In a holding pattern, for the moment

It’s Thursday, and I haven’t touched my WoW toons since Sunday, when I agreed to hop on and help my girlfriend with her Tol Barad dailies. My last real activity happened late on Saturday, when I was involved in a furious Warsong Gulch match, which we lost but where I was able to scratch and claw my way to 11 killing blows on six deaths, with six flag returns.

I got an achievement for returning five flags in a single match, and earlier in the day I also became exalted with Baradin’s Wardens. The first (flag) achievement was the more gratifying of the two. The second (reputation) was about as anticlimactic as just about any achievement that I’ve ever gotten.

It happened at the wrong time. I was in the middle of doing my Tol Barad dailies, which is generally a horrible, teeth-grinding experience fraught with deadly respawns and accidentally killing stuff that someone else tagged, or being beaten by another player who is collecting the same item as you. So, there was a sense of relief, but it was muted, because I am so frustrated with my playing experience that I’m just about completely numb to the game at this point.

Here are some of my issues:

Easy leveling (early levels)

See my post from last Saturday for my feelings on this subject.

Easy leveling (80-85)

It took me 3.5 days to move my main toon from the old level cap to 85. It was a fun experience – probably the most fun that I’ve had in the game so far, other than different moments in PvP and the general camaraderie that we have in the guild. But it was too short. I did not rush – I just played and enjoyed it, and it still only took me half of a week.

Yes I’m more experienced and had nicer gear this time… but, to compare, it took me almost three months to get Anacrusa from level 70 to level 80. At this point, a month into the expansion, I have one toon (druid) that has been 85 for almost four weeks, one (paladin) that has very casually been 83 for almost two weeks, and a third (hunter) that is, almost as casually, one bar away from the cap.

It feels that, with the revamping of old zones, the “leveling through the expansion” part of the game got the short end of the stick this time. Perhaps that’s what most people wanted… but, in retrospect, it’s not what I wanted.

PvP

Tol Barad is a mess. It has been a mess since before launch, with a massive lack of competitive balance (it heavily favors the defending team, for those who don’t know). Blizzard introduced a hotfix last week that made it ten times more lucrative to win by attacking in order to try to balance this, which resulted in game-wide win-swapping between factions. Tol Barad became an absolute joke at this point. Blizzard “fixed” that this week by reducing the attack-win honor bonus by 80%, but by that time it was all over. The zone has all of the same problems that it has always had, and we’re a month into the game.

Otherwise, while my PvP experience has varied, I’m tired of battlegrounds. I was interested in arenas for a short while, but at this point I’m not all that interested in even playing the game, so I may never try them.

Dungeons

And raids, I guess. I don’t know – I haven’t raided yet, and I’ve only managed to complete three heroics out of the seven or eight that I’ve attempted.

After we killed the Lich King in my old guild, I was burned out on raiding, and I guess that I’ve never gotten my mojo back, so to speak. Currently, my guild has one full-time tank, but he has a life to live, so he’s not always available. The experience can vary widely when pugging tanks… and I don’t like committing hours of time to frustration.

On Friday, I ditched my unused resto spec and picked up a tanking one, reforged and re-gemmed all of my gear, and swapped around my glyphs with the idea that maybe I could relearn to tank. But… I don’t want to tank. I don’t particularly like tanking, and it’s also been a while for me since I last tanked anything of consequence. And with my current attitude, I feel uninspired to actually carry out the task of learning to tank in Cataclysm.

A final note on dungeons: Being melee in these new dungeons is rough. As a cat druid, I have to balance the following: staying out of bad while being close enough to interrupt (and it’s sometimes impossible to do both), doing competitive damage, and watching people’s health (yes, I have thrown many, many heals in dungeons). Bringing in a pug tank means that, in spite of communication beforehand, the boss often doesn’t get kited, or nobody else interrupts, or whatever.

I’m fine with “staying out of fire,” concentrating on having enough energy available to interrupt each time, or throwing heals, all at the expense of topping the meters. I actually like that. However, when staying out of bad = not interrupting = Non-Kited-Boss one-shots Non-Kiting-Tank (and so on) as often as it does right now, I begin to lose what little desire that I had to be there in the first place.

Admittedly, my tolerance is low…

Going back to my points above about easy leveling through the five new zones, I have to say that being “not-capped” for less than a week also doesn’t feel good. Woot! – a few days of leveling, and then back to the old… yes… dungeon grind.

Reputation grinds

I worked hard to open up all of my dailies. I am exalted with three of the factions now. However, I have to say that I hate them. Between all of the people who are leveling and doing the quests, and all of the people grinding rep, the dailies range from pain-in-the-ass to nightmarish.

The nearly instant respawns in some zones, as noted above, are punishing. When I’m not fighting for my life, I’m competing with others for those mobs or quest items that, oddly enough, have poor respawn rates. As Darkbrew noted recently, if you need to kill ten things in Tol Barad, you’ll kill 20 by the time you’re through. It’s generally not a fun experience.

Closing

I’m in a holding pattern, for the moment. I haven’t quit the game, but I don’t know if I will be playing much at any time soon. This is a long break for me, even if it has only been four days. My heart hasn’t been in it for a week or longer. I’m saddened by the way that I feel about it. I love the potential for good times and interesting lore, and I like that the game seems more challenging at this level. It seems like I should be happy with WoW, but I have a lot of problems with it right now.

Perhaps I’m changing, or perhaps it’s just dawning on me that the game doesn’t offer what I’m interested in anymore. I’m not sure. At any rate, we’ll see what happens. I’m spending more time playing guitar, blogging a bit about sports, and I’ve picked up Fable 2 and Half-Life 2 again after months of not playing them. I’m enjoying Fable 2 – Half-Life is a game that I can only concentrate on once in a while, but Fable 2 has a fun story and an interesting NPC community that I’m enjoying right now. I’m hoping to finish it this week, and begin playing Fable 3 shortly thereafter.

As far as WoW goes… well, I’ll let you know.

[Cataclysm] Feral PvP: first impressions, a modified spec, and glyphs

Shortly after I hit level 85, I made myself the complete set of eight leather PvP pieces and decided to jump into a battleground.

I drew Arathi Basin, which is one of my favorites (along with Eye of the Storm and the new Battle for Gilneas – I like cap-and-defend BGs, I guess). As “preparation” wound down, I browsed my team members and noticed the health levels with buffs: “Wow, I have 107K health… and that puts me right in the middle of the pack!”

The experience was an eye-opener. Many things were the same, including all of the battleground objectives. However, at that point, one thing was clear: enemies weren’t going down nearly as fast as they had during the week before launch.

I don’t remember whether we won or lost, but I do know that the individual encounters, as well as the game itself, lasted a while. At the end, I was prematurely tired of PvP for the night. I finished with two killing blows and two deaths. Two killing blows! Looking at the summary, I noted that there were no spectacular kill counts, so I didn’t feel that I had performed poorly. I left with a new respect for the fact that, while we’re certainly more powerful at level 85, we’re also way more healthy, which means that our abilities to quickly decimate enemies’ health bars have been muted.

On the other hand, I survived a couple of encounters that I never would have lived through at level 80. One notable encounter was after a failed attempt at capturing the Gold Mine. There were two Horde at the flag, but when three of us made our way down to take them, they were joined by three others. My teammates died, and I, bleeding, ravaged, and loaded with DoTs, all cooldowns blown, ran for it (yes, running for it is completely acceptable in situations where you are otherwise definitely going to die!). I dashed up the hill, and when Dash expired about halfway up the hill, I popped out of cat form and threw myself a Rejuve and three Lifeblooms. The entire time, I had two mages blasting me with Frostbolts (etc.) and blinking to stay up with me, which hampered my escape speed. And there was an enemy warrior coming after them, trying to catch up with me. The heat (and cold) was on.

