I realize that this blog is titled "Bored Druid Musings" and I spend an awful lot of time talking about my warlock, but I go where the news is. Essentially, there is nothing new to report on Druids as of late, and I was contented with the position they were in beta. That is to say, if WotLK were released today, I think that all druid specs would have a good base from which to advance in both PvE and PvP, and they would scale better than they currently do. Do I think that the talent trees are perfect? No, there are some things that need changing, and some abilities need revision, but for the most part, I think that the current beta build holds much promise for hybrid classes. That being said, there was a beta patch on Friday, and as I write this blog, mainly, while at work, I did not have a chance to reflect on some of the changes (this is also true of the warlock builds... they changed the 45-tier and it's amazing now... but another time).

In one of my younger posts on this blog, I touched on some of the pros and cons of being a druid (of any spec), and here they are summarized again for your enjoyment:
Feral Pros-
1. Mobility / Speed
2. Damage

Feral Cons-
1. Mana reliance
2. Lack of utility
3. No snares/slows
4. No cc
5. No procs

You can go back and reread that earlier post if you want to see my reasoning behind these, but I am going to simply assume that I am right and move forward.

As of today's listed feral changes, they have addressed cons 3, 4, and 5 with Infected Wounds, being able to begin casting while shapeshifted with auto-deshift, and we are being giving items and procs in form. To a lesser extent, they have added provisos for 1 and 2, as well with Berserk reducing the shapeshifting reliance on snare-breaking and Savage Roar bringing utility to all melee classes in the party. As for the pros, the mobility/speed issue is being revamped to work indoors, which is good, and the damage output is being increases for ferals across the board via the "un-nerfing" of ferals by adding maul and mangle(bear) back to savage fury, King of the Jungle, Tiger's Fury being buffed in general, Berserk, Rend and Tear, etc.

All things considered, the feral builds will be amazing... but split. What do I mean by that? Well, one of the key aspects of being a feral was that currently, a full feral build could be either a tank or a dps, but not amazing at either. Prior to the Feral nerf of 2.3, ferals were great dps and great tanks in the same build, but after the nerf (and many many many scaling issues), dps fell behind and tanking was mediocre. A lot of the core feral talents have been revamped to scale, which is a long-due change, but additionally, the multiple talents have been added up and viewed as a whole of "how can we simulate the difference between tanking and dps without having 2 separate talent trees like warriors."

So, the conclusion was that there will be good tanking abilities, and good dps abilities, but they will be separate. Take Shredding Attacks, for example, and notice that it only really improves Shred, which is a core dps talent. True, it does buff Lacerate, but not enough to warrant taking that versus a different talent for a "tank-only" build. If you want to tank Sunwell, you cannot take this ability (in the new talent trees) because of all the other good talents for tanking; the same is true with Brutal Impact and many more.

However, there are some changes that I do not envision going so well. For instance, the agi:crit ratio has been dramatically reduced from 25:1 to 40:1, which will mean that instead of sporting around 40% crit at the top tier of PvP gear, druids will likely be getting gear with only agi/crit rating on it and be HOPING for 30% crit with LotP up. What does this mean? Well, for one it means that we have the option of opting out of Primal Fury for PvP (when your specials crit, you gain an extra combo point) because of its relatively questionable utility in PvP now. Instead of walking around with 30% (or more) crit against resilience-capped people, we'll be walking around with 20% perhaps. I believe that 10% does make the difference, because at low tiers of resilience, the skill will be amazing still in keeping combo points up for useful abilities such as Maim, Savage Roar, and Ferocious Bite (which MIGHT not be terrible now against bleeding targets with Berserk up and running). It is also unclear which will be the best finishing move against low-armor classes between already-bleeding-FBs because of Rend and Tear or Rip, since Rip will now scale at 5-cps. Either way, I wouldn't be surprised seeing double dps teams with a feral and they try to time gibs along the lines of "5 combo point rip, get up 5 cps again, START THE GIB, Berserk, Ferocious Bite (80% crit), King of the Jungle, shredshredshred, FB again," etc.

