Blogowned?

After months and months of working as intended, the firewall at my job has finally blocked Blogger as a "Message Board/Forum" and I can no longer view it. Since I only update my blog from work, I suppose this is good by.. or a move to Wordpress if that still works =\.

http://porkchopexpress.wordpress.com

WOTLK Thoughts: Shaman POV

Switching perspectives from a Moonkin to a Shaman, lets take a look at the upcoming changes for our second favorite hybrid class in WOTLK. Current issues with the Shaman class, in my opinion, are (of course) threat, AoE, crowd control and having too many useless Totems and weapon enhancements. Has Blizzard fixed this yet?

Totems

Show someone that has never played a Shaman before your totem selection. Pretty overwhelming, no? The sad thing is that some of these totems will never be used or have very limited use in a majority of the games scenarios. I've been 70 with Mutoh forever now and couldn't tell you the last time I've used Windwall Totem, Flametongue Totem, Stoneskin Totem or Sentry Totem (I do not PVP on my Shaman). It looks like we have some pretty good changes coming our way!

-Windwall Totem has been removed from the game.
-Flametongue Totem will now be a +spell damage totem instead.
-Stoneskin Totem will now increase armor instead of reduce physical damage.
-Grace of Air Totem has been removed from the game.
-Strength of Earth Totem now increases Agility as well.
-Windfury Totem now increases melee haste by 20% instead.

Weapon Enhancements

Rockbiter Weapon will be replaced by Windfury Weapon at level 30.
-Frostbrand Weapon's snare effect chance increased from 25% to 50%.
-Earthliving Weapon (New) - Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by X amount and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additional X over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
Trainable at level 30.

Spells

Ghost Wolf now costs 13% of your base mana to cast and will no longer cancel the Water Walking effect.
Cleanse Spirit - Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect. Restoration Talent.
Unleashed Rage now effects the entire raid.
Lava Burst - You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing 888 to 1132 Fire damage. If Flame Shock is on the target, Lava Burst will consume the Flame Shock, causing Lava Burst to critically hit. (655 Mana, 2 sec Cast, 8 sec Cooldown, 30 yd Range, trainable at level 75.)
Hex - Transforms a Beast or Humanoid into a random critter for 8 seconds, reducing the target’s movement speed by 75%. While moving, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells. Only one target can be hexed at a time. Damage done to the hexxed target will not break the effect. This is a "magic" effect and can be dispelled. (0.5 sec Cast, 20 yd range, 1 minute Cooldown, trainable at level 80.)
Feral Spirit - Summons 2 Spirit Wolves under the command of the Shaman, lasting 30 sec. (1 Rank, Instant, 2 min Cooldown, Enhancement talent.)
Thunderstorm - You call down a bolt of lighting, energizing you and damaging nearby enemies within 10 yards. Restores 5% mana to you and deals 595 to 679 nature damage to all nearby enemies, knocking them back 20 yards.
(1 Rank, Instant, 45 sec Cooldown, Elemental talent.)
Spirit Link - You link the friendly target with up to two nearby friendly targets, causing 50% of any damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. If any target takes a blow greater than 30% of their health, or shared damage would reduce a target's health below 20%, the link is broken. You can only have one link active at a time. (1 Rank, Instant cast, 12% of base mana, 40 yd range, Restoration talent.)

Talents

WOTLK Moonkin Spec

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=0xzruiIoAdhAzotZf0fzb

This is most likely what I'll be heading for with WOTLK. Boosted DPS from Treants, all the good talents (minus Imp Faerie Fire), Omen of Clarity and Master Shapeshifter which I'm sure will be in EVERY Moonkins spec. Who doesn't want +4% damage? I'm really loving what Blizzard has done with the Balance tree (outside of that shit heap called Eclipse).

I Can Has a List?

Joo R CORRECT SIR!



HUZZAH!

Oh Noes, Wall of Text!

Ding 70.. again. The 5th time hitting 70 isn't as exciting as the first, second, third.. maybe as exciting as the fourth but by the time I had half a bubble to go I just wanted it to be over.

For the most part, I didn't enjoy leveling my Warrior at all. I'm glad shes 70 so I can start doing the PVP thing but the ride there was far from fun.

Don't get me wrong. I love my Warrior.. but man, I hated the grind to get there.

The night started out good. Farming for flasks on Mutoh I got 2 Fel Lotus in under 10 minutes & Jandrae's quest for a good Moonkin weapon ended last night in ZA when the Amani Punisher dropped.