I thought that I was dead. I had accepted it, put my affairs in order, made peace with Elune, thought fondly of my loved ones, and closed my eyes with a smile and a tranquil heart…

…except I didn’t actually close my eyes: I kept running, Lifebloom kept ticking, and I refreshed it when it bloomed. I switched forms whenever I got hit by a slowing debuff, which meant that I was switching forms almost on the GCD. I ran, and ran… straight toward the Stable graveyard, from which a fresh set of newly rezzed teammates was charging in my direction.

The mages died, eventually. And I lived.

I never would have survived that assault at level 80 – my 36K health and the insane damage-dealing abilities of the mages would have killed me way before I crossed the half-way-up-the-hill point.

Damage/Survivability spec (going off the beaten path a bit)

I’ve been playing around with my spec. I’m at the maximum cost for re-specs now, which is, I think, 66g, and I’ve been there for a while because I’ve re-specced at least a dozen times since I hit level 85.

Currently, on the new armory, I am listed as having my off-spec as feral and my main spec as balance. With heroics on the horizon for our guild, I am playing with the idea of having a balance or resto spec, and my feral/raiding UI on that spec was a bit of a mess anyway, so I decided to scrap it and play around with that one for a while. I had leveled in my PvP/leveling spec, which ended up being one and the same, and was pretty comfortable with the way I had my UI set up for that. So my second spec is actually my main spec.

Anyway, I’ve thought a lot about my options with feral builds, and the idea that I’m currently running with is that I will use this spec for everything that I do as feral for a while – PvP, heroics, and quests.

Here it is:

Anacrusa's damage/survivability spec, 12/22/2010

At level 85, I have five more talent points than I had in any of my previous spec-related posts, so I have a little more to play with.

This spec differs from other excellent spec recommendations from Alaron (The Fluid Druid) and Kalon (Think Tank). It is not truly optimized for generating maximum DPS, and is also not a textbook hybrid spec for bearcats.

This spec does include almost all of the stats that will increase damage, though. The only talents that I left out that are generally accepted as “required” for a pure DPS spec are 3/3 Fury Swipes and 2/2 Blood in the Water.

My thoughts behind this spec are as follows:

• The guides linked above list 0/32/6 builds, leaving three points free. I put those three points into Perseverance. The less spell damage taken, the better, no matter the environment. This goes for heroics, too. With mana conservation more imperative now, reducing spell damage can do a little bit to contribute to the healer’s Mana Savings Fund. And for PvP, I felt that this was a good choice.
• The two points from Blood in the Water went into 2/3 Thick Hide, for the same reasons as my Perseverance choice (except that it’s physical damage this time). Blood in the Water isn’t a huge contributor at this point, because Ferocious Bite isn’t. If I want to reapply a Rip at the end of a boss fight, I’ll choose to do so. Ferocious Bite isn’t doing that much average damage since I’m not getting critical hits very often (and because I have it glyphed in dungeons to save energy). I did use BitW in a few early dungeons, and it’s neat, but I don’t really miss it.
• The three points from Fury Swipes went into 2/2 Infected Wounds and a second point of Furor. Fury Swipes has a negligible impact in PvP, and only marginally more of an impact in dungeons. Infected Wounds is necessary for PvP, and also comes in handy during the odd messy pull when I’m interrupting and locking down an add that I have aggro on. 2/3 Furor is nice when I need to pop out of cat form to throw a heal – switching back and having two thirds of my energy pool available is nice for getting right back to business.

I’ve used this spec in dungeons and PvP, and it seems to be working out fairly well. I’m not at the top of the damage meter, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I have no points in Fury Swipes and Blood in the Water. Our warlock routinely does quite a bit more damage than the rest of us, and I’m fine with that. My utility and survivability comes in handy, and makes encounters more fun for me.

Glyphs

Since I have only one feral spec, I handle my glyph situation like this: I’m always glyphed for PvP/quests, since that’s what I spend the majority of my time doing, and I keep a supply of Dust of Disappearance handy for dungeon runs.

Prime Glyphs

• Mangle – swapped out for Shred in dungeons.
• Berserk – swapped out for Tiger’s Fury in dungeons. There is an excellent argument for keeping Berserk in dungeons, but it depends on playstyle and preferences.
• Rip – great for both PvP and dungeons.

Major Glyphs

• Entangling Roots – highly recommended for both PvE and PvP. In a recent dungeon where a mark accidentally was erased just before a pull, I was able to sleep one dragonkin and instantly root another, and being able to use consecutive CCs as a druid felt pretty good.
• Barkskin – swapped out for Ferocious Bite in dungeons, although I’m not sure how I feel about that…
• Feral Charge – a keeper for PvP and PvE

Minor Glyphs

• Dash
• Wild
• Aquatic Form (PvP/dailies), Unburdened Rebirth (dungeons)

* * * * *

So, that’s my basic setup for spec and glyphs at the moment. I’m sure that it will change at some point. Perhaps I will decide to try Blood in the Water as I build up my gear set. Or maybe I’ll decide to stop PvP-ing for a while and throw Fury Swipes back into the mix. Who knows? For now, two weeks in, this is what I’ve settled on.

Since that first BG, I’ve participated in a couple dozen others, as well as several Tol Barad battles. I’ve found that, like before the launch, if I get into a one-on-one situation with anyone except a paladin (… … …), I feel that I have a good chance to come out on top. Usually, these encounters get sabotaged by either friends or foes riding in and demolishing me or my opponent before I have the chance to see the outcome. However, when it’smano a mano, I always consider myself to have the upper hand.

Except with paladins.

(…)

I don’t always crit, but when I do, I crit Dos Equis.

 

This gear is actually better than my old, killer-looking gear. It may not look like it... but after the Cataclysm, armorcrafters apparently found that they could use a lighter, stronger leather called "Savage Leather" to make Druids more rugged and agile.

I reached 85 on Friday night at 7pm, after 3.5 days of play. I did not log out in inns, and the vast majority of my experience came from quests, although I did run three or four dungeons with the guild. At this point, I’ve seen the normal versions of Blackrock Caverns, Throne of the Tides, The Stonecore, Lost City of the Tol’vir, and Halls of Origination.

I was the second person in my guild to reach level 85. Mighti reached the cap with his lock several hours before me. Secure joined us Sunday night during our maiden voyage through Lost City, and Ethiria hit the cap last night, so we’re starting to put together a group of people that can hopefully begin running heroics at some point in the near future.

Questing

I stated above that I got the vast majority of my experience from quests. Not just accepting and turning in, but actually reading them and following the stories. The lore of the expansion is unveiling before our eyes, and it’s very interesting. I had a lot of fun leveling.

At this point, I’ve completed Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands. I’m halfway through Vashj’ir, because I honestly haven’t completed anything there since my last post. I went back and finished Hyjal after all, and it picked up toward the end. At this point, I’m hard-pressed to pick a favorite. The popular sentiment seems to be that Uldum rules (capped off by the total fun that is Gnomebliteration), but, while I really enjoyed it, I also liked Twilight Highlands – some of the quests toward the end are pretty epic/challenging/brutal, and have some great rewards.

As I leveled, I decided to head into higher-level areas, rather than finishing out zones before moving on (as I had originally planned). I did this for three reasons.

1. The challenge. Each level in Cataclysm brings a major upgrade to primary stats, particularly to Stamina. The lower level areas became less difficult to conquer. Once I went back and finished Hyjal, hitting 82 in the process, I skipped the remainder of Vashj’ir in favor of Deepholm, which brought tougher survival challenges to my questing experience.
2. The quest reward gear. Within 36 hours of my Tuesday morning start, people in my guild were anxious to check out some of the new dungeons. Including repeats, we’ve probably run a dozen dungeons together so far. At level 82, I had gotten a few nice pieces but hadn’t replaced much of my gear; however, the burden on the healer is greater when you don’t have that extra Stamina. So I made it a point to try to keep my gear in line with my level. There are some nice quest reward pieces available, so I was able to supplement early dungeon drops with the quest gear to build myself an adequate set as I leveled.
3. The reputation. There are six new factions in Cataclysm, and I was determined to get started on each of them. Each faction has something to offer feral druids, so I have made it a point to complete as many quests as possible in order to build rep and/or open up dailies. At this point, I am revered with Guardians of Hyjal and Therazane, and honored with the rest of them except for Baradin’s Wardens. Therazane and Wildhammer have nice sets of dailies, while the others are basically tabard-fodder. At this point, I’m in a good place (other than with Baradin’s, which could take awhile since it looks like the Alliance is never going to win Tol Barad on my server).