Okay... I can go on and on about the Feral talents and abilities until we're all blue in the face... but the point is this: I cannot come up with a good PvP feral spec. That's right... I can come up with 50 specs that I consider amazing on my warlock, but I simply cannot grasp a great feral spec that has everything I want. I am not in the boat of "well I want to tank AND dps... what to do what to do," but rather, I am in the boat of "I want to dps in PvP... but how best to do that given all these options." There are just so many good talents that it is becoming impossible to decide between them...

Okay, kitty will definitely need all the crit talents because of the agi:crit nerf, so that means Sharpened Claws (duh) and Master Shapeshifter (harder). The latter means a minimum of 12 points into resto... with probably 13 being the reality of "fewest points spent in resto" because of Omen of Clarity being passive and marginally better [question mark]. It's hard to tell if "only procs off white attacks" will mean much in short fights, though it was always a boon to see "pounce, fff, shred, [ooc] shred, [tick] shred" when opening a fight. I suppose that it will be a definite knock on burst damage, since yellow attacks restart the swing timer, but then again, maybe they plan on our white damage scaling a little better because of this... who knows. Okay, so far the spec has a good base, 0/15/13, with Feral Swiftness (which works indoors... horray for WSG again) and OoC/MSS. Also, we're basically done with points in the resto tree... let's focus on the feral tree now.

This next tier (the 15-point tier) is arguably the best and most bloated tier for ferals. At a total of 9 possible talent points to spend at this teir, and arguably all of the talents being, if not amazing at least, useful. However, I have to go with the best talents first, in an attempt to only spend 5 points per tier... so we'll go with Shredding Attacks and Predatory Strikes. Also, PS does not irk me as much as it used to. Currently, it is "+150% of your level in AP" for a 3-point talent, which is just meh when compared to Shredding Attacks and Primal Fury. However, in WotLK, Primal Fury is a little less appealing, and PS is completely needed for HotW... so this tier is a no-brainer. Plus, PS now scales with the FAP on the equipped weapon... which is amazing.

Okay, we're at 0/20/13 now, and looking pretty good. We definitely need some of that sexy new feral charge, but it becomes unclear where to put the rest of our points for this tier. Savage Fury is getting un-nerfed... but cat form is getting so much that we might not need to dps in bear form anymore. Additionally, if you plan on going double-dps as feral (or even... plan on playing without a healer in arena most the time), then you can skip Nurturing Instinct. Personally, I like where FFF is put now, and the armor ignore is HUGELY becoming a melee stat du jour. So, let's put one point into FFF, 2 points into Nurturing Instinct (I play solo a lot, so healing is nice), and 1 point into Primal Fury. The next tier is a no-brainer... 5 into HotW.

At this point things are getting disheveled. We have a nice looking 0/30/13 build going, but now we are missing some talents that I think will be ground-breaking. Let's see... we'll just keep moving down until we have our 51-points in there, then see where we stand with the rest. At this point, LotP is necessary, but for PvP the new Primal Tenacity wins out over iLotP. I put 3 in PT, 1 in LotP, and Survival of the Fittest is SO buffed from it's original, that we can put that 1 point remainder in there right now and get the equivalent of two points of the current talent. Next, we are a dps build, so we need to put all 5 at this tier into Preditory Instincts, and Mangle. Finally, we get those talents we really needed all along, we have to take all 3 Infected Wounds. At this point, I put the last point into the remaining point of Primal Fury.

