Mashing vs. Clicking

Didn't do so much last night. I took Sali into regular Underbog with Wyrmm, Firegrin, Mattoo, and Dralkios. We took a couple runs at Hungarfen to hopefully get Dralkios the [Totem of the Thunderhead]. We tried twice and had no luck, but it was a quick and easy run so rather relaxing and fun.

When I was close to Mattoo's tanking, I heard the sounds that were imprinted on my brain from the previous night: the sounds of a bear tank. The normal rotation is Mangle followed by 3xLacerate, and in particular Lacerate makes a distinctive "pshonk" sound.

My fingers began to hurt, in memory. I spent so much time the night before mashing those two buttons that I was sore by the end of the night. I have Mangle on the 2 key and Lacerate on 1. That's great for convenience but it means I was using the smaller fingers of my right hand to pound that sequence out again and again. I might redesign my button layout to use my index finger a lot more, saving the 1 and 2 for slightly less common stuff.

It's a switch because when healing I use very few key presses - it's all clicks on unit frames. This begins with putting my unit frames front and center of the screen. This shot is almost a year old but the visual parts of my UI haven't changed much since then:



I'm using Pitbull to put the unit frames where I can watch them closely. That's great for 5-man stuff but for raids I use Grid because it's more flexible and is already set to be very compact. The Grid box just replaces the Pitbull frames.

The other key healing component is Clique. Pitbull or Grid are important, but without Clique or something similar, I would really have a hard time healing. Basically, it allows me to bind actions to specific click combos. So I just click on a unit frame to heal it. My current setup - which I know by heart - is the following:

          Ctrl-left click    Lifebloom
           Alt-left click    Rejuvenation
         Shift-left click    Regrowth
      Ctrl-Alt-left click    Swiftmend
    Ctrl-Shift-left click    Healing Touch
Ctrl-Shift-Alt-left click    Rebirth
         Ctrl-right click    Abolish Poison
          Alt-right click    Remove Curse

Clique is very smart. These keybindings are set up as "helpful" actions — they're only used on friendly unit frames, and I can apply a whole different set of actions to enemy units. This is great for stuff like Insect Swarm or Faerie Fire. Also, I can set up a different set of out-of-combat actions. I'm currently using that for buffs (Thorns and Mark of the Wild) but it's slightly annoying for those times when I'd rather remove poison or curses after a fight.

How does it work? Awesome! I will usually start a fight with the tank targeted, and I'll stack Lifebloom and then add a Rejuvenation via clicks, just by moving from Alt to Ctrl. That's an incredibly instinctive movement for anyone who uses a keyboard. As the fight goes on I can cast other heals or decurse/remove poison when needed through the same motions. If one of the other toons gets hit, I can just click on the frame to throw a heal over there. In fact, Pitbull will highlight anyone who draws aggro; I can often start a heal before the toon takes any damage. There's no need to find the player and target them, which saves a ton of time. Pitbull will even fade the frame if the toon is out of range — though unfortunately it can't track line of sight.

I would hate to heal any other way. My only concern is that WotLK will add two new healing spells (Nourish and Flourish) to my arsenal, and I'm not sure how I'll map those to clicks.

I'm not nearly so comfortable with my tanking setup. I could use Clique but there's not much point. Unit frames can deal with just two enemies — your target and your focus — so for most mobs you're worried about targeting them anyway. So it's all about getting my key mapping set up right so that I can be most efficient. I don't have a solid system for that yet. My basic plan is that left-hand numbers are the most common attacks, while the Num Pad holds reactive stuff — taunts, long-cooldown abilities, trinkets, potions, and so forth.

I would like to set up an action bar addon to manage all this better. In particular I'd love to have a mapping that shows the Num Pad and shifts with modifier keys. I've played a bit with both Bongos and Bartender, and I might use one or the other of those. But that's a whole new level of setup and it'll take some time to figure out. Until then, I'll just have to tweak my mappings a bit... and take some Advil.