Dungeons

I don’t have a lot to talk about regarding dungeons, other than the fact that they are definitely more difficult than the Wrath dungeons. Personally, I’ve enjoyed getting to use Hibernate and glyphed Entangling Roots, and Skull Bash quite honestly is one of my most favorite things to use when clearing “trash.” If I can jump on a loose caster, interrupt him, and then lock him up a few seconds later with a 5CP Maim, Skull Bash is up again shortly after the Maim falls off. If I get it right (aka do it so that I don’t take too much damage myself), I can be of assistance to my healer, who doesn’t have to be constantly healing himself, the tank or a caster who may otherwise have aggro.

As far as DPS goes, cat druids seem to be fine, particularly on single targets. My AP is higher, naturally, but my Crit chance is about half of what it was on December 6th (although when I do crit, I crit for huge chunks of damage – hence the ridiculous title to this post). I’m also struggling to get my Hit Rating and Expertise in order. Currently, I’ve managed to get my Hit Chance over 6%, which means that I won’t miss in normal dungeons. However, my Expertise is still only 13, meaning that I have about a 3% chance to be dodged. I’m trying to remedy this, mainly through reforging, without gutting the rest of my stats. It sucks when I attempt to Maim a target and the Maim gets dodged – unlike other feral finishing moves, the Maim has a cooldown, whether you connect or not. So, stat-wise, I’ve been trying to balance that stuff out, and I’ve managed to get to a place where I feel pretty good about my stat makeup, except for the Expertise issue.

So damage is fine. Sometimes I top the meters (particularly on boss fights), and usually I don’t (trash). Really, other than our healer, the party’s damage dealers have been pretty close in each dungeon. Sometimes, I check the meter, but after a couple of dungeons I became comfortable with the fact that I was doing adequate damage, and I’ve been concentrating on helping out the group. I’m more concerned about focusing the correct mob, keeping my target CC-ed or interrupted, and throwing heals when necessary. We all know that damage meter nit-picking can be a bit overrated, and that’s especially the case now. Blizzard has cats in a good place where it counts, so as long as I do my job, the damage will come. The mechanics of an encounter, and the feral’s job dealing with them, is what interests me.

Gear and Enchants

Some bloggers, regardless of class, have noted that it’s unnecessary to enchant your gear as you level. While it’s true, I’ve ignored that to some extent. I did enchant my gear along the way, because some of it was related to my Leatherworking, my girlfriend is trying to level her Enchanting, and I just enjoy enhancing my gear. I don’t have all of my gear enchanted yet, but over half of it is. I’ve bought a half-dozen Lesser Inscriptions from Therazane already, and early on I visited the Shadow Vault a couple of times for Arcanums. Sure, it’s gold out-of-pocket, but I easily grossed 5K gold just from questing and selling trash along the way to 85, and for some of that to go into enchants was, to me, quite a worthy cause. It’s all pocket change, really.

I let go of my 4pT10 set bonus when I reached 82. The stat upgrades on new gear, particularly for Stamina and Hit Rating, were just to great. I was in approximately 75% greens, 25% blues by 83, except for my 264 relic, and I replaced that in Uldum. I’m currently at 92% blues, 8% greens, as I have yet to get a rare relic.

Leatherworking

Skinning went very well. It took me a matter of a few hours to max that out. However, crafting professions take a bit more work, and Leatherworking was no exception. As of Sunday, I was able to max out, acquire recipes for all eight pieces of crafted PvP gear (and make them), and will soon have my epic leg enchants. And of course, there’s that sweet, sweet bracer enchant (+130 Agility)!

As with Wrath, the leveling process takes a boatload of leather. I spent several hours farming a few different areas in order to get enough leather and volatiles to get to 525. The fact that the recipes in Twilight Highlands cost ten Heavy Savage Leather apiece is rough, but I’m happy to be done with the initial work, and I have a nice starter set of PvP gear to boot.

Closing

I have more to write about, and I know that I’ve been neglecting this blog over the past couple of weeks. However, I’ve been playing Cataclysm. We’ve been waiting for this release for a very long time, and we’ve been talking about it for what seems like forever. Now that it’s here, I’m playing the crap out of it. So the posts will likely start to pick up a little bit, both about WoW and other things, over the next couple of weeks. For one thing, I know that I will have some comments to make about PvP, as well as the specs that I’m using at level 85.

In the meantime, I’m working on reputations, running the occasional dungeon or two, complementing putting together a resto off-set, and working on my paladin-alchemist (full rested XP, level 81+ with minimal questing done – woot!). Once the pally is familiar with all zones and comfortably herbing, I’ll be able to get started on my hunter, Mushan. Happily, I might add!

I hope that everyone else is having fun!

[Cataclysm] Some thoughts from my first day

View of Stormwind from the air, looking north

Some quick thoughts from my first day, for those of you who are taking a “coffee & bagel break” at the moment…

Hyjal

One of the things that I’ve never had the discipline to do is knock out the Battle for Mount Hyjal in Caverns of Time.

I still want to.

Hyjal is in a state of mostly-destroyed-ness right now. The majority of environment is burned, scorched, barren, and/or soaked by lava. It pisses me off.

I started my questing there yesterday morning, and after about an hour, I put the quests there on hold in favor of Vashj’ir. In all honesty, I was feeling a little bit of the same-ness that I had read about: Hyjal feels like normal WoW, to a great degree. It’s a level 80 starting area, and it feels like it.

I don’t know. I just wasn’t feeling it like I had hoped I would. So I left for a while (though I did go back in the evening to do some more quests).

Vashjir

This, on the other hand, was mostly big fun. Other than the whole “lack of enough Stormwind Helms” problem, exacerbated by the fact that scads of people were looking for them at the same time – you know what I’m talking about, my fellow Vashj’ir first-day players – the area is excellent. The underwater play has been designed very well, and while it doesn’t feel exactly like land play, it does feel natural.

And the area is beautiful. Additionally, it’s huge, or at least it feels huge, since so much of it takes place underwater. Last night, a group of us went to find Throne of the Tides, and it was at that point that I realized how large of a zone it is.

Dungeons

A few of us in the guild were interested in checking out the new dungeons. We headed over to Blackrock Caverns, which was fun. We then did the previously mentioned Throne of the Tides, which has a bit of a crazy ending.

I’m not going to say too much about them, except for a couple of things about dungeons in general.

First of all, I was glad to have the opportunity to check them out with friends. We jumped on vent and had a nice time working our way through the instances. When we finished, I was talking with my girlfriend, and we agreed that using the dungeon finder to do them was not something that we would have enjoyed nearly as much.

Secondly, I can see the CC coming. We’re peaking around the corner at it. These were normal versions of the dungeons, and there were several times where our tank pulled an entire group, Wrath-style, and we survived fairly comfortably. However, we had some opportunities to sheep and root. I particularly enjoyed the final boss in BRC, Ascendant Lord Obsidious, who has two shadow adds that apply a severe healing debuff to their targets, making them generally un-tankable. Our healer was a druid, so we decided that we would do a root-pull, and the tank would pull the boss back, and our warrior and mage would go to town on the boss. It worked beautifully.

As I said on vent last night: I know this may sound lame, but one of my favorite parts of the instance was being able to keep my guy rooted and out of harm’s way. It’s nice to be able to do something different to help the group, rather than bashing and ripping all the time.

Oh, and holy BoE drops! We had four or five of the same “rare” Agility dagger drop in BRC last night, and we only ran it once.

Skinner’s Paradise

On Monday night, Big Bear Butt posted a bit on his quest to put together the perfect mix tape to listen to when he began to play the expansion.

Now, I had some epic, WoW-sounding songs in mind for my own soundtrack. However, when I went to Vashj’ir yesterday morning, I got an entirely different tune stuck in my head.