Next, we take all 5 of Rend and Tear because those Ferocious Bite crits will be in the 8ks at level 80. Then we take Berserk. Okay, we're sitting at 0/51/13 with seven point remaining. WHAT TO DO!?!?!? Well, firstly, I like King of the Jungle so much, so I put 3 points there. At this point, we have 4 points to spend, and 4 places to put 2 points (actually, 3 places to put 2 points, and one place to put 3). Personally, unless you are going to be taking AoE of Cleave damage in a raid, then I do not think that iLotP is all that useful anymore, so I will likely be skipping it entirely. Also, I do not think Improved Mangle is all that useful because a feral's main source of damage is from Shred, not Mangle, and while it would be nice to have a 29 energy Mangle, it certainly is not a make-or-break talent. Also, Savage Fury being buffed is nice, but I just do not see enough PvP-centered abilities for Bear form anymore, and thus can ignore the extra damage. This leaves me with either putting points into SotF, Primal Precision, or more Naturalist. Essentially, SotF is 4% more stats, which is a rather nice passive effect, however Naturalist is 6% more damage done period. At this point, with the stat allocations for 80 virtually unknowable, we cannot run the numbers to see which would be a better investment in the long run. Admittedly, we could take 2/2 or 1/3 and get the benefit from both of them, but on the other hand 10 expertise and 80% energy refunded when FB does not land is amazing sounding.

I suppose that, for now, I will just bite my lip and go 2/2 into SotF and Naturalist. That would give me this spec, which seems like a good dps spec... maybe it is just too early to tell... or maybe I just have been out of feral for so long that I cannot be sure anymore. I will just have to wait and see what the expansion brings.

Chaos Bolt What's not to like about a high damage output, quickly cast nuke that gets benefits from more than half the talents in the tree? Oh yeah, and it shoots through schools. Pally bubbled? Meh... time for Chaos Bolt to lawlgib him.

Demonic Circle Man... giving a destruction warlock MIGHT be the worst idea in the world... but it is a really neat idea on how it is implemented. The only question I have is will my opponents be able to see my teleport area on the ground, or not. If not... then I could foresee chasing down a druid into a corner while a warrior is cc'd, then teleporting back to the warrior (who is attacking guntir) and gibbing him while the druid runs back.

Fel Intelligence While I will miss Paranoia, it's only really useful at the beginning of a match... and only for certain opponents... and let's face it, we aren't going to be beating any rogue teams worth their salt with or without paranoia... so having more int and spirit will be helpful... if only as a debuff buffer.

Shadow Flame An AoE attack that does decent damage, has a short cooldown, is instant cast, and gets affected by over half my destruction talents? Again, what's not to like!? The only downside is the huge mana cost... which MIGHT be addressed soon...?

Backdraft When I cast conflag... it increases the casting speed of my next 3 destro spells by 30%. So, that's 1.05 second immolate, followed by 1.75 sbolt, 1.75 sbolt... if this makes it into the actual game, you KNOW I will be destruction spec'd... because we can call the gib out over vent by "casting conflag."

Pyroclasm The conflag buffs continue. This is a 2-point talent that gives a bunch of spells one never uses a 26% chance to stun the opponent for 3 seconds. They added Conflagration to the list of spells that can proc it. For 2 points, giving conflag a 1/4 chance to stun for 3 seconds is just ridiculous. This (coupled with Backdraft) make conflag one of the best tools in the PvP-Destro's arsenal.

Shadowfury Can now be cast while moving... essentially giving destro locks "shadow grenade." Also, the stun has been buffed from 2 to 3 seconds... which is amazing.

Cataclysm Currently decreases mana cost of destro spells by 5% for 5 points... terribad. Turned into a 3 point talent, gone from 5% to 6% mana reduction (which would be bad if not for) also increases your chance to hit with destro spells by 3%. Now it's amazing... no more gemming for the PvP hit, or wearing stupid trinkets to get enough. I can live with a 1% spell-miss chance.

Molten Core A lot of people have misgivings about this spell. The PvE hardcores are complaining because they only want to cast shadowbolt. The PvPers aren't destro (by and large) and have no idea how good this will be. Essentially, with my PvP-destro spec, I have Corruption out there all the time for added damage (and some damage to off-targets if necessary). Each tick of Corruption has a chance of increasing my fire damage by 10%. My fire damage already has a 10% damage bonus from Emberstorm, a 10% damage bonus from CoE, and a 5% damage bonus from Misery (when I'm with Guntir); with 1000 spell damage, Chaos Bolt would HIT for 2k.

