On a finalized tanking rotation and spec:

So it's coming close to Cataclysm, and my usual druid tanking forecasting annoyances aside, I think we can finally put together some kind of tanking priority list.

Since I generally tend to do The Hybrid Thing, here's the spec I've been throwing around lately: 0/31/9 with one floater.

I think it, as well as some of my glyph choices, could be tweaked significantly, especially since switching glyphs back and forth will be much easier. The fact of the matter remains though, that there is really no good 3rd bear tanking glyph, which is what I usually will be doing. Lemme break it down row by row:

T1 Feral: Of the three talents, only Predatory Strikes is not hybrid, so we don't take it. The other two are both useful to us, and we need five points to get to T2, so we grab them all. The five-point requirement aside, maxing Furor will save us headaches down the line when we make our initial charges, as we will likely be using the redesigned Thorns spell on ourselves just before we shift to Bear and charge in. Since word is that it's not castable while in Bear or Cat form, we don't care about the glyph as a result, but it will definitely be used just before pulling despite its steep mana cost. Yes, 3/3 Furor is also wasted on a cat, since between the GCD afterward and haste increasing our energy regeneration, we likely will shoot from 66 to 90 or 95 energy before we can even do anything, but having to shift back and forth to get the rage required to Feral Charge will save some sanity. Feral Swiftness, free 4% dodge, 30% extra movespeed. Yaaaaaay.

T2: Oh how I hate this tier so much.

Infected Wounds is necessary as a tank. Primal Fury is necessary whether you tank or DPS. Fury Swipes is purely a DPS increase, but math right now says it's more useful to Cats because of their inherently faster swing timer. Feral Aggression is also valuable to both tanking and DPS. Since we're hybrid, we put points into everything except Fury Swipes.

But why Feral Aggression? And why 2/2? Unlike Warriors, we are going to have to juggle both Lacerate and Feral Faerie Fire stacks on our tanking targets. We also don't have a Devastate to apply stacks of Faerie Fire/Sunder Armor for us as well. And given that it only stacks to three instead of five, I figure it's better to eat the extra talent point in Feral Aggression to save the many, many extra GCDs needed to apply that ONE last stack of Faerie Fire. As a result, in for a penny, in for a pound. This may pan out differently, though, since more classes are getting the major armor debuff, it may not be imperative for just us to handle it. No word on whether any one will overwrite the other, though. It would totally suck if you slapped a stack on a boss, only to have someone accidentally hit the wrong button and wipe it out, making you start over.

T3: Get everything.

Okay, so maybe it's not that cut and dry. King of the Jungle is necessary to DPS with, although whether or not we can get by with just 2/3 or 1/3 remains to be seen. Feral Charge is absolutely necessary, no contest. Thick Hide is necessary for tanking. But IFC/Stampede... well. The increased melee haste after a Bear Charge is interesting enough. It's not increasing haste rating, otherwise, you'd never see a Cat Charge ever again, but the way things are set up right now, I would say is a bit of a tossup. If you were a full-on Cat, I could see you Bear Charging in to take advantage of the immobilize and increased melee haste to throw out more white hits and proc more Fury Swipes. It's a LONG buff, relatively speaking, too. The damage on Ravage still needs to be shaken out, a bit though. If this becomes more attractive to Cats than Cat Charge + Ravage, something probably needs to be tweaked. As it stands, Stampede isn't *explicitly* necessary? But it's certainly very tasty. If you choose not to put points here, hold onto them until T5.

T4: Leader of the Pack got it's Improved effect rolled right in, grab it. Brutal Impact is necessary as a tank, grab it. (We have a ranged interrupt now! Yay!) Nurturing Instinct is one of those spells that only helps if you have the time to shift out of form to take advantage of, (i.e., emergency Cat Tranquility) but since we're tanking most of the time, no-go.

T5: Primal Madness: I don't see this as explicitly necessary for tanking or DPS. It's just one of those talents that boosts the top end damage. Survival Instincts is necessary as our Shield Wall. Natural Reaction is required as a tank. If you didn't take 2/2 Stampede earlier, you can grab 2/2 Endless Carnage here, which pads out the Rake, SR and Pulverize durations. Since physical bleeds aren't affected by haste, (no, you read that right. Bleeds aren't affected by haste.) this will primarily just make the rotation less tight.

T6: Blood in the Water: Damn you for changing the name, Blizzard. ;_; Cat-only talent, also dead to us. Dead to us, I say! Rend and Tear gets maxed, as before. Pulverize.... I wish we didn't need to take Pulverize. I wish it were more like Devastate, were it refreshes instead of consumes. But alas, it is not to be. Necessary tanking tool, take it.

T7: Berserk: Take it.