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!

Tanking Heroic Underbog

Alamein's education as a tank continues. We ran heroic Underbog last night. I think UB is my favorite Coilfang instance. I like the brighter lighting and the pleasant nature-driven ambiance. There's also a good variety of mobs to fight.

Our participants were just about the same as with our Slave Pens run, except that healing services were provided by our Discipline priest Sedem.

The run went pretty well. We had one or two wipes and quite a few other deaths. However we never got to a point where we were beating our heads on a wall and we were able to finish it. It did take a few hours -- probably 3 I guess. My reaction speed and focus went down later on, and we had a few really messy pulls towards the end. But with another feral Druid, and three other groupmates wearing a good chunk of PvP gear, we were able to get through it. It was surprising how often we were able to finish fights with 1 or 2 players down -- even the tank or the healer on a few occasions.

I don't think I learned any major new tanking techniques, though I did hone my existing skills quite a bit. I got better at establishing threat on multi-mob pulls, especially with tab-targeting. However I was frustrated a few times with tab-cycles that didn't get me the mobs I wanted. I also learned (once again) that when in doubt, slow down and wait to pull. It's easy to try to hurry up -- both to conserve rage and to start a pull at a convenient time (because of patrols). But if I hurry, bad things often happen.

I was much better at timing taunts this time through. In particular I was happy to make good use of Challenging Roar a few times. Those long-cooldown abilities are tough to learn since you can't really practice them. But it really helped for some of the worst pulls -- even if it killed me once or twice. Similarly, I had good use of Frenzied Regeneration a couple times -- though once I also popped it too late. I also got much better at using Demo Roar and Feral Faerie Fire on a regular basis. Still to do, though, is to work on my use of Feral Charge and Bash. I don't rotate those in when needed well enough.

I was really happy with my tanking on Hungarfen. I was able to tank him around in a big circle to avoid the worst of the mushrooms. By contrast, Gahz'an was a bit of a dog's breakfast and it took two wipes for me to get it right. The tough part there was the positioning. Consensus was to fight on the bridge, and I didn't do a good job at keeping his tail out of the way. I think next time I'll use the platform instead.

Musel'ek was a tough fight, and I died fairly early while the group was burning down Claw. But we were able to finish the fight anyway. We did have a painful bug on the fight though, when Claw's knockback knocked Mattoo behind some mushrooms near the wall. He just couldn't get out -- even after the fight was over. And finally the Black Stalker was no problem.

So overall a good run, and solid for my education. I'm now at 79 badges, getting close to my 100-badge goal. The only question is how I should spend them. I've been planning to buy the [Grovewalker's Leggings], but now that I'm tanking, I'm tempted to buy a tanking item instead, perhaps the [Tameless Breeches]. In the end though I think I'll choose the healing pants... because they'll also be very good Balance pants in WotLK, and that's how I plan to level up.

Druid items - from Healing to Tanking

Due to various issues we didn't get to run anything major over the weekend. Bummed about that! But I did get a boatload of dailies in, building to my "buy Sali a fast mount" fund. My only question is whether I'll buy a gryphon first or get the mats to build the epic roflcopter.

We did kill the Blades' Edge dragons on Saturday night. It's become a quick way for us to make a good bit of gold and to maybe get some nice drops. And we got very lucky this time around, because a [Depleted Badge] dropped. This can be infused into the [Badge of Tenacity], which is one of the best Druid tank trinkets in the game.

I had moral qualms though for two reasons. First I was playing on Sali so I wasn't tanking at all. And second it's a BoE drop that sells for about 1000-1500g at auction. So I didn't feel right just rolling Need on it. Mattoo quickly said I should Need but I'd already rolled, which I felt good about anyway. He was tanking but he already has a Badge of Tenacity so it was a sell item for him.

Fortunately I won the five-way Greed roll. So I was pretty happy about that!