Improved Fear Just amazing... if someone resists my fear, I get an instant-cast fear (if they made it free to boot, I'd be in heaven).



BUT THE NUMBER ONE THING I LOVE MOST ABOUT THE TALENT TREES FOR WARLOCKS RIGHT NOW... I can spec both Nightfall and Backlash+Chaos Bolt without giving anything up that I couldn't live without.

Here is the spec.

I can just imagine it now... casting Chaos Bolt, Nightfall/Backlash procs, drop the 5k instant-attack on my opponent. Also... Backdraft is truly going to open the flood-gates for gibbings. Make a macro along these lines:

#showtooltip Conflag
/rw SPELL LOCK
/rw SPELL LOCK
/rw SPELL LOCK
/cast Conflagrate
/cast [target=focus] Spell Lock;

which will silence the healer for 3 seconds while I drop 1.75 sbolt, 1.75 sbolt, 1.05 Chaos Bolt on the opponent... and if they live I'll put back up immolate and dots and wait for the next attempt... right after I drop shadowburn+deathcoil+shadowflame+shadowfury (my instants)... JEBUS... so many instants for the gib-factor...

Hmm, this is quickly becoming a monthly installed blog. I do not necessarily think that this is a bad thing, but it is definitely not the direction I had originally intended for the site. Admittedly, the problem behind my lack of posts is most likely a lack of interest. Not in posting the funny little eccentricities of my gaming experiences, but rather a lack of interest in the game itself. Lately, I have found that PvP has become a really frustrating grind, and the end of the tunnel is really getting to 1800 on the druid+warrior team. I will most likely either stop playing that team competitively (meaning foaming-at-the-mouth-angry over losses to 1600 rated druid+warrior in full s4 except s3 shoulders and weapon that cost us 18 points when we're at 1799) as soon as we break 1800 and get the weapons. Essentially, we are simply grinding up for WotLK now. We are in that horrible valley which came last time a WoW expansion hit beta. Nothing new is interesting enough to actually facilitate competition, whereas nothing is going to be released for a while, so we're stuck in this "going through the motions" gameplay. I go out and farm up some primal airs every day while doing the dailies, etc etc.

As I stated before, our druid+warrior team hit 1799 at one point, then this past week we fought nothing but counter-comps and ended up going 2-8 and dropping down to 1696 or so. I had stockpiled about 3800 arena points or so, because I wanted to ensure that I had the points to buy the s3 weapon when we finally surpassed that 1800 point. After a lot of nothing happening, I decided that 1800 was a crap-shoot and I should just upgrade my gear instead. So, I go to buy the helm and chest, buy the chest, realize that I need 1700 for the helm, feel terrible, and gem/enchant my new chest. The second we bump over 1700 again, I'm going to buy the helm. I sincerely no longer care if I have the points to buy the s3 weapon if/when we get there... I'll just roll 3s every week and never play the 2s team again.

On to cheerier subjects: our spriest+warlock team is essentially neck-and-neck with our warrior+druid team now. I am a very odd destruction spec at the moment. The trick about destruction is that our opponents are bad, and don't realize that I am destro until it is entirely too late. Another thing, we completely eat warrior+healer alive, unless the healer is AMAZING and I get amazingly bad luck in terms of critically sbolting. At this point, our matches are usually of a derivative of "bait the spriest who will get all his dots out, then mind-blast and death, while I sit back lobbing shadowbolts at the dps target on the spriest." The reason this works so well is because usually we have gone against a string of healer+melee teams, and they almost always choose the spriest as the main target. So, guntir just keeps the melee target breaking LoS on his healer while keeping LoS on me, so I can continue spamming sbolts, keeping dots up, and cc'ing the healer as best we can. Essentially, if we ever get the melee down to 50% and shadow vulnerability is up (mine, not his), then the melee is going to die to what we lovingly titled "the gib."