See, with the starting areas being overcrowded, there were a lot of animals being killed. For a skinner like me, the vast number of dead skitterers in Vashj’ir (and dead Twilight Hatchlings, etc. in Hyjal) made me remark that it was a “skinner’s paradise.”

Some time later, I realized that there was a chorus running through my head: “Pimper’s Paradise” by Bob Marley and the Wailers, from the final album they released while he was alive, Uprising (1980). In this case, though, it was actually “Skinner’s Paradise,” over and over, over and over…

So I got out my Bob Marley CDs and started loading them onto my computer. I haven’t actively listened to him in about a year, since I replaced my iMac, because I had gotten a bit burned out on him, and so I was content to let that music sit for a while… but no more!

At any rate, it took me about four hours to get to max-level skinning. And all that leather was enough to get me approximately ten skill-up points for Leatherworking. Of course.

Leveling and XP

I wrote previously about my plans to take my time leveling through the expansion, without actively trying to acquire rested XP on Anacrusa by logging out in an inn. I was looking forward to enjoying myself… and I have, don’t get me wrong.

However, I was disappointed to see that level 81 required only about 100,000 more XP (1.6 million) than it used to take to get to level 80 from 79 (over 1.5 million), before Wrath leveling was nerfed by 20%. This went against what I had heard, which was that XP requirements would be much higher in Cataclysm. In all, it took me about four hours to get to 81, and I wasn’t gunning for it. In fact, I probably I spent an hour of that time skinning.

It was nice, then, to see that level 82 requires 2.12 million points (although I’m almost there anyway…), and one of my friends informed me last night that level 83 requires just over four million, which is a steep ramp-up. So it’s nice to see that I’m going to be leveling for a little bit, anyway.

We’ve been at end-game for a long, long time now. I’d like to have the chance to enjoy this process for more than a few days, for goodness’ sake.

Checking up on my old list of pre-Cataclysm goals

My original idea for this post was that it be a revisiting of a post I wrote at the end of January called Things I’d like to accomplish before the Cataclysm. It’s been in the back of my mind for awhile – especially lately, as I’ve seen some of my friends write about their checklist progress.

So today, I went back and looked at that post, and I realized a few things…

1. My list of goals for Anacrusa, my main, was perhaps too short. At any rate, I finished some of those goals, and there were others that I did not complete. And there were many, many things that I achieved without initially setting goals for them.
2. My goals within the game itself changed, along with my playing habits. For instance, while I was really into my baby resto druid for a while, she spent the major portion of this year on the back burner. On the other hand, I decided to start a hunter, on August 22, for the purpose of leveling quickly to 80 and gearing him very adequately for Cataclysm, and I succeeded on both counts. 48 days later (and three days before the patch), I lost my XP bar, and I had a great time leveling and gearing him.
3. My goals evolved within my mind, and I never made a blog post to update my list. There were a couple of posts that talked about my progress with some of those goals (and several posts leading up to, and including, our Lich King kill in April), but I never wrote a revised and expanded list. It was there, though, in my mind.

I have to say that I am not surprised that all of this happened. With the implosion of the guild that I raided with, the evaporation of some relationships, and my ensuing break from the game, there were circumstances (and there was time) that allowed/forced me to consider what was important to me in the game.

When I came back, I played differently. I focused on different things, new and old.

PvP, which was undoubtedly my top focus after I returned in June, opened my eyes to both a separate world of competition and a different side of my druid. Leveling the hunter, with fresh eyes and a lot more experience, was both different and familiar – I was able to master another class, relative to how I had floundered through Azeroth with my first hunter years ago.

Whereas much of my time through the end of April was spend working toward ending the Scourge threat by removing the head from its vast body, much of my time over the past five months has been spent looking at other aspects of the game. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• I’ve worked toward gaining as many exalted reputations as possible, and gotten a pile of achievements in the process.
• I’ve collected Leatherworking recipes like some people collect pets – except that, in this case, it’s a task which rewards no achievement, but it has been a source of enjoyment for me this year.
• I completed the Loremaster of Northrend achievement, which gave me the opportunity to complete some quests/chains that I hadn’t experienced before, and to really gain an appreciation for the lore and story lines that form the backbone of the expansion.
• And I’ve become fascinated by some of the old instances, gear, and other things that I had missed, through soloing BC heroic dungeons and working on Loremaster of Outland (a task that I have not completed yet).

* * * * *

I have a new list of goals floating around in my head. With Cataclysm, there will be a lot to do – a radically changed game-world to explore and learn about, three level 80s and their professions to level (and my level 67 druid that I need to get to 75 for profession purposes), gear to acquire, skills to hone, challenges to overcome, and so on. I’m not going to put that list in writing for this post, though – I think that I will need to see how I feel about the game before I set any definite goals.

“Level Anacrusa” is sort of plenty to think about at this point, in all honestly!

That’s not to say that I don’t have a million thoughts in my mind, as far as goals go. But I don’t think that I’m ready to put them into cohesive order. Not yet, at least.

[Cataclysm] My kitty leveling spec and glyphs

In just a few weeks, it will be time to resume an activity that I haven’t done for almost two years: level as a feral druid.

I reached level 80 on Anacrusa on the last day of February, 2009. Since then, I have learned exponentially more about my class than I knew at that point. I had never participated in raids or PvP, and had only done a handfull of dungeons (Deadmines, Sunken Temple, Scarlet Monastery, and Zul’Farrak) at that point. As a leveling feral in Wrath, I felt that I could plow through mobs using my trusty Mangle and Ferocious Bite abilities, in spite of my cluelessness and the fact that I had mostly garbage gear. And no glyphs. At all.

On the other side of Wrath, I am a different “animal” in so many ways:

• I’ve run countless dungeons.
• I’ve completed three of the four tiers of raid content (and gotten up to Yogg in Ulduar).
• My raiding Gearscore is whatever-the-heck-who-cares.
• I’ve PvPeed way more that I ever would have imagined on the day that I turned 80.
• My PvP Gearscore is almost whatever-the-heck-who-cares, too!
• I’m max-level in both primary, and both secondary, professions.
• I have a boatload of achievements.
• I’ve started a blog, and it even has some feral info/discussion on it!

And so on, etc. Like I said, I wasn’t very good at all back then…

In summary, I have a great deal more experience, and am much more knowledgeable about the game itself, my class/spec, raiding, PvP, etc.

Armed with this knowledge, I am heading into Cataclysm with a pretty good idea of what my spec and glyphs are going to look like as I begin leveling.

probable level 80 kitty leveling spec

Level 80 kitty leveling spec

This spec is actually very similar to my 4.0.1 PvP spec, which I wrote about last week. There are only two differences:

• I put two points into Feral Aggression, both for the Faerie Fire insta-3-stack and the bonus 10% Ferocious Bite damage.
• I paid for that by pulling one point out of both Thick Hide and Endless Carnage.

From what I’ve read about the expansion, quest mobs start to hit very hard after a level or two. I’m not in the beta, so I don’t have first-hand experience; however, I’ve read everything from “Cataclysm is just plain harder” to “the first couple of levels are pretty easy, but it gets pretty serious around level 83.”

It’s tempting to take the additional point in Thick Hide for the extra 3% armor (extra 11% armor in bear form). I’m thinking that the first point that I take, at level 81, will be the third Thick Hide point, although, if I find myself floundering before that, I may respec. I don’t think that it will be much of a game-changer, though. Using my wits and my supplemental class abilities should be enough to help me survive, particularly at the early levels of the expansion, considering the offensive power that my current raid gear has.

After filling Thick Hide, I will probably take the two points in Endless Carnage at levels 82 and 83, as it’s highly possible that mobs will live longer at that point. I’m not sure how much gear I will have replaced by then, but if I haven’t replaced any, the stat-scaling effect will reduce the value of several key stats (Haste, Crit, Hit, and Mastery in particular). With that in mind, bleeds will probably be more important, and I expect that I will play in a more PvP-like manner as I progress through the levels. Stuns, roots, slows, heals, incapacitates, shape-shifting, etc. will be more critical in that case (which is something that I am actually looking forward to).