Gearing up Alamein to tank has been an interesting exercise. For most pieces it's been surprisingly easy, but some parts have been challenging. I began with the WoWWIki druid tanking equipment page, as well as Big Bear Butt Blogger's tank starter gear post. They are great at listing what gear you should look for, but I wanted to talk about some specific challenges. I'll cover four sources of items: drops, reputation, auction house (plus crafting), PvP, and quests.

Drops

When I first decided to switch, I assumed I'd have to run regular instances for a lot of drops. This turns out not to be true. Most of the tank gear available in normal instances is just not an improvement over the other pieces you can get. The one thing I did look for -- and got on my first try -- was the [Iron Band of the Unbreakable] from regular Old Hillsbrad. Other than that, the only drop I'd be tempted to farm is [Adamantine Figurine] from Shadow Labyrinth. We had one run in there and it didn't drop. But after running a dozen or so people through their Kara attunement -- back when it mattered -- I don't want to spend more time in Slabs than I have to!

Edit: I forgot about one great drop that I had saved: [Thoriumweave Cloak] from Mech. I'd taken that while on a Mech badge run as healer; we didn't have an enchanter in the group or we probably would have sharded it. That would be worth farming too, since it drops on either normal or heroic.

Reputation

Every guide will tell you that [Earthwarden] is the best tanking weapon you'll get until T5 at least. (I'm not Exalted with Cenarion Expedition yet so no luck there.) But one source of rep gear that both guides miss is Shattered Sun Offensive. The [Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve] is a pretty good tank amulet, and if you've been running SSO dailies regularly you're probably exalted with them. The Dragonhide Battlegear also provides a great way to pick up some pieces that can round out your set.

Auction House/Crafting

The Strength of the Clefthoof set is really where you want to start. As a skinner/leatherworker, I had the patterns and most of the materials, so this was a no-brainer. But even if you're not, you can probably get all three pieces for under 500g. That's crazy-cheap for three good pieces of tanking gear. The other key piece (if you can't get Earthwarden yet) is [Braxxis' Staff of Slumber] which usually sells around 50g. The [Stylin' Purple Hat] is pretty good too if you don't have a good helm. Which leads to my next point...

PvP Items

This was a surprising situation. In short - the healing PvP gear turns out to be better than just about anything I could get through other sources. For example, I thought I'd buy the Stylin' Purple Hat, but it's not as good as the [Gladiator's Kodohide Helm] I already had. The same was true for my shoulders. Obviously the Gladiator's Dragonhide gear would be much better, but even the Kodohide gear has a good chunk of stamina, armor, and resilience that makes it work for tanking.

The problem is that I got these pieces for healing -- so they have healing enchants and gems. Mostly it's not a huge deal, but I have the [Bracing Earthstorm Diamond] in the hat - which gives -2% threat! Not good! Fortunately the mass of blue +stamina gems I used has deactivated the meta gem requirements. So I'm still using it for now. But replacing these pieces is my current PvP priority.

There's one item I haven't seen listed in any guide but I think it's worth considering. It's really a Reputation item but it comes from Alterac Valley rep so I'll list it under PvP. That's the [Stormpike Insignia] or the Horde equivalent. It's not really great, but it does grant dodge and if you've run any AV at all you should be able to pick up one rank or another of this. (You can get the first trinket at Friendly and upgrade it with each reputation level along the way.) Consider it as a stopgap measure if you don't have any other helpful trinkets.

Quest Rewards

If you're leveling as feral, this is super-easy. The hard part is when you've leveled as another spec. Basically -- either you have the gear or you don't! I was mostly lucky but lost out in one spot. So the moral is: watch for good offspec gear in quest rewards -- and save it!