The gib works like this: sbolt crits and shadow vulnerability procs, we look at the health of the target. If he is at or below 50%, we immediately start firing dps on all cylinders launching shadowfury (trying to hit both healer and dps... guntir tries to keep them close together for this and/or his AoE fear if it is up), shadowburn, and depending on placement and cc options, deathcoil. With shadow vulnerability up, shadowfury will hit for about 1.2k, and crit upwards of 2.5k, shadowburn is comparable in damage except I have seen it go as high as 3k on a crit, mostly warriors who have not yet dropped zerkers stance, and deathcoil will always do 1k, but I will often use it on the healer if he has not been feared by guntir. Similarly, guntir will drop his patented MB-D combo (mind blast, sw:death) which will hit for usually 4k damage combined with shadow vulnerability up. With the quick math, we can see that with svuln proc'd, we can essentially drop about 6.5k damage in 1.5 seconds with the healer cc'd from either fear or deathcoil and an accompanied 5 second silence from guntir. If the healer is feared, then the melee will usually take about 7k damage instantly, which should be enough to off him, but there are also dots ticking, and I usually have conflag available as part of this gib as well, which hits for 2k and crits upwards of 5k depending on the situation. Also, this does not even cover what happens if I am casting a shadowbolt when the previous bolt lands and crits... we usually can kill a warrior in this scenario even if NS-HT lands right after the second sbolt and silence is resisted or some other such nonsense.

I made a short video compilation of some of our wins. Most of the time we are facing stupidly geared warrior+healer teams (full s4 except for s3 shoulders and weapons), but we tend to smoke those. My favorite was against a paladin+warrior team that ended last season at 2100. They started by riding around mounted for a bit, then guntir charged into them and feared, which the warrior broke and started fighting from, but the pally just kept on riding... so I put my felhunter on him. The warrior was following guntir, who was limping towards the paladin, when the warrior intercepted my felhunter, and took him behind a pillar to try and gank him. I was laughing uncontrollably at this point, the pally was trying to dispel the dots off the warrior rather than heal him, so we rounded the pillar, I dropped shadowfury, sbolt, deathcoil, sburn, and guntir landed MB:D to kill the warrior while the pally was standing there like a mook with silence applied rather than bubbling quickly and Holy Shocking his warrior. The deathcoil worked great on the warrior in that situation because it ran him around the pillar, out of LoS from his healer, and INTO the open for our gib combo. This was a team that would absolutely spank our druid+warrior team, and they got completely humiliated against our double-dps caster team.

BTW: the video is about 4-5 minutes long, and has two Bad Religion songs in it: "No Control" and "I Want to Conquer the World." I thought that the songs were apt for what we were doing.

This seamlessly brings me to my last point: what's the point of playing the game if you aren't playing it your way and having fun at it. The destro+spriest team is horribly fun to play because it beats so many of the new FotMs. Shamang+warrior, arguably the new druid+warrior in terms of outlastability and damage output, is probably one of our hardest matchups, but if the warrior OR the shamang is bad, we win. Essentially, if a warrior ever stopped long enough to think about what is happening to him, we could not TOUCH that team between earthshock, grounding totem, and spell reflect. There is no way we could be a smart shamang+warrior. On the flip-side of the coin, however, if we go against druid+warrior, we cannot really lose to that team. If the warrior goes after me, I get instant-cast sbolts while dots do their thing and guntir fears and mana-burns the druid while keeping MB:D and dots up on the warrior. Without fear of dispels, he can get DP out whenever the situation needs it, and he has free reign to spam mind-flay for extra damage. Also, I am currently testing out a new strategy that I saw on a warlock vid which is when a warrior puts up spell reflect, use rank1 Curse of Wrecklessness. The armor loss is negligible for most well-geared melee opponents, but it makes me immune to fear for 2 minutes. Coupled with being undead, this is hilarious against some teams like warrior+priest. I have had a priest watch me trinket out of hamstring, after using WotF earlier in the match, walk over and use his AoE fear on ONLY me to be blessed with the word "Immune" over my head. I am quite sure that I have caused much more annoyance than that... but our team cannot be feared between us both being undead, spell-reflected CoW, and fear-ward.

