By chance I got picked up by a guild group going in to Gundrak over the weekend to try to get Less-rabi. It only took us 2 tries, and since I have such a wonderful guild they also helped me pick up Share the Love, and that leaves me just 2 achievements away from Glory of the Hero. It also gave me the opportunity to honor the Elder in Gun'drak, and I took a few minutes to pick up the last few Elders around Northrend, leaving me just 4 dungeon Elders from the meta.
A quick note on Less-rabi!...
Most of the strategies I read for it were designed before everybody overgeared the instances so completely. It is now doable with just 3 interrupts (maybe less) if you have a suitably geared party. We did it with one Bash, one interrupt from a DK, and one Kick from our rogue, and he was dead before he could try to cast again. It's still a rough achievement, because that last interrupt needs to be ON THE BALL, the cast time is so short that if you are mid-GCD when it comes you will not successfully stop it.
Hopefully, within a couple of weeks, I will have the opportunity to go get Respect Your Elders and My Girl Loves to Skadi All the Time, for my ugly new mount. And once I pick up those four Elders, I will have completed 3 of the meta achievements needed for the uber-meta and the 310% speed mount. Hopefully they won't do something silly and remove that.
Nothing really interesting to report otherwise, I'm still mulling over my options with respect to specs.
Blarg. I am ded.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Cat Druids and DPS
Since I'm considering changing my secondary spec from healing to DPS, I figured I should do some research into Cat DPS and try to formulate a plan to be at least decent at it from the get-go. What results below is some of my stream of consciousness formed into intelligible words, thoughts, sentences, and yes, even paragraphs. Please keep in mind that this is from research, not from first-hand experience.
You hear from a lot of people that DPS as a feral Druid is one of the hardest ways to do DPS in the game, at least if you want to put out good numbers for it. What is it about Cat DPS that makes it so hard?
The key issue is the number of, for lack of a better term, things that you have to juggle. You have two ability resources to keep track of (Combo Points and Energy), 3 buffs for which you have to keep track of the buff or a cooldown for it (Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Berserk), and 3 debuffs that you, again, have to keep track of, or track of the cooldown (Mangle, Rake, and Rip). Plus you need to find time for your other big hitters (Shred, Ferocious Bite). FB, SR, and Rip all require both CP's and Energy, Berserk has multiple uses and you don't want to have just used Tiger's Fury, everything needs Energy, and your priority list includes things like "Use X if Y and Z have more than 8 seconds left."
I've heard of addons that give you helpful hints of what order to use your abilities in. I'll have to look in to that.
To go into a little more detail, here is the "priority list" as gleaned from EJ's Cat DPS Guide.
Should this eventuality come to pass, however, I will make a valiant effort!! And, of course, report my results to the ravenous masses of my readers!
What's that? I was getting a little evil-dictator-ish? You mean I'm not? And I only have 3 readers? *sigh* Fine.
I may even do a Cat primer... although if I do it before I switch, it will be purely from research, not from personal experience.
You hear from a lot of people that DPS as a feral Druid is one of the hardest ways to do DPS in the game, at least if you want to put out good numbers for it. What is it about Cat DPS that makes it so hard?
The key issue is the number of, for lack of a better term, things that you have to juggle. You have two ability resources to keep track of (Combo Points and Energy), 3 buffs for which you have to keep track of the buff or a cooldown for it (Savage Roar, Tiger's Fury, Berserk), and 3 debuffs that you, again, have to keep track of, or track of the cooldown (Mangle, Rake, and Rip). Plus you need to find time for your other big hitters (Shred, Ferocious Bite). FB, SR, and Rip all require both CP's and Energy, Berserk has multiple uses and you don't want to have just used Tiger's Fury, everything needs Energy, and your priority list includes things like "Use X if Y and Z have more than 8 seconds left."
I've heard of addons that give you helpful hints of what order to use your abilities in. I'll have to look in to that.
To go into a little more detail, here is the "priority list" as gleaned from EJ's Cat DPS Guide.
1. Keep up Savage RoarThat's scary, to say the least. It's hard enough to keep a priority list 5-6 items long (Maul, Swipe, Mangle, Lacerate, FFF, Demo Roar) with all the possibilities in WoW. Ten, I think, will be nearly impossible.
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.
Should this eventuality come to pass, however, I will make a valiant effort!! And, of course, report my results to the ravenous masses of my readers!
What's that? I was getting a little evil-dictator-ish? You mean I'm not? And I only have 3 readers? *sigh* Fine.
I may even do a Cat primer... although if I do it before I switch, it will be purely from research, not from personal experience.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Ramblings
Rambling the First, on Hybrids
My apologies to the author whose post inspired me, I cannot recall which blogger it was to give credit. I can, however, use a post from my own blog's history as a starting point.
In examining the fact that Druids simply don't follow the rules, I mentioned the fact that we can, to a certain extent, shift roles mid-fight by shifting forms. While this remains true and does showcase our hybrid capabilities, we aren't and can't be good enough at a backup role to be truly hybrid, with half an exception for bears and cats.