For druid tanking, there are three quest reward pieces that you should watch for. The one that I'm kicking myself on is the [Idol of the Wild]. This one really annoys me because there's no good way to replace it. It comes from an early Hellfire Peninsula quest and there's just nothing else to replace it with. I'm using my [Idol of the Raven Goddess] but it's a poor substitute. There are so few idols that it really pays to grab every one that crosses your path.

The second reward is another fairly easy quest item: [Manimal's Cinch]. This belt is also difficult to replace. It's easy to underestimate (and throw away) because it's green, but there's not much to replace it with. This comes from a soloable quest line in Shadowmoon Valley; it's possible that many druids haven't done this yet so check it out. And the third key quest reward is [Umberhowl's Collar]. Again, it's difficult to find better bracers. This quest line requires some group work so it's probably skipped fairly often.

With these easy-to-find items and a quick respec, you'll have the gear and talents to pretty much start tanking heroics. Of course that says nothing about having the skill! That's the part I'm working on now...

Tanking Heroic Slave Pens

We ran heroic Underbog last night. With our normal group setup it would have been easy, but we did it with group roles that we're not as familiar with or as geared for. The group was:

• Alamein: Druid tank
  
• Dralkios: Shaman healer
  
• Firegrin: Hunter (Marksman)
  
• Wyrmm: Rogue (Subtlety)
  
• Mattoo: feral (Cat) Druid

Firegrin and Wyrmm are experienced and well-geared but the rest of us are a bit new to our roles. Matt has a well-geared Shaman, but his druid Mattoo just dinged 70 last week and isn't geared up yet. Eric is just started in gearing up Dralkios as a healer. And I'm still new to the tanking business with Alamein.

The good news about Druid tanking is that it's pretty easy to get geared up, especially as a skinner/leatherworker. The Heavy Clefthoof set (boots, leggings, and vest) is really good gear. It's the nucleus of a set that gets you ready for heroics or Kara. Add to that some PvP pieces and I'm pretty much ready to go.

There are great resources out there to learn about tanking. My go-to article is Bear with me, I want to tank on TankSpot.

The hardest part has been learning the mechanics, starting with the pull. I'm still working out details like when Enrage is a good or a bad idea. With Firegrin and Wyrmm in particular, I'm working pretty hard to establish aggro. I'm also still working out the attack rotation. The base rotation of Mangle, 3xLacerate is pretty easy. But I still have to work out when to throw Demoralizing Roar or Feral Faerie Fire -- sometimes I forget, while other times I'm probably refreshing them too soon. And I struggle with using Bash or Maul appropriately.

Multi-mob stuff is still my weakest point, in two ways. I have a hard time getting enough aggro lead on all mobs to stay ahead of my healer -- especially if we have casters involved. And I'm not very good at taunting when it's needed either. My DPS last night was really good at knowing when to slow down, but the healer doesn't have that luxury. I need to be better at pulling mobs off him.

With those kinds of weaknesses, it wasn't going to be an easy run. We had quite a few wipes, usually due to losing Dralkios to loose mobs. But we got a lot better at it along the way. We one-shotted both Mennu and Rokmar, which was fun. Eventually we got stuck at a bad four-lobster pull on the way to Quagmirran, where the long climbing hallway opens into a larger room. We wiped there four or five times before getting it figured out, but at that point it was too late for us all and we called the run.

Even though it was a challenging run I really enjoyed it. It's a big help that I had four extremely skilled players along for the run.

Eric on Dralkios is still learning healing and he's maybe still a bit lightly geared for heroics. But he got amazingly good at it along the way. Eric is great at balancing the tactical choices involved in each fight - knowing which totems to drop, for example. I never saw him get his healing priorities wrong either -- something that I know took me a long time to learn on Alamein.

Danny on Firegrin is the exact example of what WowInsider just called The Hunter Who Doesn't Suck. To start with he was chain-trapping a mob in every pull. He's so rock-solid at it that I'd put a blue rectangle on a mob and know that I wouldn't need to touch it until everything else was dead. At the same time he'd usually be Misdirecting onto me to help me with threat issues. And with all that he was still doing more than his share of the overall damage for the group.