Beyond that, I’m not sure which talent I will take at level 84.

As I’ve said before, there isn’t as much wiggle-room in the talent trees as there was pre-4.0.1. Basically, I’m taking talents that improve my offensive capabilities, subtracting talents that are more appropriate for raid situations, and adding in survivability talents.

Leveling glyphs

The glyph picture looks different than it did for 4.0.1 PvP. To my mind, it’s a bit murkier.

Prime Glyphs

• Mangle (extra 10% Mangle damage)
• Tiger’s Fury (reduces cooldown by 3 seconds)
• Rip (15% extra periodic damage)

For leveling, the first two make good sense to me. The Glyph of Rip is the one that I spent some time thinking about. I weighed it against Glyph of Berserk (extra 5 second duration), Glyph of Savage Roar (extra 5% auto-attack damage when Savage Roar is up), and, believe it or not, Glyph of Lifebloom (extra 10% Critical Effect on Lifebloom’s periodic heals), which is something that tantalizes me – I think that self-heals could very well be more important in the later leveling stages. However, I decided to go with Rip, because, especially as encounters last longer, the damage buff could be significant.

Major Glyphs

• Thorns (reduces cooldown by 20 seconds)
• Entangling Roots (essentially makes Entangling Roots an instant cast)
• Rake (prevents enemies from fleeing while Rake is applied)

The Glyph of Thorns and Glyph of Entangling Roots seem like perfect leveling glyphs. Thorns lasts 20 seconds and does a lot of damage whenever you are hit, and the glyph reduces the cooldown to 25 seconds. Instant Entangling Roots is great for emergency situations, when you need to stop something for a bit so that you can throw a heal or take care of another mob.

I once again wrestled with my third option. Glyph of Feral Charge (reduces cooldown by 2 seconds) is nice, but two seconds isn’t that much time. Glyph of Faerie Fire (extends the range of FFF by 10 yards) is also nice. Finally, Glyph of Barkskin (reduces chance to be critically hit with melee strikes by 25%) is also tempting – if I change my mind about Rake, particularly at higher levels, I may take this one instead.

I’m not sure how many of the mobs that we face will try to flee. If there are a bunch that do, then this will be a good one to have, particularly because it will prevent mobs from fleeing into other mobs. From what I’ve read, multi-mob pulls at higher levels can be brutal, so that’s why I decided to go with Rake.

Minor Glyphs

• Dash (reduces cooldown by 20%)
• Aquatic Form (increases swim speed in Aquatic Form by 50%)
• Mark of the Wild (reduces mana cost of MotW by 50%)

There’s nothing new here. These seem to be the best minor glyphs for solo leveling as a kitty.

Miscellaneous

Right now, my DPS gear set includes the Whispering Fanged Skull and Herkuml War Token trinkets. However, I may switch out the HWT for the Medallion of the Alliance for stun removal, if it works in Cataclysm. I’ll probably test this out early – I’m planning on reforging my DPS gear soon, and when I start leveling I will equip the MotA and see if it works against the higher-level mobs. If it does, I’ll keep it; if it doesn’t, I’ll ditch it for either the HWT or something with Stamina on it. Being stunned for even a few seconds in cat form can be lethal, so I’m definitely going to give it a try.

Closing

Cataclysm is looking like it has the potential to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to the solo leveling process, and the challenges that it poses. Hopefully, my spec and glyph choices, along with my knowledge and abilities, will enable me to take on these challenges in fun and interesting ways.

ADDENDUMS

This is a rewrite of an earlier post that I completed and published less than 24 hours ago. Unfortunately, the original has been corrupted beyond repair for some technical reason that is beyond me, and so I have completely re-typed and re-formatted it as a new post. Hopefully, this one will stick.

* * * * *

Since I’m trashing the original post, one comment from Saniel will evaporate into the ether… Except that I am going to copy it into my new post. Bwahahahaha!

His comment: “Looks pretty solid. Any idea where you’re headed first?”

My response was: “Not sure. Frostheim, in his 80-85 Hunter leveling guide posted on Thursday on WoW Insider, says that Vashj’ir is a much better area than Hyjal, but Hyjal has a lot of lore-based stuff. I’m a lore fan… having not seen them myself, I don’t quite know yet where I will go.”

Sorry about that, San.

* * * * *

Talent tree update? According to a blue post about patch 4.0.3a on Thursday, “Due to several talent revisions for select classes, druids, paladins, priests, and shaman will have their talent trees reset.”

I’ve seen some changes come down the wire, but if there has been anything significant in the feral tree, I’ve missed it. If I do find out about a change that affects my leveling spec, I will pass it along in a future post (or update this one, if WordPress accommodates me…).

Feral PvP: my 4.0.1 spec and glyphs

Anacrusa, feral PvP spec, 4.0.1

*Note: Some of the information in this article is outdated, as it was written prior to the launch of Cataclysm. Please do not take the following info as gospel, as it is not current!

As promised in my previous post, here is my feral PvP spec for 4.0.1. I’ll also talk a little bit about the glyphs that I’m currently using.

Feral PvP Spec, 4.0.1

I haven’t done a lot of PvE since the patch. However, while making my PvE spec, I felt that, after exhausting the DPS talents available at level 80, there weren’t many choices to make unless you wanted to create a hybrid spec.

On the other hand, I found that I had to make some decisions when I put together my PvP spec. This decision-making process is unchanged from before the patch, and as such isn’t terribly surprising. In an ideal, impossible situation, I would want to take somewhere between 50-60 of the available talents, which would make me an OP, killing, healing, pew-pewing machine who could handle any situation with no problem at all! Obviously, each class is limited to 36 points at 80, and 41 points at 85, so there’s some sense of balance. Anyway, without going off on a ridiculous tangent… I had to decide which talents to take in order to properly boost my offensive abilities while also providing myself with some survivability tools.

I’m pretty happy with this spec. It provides me with most of the DPS talents that raiding cat druids might take, excepting the following:

• Fury Swipes (0/3) – Three points in Fury Swipes would provide a 15% chance to get an extra, 310%-weapon-damage melee attack, no more than once every three seconds. The amount of damage that this could do in PvP situations is so minuscule that these are no-brainers to not take.
• Feral Aggression (0/2) – Two points in Feral Aggression would increase Ferocious Bite damage by 10%. Unfortunately, I almost never use Ferocious Bite in PvP, because I’m focusing on Rip and Maim as my “finishers. However, Feral Aggression 2/2 also makes Faerie Fire stack three times with one application, giving an instant 12% armor reduction on an opponent. Taking that fact into consideration, Feral Aggression might be a good PvP talent to have; however, I find that I don’t use Faerie Fire enough to take this talent. The reason: when I attack, I’m usually coming out of stealth, and trying to get five combo points for a 5 CP Rip before my opponent comes out of the Pounce stun. Thus, I’ve found that using a GCD for FFF is often difficult to justify anyway. Feel free to disagree with this choice, though!
• Endless Carnage (only 1/2) – Savage Roar is of less importance in PvP than in PvE, because of the fact that auto attacks are not very effective, so I wasn’t all that interested in increasing its duration. However, Rake is extremely important. In a recent BG, Rake did 30% of my damage, and auto attacks did 8%. So I decided to take one point, making Rake last 12 seconds instead of nine, and sort of split the difference there…
• Blood In The Water (0/2) – As I mentioned above, I rarely use Ferocious Bite when I PvP. In my experience in BGs, the enemy will die within a reasonable amount of time, or I’m probably going to fail to kill him. Putting points into a talent that can extend the length of a 16-second DoT usually isn’t going to help me – I’m going to run out of energy, and if the enemy isn’t dead after 16 seconds, he’s either healing himself, being healed, or just more resilient than I am powerful. I may change my feeling on this in Cataclysm, where health pools will be much larger. I can totally see this being a good talent to have at higher levels, where renewing Rip with the big burst damage of a Ferocious Bite could be really beneficial.