No more than 5 minutes after hitting the big seven-o on Adiar, Call and my wife wanted to start our 3v3 arena team to get points for this week before Tuesdays restart. We named our team Good Eats because the three of us love the Food Network show of the same name, but that didn't stop us from going 0-10.



As you can see, Good Eats is 1337 according to our team rating. We did awful for the most part. I'm still wearing about 60% green quest rewards and had a whopping 13 resiliance thanks to the Thick Felsteel Ring. I hadn't had time to go pick up the 3 pieces of blue rep PVP gear but honestly we didn't care if we won. We just wanted our points.

Hopefully I'll have time to at least get the S2 shoulders before we try arena again.

WotLK Thoughts: Moonkin PoV

Moonkin have been the bastard stepchildren in the caster universe for quite some time. A majority of players have no idea what they bring to raids outside of a +5% crit buff and 9 times out of 10 will take another caster over a Balance Druid. When WotLK is released, will the boosts to the Balance tree be enough to move our feathered friend out of the shadows and in to the spotlight?

Before I get in to the changes, let me address what has the bane of Moonkin since we've trained in Moonfire - Gear, Threat, AoE and Crowd control.

Gear

I leveled Balance on Jandrae from 10 to about 47 and respecced Feral from 47 to 50, hated it and respecced back to Balance until 70 and beyond. The lack of caster leather in WoW is no secret. Outside of the belt from SFK, every ounce of caster leather I wore up until about 50 was cloth. Once you hit Outlands, gear doesn't become an issue since they tossed some Moonkin love our way with plenty of caster leather quest rewards, epic craftables and a boat-load of Badge of Justice gear BUT you could still find a piece of cloth for every piece of leather that was better. Hopefully in WotLK Blizzard takes notice and includes leather (and mail for the Shaman) that is par with the cloth gear our caster counterparts receive.

Threat

We're not called Boomkin for nothing nor do we get a huge armor boost in Moonkin form for bragging rights. Starfire hurts. Srsly. If your group doesn't have a Paladin for Blessing of Salvation or a Shaman that wants to blow his air totem for Tranquil Air you're in deep kodo poo. What makes that pile of poo larger is if you don't have Subtlety enchanted on your cloak or talent points in Subtlety in the Resto tree. Any Moonkin worth his feathers will take Intensity's mana regen boost over a threat reduction talent any day of the week. Thankfully, with WotLK, Natures Reach will provide a 30% reduction in threat to all Balance spells, on top of increasing their range, eliminating the threat reduction aspect for DPS spells through Subtlety. Ty Blizzard.

AoE spells

LOLicane. Thats all I have to say. Before Moonkin form was introduced, the 31 point talent for Balance Druids was this laughable AoE that, at the time, had a 10 minute cooldown. As if the damage wasn't bad enough, right? IMO the highlight of Hurricane is it's ability to reduce the attack speed of whatever it's hitting by 25%, not so much the lackluster damage. The cooldown has since been reduced down to 1 minute which is OK but it's not really long enough to take down an entire AoE group. The cooldown to Hurricane will be completely removed in WotLK in addition to the new spells Typhoon and Starfall.

Typhoon - Deals X amount of damage to enemies and knocks them back 5 yards.

There really isn't anymore info and no one is really sure how the spell will work. My guess is that it will be a slow moving frontal-cone-ish spell and will mostly likely have low damage due to it's ability to knock back mobs/players. Information on Starfall seemed to dissapear as soon as the original beta notes leaked but from what I remember it's a channeled AoE spell that targets a radius around the Druid dealing X amount of damage plus an additional X amount of damage to mobs close to the mobs effected. In short, it deals more damage if the mobs are close to each other. It's an AoE + splash damage but it's channeled like Tranquility.

With the cooldown being removed from Hurricane and the addition of one (possibly two) new AoE spell, we should finally be able to hang out with the Mages and Warlocks. Maybe not in terms of overall damage but at least keeping the AoE going. Another ^5 to Blizzard for this one.

Crowd Control

Outside of ZF, ZA and a few pre-BC raids, we never get to use Entangling Roots in a group PVE situation. That is until WotLK! Entangling Roots will now work indoors and will finally be a viable form of CC for Druids. Want better news? Diminishing returns have been removed from Cyclone in PVE so it can now be constantly spammed on mobs without seeing the dreaded "IMMUNE" sign. All this just in time to never have to do the 3rd boss in heroic Magister's Terrace ever again.

As if all this wasn't enough, check out these new toys for Druids that will hopefully make us more wanted in groups.

Revive - A non-combat rez spell. Works just like a Priest, Pally or Shaman rez. We still get to keep Rebirth as well for those "oh shit!" moments =D.

