaving based on the skill point gaps. If you need Midnight Ink to get from 75 to 100, let's assume that you'll need 25 vials of Midnight Ink along the way. Given that, it looks like you would need about 5 full stacks — 100 herbs — of each tier to level up. The exceptions are the Northrend herbs, where you'll need 8 stacks. You'll also need a couple extra stacks of Silverleaf or Peacebloom to get from 0-30. That's ignoring the 5 or so skill points you'll get from making each type of ink. But I fully expect the ink requirements to go up too, so think of this as a floor for getting started.

I'll keep watching for more data, and post updates when I know more.

The end is near

The Wrath of the Lich King release date has been announced! 13 November will see the opening of Northrend and the unleashing of death knights across the Plaguelands. This really narrows down some other dates too, as the 3.0.2 patch will launch sometime between now and then, with a best guess of early to mid October.

This is exciting of course and I'm really looking forward to it. Of course there's lots of new cool features to anticipate. But more than anything I'm just excited to see the new zones of Northrend.

The Outland zones of Burning Crusade were a mixed bag for me. I wasn't a huge fan of the milieu — the fragmenting planet, crashed spaceships, and crystalline aliens that fill Outlands. I never enjoyed the aesthetics of Hellfire Peninsula, Shadowmoon Valley, Blades Edge, or Netherstorm. They are too... much. Too much sparking, too much shattered bare rock, too much ambient sound of pulsating energies.



And yet it's astounding how much better the gameplay experience was in Burning Crusade. Individual quests were better designed, and the quests string together so much more nicely. It's telling that a leveling guide like Jame's is so crucial in old Azeroth, but almost redundant in Outlands. And other design qualities are miles ahead too. Even though I don't like the aesthetics, the art is beautiful and extremely well executed. Storylines are nicely worked into the questing, and it's easier to feel a part of the world than it ever was in Azeroth.

With another two years of experience and technical advances — and revenue — Blizzard will do an even better job at these details in WotLK. I'm really excited to see how it looks and feels, how it works. But they've also returned to a setting that really appeals to me. Any environment with a better 'real-world' feel would be great, but a snowy, mountainous Nordic scene is just great for me. I really expect to have a very entertaining time in Northrend.



With all that excitement coming, it feels like the current gameplay is a bit of a waiting game. It's a time for looking forward rather than focusing on the events at hand, and my play has been a bit unfocused as a result. I spent some time last week thinking about my goals for the remaining time of Burning Crusade. Now that the date has been announced, I know how much time I'll have for accomplishing them.

I accomplished a big goal last night by getting Sali her epic flyer. I've also reached some rep goals by getting Alamein to Exalted with the Sha'tar and Revered with the Consortium. What's left on the plate?

Alamein:

• Exalted with Cenarion Expedition
  
• Revered with Keepers of Time
  
• Get 100 BoJ (currently at 87) and get my [Crystalwind Leggings]
  
• Get enough Honor points to get a PvP helm (and maybe shoulders) for Feral/tanking

Sali:

• Exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive
  
• Revered with the Consortium

Gazala:

• Get to at least level 60
  
• Level Enchanting to 375

General:

• Sell off most of stock of unneeded materials
  
• Clean up bag and bank space
  
• Delete one or two unneeded toons
  
• Get an action bar addon configured

Beyond that, I don't know. I might spend some time on leveling my new hunter, some PvP with Sali, and maybe some other stuff too. I'm still having fun, so why not enjoy the end times... of Burning Crusade?

Spellpower: Choosing pants for WotLK

I mentioned in the last post that I was thinking about taking the [Grovewalker's Leggings] when I get 100 Badges of Justice. I might still take tanking leggings instead, but the more interesting question I considered is whether I should take the [Crystalwind Leggings] instead.

First, some background: I plan to level as either Balance or Balance/Resto (Restokin) in WotLK. Along the way -- and at 80 -- I will probably respec to full Resto more than once to heal through instance runs. From what I've seen, these pants (either way) will probably last me until the high 70s at least and might well last into level 80 heroics. So the choice is fairly significant, not just for now, but also for Wrath.

Today, it's a basic question. Are you a healer or a DPS caster? The answer is more foggy in Wrath of the Lich King with the advent of Spellpower. The distinction between healing and casting items -- between +Spell Damage and +Healing -- fades away and is replaced with utilitarian Spellpower. Both items will have an identical +61 Spellpower. Neither will have more or less raw healing or casting power.

We'll end up with the following (including socket bonuses):

               Grovewalker   Crystalwind     Difference
Stamina        +36           +36               0
Intellect      +42           +40              +2
Spirit         +47           +32             +15
Sockets         B, R         B, Y
Spell Power    +61           +65              -4
Crit            0            +28             -28

So, the 'healer' Grovewalker pants will have greater spirit but reduced healing power and crit. That's an interesting tradeoff in itself, but then I look at the way talents are evolving in the beta. It's pretty clear that the Tree of Life aura will no longer work on Spirit; instead it will be a straight 3% increase to healing received. That already makes the Grovewalker pants less interesting.

But then I start to look at spell rotations. I can't say for sure -- I'm not in the beta -- but it really seems like Blizzard is working hard to deemphasize Lifebloom and instead encourage us to use more Regrowth and Healing Touch in particular. And that suddenly makes Crit a valuable tool for some kinds of healing. Moreover, the Nautre's Grace talent is now more accessible as the 11-point Balance talent, so I might well be able to take it in a resto build. That means that spell crits will now reduce casting time -- making Crit even more important.

The only motivation towards spirit is pretty vague at this point. There have been some forum posts that hint Blizzard is going to emphasize mana regen a bit more, and specifically out-of-combat regen requiring Spirit. I'm not sure that I see how this will work yet though; if I'm in combat then spirit is 70% (Dreamstate) less important; if I'm out of combat then I'll just drink anyway. I believe they're going to try to do what they say, but there's a good chance it will either not work out or that the mechanics may change.

All this leads me to believe that the choice is pretty tough, but that the Crystalwind pants may be the way to go. The Crit will be seriously helpful for a moonkin, and pretty useful for a tree too; on the other hand, the spirit will be probably unimportant for the moonkin and maybe unimportant for the healer.

I won't hit 100 BoJ for a few days at best, so I'll be wathching beta news closely until then. I'm sure things will change. Hopefully we'll know more soon!