Blizzard has made a point of making characters with multiple roles specialize and remove their hybrid capabilities in order to be competitive with other classes. While this is a good thing in general - hybrids shouldn't be able to be the best simultaneously at 2 things - it has the (I hope) unintended consequence of removing some of what I consider the key benefits of playing a hybrid class. While being able to switch between tank, healer, and 2 different forms of DPS is nice, we can't effectively switch in the middle of a fight, which would seem to me to be one of the key benefits of being a shapeshifter.
The shifting of stats for bears means that bears and cats can fake it - the gear they want shares stats, with the exception of cloaks, amulets, rings, and trinkets - but you're not going to have "enough" survivability as a bear or be solid enough at DPS as a cat to make this worthwhile, and if you've taken the talents to be really great at one you're going to be missing key talents for the other, not to mention the glyph clashing. The other two forms that share key stats - boomkin and tree - cannot really share because the forms that make each great are not attainable at the same time, and even if they were, you need spirit as a tree and hit as a crit chicken, and each is not needed by the other. This means that unlike cats and bears, where the gear (if not the gems and enchants) can be shared, trees and boomkin are unable to really move between each other.
They are doing away with a number of secondary stats in Cataclysm. Perhaps some of the Druid's hybrid-ness will return, but I doubt it.
In this blogger's humble opinion, the era of the true hybrid is over, and has been for quite some time. Being one of the things that drew me to this class, I hope it can come back, but I mourn its loss and expect that it is gone for good.
Rambling the Second, on Dual-spec
On a side note, Blizzard can we please have 7 specs? I would so have one of each Druid spec and a PvP spec or three. I would even pay 1000g apiece, at least for 2 more than I have now, so I could have a cat and boomkin spec. What's that you said? No other class in the game could use more than 3, and most couldn't even really do that? So what, *I* could use it! ;)
Rambling the Third, on My Specs, My Guild, and Raids
Speaking of specs, I'm toying with a couple of ideas. While I enjoy making like a tree and leaving (ooooh, bad pun!), I have an issue that I've been pigeonholed into that role in my guild's raids (long story, if you've read my earlier posts you should have a taste) and it causes me to have an issue with gear. Specifically, I don't get the opportunity to roll on gear for my main spec.
I've attempted to discuss the issue with my guild and raid leader, and while a resolution may still be forthcoming, I'm not hopeful.
This leads me to some decision making regarding my options. The last resort, always, is to leave and try to find another guild. I'd like to avoid that if I can, because frankly I love my guild, I'm friends in real life with a number of the members, and I don't really relish the thought of trying to find a new one that I would fit in to. Since I don't want to do that, I'm left with trying to find options that simultaneously allow me to stay in the guild, continue running raids, and actually have a chance to roll on gear for my main spec sometime.
The second-most extreme (beyond /gquit) option I have thought of is removing the ability to do anything but tank by respeccing by secondary spec into another bear spec. I think I've just about ruled that out though, because I believe that would lead to no guild raids for me.
I could also forsake the 25-man raids to run my own 10-mans. However, with Wednesday and Thursday claimed for 25-man runs and Tuesday a hit-or-miss night to have the folks in my guild on to play, that seems like an iffy proposition at best. I tried running Mondays in the past, and by then most of our players have their mains locked. My Friday and weekend availability is not steady enough to run then. Plus, given that I have committed to my significant other that I will only raid on a regular basis on one night a week, that would preclude me from running in the guild 25-mans, which I also would like to continue doing.
The option that seems to present me with the best situation is to change my offspec from tree to kitty DPS. This would allow me to roll on leather gear and weapons that I would actually use for my main spec even if I'm in my offspec, because the two forms share stats now. The major downside to this plan is that I lose the flexibility of having a healing spec. If I'm not tanking I become just the meat in the room. (For all you DPS out there, I'm kidding. I love you guys.) Also, I still couldn't roll on tanking accessories for things such as the cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets, but I can get by with Emblem items for most of those.
Of course, this plan also requires me to do the research and take the time to learn how to be good with the class with the hardest DPS rotation in the game... or so I've been told it is. Stay tuned, my blog name may become somewhat of a misnomer.
Rambling the Fourth, on Blog Changes
Check out some changes on the site, I added some perma-links to the bear and tree primers on the right, and a real blogroll and limited the blogroll updates to the latest 5. Also, I actually touched my profile. No pics yet, but I'm working on it!
Rambling the Fifth.... ok I'm done.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!
My apologies to the author whose post inspired me, I cannot recall which blogger it was to give credit. I can, however, use a post from my own blog's history as a starting point.
In examining the fact that Druids simply don't follow the rules, I mentioned the fact that we can, to a certain extent, shift roles mid-fight by shifting forms. While this remains true and does showcase our hybrid capabilities, we aren't and can't be good enough at a backup role to be truly hybrid, with half an exception for bears and cats.
Blizzard has made a point of making characters with multiple roles specialize and remove their hybrid capabilities in order to be competitive with other classes. While this is a good thing in general - hybrids shouldn't be able to be the best simultaneously at 2 things - it has the (I hope) unintended consequence of removing some of what I consider the key benefits of playing a hybrid class. While being able to switch between tank, healer, and 2 different forms of DPS is nice, we can't effectively switch in the middle of a fight, which would seem to me to be one of the key benefits of being a shapeshifter.