Brambles - In addition to it's old effect, Brambles now increases the damage done by your Treants. Also, any damage done by your Treants or Thorns will have a 5%/10%/15% chance to daze the target. Sexyness. I love my Treants.

Force of Nature - The Treant summon talent has had it's cooldown reduced from 3 minutes to 2 minutes.

Improved Faerie Fire (Feral) - This former Balance talent is being moved over to the Feral tree to replace the current Feral Faerie Fire ability. No longer will Moonkin have to waste 3 talent points but we also won't have to blow our global cooldowns to keep it up. +3% hit for everyone is nice considering Feral Druids keep this on their target anyway. Nice boost IMO.

Moonkin Form - This is my favorite future change and solidifies my choice for who I will be leveling first and raiding with in WotLK. Increased AP and mana regen on melee swings have been removed and replaced with a 2% mana regen for every spell crit. The original boosts, outside of the +armor and +spell crit, were useless. Giving you back 2% of your mana pool for every critical spell cast is not. I love you, Blizzard!

Improved Moonkin Form - All party members effected by Moonkin Aura will gain 20% spell haste for 8 seconds after successful spell crits. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

Natures Grace - In addition to reducing the cast time of your next spell by .5 seconds every time you crit, spell crits will also reduce the global cooldown on your next Wrath spell by 50%. This + PVP = Nature Cannon. Love it.

Omen of Clarity - No longer a buff but a passive spell. OoC now has a 6% chance to proc clearcasting from all attacks and spell casts (damage or healing) instead of just melee abilities. This ability cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds. Huzzah for clearcasting!

Good stuff, no? Blood Pact, Pally auras and Shammy totems now effect the entire raid instead of just their raid group. If they let Moonkin Aura (LotP for our Feral kin) do the same, that'll be a lot of happy casters. Is that a raid spot I smell?

A lot of this information was found through various WoW blogs such as Gray Matter (my personal favorite Moonkin blog) & YAWN (Yet Another Warlock Nerf).

Booty at the Dark Portal + Kara gets Stallowned.

I was dead set on reaching 70 last night with Adiar but I spaced that our normal weekly Kara run was moved ahead from Saturday to Friday night at 8:30 EST.

With the few hours I had before hand I got in to a group for Black Morass with Ash's Warrior and Munsond's Warrior. In the group was a Holy Paladin with an odd mix of Holy and Prot gear but he healed fine. Forsaken is desperate for a Healadin for our Kara group and after the run we extended an offer for him to run with us. Thankfully he took the offer.

We ran BM twice. Once for the quest and another to get Ash's Warrior, Devastator, enough rep for the helm enchant. Oddly enough, the Hourglass of the Unraveller dropped in both runs. I won the first one, along with the bow from the first boss and the legs from my Bold set. BM is nice and quick but sucks for XP. In the time it took us to do the 2 runs I could have gotten twice the XP from questing in Netherstorm.

Kara time came and the last 3 weeks have been awful for us. We've run in to a string of bad luck with healers no showing and when invites went out the new Pally was nowhere to be found. What our guild needed was a good solid Kara run and our only chance of saving this was a Paladin we had met 2 hours earlier in a PuG and he hadn't shown up.. yet. Thank Jeebus he finally showed up and in less than 4 minutes we had a full Kara group ready to go.

We blew through the bosses until we reached Aran. We had a hangup on him and wiped 3 times due to lack of spell interrupts and horrible luck during the elemental spawn phase. The first two times they spawned in the middle of an arcane explosion. While everyone was running out of the middle, the elementals picked off our raid group one at a time. The third time they spawned during a Blizzard so our melee was caught under it and died instantly.

At this point I was asked to bring in my Warlock, Veresitha, to help with elemental CC and we were doing Illhoof next anyway. They always need me to bring Vere for Illhoof since no one in our guild has a Warlock but me. We downed Aran and Illhoof, I logged back on to Jandrae and we cleared up to Prince. He was tanked a little to close so his aoe killed half of our raid during the first Enfeeble. We took him out the 2nd time, wiped on Netherspite and called it a night.

Overall it was NOT a bad Kara run. We wiped 5 times in total but the Paladin got at least 6 or 7 drops. We also cleared every boss but Netherspite and one shotted Nightbane which is normally difficult with new healers. What does this mean? He'll come back each and every week to get more gear and provide our DPS with Blessing of Salvation lol. We needed a Paladin and we got one. He even joined the guild!

Next week, hopefully we have enough DPS so I can bring Adiar. I'd love a shot at Despair or Gorehowl.