See... that seamless transition is ruined because of my fervor for competition on that team. The point I was originally going to make is this: why play if it isn't fun. Back in the day, we would play to annoy other players. Essentially griefing anyone who would oppose us. While GMs have made this much harder in the newer times, and world PvP essentially being dead, we have had to get creative with how we can accomplish this goal. My brother and I are currently grinding up a shamang (me) and a paladin (him) for the sole purpose of healing in PvP. I like the way shamangs heal in PvP... it just feels more natural. Also, my brother has long been under the assumption that "anyone who whines about healing as a paladin simply isn't doing it right." So, he's going to try his hand at it. While I do not disagree that he will be a fine healer, I just don't know how much I am willing to dedicate to getting him geared out, etc. We are currently grinding with the idea that the blue reputation PvP sets will be sufficient to start in the arena, but that might not hold true. However, the point is not so much to do well, but rather to annoy people until the WotLK is released.

How are we going to accomplish this goal? Find a disc priest.

We had this idea while golfing last week. What would be the single most annoying team to have to face in 3s, where bursting players down is much harder than in 2s? We decided that a triple healer team would, indeed, take forever to kill, if it was even possible. Currently, the 3s bracket has a few types of team comps: healer+dps+dps (usually double melee, but not always), healer+healer+dps (usually warrior, but we played against an amazing pally+pally+warlock team before), and triple dps. The triple dps teams have a REALLY hard time against the double healer teams, but then again, so does double dps+healer. So, we thought "what could be more annoying that 30 minute matches against double healer?" We came to the conclusion that triple healer (all of a variety that rarely oom, and can always bounce back when they do) would be so annoying that most teams would AFK after an hour or so of arena play, and the others would eventually OoM and succumb to measly dot damage.

Restokin, holy pally, disc priest. Essentially, pain suppression, mana drain, and focused will make the priest the worst target with two healers on him, but a pally is no better because of bubble and high armor since most double dps teams are double melee. Restokin will have the benefit of supplemental damage, good healing, and never going OoM between Dreamstate, and already absurdly high mp5 while casting, and BoW. No one on the team will need to ever cast a heal bigger than FoL/Lifebloom/Flash Heal, so mana efficiency will not be an issue. Also, the priest brings mana burn and additional supplemental damage from dots. Also, with roots, cyclone, fear, JoJ, and HoJ, any one healer will be able to strip themselves from the fight and drink at any time, with the paladin being the only one who will actually need it because of Innervate and Manafiend.

WHAT'S THE POINT!? Well, quite obviously to annoy the reroll teams. I hate queuing for 3s and seeing a team in full s4 (s3 shoulders and weapons) who have either obviously just rolled a 3s team for fun to hit 1800 and sell, or are wildly successful in another bracket and are only in 3s to goof off and beat teams with worse gear than them. We are going to specifically target these teams. The teams who would require so much time defeating our team that they could have probably gone 20-0 had they never faced us instead. They will be our main target, we will relish in the matches that last 4 hours and will result in either an 18 point loss for them or an 11 point win because it will mean that the next time they face us, they should probably just afk and try to not get matched against us. We will be the most annoying team in the bracket because no one will be able to defeat us in a timely manner, and the teams that are competing will ONLY care about beating teams in a timely manner... get those 50 games in per day to hit 2200 with a win percentage of 55%.

They're going to hate us... and at the end of that 4 hour match, the scoreboard will show our team name: "Sorry for the long match"