Resto T1: Blessing of the Grove no longer buffs Rake damage, so that's one less thing we have to take. Naturalist is useless to us. Heart of the Wild is only three points, so what's left? Natural Shapeshifter. I'm not thrilled to have to take it, but since Thorns has a very steep mana cost, (35% of base) it helps take the sting away. On the plus side, it makes Master Shapeshifter (just one point) available, so.

Resto T2: Hooray for Perseverance. 6% less spell damage will stack with the Effulgent Skyflare Diamond, bring that passive spell damage resist up to 8% Are we still going to be of the "we handle spell damage by having massive health pools" school? Probably not, since we now have a Shield Wall equivalent, so it remains to be seen how important it is. But less damage taken is always a good thing, so 3/3 that sucker. Drop a point into Master Shapeshifter while you're at it.

-BTC

On a new mission:

Well, it's official. Zul'Gurub is going poof in Cataclysm. Now I know what my new thing-to-do is.

-BTC

On topics that change while you write:

So I figured at some point, I should write some articles about actual Druid issues in general again. But let's face it, I can't bring myself to write about the stuff that's going on now, not when there are others who are still writing excellent articles about things like tanking cooldowns.

(That, and it's kind of hard to hold a candle to the Big Bear, y'know?)

So then I decided that I should look forward to druid tanking in Cataclysm. Specifically, cooldowns.

Mechanically speaking... we really ARE becoming like Warriors. Survival Instincts is becoming the bear's AND cat's Shield Wall, while Frenzied Regeneration picks up the old Survival Instincts's effect in addition to its old regeneration effect. Barkskin, thankfully, remains just the same. Skull Bash is Intervene + Gag Order. Bash is becoming Concussion Blow.

My criticism of the druid tanking experience in general still holds, namely, that it is becoming incredibly close to Warrior-style tanking, that is, tanking in the buff. (An awesome shirt, by the way, even if it *is* a Night Elf. *rolls eyes*) Recent changes to the game bear this out as well, given that Swipe is no longer spammable, and the threat values of our attacks have been shuffled around. At this point, it appears that we will likely deal with trash packs as Warriors do now; Feral Charge in, (Note the lack of an interrupt effect.) Swipe, Thrash, Demoralizing Roar, then tab-target around and Lacerate, (Only stacks to three, now) Mangle, and Feral Faerie Fire. (which is now a Sunder Armor effect. Both only stack to three.) The only appreciable difference is with the new changes to Maul/Heroic Strike, (Maul hasn't gotten the tooltip updated to reflect the changes to it yet.) where we can no longer macro these in with every attack, and instead now save those abilities to burn off excess rage.

For reference, the current Cataclysm Warrior setup is to Charge in, Shockwave, Thunderclap, Demoralizing Shout, then tab target around with Revenge, Shield Slam, and Devastate, using Heroic Strike or Cleave to burn excess rage. As I understand it, Warrior tanking is not fundamentally changing.

I suppose homogenization is inevitable, really. Even as big a studio as Blizzard is, I really don't expect them to try and create two completely different tanking methodologies with two completely separate toolkits using the same energy source. It's a Herculean task of asinine proportions.

But I still have a number of reservations about this setup.

Namely, uptime. Between all of our abilities, in order to maintain the absolute maximum threat on a group, we need to, in no particular order:

1) Keep 3 stacks of Lacerate going
2) Keep Pulverize going
3) Keep 3 stacks of Feral Faerie Fire going
4) Keep Mangle up
5) Possibly keep Thrash up, depending in how the numbers bear out.
6) Keep Demoralizing Roar up

Of particular contention is the difficulty of maintaining stacks of two abilities on multiple targets. Warriors only have the one to deal with, Sunder Armor, which not only is automatically applied with Devastate, but is neither consumed for any ability, and when glyphed, applies multiple stacks at once, or if a glyphed Sunder Armor is used, affects two targets at once. Sadly, the glyphs are purely speculation at this point, given that the new glyph system is not yet implemented, especially with the added tier of glyphs.


It's pointless for me to complain about this, given that I don't have a beta key with which to test things and see just how difficult this task is going to be, but I do hope that the consumption effect of Pulverize is either changed into a "Adds a charge of Lacerate" a la Devastate, or "adds X seconds to the duration of Lacerate" or "refreshes Lacerate to its full duration".

-BTC

On ohgodkillmenow:

Just got The Argent Dawn, Argent Champion, Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms, and  Somewhat disappointingly, it was off of Chromatic Mantle of the Dawn, and not In Dreams or The Battle of Darrowshire as I had intended. But hey, it's done, I'm finished and I don't have to finish...... the rest..... of the...... *twitch* quests...... there........ right? *twitchtwitch*

(Goddamn me and my completionist streak. It *will* be the end of me, one of these days.)