In exchange for these points, I took some points designed to help me hamper my opponent and protect myself:

• Predatory Strikes (2/2) – This is a great PvP talent. Two points give a 100% increase in Critical Strike chance to Ravage, making Ravage a great move to use during an opening sequence. Additionally, a 5 CP Rip or Maim gives you a 100% chance to gain Predator’s Swiftness, which allows you to throw a GCD-free Healing Touch.
• Infected Wounds (2/2) – Putting two points here means that a Mangle or Ravage in the opening sequence hampers the opponent’s movement speed by 50% for 12 seconds, which is nice when your opponent is trying to run away from your claws.
• Thick Hide (3/3) – Three points give you 10% more armor and 33% more armor in bear form. However, the real win may be the 6% reduced critical strike chance from melee attacks against you. It’s nice to have when you’re going toe-to-toe with a DK. Or a warrior. Or two.
• Survival Instincts (1/1) – As ever, 60% less damage taken makes this is a great talent for PvP. The 5-min cooldown is not so nice, though.
• Nurturing Instinct (2/2) – This talent is great, because it gives you two buffs, and they both work for cats! Let me explain. First of all, it gives you a flat 70% bonus to all healing that you do. Additionally, it buffs all heals that you receive by 20%. Now, if I throw a Rejuvenation on myself in my unbuffed caster form, it ticks for around 1334 health. If I switch to cat form, those ticks change to 1600 health. So, as you can see, the 20% cat form healing buff applies to your own heals. If you apply three stacks of Lifebloom and a Rejuvenation, and then switch to cat form, the amount of healing taken is significant – unbuffed, my Lifebloom’s final tick alone is 9k on me in Dalaran – so with buffs on the battlefield (and a small Crit chance), the benefits of Nurturing Instincts for PvP are quite evident.

Feral PvP glyphs, 4.0.1

I’ve had some fun with my PvP glyphs. Here is my current configuration:

Prime Glyphs

• Rip (periodic Rip damage increased by 15%)
• Berserk (Berserk duration increased by 5 seconds)
• Mangle (Mangle damage increased by 10%)

Before I did my reforging last week, I had the Glyph of Tiger’s Fury equipped. However, reducing the cooldown of Tiger’s Fury seemed less important than stacking the extra Rip damage on top of Mastery, so I think that I’m going to keep the Glyph of Rip.

Major Glyphs

• Barkskin (chance to be critically hit by Melee attacks reduced by 25%)
• Entangling Roots (makes Entangling Roots an instant cast, increases the CD by 5 seconds)
• Feral Charge (reduces the CD on Feral Charge by 2 secs for cats, 1 sec for bears)

As major glyphs, these are a bit more situational than the primes, but they seem to be the best options. Limiting the damage of Ferocious Bite seems to be counterproductive, and I didn’t see any others that I felt would do me much good.

Minor Glyphs

These fall into the category of “nice to have.” There aren’t many available, but I chose the following:

• Dash (CD reduced by 20%)
• Mark of the Wild (mana cost reduced by 50%)
• Aquatic Form (increases swim speed by 50%)

Odds and ends

A couple of recent thoughts:

1. Lifebloom is awesome now! As I mentioned above, it is a powerful healing spell, particularly in cat form and with three stacks.
2. I got my Wrathful Gladiator’s Staff yesterday. The 108 Resilience on it equals 3.06% less PvP damage taken. I’m excited to try it out tomorrow night. I know that warlocks, mages and shadow priests are still going to cream me, but hopefully it won’t be quite so bad… (yeah, who am I kidding?!)

Closing

This is not really a guide, but hopefully it has some useful information for my fellow ferals who are finding my blog with “feral pvp 4.0.1 spec”-like search terms. I’m sorry that it took me so long to do, but I’m glad that I waited until I tried out a full-Mastery-reforge before I wrote about it!

Feral PvP: reforging for Mastery in 4.0.1

*Note: Some of the information in this article is outdated, as it was written prior to Patch 4.0.1 or the launch of Cataclysm. Please do not take the following info as gospel, as it is not current!

Patch 4.0.1 dropped on Oct. 12, and for the first couple of days, cat druids had not yet received the huge damage adjustments that would bring their abilities somewhere closer to their pre-patch levels. Thus, I didn’t PvP until several days after the patch.

However, when the damage adjustments were made, ninja-style, somewhere around a day and a half later, I spent a lot of time working on my PvE gear and spec, and then I looked at PvP.

My PvP gear looked pretty good. The gems were pretty much set, my stats seemed balanced, and so on. I went ahead, tried some things out in battlegrounds, and eventually decided that I was pleased with the results. I did write a couple of posts about these experiences early in the patch, and have been happily PvP-ing on a fairly regular basis since then.

However, late this past week, I looked at my gear and was absolutely shocked to see that I had completely forgotten to reforge my gear on the druid!

I was, as I said, shocked. I didn’t remember not doing it… but I didn’t remember doing it either… I guess that I did it on the hunter and forgot – just plain forgot! – to reforge my druid.

When I looked more closely, I saw that I had indeed reforged a couple of pieces, but that was to balance out Hit Rating (it was too high). By and large, though, I had completely neglected Mastery on my PvP gear, and so I set out to remedy that.

What follows is a discussion of my PvP reforging strategy, and how I’ve adjusted my play style to finally give bleeds their due in PvP situations.

Reforging

Before reforging, my Mastery stood at the flat 8.00 that we get from the trainer. 8.00 Mastery increases the damage done by bleed effects by 25%. Each additional point of Mastery gives 3.1% additional bleed damage, and that sounded pretty good to me, so I decided to see how much Mastery I could acquire on my PvP gear.

I had 14 pieces that I could reforge; I couldn’t reforge my PvP ring because I didn’t want to lose the Hit Rating, and my PvP trinket has Resilience as its lone secondary stat, and Resilience cannot be reforged.

I decided to reforge Critical Strike Rating into Mastery on 13 of the pieces. The shoulders are from Wintergrasp, and I chose that piece as the place to lose Hit Rating. In all, I dumped 399 Critical Strike Rating (8.7% Crit) and 25 Hit Rating, and picked up 424 Mastery Rating (9.24 Mastery). This bumped my Mastery from 25% to 53% additional bleed damage, which was a nice jump!

My unbuffed Crit chance dropped from 55.22% to 46.52%, which seems like a huge amount. However, I reminded myself that it was probably a good time to adjust my play style anyway, after that bit of reforging…

Changing my play style

Even before the patch arrived (and I dropped the ball on Mastery for the first three weeks!), I hadn’t given much thought to bleed damage in PvP. The bursty nature of Wrath PvP for several classes seemed to infect me, and I spent a lot of time concentrating on using lock-down abilities and then bashing the hell out of my opponents. Perhaps that is why I sort of got stuck, feeling like I was doing a mediocre job all-around: blah damage, blah CC, blah survivability, etc. It seems to me that cats don’t quite have the power behind their burst that other classes seem to have. However, in spite of my knowledge of how cats work, I specced for maximum Mangle and Shred damage, and applied bleeds when I felt that it was convenient.

With Mastery in mind, I reconfigured my priorities. This meant bleeds, bleeds, bleeds! In battlegrounds over the weekend, I practiced applying bleeds, regardless of the situation, and monitoring the debuff durations with NeedToKnow, just like I would during a boss fight. This is what an ideal “rotation” looks like for me:

1. Feral Charge —> Pounce (bleed)
2. Ravage
3. Tiger’s Fury
4. Mangle
5. Rake (bleed)
6. Mangle or Shred (if a CP is needed, otherwise…)
7. Rip (bleed)
8. Mangle/Shred, Maim, Cyclone, throw a heal, etc… Survivability certainly comes into play, especially when you’re in a multi-opponent situation.

The first five random battlegrounds that I did after I made this change were pretty discouraging, but they were Isle of Conquest and Alterac Valley, where I spent most of my time getting mowed down by large numbers of Horde. However, I finally drew Arathi Basin, and it was in this battleground that I started to see my focus on bleeds pay off.

