Patch 3.1 (or the only reason I would do two posts in one day)

How can you chew over my underseasoned, overcooked last post if I post again already? It’s a travesty to serve the second course before the first is finished, but I suppose you’ll have to set the brick wall that is CCT vs. Sarth 3D aside for now. Dessert is here!

The Good

• Ulduar – All serious raiders have been waiting for this since the first time we cleared through Naxx and 25 people all typed /raid Was that supposed to be a challenge?! at once.  Were there sticky moments in Naxx?  Sure, but nothing you couldn’t get through in two nights.  Remember what getting through SSC was like back in BC?  Exactly, no comparison.  Ulduar is our hope of real progression, and I can’t wait.  My biggest concern is that they’ll goof around too much with new items.  I love the idea of an epic battle with the siege tanks, but I don’t want that to be the entire raid.  I’m hoping for a nice balance of new and old raiding dynamics.
• Dual Spec – Oh sure, other classes are excited about this.  Mages can go frost for farming or can PvP spec and also have their raiding spec.  Death Knights can have a tank spec and dps spec simultaneously.  But druids – oh, how long we’ve waited for something like this!  No more “oh, I’m sorry, we need a healer” when you’re moonkin, only to be followed by, “LFM DPS” once you jump into a resto respec.  Now we can satisfy two parts of our split personality at the same time!

• New Items – In particular, Leatherworking: Belt of Arctic Life. Oh yeah, and a bunch of new mounts and pets. This one looks fun.

The Bad

• Dual Spec Cost – I’m a stingy, gold-grubbing chicken, so I have enough gold to pay for this, but I’m not going to like laying another 1000g.  Of course, this is totally worth it, and I’d pay more in a heartbeat (but please don’t make me, Blizz).
• When? – Of course there’s no guess as to when 3.1 will go live.  The good news is that you can visit it in the PTR.

The (Mostly) Indifferent

• Balance Ability Changes – Really, out of all the things Blizz had to work with, they chose to alter Faerie Fire (now 5% armor increase instead of a set amount), and to nerf Owlkin Frenzy, a wasted raid talent but a fair enough PvP talent (it only procs off of ranged and melee attacks now, so you won’t get it by being hit with an arcane barrage anymore).  Super.
• Glyph Changes – Glyph of Starfall now reduces the cooldown by 90 seconds instead of increasing the duration by 2 seconds.  Woop-de-doo, Starfall is just not useful enough in a raid to justify dropping any of my other major glyphs.  If you’re a AoE farming or PvP moonkin who likes knocking people off of the edge of the lumbermill in Arathi Basin, you might like the Typhoon glyph, reducing the cooldown by 3 seconds.  Glyph of Barkskin might also be useful in PvP, reducing the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks.  As you can see, though, there aren’t any useful glyph changes for raiding.

So there you have it.  3.1 Patch incoming…someday.  Ulduar is calling, and I’m answering.  I’ll be doing a character copy as soon as the queue goes down, so hopefully I’ll be on the PTR under some obnoxious alias soon for a personal preview.  I’m disappointed that there isn’t more for us in this patch, but I’ll settle for Ulduar for now.  It had better be good.

For full patch notes and picture previews, check out the patch information at MMO-Champion.

Sartharion 3D & My Wake Up Call

Last Tuesday, I did not get a raid invite.  In the past year, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have been unexpectedly excluded from a raid, and each time, I got a whisper from officer explaining why.  But Tuesday, I didn’t get an invite, and I didn’t get a whisper.  Or an in game mail.  Or a guildportal mail.  I felt irritated and abandoned.

On Wednesday, I considered not logging in at all.  Or declining my Naxx farming invite (if I can’t progress, why should I farm?!).  But like a trained seal I logged on and accepted the invite, and boy, am I glad I did.  One of our inconsistent raiders was on, someone who knows a lot about the classes he plays but still plays one too many, and he was playing a moonkin.  And this guy was kicking my ass on the meter.

Finally (with a lot of encouragement from my mageboy fiance), I whispered him and asked him how the hell he was beating me on the meter.  We started discussing spell rotation and I realized I was way off.  Then he told me that he had recently sucked on a 10-man 3D Sarth PuG and done some research.  Research?  When I respecced, there was nothing on LK moonkin.  I decided to investigate.

I started with a guide on the druid class forums.  I changed my spell rotation, I switched out some gems here and there and updated my enchants.  I downloaded Squawk and Awe; I’m still not sure how I completely missed an addon that important.  I’m not kidding, my base DPS went up at least 1000 the next day.

I sent a guildportal message to one of our officers, and reminded him that I’m a consistent raider, and that if there’s a problem, I deserve to know about it so I can fix it.  He agreed, and I told him about my increase in DPS.  I got an invite to the next Sarth 3D raid.

We’re still beating our head against it a little.  Last night we tried a DK tank, which seemed to work really well once they got a rotation going with his abilities and his healers.  However, by the time they got that worked out, the DPS was worn out and unfocused, and people started dying to blue circles and fire walls again.  We finally finished it off with two drakes, and we’re going back to Sarth 3D tonight. I’m not putting a picture on this post because I hope by my next post I’ll have a kill shot for you.

I hovered around 10th in damage.  It’s a start.

Hello, My Name is Ambermist

And I am a moonkin.

It’s something I’ve been dealing with for about four months now, when one of our guild officers requested that I shed my well-established Tree of Life and try the feathery side of a druid’s split personality.  Being one of the many druids who opted to level Northrend balance, this seemed an exciting new frontier.

Now I’m addicted.  I’m addicted to crits and treants and the new moonfire graphic.  I’m addicted to the floating eclipse above my head lovingly referred to as the Death Star.  I’m addicted to standing in front of the heroic target dummy with my tongue hanging half out of my mouth looking for that little bit of dps improvement.  I do look forward to dual spec only to give me more opportunities in heroics (I admit I will moonlight as a healer every now and then), but there will be no going back if I can help it.  I am boomkin for life.