On the other hand, still wiping on Sindragosa. I had *hoped* that I would be able to carry it out without any Frost Resist gear, after seeing my co-tank resist damage like nothing else, I got suspicious that it really might be me that was holding everyone back. So, one quick trip to the AH, one quick trip to my local Leatherworker, one quick trip to the bank to fish that dusty mark out of the vault, one quick trip to the leather armor shop, and one short hop to Dun Niffelheim, and I now have a set of frost resist gear, and a Sanctified Lasherweave Headguard to go with it, gemmed with an Effulgent Skyflare Diamond. After today, I should also be able to pick up an Idol of the Crying Moon as well. (My sense of overkill, or lack thereof, will probably be the end of me, too.)

Yes, that's right. I plunked down 95 Frost emblems for a second Lasherweave Headguard, and then gemmed and enchanted it up as Sindragosa gear. Now, the new meta gem is nothing new. I have been seriously considering using it in place of the time-tested Austere Earthsiege Diamond, but intended to use it once I had gotten much closer to the armor cap. Now, however, appears to no longer be an option. Testing it during the rest of ICC this next Tuesday should give me the data I need to determine whether I should be using this full time, geared as well as I am. I'd also resisted getting the Frost Emblem idol, since the ramp-up is murder on trash packs, but against Sindragosa, I want to leave nothing to chance.

One-button mount? Pff, that's old news.

By now, if you *haven't* seen My Starry Pwny yet, you clearly have been living under a rock. Go ahead, take a loot. Drool at it. And then come back.

Done? Okay, good. Now, one of the benefits that this mount provides, since it scales itself from a 60% speed mount, to a 100% speed mount, to a 150% speed flying mount, to a 280% speed flying mount depending on your riding skill, (And if you have a 310% speed flying mount, it will scale up to that too.) is that you only need to have one button on your action bars for an all-purpose mount.

....except that that's what I kind of have been doing all this time*. With a little bit of clever macroing, you can accomplish the same thing. All you need to do is to fill in the name of the mount of choice.

#showtooltip Great Gray Kodo
/castrandom [flyable] Bronze Drake; [noflyable] Great Gray Kodo
/cast Great Gray Kodo

Make sense? No? Okay, here's how it works. The #showtooltip lets you pick the icon that you want for it. Replace "Great Gray Kodo" with whatever you like.

The /castrandom part lets you define a couple of different mounts to use. All you need to remember is to prepend [flyable] if it's a flying mount and [noflyable] if it's not. And if you really want to be clever, you can define the mounts by spell ID instead to save space.

This would normally be all fine and dandy, but there are a few places where just that line fails, such as Lake Wintergrasp. You *can* fly in Wintergrasp, but whenever there is combat going on, a flag is turned on, which disables flying. But because it is an outdoor zone, something doesn't work right, so the second line is the failsafe. That way, if you can't use either of the previously defined mounts, it will default to the second line.

The above is the example that I use on my bankalt. This is the version I use on my druid:

#showtooltip Swift Flight Form
/cast [flyable] Swift Flight form; [noflyable] Mechano-hog;
/cast Mechano-hog

Now, one last thing before you head off to use this: Ostensibly, you're all druids, right? Remember, if you use the new shiny Algapony, you lose the benefit of Swift Flight Form's instant cast time, (Which, if you're an avid world PVPer like I am, is a gift from heaven.) as well as the ability to loot things without dismounting. So choose wisely!

-BearTreeCat

 *You can take my Swift Flight Form and Mechano-hog away from my cold, dead, deathgripping fingers! Seriously, I don't know if the Sparkulpony has enough height to cause issues with a Tauren rider, but I vehemently refuse to use anything other than those two, just so I don't have to freaking dismount to get into doors. Drop a line, if you can clarify one way or the other?

Finally, some sanity.

I've expressed respect and admiration for Allison Robert of Wow.com to others before, but she's recently written an article that that makes me breathe a sigh of relief that reassures me that yes, Virginia, there are people who are looking at the Tree of Life forms rationally, and don't need to be talked down from the ledge*. It's a good article that expresses pretty much how I feel about what they're doing as well, except that while we both play female tauren**, the casting animations don't matter to me one bit.

-BearTreeCat

*Ouch. Bad turn of phrase. I just watched the first episode of the latest season of House.
**I was not about to roll a character that liberally scratches its ass every five seconds. The exasperated sigh works much better, especially given the nicknames that get thrown around the poor girl's, and, by extension, my direction. "Steak", usually. But "Bear butt" is a close second.

HA!