Bleeds add a funny element to the equation, and to illustrate this, I’ll simply say that it’s kind of a nice surprise, at first, when you hit a player who’s got about 30 percent health with a non-critting Mangle, and he suddenly drops dead from a couple of nice bleed ticks in rapid succession. The combination of Rake and Rip with the Mangle debuff and Mastery is a pretty powerful one.

Bleeds and Mastery make for a more well-rounded kitty

In my last PvP article, I wrote that, with the removal of Armor Pen in 4.0.1, it seemed to me that kitties felt like they were hitting harder. Well, the changes that I made to my play style (which are really a correction of old bad habits), combined with the additional damage from a nice chunk of Mastery, change up the overall feel of feral PvP for me. I’m still hitting hard with Ravage, Mangle, and Shred, although I’m definitely not critting as much. However, adding those powerful bleeds to the priority list complements the impact abilities nicely, allowing me to damage my opponent more consistently. This is especially true at times where I get thrown, stunned, incapacitated, or am taking a few seconds to throw myself a few quick heals.

Closing

I’ve read quite a bit about Mastery for kitties in 4.0.1, but I haven’t seen too much about using it for PvP. Red (A Distant Land) had a nice PvP/PvE post a few weeks back, and he mentioned that he had reforged all of his gear into Mastery, although he did seem to be reconsidering dumping so much Crit for Mastery.

I currently have one piece that has Haste Rating, which is Bloodfall. If I reforged the Haste instead of Crit, I would lose 7 points of Mastery Rating and pick up almost 1% Critical Strike chance. However, I am less than 200 Honor Points away from being able to buy the Wrathful staff, and if I do that, the 92 Haste Rating on Bloodfall will be replaced with 108 Resilience anyway, so it won’t matter. However, if I decide to use my Honor Points to get a couple of other pieces instead, I may reforge the Haste on Bloodfall… but that is unlikely – the Wrathful staff is pretty awesome!

I think that reforging Crit into Mastery on every piece is the route that I’ll continue to go as I upgrade my last couple of PvP pieces. There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that once you land those bleeds, the opponent can’t remove them, and he’s going to have to deal with them even if you’re out of commission.

* * * * *

In my next post, I’ll talk briefly about my PvP spec and glyphs. Apparently, a lot of people find my blog by using a variation on the “feral pvp spec 4.0.1″ search term, so I’ll take a look at that very soon!

Feral PvP: pretty sweet in 4.0.1

(not a guide.)

Several days ago, I posted a QQ-filled whine-fest where I expressed frustration over my inability to kill priests in PvP. Sorry about that.

In that post, I summed up my experience by saying that I probably wouldn’t be PvP-ing much for a while. As it turns out, I got all of my frustration out of my system then and there, and the next day I was back to PvP-ing. Actually, it’s pretty much all that I’ve done in-game since then.

There are a couple of reasons that I am enjoying PvP again.

Adjusting to changes

The biggest thing for me has been adjusting to the changes that came with the patch. There are several mechanics that differ from before, and learning how to use some of them has helped me have quite a bit more success than I’d had in the past.

• The addition of Skull Bash, while having its range limitations, is nonetheless extremely useful when fighting spellcasters. It’s an ability that I pay a lot of attention to now.
• For me, the removal of Armor Penetration from the game seems to make damage dealing feel different. While bleeds are still just as important in PvP as they are in PvE, it feels like my direct damage is making more of an impact now. This doesn’t mean that I’m seeing “bigger crits” or anything; it just feels like my hits really slam into the person. Perhaps I’m totally wrong, and what I’m feeling is just a result of better playing or something. However, feeling like I’m pounding on my opponent makes the experience that much more fun!
• Ravage, which is even more useful now with the change to the Predatory Strikes talent and the addition of Stampede, is something that I am still working into my repertoire. It’s great for huge chunks of damage.
• The Primal Madness talent, which raises the maximum energy level during Tiger’s Fury and Berserk, is great for when you really need to go to town on someone, which is almost always!
• The expanded glyph system gives druids a nice level of customization potential, and I’ve been playing around with different glyph combos over the past few days. For example… Red (A Distant Land), who has made several fun, high-quality feral PvP videos, recently extolled the virtues of Glyph of Entangling Roots, so I’m giving that one a try as one of my Majors.
• The 31-point talent trees significantly reduce the number of available talent choices, but for feral PvP there are still several combinations that you can use. I’ve been tweaking my spec this week, and while I’m still not completely sold on one or two of my choices, it’s working out pretty well for me.

Wrathful Arena gear

For a while now, I’ve been at the point where I had all of the gear that I was going to get. Since I haven’t participated in arenas, I have no Arena Rating, so I haven’t been able to get a PvP weapon, along with the Wrathful set, boots or belt.

However, with Patch 4.0.1, some of these items are purchasable! It looks like anything that doesn’t require a 2000(+) Arena Rating can be purchased with Honor Points. A couple of days ago, I remembered that I had read about this change at some point before the patch arrived, and so I went to look at what was available.

I’ve been eying the Wrathful Gladiator’s Staff for a while, but when I went to look at it again, I wasn’t as sure that it should be my first purchase. I first looked at it a few months ago, before I had gotten Bloodfall. At that time, the staff was simply a sweet PvP upgrade! However, comparing it this week with Bloodfall, I decided that I didn’t want to lose the sheer damage that it brings to the table right now. The staff has a nice chunk of Resiliance (108), but it costs 2550 Honor Points now, and with slightly more honor than that, I was able to buy the Wrathful chest (1650 HP), gloves (1040 HP), and idol (265 HP), which gave me direct stat upgrades on pretty much everything.

I now have a pitiful amount of honor, and am beginning the long process of saving up for the helm and legs (1650 HP each) and belt (945 HP), which are also direct upgrades. The boots (945 HP) are still a damage downgrade, although I would gain 80 Resilience, but I’ll get them eventually. And then, the weapon!

Fun stuff

So, things are going much better than they were a week ago. I’ve had some exciting fights in battlegrounds recently, including a few situations* where I was able to survive and prevail in a situation where I (and my opponents) assumed that I was overmatched.

Yesterday, in Warsong Gulch, we ran up against a pre-made. Usually, these games go badly, as they get two quick scores and then farm us at the graveyard. However, while they got their two scores, we didn’t let them destroy us for 20 minutes. We had four druids and two rogues, and so we kept stealthing and sending people to their flag, which spread them out. We also defended our own flag, and after a while, when they realized that they were wasting their time trying to farm, they started coming for the flag. They sent one person, and then two people a few times, and then four a few times, and finally five. We had two cats, a warlock, and a DK in the keep, and we were able to hold them off quite nicely.

It was a good experience. There were a couple of people who were saying “Why aren’t we just letting them win?” My response was “Screw them – if they want to play ‘Farm the Alliance,’ we’re going to make it as painful as possible for them!” The DK concurred, and the other cat was pretty good. They kept coming, and we kept dropping them. For me, it was a good time to test my skills over an extended period of time in a confined space.

The situations* that I refer to are situations where I fight two people at once by myself. The times I’ve succeeded, it has generally been two melee that are ganging up on me. In the past, these situations were the death of me. Over the past week, though, things have gone a little something like this:

I attack a warrior. I stun him and get to work on him. A DK joins the fun and grips me. I hit him, stun him, and switch back to the warrior, who has been bleeding. I finish him off. The DK is now attacking me again. (At this point, I’m low on health.) I switch to bear, Bash, and then pop a couple of heals. I switch back to cat and try to land as many blows/bleeds on him as possible while avoiding him. He dies.

I cheer loudly at my computer like my team just scored a touchdown. My girlfriend wonders what the heck just happened…

Succeeding in these situations is really fun and exciting. I’ve done it a few times, and the fact that I can do it at all gives me a thrill.

Obviously, there is more that I could do. I’m still working on using Cyclone, Nature’s Grasp, and Entangling Roots more often, and that’s just something that will take practice and diligence. However, I am definitely improving.