DK on Wyrmm is just as skilled as a rogue. He's exactly the melee partner you want in a group. He can scout ahead and use Distract and Sap to set up the pull. In a fight his stuns and kicks are perfectly timed, and he will Evasion-tank a mob to prevent disaster. He's also really heads-up in every fight, calling out problems or warnings and reminding us of the next kill. And his damage was insane; he really rocked the meter last night, without becoming an aggro menace.

Finally Matt on Mattoo is great to play with as well. His druid is still undergeared and he wasn't able to DPS to the same level. But it's a testimony to his skill that we still got as far as we did. His knowledge is encyclopedic and he knew exactly what to expect with each pull. And he did the great druid multitasking role really well -- switching to bear to pick up a loose mob or to healer to help out Dralkios any time it was needed.

And the whole group was great to work with overall. People were relaxed and laid-back even when chain-wiping. Each frustration was met with good suggestions for what to try next. But even with a laid-back joking atmosphere the whole group stayed focused and was always ready for the next pull.

That's the kind of stuff that really gets me hooked into the game: the people I get to play with. I love that stuff!

A Tale of Two Professions

I've now leveled two crafting professions to 375. They provide an interesting comparison.

Alamein is a leatherworker. There wasn't a lot of thought in the choice -- not much more than "she wears leather armor, so she should be a leatherworker." It's worked out fairly well. The drums are quite nice, though we have to be careful since both Wyrmm and Firegrin are also leatherworker/percussionists. We just have to time our drumming so that it doesn't overlap. But the biggest benefit has been the Windhawk Set. Alamein is unlikely to get rid of that until fairly far into WotLK. It's not only a strong set, but its bonuses work very well for switching back and forth between Resto and Balance.

Sali is an Engineer. I really chose it just because it sounded fun, and it has been. The [Destruction Holo-gogs] are top notch. The trinkets are great for early levels, and the mote extractor is great for making money. However, mages get less use out of engineering than most classes. All the bombs are pretty much useless, since mages can do that kind of thing better anyway. That also rules out Goblin engineering as a specialty. Goblin engineering isn't bad but the [Gnomish Poultryizer] is rather pointless too due to Polymorph. And the crazy +stamina on trinkets isn't all that helpful either. And there's not much you can sell as an engineer that will make you much money. So while I'm still enjoying it, it's not a huge advantage to me either.

I expected the benefits to be different, but I was surprised at how different the leveling experience was. The first factor is that Sali, as a gnome, gets the +15 skill bonus. When it comes to leveling those final points to 375, that's huge. She got the last 5 points all from making parts -- felsteel stabilizer and so forth. With Alamein it was a real struggle to reach 375 -- even more so before the 2.3.0 patch that reduced rep requirements to get drum patterns.

The second part is that 375 skill was huge for leatherworking but anticlimactic for engineering. With leatherworking, 375 meant that Alamein could make the Windhawk set -- the whole reason Alamein took the profession. For engineering, Sali could make her epic goggles at 350 skill. While the new epic goggles are fantastic, they rendered all the old goggles obsolete. So the gnomish schematics learned at 375 are pointless. I am interested in making the [Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer] for Firegrin, so 375 still has some value. But for Sali, there's nothing worthwhile at 375.

If I had to theorycraft, there's no comparison: leatherworking is both harder and more beneficial. I got three quality armor pieces and a whole array of drums to use. Engineering gets me a great helm and not a whole lot more. But beyond the straight stats, it's just a lot of fun. And that's worth a lot! I'm not sure what WotLK will bring. I haven't seen anything special yet for either profession; I'm sure that the high-end itemization isn't around yet. I'm curious whether they'll advance the specializations; in particular I'm looking forward to seeing whether leatherworking continues to give me good gear. We'll see how it goes!

Catch Up

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

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

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


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


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


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

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