Just a month in and bearly a fistful of blog posts later, I have to change my blog name. Why? Because I started Kitty DPSing. You see, at first, I didn't *want* to Cat DPS at all. I wanted to be the renegade, the rebel, the maverick! I wanted to make a full-on bear tank spec, with no regard for cat DPSing at all, the hybrid nature of Druids be damned!

Hand me that bottle of Tabasco, will you? This foot is a bit bland.

Back when I started playing my Druid, it was because my guild had hit GUILD DRAMA, and we'd lost a rogue DPS and our warrior tank. Because of this, raiding was pretty much out the window because we only *had* 10 people, and until our raid leader found someone to replace the two slots we weren't going anywhere. So we had a month of downtime, and I was getting more and more disillusioned with my Shaman. I'd originally wanted to make her an Elesham for raiding, But like any good Trekkie, I held to Spock's famous words, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," and converted her into a Restosham. But something rubbed me the wrong way about it. As time went on, I found myself growing to rely more and more and more on Chain Heal spam to heal my raids. And that was getting seriously boring for me, just mashing the same button over and over again. I've had many arguments with my Discipline priest raid leader over this. I think she still considers me a moron for giving up such a great spell. But I hated it. My line of thinking was that when that one spell becomes the *only* thing you do, something needs to change. So I went looking for a new healer to make. Now since, my favorite Shaman healing spell is Riptide, I naturally started looking at the most HoT-centric healer I could find, the Restoration Druid. And so I bought some heirlooms, and started to level.

Along the way, we discussed a number of things in guild chat. We also recruited friends from other servers to help us. In the end, it was concluded that if I were to go Bear with my druid, we could source another Resto Shaman from our alliance guild and, along with a guildie's roommate, we would be 10-man ready once again. This wasn't really a problem for me, since I was absolutely loving being a bear. A Repurposed Lava Dredger enchanted with Crusader, with a Darkmoon Card: Heroism in one trinket slot, a Mark of Conquest in the other slot, and Improved Leader of the Pack meant I could get away with all kinds of stupid antics overpulling and still get away, alive.

So I sped towards 80 blindingly fast, and geared myself up. Heck, the Restoration offspec that I originally wanted was rapidly left by the wayside, untouched from levels 40 to 80.

Now, since I was gearing a pure Bear tank, this required me to spec and gear in a certain way. All gems? +30 Stamina gems, except for one Nightmare Tear! Forget Improved Mangle, I gotta have Bash down to thirty seconds! Shredding Attacks? Who needs a reduced Lacerate energy cost, those points are going to go into 5/5 Furor instead. I want instant rage when I shift! And.... I kind of have one point left over. Eh, let's reduce shapeshifting mana costs and drop it into King of the Jungle. And I'll get a small 5% damage boost when I pop Enrage, too.

And off we went. We went through all of Ulduar 10-man and ToC 10-man, and I blissfully upgraded my gear as we went along. But as we went along, there weren't always fights that needed two tanks. Or four healers. So as to actually be contributing and pulling my weight during those one-tank fights, I started shifting into cat and whacking things, throwing down 5-point Rips before shifting back to refresh Lacerate, and struggling to even do that, with only 1/3 King of the Jungle. I even started to gem my new gear with a mix of red and blue gems, slowly inching along towards hybridism. But I still resisted, putting myself as a tank first, and using cat to help the raid burn things down faster.

And then T10 came along. If you've been playing for quite some time, you know the four-piece bonus by heart now. That was pretty much the last straw I needed to finally respec. As soon as I was able to buy an Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder off the auction house, I bought my T10 pants, and then respecced from 5/5 Furor and 1/3 KotJ into the more mainstream 3/5 Furor and 3/3 KotJ.

Which brings us to the last two weeks. My guild has been running heroic 5-mans a lot, lately. Several of us have gotten freshly-80 alts. A veritable DKpalooza, really. One of our hunters has been picking up tanking on his DK, and we've been having him Blood tank instances to practice. Our main tank's DK finally hit 80 as well, so she's feeling out Unholy DPS. And since I wasn't needed to tank, and we had healing in various forms, ranging from the aforementioned guild alliance Restosham, picking up Elemental gear for his long-neglected DPS set, to another hunter's trying out her Retadin's Holy spec.... I started DPSing as well.

And I've been liking it so far. It's only in the past week or so that I decided that I was going to embrace all three roles, Tanking, Healing, and DPS fully. So that's my story. That's going to be the focus of this blog. There are going to be Druid blogs left and right. There are going to be dozens of Feral blogs, both Bear and Cat. There will be Restoration blogs as well. But this is going to be the blog that focuses on the druid (population: me!) that wants to do all three roles with one character, and never wants to roll another alt to slog from 1 to 80 and Loremaster AGAIN.

Welcome to Bear-y Leafy Kitty, folks.

-BearTreeCat