You may have noticed an ugly little link-bar at the top of the posts section now (which interestingly links to the banhammer page even though it's directly to the right...). Well, I have finished the Cataclysm FAQ section and you SHOULD be able to post comments there or ask questions to me directly about things which you are concerned about for Cataclysm. I plan on putting YouTube links there illustrating demonstrable abilities/talents in action.

Really, I remember being excluded from the Wrath of the Lich King beta until the very end (literally, like the last 2 weeks of beta) and wanting all these questions answered, but no single beta tester took the time to address the non-beta community. I did not like it, shocking thought that may sound. Therefore, I warmly welcome all questions which I can test on the Beta server, and I will post all the responses back to the FAQ section to keep it up-to-date. "Does Skull Bash still charge the target as of build X?" Etc.



We have not had a warrior to run 3s with in quite a while now. Admittedly, it was mainly my fault as Merkcity started running with two friends of his doing Disc+RDruid+War to try and help them hit 2200 (which they are very close to accomplishing), but he did not start playing with these guys until directly after my telling Seere that he probably would not be needed until we hit 2200 with Merk... so Seere has not logged on in ~3 weeks, and Merk is no longer playing with us.

So, we had been running 2v2s as Disc+Feral again thinking that it would be just a matter of time before one of them would become available again. I was sitting on enough points to buy the T2 Feral Staff, so it was really just as soon as we could get the time to grind the 2200 up, we would. After a few weeks, I was sitting at ~9800 arena points and it was a Monday night... meaning that I was going to get ~1000 arena points, and really only get 200 because the cap is 10,000. So, I did what anyone would do in my situation:

I bought boomkin gear.

Now, I have been grinding off-pieces for my Boomkin set (which is not amazing, but I'm wearing 4 pieces of Wrathful and only really missing the weapon, offhand, and pants) and noticing how asinine Boomkin is. The damage output is laughable, the burst can be set up to literally drop houses on people (I have been in BGs and dropped a Starfall crit with the Berserking buff for 16k in PvP gear), and the rotation is much MUCH easier than Feral.

So, I got to thinking, I want to continue PvP'ing, but I want to branch out a bit. Someone linked this video in the WoW Forums (before my ban) and I thought it was entirely TOO hilarious to bypass:



Katrina Cleave, named for obvious reasons, is all about 4x Starfalls, 12x Tree Posse, and unhealable nukes during Bloodlust... oh yeah and Typhoon is hilarious if you use it right. I was sitting in Trade thinking about how fun this might be and just threw it out there:

"2200 Boomkin LF Katrina Cleave 5s team, PST"

I got a couple tells from some other druids asking "What is Katrina Cleave?" So, I explained "Katrina Cleave is a 5s comp which is 4x Moonkins and 1x Resto Shammy... you run in, pop all your CDs, and collect your points... super-fun, super-easy, and possible to hit high-ratings with."

Well, before you know it, I'm on a 5s team again (Katrina Cleave, yeah, they stole the name but it's apt so whatever). We ran 19 games last night before dinner and went 13-6 against mostly 1700-rated teams. The one thing I will say about the guys on that team is that most of them are worse-geared than I am, and while I'm dropping the most damage most the time, I need to play more aggressively with CCs.

I don't know about any of the other guys' experience in the Arena, but I will calling things like "That Pally needs to get Cycloned now... do it" or "Typhoon that rogue off the side to get him off the shammy" etc and it takes longer than I would expect (at 2200) it to take. Not a huge deal, we are all learning the comp after all, but it means that I will end up having to run in, pop Starfall with the rest, hit Tree posse with the rest, then start Cycloning healers and THEN Typhooning to make space. Again, this isn't a huge deal, but it definitely cost us a match or two... along with my improper calling out of targets - Katrina Cleave is all about Starfall killing basically everyone at the same time while we pick a healer and train him down in addition to the Starfall.

We had a few matches on Dalaran Sewers (our best map by far) which started with us running in, popping Starfall, popping trees, and then just chain-Typhoon'ing the Shammy so he could not cast a single heal while he is eating Starfall and Wraths. We had a couple matches against Paladins where we killed him before he could hit bubble.

Long-story-short: Katrina Cleave is hilarious, and we're going to milk how OP multi-starfall is for as long as we can, but it's total-cheese.

Another thing we are looking into at the moment is running a new Spellcleave 3v3s team. Something like "Disc+Ele+Boomkin" or perhaps "RShammy+Shadow+Boomkin". Personally, I think that "Disc+Frost+Boomkin" might be the best way to go, just because of all the CC it would bring to the table on-demand, but Starfall breaks Polymorph, so it is hard to tell. Guntir is convinced that Disc is the worst healer for Spellcleave teams at the moment unless you have insane peels, which Boomkin+Ele and Boomkin+Frost would... oh well. Guntir needs to start buying some Crit gear with his arena points to make a real Shadow set so we can run RShammy+Shadow+Boomkin, I think that would be the best team.