The shifting of stats for bears means that bears and cats can fake it - the gear they want shares stats, with the exception of cloaks, amulets, rings, and trinkets - but you're not going to have "enough" survivability as a bear or be solid enough at DPS as a cat to make this worthwhile, and if you've taken the talents to be really great at one you're going to be missing key talents for the other, not to mention the glyph clashing. The other two forms that share key stats - boomkin and tree - cannot really share because the forms that make each great are not attainable at the same time, and even if they were, you need spirit as a tree and hit as a crit chicken, and each is not needed by the other. This means that unlike cats and bears, where the gear (if not the gems and enchants) can be shared, trees and boomkin are unable to really move between each other.
They are doing away with a number of secondary stats in Cataclysm. Perhaps some of the Druid's hybrid-ness will return, but I doubt it.
In this blogger's humble opinion, the era of the true hybrid is over, and has been for quite some time. Being one of the things that drew me to this class, I hope it can come back, but I mourn its loss and expect that it is gone for good.
Rambling the Second, on Dual-spec
On a side note, Blizzard can we please have 7 specs? I would so have one of each Druid spec and a PvP spec or three. I would even pay 1000g apiece, at least for 2 more than I have now, so I could have a cat and boomkin spec. What's that you said? No other class in the game could use more than 3, and most couldn't even really do that? So what, *I* could use it! ;)
Rambling the Third, on My Specs, My Guild, and Raids
Speaking of specs, I'm toying with a couple of ideas. While I enjoy making like a tree and leaving (ooooh, bad pun!), I have an issue that I've been pigeonholed into that role in my guild's raids (long story, if you've read my earlier posts you should have a taste) and it causes me to have an issue with gear. Specifically, I don't get the opportunity to roll on gear for my main spec.
I've attempted to discuss the issue with my guild and raid leader, and while a resolution may still be forthcoming, I'm not hopeful.
This leads me to some decision making regarding my options. The last resort, always, is to leave and try to find another guild. I'd like to avoid that if I can, because frankly I love my guild, I'm friends in real life with a number of the members, and I don't really relish the thought of trying to find a new one that I would fit in to. Since I don't want to do that, I'm left with trying to find options that simultaneously allow me to stay in the guild, continue running raids, and actually have a chance to roll on gear for my main spec sometime.
The second-most extreme (beyond /gquit) option I have thought of is removing the ability to do anything but tank by respeccing by secondary spec into another bear spec. I think I've just about ruled that out though, because I believe that would lead to no guild raids for me.
I could also forsake the 25-man raids to run my own 10-mans. However, with Wednesday and Thursday claimed for 25-man runs and Tuesday a hit-or-miss night to have the folks in my guild on to play, that seems like an iffy proposition at best. I tried running Mondays in the past, and by then most of our players have their mains locked. My Friday and weekend availability is not steady enough to run then. Plus, given that I have committed to my significant other that I will only raid on a regular basis on one night a week, that would preclude me from running in the guild 25-mans, which I also would like to continue doing.
The option that seems to present me with the best situation is to change my offspec from tree to kitty DPS. This would allow me to roll on leather gear and weapons that I would actually use for my main spec even if I'm in my offspec, because the two forms share stats now. The major downside to this plan is that I lose the flexibility of having a healing spec. If I'm not tanking I become just the meat in the room. (For all you DPS out there, I'm kidding. I love you guys.) Also, I still couldn't roll on tanking accessories for things such as the cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets, but I can get by with Emblem items for most of those.
Of course, this plan also requires me to do the research and take the time to learn how to be good with the class with the hardest DPS rotation in the game... or so I've been told it is. Stay tuned, my blog name may become somewhat of a misnomer.
Rambling the Fourth, on Blog Changes
Check out some changes on the site, I added some perma-links to the bear and tree primers on the right, and a real blogroll and limited the blogroll updates to the latest 5. Also, I actually touched my profile. No pics yet, but I'm working on it!
Rambling the Fifth.... ok I'm done.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Monday's Double-you Tee Eff Moment
After braving the ice and snow to make the short trip in to work this morning, one of the folks who work down in the datacenter with me came over to talk about his new tattoo, the sight of which caused several of us to need surgery to rebuild our heads after they exploded.
When asked why, the response was, "I realized that I've loved Terry Tate longer than I've loved any woman."
I regret that I don't have a picture to show you, but this masterpiece, which apparently took 4 hours to complete, depicts the Office Linebacker about to sack one of his charges, and is located on the left side of this man's chest.
I have no idea what he's smoking, but I want to, because I need to stay as far away from it as possible.
I'm sorry if your head exploded too. I have the name of a good surgeon...
When asked why, the response was, "I realized that I've loved Terry Tate longer than I've loved any woman."
I regret that I don't have a picture to show you, but this masterpiece, which apparently took 4 hours to complete, depicts the Office Linebacker about to sack one of his charges, and is located on the left side of this man's chest.
I have no idea what he's smoking, but I want to, because I need to stay as far away from it as possible.
I'm sorry if your head exploded too. I have the name of a good surgeon...
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