I still get creamed when there are a lot of people attacking me, and casters – particularly priests, who are like warlocks with heals right now – are still difficult, but even that is going better. I often find myself in skirmishes where there are a few people on each side duking it out, and I’m finding that if I close in on the caster, I can contain him a bit, and will generally survive longer than if I worried about the melee attackers instead.

Additional inspiration

In addition to the potential for gear and the different feel and abilities, I was inspired in part by an experience that I had with an enemy feral druid that I ran into in Arathi Basin the other day.

We ran into a premade from my server, and held our own for a while before their superior organization (etc.) started to overwhelm us. We were trying to find a node to take from them, and in the course of attempting to take the Farm, I began to be chain-ganked by this druid.

He was badass. I looked him up on the armory, and he had a nice set of gear, both PvP and PvE (including Deathbringer’s Will and Heroic Cryptmaker). He was much more skilled than I am (he has the Arena achievements to prove it), and, while fighting him (he killed me approximately eight times), I got to observe a little bit of his play style. The most inspiring part of it, though, was just seeing how he dominated just about everyone he fought. I’ve fought with or against some pretty pesky kitties in my time, but never one who so dominated his opponents like this guy. Seeing how he moved and the ways that he killed us inspired me to work harder at improving my skills.

Closing

This is a bit of a rambling post, and I’m not satisfied with that, but I wanted to share my updated views on the feral PvP experience. I’m happy to be excited about PvP again, and to be seeing some improvement.

Further impressions of Patch 4.0.1

I’m reading a lot of mixed reactions to WoW Patch 4.0.1 around the blogosphere, as well as in the various in-game chats.

Some people love the changes to their toon(s), while others don’t. There are also certain issues, including bugs, errors and class imbalances that have made the game more frustrating than it used to be for players. Thirdly, some people are just annoyed that they have to relearn their classes, re-gem their gear, reset their talents, and so on.

I’ve already written one post about my experiences with the patch, but I have more observations, and I’ll offer some of them now.

Having to re-gem, reforge, reset talents, buy glyphs and retrain

On Tuesday evening, the first thing that I did was log onto Mushan and began the process of looking at my Justice Points, converting them into Tier 10 gear, and getting him trained, talented and stat-balanced.

At one point, I was in Ironforge and I ran into my friend Somb, who was working on putting together his priest. One of his first comments to me was “Dude, this is so much fun!” We talked about how the talents/abilities/gear game was a totally fun mini-game within the game.

I have to say that I have immensely enjoyed the process, at least with my two main characters. My paladin didn’t require much work, but I spent a lot of time researching and optimizing my hunter. And when I tackled Anacrusa, who was heavily gemmed and configured for Armor Penetration, I had to replace 19 gems! I had a notebook handy, and I actually had to make a chart containing all of my gear and gem slots, in order to decide where I was going to put each gem. That kind of stuff is right up my alley.

Learning about the new talents, abilities, and glyphs was something that I’ve been waiting for, and the massive experience of putting toons together again all at once is something that you don’t usually get to do – unless, of course, you have just leveled a new toon to 80.

Changes to class mechanics

Anacrusa

When the patch came out on Tuesday, I basically ignored my druid, other than logging in to buy an enchant and send my hunter some gold. This was before Blizzard adjusted the damage coefficients for several of the feral DPS abilities on Wednesday night.

However, on Thursday morning I logged in and decided to go ahead and get her “set up.” Once I did, I looked over the tooltips to my abilities one more time, and then I went over to the training dummy and launched into a physical assault upon it. It was an interesting session.

For me, the biggest changes have to be the time increase to the Savage Roar buff and the effect of Haste on energy regeneration. Whereas a two-point SR used to give 18 seconds, one point now gives 22 seconds. Combined with the faster global cooldown and energy regeneration, Savage Roar almost feels like it’s an afterthought to me now. I apply it, forget about it for a half-minute or so, and then reapply it. I can do two to four “rotations” between Savage Roar applications now, and with the Haste impact it sort of feels like I am constantly in Berserk-mode – except for when I hit Berserk, in which case it feels like Berserk-on-speed.

On the negative side, Swipe is an expensive, ineffective multi-target ability now. That’s to be expected with Cataclysm‘s move away from AoE-based encounters, but it still feels like it sucks to use it now. I’ve moved it off of my main action bar for now.

 

Hangin' out with Numa

Mushan

There were several changes to hunters, but two most fundamental changes were the loss of Volley and the switch from mana to focus as the hunter resource.

The loss of volley makes doing current content underwhelming, at least in multi-mob scenarios. Multi-Shot is something of a focus-hog, which makes it largely uneconomical with regard to DPS, and the limited area that it affects makes it a little less useful as a threat generator with Misdirect.

On the other hand, focus, while not without its drawbacks, is fun and challenging to manage. It somewhat reminds me of playing my druid, in that the resource is used in relatively larger chunks (as a percentage of our total resource), but it regenerates quite a bit faster than mana did (once again by percentage). Focus regeneration is affected by the hunter’s use of Steady Shot (nine focus per SS), as well as by Haste (since Haste affects the cast time of Steady Shot). As a Marksman-specced hunter, judicious use of Rapid Fire and Potion of Speed, as well as a rotation that uses two Steady Shots in a row in order to keep up the Improved Steady Shot buff, can make focus management fairly viable.

Class/spec imbalances

There is a lot of commentary out there about imbalances between the specs. Hunters aren’t doing as much DPS as they used to. Holy paladins struggle at times. Casters are OP. Etc.

While I don’t disagree with the sentiments, and I felt them keenly myself when kitties started off the patch with their claws freshly removed, I’m willing to live with what I’ve seen thus far, as far as PvE goes.

Our guild decided to try out Ruby Sanctum (10-player) last night, and the casters (mage and lock) seemed to have the highest DPS, while the melee (DK, warrior, and kitty) performed about as expected. We got Halion down to about 10% before he enraged, and we failed to kill him mainly because six of us had never attempted the place before. Coordination seemed to be our biggest concern, because the DPS numbers, tanking and healing were all fine.

So yes, there are imbalances, but for the most part they don’t make the classes unplayable, which is what’s most important (in my opinion) in this stage of Blizzard’s Cataclysm prep.

Bugs and errors

Argg… bugs abound! It’s all good… sort of.

One of the biggest bugs that I am experiencing is the broken nameplate system, in which nameplates/health bars on mobs are often invisible or flitting all over the place, which leads me to sort of shoot blindly toward my tank at times and hope that I target something. Analogue said today that she uses Tidy Plates, which apparently takes care of the problem, so I may give that a try.

The other thing that is increasingly annoying me is the fact that, when I go to buy Northern Spices in Dalaran, I get an Internal Bag Error. Given the fact that I have well over 300 Dalaran Cooking Awards on one toon and 250+ on another, it pains me to think that, if this doesn’t get resolved, I will soon have to resort to begging for spices from friends or, even worse, buying them at the AH. I actually have a ticket in for this as of yesterday, and hopefully it will be resolved at some point early this week.

There are many other problems, including mouseover and portal bugs that freeze or crash the game, instance portals that cause disconnects, missing enchants, missing characters, and so on. And I’ll admit that, on Saturday night, I got extremely frustrated with the litany of issues, and so I barely played between then and last night’s raid.

However, in the long run, I’m assuming that Blizzard will address most of the issues. At least, I hope that they will.

Closing

I know that there are a lot of opinions about the patch. I have a couple of friends that are considering quitting the game, while I have other friends who love some of the new things they can do.

Here is a small list of articles that I’ve read recently where bloggers discuss their impressions:

• Dinaer wonders whether this patch has been a mistake.
• Red thinks that kitty DPS is very nice right now!
• Big Bear Butt asks if your play priorities changed with the patch.
• Flyv muses about Warcraft’s middle-aged-ness.
• Adam looks at 4.0.1 as a n00b.
• Klepsacovic is enthused about reforging.

P.S.  What’s up with the water? This shot from Darnassus kind of looks like when I used to log in to Dalaran, and the floor took  a while to load on my old computer, and it looked like you were just standing on thin, purple air…

Is it water? or...